The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
The people making the t-shirts here don't get £4k per month. The Trump voters are not being promised min wage jobs, but good jobs, the kind that existed for their grandparents, with one earner able to support a family.
The best way to enable one earner to be able to support a family would be to crater house prices back to what they were in the 80s and early 90s.
Housing costs is a primary reason we've gone from the mad situation where one earner could buy and own a home of their own and support their family, to two earners are paying rent but struggling to make ends meet.
Or you build enough council houses.
Just saying.
Even post-war, with the country bombed out and the rise of Council housing, we have never proportionately built as many houses as we did in the 1930s under a free market before Attlee's disastrous planning reforms.
The free market works, when given space to do so.
There were quite a lot of council houses built pre-war, often as part of slum clearance schemes. My late father-in-law worked for a Town Council in the North West which did a lot of slum clearance/council house building. He joined the department straight from school, after School Certificate, and was advised to put his name down for a house. When he protested that he didn't want one, it was pointed out that by the time he got to the top of the list he would. And indeed, on marriage, he and his new wife were able to move into a new council house, and lived for around 30 years.
Pedantic correction - Sussex Essex vs Surrey, Essex batting line-up looking a bit thin, opening with Paul Walter. Surrey top 6 all former/current internationals.
Essex / Somerset a value bet at circa 7s ? Surrey evens
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
Or indeed in the US. Though this price point will likely change now that Trump has tariffed cotton imports.
Can't see the article but is this creating many thousands of US well paid jobs for low skilled workers? I somehow doubt it - this is the reason behind the tariffs, not investment in machinery.
Unlikely. And note this is from before Trump took office.
The only thing tariffs are likely to do is to allow everyone in the production chain to raise their prices.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
I am sure there is an argument which links the concept of a single self existent uncaused cause of all reality with the tooth fairy and Santa, but I don't know what it might be.
American philosphers at this point would add that you have forgotten to add Linus's Great Pumpkin to your list. It is conventional to invoke it at this point. For example you will find it in Plantinga's 'Faith and Rationality'.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
What's wrong with non-christians sitting through an Easter themed assembly?
They are all at skool to learn presumably and learning about Easter seems rather appropriate given that it is almost Easter and the event has played, and to a lesser extent still plays, a huge part in the religious culture and history of this country.
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
Or indeed in the US. Though this price point will likely change now that Trump has tariffed cotton imports.
And people are expecting bilateral trade deals to take place to mitigate the effect of the tariffs.
India provides a significant amount of textiles to the US, where it has a competitive (cost) advantage. If, as is possibly perhaps likely, they reduce tariffs to zero both ways then India will benefit greatly.
Incidentally, textile imports to the US were last year US$110bn. Or 0.4% of GDP before anyone gets too carried away. Computer hardware is by far the biggest component of US imports and who the hell knows how much a MacBook is these days. The price could go up by $1,000 and no one would know if it was tariff-induced or Apple's marketing strategy. No wonder the tech bros were at the inauguration.
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
The people making the t-shirts here don't get £4k per month. The Trump voters are not being promised min wage jobs, but good jobs, the kind that existed for their grandparents, with one earner able to support a family.
The best way to enable one earner to be able to support a family would be to crater house prices back to what they were in the 80s and early 90s.
Housing costs is a primary reason we've gone from the mad situation where one earner could buy and own a home of their own and support their family, to two earners are paying rent but struggling to make ends meet.
Which is not going to happen unless we return to one earner families with the other partner staying home with the children as was more often the case last century, even if we built masses of new homes and slashed immigration the average home would still cost what a 2 earner couple were willing to pay for it not a 1 earner
Only if there's no competition.
Liberate planning back to what it was like in the 1930s and it would be cheaper to build a new house next door to a too expensive one, which would drive the prices of too expensive ones down.
Competition works. There's no reason why competition can't be made to apply to housing just as it does for other sectors.
Lol. Barty's version of Trumpian economics (designed by simpletons). "It's sooo not fair that I can't have a big house boohoo."
Believing in a free market and liberalisation of laws, and the reversal of socialist 1940s policies implemented under the Attlee government is the polar opposite of Trumpian economics, or simpleton.
Its what the Conservatives used to believe in and did well in the 1980s, just a shame it wasn't done with housing.
Nah, it is Trumpian and very very simpleton. All "free markets" have regulation. Planning laws are sometimes dumb, but overall they are there to provide structure. You are obsessed by it because you found it difficult to get on the housing ladder and this is your answer to that heartache. Except that it wouldn't be. It is as simplistic as Trump's Tariffs which are his emotional and childish response to the juvenile refrain "it's not fair". But hey, it is a free country and I support your right to have simplistic childish solutions to the country's challenges.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
It's a sobering thought that non-Christian countries have only one holiday a year - in the Summer.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
Science is not a democracy. It wouldn't matter if 99% of people believed that the best cure "in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury" was to perform some ritual utterly unconnected to the sufferer in question, they'd still be daft.
(There is an argument that a sufferer's *own* faith can sometimes make a difference through reverse psychosomatic effects, and so are worth encouraging in such circumstances, but that would be true of any strong belief in their ability to recover and are dependent on the individual, not the religion).
