Trumpski, or at least Musk, seems to be in the process of stopping the social security system from functioning.
So, he's not cutting Medicare, it's just no one can physical access it.
Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, said: "Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law—who is 94—she wouldn't call and complain."
Well, Howard, your mother is atypical. There are tens of millions of voters for whom Social Security is their primary source of income. And if they don't get their check they don't eat.
These older, lower education, lower income pensioners voted for Donald Trump.
Reality distortion only goes so far. It's hard to think of a policy better designed to fuck over your own voters than not sending them their Social Security cheques because Elon Musk is convinced the program is rife with fraud. (It's not.)
*cheque
The greatest thing about our beautiful English language is that it completely LACKS an authoritarian, shall we say, "regulating" authority like the French language has with the Académie Française.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Trumpski, or at least Musk, seems to be in the process of stopping the social security system from functioning.
So, he's not cutting Medicare, it's just no one can physical access it.
Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, said: "Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law—who is 94—she wouldn't call and complain."
Well, Howard, your mother is atypical. There are tens of millions of voters for whom Social Security is their primary source of income. And if they don't get their check they don't eat.
These older, lower education, lower income pensioners voted for Donald Trump.
Reality distortion only goes so far. It's hard to think of a policy better designed to fuck over your own voters than not sending them their Social Security cheques because Elon Musk is convinced the program is rife with fraud. (It's not.)
If it turns out fine, it will be forgotten by the midterms.
If it turns out badly, the people who might be complaining won't be in a position to complain...
Will it turn out fine?
Trump's mushroom's response to a refusal for Doge to have full access to all the personal data (the Court says they can have it anonymised) whilst the case is investigated, has been to threaten to liquidate the whole department.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
You also forget I have a child that grew up in the smart phone age, there were absolutely teachers where he would just get his phone out for most of the lesson, there were others he didn't. Shit teachers have always been a thing and I suspect the same applies now
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
I am assured that Lowe is more sinned against than sinning.
That said I can't summon up the energy to ask what's really going on.
The IOW Reform’s apparent implosion over the Lowe affair remains mysterious. Their local party chair and IOW east parliamentary candidate was a reasonably young and capable woman, saner than many of their candidates (all things being relative), who had a very good chance of a county council seat next year and, if politics stay as it is, some chance against the Tory MP, who she gave a run for his money last year, coming second.
Yet she’s resigned in support of Lowe, incidentally accusing Farage of being soft on migrants, and taken a bunch of members including some of the committee with her. One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?
I think he's setting elephant traps for when his committee get a hold of the full transcript from the Editor of the Atlantic.
I don't why they don't still have access to the group, unless someone has deleted it.
Law requires preservation of records of conversations, as I think it does here. I saw a reference yesterday, but do not remember the incident, of a Conservative Ministers going (sacked or resigned) for that type of reason.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
I am assured that Lowe is more sinned against than sinning.
That said I can't summon up the energy to ask what's really going on.
The IOW Reform’s apparent implosion over the Lowe affair remains mysterious. Their local party chair and IOW east parliamentary candidate was a reasonably young and capable woman, saner than many of their candidates (all things being relative), who had a very good chance of a county council seat next year and, if politics stay as it is, some chance against the Tory MP, who she gave a run for his money last year, coming second.
Yet she’s resigned in support of Lowe, incidentally accusing Farage of being soft on migrants, and taken a bunch of members including some of the committee with her. One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?
"One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?"
Trumpski, or at least Musk, seems to be in the process of stopping the social security system from functioning.
So, he's not cutting Medicare, it's just no one can physical access it.
Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, said: "Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law—who is 94—she wouldn't call and complain."
Well, Howard, your mother is atypical. There are tens of millions of voters for whom Social Security is their primary source of income. And if they don't get their check they don't eat.
These older, lower education, lower income pensioners voted for Donald Trump.
Reality distortion only goes so far. It's hard to think of a policy better designed to fuck over your own voters than not sending them their Social Security cheques because Elon Musk is convinced the program is rife with fraud. (It's not.)
