NEW: Having “taken soundings” from MPs and heard that a formal complaint has been made to the ICGS, the PM has agreed to suspend Chris Pincher while the investigation is ongoing.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Thanks, I think. Disturbing and depressing
You're depressed by the idea of teenage girls not wearing enough? Well, well, well. So much for all that nonsense about leopards and spots. Good news anyway.
There’s a schoolgirl I see most mornings whilst I’m out with the dog. She’s about 15 or 16. A few times I’ve held the dog to one side so she can get by when there’s been a car parked on the pavement, so it’s just naturally developed, as it does - at least up north anyway - that if we see each other we smile and say good morning. Nice and polite, as you do.
The other week I was driving along and I see this woman on the pavement. Her back was to me, and she had a pair of Daisy Dukes on. Cut really high, as they do, arse cheeks poking out the bottom, long tanned legs.
Now I like to think I’m a nice bloke, liberal, feminist, probably even woke. But there’s a part of me that’ll always be an unreconstructed Yorkshire letch.
‘Cracking arse’ I thought to myself as I overtook this vision of loveliness.
I was mortified to see it was the schoolgirl I say hello to every other morning.
I had to confess to someone so I told my niece. She laughed and called me a dirty old man. Made me feel a bit better.
The surprising and pitiful thing is that to some people being nice, liberal, feminist and not racist bars you from admiring a 'cracking arse'.
Sources saying that PM took decision to remove whip after a number of MPs got in touch with him, Steve Barclay and the whips today about last night's allegations, and they decided if a formal complaint was lodged they would act. 1/
They admit that PM knew about the rumours surrounding Chris Pincher but said the Propriety and Ethics Team in Cabinet office said there were allegations but they were unsubstantiated, and they didn't object to appointment. 2/
Bafflement that No 10 tried to hold an obviously unsustainable line on Pincher and then caved when it collapsed to dust. Why the surprise? This is literally always how Boris Johnson's deals with crisis: "Fight it, tell them to get lost, fight it, hope something comes up...Oh" https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1542907960891932672
Bafflement that No 10 tried to hold an obviously unsustainable line on Pincher and then caved when it collapsed to dust. Why the surprise? This is literally always how Boris Johnson's deals with crisis: "Fight it, tell them to get lost, fight it, hope something comes up...Oh" https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1542907960891932672
No. 10 making anything other than the stupidest call on events would be a surprise these days.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Global travel chaos is why I can’t be bothered flying this summer. I’m driving up to Maine instead.
Apparently there is a glut of lobster, too. Can’t give the buggers away.
You just moved to the US, a driving holiday is compulsory in your first year there
You don’t even think $5 a gallon (c. £1 a litre) is particularly expensive ‘gas’.
Enjoy the seafood!
I am finalising my autumn US road trip as we type. Last time (2019) I headed out to South Dakota; this time I am mostly giving Trumpland a miss, doing a circuit of the New England states, heading down in a loop toward North Carolina before heading back to NYC.
Awesome! A proper US road trip is on my bucket list. Half of me wants to start with the Cannonball Run, and then spend a month driving back East a lot more slowly.
Last time I did 6,088 miles in about seven weeks. This time I have about six weeks and am expecting the mileage to be lower.
In 2019 I hired a car (a Toyota Corolla, which subsequently led to me buying one for myself - the car will drive itself on the motorway while I feed the dog in the back seat) for about £1200 for just over six weeks (I ditched it before returning to NYC); this year I had one reserved with Avis for over £3000 - fortunately prices have very recently reduced and I snapped one up for about £2200 for just under six weeks. Which looks like a good deal given reports of £700 for a week hiring a car in Europe right now.
The outline plan is NYC-RI-NH-VT-NY(upstate)-PA-VA-NC-PA-NYC
That sounds safe, and why should only OAPs and toddlers in inner city areas have their lives endangered by the glorious world of dogdom?
What I'm trying to work out, is how to drive from PA to VA without going through either MD or WV?
Also from VA to PA without driving through either a) VA or b) TN>KY>WV or something like that But heck, could decide to head to Key West by way of Coeur d'Alene!
FYI (and BTW) once amused myself and a friend on a road trip, by driving from Pennsylvania to Virginia across 5 miles or so of Maryland, while smoking the same joint the entire way: a tri-state doobie!
