For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
Snip
Snip
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
Genuine question , why do you think people with further education would be Remain and others not. Personally I think older people voted that way because they have had the tough lives and major changes before and see what a bunch of no users are running things nowadays. Whereas younger people with more "education" have had an easy life and never known anything other than Europe and so are scared and vote Remain. I would prefer to Remain even though I voted leave , hoping to get another Scottish referendum, but have no fears either way and will just get on with it. I may change my tune if the stockmarket plummets mind you but that could happen either way. PS: As I have said from the beginning , we will get a fudge , we will be out but really in , paying more for it and having no say in what the rules are. The plebs will pay dearly and the politicians , elite etc will make out of it , a la JRM opening funds in Dublin. They are all crooks and charlatans along with their media chums and the great unwashed will get stuffed.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other high level qualifications. On the contrary they think that there is a pool of well educated, fairly fluent speakers of English who are happy to work here for lower wages than they will. This last bit is contentious (to say the least) but I think that we can agree that the perception that it is true swayed a lot of votes.
In summary: less well educated people were more likely to vote leave not because they were stupid but because for them the Free Movement of the EU has not worked as well as it has for those of us who are well educated; they have seen few of the advantages and more of the disadvantages.
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
I think it does. Leave voters generally are disturbed by the modern world. I know that comes across as horribly patronising, but the modern world IS disturbing. The question is whether you reject it or deal with it. Rejection isn't a solution IMO. Brexit makes dealing with the modern world much, much harder.
The world has probably, for the ‘average’ Western person, been “dsturbing' for the last couple of hundred year. Personally I (still) regard it as challenging, but as far as my wife and are concerned it’s more a matter of advsing our grandchildren than doing much about it themselves. Whether they take the advice........
But surely older people, once they have settled into their ways and acccumulated enough understanding of the world as it is, always find the changes being promoted by the upcoming generation to be disturbing?
It seems it is the younger person who is afraid of the change to leave the EU. Older people remember the time before we were in the EU and so are not afraid.
But older people simply don't understand (or are immune from, being on secure fixed incomes, or safely overseas like so many PB leavers) the transitional costs, disruption and damage that will be involved in travelling from our current universe to one of the parellel ones that might have arisen from their youth.
Besides, if they really remembered the 1970s, they would recall our imperative to join.
It was Thatcher wot sorted out the country not the European Economic Community.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
According to Owen Jones you need to have gone to Eton or Harrow, and have a double first from Oxford to be a journalist now. :-)
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my ally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Yes, just people with average GCSEs (O Levels then) and A Levels now go to university rather than straight to work after leaving school
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
7th september Cable to announce resignation.Next LD leader betting 8/11 Swinson 2-1 Moran.
Hard to believe the favourite is worse than Cable, they are in some state.
Why is Swinson worse than Cable? Genuine question.
I just think she is useless, an empty windbag with no talent , principles etc. Typifies why the LD's have fallen so far a female Clegg, no substance , just self seeking shallow chancers.
In fairness though Malcolm you think that of most politicians, especially those who are Scottish and not separatist.
As homework for Malcolm how about he identifies a list of non-SNP politicians that he likes?
In Scotland they are rarer than hens teeth, all of them and including many SNP are useless. SNP are best of a bad bunch but I do not think they are anything special either, only that they alone really have an interest in Scotland. Outside Scotland there are very few who I would rate as anything decent , I like Ken Clark but apart from that there is a dearth of real political talent. If you go back there used to be big hitters in all parties but most nowadays are just PPE graduates in it for the money and the glory, few if any are in it to make the country a better place.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in Engli
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
By educated you mean intelligent. But of course. The correlation with Leave/Remain is however with formal education.
Edit/ nevertheless analysis does reveal that, amongst people of the same age cohort, greater education does correlate with greater likelihood of voting Remain.
On the news: the government is expected to provide funding for UK's own satellite navigation system to counter being thrown out of the Galileo system. Initial spending £100 million - just on investigations.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
According to Owen Jones you need to have gone to Eton or Harrow, and have a double first from Oxford to be a journalist now. :-)
Apart from Boris and Charles Moore and Gavin Esler I cannot think of a journalist who went to either
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
There’s one point in Mr Teacher’s post that needs taking up. Too many British students have, over the past 40 or so years ‘dropped out’ of learning languages and in consequence have either not taken up opportunities abroad or only done so where they felt they could manage with English-and-a-smattering. I referred upthread to pharmacists; when smug retired people (like me) asked colleagues why they didn’t up sticks and go to parts of Europe where the pay was better the language was almost always the reason. Many of our European colleagues, not just language graduates, learn English to a much higher standard than we do any Western European language. Indeed there are tales about Aussies failing the new language tests while Europeans are passing them!
It’s a real problem yes, made more difficult because:
We start teaching languages at 11, which is about 4 years too late. I’ve visited French primary schools to check up on Y12 students (first year of sixth form in old money) doing work experience and seen very young French schoolchildren eager to practise their English.
If we want to change that then leaving the EU isn’t going to help as we don’t have anything like the number of graduates willing to become MFL teachers and most primary school teachers here are not fluent in another European language (unlike much of the EU where fluency in English is almost a given for any graduate).
Then which language do we teach? French is actually a bit of a pig to learn, particularly given spelling rules that give English a run for its money. German is seen as too hard by many (although I am told it is actually not too bad). Spanish is problably one of the easiest, but won’t really help you get that dream job in Hamburg.
Perhaps the paradox is that because everyone else speaks English (or so it seems) we end up at a severe disadvantage. Shame we are not Dutch...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
According to Owen Jones you need to have gone to Eton or Harrow, and have a double first from Oxford to be a journalist now. :-)
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
7th september Cable to announce resignation.Next LD leader betting 8/11 Swinson 2-1 Moran.
Hard to believe the favourite is worse than Cable, they are in some state.
Why is Swinson worse than Cable? Genuine question.
I just think she is useless, an empty windbag with no talent , principles etc. Typifies why the LD's have fallen so far a female Clegg, no substance , just self seeking shallow chancers.
In fairness though Malcolm you think that of most politicians, especially those who are Scottish and not separatist.
As homework for Malcolm how about he identifies a list of non-SNP politicians that he likes?
