Thursday, May 02, 2013



Nursery assistant, sacked by British nursery for smacking her OWN daughter on the bottom, claims she was unfairly dismissed

A nursery assistant is claiming unfair dismissal after she was sacked for smacking her own daughter at work.

Kyshia Cammock, 25, lost her job at Little Folks Nursery in Birmingham after she hit her two-year-old on the bottom for misbehaving, a tribunal was told.

The mother is suing her former employers, Mishi Nurseries Ltd, for unfair dismissal and seeking compensation.

But Mishi Nurseries is fighting the claim and maintains Miss Cammock was sacked for gross misconduct after the incident, which is against company policy.

The police were informed at the time, the hearing was told, but no action was taken.  Miss Cammock was on a training scheme at the centre.

She has accused her employers of favouritism among staff, claiming she had been treated less favourably than others.

At the hearing, Miss Cammock said she had been told by management not to deny the smacking accusation because there had been CCTV footage. But it was revealed there was no such footage.

Tribunal judge Victoria Dean said she could not find any reference in a witness statement by Miss Cammock that acknowledged she knew about the firm’s policy against smacking children on the premises.

But Miss Cammock said during the hearing: 'I knew I was not allowed to smack a child.'

The nursery owners claimed the member of staff had been fully aware of the firm’s 'behaviour policy' regarding staff.

The case was adjourned to a later date, to allow more evidence to be provided.  Miss Cammock has yet to give verbal evidence.

SOURCE





You CAN'T have it all, says Net-a-porter boss: Entrepreneur reveals trauma at starting business while pregnant with her first child

She has long been regarded as one of the few women who has managed to juggle ‘having it all’ .

But Natalie Massenet has now revealed she deeply regrets her ambitious decision to launch her successful online fashion business when she was pregnant with her first child.

Mrs Massenet has confessed the experience left her so ’traumatised’ that she waited another six years before having her second child.

The 47-year-old entrepreneur, named as one of the world’s most influential women in February, created her online fashion empire Net-a-porter more than a decade ago, when shopping via a keyboard was in its infancy.

Net-a-Porter was reported to be worth £350 million two years ago.

Speaking at the Vogue Fashion Festival at the weekend, Mrs Massenet, who at the time was pregnant with Isabella, now 13, said: ‘At the same time when I started writing the business plan I was also pregnant. And I think fuelled by hormones and delusions that if I could build a baby why not a business?

‘I made a dreadful mistake or opportunity I’m not sure, of doing both of them at the same time, and it was enormously hard.’

She added: ‘I was so traumatised by having a baby and starting a business in the same year that it took six years for the next one to come along.’

Mrs Massenet, who is divorced from her French investment banker husband Arnaud Massenet, gave birth to another girl, Ava, and she jokes that she was ‘building the Net a Porter future consumer base one at a time.’

Mrs Massenet began her business with a team of 15 from an apartment in Chelsea, London.  They worked from one bedroom and used the spare as a distribution centre, taking orders via a nineties laptop connected to dial-up internet.

Today 5 million people visit the site’s weekly magazine and 2,600 people are employed. Mrs Massenet has offices in the UK, US and Hong Kong.

She said she still has to ‘pinch herself’ every now and again.

‘While we were in this little rickety apartment in Chelsea and while we had all of our stuff stacked in the back and only 15 people in the room we put all of our energy to what the consumer saw and aimed big, wanted to make people think this was a big company,’ she said.

‘There is no recipe for success, it’s as unique and individual as you are,’ she added. ‘People always ask is it hard being an entrepreneur and a mum and the answer is yes.

'But the reality is women do it all the time and thankfully we have mentors and women around us who can inspire us.’

SOURCE






Canada Wants to Join the Government Stupidity Contest

A recurring feature on this blog is the US vs UK government stupidity contest, which features examples of idiotic behavior by politicians and bureaucrats on both sides of the Atlantic.

Recent winners of this dubious honor include a rather amazing example of British road painting and a horrid incident of anti-gun political correctness by American school bureaucrats.

Our neighbors to the north must be envious that they’re not part of this contest. Based on what just happened in Quebec, Canada probably deserves to be in the conversation.

Mon Dieu!

First some background, courtesy of a story from the Guardian. It seems that the provincial government actually has language police.

    "They are known as the language police, a unit within the regional Quebec government that seeks to protect French from the rising tide of English. It deploys inspectors to rein in recidivist anglophones, take on big corporate transgressors such as Guess, the Gap and Costco and conduct spot checks to follow up thousands of public complaints."