Thankfully, the statue of limitations for this felony (actually plural, quadruple, feds plus states) LONG ago.
Speaking of crossing multiple borders quickly, Leon is well positioned to achieve this, as he is now about a hundred miles of so south of the BOSNIAN RIVIERA
Which is extends for a few short miles, at Neum, between separate sections of Croatia, thus giving the otherwise land-locked nation access to the Adriatic:
He has a point. In a straight contest between an MP squeezing two bottoms at the Carlton Club without the owners permission and sitting in the chamber watching porn during PMQs I'd say the squeezed bottoms have it.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Thanks, I think. Disturbing and depressing
You're depressed by the idea of teenage girls not wearing enough? Well, well, well. So much for all that nonsense about leopards and spots. Good news anyway.
There’s a schoolgirl I see most mornings whilst I’m out with the dog. She’s about 15 or 16. A few times I’ve held the dog to one side so she can get by when there’s been a car parked on the pavement, so it’s just naturally developed, as it does - at least up north anyway - that if we see each other we smile and say good morning. Nice and polite, as you do.
The other week I was driving along and I see this woman on the pavement. Her back was to me, and she had a pair of Daisy Dukes on. Cut really high, as they do, arse cheeks poking out the bottom, long tanned legs.
Now I like to think I’m a nice bloke, liberal, feminist, probably even woke. But there’s a part of me that’ll always be an unreconstructed Yorkshire letch.
‘Cracking arse’ I thought to myself as I overtook this vision of loveliness.
I was mortified to see it was the schoolgirl I say hello to every other morning.
I had to confess to someone so I told my niece. She laughed and called me a dirty old man. Made me feel a bit better.
- presume it's the summer hols rather than the new uniform.
If the later, might be just the kind of wokery yours truly could really get . . . behind.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Occasionally variegated by references to Scotch breakfasts and Mars Bars, and to drinking habits at the same time as sneering at SG policies on alcohol control.
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Thanks. Perfectly fair position to take. In politics as in life working out the relationships between motive, words, actions, ambitions, self interest etc is fascinating and never easy.
We know it is hard because we know about ourselves and the gulf between public and non-public personas in ourselves; and we know that others, if interested, would have to guess and may or may not be right about all sorts of things. And that is just at the conscious level.
Leave personal preferences out of it. Most people have no difficulty with the idea about Boris that there is only the most tenuous relation between what he says, what he does and what he actually thinks.
Boris is egregious, but speaks for us all, including the motives of Ms Sturgeon. Neither of us knows.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
Not so sure.
A lot of them tend to grow up.
Are you manifesting a touch of 'sofness' there yourself, Matt?
No idea - you'll have to tell me.
I was reflecting on the difference between Wes Streeting and Zara Sultana. And some of the people I knew at University.
Wes has grown up more than her, you mean? Maybe so. But it's not always easy to tell growing up from giving up. Or not so much 'giving up' - that's harsh - more shedding your principles in order to get on or for an easier life.
And sometimes those youthful ideas prove ultimately to be good ones. Eg - and apols for self back slap - when I was 23 and doing my chartered accountancy training, I used to irritate my elders and wisers no end with the sentiment that "Audit" should be totally uncoupled (legally) from "Consulting" because all of the so-called synergy it provided (aka cross selling) was as nothing compared to the structural problem of the conflict of interest.
30 odd years later and .... exactly. So who had the wisdom there? Those smooth and seasoned partners and CFOs etc or the "naive" young working class lad from the South Yorkshire coalfields?
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
That post is the meanderings of a half witted bellend talking out it's arse. English cash my arse, the clown obviously needs an education given he does not realise we have subsidised England for the last 50 years. Is it any wonder England is circling the drain.
Good evening. You are probably right. BTW, apostrophe alert. Kind regards.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Occasionally variegated by references to Scotch breakfasts and Mars Bars, and to drinking habits at the same time as sneering at SG policies on alcohol control.
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
I just installed about ten keyboards, then switch as desired to achieve correct accents.
Current range is English, Swedish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Castilian, German, Dutch. My second language, Scots, is oddly unavailable.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Thanks, I think. Disturbing and depressing
You're depressed by the idea of teenage girls not wearing enough? Well, well, well. So much for all that nonsense about leopards and spots. Good news anyway.