They also seem unaware that children can qualify for social security, because they're orphans.
I see the YG weekly tracker for the south of England puts the LibDems ahead, for the first time ever, with the Tories and Reform close behind and Labour some way back. The LDs do seem to be picking up recently, as the government falters.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
You also forget I have a child that grew up in the smart phone age, there were absolutely teachers where he would just get his phone out for most of the lesson, there were others he didn't. Shit teachers have always been a thing and I suspect the same applies now
Ha! Pagan you show a touching level of naiveté here. I'll pass over the unnecessary insults and also the faintly ridiculous reading of my comment to suggest he is using his phone in class.
More substantively, as Stuart has expressed well, do just the basic level of research on the way in which tiktok is built to grab and hold attention. Now factor in that by far the best way to revise maths is online (personalised, immediate, AI-powered feedback) and you'll start to glimpse the problem.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
It's not possible/impossible- but it is easier/harder. You are looking for a smaller device, that they may only glance at for a few seconds at a time, and that they can hide more easily under the table or on their lap.
Like the technical skill in addictiveness of apps over magazines... It's not that it hasn't happened before, but the degree of the problem is much much greater than in the past. And the bigger problem is when appscrolling is more attractive than sleep.
An important interview with "the author of a new United Nations report shedding light on alarming 'widespread and systematic' war crimes committed against civilians."
I see the YG weekly tracker for the south of England puts the LibDems ahead, for the first time ever, with the Tories and Reform close behind and Labour some way back. The LDs do seem to be picking up recently, as the government falters.
A lot of people have started to talk to Ed Davey and his team. Some very interesting conversations going on. Could be some exciting times ahead for the Lib Dems.
Trumpski, or at least Musk, seems to be in the process of stopping the social security system from functioning.
So, he's not cutting Medicare, it's just no one can physical access it.
Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, said: "Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law—who is 94—she wouldn't call and complain."
Well, Howard, your mother is atypical. There are tens of millions of voters for whom Social Security is their primary source of income. And if they don't get their check they don't eat.
These older, lower education, lower income pensioners voted for Donald Trump.
Reality distortion only goes so far. It's hard to think of a policy better designed to fuck over your own voters than not sending them their Social Security cheques because Elon Musk is convinced the program is rife with fraud. (It's not.)
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
You also forget I have a child that grew up in the smart phone age, there were absolutely teachers where he would just get his phone out for most of the lesson, there were others he didn't. Shit teachers have always been a thing and I suspect the same applies now
Ha! Pagan you show a touching level of naiveté here. I'll pass over the unnecessary insults and also the faintly ridiculous reading of my comment to suggest he is using his phone in class.
More substantively, as Stuart has expressed well, do just the basic level of research on the way in which tiktok is built to grab and hold attention. Now factor in that by far the best way to revise maths is online (personalised, immediate, AI-powered feedback) and you'll start to glimpse the problem.
I know all about how social media etc is built, its what is basically known as a skinner box. I was not trying to insult you personally just pointing out there have always been good and bad teachers, every generation has had teachers saying how can I compete with x....
I have no doubt if the teachers that I had that were good as a child were teaching they would not be saying I can't compete with TikTok, nor the ones that were good when my son was at school.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
I had teachers like that. It was the short ones who you didn't ignore. Tich Murphy would walk from the back of the room and give a boy a big cuff on the back of his head. "What's that for sir?" "It's not for what you've done. It's for what you were thinking of doing. Now pay attention."
An independent KC has found “credible evidence” of unlawful harassment of two women by MP Rupert Lowe and “male members of his team”, Reform UK has said.
Jacqueline Perry KC, who was commissioned by Reform, said there was “veracity in the complaints from both women which amounts (to) ‘credible evidence’ — to use Mr Lowe’s own words”.
Perry said that the complaints of “victimisation, constant criticisms (and) discriminatory behaviour do seem to amount to harassment on the part of both Mr Lowe and his constituency team”.
