"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Don’t know about other men, but I love women. My wife is also my best friend. Sadly there are some utterly repellent filth out there with real issues, but generalising doesn’t help anyone.
Just met a recruiter who places agency/contract staff in London Hospitals. He said, "It's insane, the government is paying nurses £30-55 an hour & making me rich rather than use the money to just pay proper wages in the NHS." I said "why do you think? Him "They want to break it".
‘Let’s be frank here, the reason unionists are afraid of the Scottish independence referendum is because there is a serious chance they might lose’ Prof John Curtice.
Any referendum can be lost, we have had far too many of them. We are a parliamentary democracy not a direct democracy based on Westminster sovereignty as the Supreme Court confirmed
England has democracy. Scotland doesn’t.
It should be remembered that Scotland has no history of being a democracy at its own hand. The Scots have a clear track record of backing the dictatorial Stuart kings in the War of the Three Kingdoms. They fought against Cromwell’s republican army at Dunbar in 1650 – despite the Lord Protector’s offer of peace if they would just “think again”. Having backed the wrong horse, the Scots then abolished their own corrupt Parliament in 1652 and began returning Scottish MPs to Westminster, only to opt out of that democratic (for its time) system again after 1660. Democracy has always been very much “law from over the Border” for Scotland. Perhaps that history might explain Ms Sturgeon’s failure to grasp what democracy actually means today.
Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce (Cream), Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience), Jim Capaldi (Traffic), Christine McVie (soon to join Fleetwood Mac), Brian Auger, and Paul Kossoff (Free)
What is brilliant is Michael Fry's series of "xxxxxxx but it's performed by an indie band" songs of popular TV moments done in 5he style of say belle and Sebastian or the feeling, eg
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
Both sound very low offers for the time - given the considerable grade inflation that had already taken place since the late 1980s when A Level Relative marking was replaced by the Absolute marking system we still have today. Back in the mid-1970s an offer of BCC was quite a challenge in that only 10 % of A Level entrants were awarded an A with a further 15% receiving a B grade. Thus, 75% failed to achieve a grade as high as a B - indeed 30% did not reach the standard for the lowest pass grade - an E. The 30% who fell short were given an O Level pass or failed outright. Nowadays fewer than 2% of entrants fail to obtain at least an E grade pass.
And yet people will insist that there has been no grade inflation.
BTW, my offer from Brum in 1985 was BBC. I was worried that I might not get the C in Physics, but as it turned out I didn't get any Bs or Cs, so my place was secure.
My offer in 1979 of BBC for Durham was just out of my reach, so Aberdeen had me instead.
Back in 1990 I was offered 1 E in physics to do theoretical physics at York, a C in French (!) to do Physics at Imperial, or a bunch of As to do NatSci at Cambridge.
In the 1960s I was offered 2 Es by Oxford. Thirty years later my son was offered 3 As. That's what I call grade inflation! For the record, I overshot; Soup Jr scraped it.
‘Let’s be frank here, the reason unionists are afraid of the Scottish independence referendum is because there is a serious chance they might lose’ Prof John Curtice.
Any referendum can be lost, we have had far too many of them. We are a parliamentary democracy not a direct democracy based on Westminster sovereignty as the Supreme Court confirmed
England has democracy. Scotland doesn’t.
It should be remembered that Scotland has no history of being a democracy at its own hand. The Scots have a clear track record of backing the dictatorial Stuart kings in the War of the Three Kingdoms. They fought against Cromwell’s republican army at Dunbar in 1650 – despite the Lord Protector’s offer of peace if they would just “think again”. Having backed the wrong horse, the Scots then abolished their own corrupt Parliament in 1652 and began returning Scottish MPs to Westminster, only to opt out of that democratic (for its time) system again after 1660. Democracy has always been very much “law from over the Border” for Scotland. Perhaps that history might explain Ms Sturgeon’s failure to grasp what democracy actually means today.
What do you think was democratic about Oliver bloody Cromwell? Have you any idea in which century universal male suffrage was introduced in the UK? And if you are the bloke who lives on bloody Sark or somewhere why the obsession with somewhere about as close to you as Casablanca is?