There’s a schoolgirl I see most mornings whilst I’m out with the dog. She’s about 15 or 16. A few times I’ve held the dog to one side so she can get by when there’s been a car parked on the pavement, so it’s just naturally developed, as it does - at least up north anyway - that if we see each other we smile and say good morning. Nice and polite, as you do.
The other week I was driving along and I see this woman on the pavement. Her back was to me, and she had a pair of Daisy Dukes on. Cut really high, as they do, arse cheeks poking out the bottom, long tanned legs.
Now I like to think I’m a nice bloke, liberal, feminist, probably even woke. But there’s a part of me that’ll always be an unreconstructed Yorkshire letch.
‘Cracking arse’ I thought to myself as I overtook this vision of loveliness.
I was mortified to see it was the schoolgirl I say hello to every other morning.
I had to confess to someone so I told my niece. She laughed and called me a dirty old man. Made me feel a bit better.
The surprising and pitiful thing is that to some people being nice, liberal, feminist and not racist bars you from admiring a 'cracking arse'.
Isn't the Golden Rule here, cause no embarrassment? In other words, curb your enthusiasm!
A discrete gander at what there to gander being one thing, while panting or wolf-whistling is another.
Women seem to be pretty good at this, better than men on average. But not too hard with a bit of practice to show no more than mild appreciation, without causing undue offense.
Bafflement that No 10 tried to hold an obviously unsustainable line on Pincher and then caved when it collapsed to dust. Why the surprise? This is literally always how Boris Johnson's deals with crisis: "Fight it, tell them to get lost, fight it, hope something comes up...Oh" https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1542907960891932672
Trouble is, Boris's tactics often work, for instance with partygate and wallpapergate and whatever we are calling Cummings' eye tests. It worked with his freebie holidays and seems to be holding with the various donorgates.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
My sister is (just retd now) Head of a top (private) girls school and one of the arguments she makes for the single sex model is that it's easier to shield girls from the pressure to sexualize. Wonder if that's right? Sounds like it might be.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Occasionally variegated by references to Scotch breakfasts and Mars Bars, and to drinking habits at the same time as sneering at SG policies on alcohol control.
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
I just installed about ten keyboards, then switch as desired to achieve correct accents.
Current range is English, Swedish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Castilian, German, Dutch. My second language, Scots, is oddly unavailable.
Ok, so translate your last post into this myserious 'Scots' tongue! Feel free to annotate where the keyboard characters are unavailable.
Help. I’ve left the discussion but posts are coming through to my inbox. What have I done?
Accidentally clicked on notifications for the thread on Vanilla?
Looks like it Dr F. I think it's sorted now but my inbox was very full for a while!
Yes, that is how I did it once.
Don't you just love it, when some inadvertent key stroke or screen swoosh suddenly revolutionizes your personal technological ergonomics, often when your engaged in complicated tasks and/or on tight deadlines?
Just Good Lord's way of keeping us tethered to the ground in the Brave New World of the Third Millennium.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Thanks, I think. Disturbing and depressing
You're depressed by the idea of teenage girls not wearing enough? Well, well, well. So much for all that nonsense about leopards and spots. Good news anyway.
There’s a schoolgirl I see most mornings whilst I’m out with the dog. She’s about 15 or 16. A few times I’ve held the dog to one side so she can get by when there’s been a car parked on the pavement, so it’s just naturally developed, as it does - at least up north anyway - that if we see each other we smile and say good morning. Nice and polite, as you do.
The other week I was driving along and I see this woman on the pavement. Her back was to me, and she had a pair of Daisy Dukes on. Cut really high, as they do, arse cheeks poking out the bottom, long tanned legs.
Now I like to think I’m a nice bloke, liberal, feminist, probably even woke. But there’s a part of me that’ll always be an unreconstructed Yorkshire letch.
‘Cracking arse’ I thought to myself as I overtook this vision of loveliness.
I was mortified to see it was the schoolgirl I say hello to every other morning.
