Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
And as I keep saying, punters pile more and more and more votes onto the SNP when given the chance. There is so much they do wrong, but the idea that they aren't popular is laughable. Well, they *were* popular, we'll have to see where they go from here.
Fair assessment, I think.
There's an interesting dissonance here on PB.
SNP minority government - one party state, but not majority Tory government in London Voting in the 45-55% range - no mandate at all, no sirree, unles we are talking about the Tories or Brexiters
If you'd got more than 50% in your referendum, you'd have had a mandate for separation...
That was then. I was talking about a mandate *to have a referendum* as you must surely realise. As this has been refused, and the underlying and very recent Act of Parliament is not being changed, this raises major questions about what a democratic mandate really is in the UK state.
Carnyx, the smartarse will not be interested in your civil answer. These clowns are happy for a minority party to have full control of not only England but Scotland as well and the arses also are happy to have a revolving chair re PM's , sheep shagging hypocrite and only one of many.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I broadly agree, and certainly Hitler and Pol Pot (and maybe Ruanda) offer instructive examples of the sheer lunatic monstrosities that occur when ideology or nationalism are allowed to flourish without limit. I can see endless scope for culture war stuff, though - I think most of us would concede that some of the things that were done in the British Empire were revolting too, though not on the same scale, and I'd include them too so that kids don't conclude that horrid stuff is just what foreigners do. Others might disagree, and as you can't teach everything someone would need to decide what to include, and get hassled for whatever they left out.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Banning cars from primary schools in London would be a grand start, unless you live more than a mile away and could therefore justify the drive. We had several families at my son's primary who would drive their children 500 yards or less, causing pollution and congestion on a tiny cul-de-sac on which the school is located.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of UK moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
For a 2024 Labour Marginal Seat where exactly are you talking about - Chester, Uxbridge (albeit very unlikely to go Green because of Heathrow) or Maidenhead?
All of them potentially.
Say what you like about Blair, he was tactically aware enough not to deselect Tony Benn and Corbyn as he knew he needed leftwing votes for a majority under FPTP.
Cameron too never deselected Bill Cash or IDS as he knew he needed rightwing votes under FPTP too.
Starmer is taking a big risk here if leftwingers go Green or stay home
"Leftwingers" of the kind you describe do not vote Labour. They have long-since scabbed off to a multitude of groups (TUSC, NHA, Socialist Labour etc etc) which get laughingly housed under the "left unity" umbrella.
Them coming to Labour under Corbyn added a small number of votes. The mainstream being repelled by them from Labour cost a great deal more votes.
If we assume that all of the embittered left decide to back the TUSC candidate in whichever seat, thats all of 0.3% off the Labour tally. Whereas them not being around brings in 5% off the Tory tally...
In 2005 many of these same leftwing voters switched to the LDs or Greens or Respect having voted Labour in 1997 and 2001.
That saw Labour lose almost 50 seats despite barely any change in the Conservative voteshare from 2001 to 2005
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Yes, I had a very British experience like that. I parked a bit close to someone's driveway. She left me a note saying sorry to be a nuisance, but can you park a metre or so further along next time as it's hard to get out safely. I did, and a few days later she saw me and said oh thank you, and I do feel bad about hassling you, I hope it was all right, and I said no, no, I feel bad that I caused you inconvenience, thank you for telling me.
There are countries where this culture would seem utterly ridiculous, but unlike flags and parades and stuff, I do think it's something that we can be rather proud of in Britain - it's OK to be OTT in making each other feel good.
Unfortunately you are not the norm Nick, many would have blocked it next time and cursed the poor woman out, far too many mindless yobs about nowadays.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
Yeah, absolutely. The trouble with teaching in time periods is that every time period shaped the present to some extent, going back continuously to at least Æthelstan (and the gap between the Romans and Æthelstan is mostly a gap of records not of importance, I'd suggest). Teaching in themes seems almost more natural, but I'm sure the teachers will now jump in and tell me why it wouldn't work...
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
I think Labour now have an opportunity to have their case heard in Scotland for the first time in almost a decade. Whether they make that case and how it lands is more uncertain. But at least they have some agency in the process now.
Those London sockpuppets have nothing to offer Scotland , same arrogant London arses dictating what we will be allowed or not allowed to do. We had enough of those arses previously. Money grubbing carpetbaggers, worse than the hated Tories.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
And the Scots pivotal role in the British Empire and Slavery too of course, including their failed attempt to found a Caribbean colony leading to the Act of Union
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
And the Scots pivotal role in the British Empire and Slavery too of course, including their failed attempt to found a Caribbean colony leading to the Act of Union
Central American rather than Carribbean, of course, but yes.
Inflation figures in from Ireland. Month on month inflation, December-January was -0.8%, again lower than inflation in Britain (where the figure was -0.6%).
This takes the annual rate of inflation in Ireland down to 7.8%, compared to 10.1% in Britain.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
We live on the same road as my son's school. Its 9 miles away. As most of the school's catchment is not in its village a network of buses takes everyone to and from school each day. There are more bus stands outside the school than in some town bus stations I know.
So it works where the need is there. The reality is that most of the schools where parents crap up local roads aren't far enough away to justify buses. Group walking to and from school would be better.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
In urban areas people most people are within walking distance of their primary school. Parents who drive and drop their children at school do not do so out of physical laziness, as people often assume. They do so because: - it is no longer de rigeur to allow primary school children (with the exception perhaps of year 6s) to walk to school alone. Not only would other parents look down on you, the school would have a word. Social services might be called. - schools do not accept drop off any earlier than 8.45. Sometimes 8.55, 9.00; I've known 9.10 in places. - based on the above, parents cannot then get off to work before 8.45 at the earliest. - working parents desperately need to minimise the time between dropping their child off at a time convenient for the school and arriving, breathless and apologetic, at their place of work. Hence, they drive, and leave their car as close as possible.
It's ok for me. My kids' school now is only two minutes' walk away, my employer is flexible and understanding, and I WFH as often as not. Most people are not this lucky.
Primary schools still seem to believe there is at least one parent hanging around at home at the beck and call of the school.
Think they will be ones getting fixed , Pete depositing £107,620 in SNP coffers teh day after talking to the rozzers and not telling teh wife he had given them a large loan seems a bit odd. Will tehy still be around to handle one wonders. Who will blame who for the misplaced £600K.
“For the SNP, Brexit has turned out to be both the casus belli for its second push for independence and a strategic disaster. The best thing that could happen to Scottish nationalism would be for Britain to rejoin the European Union.”
This is about right I think. The departure of NS makes no difference to the big question of Scottish independence - there was and is no foreseeable route to it because of: Brexit, history, economics and, critically, the Scottish voters don't want it.
It makes a lot of difference to quotidien Scottish and UK politics. NS is a force of nature, as was Salmond. Kate Forbes is the only possible 'force of nature' candidate - jury is out and we may never know. She may have better things to do that face the mob over her centre right opinions.
Finally, suppose we rejoin the EU, in truth it makes little difference whether Scotland is then 'independent' or not. It just means their 'ever closer union' is with rUK +27.
"Scottish voters don't want it" is an odd interpretation of around 50% wanting independence.
And as I keep saying, punters pile more and more and more votes onto the SNP when given the chance. There is so much they do wrong, but the idea that they aren't popular is laughable. Well, they *were* popular, we'll have to see where they go from here.
Fair assessment, I think.
There's an interesting dissonance here on PB.
SNP minority government - one party state, but not majority Tory government in London Voting in the 45-55% range - no mandate at all, no sirree, unles we are talking about the Tories or Brexiters
If you'd got more than 50% in your referendum, you'd have had a mandate for separation...