All going swimmingly in auto manufacture, which tends to be concentrated in areas that need “levelling up”.
Pretty much the entire existing car manufacturing industry is dying and being replaced by a new battery electric car industry. But none of the new industry is locating in Britain yet. Time is running out.
All going swimmingly in auto manufacture, which tends to be concentrated in areas that need “levelling up”.
Pretty much the entire existing car manufacturing industry is dying and being replaced by a new battery electric car industry. But none of the new industry is locating in Britain yet. Time is running out.
Just met a recruiter who places agency/contract staff in London Hospitals. He said, "It's insane, the government is paying nurses £30-55 an hour & making me rich rather than use the money to just pay proper wages in the NHS." I said "why do you think? Him "They want to break it".
So, this recruiter either does not exist, or has magicked up a profitable business out of thin air in instantaneous response to the government's sudden "break the nhs" initiative, or realises that the NHS always has and always will rely on a mix of employed and agency staff and is merely giving it large to a credulous wanker with a twitter account.
I wonder which it is.
I can introduce you top about 10 recruitment firms who operate in the supplying staff at emergency rates to the NHS.
Step 1 is they get workers needing another shift or 2 to cover bills. Then they discover who easy and continuous the work is and they switch from permanent to contract.
Just met a recruiter who places agency/contract staff in London Hospitals. He said, "It's insane, the government is paying nurses £30-55 an hour & making me rich rather than use the money to just pay proper wages in the NHS." I said "why do you think? Him "They want to break it".
So, this recruiter either does not exist, or has magicked up a profitable business out of thin air in instantaneous response to the government's sudden "break the nhs" initiative, or realises that the NHS always has and always will rely on a mix of employed and agency staff and is merely giving it large to a credulous wanker with a twitter account.
I wonder which it is.
I can introduce you top about 10 recruitment firms who operate in the supplying staff at emergency rates to the NHS.
Step 1 is they get workers needing another shift or 2 to cover bills. Then they discover who easy and continuous the work is and they switch from permanent to contract.
I have worked agency at times. The rates are good but no pension, sick or holiday pay. Lucrative but not much fun either, as just as you get used to a place, you get moved on by the agency.
Just met a recruiter who places agency/contract staff in London Hospitals. He said, "It's insane, the government is paying nurses £30-55 an hour & making me rich rather than use the money to just pay proper wages in the NHS." I said "why do you think? Him "They want to break it".
So, this recruiter either does not exist, or has magicked up a profitable business out of thin air in instantaneous response to the government's sudden "break the nhs" initiative, or realises that the NHS always has and always will rely on a mix of employed and agency staff and is merely giving it large to a credulous wanker with a twitter account.
I wonder which it is.
I can introduce you top about 10 recruitment firms who operate in the supplying staff at emergency rates to the NHS.
Step 1 is they get workers needing another shift or 2 to cover bills. Then they discover who easy and continuous the work is and they switch from permanent to contract.
Yes, I know all that. GF = senior theatre nurse for NHS/Nuffield/contract depending from year to year what suits best. Which doesn't really argue for a sudden recent tory plot to scuttle the NHS.
Just met a recruiter who places agency/contract staff in London Hospitals. He said, "It's insane, the government is paying nurses £30-55 an hour & making me rich rather than use the money to just pay proper wages in the NHS." I said "why do you think? Him "They want to break it".
So, this recruiter either does not exist, or has magicked up a profitable business out of thin air in instantaneous response to the government's sudden "break the nhs" initiative, or realises that the NHS always has and always will rely on a mix of employed and agency staff and is merely giving it large to a credulous wanker with a twitter account.
I wonder which it is.
I can introduce you top about 10 recruitment firms who operate in the supplying staff at emergency rates to the NHS.
Step 1 is they get workers needing another shift or 2 to cover bills. Then they discover who easy and continuous the work is and they switch from permanent to contract.
Yes, I know all that. GF = senior theatre nurse for NHS/Nuffield/contract depending from year to year what suits best. Which doesn't really argue for a sudden recent tory plot to scuttle the NHS.