In Scotland they are rarer than hens teeth, all of them and including many SNP are useless. SNP are best of a bad bunch but I do not think they are anything special either, only that they alone really have an interest in Scotland. Outside Scotland there are very few who I would rate as anything decent , I like Ken Clark but apart from that there is a dearth of real political talent. If you go back there used to be big hitters in all parties but most nowadays are just PPE graduates in it for the money and the glory, few if any are in it to make the country a better place.
Malcolm - What do you think of Ruth Davidson?
I do not have long enough or enough space to define how crap she is. She is a self seeking , worst type of ex BBC , establishment , Westminster lackey on the planet. She has more faces than the town clock and would sell her granny. The sooner she gets to Westminster the better for Scotland.
PS: Best politician out of Scotland in many a year was Alex Salmond.
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
By educated you mean intelligent. But of course. The correlation with Leave/Remain is however with formal education.
Edit/ nevertheless analysis does reveal that, amongst people of the same age cohort, greater education does correlate with greater likelihood of voting Remain.
No I don't, I mean that the difficulty of the A level syllabus and the mastery of it required for a pass then may have been equivalent to a degree, now.
Britain is obviously a worse place than it was three years ago and is getting worse, more divided, more unhappy, more extreme politics, lower long term growth, more isolated. There is no light on the horizon and none can be expected for years. But there we are.
Maybe what we have discovered in the last three years is that what we thought was a reasonably contented country was not in fact so and that we were living in a fool’s paradise, one reason possibly that extreme politics has had a purchase on us. It is - or should be - a wake up call which few are heeding.
There is the phenomenon of the middle-aged woman who, to the astonishment of her husband, family and friends, walks out of her marriage. Everything seemed fine, there were no obvious signs of distress, nice house, a good lifestyle, kids doing well,...
Maybe you and I and people like us who benefited hugely from the previous settlement need to realise that for others it was not anywhere near as it good as it was for us and ask ourselves why that was.
This is a good question that deserves a full answer. I will seek to address it when I get a bit of time. For now, it’s worth noting that if no one talks to the middle-aged woman about how plausible her imagined alternatives are, she may make poor choices. No one has been making the case for solid stability in Britain for many years.
On your other question, no that’s not a correct statement of my position. Immigration is a subject where it’s easy to frighten people by working on their basest instincts rather than have a measured discussion and the Leave campaign consciously opted to frighten people.
Thank you for your clarification. I look forward to your answer.
For now, I will tease you a bit. A man preaching the virtues of solid stability to a middle aged woman who has been relied on but ignored for years is.... well, brave.
The point about middle aged women is that they become invisible, often despite being wise, comfortable in their own skin at last and beautiful. They need to fight to be heard and, even then, are often patronised or described in insulting terms: “harridan”, “bossy”, “nagging”. They are relied on but not valued.
And rather more than you might expect are not just content with the “deep deep peace of the double bed” but would like to enjoy once more the “hurly burly of the chaise longue”.
7th september Cable to announce resignation.Next LD leader betting 8/11 Swinson 2-1 Moran.
Hard to believe the favourite is worse than Cable, they are in some state.
Why is Swinson worse than Cable? Genuine question.
I just think she is useless, an empty windbag with no talent , principles etc. Typifies why the LD's have fallen so far a female Clegg, no substance , just self seeking shallow chancers.
In fairness though Malcolm you think that of most politicians, especially those who are Scottish and not separatist.
As homework for Malcolm how about he identifies a list of non-SNP politicians that he likes?
In Scotland they are rarer than hens teeth, all of them and including many SNP are useless. SNP are best of a bad bunch but I do not think they are anything special either, only that they alone really have an interest in Scotland. Outside Scotland there are very few who I would rate as anything decent , I like Ken Clark but apart from that there is a dearth of real political talent. If you go back there used to be big hitters in all parties but most nowadays are just PPE graduates in it for the money and the glory, few if any are in it to make the country a better place.
Malcolm - What do you think of Ruth Davidson?
I do not have long enough or enough space to define how crap she is. She is a self seeking , worst type of ex BBC , establishment , Westminster lackey on the planet. She has more faces than the town clock and would sell her granny. The sooner she gets to Westminster the better for Scotland.
PS: Best politician out of Scotland in many a year was Alex Salmond.
How do you expect to pass with homework turned in in such a state?
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
We at the very least know that the US would not have flirted with legalising torture.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
LOL, you get 30 weeks holidays , work 9am to 3 ish , maybe 4 pm. Gold plated pensions, and it's not enough.
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
I agree we start languages about four years too late, but English gives us easy access to the English speaking world. And we use it.
I seem to recall some stats (from the Royal Statistical Society?) a couple of years ago (somebody will dig them out I’m hopeless at linking) where there’s nigh on 3million British born in Can/Aus/NZ/SA/USA (1.2M in Aus alone!) dwarfing the 1.2M in the EU ( of whom 300k were in Ireland ). Germany musters a paltry 96K.
Put bluntly we dream of Bondi beach but regard Düsseldorf as a necessary chore.
Until we dream en masse of living in Milan (and not just a bunch of middle class folk doing Chiantishire in Tuscany), or Mannheim, or Mechelen, it’s going to be an uphill struggle to win our hearts for “Europe”. I suspect the relatively large numbers in Spain and France are heavily bolstered by oldies sitting in the sunnier weather rather than any burning desire to absorb the local life by loads of twenty somethings wanting to stay forever.
Even now the entire deal/no deal debate is framed almost wholly in economic terms, and not on anything more “uplifting” like where we want to live out our lives.
So what does Remain do when the world doesn’t end?
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
Bush only invaded Iraq to feel that he had succeeded where his own father had failed. A lot of negative stuff has flowed as a consequence (although tbf the case that a lot of it was inevitable anyway isn't a weak one).
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of course there are very educated older people. But my family's experience is common - my parents (and grandparents) were from ordinary backgrounds, and the opportunity to go to university was never realistically on offer. Of my generation, I was the very first in my wider family to do so. Of my nephews and nieces, several of them have, although one can debate to what extent this was a wise decision for some of them. The bottom line is that, amongst older people, only the privileged or exceptionally talented got such a chance; amongst my cohort it was probably the more fortunate or able 30%, and nowadays it is a majority.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
"85's gonna be in charge! Jesus, give us a break!"