I had to confess to someone so I told my niece. She laughed and called me a dirty old man. Made me feel a bit better.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
My sister is (just retd now) Head of a top (private) girls school and one of the arguments she makes for the single sex model is that it's easier to shield girls from the pressure to sexualize. Wonder if that's right? Sounds like it might be.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
Is it not generally accepted that it is better for children and youths to abstain from sexual intercourse and from alcohol as long as possible? Preferably til at least 18? That’s certainly been the general message for our three, and it has been a winning formula so far, certainly for the 2 adult ones.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Occasionally variegated by references to Scotch breakfasts and Mars Bars, and to drinking habits at the same time as sneering at SG policies on alcohol control.
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
I just installed about ten keyboards, then switch as desired to achieve correct accents.
Current range is English, Swedish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Castilian, German, Dutch. My second language, Scots, is oddly unavailable.
Ok, so translate your last post into this myserious 'Scots' tongue! Feel free to annotate where the keyboard characters are unavailable.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
That post is the meanderings of a half witted bellend talking out it's arse. English cash my arse, the clown obviously needs an education given he does not realise we have subsidised England for the last 50 years. Is it any wonder England is circling the drain.
Well those are your words, Malcolm, not mine!
I'll just stick to the knitting of calling out this particular strain of 'looking down on Scotland' that I see on here from time to time. It's subtle and most seem to miss it.
Bafflement that No 10 tried to hold an obviously unsustainable line on Pincher and then caved when it collapsed to dust. Why the surprise? This is literally always how Boris Johnson's deals with crisis: "Fight it, tell them to get lost, fight it, hope something comes up...Oh" https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1542907960891932672
Trouble is, Boris's tactics often work, for instance with partygate and wallpapergate and whatever we are calling Cummings' eye tests. It worked with his freebie holidays and seems to be holding with the various donorgates.
The tactic worked for an remarkably long time. Was Matt Hancock (another Carry On name, if ever there was one) the first one to fall for anything other than falling out with the boss? And the plan was to protect Paterson- it's just that the stomach to do so had gone.
One of those striking signs of fading power- Johnson can't defend his stooges from themselves any more.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Occasionally variegated by references to Scotch breakfasts and Mars Bars, and to drinking habits at the same time as sneering at SG policies on alcohol control.
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
I just installed about ten keyboards, then switch as desired to achieve correct accents.
Current range is English, Swedish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Castilian, German, Dutch. My second language, Scots, is oddly unavailable.
Ok, so translate your last post into this myserious 'Scots' tongue! Feel free to annotate where the keyboard characters are unavailable.
Mc/Mac key? Would be a time saver.
When we got married, my wife was disappointed that I didn’t have a sufficiently Scottish surname 😄 She should’ve got hold of a MacFarquhar or something.
In fairness, I’m as much Mackintosh, McRae, Melville etc as I am Dickson. Paternalistic naming conventions are a wee bit odd.
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Cos Unionists never, ever learn.
Tbf they're capable of learning by rote one or two things, usually along the lines of the SNP are anti English racists and Sturgeon just wants to keep things as they are (mysteriously combined with she's gonna be off any minute now). Unfortunately that's their limit so they have to keep repeating them over and over again.
Going to keep the pot simmering until the gas runs out then it's New York and Head of the UN!
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
My sister is (just retd now) Head of a top (private) girls school and one of the arguments she makes for the single sex model is that it's easier to shield girls from the pressure to sexualize. Wonder if that's right? Sounds like it might be.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
Is it not generally accepted that it is better for children and youths to abstain from sexual intercourse and from alcohol as long as possible? Preferably til at least 18? That’s certainly been the general message for our three, and it has been a winning formula so far, certainly for the 2 adult ones.
You can still have fun as a teenager without being some quasi Holden Caulfield dickhead
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
My sister is (just retd now) Head of a top (private) girls school and one of the arguments she makes for the single sex model is that it's easier to shield girls from the pressure to sexualize. Wonder if that's right? Sounds like it might be.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
Is it not generally accepted that it is better for children and youths to abstain from sexual intercourse and from alcohol as long as possible? Preferably til at least 18? That’s certainly been the general message for our three, and it has been a winning formula so far, certainly for the 2 adult ones.
You can still have fun as a teenager without being some quasi Holden Caulfield dickhead
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
My sister is (just retd now) Head of a top (private) girls school and one of the arguments she makes for the single sex model is that it's easier to shield girls from the pressure to sexualize. Wonder if that's right? Sounds like it might be.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
Is it not generally accepted that it is better for children and youths to abstain from sexual intercourse and from alcohol as long as possible? Preferably til at least 18? That’s certainly been the general message for our three, and it has been a winning formula so far, certainly for the 2 adult ones.