It has been like it all my professional career. Agency commands a premium because cover has to be found.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
‘Let’s be frank here, the reason unionists are afraid of the Scottish independence referendum is because there is a serious chance they might lose’ Prof John Curtice.
Any referendum can be lost, we have had far too many of them. We are a parliamentary democracy not a direct democracy based on Westminster sovereignty as the Supreme Court confirmed
England has democracy. Scotland doesn’t.
It should be remembered that Scotland has no history of being a democracy at its own hand. The Scots have a clear track record of backing the dictatorial Stuart kings in the War of the Three Kingdoms. They fought against Cromwell’s republican army at Dunbar in 1650 – despite the Lord Protector’s offer of peace if they would just “think again”. Having backed the wrong horse, the Scots then abolished their own corrupt Parliament in 1652 and began returning Scottish MPs to Westminster, only to opt out of that democratic (for its time) system again after 1660. Democracy has always been very much “law from over the Border” for Scotland. Perhaps that history might explain Ms Sturgeon’s failure to grasp what democracy actually means today.
Scotland is currently conducting an energetic debate over secession from a 300 year old union without bombs going off. It's great. It's entrenched. It's very silly, often.
We're about the most democratic nation on earth, in a sense.
The best thing about it is it focuses minds on what we want Scotland to be in the future. I'm quite short-termist in my thinking, which contributes to my unionist tendencies. I actually think a lot of the division is simply timing.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
Some cases recently reported by the Royal College of Surgeons too. Misogynism is common and all too often ignored by other men. It is why being woke to these things matters, and calling it out too.
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
Thus a site dies. We are at that stage
I'd post some shitty holiday snaps if the upside-down photo bug were fixed. Not the most scintillating content, but there we are.
Couldn't even get a rise out of GardenWalker earlier. Times are tough.
This evening is maybe the dullest I have ever seen PB
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
Everyone has got their lives back after COVID.
And there isn't much on, tbh. Labour government nailed on, no Indyref2, I can't really get that into US politics any more.
Even the world cup is a bit rubbish - winter/Qatar.
No, we've had lulls before, but this is new. PB is boring, Even when it was slow, in the past, it was not boring
I wonder if we are uncovering a new iron law of the internet, and internet forums. To succeed, an internet forum must attract a variety of informed, interesting, vivid and often inflammatory opinion. If you get those people: BOOM. It works! But as the forum grows in success, so the many dull centrist middlebrow newcomers pressure the mods to ban anyone over-the-top and transgressive, and they are then banned to please the masses, and yet as they are banned the attraction of the site fast diminishes, as it becomes a bunch of disapproving, feeble minded centrist people talking tedious rubbish to each other
That kinda happened to Twitter, or was about to happen, and this is what Elon is trying to address, I think
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
Thus a site dies. We are at that stage
Goodbye.
It would help if you left. So thanks. You are indeed a deadening presence
It is good you acknowledge this, and we are in your debt. Goodbye
This evening is maybe the dullest I have ever seen PB
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
Everyone has got their lives back after COVID.
And there isn't much on, tbh. Labour government nailed on, no Indyref2, I can't really get that into US politics any more.
Even the world cup is a bit rubbish - winter/Qatar.
No, we've had lulls before, but this is new. PB is boring, Even when it was slow, in the past, it was not boring
I wonder if we are uncovering a new iron law of the internet, and internet forums. To succeed, an internet forum must attract a variety of informed, interesting, vivid and often inflammatory opinion. If you get those people: BOOM. It works! But as the forum grows in success, so the many dull centrist middlebrow newcomers pressure the mods to ban anyone over-the-top and transgressive, and they are then banned to please the masses, and yet as they are banned the attraction of the site fast diminishes, as it becomes a bunch of disapproving, feeble minded centrist people talking tedious rubbish to each other
That kinda happened to Twitter, or was about to happen, and this is what Elon is trying to address, I think
PB is just a mini Twitter
I think temporary bans work to let things cool down a bit. You want PB to be bubbling along nicely, with the mods lifting the lid off the pan occasionally.
I've deeply enjoyed the spats I've had with others in the past, and I like it when I find I disagree with someone with whom I'd generally identify with.