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
Ignoring your characteristic dodgy extrapolation from the latest passing opinion poll, I think you will find that they are interested in winning first, and will worry about their position on Brexit afterwards. For the time being, sitting on the fence suits, but this could easily change, and very quickly.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
7th september Cable to announce resignation.Next LD leader betting 8/11 Swinson 2-1 Moran.
Hard to believe the favourite is worse than Cable, they are in some state.
Why is Swinson worse than Cable? Genuine question.
I just think she is useless, an empty windbag with no talent , principles etc. Typifies why the LD's have fallen so far a female Clegg, no substance , just self seeking shallow chancers.
In fairness though Malcolm you think that of most politicians, especially those who are Scottish and not separatist.
As homework for Malcolm how about he identifies a list of non-SNP politicians that he likes?
In Scotland they are rarer than hens teeth, all of them and including many SNP are useless. SNP are best of a bad bunch but I do not think they are anything special either, only that they alone really have an interest in Scotland. Outside Scotland there are very few who I would rate as anything decent , I like Ken Clark but apart from that there is a dearth of real political talent. If you go back there used to be big hitters in all parties but most nowadays are just PPE graduates in it for the money and the glory, few if any are in it to make the country a better place.
Malcolm - What do you think of Ruth Davidson?
I do not have long enough or enough space to define how crap she is. She is a self seeking , worst type of ex BBC , establishment , Westminster lackey on the planet. She has more faces than the town clock and would sell her granny. The sooner she gets to Westminster the better for Scotland.
PS: Best politician out of Scotland in many a year was Alex Salmond.
How do you expect to pass with homework turned in in such a state?
LOL, I prefer short and sweet, I was not that keen on school found it boring a lot of the time. I used to go off and do the odds in the bookies , light the coal fire and then mark the boards , all for princely sum of 2/6d. Still managed to get all my O levels when they were real exams though. Did not bother with uni as I preferred wine , women and horses and it did me no harm whatsoever, as Bid G said in those days if you were clever you did not need so many bits of paper ( mind you I did years at college so bit contradictory). It was a great life , month in Edinburgh , month in Motherwell and month at home and huge expenses so we could live the high life. Happy days, I loved the seventies.
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
Bush only invaded Iraq to feel that he had succeeded where his own father had failed. A lot of negative stuff has flowed as a consequence (although tbf the case that a lot of it was inevitable anyway isn't a weak one).
It’s pretty well impossible to say, though McCain’s Vietnam experience might well have persuaded him to better sort out the Afghan engagement before considering doing anything in Iraq, and it is quite possible that he would have stopped short of invading.
McCain’s judgment was, to say the least, pretty flakey throughout his career (Palin, for example), but his basic feel for right and wrong rarely deserted him.
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
Ignoring your characteristic dodgy extrapolation from the latest passing opinion poll, I think you will find that they are interested in winning first, and will worry about their position on Brexit afterwards.
As I have shown you a fudged Brexit position gives Labour the best chance of winning (plus a majority of the top marginal seats voted Leave) despite your deluded position in believing your best bet of getting an anti Brexit agenda is with sticking with Corbyn Labour rather than switching to the LDs who really are anti Brexit and pro single market
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
The point is for the vast majority of Brits it’s just not seen as a “problem”. Sure, we can argue whether it should be seen as a problem, but right now I’m sure for most, it’s just not.
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
Bush only invaded Iraq to feel that he had succeeded where his own father had failed. A lot of negative stuff has flowed as a consequence (although tbf the case that a lot of it was inevitable anyway isn't a weak one).
If Bush hadn't invaded Iraq things could have been different here too.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
But you can not satisfy the demand for different languages in Europe. For the UK education system to provide labour for checkout jobs in the EU it would need to teach 20 plus languages. So focus on the large ones, Spanish for Spain and Latin America, Chinese for the Far East. This would provide far more opportunities for UK youth to work abroad than German or French.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
No personal comment was intended, and of ty.
Any fool can get a degree nowadays, they give them out like sweeties , does not mean they are any smarter for sure. I would say today's generation know more but most of it unimportant. They are mostly woosies and snowflakes who cannot take the pressure and easily offended. Things are not improved since we started sending any tom, dick and henrietta to Uni.
Again, I agree. Blair's target of 50% of young people going to university was always a nonsense, and led directly into Labour itself betraying the promises it had made to students, well before the LibDems followed the same path. The correlation with voting Remain is with education, not intelligence.
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
That was then and this is now. In a services and knowledge based economy rather than a manufacturing based one, education is critical.
There isn't a developed country without a tertiary education rate of 30%ish or more.
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
By educated you mean intelligent. But of course. The correlation with Leave/Remain is however with formal education.
Edit/ nevertheless analysis does reveal that, amongst people of the same age cohort, greater education does correlate with greater likelihood of voting Remain.
No I don't, I mean that the difficulty of the A level syllabus and the mastery of it required for a pass then may have been equivalent to a degree, now.
Current A-levels (at least in Physics and Maths which I know best) are really not that much different in difficulty to the ones I took in the eighties. Some of the content is different, but that does not mean easier. This means that if you are correct there are universities who are doing nothing for three years whils charging a lot of money.
I’m not saying you are wrong, particularly if you compared someone with (say) straight As then to someone who got a couple of Es now and went to a ‘new’ university, but when I looked at what a young relative of mine was doing in his Maths degree I realised I didn’t even recognise the names of most of the topics. Back in the day I got an A in maths and a B in further maths. He was past me before he had finished his first term.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
LOL, you get 30 weeks holidays , work 9am to 3 ish , maybe 4 pm. Gold plated pensions, and it's not enough.
I object to that: it’s 13, not 30. Or is it different in Scotland?
More seriously, if it’s that easy and the conditions are so good, have you ever considered a job in teaching?
Watching the tributes to John McCain what a loss to the US he is and the contrast to the terrible President Trump
McCain wasn't regarded that way the last time he ran for president.
I think he was. I remember him putting down a supporter who claimed that Obama wasn't patriotic. That's really rare in the middle of a campaign - political leaders tend to praise opponents only when they're retired or dead.
On the news: the government is expected to provide funding for UK's own satellite navigation system to counter being thrown out of the Galileo system. Initial spending £100 million - just on investigations.