You can still have fun as a teenager without being some quasi Holden Caulfield dickhead
Agreed. But it is an art form to explain that delicately and diplomatically to you own children. It is possible to emit messages without being too straightforward.
NYT ($) - Sonny Barger, Who Turned the Hells Angels Into Rebels, Dies at 83
SSI - Before Hunter S. Thompson, a PB favorite, penned "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (also "F&I on the Campaign Trail") he wrote "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga". Which helped turn Sonny Barger into a (once) living legend.
"The public comes last in ‘digital-only’ Britain Technology is being used to make our lives less convenient and cover up for the state’s many failures Camilla Tominey"
Dunty examines the moral case for a few seconds then decides nah, fuck it.
I did try and tell you. The Tories definitely won’t give you a referendum, and Labour almost certainly won’t
Partly because most Scots don’t want one, as per the polls, so this is popular
Next indyref: 2030s
That's handy as Sturgeon doesn't want one at the moment either because she knows she will lose.
So this is all a Sturgeon stunt. She can blame Tories and Labour for denying her followers a vote her extremists want, but the likely loss of which would undermine the SNP's raison d'etre?
Cunning little vixen, isn't she?
Yes she is. It is a fascinating question whether she can keep this show on the road until she wants to get out of politics. The SNP currently have everything and more that they can possibly want. Power, almost no responsibility and accountability, loads of jobs in Scotland and Westminster, media coverage (what a switch off they are though), a wall of English cash while like farmers blaming everyone else for everything they don't like.
It must be very tempting to the Tories to give them what they pretend to want and stay neutral.
But it would destroy the nature of the English and Scottish border areas, which is God's own country with God's own people who deserve no such fate.
Ah, a sighting of the colourful "Nicola Sturgeon doesn't actually want to realise the thing she's been in politics her whole life for" bird!
Although I don't why I've gone (!) since it's anything but a rarity.
What it is, though, is remarkably robust. No matter how the evidence mounts that ought to make it extinct, it survives to fly another day.
Thanks. Perfectly fair position to take. In politics as in life working out the relationships between motive, words, actions, ambitions, self interest etc is fascinating and never easy.
We know it is hard because we know about ourselves and the gulf between public and non-public personas in ourselves; and we know that others, if interested, would have to guess and may or may not be right about all sorts of things. And that is just at the conscious level.
Leave personal preferences out of it. Most people have no difficulty with the idea about Boris that there is only the most tenuous relation between what he says, what he does and what he actually thinks.
Boris is egregious, but speaks for us all, including the motives of Ms Sturgeon. Neither of us knows.
Of course you only know your own inner thoughts (and even that's not a cert). And this is nothing to do with personal preferences. Not with me anyway. Maybe you're letting yours creep in, I don't know. How can I? I'm not in your head.
Point is, unless there's good evidence that someone is not telling the truth about what they believe in (as eg there is shedloads in the case of BJ) it makes no sense to assume they aren't. That's jaundiced cynic not healthy skeptic.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
Interestingly, self reported rates of "teenage trans" vary remarkably little between US states, which suggests that schools are responding rather than creating.
Last nights by elections Both Scottish Island byes went to Indies as expecred. LDs picked up 2 Tory seats, one in Goblin Bercow's old haunt of Buckinghamshire although it should be noted this was a three member Green, Con, Con vote last time so its LDs taking from first placed Greens last time although it was thd 2nd placed Con who's seat was being fought. Strong LD performance, Weak Con, and Greens will i think be disappointed not to have won it. The other was Bridlington with a massive swing but note that no LDs stood in May 2019 3 member ward and this is the second by election since then as 2 of the 3 passed away, the LDs also won the other in similar fashion so this result is not as surprusing as the raw figures suggest. Andrew Teales preview suggests this ward had what nay be a unique result a decade ago with UKIP GAIN from rump SDP (Bridlington was after 1992 one of the last redouts of SDPism) Labour had a tepid hold in Liverpool losing votes to an indy and a functional hold in Ollerton, Notts without much dramatic movement. They gained a seat ftom an ibdy in Middlesborough they should hold anyway and they gained one from the Tories in S Derbyshire. It was a toss up ward fornerly Lab but recently a hyper marginal Tory ward but thus time ukip's 23% split more for Labour and they took it by 50 votes approx, still a hyper marginal and again, no rush to Labour. Tories lost the 3 mentioned, held in Wyre (Blackpool South) with a swing to Labour seen but not enough to lose and they easily held in Croydon with a swing from Labour of 2.5% continuing the trend there after Labour bankrupted the council, although former MP and Con to Lab switcher Andrew Pelling standing as an indy may have taken a little off both parties. The Greens and LDs didnt make much progress here.