This evening is maybe the dullest I have ever seen PB
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
Everyone has got their lives back after COVID.
And there isn't much on, tbh. Labour government nailed on, no Indyref2, I can't really get that into US politics any more.
Even the world cup is a bit rubbish - winter/Qatar.
No, we've had lulls before, but this is new. PB is boring, Even when it was slow, in the past, it was not boring
I wonder if we are uncovering a new iron law of the internet, and internet forums. To succeed, an internet forum must attract a variety of informed, interesting, vivid and often inflammatory opinion. If you get those people: BOOM. It works! But as the forum grows in success, so the many dull centrist middlebrow newcomers pressure the mods to ban anyone over-the-top and transgressive, and they are then banned to please the masses, and yet as they are banned the attraction of the site fast diminishes, as it becomes a bunch of disapproving, feeble minded centrist people talking tedious rubbish to each other
That kinda happened to Twitter, or was about to happen, and this is what Elon is trying to address, I think
PB is just a mini Twitter
I think temporary bans work to let things cool down a bit. You want PB to be bubbling along nicely, with the mods lifting the lid off the pan occasionally.
I've deeply enjoyed the spats I've had with others in the past, and I like it when I find I disagree with someone with whom I'd generally identify with.
I find it weird how angry people get with each other on here. We all have opinions but none of us have any power to change anything.
Take Brexit for example. If I had voted remain and if I had persuaded everyone who I knew who wasn't already doing so to vote remain, and if I had taken a year off work to campaign for remain, none of it would have made the blindest bit of difference as the winning margin was 1.3 million votes.
‘Let’s be frank here, the reason unionists are afraid of the Scottish independence referendum is because there is a serious chance they might lose’ Prof John Curtice.
Any referendum can be lost, we have had far too many of them. We are a parliamentary democracy not a direct democracy based on Westminster sovereignty as the Supreme Court confirmed
England has democracy. Scotland doesn’t.
It should be remembered that Scotland has no history of being a democracy at its own hand. The Scots have a clear track record of backing the dictatorial Stuart kings in the War of the Three Kingdoms. They fought against Cromwell’s republican army at Dunbar in 1650 – despite the Lord Protector’s offer of peace if they would just “think again”. Having backed the wrong horse, the Scots then abolished their own corrupt Parliament in 1652 and began returning Scottish MPs to Westminster, only to opt out of that democratic (for its time) system again after 1660. Democracy has always been very much “law from over the Border” for Scotland. Perhaps that history might explain Ms Sturgeon’s failure to grasp what democracy actually means today.
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
Thus a site dies. We are at that stage
Pontificating about it is a self fulfilling prophecy, mate. Cheer up you glum bugger.
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
The British offer system (find out what school you go to, see what they say about you, probably hear your accent, then decide how high or low an entry hurdle to give you) is absolute sh*t. The way they say they're only doing it to help the proles too, because they're so committed to social mobility - you can almost hear them laughing behind their hands. "Admissions tutors" - fnnnnaaarrrr...
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
A 2 Us offer - impressive! Are you a member of the royal family?
Any lower offer and it would be "All you need to do to get in is draw a c*ck and b*lls on your A Level script".
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
I don't understand what you mean. The old student grants were mandatory once an (actual) place was awarded and accepted. They didn't depend on what conditions had been in an offer.
This evening is maybe the dullest I have ever seen PB
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
A lot of the interesting characters have left. Not sure why.
Banned. Or they got bullied by the banned before they were banned
Either way, I reckon it might be an inevitable process, as limned below
I hope not.
The interesting thing is I can remember individual posts on this site from many years ago, that made a real impression. For example, I remember one from you talking about the way a mobile phone could be used in all sorts of ways, such as fobbing people off, etc. That was in about 2012 if I remember correctly.
This evening is maybe the dullest I have ever seen PB
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
A lot of the interesting characters have left. Not sure why.
Recently there have been so many posts to plough through, even without the personal feuds, that perhaps the game is seen as not worth the candle. I know sometimes I come to pb, see there are 400 unread comments, and head straight out again to wait for a new thread.