Lowe's response is less ranty than I would have expected, but even if his view of events were correct, an independent KC authored report is a strong card to play in the game of public, and even party, opinion.
What does independent mean here? Reform hires a KC and she crosses her heart and hopes not to be biased?
Independent simply means that the declared intention is that a lawyer is acting in a quasi judicial role and not for one party or another. Like Martin Moore-Bick in the Grenfell inquiry.
Whether such a thing is possible is a different question, best not looked into too closely, like how juries reach their decisions. All societies need foundational myths and these two are an improvemnet on trial by ordeal.
This is a bit different from jury deliberations as she's subject to Bar Council regulation, and indeed her ability to earn a living is rather dependent on them concluding she maintained her independence. Lowe could go to them and say, "This is a travesty - she didn't tell me what the allegations were or let me respond; witnesses I suggested weren't approached" etc. But he probably won't as she probably did those things, and the Bar Council probably wouldn't uphold the complaint.
There could be a grand conspiracy, but it's pretty unlikely. Lowe's best approach is probably to shake his head sadly and say the KC tragically had the wool pulled over her eyes by dreadful liars and crooks. People who don't like Farage may well buy that. But saying she was part of the plot probably isn't a runner.
Yes. A quasi judicial role in non formal circumstances is fraught with difficulties anyway. Lacking investigatory facility and powers, lacking powers to require people to speak, answer questions or produce stuff, and usually lacking lawyers putting the case of the parties and challenging the other sides means you are on your own relying on limited information and guesswork. I hope that an appropriate fee provides some consolation in these difficulties.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
It's not possible/impossible- but it is easier/harder. You are looking for a smaller device, that they may only glance at for a few seconds at a time, and that they can hide more easily under the table or on their lap.
Like the technical skill in addictiveness of apps over magazines... It's not that it hasn't happened before, but the degree of the problem is much much greater than in the past. And the bigger problem is when appscrolling is more attractive than sleep.
There's evidence that having a phone on the students person, even in pocket or bag, it affects concentration.
There should be phone lockers in schools, so students lock them up during lessons.
I am assured that Lowe is more sinned against than sinning.
That said I can't summon up the energy to ask what's really going on.
The IOW Reform’s apparent implosion over the Lowe affair remains mysterious. Their local party chair and IOW east parliamentary candidate was a reasonably young and capable woman, saner than many of their candidates (all things being relative), who had a very good chance of a county council seat next year and, if politics stay as it is, some chance against the Tory MP, who she gave a run for his money last year, coming second.
Yet she’s resigned in support of Lowe, incidentally accusing Farage of being soft on migrants, and taken a bunch of members including some of the committee with her. One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?
I've yet to stumble across an explanation as to why the Farage skeptics in Reform alighted on Lowe in first place. Even if he was picked out by others, say Musk or whoever, why him?
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Are GCSE etc. pass rates declining (grade inflation, I know, but still)?
I see the YG weekly tracker for the south of England puts the LibDems ahead, for the first time ever, with the Tories and Reform close behind and Labour some way back. The LDs do seem to be picking up recently, as the government falters.
One more screw up from Reeves and Labour will be done for in this Parliament, IMO.
I see the YG weekly tracker for the south of England puts the LibDems ahead, for the first time ever, with the Tories and Reform close behind and Labour some way back. The LDs do seem to be picking up recently, as the government falters.
They are more active in my neck of the woods but usually are without coming top overall. Local Tories seem to flit back and forth between confidence and nervousness, and I've not had wind of any breakdown in intra-Reform relations as you've suggested about IoW.
So I really have no clue and it is a very broad set of possibilities, but a LD through the middle type success is in the mix.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
It's not possible/impossible- but it is easier/harder. You are looking for a smaller device, that they may only glance at for a few seconds at a time, and that they can hide more easily under the table or on their lap.
Like the technical skill in addictiveness of apps over magazines... It's not that it hasn't happened before, but the degree of the problem is much much greater than in the past. And the bigger problem is when appscrolling is more attractive than sleep.