It's quite impressive how fast they've pivoted from "there's no money left, we'll have to gut social services" to "fuck everything, just keep borrowing".
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
Twenty years ago the hospital pharmacy where I worked participated in a scheme whereby German pharmacy students in their final year could work in Britain, and become qualified to work in either country. The vast majority of them were competent to hand out medicines and explain any points the patients needed to know, certainly after a few weeks.
I’ve spoken at a Thai university and pretty well all the post-grads I was talking to were reasonably competent in English.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
The point is for the vast majority of Brits it’s just not seen as a “problem”. Sure, we can argue whether it should be seen as a problem, but right now I’m sure for most, it’s just not.
It’s not seen as a problem because so many British people don’t think of themselves as European. My original argument (I think) was that this is one of the reasons that so many people voted for Brexit. If we were more fluent in the sorts of language that ment that moving from Bolton to Berlin or Stockport to Stockholm were no more difficult than moving from Cardiff to Coventry then I think the vote might have gone the other way.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
But you can not satisfy the demand for different languages in Europe. For the UK education system to provide labour for checkout jobs in the EU it would need to teach 20 plus languages. So focus on the large ones, Spanish for Spain and Latin America, Chinese for the Far East. This would provide far more opportunities for UK youth to work abroad than German or French.
It is entirely conceivable that someone with A levels then was on any measure other than the formal, as highly educated as the average graduate now.
By educated you mean intelligent. But of course. The correlation with Leave/Remain is however with formal education.
Edit/ nevertheless analysis does reveal that, amongst people of the same age cohort, greater education does correlate with greater likelihood of voting Remain.
No I don't, I mean that the difficulty of the A level syllabus and the mastery of it required for a pass then may have been equivalent to a degree, now.
Current A-levels (at least in Physics and Maths which I know best) are really not that much different in difficulty to the ones I took in the eighties. Some of the content is different, but that does not mean easier. This means that if you are correct there are universities who are doing nothing for three years whils charging a lot of money.
I’m not saying you are wrong, particularly if you compared someone with (say) straight As then to someone who got a couple of Es now and went to a ‘new’ university, but when I looked at what a young relative of mine was doing in his Maths degree I realised I didn’t even recognise the names of most of the topics. Back in the day I got an A in maths and a B in further maths. He was past me before he had finished his first term.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
It used to be common even back in the 80s during the recession - the sitcom "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" was based on building workers going to Germany. In the same way as employers of manual workers in Britain accept people from the Balkans with only a limited knowledge of English, German employers were pleased to have them. At the other end of the scale, it was all too normal in Switzerland for British expats to expect to do their professional jobs in the pharmceuticals industry without ever speaking a word of German or French. I knew one chap who only half-ironically boasted of the fact that he "wouldn't lower" himself to say anything in German, and he used to use complex English phrasing to force local colleagues to ask him to explain.
He was an idiot, of course, and most people get more out of a country if they learn the language,but you don't really need it to start with for a wide range of jobs. Smaller countries in particular are relaxed about it - Danes are pleasantly surprised if you speak Danish and definitely don't expect it, while many Dutch university courses are purely in English.
(It's that common polity the Brexiteers claim doesn't exist, innit.:))
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
LOL, you get 30 weeks holidays , work 9am to 3 ish , maybe 4 pm. Gold plated pensions, and it's not enough.
I object to that: it’s 13, not 30. Or is it different in Scotland?
More seriously, if it’s that easy and the conditions are so good, have you ever considered a job in teaching?
I was joking obviously , but I am sure I would do significantly less hours than present , albeit I do them from home nowadays, but could not afford the drop in salary. Given the stage of my career it would be crazy as well, more likely to retire and going from being Top Dog to a rookie teacher would be a shock for sure. I went to a parents time at my grandsons primary school and I have to say it was bedlam , I could never suffer it all day
LOL, I prefer short and sweet, I was not that keen on school found it boring a lot of the time. I used to go off and do the odds in the bookies , light the coal fire and then mark the boards , all for princely sum of 2/6d. Still managed to get all my O levels when they were real exams though. Did not bother with uni as I preferred wine , women and horses and it did me no harm whatsoever, as Bid G said in those days if you were clever you did not need so many bits of paper ( mind you I did years at college so bit contradictory). It was a great life , month in Edinburgh , month in Motherwell and month at home and huge expenses so we could live the high life. Happy days, I loved the seventies.
I'm curious: have you ever voted Labour?
(I think you said the other day that you voted for Maggie in the 80s?)
Then which language do we teach? French is actually a bit of a pig to learn, particularly given spelling rules that give English a run for its money. German is seen as too hard by many (although I am told it is actually not too bad). Spanish is problably one of the easiest, but won’t really help you get that dream job in Hamburg.
Some Spanish is easy but highly competent Spanish (say CERF B2) is harder than the same level in French. Eg the subjunctive is very important in Spanish, quite important in French and often ignored in English.
Swedish, Norwegian or Danish are the easiest for native English speakers. However the differences between the languages is almost irrelevant compared to the dedication of the indivudual student in my experience.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
It used to be common even back in the 80s during the recession - the sitcom "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" was based on building workers going to Germany. In the same way as employers of manual workers in Britain accept people from the Balkans with only a limited knowledge of English, German employers were pleased to have them. At the other end of the scale, it was all too normal in Switzerland for British expats to expect to do their professional jobs in the pharmceuticals industry without ever speaking a word of German or French. I knew one chap who only half-ironically boasted of the fact that he "wouldn't lower" himself to say anything in German, and he used to use complex English phrasing to force local colleagues to ask him to explain.
He was an idiot, of course, and most people get more out of a country if they learn the language,but you don't really need it to start with for a wide range of jobs. Smaller countries in particular are relaxed about it - Danes are pleasantly surprised if you speak Danish and definitely don't expect it, while many Dutch university courses are purely in English.
(It's that common polity the Brexiteers claim doesn't exist, innit.:))
Aren’t there quite a lot of Briitish students at, for example, Maastricht University? Cheaper to study there, I understand.
In summary: less well educated people were more likely to vote leave not because they were stupid but because for them the Free Movement of the EU has not worked as well as it has for those of us who are well educated; they have seen few of the advantages and more of the disadvantages.