Although right now, the World Cup is probably the biggest factor in keeping PBers otherwise occupied.
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
I don't understand what you mean. The old student grants were mandatory once an (actual) place was awarded and accepted. They didn't depend on what conditions had been in an offer.
University funding (for students) does not come from Central Government. It comes from local authorities. If Joe Smith gets into Radcliffe College of Art & Design, it is his local council that pays the state funded portion of the fees.
(And this is why people who find themselves needing to repeat a year often need to write letters to their local authority to get them to pony up another year's fees.)
The "Two Es" requirement was (and as far as I know is) a requirement of local councils before being willing to spend money on sending pupils to University.
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
I don't understand what you mean. The old student grants were mandatory once an (actual) place was awarded and accepted. They didn't depend on what conditions had been in an offer.
University funding (for students) does not come from Central Government. It comes from local authorities. If Joe Smith gets into Radcliffe College of Art & Design, it is his local council that pays the state funded portion of the fees.
(And this is why people who find themselves needing to repeat a year often need to write letters to their local authority to get them to pony up another year's fees.)
The "Two Es" requirement was (and as far as I know is) a requirement of local councils before being willing to spend money on sending pupils to University.
It was (and perhaps still is) slightly more complicated than that, being, I think, the council (or local education authority) where the student had gone to school. Some decades ago, I assisted a student get a discretionary grant (for a second degree) from one council even though her family had recently moved to live in (and pay rates/council tax to) a different local authority.
I'm not really convinced we give a shit about kids in this country, except our annoyance at them when they become feral.
We care far more about animals.
Labour have an opportunity to become the party for families, 35h free childcare from age 1, huge investment in schools and bring uni fees back down to £1k per year. For once tell the nation that ensuring kids are educated is more important than ensuring some 89 year old can live for another 2 years at huge expense to the NHS.
They'd hoover up votes if they did that.
The subsidised nursery care for 3-4 year olds (which was a LD policy, to be fair) is hugely popular with parents, and certainly makes our lives easier.
If they guaranteed class sizes of not more than 20 in the state sector they would kill private education stone dead anyway, apart from a handful of real snob schools.
Not necessarily it is the intake which boosts private and grammar schools most not the class size
At last, you concede that Grammar schools are not better schools.
Not better than all private schools, better than almost all comprehensives and academies however
How can they be better if, as you say, it is their intake which boosts them, not their teaching and learning…
As they get better results and more pupils percentage wise into top universities.
You can have a better value added school which still gets worse results than most private and grammar schools overall
So which is the better school, the one where students progress much better than their peers or the one where they do just about as well as their peers?
The latter overall if they get better exam results and higher percentage into top universities.
A school might have better value added but still be worse overall in terms of exam results than the latter.
Just because an Olympic athlete improves from going out in the first round to a silver medallist, an athlete who won the gold on both occasions is still better
But as a parent you definitely want to send your kid to the better value added school, because they will get better grades there. That's the definition of value added.
No they won't, a child entering the school with D grades who ends up with B grades has had better value added input than a child entering a school with A grades and leaving with A grades.
The school producing the latter is still better than the former
How on earth is it better. If they had gone to the other school with 'added value' they would have done even better because, well 'added value'. That is what 'added value' means. The children do better.
No it doesn't, just they have more D grade pupils to add value to unlike Eton or a top grammar
Why do you assume it is easier to add value to a D grade student and not an A grade student. Any evidence for that. Personally I assume it is easier to teach A grade students and therefore easier to add value to them.
My only concern regarding exceptionally gifted students would be whether the school had the expertise available to teach them.
Does lifting a d grade student to a c grade student make a difference? Yes genuine question. I suspect the answer is no they still wont be one of the 50 percent uni intake and so written off.
I abosolutely hate the 50% uni target for this reason....roles that didnt require degrees when I grew up in the 10% days now require a degree despite the fact they really dont. The 50% degree target has done more to keep people down than most things.
For info I grew up in the 10% era, no I didnt go to uni even though offered a place or two for personal reasons. However I went into a job I was perfectly capable of doing without a degree and did it well enough to get several promotions. These days my cv wouldnt get past hr because no degree.