That was then. I was talking about a mandate *to have a referendum* as you must surely realise. As this has been refused, and the underlying and very recent Act of Parliament is not being changed, this raises major questions about what a democratic mandate really is in the UK state.
Carnyx, the smartarse will not be interested in your civil answer. These clowns are happy for a minority party to have full control of not only England but Scotland as well and the arses also are happy to have a revolving chair re PM's , sheep shagging hypocrite and only one of many.
Morning, Malky! Interesting times.
Carnyx , Yes indeed and lots more to come, yesterday was all very rushed indeed.Ther e will be a few rammies.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I broadly agree, and certainly Hitler and Pol Pot (and maybe Ruanda) offer instructive examples of the sheer lunatic monstrosities that occur when ideology or nationalism are allowed to flourish without limit. I can see endless scope for culture war stuff, though - I think most of us would concede that some of the things that were done in the British Empire were revolting too, though not on the same scale, and I'd include them too so that kids don't conclude that horrid stuff is just what foreigners do. Others might disagree, and as you can't teach everything someone would need to decide what to include, and get hassled for whatever they left out.
Yes, although the narrative nowadays seems to be that bad stuff was done ONLY by the British, and Hitler.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I broadly agree, and certainly Hitler and Pol Pot (and maybe Ruanda) offer instructive examples of the sheer lunatic monstrosities that occur when ideology or nationalism are allowed to flourish without limit. I can see endless scope for culture war stuff, though - I think most of us would concede that some of the things that were done in the British Empire were revolting too, though not on the same scale, and I'd include them too so that kids don't conclude that horrid stuff is just what foreigners do. Others might disagree, and as you can't teach everything someone would need to decide what to include, and get hassled for whatever they left out.
Yes, although the narrative nowadays seems to be that bad stuff was done ONLY by the British, and Hitler.
An honest treatment of Empire would involve comparisons not only with modern standards, but also with what other empires considered appropriate at the time.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Yes, I had a very British experience like that. I parked a bit close to someone's driveway. She left me a note saying sorry to be a nuisance, but can you park a metre or so further along next time as it's hard to get out safely. I did, and a few days later she saw me and said oh thank you, and I do feel bad about hassling you, I hope it was all right, and I said no, no, I feel bad that I caused you inconvenience, thank you for telling me.
There are countries where this culture would seem utterly ridiculous, but unlike flags and parades and stuff, I do think it's something that we can be rather proud of in Britain - it's OK to be OTT in making each other feel good.
That's a nice story. I once parked on a country lane in a way which inconvenienced a farmer attempting to access his field. He left a note I would say was no ruder than 'terse'. I was mortified. Had I realised that was an active access (it hadn't appeared to be to me) I certainly wouldn't have parked there - I wish I could have seen him to apologise. Though probably had I done so he would have simply remained terse and there would have been no happy resolution. It was in Herefordshire, beneath Black Hill. Well worth a visit. Though not easy to find somewhere to park.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Yes, I had a very British experience like that. I parked a bit close to someone's driveway. She left me a note saying sorry to be a nuisance, but can you park a metre or so further along next time as it's hard to get out safely. I did, and a few days later she saw me and said oh thank you, and I do feel bad about hassling you, I hope it was all right, and I said no, no, I feel bad that I caused you inconvenience, thank you for telling me.
There are countries where this culture would seem utterly ridiculous, but unlike flags and parades and stuff, I do think it's something that we can be rather proud of in Britain - it's OK to be OTT in making each other feel good.
Yes the passive aggressive parking note is a very British phenomenon. I got one once when I parked well inside the marked bay in a public car park. The person objected to me parking in the space next to them when other bays were available (but less convenient for me), largely because they had a humungous SUV that they had badly parked too close to the edge of their space. The most frightening thing about the note was the apparently random deployment of upper and lower case letters. They were clearly a psycho.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice in my experience is a bit of an illusion. You can, if you like, apply to a school which isn't your local school, but you won't get in, because it's full. People in Trafford who are taking their kids to schools which aren't their local schools almost all fall into the category of a) it used to be their local school, but they've moved house and either can't get into a new school or are so close to moving on to senior school that they're putting up with it for now, or b) they've recently arrived in Trafford and have been dumped in the one school which has places, even though it's four miles away. Or c) they're going to the Catholic school. But the Catholic schools are so numerous that they're still within walking distance.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
And also not reliant on anybody except the buyer and the seller.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
No.
First, anyone instructing someone to apologise is bonkers. A forced apology is meaningless.
Second, Jeremy argued not that there was no problem, but that the antisemitism had been exaggerated by his enemies. That is correct, because that is what enemies do. They exaggerate weaknesses.
And third -- and most importantly -- SKS is running an organisation. Organisational amity is important. This kind of vindictive bloodletting destroys collegiality. SKS is in a position of strength now, but he won't always be, Politics changes quickly. He might need help from the Left soon enough.
So, it is poor from a personal standpoint (I mean, does SKS not carry any responsibility for what happened, he was side-by-side with Corbyn). And it is poor from the standpoint of leadership of an organisation which necessarily must encompass a range of views.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Another reason for pavement parking is to avoid the risk of accidentally scuffing your wheel hubs against the kerb when parking on the road. That's why I sometimes guiltily place a couple of wheels on the edge of a wide pavement. Maybe I just need to learn to park better :-)
Wow! You think you know someone as a reasonably rational individual, and then they reveal something about themselves like this?!?
I occasionally drive slightly above the speed limit too.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I broadly agree, and certainly Hitler and Pol Pot (and maybe Ruanda) offer instructive examples of the sheer lunatic monstrosities that occur when ideology or nationalism are allowed to flourish without limit. I can see endless scope for culture war stuff, though - I think most of us would concede that some of the things that were done in the British Empire were revolting too, though not on the same scale, and I'd include them too so that kids don't conclude that horrid stuff is just what foreigners do. Others might disagree, and as you can't teach everything someone would need to decide what to include, and get hassled for whatever they left out.
Yes, although the narrative nowadays seems to be that bad stuff was done ONLY by the British, and Hitler.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Brilliant. Will definitely be buying a copy of that, even if it never gets played. 🇺🇦
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is more based on whether they live in a wealthy or poorer area. They only travel outside the catchment area on the whole to go to private schools, faith schools which admit on church attendance or to go to a grammar school when only part of the county or borough is selective and the grammars concerned take only the top 10% from a broad area
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
No such thing as "uniquely dark streaks in national characters"
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
I’m not sure there is “no such thing”, but, more pertinently, this is not my theory. It’s a theory i have heard from historians, some of them actually Cambodian, so there you go
Cultures do persist over many generations, so it's entirely conceivable without getting mired in the nonsense of race.
National character is definitely a thing. See how everything changes in the 10km between Menton, France, and Ventimigila, Italy. It’s the same scenery, same climate, same place basically. Yet the dyspeptic, decorous, vaguely snooty French become the garrulous, messy, gesticulating Italians in that short distance
Not necessarily national - you see similar things within the US.
The Swiss have the term Rostigraben for the huge and sudden change in everything between French and German Switzerland.
Closer to home we have Shooter's hill, famous in history and the opening pages of a tale of 2 cities as the hangout of highwaymen, and now our own Rostigraben. The aesthetics, architecture, culture, socio-economics, demographics and politics on the West and East sides of the hill are utterly different.