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
I think it does. Leave voters generally are disturbed by the modern world. I know that comes across as horribly patronising, but the modern world IS disturbing. The question is whether you reject it or deal with it. Rejection isn't a solution IMO. Brexit makes dealing with the modern world much, much harder.
The world has probably, for the ‘average’ Western person, been “dsturbing' for the last couple of hundred year. Personally I (still) regard it as challenging, but as far as my wife and are concerned it’s more a matter of advsing our grandchildren than doing much about it themselves. Whether they take the advice........
But surely older people, once they have settled into their ways and acccumulated enough understanding of the world as it is, always find the changes being promoted by the upcoming generation to be disturbing?
It seems it is the younger person who is afraid of the change to leave the EU. Older people remember the time before we were in the EU and so are not afraid.
But older people simply don't understand (or are immune from, being on secure fixed incomes, or safely overseas like so many PB leavers) the transitional costs, disruption and damage that will be involved in travelling from our current universe to one of the parellel ones that might have arisen from their youth.
Besides, if they really remembered the 1970s, they would recall our imperative to join.
Any one living in Europe on any kind of fixed income denominated in sterling [almost certainly the great majority of us] has seen around a 25% drop in such income since the Brexit vote. Some of them to my knowledge voted Leave and some Remain. Your level of genera;isation about people - their motives and outlook is really wide of the mark. The idea that older people, whether educated or not are somehow less knowledgeable about the world of politics than people, let's say under 40 is also risible. I taught for over 30 years in a range of schools and have mixed, as I do now, with people of all ages and my personal experience would suggest the opposite.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
It used to be common even back in the 80s during the recession - the sitcom "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" was based on building workers going to Germany. In the same way as employers of manual workers in Britain accept people from the Balkans with only a limited knowledge of English, German employers were pleased to have them. At the other end of the scale, it was all too normal in Switzerland for British expats to expect to do their professional jobs in the pharmceuticals industry without ever speaking a word of German or French. I knew one chap who only half-ironically boasted of the fact that he "wouldn't lower" himself to say anything in German, and he used to use complex English phrasing to force local colleagues to ask him to explain.
He was an idiot, of course, and most people get more out of a country if they learn the language,but you don't really need it to start with for a wide range of jobs. Smaller countries in particular are relaxed about it - Danes are pleasantly surprised if you speak Danish and definitely don't expect it, while many Dutch university courses are purely in English.
(It's that common polity the Brexiteers claim doesn't exist, innit.:))
I think there is a big difference between limited knowledge of a language (that would describe my French quite well) and none at all (which would describe my knowledge of German). I was in Switzerland earlier in the summer and found Geneva much easier to deal with than Bern for that very reason.
Completely off topic, but speaking of Bern: while I was there I went to see the bears as I remembered reading a couple of the Mary Plain books when I was young. When I mentioned this to my friends and colleagues all I got were blank looks. Did anybody else read them or was it just me?
On the news: the government is expected to provide funding for UK's own satellite navigation system to counter being thrown out of the Galileo system. Initial spending £100 million - just on investigations.
It's quite impressive how fast they've pivoted from "there's no money left, we'll have to gut social services" to "fuck everything, just keep borrowing".
I'm in two minds about this. It's good for the UK space industry (and AIUI the EU cannot design/make all the bits for their satellites without UK industry, whereas we have companies who can do it all ourselves).
On the other hand, it's expensive, replicates a capability that several other countries have, and only serves a marginal use.
It'd be better if the EU just let us have access to the military side.
As an aside, until recently I hadn't realised that Galileo was designed to have uplink capabilities to allow the government to track vehicles - this was dropped, and the capability has to be reproduced using other systems in conjunction with the positioning. It'll be interesting to see exactly what the spec of any system we design is .
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
LOL, you get 30 weeks holidays , work 9am to 3 ish , maybe 4 pm. Gold plated pensions, and it's not enough.
!3 weeks holiday actually - let's not get carried away.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
But you can not satisfy the demand for different languages in Europe. For the UK education system to provide labour for checkout jobs in the EU it would need to teach 20 plus languages. So focus on the large ones, Spanish for Spain and Latin America, Chinese for the Far East. This would provide far more opportunities for UK youth to work abroad than German or French.
Learning Mandarin is known in language teaching circles as The Six Year Lesson in Humility. It's tonal qualities and topic prominence make it difficult for all but the most able students. It takes months just to learn how to use the dictionary.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
Except for, in my experience, 0% of Parisians.
I find that as soon as I try to speak French to them they either reply much faster than I can cope with or switch straight to English to save time.
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
Ignoring your characteristic dodgy extrapolation from the latest passing opinion poll, I think you will find that they are interested in winning first, and will worry about their position on Brexit afterwards.
As I have shown you a fudged Brexit position gives Labour the best chance of winning (plus a majority of the top marginal seats voted Leave) despite your deluded position in believing your best bet of getting an anti Brexit agenda is with sticking with Corbyn Labour rather than switching to the LDs who really are anti Brexit and pro single market
Lol. Which shows how astute and observant you are! For in reality I am a current LibDem member, recently retired from 24 years as one of their councillors, now beginning to wonder what future the party might have,
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
Except for, in my experience, 0% of Parisians.
I find that as soon as I try to speak French to them they either reply much faster than I can cope with or switch straight to English to save time.
I used to have what we'll kindly call 'business French'. Parisians would feign complete incomprehension. Once I realised that most French people hate Parisians, I allowed myself to fall completely in love with the country.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
It used to be common even back in the 80s during the recession - the sitcom "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" was based on building workers going to Germany. In the same way as employers of manual workers in Britain accept people from the Balkans with only a limited knowledge of English, German employers were pleased to have them. At the other end of the scale, it was all too normal in Switzerland for British expats to expect to do their professional jobs in the pharmceuticals industry without ever speaking a word of German or French. I knew one chap who only half-ironically boasted of the fact that he "wouldn't lower" himself to say anything in German, and he used to use complex English phrasing to force local colleagues to ask him to explain.
He was an idiot, of course, and most people get more out of a country if they learn the language,but you don't really need it to start with for a wide range of jobs. Smaller countries in particular are relaxed about it - Danes are pleasantly surprised if you speak Danish and definitely don't expect it, while many Dutch university courses are purely in English.