There's evidence that having a phone on the students person, even in pocket or bag, it affects concentration.
There should be phone lockers in schools, so students lock them up during lessons.
Let me guess Jonathon Haidt.....the one who's studies keep getting debunked....the same guy that wrote a book about how social media is harmful despite all actually scientific studies done show its at worst neutral and probably more beneficial than harmful on the whole
An independent KC has found “credible evidence” of unlawful harassment of two women by MP Rupert Lowe and “male members of his team”, Reform UK has said.
Jacqueline Perry KC, who was commissioned by Reform, said there was “veracity in the complaints from both women which amounts (to) ‘credible evidence’ — to use Mr Lowe’s own words”.
Perry said that the complaints of “victimisation, constant criticisms (and) discriminatory behaviour do seem to amount to harassment on the part of both Mr Lowe and his constituency team”.
Lowe's response is less ranty than I would have expected, but even if his view of events were correct, an independent KC authored report is a strong card to play in the game of public, and even party, opinion.
What does independent mean here? Reform hires a KC and she crosses her heart and hopes not to be biased?
Independent simply means that the declared intention is that a lawyer is acting in a quasi judicial role and not for one party or another. Like Martin Moore-Bick in the Grenfell inquiry.
Whether such a thing is possible is a different question, best not looked into too closely, like how juries reach their decisions. All societies need foundational myths and these two are an improvemnet on trial by ordeal.
This is a bit different from jury deliberations as she's subject to Bar Council regulation, and indeed her ability to earn a living is rather dependent on them concluding she maintained her independence. Lowe could go to them and say, "This is a travesty - she didn't tell me what the allegations were or let me respond; witnesses I suggested weren't approached" etc. But he probably won't as she probably did those things, and the Bar Council probably wouldn't uphold the complaint.
Long term it is probably not worth being a hack KC.
I am assured that Lowe is more sinned against than sinning.
That said I can't summon up the energy to ask what's really going on.
The IOW Reform’s apparent implosion over the Lowe affair remains mysterious. Their local party chair and IOW east parliamentary candidate was a reasonably young and capable woman, saner than many of their candidates (all things being relative), who had a very good chance of a county council seat next year and, if politics stay as it is, some chance against the Tory MP, who she gave a run for his money last year, coming second.
Yet she’s resigned in support of Lowe, incidentally accusing Farage of being soft on migrants, and taken a bunch of members including some of the committee with her. One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?
I've yet to stumble across an explanation as to why the Farage skeptics in Reform alighted on Lowe in first place. Even if he was picked out by others, say Musk or whoever, why him?
I know, one racist millionaire is very much like the others. The only one different is 30p Lee, and he's just thick as pig sh!t.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
I had teachers like that. It was the short ones who you didn't ignore. Tich Murphy would walk from the back of the room and give a boy a big cuff on the back of his head. "What's that for sir?" "It's not for what you've done. It's for what you were thinking of doing. Now pay attention."
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
Look, nobody is denying 47 years on death row would be annoying.
But this is just snowflakes playing the "mental health" card. Ultimately, this bozo needs to man up.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
I see TSE posted a British Columbia poll with a 4% lead for a republic, yet failed to mention that was on just 36% with most still saying there would be a monarchy in future decades.
He also failed to mention zero chance of such a referendum anyway given both Carney and Poilievre are monarchists and the more pro republic NDP, BQ and PP have collapsed to under 10% in polls.
Remember too Canada was created by Crown Loyalists effectively after the US War of Independence. So if King Charles III was removed as its head of state no reason for Trump not to send troops over the border and fill the gap and make good his quip he might annex it as he could then be its new head of state
An important interview with "the author of a new United Nations report shedding light on alarming 'widespread and systematic' war crimes committed against civilians."
An important interview with "the author of a new United Nations report shedding light on alarming 'widespread and systematic' war crimes committed against civilians."
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
Look, nobody is denying 47 years on death row would be annoying.