I remember being similarly struck by the sudden changes between Italy and Italian-speaking Switzerland when I crossed the border to Lugano. Swiss side - clean, sparkly, efficient - two miles away, Italian side: dusty, languid, indulgent. Fascinating.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
Corbyn is thick and stubborn - hence the refusal to apologise. Unfortuately there are 30 odd very left-wing Labour MPs still there and likley to be there + others after the next GE. Assuming Starmer is generally now the moderate he never was when he served under JC - a very big assumption - they could cause big problems for a future Labour government.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Brilliant. Will definitely be buying a copy of that, even if it never gets played. 🇺🇦
Can't say I've played their other Sherlock Holmes games (I think they might have been the ones behind the creepy Watson meme from an earlier game) but I tossed a few pounds to the kickstarter for this one.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
My nearest primary is 1.2 miles away down a busy A-road. A bit far for a child under 11 to walk alone I think ?
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
Corbyn is thick and stubborn - hence the refusal to apologise. Unfortuately there are 30 odd very left-wing Labour MPs still there and likley to be there + others after the next GE. Assuming Starmer is generally now the moderate he never was when he served under JC - a very big assumption - they could cause big problems for a future Labour government.
20-30 troublemakers in your ranks should probably be assumed for any PM. It's why a narrow majority is not regarded as really sufficient (and why Cameron might have preferred being a bit short and getting another Coalition).
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I'd like to see the school history curriculum looking something like this -
Capitalism, industrialisation, colonialism and slavery - the Atlantic economy 1492-1900
Dissent, revolt and the path to universal suffrage - UK political history from the English Civil War to 1928
The British in Ireland and India
The age of enlightenment and the French and American revolutions
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
And the Scots pivotal role in the British Empire and Slavery too of course, including their failed attempt to found a Caribbean colony leading to the Act of Union
Well, of course. What dio you ewxpect? We don't adulate slavers and get upset when they get their statues overthrown.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
Corbyn is thick and stubborn - hence the refusal to apologise. Unfortuately there are 30 odd very left-wing Labour MPs still there and likley to be there + others after the next GE. Assuming Starmer is generally now the moderate he never was when he served under JC - a very big assumption - they could cause big problems for a future Labour government.
More so than the ERG have for the Tories? Doubt it.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
Yes. It isn't complicated. SKS needs a few million normally Tory voters to vote Labour. And lots more to stay at home. Whether Momentum votes Labour or SWP makes little difference.
Jezza not being a candidate, or standing as an independent continues to make the point to Tory voters.
SKS knows that calling the voters he needs 'Tory scum' or standing on a scary ticket cannot win elections. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I broadly agree, and certainly Hitler and Pol Pot (and maybe Ruanda) offer instructive examples of the sheer lunatic monstrosities that occur when ideology or nationalism are allowed to flourish without limit. I can see endless scope for culture war stuff, though - I think most of us would concede that some of the things that were done in the British Empire were revolting too, though not on the same scale, and I'd include them too so that kids don't conclude that horrid stuff is just what foreigners do. Others might disagree, and as you can't teach everything someone would need to decide what to include, and get hassled for whatever they left out.
Yes, although the narrative nowadays seems to be that bad stuff was done ONLY by the British, and Hitler.
An honest treatment of Empire would involve comparisons not only with modern standards, but also with what other empires considered appropriate at the time.
But that should be part of any competent history teaching. The sort of Whig history beloved of Our Island Story was discredited many years ago. There's a great paper out there somewhere on open access how '1066 and all That' arose as a reaction to precisely the kind of Whig history that abuses such comparisons.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
Corbyn has by his actions made it very clear that he will defy the Labour whip on all manner of votes as he pleases should he ever again get re-elected as a Labour MP. His voting record when an MP, until he became leader, was absolutely lamentable in terms of failure to follow the Labour whip. More recently he has shown absolutely no sign of changing. Take his lamentable stance of appeasement at the start of the Ukraine war for example, leading from the front Putin's useful idiots in the Stop the War coalition, reprising his role at the time of the Salisbury poisonings. A dozen or so of the other usual suspects were rightly threatened by Starmer with immediate loss of the whip should they not withdraw their backing for that stance, and promptly backed down. Corbyn did not, having already lost the whip. He knew what the consequences of his continued defiance would be, it is not as though he wasn't warned and he has brought this on himself. On any tight parliamentary vote, he will never be someone who can be relied upon by a Labour government to vote as the whips require. So Starmer's position stems from a lot more than Corbyn's failure to accept the report condemning Labour's antisemitism under his leadership. It is absolutely right that he should continue to have the whip withdrawn and as a consequence be ineligible for selection as a Labour MP.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
My nearest primary is 1.2 miles away down a busy A-road. A bit far for a child under 11 to walk alone I think ?
Most modern parents agree with that, though the law does not. If the child is under 8 you are ineligible for free school transport if you live within 2 miles, for example, unless it is officially considered unsafe to do so or they have special needs. Not being able to be escorted would not cut it in most instances, as they could probably walk with other children, or it is just considered not unsafe.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
Given I haven't used cash for about five years, I dare say fungibility is not a problem I have ever encountered. As for anonymity, there are easy ways around that if you really don't want someone to potentially know you parked in Banbury Central car park.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
And the Scots pivotal role in the British Empire and Slavery too of course, including their failed attempt to found a Caribbean colony leading to the Act of Union
Well, of course. What dio you ewxpect? We don't adulate slavers and get upset when they get their statues overthrown.
Though some people seem to get upset when people currently engaged in slavery get mentioned.
One chap got very irritated when I pointed out the inconsistency between the campaign poster on his stall for toppling statues and his poster about Shamima Begum.
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
And also not reliant on anybody except the buyer and the seller.
They are reliant on visiting a bloody ATM!
Digital payments are still far quicker and easier despite having a notional 'middleman'. I'm still waiting for a friend to repay me £30 I spend on materials for our local community facility because he insists on making the refund in cash. He could have wired me the money in about 90 seconds on the day.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
This is not a simply large organisation, it is a political party, and Keir has wider factors to consider about media and public perception of him and his team.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
If everyone goes to the good school and no-one goes to the bad one, then the bad one will be empty and will be closed. But 99 per cent of the time, both schools will be full, so the net benefit of allowing parents to choose the good school is zero. With or without that choice, there will be the same number of pupils in both schools.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
This is not a simply large organisation, it is a political party, and Keir has wider factors to consider about media and public perception of him and his team.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
And, as @Cyclefree will tell you, you either have standards in an organisation or not.
Standards for 99% of the membership, but a bit of a wink and nod to old Harold who has funny views about minority group X, means you have no standards.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Brilliant. Will definitely be buying a copy of that, even if it never gets played. 🇺🇦
Can't say I've played their other Sherlock Holmes games (I think they might have been the ones behind the creepy Watson meme from an earlier game) but I tossed a few pounds to the kickstarter for this one.
Is it the latest episode in the Crime & Punishment / Devil's Daughter series? My son and I really enjoyed DD and C&P. Your post prompted me to look them up – I hadn't realised there were two more already available!
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
If everyone goes to the good school and no-one goes to the bad one, then the bad one will be empty and will be closed. But 99 per cent of the time, both schools will be full, so the net benefit of allowing parents to choose the good school is zero. With or without that choice, there will be the same number of pupils in both schools.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Attempting to mandate all instances of an organisation are good is always a disaster. Redundancy and options are always better.
Failing schools should fail.
99% occupancy of spaces in schools is a sign of a stupid policy that stresses the entire schools system. Any system working at 99% of capacity is a snapped twig away from failure.
An architect attempted to design the boat house for the boat club I row at.
Apparently he was surprised when someone pointed out it wouldn't work. He hadn't actually measured an actual boats first, so the existence of 62 foot long boats caught him by surprise.