But sometimes, these tax-funded Keystone Cops go too far.  Zealots in the Office québécois de la langue française (Quebec Board of the French Language) may have gone a step too far in picking a fight with an Italian restaurant… After a five-month investigation into an anonymous complaint, Massimo Lecas received a letter from the board telling him that his establishment, Buonanotte, had broken the law by including the words “pasta” on the menu and “bottiglia“, the Italian word for bottle, instead of the French word bouteille. Outraged, Lecas posted the letter for 2,500 of his Facebook friends to see. In doing so, he unleashed a political tempest over one of the most sensitive topics up for debate in the province. The outcry has forced the Quebec government to rein in its language inspectors, ensure exceptions to the rules are made for ethnic food and restaurant menus and order a review of how it handles public complaints.

By the way, this is not an isolated incident.

    "Lecas’s decision to go public with the letter from the language inspector has prompted other restaurateurs to come forward. One told how he was ordered to cover his microwave’s on/off switch and the redial button on a telephone with tape because they were in English. The chef’s grocery list, which was written on a kitchen chalkboard, was also found to have broken the law: steak frites may be a staple of Parisian bistros but, according to Quebec law, biftek is the only acceptable term. …Quebec’s recent budget included one notable increase: the yearly allotment for the language police."

So Canada definitely can make a claim that it belongs in the government stupidity contest. Though, to be fair, I should acknowledge that other governments also merit consideration.

*    In Germany, the government misplaced the sensitive blueprints of its new $2.3 billion spy headquarters.

*   In Italy, the government of supposed technocratic experts managed to appoint the wrong person to a job that shouldn’t exist.

*   In the European Union, watching free soccer broadcasts is now a human right.

*   In Greece, bureaucrats actually demand stool samples from entrepreneurs applying to set up online companies.

The moral of the story is that government – in all nations – is a festering black hole of waste. And if you ever feel that these incompetent and foolish people deserve more of our money, then I suggest you move to France, where the nation’s President generously has promised that nobody will have to surrender more than 80 percent of their income to the government.
Are You Happy that Your Tax Dollars Subsidized the Tsarnaev Family?

The bad news is that there are despicable and evil people seeking to kill innocents.

The worse news is that some of these pathetic excuses for protoplasm are subsidized by taxpayers.  It’s happened in France, Australia, and the United Kingdom.  And we now know that the Tsarnaev family was on he dole as well.

I used to think it was outrageous that the welfare state funded bad behavior (as illustrated by this humorous poster), as well as general laziness and moral depravity.

But there should be a special wing of the Moocher Hall of Fame for taxpayer-subsidized terrorists.

SOURCE





Australia:  Melbourne doctor's anti-abortion stance may be punished

A MELBOURNE doctor who refused to refer a couple for an abortion because they wanted only a boy has admitted he could face tough sanctions.

Dr Mark Hobart fears he could be punished for refusing to give the Melbourne couple a referral after discovering they were seeking an abortion because they didn't want to have a girl.

By refusing to provide a referral for a patient on moral grounds or refer the matter to another doctor, Dr Hobart admits he has broken the law and could face suspension, conditions on his ability to practice or even be deregistered.

But he was willing to risk punishment in pursuit of principles. He said he did not believe any doctor in Victoria would have helped a couple have an abortion just because they wanted a boy.

"I've got a conscientious objection to abortion, I've refused to refer in this case a woman for abortion and it appears that I have broken the rules," he said.  "But just because it's the law doesn't mean it's right."

The Sunday Herald Sun yesterday revealed the couple had asked Dr Hobart to refer them to an abortion clinic after discovering at 19 weeks they were having a girl when they wanted a boy.

Victoria's Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 specifies the obligations of registered health practitioners who have a "conscientious objection" to abortion.

Under the Act, if a woman requests a doctor to advise on a proposed abortion and the practitioner has a conscientious objection, he or she must refer the woman to a practitioner who does not conscientiously object.

"That is the letter of the law," he said. "It leaves me in limbo.   "It's never been tested ... it is a very complicated area."

Medical Practitioners Board spokeswoman Nicole Newton said doctors were bound by the law and a professional code of conduct.

"The board expects practitioners to practise lawfully and to provide safe care and to meet the standards set out in the board's code of conduct," she said.

Another doctor who was brought before the Medical Board in January for airing his views against abortion was cautioned and warned he could be deregistered if it happened again.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICSDISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL  and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine).   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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