Summary - tories have a big LD problem, Labour have a finding new votes problem
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
Yes, this is the counterpoint,and we discussed this too. And I certainly wouldn't want the situation where a gay pupil feels the need to hide it because he would fear the social consequences. I wouldn't want ghettoisation. I do recognise how imperfect my own era was from that perspective. But I honestly don't think we're in that situation. And I think the approach schools are taking, especially with regard to race, risks exacerbating divides. At some schools girls just seem to wear their uniforms as if they're extras in a Britney Spears video. It's not the case that it's a continuum, at some schools the skirts are all worn knee length, at others they're almost all worn upper mid thigh. Which makes me think there is a large amount of peer pressure involved. I know complaining about this isn't a good luck, but I also know that at least two of my daughters would not be comfortable if they felt that was how they had to wear their skirts. That's my main reason for jot being happy about the situation. Look, I've been in a few secondary schools recently, and they are shockingly woke. A political agenda is pushed which is a long way from neutral. In particular, the extent to which transsexualism seems to be encouraged is frightening. This isn't some media storm, this is how things, at least in this neck of the woods, seek to be. An odd aspect of this is that in primary schools I know, while there are flashes of wokeness, you would recognise the overall experience and ethos from what it was 30 years ago.
On the transgender thing, which is where my woke tendencies kind of start to reach their limits, I think it is a generational thing. I really don't think it is coming from the schools, they are simply trying to accommodate the choices that teenagers are making around their identity. What is the alternative? That they start insisting that kids conform to their biological sex? That would invite a whole load of trouble from the kids' parents, and would risk pushing kids out of school, ruining their education. And if they accommodate these kids, as I think they have to, then they need to make sure there is no bullying. And so they have to communicate a message of acceptance clearly to all the kids in the school. I probably come from a place of being rather suspicious of it all, especially the sudden huge increase in numbers. There really are a lot of kids in my daughter's cohort who are going down that route. We have been schooled by my daughter in terms of our attitudes. I don't honestly know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. But like I say, the schools are simply responding to changing attitudes, I really, like 100%, don't believe they are the motive force here at all. I should add, this is a very difficult environment for schools, they are doing a very good job navigating it and that's why I get really fucking furious when they are the victims of ill informed hatchet jobs from politically motivated hacks who simply want to open a new front in their tedious culture wars.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
The 1990s were not a decade of brutal homophobia.
There was a lot of homophobia in my Scottish comprehensive school in the early 1990s.
"Britain’s students will become the wokest generation Don't expect them to abandon illiberalism Eric Kaufmann
A survey from the respected, Left-leaning Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) shows that British undergraduates have caught up with the craziness of their North American counterparts. If policymakers don’t act quickly, Britain is likely to become a substantially less free society."
Each generation will normally be the wokest. Would be a bit odd if they weren't.
And, yes, I know we've just agreed that sillyoldfartness can manifest in the young, which it can - but it's less likely.
I'd challenge that. No reason we have to continue getting woker. Some of us would struggle to see how that would be possible. It certainly can't be desirable for the future of a free and/or wealthy society.