Hence his brilliant design that involved turning such a boat 90 degrees, indoors, to reach the exit.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I'd like to see the school history curriculum looking something like this -
Capitalism, industrialisation, colonialism and slavery - the Atlantic economy 1492-1900
Dissent, revolt and the path to universal suffrage - UK political history from the English Civil War to 1928
The British in Ireland and India
The age of enlightenment and the French and American revolutions
European great power conflict, 1789 to 1945.
I like that a lot - but very Eurocentric and nothing before the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169.
I know five was an artificially small limit, but it does go to show how hard it is to fit everything in. I think there's something like 117 weeks in the first three years of Secondary school in England, not including time taken out for exams and revision. One and a half hours of history a week?
And always someone telling you to teach event x, or period y, or civilisation z.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
This is not a simply large organisation, it is a political party, and Keir has wider factors to consider about media and public perception of him and his team.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
Corbyn has talents (because everyone does). And in fact, Corbyn had some very good ideas in the 2017 manifesto.
SKS could have put Corbyn in charge of developing ideas into policy on, say, inequality and poverty. It is a full time job, we need to make major changes in the wealth distribution in this country. All strands of the party are represented on Corbyn's committee. The quid pro quo is he hands over Islington N. to his successor.
My point is it would have been easier for SKS to do this.
But he wanted to humiliate Corbyn for (doubtful) electoral advantage.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
If everyone goes to the good school and no-one goes to the bad one, then the bad one will be empty and will be closed. But 99 per cent of the time, both schools will be full, so the net benefit of allowing parents to choose the good school is zero. With or without that choice, there will be the same number of pupils in both schools.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Attempting to mandate all instances of an organisation are good is always a disaster. Redundancy and options are always better.
Failing schools should fail.
99% occupancy of spaces in schools is a sign of a stupid policy that stresses the entire schools system. Any system working at 99% of capacity is a snapped twig away from failure.
An architect attempted to design the boat house for the boat club I row at.
Apparently he was surprised when someone pointed out it wouldn't work. He hadn't actually measured an actual boats first, so the existence of 62 foot long boats caught him by surprise.
Hence his brilliant design that involved turning such a boat 90 degrees, indoors, to reach the exit.
Reminds me of that bit in Dirk Gently (on the stairs). Just need to open a space/time portal to help turn it around.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
You forgot Empire and Slavery (to keep both sides equally happy or unhappy, delete to taste).
The question asked was which five events would you cover. You can't add any unless you take one away. That's the point and the central problem.
five is very hard
Like above, you 'have' to cover Roman England 1066 Split from Rome (Henry VIII) English Civil War WW2
But, that does miss out The Industrial Revolutions' and British Empire, which are just as vital.
If anything, possibly ditch the Romans as crazy as that sounds.
Taking those seven, I think I'd drop the Romans and then either the Tudors or the Empire. Really tough, though, because all of them made major contributions to the way England is today.
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
The Industrial Revolution not only saw big economic change and the growth of the railways and mass produced goods. It also marked the point the population of England moved from mainly living in rural areas to living in cities and towns.
So that has to be there certainly
And empire and slavery to explain where the raw materials and cheap urban foods came from.
And the Scots pivotal role in the British Empire and Slavery too of course, including their failed attempt to found a Caribbean colony leading to the Act of Union
Well, of course. What dio you ewxpect? We don't adulate slavers and get upset when they get their statues overthrown.
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
If everyone goes to the good school and no-one goes to the bad one, then the bad one will be empty and will be closed. But 99 per cent of the time, both schools will be full, so the net benefit of allowing parents to choose the good school is zero. With or without that choice, there will be the same number of pupils in both schools.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Attempting to mandate all instances of an organisation are good is always a disaster. Redundancy and options are always better.
Failing schools should fail.
99% occupancy of spaces in schools is a sign of a stupid policy that stresses the entire schools system. Any system working at 99% of capacity is a snapped twig away from failure.
An architect attempted to design the boat house for the boat club I row at.
Apparently he was surprised when someone pointed out it wouldn't work. He hadn't actually measured an actual boats first, so the existence of 62 foot long boats caught him by surprise.
Hence his brilliant design that involved turning such a boat 90 degrees, indoors, to reach the exit.
I don't think the system has been deliberately designed to be at 99% capacity. It just hasn't kept pace with growth of demand. Which to be fair is not easy. If you're really quick about it you can plan in response to a baby boom so there are enough places in your borough 4-18 years later - though it's hard. But even harder is responding to abrupt demographic shifts which sees a lot of families with children coming into your borough replacing childless oldies. And demographic bulges happen. As I understand it, 2011 was a boom year for babies. So that places a demand on schools from 2015. But actually, it was a bit of a freak; by 2014, that boom has gone. If you end up making a lot of 2-form entry school into 3-form entry schools, you'll have a lot of extra capacity you don't need soon afterwards.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
This is not a simply large organisation, it is a political party, and Keir has wider factors to consider about media and public perception of him and his team.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
Corbyn has talents (because everyone does). And in fact, Corbyn had some very good ideas in the 2017 manifesto.
SKS could have put Corbyn in charge of developing ideas into policy on, say, inequality and poverty. It is a full time job, we need to make major changes in the wealth distribution in this country. All strands of the party are represented on Corbyn's committee. The quid pro quo is he hands over Islington N. to his successor.
My point is it would have been easier for SKS to do this.
But he wanted to humiliate Corbyn for (doubtful) electoral advantage.
I don't find that attractive.
He couldn't have put him in charge of anything, when they needed to address the issue of the antisemitism report. I doubt he would have included him anyway, but Corbyn's stubborness gave him an opening to suspend him, because you cannot move on if he is still insisting it was all made up (which despite his protestations is his clear implication)
Corbyn surely does have some good ideas. He is a good campaigner. But even if Keir took the wrong approach your suggestions seem to ignore that the political situation as if it was irrelevant.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Brilliant. Will definitely be buying a copy of that, even if it never gets played. 🇺🇦
Can't say I've played their other Sherlock Holmes games (I think they might have been the ones behind the creepy Watson meme from an earlier game) but I tossed a few pounds to the kickstarter for this one.
Is it the latest episode in the Crime & Punishment / Devil's Daughter series? My son and I really enjoyed DD and C&P. Your post prompted me to look them up – I hadn't realised there were two more already available!
I currently have a van regularly parked 90% across the pavement which is the walking route to the local primary school, and to the shops. Council can't enforce as it is not marked double yellow or zone, and is not yet adopted. Police generally aren't interested.
Direct action that shit. One of the many things I learned from hunt sabbing is that broken glass from a fluorescent light tube in the oil filler will completely destroy an engine in a few hours while leaving no trace of shenanigans.
Breaking in to release the bonnet to open the oil filler might leave a few traces though, shirley?
In any event, if the dumb twat's engine is destroyed with no trace how's he going to learn that it was the poor parking that cost him.
I favour letting down a tyre for maximum inconvenience at little long-term damage/risk.
My house is conveniently close for the school run. So in the case of extremely inconsiderate parking it is an easy job to pop home, write a quick post-it note and slap it on the offending windscreen.
Most people don't park poorly out of spite or selfishness. They occupy the pavement because they think they are being considerate to road users and the inconvenience they are causing to pedestrians doesn't occur to them. And we're British, even a politely worded note wounds. And I'm not trying to inconvenience or offend, I'm trying to gently guide future behaviour. I try to as nicely as possible ask them to leave enough room for a double buggy to pass. Direct action suburban style.
Getting rid of the school run would be better. Let's go back to the days of relatively small, neighbourhood schools within walking distance. Less traffic, more walking, fewer obesity.
Apparently School Buses in the UK would destroy the spacetime continuum or something.