(It's that common polity the Brexiteers claim doesn't exist, innit.:))
I think there is a big difference between limited knowledge of a language (that would describe my French quite well) and none at all (which would describe my knowledge of German). I was in Switzerland earlier in the summer and found Geneva much easier to deal with than Bern for that very reason.
Completely off topic, but speaking of Bern: while I was there I went to see the bears as I remembered reading a couple of the Mary Plain books when I was young. When I mentioned this to my friends and colleagues all I got were blank looks. Did anybody else read them or was it just me?
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
Ignoring your characteristic dodgy extrapolation from the latest passing opinion poll, I think you will find that they are interested in winning first, and will worry about their position on Brexit afterwards.
As I have shown you a fudged Brexit position gives Labour the best chance of winning (plus a majority of the top marginal seats voted Leave) despite your deluded position in believing your best bet of getting an anti Brexit agenda is with sticking with Corbyn Labour rather than switching to the LDs who really are anti Brexit and pro single market
In fairness, only a muppet wouldn't be pro-Single Market. It's just that the SM without FoM is pure cakeatery and therefore not politically possible.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
Except for, in my experience, 0% of Parisians.
I find that as soon as I try to speak French to them they either reply much faster than I can cope with or switch straight to English to save time.
I used to have what we'll kindly call 'business French'. Parisians would feign complete incomprehension. Once I realised that most French people hate Parisians, I allowed myself to fall completely in love with the country.
I have a very good friend from University who ended up in Paris married to a Frenchman and I’ve been going over to visit pretty regularly for the last 25 years or so. Throw in some school trips which I have talked my way onto and I’ve been able to maintain my spoken French at O-level standard. Just don’t ask me to write anything.
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
Except for, in my experience, 0% of Parisians.
I find that as soon as I try to speak French to them they either reply much faster than I can cope with or switch straight to English to save time.
I used to have what we'll kindly call 'business French'. Parisians would feign complete incomprehension. Once I realised that most French people hate Parisians, I allowed myself to fall completely in love with the country.
I owned a business in France a while back.
Before I purchased I talked to various French friends about how an English person taking over a French business would be viewed.
A couple of the replies I will never forget - they boiled down to this "you will be fine, you're not Arab or Parisian"
LOL, I prefer short and sweet, I was not that keen on school found it boring a lot of the time. I used to go off and do the odds in the bookies , light the coal fire and then mark the boards , all for princely sum of 2/6d. Still managed to get all my O levels when they were real exams though. Did not bother with uni as I preferred wine , women and horses and it did me no harm whatsoever, as Bid G said in those days if you were clever you did not need so many bits of paper ( mind you I did years at college so bit contradictory). It was a great life , month in Edinburgh , month in Motherwell and month at home and huge expenses so we could live the high life. Happy days, I loved the seventies.
I'm curious: have you ever voted Labour?
(I think you said the other day that you voted for Maggie in the 80s?)
Yes , I started off labour being from working class home. I voted for Maggie as the country needed change and like most voted first time for Blair as Tories had lost the plot. SNP ever since and that because they are only party interested in Scotland and the caliber of the others has been dire and personal /London centric. PS: I would say I am right wing Labour or could be a left wing Tory if a Tory could have a heart
One point often made by some remain voters is that the leave voter was less well educated than the average remain voter. Ignoring for the moment the extent to which this is due to the For those who are not fluent (and probably hated their French lessons at school) the jobs market of the EU is largely closed to them: there are jobs that are can be performed in English but they tend to require other
That doesn’t explain why pensioners were so pro-Leave.
Pensioners are less educated by dint of time; in years past it was far less common to get the opportunity to go to university and beyond.
0ood to see you think I am less educated even though I did actually vote remain
40 years ago you did not need a degree to become an accountant, a stockbroker, a police officer, a nurse, a journalist, even a solicitor or primary school teacher. You largely do now
In 1963 only 5% of people went to university, now it is over 40%.
The average IQ of eighteen year olds has hardly changed however.
Draw your own conclusions.
Teachers are much better than they used to be and deserve a massive pay rise?
LOL, you get 30 weeks holidays , work 9am to 3 ish , maybe 4 pm. Gold plated pensions, and it's not enough.
!3 weeks holiday actually - let's not get carried away.
Quite possibly. Though myself and I believe Alanbrooke of this parish and others would not fit the stereotype.
This stuff is important. We are surrounded every day by the culture of the Anglosphere. It’s so pervasive we don’t really see it as such. But there it is everyday, from the latest Hollywood movie, to ACDC in concert, to Game of Thrones, to the Indian Premier League, to Graham Norton’s sofa. I can almost hear the snorting amongst some that it’s all so low brow but that is the point: it’s popular.
Now there’s fantastic stuff from Europe but 200k watching Spiral in French with subtitles on BBC4, or bilingual Moliere at the Donmar is a cultural peashooter against daily 21century shock and awe.
Even here, look how we get fairly regular threads on US elections and we are all fairly au fait with who is who, and we all know who Malcolm Turnbull is, but a Swedish opinion poll pops up on their election in a couple of weeks, and most of us are puzzling over which party is which, and couldn’t really care very much. How many could name the Spanish PM straight off (even though he’s new)?
There’s nothing wrong here with this, we are bound to be more interested in what we can understand (literally).
The head to head polling of Tory v Labour under different Labour Brexit positions we have had shows that while Labour would trail badly and lose votes to the LDs in significant numbers if it took a pro Brexit position it would actually poll slightly better with the current fudged Brexit position than a clear anti Brexit line
They are simply waiting until the iceberg fills a greater proportion of people's forward vision.
Corbyn and Gardiner and McDonnell are ideologically opposed to returning to the single market let alone the EU
I think you will find that they are mostly focused on Labour's political self-interest.
They are interested in leading a socialist government which requires a renationalisation programme which would be blocked by staying in the single market.
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
Ignoring your characteristic dodgy extrapolation from the latest passing opinion poll, I think you will find that they are interested in winning first, and will worry about their position on Brexit afterwards.
As I have shown you a fudged Brexit position gives Labour the best chance of winning (plus a majority of the top marginal seats voted Leave) despite your deluded position in believing your best bet of getting an anti Brexit agenda is with sticking with Corbyn Labour rather than switching to the LDs who really are anti Brexit and pro single market
Lol. Which shows how astute and observant you are! For in reality I am a current LibDem member, recently retired from 24 years as one of their councillors, now beginning to wonder what future the party might have,
Do you think the brand is terminally tarnished? Or will a couple of decades distance from tuition fees/Coalition with Tories be enough?