But this is just snowflakes playing the "mental health" card. Ultimately, this bozo needs to man up.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Ok whats the difference between me taking out a magazine to read which I absolutely did with some teachers and someone on tiktok?
Two biggies.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Really a teacher cant notice a kid is scrolling his phone? Magazines were also maximised for grabbing attention. I suspect most teachers that complain about it are exactly like the teachers that complained about us ignoring them and continuing to read a magazine while telling them where to go if they raised the issue. As I said my son grew up with smartphones and social media and his experience was there were teachers you didn't get your phone out with and others you could ignore
It's not possible/impossible- but it is easier/harder. You are looking for a smaller device, that they may only glance at for a few seconds at a time, and that they can hide more easily under the table or on their lap.
Like the technical skill in addictiveness of apps over magazines... It's not that it hasn't happened before, but the degree of the problem is much much greater than in the past. And the bigger problem is when appscrolling is more attractive than sleep.
There's evidence that having a phone on the students person, even in pocket or bag, it affects concentration.
There should be phone lockers in schools, so students lock them up during lessons.
That’s what many private schools do, as standard. Quite a few state schools as well.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
Perhaps we could get some of those scientists who do studies of The Bleedin’ Obvious (Water and its wetness etc) to do a study?
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Too much emphasis on teachers being inspiring. The day to day world of work is largely not inspiring but often grinding and they are not actors.
More important is their subject knowledge and ability to control a class
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
People are still criticising Labour too. There’s a total lack of deference. That also seemed to trigger you.
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
Look, nobody is denying 47 years on death row would be annoying.
But this is just snowflakes playing the "mental health" card. Ultimately, this bozo needs to man up.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Too much emphasis on teachers being inspiring. The day to day world of work is largely not inspiring but often grinding and they are not actors.
More important is their subject knowledge and ability to control a class
One of the most important things in life is learning to manage boredom, even enjoy it. It's a feature of superficial minds that they lack concentration and persistence.
A lot of life is boring, whether work, chores or relationships. It's a very important life skill to be able to navigate it successfully.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
WRT Adolescence: that show has rightly got a lot of people talking*.
But the extremes of radicalisation through social media are only part of the story. I've just got out of a meeting between a Y11 boy and Mum - he is on course to fail GCSE maths and this is a last ditch attempt to get him to commit to actually revising when he says he will, rather than posting on Snapchat and watching Netflix.
We can all insert the usual caveats about feckless teenagers and overly permissive parents, and those caveats all hold in this case.
But how in holy hell have we got to the point where we think it is appropriate or sensible to put a highly addictive technology in the pockets of pre-frontal-cortex-deficient teenagers, where their attention is quite literally the product on offer to the most rapacious bidder, just at the point when their whole future success depends on them putting their attention into a fundamentally less immediately gratifying pursuit such as revising?
Why am I as a teacher being asked to compete with that? Why is this boy's mum being asked to get into constant conflict with him to ask him to overcome an addictive draw on his limited attention? In what possible world do we think this is in any way sensible?
Alright this boy isn't going to go and stab someone. But he is going to mess his life up. And we're greasing that slippery slope for him.
*Although I have some beef with episode 2 - the shambles of a school makes for good TV but is not representative.
You as a teacher are meant to inspire him and grab his attention so he doesn't watch meaningless tiktoks etc.
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
Too much emphasis on teachers being inspiring. The day to day world of work is largely not inspiring but often grinding and they are not actors.
More important is their subject knowledge and ability to control a class
One of the most important things in life is learning to manage boredom, even enjoy it. It's a feature of superficial minds that they lack concentration and persistence.
A lot of life is boring, whether work, chores or relationships. It's a very important life skill to be able to navigate it successfully.
True, although kids should rarely be bored in school. If we are going to lock them up all day in vaguely prison - like conditions we can at least make it interesting (most of the time).
Though I do half agree with HY's comment - in my view good subject knowledge and the ability to impart it well is more inspirational for students than bells and whistles in the classroom.