On which subject, following my visit in May to a disturbingly woke private school which we were considering for our daughter, I visited two state schools yesterday and today and am vaguely horrified to conclude that 'disturbingly woke' is simply the norm for secondary schools. My wife simply dismisses this as youth culture, and she is right that the young have always - quite rightly - pushed at the edges and challenged society. But in the past grown-ups have taken the role of tempering the excesses of all this, rather than simply joining in with and encouraging it. Some nuance: the first school - academy controlled state selective with fairly mixed socio-economic catchment - wasn't that bad, actually. I'd be happy if she ended up there. It felt Al out normal, with the exception of the plethora of posters following the mold of "famous person x in field relevant to this department has achieved y - and he's gay". These were all suffixed with the strapline "just like us", which offered a message ("they're just like us, the gays") which came across as possibly lessinclusive than the authors had intended. Possibly that was all just there for the pride month though. Anyway, a bit over the top, but not too much to object to, apart from the mangling of the English language about and Sam Smith which concluded "and they're non-binary". I cannot be doing with using the word 'they' to refer to one person. It's clunky and awful. But the second school - council controlled, non-selective - I came out with feeling physically sickened. I reckon we'll over 50% of display materials around the school were about particular sexualities or gender identities, or about racism. I can accept the need to educate kids about this sort of thing, but the impression was that the school believes educating kids about all the different gender identities and about being anti-racist was its primary purpose. Weirdly, lessons seemed normal and no teachers or students mentioned any of it at any stage. There was a massive dichotomy between what was going on in the foreground and what was going on in the background. If I was asked to pick anything I didn't like about the school
...aside from the display materials it would be that the girls dressed slightly sluttily and the headtea her used the word 'less' where 'fewer' should have been.
It felt like a play being performed on another plays set.
Ahh makes me yearn for the casual racism and brutal homophobia of my 1980s/90s school days. Happy times! BTW not sure a middle aged man commenting on children dressing "sluttily" is a good look for you. I fully support your less vs fewer pedantry, however. Seems to be an "attacking schools for wokeness" thing in the water right now, our kids' secondary school has got monstered by three national newspapers now based on inaccurate reporting of a complaint from an ill-informed parent.
The 1990s were not a decade of brutal homophobia.
There was a lot of homophobia in my Scottish comprehensive school in the early 1990s.
When I came to the UK for a year of schooling in 1993, I was shocked at what we would now call the homophobic language used by the tabloid press.
Comments
They admit that PM knew about the rumours surrounding Chris Pincher but said the Propriety and Ethics Team in Cabinet office said there were allegations but they were unsubstantiated, and they didn't object to appointment. 2/
https://twitter.com/AnushkaAsthana/status/1542907938171506689
Why the surprise? This is literally always how Boris Johnson's deals with crisis: "Fight it, tell them to get lost, fight it, hope something comes up...Oh"
https://twitter.com/ShippersUnbound/status/1542907960891932672
Also from VA to PA without driving through either a) VA or b) TN>KY>WV or something like that But heck, could decide to head to Key West by way of Coeur d'Alene!
FYI (and BTW) once amused myself and a friend on a road trip, by driving from Pennsylvania to Virginia across 5 miles or so of Maryland, while smoking the same joint the entire way: a tri-state doobie!
Thankfully, the statue of limitations for this felony (actually plural, quadruple, feds plus states) LONG ago.
Which is extends for a few short miles, at Neum, between separate sections of Croatia, thus giving the otherwise land-locked nation access to the Adriatic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neum#:~:text=Neum (pronounced [něum]),access to the Adriatic Sea.
Though doubt that "quickly" is really right word re: these particular border crossings.
Goddess forgive me for my sins!
Which reminds me, I have some Provencal rose cooling. *goes off to fridge*
[I know the accents are missing. But I can't find them on this damn interface.]
"The Unpleasantness at the Carlton Club"
(Apologies to the late great Dorothy Sayers)
We know it is hard because we know about ourselves and the gulf between public and non-public personas in ourselves; and we know that others, if interested, would have to guess and may or may not be right about all sorts of things. And that is just at the conscious level.
Leave personal preferences out of it. Most people have no difficulty with the idea about Boris that there is only the most tenuous relation between what he says, what he does and what he actually thinks.
Boris is egregious, but speaks for us all, including the motives of Ms Sturgeon. Neither of us knows.
And sometimes those youthful ideas prove ultimately to be good ones. Eg - and apols for self back slap - when I was 23 and doing my chartered accountancy training, I used to irritate my elders and wisers no end with the sentiment that "Audit" should be totally uncoupled (legally) from "Consulting" because all of the so-called synergy it provided (aka cross selling) was as nothing compared to the structural problem of the conflict of interest.