Despite
1) Private Schools running them 2) A number of school bus systems actually being set up in parts of the UK. Saw one in Cornwall - local taxi driver had amalgamated his morning taxi runs for various children, bought a properly equipped mini bus etc.
Simply axing the farce that is parental choice of normal schools will remove a lot of the need for buses and cars to take children there. Things are different in thinly-populated rural areas, of course. Parental choice or not, you'd have the same number of children going to the same number of schools, the only difference is how far they need to travel. Abolish it and let children walk once more.
Parental choice is a thing where I live. For Primary school you have a shit failing one, or an outstanding school.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
If everyone goes to the good school and no-one goes to the bad one, then the bad one will be empty and will be closed. But 99 per cent of the time, both schools will be full, so the net benefit of allowing parents to choose the good school is zero. With or without that choice, there will be the same number of pupils in both schools.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Attempting to mandate all instances of an organisation are good is always a disaster. Redundancy and options are always better.
Failing schools should fail.
99% occupancy of spaces in schools is a sign of a stupid policy that stresses the entire schools system. Any system working at 99% of capacity is a snapped twig away from failure.
An architect attempted to design the boat house for the boat club I row at.
Apparently he was surprised when someone pointed out it wouldn't work. He hadn't actually measured an actual boats first, so the existence of 62 foot long boats caught him by surprise.
Hence his brilliant design that involved turning such a boat 90 degrees, indoors, to reach the exit.
I don't think the system has been deliberately designed to be at 99% capacity. It just hasn't kept pace with growth of demand. Which to be fair is not easy. If you're really quick about it you can plan in response to a baby boom so there are enough places in your borough 4-18 years later - though it's hard. But even harder is responding to abrupt demographic shifts which sees a lot of families with children coming into your borough replacing childless oldies. And demographic bulges happen. As I understand it, 2011 was a boom year for babies. So that places a demand on schools from 2015. But actually, it was a bit of a freak; by 2014, that boom has gone. If you end up making a lot of 2-form entry school into 3-form entry schools, you'll have a lot of extra capacity you don't need soon afterwards.
It has certainly been run at 99% for years. I've spoken to people in the system who are proud that there are no "wasted spaces".
It's the same mentality as the NHS - any spare capacity is treated as waste.
As a result of yesterday's conspiracy against the people's princess, we're talking about Nicola Sturgeon and not Jeremy Corbyn.
That is worth a look though. Absolute rage and fury from the hard left which is largely demanding that Jezbollah turn his Peace and Justice Project into a party.
If his "Brexiteer-at-heart"-ness does this, or even runs as an independent, it threatens a schism in the party where the Jeremy forever activists and MPs will have to choose whether they want to follow him out of the now Tory Labour Party into the socialist promised land.
Jeremy running in a seat he has held for decades has a shot at winning. But the rest? Jumping out of a party likely to win a chunky majority to form a hard left version of The Independent Group of Change is likely to deliver the same result - oblivion.
So its stick or twist time. How much are the likes of Ricky Dickie Ding Dong Burgon ideologically pure or how much are they sell-out scab faux-Tories? If they follow the people's princess they will likely lose their seats. If they follow him to the end, that end may be swift.
Starmer can't lose either way!
He can if some Labour voters in marginal seats go Green or stay home on polling day in protest at Corbyn's deselection
I think on balance Starmer has the political calculus right with ejecting JC but a note of caution from my own little world.
Neither my wife nor son are hard lefties but both of them are on Corbyn's side here. They say this is vindictive and Jeremy deserves better.
There is affection for the man out there. So, you know, I wonder. Was this really necessary?
Yes. He defied an instruction from the leadership to apologise and rejected an independent report that demonstrated under his leadership the party had a serious problem with racism.
Now, it is his right to not apologise, and to reject the report, is he genuinely feels he has nothing to apologise for and the report is wrong. But with that right, comes the right to take the consequences. It marks him out as somebody who isn't suitable to be a Labour MP, because he is either racist himself or so dim he can't recognise racism when he sees it, and that is why Starmer has withdrawn the whip.
It is my fervent hope that Sunak will have the courage to do the same to Johnson over the SPC report, but unhappily I fear Sunak doesn't have Starmer's steel.
My take is slightly different.
Antisemitism in the party under his leadership was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents, most of whom had not until then showed much zeal in opposing any form of racism. However it did spread and fester when he was in charge and as leader he was responsible. Starmer had to come down hard on it, he has, and I applaud him for it.
But antisemitism isn't the reason for this. It's political calculation. He's identified 'Corbyn' as a major factor behind the GE19 defeat and assesses a net electoral benefit from a high profile ejection of the man himself. It's symbolic. Bit like clause IV for New Labour - NL being his unabashed template.
I think Starmer - as usual - has it right on the politics. He's ruthlessly closing down all controllable risks to the GE24 win. But this one is maybe not quite the no-brainer many seem to think. It's wrong to assume warmth towards Jez is only felt by hardened Trots. Eg my wife/son, I've tried telling them this is SKS as Don Corleone - "it's not personal, Sonny, it's business" - securing the future of The Firm, but they struggle to see it that way.
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
But, there are other ways of persuading Corbyn not to stand (if that is what SKS wants), other than this brutal way.
Why should he want to use them? The animosity between Corbyn supporters and Keir would not be lessened if Corbyn had stated in advance he would not be standing again (and wouldn't be believed it was voluntary given his previous comments about standing), so it wouldn't achieve anything. This way he upsets quite a few people - and makes me wonder about others who agree with Corbyn and are current PPCs who slipped the new - but removes it as an attack issue.
Have you ever run a large organisation?
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
This is not a simply large organisation, it is a political party, and Keir has wider factors to consider about media and public perception of him and his team.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
Corbyn has talents (because everyone does). And in fact, Corbyn had some very good ideas in the 2017 manifesto.
SKS could have put Corbyn in charge of developing ideas into policy on, say, inequality and poverty. It is a full time job, we need to make major changes in the wealth distribution in this country. All strands of the party are represented on Corbyn's committee. The quid pro quo is he hands over Islington N. to his successor.
My point is it would have been easier for SKS to do this.
But he wanted to humiliate Corbyn for (doubtful) electoral advantage.
I don't find that attractive.
What if "Corbyn's committee" came up with ideas that Starmer judges electorally disastrous? What would the Tories and press say about SKS outsourcing his economic plans to Corbyn? Agree about the 2017 manifesto but the party has moved on.
Pah, companies will use any excuse to delay work thesedays - from an email from the Ukrainian Frogwares studio on their upcoming Sherlock Holmes video game. While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
Brilliant. Will definitely be buying a copy of that, even if it never gets played. 🇺🇦
Can't say I've played their other Sherlock Holmes games (I think they might have been the ones behind the creepy Watson meme from an earlier game) but I tossed a few pounds to the kickstarter for this one.
Is it the latest episode in the Crime & Punishment / Devil's Daughter series? My son and I really enjoyed DD and C&P. Your post prompted me to look them up – I hadn't realised there were two more already available!
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
Given I haven't used cash for about five years, I dare say fungibility is not a problem I have ever encountered. As for anonymity, there are easy ways around that if you really don't want someone to potentially know you parked in Banbury Central car park.
You’re one of the lucky ones then, who hasn’t had their bank account closed arbitrarily in recent years. It’s becoming a serious problem for small businesses or people with a side job online trading.
Also, while no-one cares that you parked in the car park last Tuesday, banks can and do make use of all the data available to them, when making decisions on lending. People have been turned down for mortgages and loans based on where they spend their money.