Laurence Fox has reportedly been charged with an offence "contrary to section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003", in connection with posting an image of a TV presenter on social media.
That section states: A person (A) who intentionally sends or gives a photograph or film of any person’s genitals to another person (B) commits an offence if— (a)A intends that B will see the genitals and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or (b)A sends or gives such a photograph or film for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and is reckless as to whether B will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.
It will be interesting to see exactly what is being argued.
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
Laurence Fox has reportedly been charged with an offence "contrary to section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003", in connection with posting an image of a TV presenter on social media.
That section states: A person (A) who intentionally sends or gives a photograph or film of any person’s genitals to another person (B) commits an offence if— (a)A intends that B will see the genitals and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or (b)A sends or gives such a photograph or film for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and is reckless as to whether B will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.
It will be interesting to see exactly what is being argued.
Could @TSE be in trouble over posting that Farage pic?
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Laurence Fox has reportedly been charged with an offence "contrary to section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003", in connection with posting an image of a TV presenter on social media.
That section states: A person (A) who intentionally sends or gives a photograph or film of any person’s genitals to another person (B) commits an offence if— (a)A intends that B will see the genitals and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or (b)A sends or gives such a photograph or film for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and is reckless as to whether B will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.
It will be interesting to see exactly what is being argued.
Could @TSE be in trouble over posting that Farage pic?
It has to be showing genitals or underwear.
Not sure if he wears underwear, but at least there's no issue with the other aspect...
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Laurence Fox has reportedly been charged with an offence "contrary to section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003", in connection with posting an image of a TV presenter on social media.
That section states: A person (A) who intentionally sends or gives a photograph or film of any person’s genitals to another person (B) commits an offence if— (a)A intends that B will see the genitals and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or (b)A sends or gives such a photograph or film for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and is reckless as to whether B will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.
It will be interesting to see exactly what is being argued.
Could @TSE be in trouble over posting that Farage pic?
It has to be showing genitals or underwear.
Not sure if he wears underwear, but at least there's no issue with the other aspect...
Well there is a massive bellend/twat on display in that photo, depending on your choice of invective.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Any chance that both Farage and Lowe can lose from here?
Every chance I'd say.
Why do Reform continue to do this? Farage is undoubtedly stubborn and not without spite, but he is also a smart cookie and he must realise he's on to a loser with this macabre dance of stabby death he's got into with Lowe.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Any chance that both Farage and Lowe can lose from here?
Every chance I'd say.
Why do Reform continue to do this? Farage is undoubtedly stubborn and not without spite, but he is also a smart cookie and he must realise he's on to a loser with this macabre dance of stabby death he's got into with Lowe.
Time to change tack - and fast.
I think it would be difficult to have the political success against the odds that he has had without developing an over-inflated ego. I suspect he thinks he will win this one.
@Leon FPT, your Uruguayan cashless experience is mildly unsurprising. The argument was won long ago - it’s become deeply tedious. Of course there are a handful of holdouts (similar to those who prefer the horse and cart to the car). But few will choose to faff around wasting time and effort with bits of pointless plastic and daft scraps of metal when they don’t need to.
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
And we wonder why this country is going bankrupt and has no proper infrastructure to talk of.
Quite.
This is why we must not print £500bn for an 'infrastructure fund'. We'd just be feeding money we don't have to the insatiable beast. This sort of thing and the laws (mainly European) underpinning it need to be obliterated.
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
And we wonder why this country is going bankrupt and has no proper infrastructure to talk of.
I also notice, bloody London *yet again* while there are no railway or road developments in the North and Midlands.
I heard on the radio this morning that the iron age treasure trove found at Melsonby showed that the locals were both well connected and well to do. I did reflect on where things had gone wrong.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Any chance that both Farage and Lowe can lose from here?
Every chance I'd say.
Why do Reform continue to do this? Farage is undoubtedly stubborn and not without spite, but he is also a smart cookie and he must realise he's on to a loser with this macabre dance of stabby death he's got into with Lowe.