Neither is the word of God a democracy
If he drops me a WhatsApp, I'll read it. Promise.
By contrast, words written down *by men* 1500-3000 years ago may have some merit but I'll take them in context.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
I have a grandson who has a justified belief in Santa, in that he possesses mental assent and has grounds and reasons for so thinking. Which at six is fair enough. But, sorry to give away the secret, there are in fact very good reasons for thinking that this belief does not have the quality of being true. A plethora of far superior explanations for the Santa phenomenon exist. So I don't believe in Santa, though he does. he does not know that Santa exists, even though he thinks he does. Even at 6, epistemology is tough stuff.
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
The people making the t-shirts here don't get £4k per month. The Trump voters are not being promised min wage jobs, but good jobs, the kind that existed for their grandparents, with one earner able to support a family.
The best way to enable one earner to be able to support a family would be to crater house prices back to what they were in the 80s and early 90s.
Housing costs is a primary reason we've gone from the mad situation where one earner could buy and own a home of their own and support their family, to two earners are paying rent but struggling to make ends meet.
Or you build enough council houses.
Just saying.
Even post-war, with the country bombed out and the rise of Council housing, we have never proportionately built as many houses as we did in the 1930s under a free market before Attlee's disastrous planning reforms.
The free market works, when given space to do so.
There were quite a lot of council houses built pre-war, often as part of slum clearance schemes. My late father-in-law worked for a Town Council in the North West which did a lot of slum clearance/council house building. He joined the department straight from school, after School Certificate, and was advised to put his name down for a house. When he protested that he didn't want one, it was pointed out that by the time he got to the top of the list he would. And indeed, on marriage, he and his new wife were able to move into a new council house, and lived for around 30 years.
Indeed, the St Helier Estate was built in the 1930s but by the London County Council as public housing rather than by property developers chasing a profit.
Both my paternal and maternal families moved out from Inner London as part of the slum clearances. My mother's family were in Forest Gate and moved to West Wickham in 1935 while my father's family were in Clapton and moved to Shirley, Croydon in 1934.
All of it was public housing built by the London County Council, sadly abolished. The peak of the housebuilding was in the 1930s but it did continue briefly after the war - the St Helier Estate suffered bomb damage during the Blitz and later as a result of V1 and V2 rockets and there was a lot of work done from 1945-50 to restore the Estate.
this price point will likely change now that Trump has tariffed cotton imports.
If only there was a way of growing cotton in the US using very cheap labour...
Ouch.
I’ve discovered from discussions on social media, that Americans who believe that slavery was a kind of finishing school for Africans, are not outliers.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
Science is not a democracy. It wouldn't matter if 99% of people believed that the best cure "in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury" was to perform some ritual utterly unconnected to the sufferer in question, they'd still be daft.
(There is an argument that a sufferer's *own* faith can sometimes make a difference through reverse psychosomatic effects, and so are worth encouraging in such circumstances, but that would be true of any strong belief in their ability to recover and are dependent on the individual, not the religion).
Neither is the word of God a democracy
If he drops me a WhatsApp, I'll read it. Promise.
By contrast, words written down *by men* 1500-3000 years ago may have some merit but I'll take them in context.
The Seleukid/Hellenic influence is readily apparent when reading Genesis. It's why the tale of Eden makes no sense. It's a rip-off of Prometheus-Lucifer (Lucifer meaning light-bringer) gifting fire/technology/knowledge to mankind and getting punished, because Zeus-God is angry.
But in the Christian version why would God allow Satan in? Why put the tree of knowledge there? How could an omniscient being not know Lucifer was crawling about?
It then copies the follow-up story of Epimetheus and Pandora, Pandora being Eve, of course.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
Dear God. Have these voters learnt nothing from the last 48 hours? Maybe they don't follow any news.
Reform is Farage and Farage is Britain Trump.
It is ex-mining leave central around here, a place you'd expect Reform strength tbh. And the poll is both self selected and non weighted. But still interesting.
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
The people making the t-shirts here don't get £4k per month. The Trump voters are not being promised min wage jobs, but good jobs, the kind that existed for their grandparents, with one earner able to support a family.
The best way to enable one earner to be able to support a family would be to crater house prices back to what they were in the 80s and early 90s.
Housing costs is a primary reason we've gone from the mad situation where one earner could buy and own a home of their own and support their family, to two earners are paying rent but struggling to make ends meet.
Which is not going to happen unless we return to one earner families with the other partner staying home with the children as was more often the case last century, even if we built masses of new homes and slashed immigration the average home would still cost what a 2 earner couple were willing to pay for it not a 1 earner
Only if there's no competition.
Liberate planning back to what it was like in the 1930s and it would be cheaper to build a new house next door to a too expensive one, which would drive the prices of too expensive ones down.
Competition works. There's no reason why competition can't be made to apply to housing just as it does for other sectors.
Even then would still not be affordable for one earner when most couples are 2 earners
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
Based on your posts (and particularly that one) I think it is fair to say that there is also a very large body of individuals both past and present who have intellectual capacity far greater than your own that still profess faith, or at least the possibility of a higher supreme being or universal intelligence.