A society where it’s impossible to spend cash, is a society where you can be un-personed much more easily.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
No such thing as "uniquely dark streaks in national characters"
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
I’m not sure there is “no such thing”, but, more pertinently, this is not my theory. It’s a theory i have heard from historians, some of them actually Cambodian, so there you go
Cultures do persist over many generations, so it's entirely conceivable without getting mired in the nonsense of race.
National character is definitely a thing. See how everything changes in the 10km between Menton, France, and Ventimigila, Italy. It’s the same scenery, same climate, same place basically. Yet the dyspeptic, decorous, vaguely snooty French become the garrulous, messy, gesticulating Italians in that short distance
Indeed. The Italian side is notably noisy, messy and stressful compared to the elegant, refined French side.
But the Italians are so much more fun. More amusing, more gracious, more charming and exuberant, even the introverts have a natural affability lacking in the French
You never get the sense an Italian is trying to make you feel inferior. He wants to make you welcome, or at least see you contented
The French spend 57% of their time pointlessly trying to make you feel slightly uncomfortable, and they are much more boring than the Italians
The other thing to note, is the extent that the Russians have regressed as an army in technical terms. The human wave assaults with some artillery backing are reminiscent of the German tactics in the later part of WWII as the panzer divisions ran out of tanks.
When they were opposed with armies with armour and combined arms tactics, they were slaughtered.
Do young people in the West have any awareness of the Khmer Rouge, or Pol Pot, or any of it?
My guess is no. I remember being shocked when my then 22 year old niece asked me (after a discussion of this subject) “who is Pol Pot”? She was and is well educated and intelligent, yet this horribly important chunk of history had completely passed her by
That was 10 years ago and I seriously doubt that things have got better, indeed I have evidence they have not (someone else asked me a similar question recently)
For a while, it was huge. One of my first news memories is Blue Peter covering the story (checks- it was their 1979 Christmas appeal, which was to rebuild the country after Pol Pot).
But sadly, it's one of a chain of horrible things done by and to people in faraway countries. See also Biafra. Collectively, we'd rather not store too many of them in our heads.
(And, with my teacher hat on, there is a limit to how much stuff we can teach the young about the world in school, and we're pretty close to it now. Beyond that, we need them to find podcasts.)
Before WWII British kids would be taught the history of the Napoleonic and Boer Wars (WWI was too recent to be in the syllabus), but they've long since been dropped to fit in more recent history.
If you want to add more recent history - like China under Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, or even the War on Terror - then you have to drop something else from the history curriculum.
There's a lot to cover, for English kids, in the Romans, the Norman conquest, Henry VIII, the Armada, the slave trade, WWI, WWII and the Cold War (with the Welsh and Scots covering some different bits instead of the first four). And even then you've missed out Magna Carta, the Hundred Years War, Wars of conquest in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, Empire and a whole bunch of other important stuff.
I think History must be a uniquely difficult subject to teach. It just keeps on expanding. Reading, writing and arithmetic are essentially still the same as they always were.
What are the five most important historical events that you'd want someone to learn about, in order to understand the modern world, and modern Britain? I wouldn't know where to start.
Good question. Off the top of my head, they would be: WW2 End of the Roman Empire - 1066. (Very difficult this one as so much is unknown, but if it were possible to teach it I'd include it.) The industrial revolution Tudors (how we got from the medeival period through the reformation to an England we'd vaguely recognise as modern) Stuarts (civil wars and the birth of parliamentary democracy)
Admittedly that pretty much covers all of English* history.
*Yes, I recognise Scotland might be slightly different - though I'd probably propose a very similar answer for Scotland.
There should be a school term dedicated to human evil, especially genocide
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Rwanda, Namibia, and yes Pol Pot, plus global slavery (by Muslims and Africans and Romans just as much as white Europeans)
Because this shit is so important and because it can come from anywhere and arise with great speed
Also the gorier bits would be entertaining for bored kids
Themed terms would be an interesting idea, cutting across eras and regions. Other themes:
- Revolutions and revolts - Major political & constitutional changes (from greek city democracy through magna carta to William of Orange and the French republic) - Empires - Religious schisms
I'd like to see the school history curriculum looking something like this -
Capitalism, industrialisation, colonialism and slavery - the Atlantic economy 1492-1900
Dissent, revolt and the path to universal suffrage - UK political history from the English Civil War to 1928
The British in Ireland and India
The age of enlightenment and the French and American revolutions
European great power conflict, 1789 to 1945.
I like that a lot - but very Eurocentric and nothing before the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169.
I know five was an artificially small limit, but it does go to show how hard it is to fit everything in. I think there's something like 117 weeks in the first three years of Secondary school in England, not including time taken out for exams and revision. One and a half hours of history a week?
And always someone telling you to teach event x, or period y, or civilisation z.
Yes it's hard to fit everything in. I think it's okay to run with a geographical and temporal gravity model and put more weight on the more recent and more European stuff, on the basis of relevance.
The other thing to note, is the extent that the Russians have regressed as an army in technical terms. The human wave assaults with some artillery backing are reminiscent of the German tactics in the later part of WWII as the panzer divisions ran out of tanks.
When they were opposed with armies with armour and combined arms tactics, they were slaughtered.
WWII is to be kind to them. In recent weeks it’s been more like WWI for the mobliks.
Any history curriculum worth its salt HAS to include the British Empire, because the British Empire explains so much of the modern world. From the sports the world plays, to the way the world - and the internet - speaks English, to the speedy spread of Britain’sindustrliasation
A history curriculum anywhere should include it, it would be insane to exclude it in BRITAIN
The other thing to note, is the extent that the Russians have regressed as an army in technical terms. The human wave assaults with some artillery backing are reminiscent of the German tactics in the later part of WWII as the panzer divisions ran out of tanks.
When they were opposed with armies with armour and combined arms tactics, they were slaughtered.
WWII is to be kind to them. In recent weeks it’s been more like WWI for the mobliks.
- Technology vanishing - Chain of command destroyed by heavy losses among officers and NCOs - Humans used to replace machines - Savage disciple used to hold the line - Looting encouraged within certain parameters. Torture and murder of civilians accepted and even encouraged.
I think Labour now have an opportunity to have their case heard in Scotland for the first time in almost a decade. Whether they make that case and how it lands is more uncertain. But at least they have some agency in the process now.
It would be ironic if SLAB were left holding the GRR parcel when the music stopped:
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
Given I haven't used cash for about five years, I dare say fungibility is not a problem I have ever encountered. As for anonymity, there are easy ways around that if you really don't want someone to potentially know you parked in Banbury Central car park.
You’re one of the lucky ones then, who hasn’t had their bank account closed arbitrarily in recent years. It’s becoming a serious problem for small businesses or people with a side job online trading.
Also, while no-one cares that you parked in the car park last Tuesday, banks can and do make use of all the data available to them, when making decisions on lending. People have been turned down for mortgages and loans based on where they spend their money.
A society where it’s impossible to spend cash, is a society where you can be un-personed much more easily.
"one of the lucky ones" LOL.
The majority of transactions are made digitally. A large proportion of the population never or rarely use cash. So there are tens of millions of lucky ones, in the UK alone.
I have just been to the Killing Fields of Cheoung Ek, south of Phnom Penh
I am glad I went, I fervently never want to see anything like it, ever again. Never never never. “Desolating” does not cover it
A fair few lefties who think Hitler was the most evil of all evil dictators might want to swing by though.