Yes but now even C grade pupils go to university, just ex polytechnic ones like East London or Man Met.
I had a friend with an offer of 2 Es at A-level to study at Warwick.
When I went to Uni, the requirement for Liverpool was 3 Cs. Leeds wanted BCC.
That was in 2001.
I got a 2 Us offer for UCL.
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
2 Us? That doesn’t make sense. U is the fail grade. So such an offer would be unconditional whether you had sat A-levels early or not.
As an entirely novice poster, I cannot help noticing that PBers who are aware of, and strive to comply with, their statutory obligation to inform, educate and entertain, are frequently banned on the most frivolous of pretexts while the dullards soldier on regardless.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
Yeah, they've banned all the interesting people
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
Thus a site dies. We are at that stage
Ishmael was banned for impugning a polling companies honesty, not for being mean to other posters. Facts matter.
"Women have very little idea of how much men hate them."
Germaine Greer
“The worst sin towards our fellows is not to hate them. It is to be indifferent to them. For that is the essence of inhumanity.”
George Bernard Shaw
Weird ideas. I like women every bit as much as men, much more in one particular case. I don’t really choose friendships on the basis of sex at all.
And yet the lead story on Channel 4 was not raised by anyone until I did and has been dismissed with either jokes or "I'm one of the good guys" defensiveness. No doubt you and @turbotubbs are decent men but that is just missing the point.
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met Other police forces The Navy The Army The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
I am sorry you feel that’s what I meant in my post. I believe you should never treat all people of x characteristic in a manner just because of that characteristic, so I intrinsically despair when I read such statements as the one posted. Would a little nuance help. ‘Some men’. Or even ‘many men’. It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did. Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get. I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start. But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.
Comments
Sadly there are some utterly repellent filth out there with real issues, but generalising doesn’t help anyone.
https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/alistair-bonnington
https://youtu.be/ZrUBKZ9JSe8
Step 1 is they get workers needing another shift or 2 to cover bills. Then they discover who easy and continuous the work is and they switch from permanent to contract.
Entire hours pass with a few remarks on pffff
Is it over? Sad
The post-protest pub culture is very strong...
What Nazir Afzal, a former prosecutor, said - not just about the London Fire Brigade - but about misogyny being like a "pandemic", about "decades of avoidance" of the issues, when he says that "the level of prejudice against women is dangerous", the reaction has been .... well ..... silence. Indifference? Or is it too difficult and uncomfortable a topic?
Or maybe it's not easy to think that all this prejudice and bad behaviour is not being done by a few evil repellent shitty men but by rather more men than people would like to think, men who are often apparently respectable, professional, well-educated, men with good jobs, men with wives, girlfriends and families. I was raped by a lawyer, a witty fellow, admired by his colleagues at his place of work. Which is why I - stupidly as it turned out - trusted him. He didn't have "repellent predator" imprinted on his forehead. And I don't suppose any of the people doing the awful stuff detailed in this latest report - and all the earlier ones - had "shitty individual" imprinted on their foreheads either.
In the last year we have had endless reports on such bad behaviour in:-
The Met
Other police forces
The Navy
The Army
The London Fire Brigade
There was a report on Parliament too.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking why it is that so many men behave so badly to so many women.
Maybe - just maybe - it is worth asking whether refusing to think about or debate these questions is - just possibly - part of the problem.
I will leave you to it, if you want. I am done. I have other stuff to be getting on with.
But before I do may I wish you good luck in your new job and congratulations.
Goodnight.
Scotland is currently conducting an energetic debate over secession from a 300 year old union without bombs going off. It's great. It's entrenched. It's very silly, often.
We're about the most democratic nation on earth, in a sense.
The best thing about it is it focuses minds on what we want Scotland to be in the future. I'm quite short-termist in my thinking, which contributes to my unionist tendencies. I actually think a lot of the division is simply timing.
But I am new here, so what do I know?