30 odd years later and .... exactly. So who had the wisdom there? Those smooth and seasoned partners and CFOs etc or the "naive" young working class lad from the South Yorkshire coalfields?
Current range is English, Swedish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Castilian, German, Dutch. My second language, Scots, is oddly unavailable.
A discrete gander at what there to gander being one thing, while panting or wolf-whistling is another.
Women seem to be pretty good at this, better than men on average. But not too hard with a bit of practice to show no more than mild appreciation, without causing undue offense.
It's also interesting to consider the conundrum you'd have if single sex schooling is on the whole better for girls but mixed sex schooling is on the whole better for boys.
And question for you on your post here - what do you mean when you say re schools you've seen that "the extent to which transexualism is encouraged is frightening"?
https://twitter.com/sgtrockusofa/status/1542816080812556290?s=21&t=eczosrtH6zpE7cP3Axy7uA
Just Good Lord's way of keeping us tethered to the ground in the Brave New World of the Third Millennium.
I'll just stick to the knitting of calling out this particular strain of 'looking down on Scotland' that I see on here from time to time. It's subtle and most seem to miss it.
One of those striking signs of fading power- Johnson can't defend his stooges from themselves any more.
In fairness, I’m as much Mackintosh, McRae, Melville etc as I am Dickson. Paternalistic naming conventions are a wee bit odd.
(or maybe LA and Facebook)
SSI - Before Hunter S. Thompson, a PB favorite, penned "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (also "F&I on the Campaign Trail") he wrote "Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga". Which helped turn Sonny Barger into a (once) living legend.
RIP would be less than appropriate, methinks.
Technology is being used to make our lives less convenient and cover up for the state’s many failures
Camilla Tominey"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/01/public-comes-last-digital-only-britain/
Point is, unless there's good evidence that someone is not telling the truth about what they believe in (as eg there is shedloads in the case of BJ) it makes no sense to assume they aren't. That's jaundiced cynic not healthy skeptic.
Both Scottish Island byes went to Indies as expecred.
LDs picked up 2 Tory seats, one in Goblin Bercow's old haunt of Buckinghamshire although it should be noted this was a three member Green, Con, Con vote last time so its LDs taking from first placed Greens last time although it was thd 2nd placed Con who's seat was being fought. Strong LD performance, Weak Con, and Greens will i think be disappointed not to have won it.
The other was Bridlington with a massive swing but note that no LDs stood in May 2019 3 member ward and this is the second by election since then as 2 of the 3 passed away, the LDs also won the other in similar fashion so this result is not as surprusing as the raw figures suggest. Andrew Teales preview suggests this ward had what nay be a unique result a decade ago with UKIP GAIN from rump SDP (Bridlington was after 1992 one of the last redouts of SDPism)
Labour had a tepid hold in Liverpool losing votes to an indy and a functional hold in Ollerton, Notts without much dramatic movement. They gained a seat ftom an ibdy in Middlesborough they should hold anyway and they gained one from the Tories in S Derbyshire. It was a toss up ward fornerly Lab but recently a hyper marginal Tory ward but thus time ukip's 23% split more for Labour and they took it by 50 votes approx, still a hyper marginal and again, no rush to Labour.
Tories lost the 3 mentioned, held in Wyre (Blackpool South) with a swing to Labour seen but not enough to lose and they easily held in Croydon with a swing from Labour of 2.5% continuing the trend there after Labour bankrupted the council, although former MP and Con to Lab switcher Andrew Pelling standing as an indy may have taken a little off both parties. The Greens and LDs didnt make much progress here.
Summary - tories have a big LD problem, Labour have a finding new votes problem
I probably come from a place of being rather suspicious of it all, especially the sudden huge increase in numbers. There really are a lot of kids in my daughter's cohort who are going down that route. We have been schooled by my daughter in terms of our attitudes. I don't honestly know if it is a good thing or a bad thing. But like I say, the schools are simply responding to changing attitudes, I really, like 100%, don't believe they are the motive force here at all.
I should add, this is a very difficult environment for schools, they are doing a very good job navigating it and that's why I get really fucking furious when they are the victims of ill informed hatchet jobs from politically motivated hacks who simply want to open a new front in their tedious culture wars.
Tonight, they are showing an opera and have sold 4,000 tickets.