Time to change tack - and fast.
Is anyone following the tacky stuff of low life in UK politics at the moment? It feels to me that USA and international events of the last couple of weeks have reminded us that our politics is trivial, dull, uninspiring and of little relevance to anyone else.
And, as a local detail, it seems to me that you can follow UK politics fairly closely in a mild sort of way and at the same time forget that the Tory party exists or ever existed or might exist again one day. I can remember that they were once important and interesting but can't quite remeber why.
"So why has it taken so long just to get planning permission for this project? The reason is that colossal amounts of time and money have been spent building a mountain of paperwork. All told, National Highways has been forced to produce 359,866 pages to get approval from the crossing. Laid end to end, this paper trail would stretch 66 miles, almost five times longer than the road itself. There’s 1,800 pages on newts, 774 pages on bats, 5,800 pages on archaeology, and a long running debate National Highways had with a Cambridge college about nitrogen deposition." (£)
And we wonder why this country is going bankrupt and has no proper infrastructure to talk of.
Quite.
This is why we must not print £500bn for an 'infrastructure fund'. We'd just be feeding money we don't have to the insatiable beast. This sort of thing and the laws (mainly European) underpinning it need to be obliterated.
No part of Europe has this type of judicial review for 20 years issue. They go this is a core infrastructure project, F*** off.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
Any chance that both Farage and Lowe can lose from here?
Every chance I'd say.
Why do Reform continue to do this? Farage is undoubtedly stubborn and not without spite, but he is also a smart cookie and he must realise he's on to a loser with this macabre dance of stabby death he's got into with Lowe.
Time to change tack - and fast.
I think it would be difficult to have the political success against the odds that he has had without developing an over-inflated ego. I suspect he thinks he will win this one.
He will win, but at a great, and possibly unnecessary cost.
Comments
When I went to school we had zx81's, spectrums etc we had distractions however there were some teachers you always did what was expected and others you basically ignored. Perhaps the problem is the teacher not the distraction
Trump's mushroom's response to a refusal for Doge to have full access to all the personal data (the Court says they can have it anonymised) whilst the case is investigated, has been to threaten to liquidate the whole department.
Obviously, part of the job of a teacher is to be inspiring, engaging, yada yada.
The difference is that the competition is much more unbalanced than it was in the 1980s. Social media has put billions of research dollars into optimising the grabbabilty and addictiveness of their apps, because their business model depends on it.
Teachers, even collectively, struggle to fight and beat that.
One is the degree of investment that goes into maximising the addictive properties of SM.
The other is the bitesize nature of SM texts compared with magazine articles. That makes policing harder to do, but also it's lethal for attention.
Yet she’s resigned in support of Lowe, incidentally accusing Farage of being soft on migrants, and taken a bunch of members including some of the committee with her. One thinks there must be some sort of bigger picture?
I don't why they don't still have access to the group, unless someone has deleted it.
Law requires preservation of records of conversations, as I think it does here. I saw a reference yesterday, but do not remember the incident, of a Conservative Ministers going (sacked or resigned) for that type of reason.
Canvas returns?
By sinking the Russian navy.
Russia and Ukraine agree to ‘eliminate the use of force’ in Black Sea
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/25/russia-and-ukraine-agree-ceasefire-in-black-sea
More substantively, as Stuart has expressed well, do just the basic level of research on the way in which tiktok is built to grab and hold attention. Now factor in that by far the best way to revise maths is online (personalised, immediate, AI-powered feedback) and you'll start to glimpse the problem.
Like the technical skill in addictiveness of apps over magazines... It's not that it hasn't happened before, but the degree of the problem is much much greater than in the past. And the bigger problem is when appscrolling is more attractive than sleep.
An important interview with "the author of a new United Nations report shedding light on alarming 'widespread and systematic' war crimes committed against civilians."
https://youtu.be/yhtZXbd5M9s?list=PLJnf_DDTfIVCYlsANGtNkzMeM9Fdmqzxr&t=1245
I have no doubt if the teachers that I had that were good as a child were teaching they would not be saying I can't compete with TikTok, nor the ones that were good when my son was at school.