@IshmaelZ is only the latest example. Yes, he could be nasty and vituperative, but the gaylords who complained are generally pathetic and dull
So the result is you are left with the pathetic and the dull, and @IshmaelZ is gone forever, and then the pathetic and dull disperse anyway, as the site is no longer entertaining, as it reduced to basically: them, and they are excruciatingly boring. It is basically @foxy talking to @kinabalu about ambulance staffing
Thus a site dies. We are at that stage
And there isn't much on, tbh. Labour government nailed on, no Indyref2, I can't really get that into US politics any more.
Even the world cup is a bit rubbish - winter/Qatar.
Couldn't even get a rise out of GardenWalker earlier. Times are tough.
I wonder if we are uncovering a new iron law of the internet, and internet forums. To succeed, an internet forum must attract a variety of informed, interesting, vivid and often inflammatory opinion. If you get those people: BOOM. It works! But as the forum grows in success, so the many dull centrist middlebrow newcomers pressure the mods to ban anyone over-the-top and transgressive, and they are then banned to please the masses, and yet as they are banned the attraction of the site fast diminishes, as it becomes a bunch of disapproving, feeble minded centrist people talking tedious rubbish to each other
That kinda happened to Twitter, or was about to happen, and this is what Elon is trying to address, I think
PB is just a mini Twitter
It is good you acknowledge this, and we are in your debt. Goodbye
I've deeply enjoyed the spats I've had with others in the past, and I like it when I find I disagree with someone with whom I'd generally identify with.
Take Brexit for example. If I had voted remain and if I had persuaded everyone who I knew who wasn't already doing so to vote remain, and if I had taken a year off work to campaign for remain, none of it would have made the blindest bit of difference as the winning margin was 1.3 million votes.
Either way, I reckon it might be an inevitable process, as limned below
What was funny was that I’d taken 2 A levels a year early. So I could tell the prof making the offer that he’d given me a place. Which rather startled him.
I’ve heard that this was the minimum offer to trigger the old Student Grants..
Any lower offer and it would be "All you need to do to get in is draw a c*ck and b*lls on your A Level script".
The interesting thing is I can remember individual posts on this site from many years ago, that made a real impression. For example, I remember one from you talking about the way a mobile phone could be used in all sorts of ways, such as fobbing people off, etc. That was in about 2012 if I remember correctly.
Although right now, the World Cup is probably the biggest factor in keeping PBers otherwise occupied.
After winning Michigan, a swing state, she is being hailed as the woman to beat the Republicans’ new hero
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/who-gretchen-whitmer-democrats-party-michigan-hgq68xnv6 (£££)
University funding (for students) does not come from Central Government. It comes from local authorities. If Joe Smith gets into Radcliffe College of Art & Design, it is his local council that pays the state funded portion of the fees.
(And this is why people who find themselves needing to repeat a year often need to write letters to their local authority to get them to pony up another year's fees.)
The "Two Es" requirement was (and as far as I know is) a requirement of local councils before being willing to spend money on sending pupils to University.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11472779/Bombshell-polling-reveals-Sir-Keir-Starmer-ahead-Rishi-Sunak-11-12-key-issues.html
Any price on this poll, courtesy of Lord Ashcroft, forming the next header? It seems an age since Ashcroft's polls were a feature of political life.
It is striking that most, if not all of the professions under discussion have seen huge change in recent decades in gender membership. In WW2 (ok 80 years ago) the British army was entirely male. Women served in affiliated roles, but did not go to the front to fight, nor fly bombers over Berlin. Attitudes change. In the Falklands in 1982 it was the same. And yet in 2022 society has moved on and many more women are to be found excelling in the army, navy, police, parliament etc. Does any of this excuse terrible behaviour and attitudes towards women? Of course not. But it does provide context. Many of those men in those environments entered it in a different era, I do not expect my father to share my attitudes to everything - he’s 83, and lived a different life. I do expect him to be kind and do the right thing, and as a policemen for 30 years and a Guardsman before I hope and believe he did.
Ultimately too many men are brought up badly, or have traumatic childhoods. My aunt, who was a social worker, opened my eyes to the shit start in life some get.
I note the recent TV ads about misogyny and think it’s a good start.
But the battle isn’t going to be one by tarring all men with the same brush.