On the news: the government is expected to provide funding for UK's own satellite navigation system to counter being thrown out of the Galileo system. Initial spending £100 million - just on investigations.
It's quite impressive how fast they've pivoted from "there's no money left, we'll have to gut social services" to "fuck everything, just keep borrowing".
I as bemused to see a story the other day that essentially said as we were now borrowing less than expected we had room to borrow even more.
This is a Conservative government right?
There will be a downturn at some stage and we will need to borrow more then - yet they can't even balance the books in a relatively benign environment.
As for Labour - well if they get hold of the controls Brexit would be the least of our worries and we really would be fecked.
By the way "gut social services" is a lot of bollocks.
Quite possibly. Though myself and I believe Alanbrooke of this parish and others would not fit the stereotype.
This stuff is important. We are surrounded every day by the culture of the Anglosphere. It’s so pervasive we don’t really see it as such. But there it is everyday, from the latest Hollywood movie, to ACDC in concert, to Game of Thrones, to the Indian Premier League, to Graham Norton’s sofa. I can almost hear the snorting amongst some that it’s all so low brow but that is the point: it’s popular.
Now there’s fantastic stuff from Europe but 200k watching Spiral in French with subtitles on BBC4, or bilingual Moliere at the Donmar is a cultural peashooter against daily 21century shock and awe.
Even here, look how we get fairly regular threads on US elections and we are all fairly au fait with who is who, and we all know who Malcolm Turnbull is, but a Swedish opinion poll pops up on their election in a couple of weeks, and most of us are puzzling over which party is which, and couldn’t really care very much. How many could name the Spanish PM straight off (even though he’s new)?
There’s nothing wrong here with this, we are bound to be more interested in what we can understand (literally).
That may be the answer to how we learn to love Europe: they promise to stop speaking languages we don’t understand and just use English instead. We’ll let them carry on driving on the wrong side of the road I suppose...
Quite possibly. Though myself and I believe Alanbrooke of this parish and others would not fit the stereotype.
This stuff is important. We are surrounded every day by the culture of the Anglosphere. It’s so pervasive we don’t really see it as such. But there it is everyday, from the latest Hollywood movie, to ACDC in concert, to Game of Thrones, to the Indian Premier League, to Graham Norton’s sofa. I can almost hear the snorting amongst some that it’s all so low brow but that is the point: it’s popular.
Now there’s fantastic stuff from Europe but 200k watching Spiral in French with subtitles on BBC4, or bilingual Moliere at the Donmar is a cultural peashooter against daily 21century shock and awe.
Even here, look how we get fairly regular threads on US elections and we are all fairly au fait with who is who, and we all know who Malcolm Turnbull is, but a Swedish opinion poll pops up on their election in a couple of weeks, and most of us are puzzling over which party is which, and couldn’t really care very much. How many could name the Spanish PM straight off (even though he’s new)?
There’s nothing wrong here with this, we are bound to be more interested in what we can understand (literally).
That may be the answer to how we learn to love Europe: they promise to stop speaking languages we don’t understand and just use English instead. We’ll let them carry on driving on the wrong side of the road I suppose...
The puzzle is, what point this claim is meant to make
them!
...
When I worked in Italy 30 years ago all of my Italian colleagues wanted to speak English with me because it was a great to have for their career. I had to agree a deal with them that it was 1 day English, 1 day Italian so I could learn Italian. Then 20 years ago working in Germany the large German businesses all had a policy of English only at work. So if the meeting was 10 Germans, the language was English. In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
How many German businesses talk to their German customers in English? If I wanted to get a job on a checkout in Berlin I expect they would want me to have more than a bit of German, in fact more than your average GCSE student would have.
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
English is the most widely understood language in the EU, with the EU's own data showing 51% of EU citizens claiming "some understanding" of our language.
Except for, in my experience, 0% of Parisians.
I lived (and got by reasonably well) in the French speaking part of Brussels - but take the train to the Gare du Nord and I'd started speaking Polish or something.....
7th september Cable to announce resignation.Next LD leader betting 8/11 Swinson 2-1 Moran.
Hard to believe the favourite is worse than Cable, they are in some state.
Why is Swinson worse than Cable? Genuine question.
I just think she is useless, an empty windbag with no talent , principles etc. Typifies why the LD's have fallen so far a female Clegg, no substance , just self seeking shallow chancers.
In fairness though Malcolm you think that of most politicians, especially those who are Scottish and not separatist.
Malcolm is probably still smarting about Mike's intervention for the Lib Dems in the 2017 election in East Dunbartonshire.
Quite possibly. Though myself and I believe Alanbrooke of this parish and others would not fit the stereotype.
This stuff is important. We are surrounded every day by the culture of the Anglosphere. It’s so pervasive we don’t really see it as such. But there it is everyday, from the latest Hollywood movie, to ACDC in concert, to Game of Thrones, to the Indian Premier League, to Graham Norton’s sofa. I can almost hear the snorting amongst some that it’s all so low brow but that is the point: it’s popular.
Now there’s fantastic stuff from Europe but 200k watching Spiral in French with subtitles on BBC4, or bilingual Moliere at the Donmar is a cultural peashooter against daily 21century shock and awe.
Even here, look how we get fairly regular threads on US elections and we are all fairly au fait with who is who, and we all know who Malcolm Turnbull is, but a Swedish opinion poll pops up on their election in a couple of weeks, and most of us are puzzling over which party is which, and couldn’t really care very much. How many could name the Spanish PM straight off (even though he’s new)?
There’s nothing wrong here with this, we are bound to be more interested in what we can understand (literally).
That may be the answer to how we learn to love Europe: they promise to stop speaking languages we don’t understand and just use English instead. We’ll let them carry on driving on the wrong side of the road I suppose...
Comments
I would prefer to Remain even though I voted leave , hoping to get another Scottish referendum, but have no fears either way and will just get on with it. I may change my tune if the stockmarket plummets mind you but that could happen either way.