I’m not really using an evil-o-meter. Hitler would surely be right at the top of that, with maybe Mao and Stalin
It’s the weird self-harming sadism of the Khmer Rouge that strikes me
Lots of historians have tried to explain it, and failed. Yes it was commie and class based but they also slaughtered trillions of peasants. Yes initially it was urban v rural but in the end the entire nation was crucified by itself. They nailed themselves up
The Khmers themselves sometimes say they have a uniquely dark streak in their national character. The Black Khmer, the Khmer Noir (hence the Khmer Rouge). Normally this is reined in by Buddhism, but if you take that away….or so the theory goes
Men Without Gods do mad things
No such thing as "uniquely dark streaks in national characters"
... but ok it lubes the wheels of this sort of conversation, so I'll butt out.
I’m not sure there is “no such thing”, but, more pertinently, this is not my theory. It’s a theory i have heard from historians, some of them actually Cambodian, so there you go
Cultures do persist over many generations, so it's entirely conceivable without getting mired in the nonsense of race.
National character is definitely a thing. See how everything changes in the 10km between Menton, France, and Ventimigila, Italy. It’s the same scenery, same climate, same place basically. Yet the dyspeptic, decorous, vaguely snooty French become the garrulous, messy, gesticulating Italians in that short distance
Indeed. The Italian side is notably noisy, messy and stressful compared to the elegant, refined French side.
But the Italians are so much more fun. More amusing, more gracious, more charming and exuberant, even the introverts have a natural affability lacking in the French
You never get the sense an Italian is trying to make you feel inferior. He wants to make you welcome, or at least see you contented
The French spend 57% of their time pointlessly trying to make you feel slightly uncomfortable, and they are much more boring than the Italians
So long as we realize this is just a way of having enjoyable 'men of the world' conversations rather than being in any sense true I have no problem with it. It's absolutely fine.
I think Labour now have an opportunity to have their case heard in Scotland for the first time in almost a decade. Whether they make that case and how it lands is more uncertain. But at least they have some agency in the process now.
It would be ironic if SLAB were left holding the GRR parcel when the music stopped:
Starmer's decision on Corbyn is based on ruthless political calculation, in line with everything he is doing to win the GE.
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
I agree. It's hard on Corbyn but it's for the greater good of defeating the Tories .
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
Previous poster is either trolling or is a brain dead moron
The 15-minute cities article struck a chord. Why are the pavements so shocking in our towns and cities?
As a wheelchair user I find myself increasingly deciding to wheel along roads in town centres - nice smooth tarmac compared to uneven, unstable, narrow, highly-cambered pavements.
As an occasional runner but who often has to run in the dark, albeit with a light, I find it safer generally to run on the tarmac road so I don't trip on an unexpected bumps in the pavement. I hop back onto the pavement if a car comes along. I imagine that is very difficult or impossible for you so you are very brave!
Hah yes, but I don't use the road in the dark tbf. And I am only talking about shopping high streets, which should be pedestrianised imo, resistance to which often bizarrely comes from shopkeepers.
Not that bizarre. Make it more difficult for people to put stuff in their cars and they go to out of town centres instead.
One of the other things, separate but linked to that, which is killing town centres is high parking charges.
Blimey, even I can carry a bag of shopping a few hundred yards to a car.
(Agree about car-parking charges, though. Also the sheer difficulty of paying for parking in, for example, my local town Shaftesbury last time I tried: coin-meter full, card-reader broken, pay-by-app no signal to down load yet another new parking app.)
There are some parking machines that you select the tariff and then just tap your card - easy. The RUH in Bath has this, and its great (even if expensive).
And then there are the rest... Wiltshire has a app based one, which to use I have to constantly 2FA my card. i could fully sign up I suppose, but when I can see its possible to tap and go (see above) I don't see why I should.
I refuse to use car parks that won't accept cash, though if they are rip-off prices I will tolerate a card reader. If it's App only then they can forget it (why do I need my phone just to nip to the shops, or the country park?) so the businesses of Chelmsford Borough Council and the London Borough of Redbridge live without my custom altogether.
I'm the opposite. I never carry cash and therefore refuse to use the ludicrous outdated 'cash-only' carparks that you still encounter in the darkest corners of the provinces. I mean, who in their right mind carries notes, never mind coinage, around in this day and age? Cash is pointless – wasteful, environmentally unjustifiable, inconvenient, outdated, slow, expensive. What is the point of it? There is none.
Anonymity and fungibilty. Something to which not enough people pay attention.
Given I haven't used cash for about five years, I dare say fungibility is not a problem I have ever encountered. As for anonymity, there are easy ways around that if you really don't want someone to potentially know you parked in Banbury Central car park.
You’re one of the lucky ones then, who hasn’t had their bank account closed arbitrarily in recent years. It’s becoming a serious problem for small businesses or people with a side job online trading.
Also, while no-one cares that you parked in the car park last Tuesday, banks can and do make use of all the data available to them, when making decisions on lending. People have been turned down for mortgages and loans based on where they spend their money.
A society where it’s impossible to spend cash, is a society where you can be un-personed much more easily.
"one of the lucky ones" LOL.
The majority of transactions are made digitally. A large proportion of the population never or rarely use cash. So there are tens of millions of lucky ones, in the UK alone.
Oh indeed. The unlucky ones are likely in the thousands, rather than the millions. Doesn’t mean their lives aren’t totally Donald Ducked though.
Comments
1066 and WW2 are surely untouchable, and the Industrial Revolution not far behind in my eyes (biased perhaps that I grew up within easy school trip distance of quite a lot of the relevant sites)
So that has to be there certainly
That saw Labour lose almost 50 seats despite barely any change in the Conservative voteshare from 2001 to 2005
The calculation is as follows. If Corbyn is allowed to stand for Labour, this will be used by the Tories and the right-wing media throughout the GE campaign to beat Starmer arounds the head: Starmer is supporting a Russia-loving anti-semitic leftie lunatic to stand - Labour hasn't changed at all. And he's right - it would become a GE theme were Corbyn to stand.
So the calculation is that more damage will ensue during the campaign from Corbyn standing than the risk of losing some votes to the Greens. As in most of these instances, Starmer's calculation is probably right. It's not pretty, but it is just more evidence of Starmer removing barriers to election victory.
This takes the annual rate of inflation in Ireland down to 7.8%, compared to 10.1% in Britain.
So it works where the need is there. The reality is that most of the schools where parents crap up local roads aren't far enough away to justify buses. Group walking to and from school would be better.
Parents who drive and drop their children at school do not do so out of physical laziness, as people often assume. They do so because:
- it is no longer de rigeur to allow primary school children (with the exception perhaps of year 6s) to walk to school alone. Not only would other parents look down on you, the school would have a word. Social services might be called.
- schools do not accept drop off any earlier than 8.45. Sometimes 8.55, 9.00; I've known 9.10 in places.
- based on the above, parents cannot then get off to work before 8.45 at the earliest.
- working parents desperately need to minimise the time between dropping their child off at a time convenient for the school and arriving, breathless and apologetic, at their place of work. Hence, they drive, and leave their car as close as possible.
It's ok for me. My kids' school now is only two minutes' walk away, my employer is flexible and understanding, and I WFH as often as not. Most people are not this lucky.
Primary schools still seem to believe there is at least one parent hanging around at home at the beck and call of the school.
Will tehy still be around to handle one wonders. Who will blame who for the misplaced £600K.
I once parked on a country lane in a way which inconvenienced a farmer attempting to access his field. He left a note I would say was no ruder than 'terse'. I was mortified. Had I realised that was an active access (it hadn't appeared to be to me) I certainly wouldn't have parked there - I wish I could have seen him to apologise. Though probably had I done so he would have simply remained terse and there would have been no happy resolution.
It was in Herefordshire, beneath Black Hill. Well worth a visit. Though not easy to find somewhere to park.
First, anyone instructing someone to apologise is bonkers. A forced apology is meaningless.