Tich Murphy would walk from the back of the room and give a boy a big cuff on the back of his head.
"What's that for sir?"
"It's not for what you've done. It's for what you were thinking of doing. Now pay attention."
There should be phone lockers in schools, so students lock them up during lessons.
So I really have no clue and it is a very broad set of possibilities, but a LD through the middle type success is in the mix.
He probably belts his kids in the same way.
A Japanese man who spent nearly 50 years on death row before he was acquitted of murder will be compensated 217 million yen ($1.45m), in what his lawyers say is the country's largest-ever payout in a criminal case.
Mr Hakamata's lawyers had sought the highest compensation possible, arguing that the 47 years in detention - which made him the world's longest-serving death row inmate - took a toll on his mental health.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2gwelynkyo
One reason I took a break from PB is that I had become a lightning rod for this topic - a bete noire for a series of very odd nostalgics on here who (claim) to like farting around with Monopoly money for reasons best known to themselves. I hope I had more to offer than that - but judging by the series of cash-obsessed comments, it would seem most PBers thought otherwise!
But this is just snowflakes playing the "mental health" card. Ultimately, this bozo needs to man up.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/30/sweden-and-norway-rethink-cashless-society-plans-over-russia-security-fears
He also failed to mention zero chance of such a referendum anyway given both Carney and Poilievre are monarchists and the more pro republic NDP, BQ and PP have collapsed to under 10% in polls.
Remember too Canada was created by Crown Loyalists effectively after the US War of Independence. So if King Charles III was removed as its head of state no reason for Trump not to send troops over the border and fill the gap and make good his quip he might annex it as he could then be its new head of state
Shouldn't get any PIP at all.
Quite often, from arrival at school till leaving.
I’ve just spoken to Parliamentary authorities about the disgraceful harassment and intimidation of my innocent staff through this Reform report - their names, and the report, were released without the KC’s permission today.
My staff have also spoken to the police tonight, having been invited to express their understandable worries. Reports have been made.
Parliamentary security are concerned and are now involved with my staff.
None of this is acceptable - dragging my staff into this mess to smear my name is desperate and disgusting.
In 67 years I have never seen such unprofessional and vile behaviour.
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1904620146410635333
I think, for the morning thread, I have come up with the greatest headline in the history of PB if not the internet.
It's brilliance is only matched by its subtlety.
More important is their subject knowledge and ability to control a class
Lowe is found, however, to have actually done what is alleged.
That would be - epic...
So she would have been a hot waitress.
A lot of life is boring, whether work, chores or relationships. It's a very important life skill to be able to navigate it successfully.
Then again Nige is prone to a tipple or seven himself, lol!
Though I do half agree with HY's comment - in my view good subject knowledge and the ability to impart it well is more inspirational for students than bells and whistles in the classroom.
That section states:
A person (A) who intentionally sends or gives a photograph or film of any person’s genitals to another person (B) commits an offence if—
(a)A intends that B will see the genitals and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or
(b)A sends or gives such a photograph or film for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification and is reckless as to whether B will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.
It will be interesting to see exactly what is being argued.
It was just amusing in the context of your comment.
Not sure if he wears underwear, but at least there's no issue with the other aspect...
Why do Reform continue to do this? Farage is undoubtedly stubborn and not without spite, but he is also a smart cookie and he must realise he's on to a loser with this macabre dance of stabby death he's got into with Lowe.
Time to change tack - and fast.
This is why we must not print £500bn for an 'infrastructure fund'. We'd just be feeding money we don't have to the insatiable beast. This sort of thing and the laws (mainly European) underpinning it need to be obliterated.
And, as a local detail, it seems to me that you can follow UK politics fairly closely in a mild sort of way and at the same time forget that the Tory party exists or ever existed or might exist again one day. I can remember that they were once important and interesting but can't quite remeber why.
We need to do the same with bells on...