PS: As I have said from the beginning , we will get a fudge , we will be out but really in , paying more for it and having no say in what the rules are. The plebs will pay dearly and the politicians , elite etc will make out of it , a la JRM opening funds in Dublin. They are all crooks and charlatans along with their media chums and the great unwashed will get stuffed.
Malcolm - What do you think of Ruth Davidson?
Edit/ nevertheless analysis does reveal that, amongst people of the same age cohort, greater education does correlate with greater likelihood of voting Remain.
In today's world the places that do not speak English are South America and China. So I would teach Spanish and Mandarin.
Would have been an interesting counterfactual if he had been on the GOP ticket in 2000 and if he had won. Would the post-9/11 world have been markedly different?
PS: Best politician out of Scotland in many a year was Alex Salmond.
They might be married to a Republican Congressman....
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/24/duncan-hunter-indictment-wife-congress-republicans-795710
As I have already showed you a fudged Brexit position gets more votes for Labour than either a pro or anti Brexit position
I agree we start languages about four years too late, but English gives us easy access to the English speaking world. And we use it.
I seem to recall some stats (from the Royal Statistical Society?) a couple of years ago (somebody will dig them out I’m hopeless at linking) where there’s nigh on 3million British born in Can/Aus/NZ/SA/USA (1.2M in Aus alone!) dwarfing the 1.2M in the EU ( of whom 300k were in Ireland ). Germany musters a paltry 96K.
Put bluntly we dream of Bondi beach but regard Düsseldorf as a necessary chore.
Until we dream en masse of living in Milan (and not just a bunch of middle class folk doing Chiantishire in Tuscany), or Mannheim, or Mechelen, it’s going to be an uphill struggle to win our hearts for “Europe”. I suspect the relatively large numbers in Spain and France are heavily bolstered by oldies sitting in the sunnier weather rather than any burning desire to absorb the local life by loads of twenty somethings wanting to stay forever.
Even now the entire deal/no deal debate is framed almost wholly in economic terms, and not on anything more “uplifting” like where we want to live out our lives.
So what does Remain do when the world doesn’t end?
This means that for most people moving to Germany, or any other major EU country for that matter, for a job is not something that would ever contemplate.
It was a great life , month in Edinburgh , month in Motherwell and month at home and huge expenses so we could live the high life. Happy days, I loved the seventies.
McCain’s judgment was, to say the least, pretty flakey throughout his career (Palin, for example), but his basic feel for right and wrong rarely deserted him.
There isn't a developed country without a tertiary education rate of 30%ish or more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment
I accept that Britons may well be significantly thicker than other nations, but that doesnot bode well for the future.
The problem of British higher education is more to do with the poor quality of much of it, and the high cost, rather than the numbers going.
I’m not saying you are wrong, particularly if you compared someone with (say) straight As then to someone who got a couple of Es now and went to a ‘new’ university, but when I looked at what a young relative of mine was doing in his Maths degree I realised I didn’t even recognise the names of most of the topics. Back in the day I got an A in maths and a B in further maths. He was past me before he had finished his first term.
More seriously, if it’s that easy and the conditions are so good, have you ever considered a job in teaching?
McCain's mistake was choosing Sarah Palin as Vice Presidential running mate, but he admitted that himself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5697057/John-McCain-reveals-regrets-choosing-Sarah-Palin-running-mate.html
I’ve spoken at a Thai university and pretty well all the post-grads I was talking to were reasonably competent in English.
If all DOES go belly-up, what do you leavers do?
He was an idiot, of course, and most people get more out of a country if they learn the language,but you don't really need it to start with for a wide range of jobs. Smaller countries in particular are relaxed about it - Danes are pleasantly surprised if you speak Danish and definitely don't expect it, while many Dutch university courses are purely in English.
(It's that common polity the Brexiteers claim doesn't exist, innit.:))
(I think you said the other day that you voted for Maggie in the 80s?)
Swedish, Norwegian or Danish are the easiest for native English speakers. However the differences between the languages is almost irrelevant compared to the dedication of the indivudual student in my experience.
Completely off topic, but speaking of Bern: while I was there I went to see the bears as I remembered reading a couple of the Mary Plain books when I was young. When I mentioned this to my friends and colleagues all I got were blank looks. Did anybody else read them or was it just me?
On the other hand, it's expensive, replicates a capability that several other countries have, and only serves a marginal use.
It'd be better if the EU just let us have access to the military side.
As an aside, until recently I hadn't realised that Galileo was designed to have uplink capabilities to allow the government to track vehicles - this was dropped, and the capability has to be reproduced using other systems in conjunction with the positioning. It'll be interesting to see exactly what the spec of any system we design is .
https://twitter.com/australian/status/1033678343462240257
Before I purchased I talked to various French friends about how an English person taking over a French business would be viewed.
A couple of the replies I will never forget - they boiled down to this "you will be fine, you're not Arab or Parisian"
(This was in Normandy to be clear)
PS: I would say I am right wing Labour or could be a left wing Tory if a Tory could have a heart
Quite possibly. Though myself and I believe Alanbrooke of this parish and others would not fit the stereotype.
This stuff is important. We are surrounded every day by the culture of the Anglosphere. It’s so pervasive we don’t really see it as such. But there it is everyday, from the latest Hollywood movie, to ACDC in concert, to Game of Thrones, to the Indian Premier League, to Graham Norton’s sofa. I can almost hear the snorting amongst some that it’s all so low brow but that is the point: it’s popular.
Now there’s fantastic stuff from Europe but 200k watching Spiral in French with subtitles on BBC4, or bilingual Moliere at the Donmar is a cultural peashooter against daily 21century shock and awe.
Even here, look how we get fairly regular threads on US elections and we are all fairly au fait with who is who, and we all know who Malcolm Turnbull is, but a Swedish opinion poll pops up on their election in a couple of weeks, and most of us are puzzling over which party is which, and couldn’t really care very much. How many could name the Spanish PM straight off (even though he’s new)?
There’s nothing wrong here with this, we are bound to be more interested in what we can understand (literally).
NEW THREAD
This is a Conservative government right?
There will be a downturn at some stage and we will need to borrow more then - yet they can't even balance the books in a relatively benign environment.
As for Labour - well if they get hold of the controls Brexit would be the least of our worries and we really would be fecked.
By the way "gut social services" is a lot of bollocks.
Ferme La Gauche.