Second, Jeremy argued not that there was no problem, but that the antisemitism had been exaggerated by his enemies. That is correct, because that is what enemies do. They exaggerate weaknesses.
And third -- and most importantly -- SKS is running an organisation. Organisational amity is important. This kind of vindictive bloodletting destroys collegiality. SKS is in a position of strength now, but he won't always be, Politics changes quickly. He might need help from the Left soon enough.
So, it is poor from a personal standpoint (I mean, does SKS not carry any responsibility for what happened, he was side-by-side with Corbyn). And it is poor from the standpoint of leadership of an organisation which necessarily must encompass a range of views.
While the development of the game since April 2022 had always been challenging due to the war, the last 5 months starting in October 2022 have been extremely difficult for our team.
Initially, we were aiming for a February / early March release window, but the relentless strikes on civilian infrastructure in our country have forced us to work around continual blackouts and redo our entire production pipeline. Therefore, we decided to delay the game by a few weeks, moving it to late March / April 2023.
The plan under Brown was to merge the two schools, on the smaller of the two sites. With the combined school run by the people running the failing school. Because seniority.
The cost to build the combined school premises was higher per square foot than a relative charges the uber rich for luxury interiors. He joked that he would tender for the project, and add in a basement swimming pool just for LOLs.
The design was insane - fixed, un-opening windows, no air-conditioning. Glass wall facing the sun.... Teaching white boards mounted in front/between windows. So you couldn't actually see anything.
Capitalism, industrialisation, colonialism and slavery - the Atlantic economy 1492-1900
Dissent, revolt and the path to universal suffrage - UK political history from the English Civil War to 1928
The British in Ireland and India
The age of enlightenment and the French and American revolutions
European great power conflict, 1789 to 1945.
Jezza not being a candidate, or standing as an independent continues to make the point to Tory voters.
SKS knows that calling the voters he needs 'Tory scum' or standing on a scary ticket cannot win elections. The evidence for this is overwhelming.
If they are over 8 it's 3 miles.
I did, and someone senior did something bad (though not illegal).
I could have forced him to apologize. I could have suspended him. I could have even forced him out.
Instead, I persiaded him to go away for 1 year on sabbatical, saying that when he came back, he would be welcomed back.
And when he came back, the troubles he had caused had been forgotten.
We were grateful to have him back, and he was grateful to be back.
One chap got very irritated when I pointed out the inconsistency
between the campaign poster on his stall for toppling statues and his poster about Shamima Begum.
Digital payments are still far quicker and easier despite having a notional 'middleman'. I'm still waiting for a friend to repay me £30 I spend on materials for our local community facility because he insists on making the refund in cash. He could have wired me the money in about 90 seconds on the day.
I'm not saying it was necessarily the right choice, but I think the comparison with a regular organisation does not work. Politics in the public eye is something else.
Plus in this case it is abundantly clear that Corbyn will never sincerely apologise for what he said about the report that got him suspended, as he thinks he was right, he has indicated that many times. The troubles won't be forgotten, and he has no reason to be quiet if he stepped down - what could Keir offer him, a declaration of friendship if he did that? Keir won't do that because he'll be accused of being chummy with an antisemite, which would be the attack line.
That something ought to be done to improve bad schools is clear, but parental choice is not it. That just adds more car journeys.
And yes, architects have a lot to answer for. They should be made to attend courses on glass, sunlight and their interaction. It's not just schools; I remember a nurse friend complaining about the distance in her new hospital that pregnant women had to walk between tests and clinics.
Standards for 99% of the membership, but a bit of a wink and nod to old Harold who has funny views about minority group X, means you have no standards.
Failing schools should fail.
99% occupancy of spaces in schools is a sign of a stupid policy that stresses the entire schools system. Any system working at 99% of capacity is a snapped twig away from failure.
An architect attempted to design the boat house for the boat club I row at.
Apparently he was surprised when someone pointed out it wouldn't work. He hadn't actually measured an actual boats first, so the existence of 62 foot long boats caught him by surprise.
Hence his brilliant design that involved turning such a boat 90 degrees, indoors, to reach the exit.
I know five was an artificially small limit, but it does go to show how hard it is to fit everything in. I think there's something like 117 weeks in the first three years of Secondary school in England, not including time taken out for exams and revision. One and a half hours of history a week?
And always someone telling you to teach event x, or period y, or civilisation z.
SKS could have put Corbyn in charge of developing ideas into policy on, say, inequality and poverty. It is a full time job, we need to make major changes in the wealth distribution in this country. All strands of the party are represented on Corbyn's committee. The quid pro quo is he hands over Islington N. to his successor.
My point is it would have been easier for SKS to do this.
But he wanted to humiliate Corbyn for (doubtful) electoral advantage.
I don't find that attractive.
Which to be fair is not easy. If you're really quick about it you can plan in response to a baby boom so there are enough places in your borough 4-18 years later - though it's hard. But even harder is responding to abrupt demographic shifts which sees a lot of families with children coming into your borough replacing childless oldies.
And demographic bulges happen. As I understand it, 2011 was a boom year for babies. So that places a demand on schools from 2015. But actually, it was a bit of a freak; by 2014, that boom has gone. If you end up making a lot of 2-form entry school into 3-form entry schools, you'll have a lot of extra capacity you don't need soon afterwards.
Corbyn surely does have some good ideas. He is a good campaigner. But even if Keir took the wrong approach your suggestions seem to ignore that the political situation as if it was irrelevant.
The Awakened is set a few years after the events of our latest game, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One
It's the same mentality as the NHS - any spare capacity is treated as waste.
Antisemitism in the party under his leadership was exaggerated and weaponized by political opponents, most of whom had not until then showed much zeal in opposing any form of racism. However it did spread and fester when he was in charge and as leader he was responsible. Starmer had to come down hard on it, he has, and I applaud him for it.
But antisemitism isn't the reason for this. It's political calculation. He's identified 'Corbyn' as a major factor behind the GE19 defeat and assesses a net electoral benefit from a high profile ejection of the man himself. It's symbolic. Bit like clause IV for New Labour - NL being his unabashed template.
I think Starmer - as usual - has it right on the politics. He's ruthlessly closing down all controllable risks to the GE24 win. But this one is maybe not quite the no-brainer many seem to think. It's wrong to assume warmth towards Jez is only felt by hardened Trots. Eg my wife/son, I've tried telling them this is SKS as Don Corleone - "it's not personal, Sonny, it's business" - securing the future of The Firm, but they struggle to see it that way.
https://www.thebulwark.com/keep-the-new-russian-offensive-in-perspective/
Also, while no-one cares that you parked in the car park last Tuesday, banks can and do make use of all the data available to them, when making decisions on lending. People have been turned down for mortgages and loans based on where they spend their money.
A society where it’s impossible to spend cash, is a society where you can be un-personed much more easily.
You never get the sense an Italian is trying to make you feel inferior. He wants to make you welcome, or at least see you contented
The French spend 57% of their time pointlessly trying to make you feel slightly uncomfortable, and they are much more boring than the Italians
When they were opposed with armies with armour and combined arms tactics, they were slaughtered.
A history curriculum anywhere should include it, it would be insane to exclude it in BRITAIN
NEW THREAD
- Technology vanishing
- Chain of command destroyed by heavy losses among officers and NCOs
- Humans used to replace machines
- Savage disciple used to hold the line
- Looting encouraged within certain parameters. Torture and murder of civilians accepted and even encouraged.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/anas-sarwar-no-regrets-over-29216326.amp
The majority of transactions are made digitally. A large proportion of the population never or rarely use cash. So there are tens of millions of lucky ones, in the UK alone.