Drawing comparison between religious faith and Santa and the tooth fairy is about as pathetic and unimaginative an analogy as comparing every politician with Hitler.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
Yes but 'most of the world' includes large swathes of the third world which is, frankly, whatever euphemisms we may employ, backwards, If you were to look at the developed world, American religious attitudes stick out like the sorest of sore thumbs. It's not just that atheism is much higher everywhere other than America, it's that among the religious, the belief that God is actually interventionist on an individual level in response to this sort of thing is much lower.
In values there is an argument to some that much of the 'third world' you so patronise still holds true to traditional values and morality which were the backbone of humanity for centuries.
In Greece, Poland, much of Italy even rural Ireland and Orthodox Jew Israel attitudes to religion would be similar to red state USA
Well yes there are some splodges elsewhere in the developed world were religious fervour is the norm (though I'd question rural Ireland, nowadays - 30 years ago perhaps). But they are exceptions.
And yes, for centuries, traditional values and morality were the norm. I don't think that's an argument that it should be the norm now. I certainly wouldn't want the value of the Middle East to be the norm here. And plenty of things used to be the norm, like autocracy, outdoor defecation and grinding poverty - I don't think we should be looking to emulate those either.
We were in Donegal a few years ago and met a man talking about looking out for the 'little people' and fairies.
Donegal also rejected abortion in the referendum in Ireland in 2018
The Trump Administration won on an anti-globalisation platform - basically American jobs for American workers - and that carried states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Being able to make your widgets in Vietnam, Bangladesh or Gabon for a fraction of the cost of making them in America, the UK or Japan is a strong argument and both business and consumers have done well out of it. The losers have been the workers in the more advanced countries who have seen traditional manufacturing jobs go overseas without commensurate newer more skilled work replacing those jobs.
The other aspect to the relatively free movement of labour and capital is you can continue to make your widgets in America but bring in foreign labour who will think what you want to pay is a king's ransom - compare the UK minimum wage with average wages in Romania and Bulgaria (not Poland any longer) and you see why people come here to work.
You resist this and "protect" your indigenous labour by both clamping down on the influx of foreign labour and imposing tariffs on imported goods in an attempt to level the playing field and get back to American workers making American widgets in American factories charging American prices to American consumers.
This might work as long as your consumer is happy to "buy American" at higher prices and the business can still turn a buck despite the cost of producing every widget having gone up. The worker might be happy for a while but if the price of everything else goes up he or she will demand more money to keep pace (been there, done that).
In the end, it's a nakedly political move to play to the core vote. America is big enough for the policy to be successful in the short term (as others say, the convulsions of the DJIA and FTSE aren't of relevance to many) but it's not an answer now any more than it was when they moved pineapple production from Hawaii to Guatemala for the same reason.
To get $10 T-shirts to the US consumer workers in Asia work for $200 a month. A good job in the US, according to surveys, pays around $5,000 dollars a month. That would see T-Shirts being priced around $150-200.
The idea that the US can simply reshore production and create good jobs is absurd.
Your maths doesn't work.
Firstly labour is not the only cost, but secondly costs don't work like that, costs and prices aren't all held 1:n to scale. You can get t-shirts made in the UK, they don't cost anything like £150.
Or indeed in the US. Though this price point will likely change now that Trump has tariffed cotton imports.
And people are expecting bilateral trade deals to take place to mitigate the effect of the tariffs.
India provides a significant amount of textiles to the US, where it has a competitive (cost) advantage. If, as is possibly perhaps likely, they reduce tariffs to zero both ways then India will benefit greatly.
Incidentally, textile imports to the US were last year US$110bn. Or 0.4% of GDP before anyone gets too carried away. Computer hardware is by far the biggest component of US imports and who the hell knows how much a MacBook is these days. The price could go up by $1,000 and no one would know if it was tariff-induced or Apple's marketing strategy. No wonder the tech bros were at the inauguration.
This is incoherent stuff from you. For one thing, Apple is the single company most affected by the tariffs. Their overseas manufacturing costs (assuming tariffs are indeed imposed) are going to rise by something like 40% for their US sales.
Textiles might be a small component of the economy, but they're a much larger proportion of the sorting of the Trump voter you were waxing lyrical about earlier this morning. And 95% of US apparel is imported.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
This sort of "poll" is absolutely worthless. I don't just say that because it has RefUK doing well (which is clear enough from genuine polls) - just that all such "polls" are pure voodoo.
Find Out Now seem to consistently be outliers in terms of the REF vote shares and lead.
That doesn't mean they are wrong as they may be picking up on something the others are missing, but it is noteworthy.
From memory, much stronger enthusiasm/claimed certainty to vote filter. And right now, Farage is attracting that "definitely going to vote for him" enthusiasm. How that plays out in a real election will become clearer as we go along.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
This sort of "poll" is absolutely worthless. I don't just say that because it has RefUK doing well (which is clear enough from genuine polls) - just that all such "polls" are pure voodoo.
I think Pulpstar knows this. More interesting is whether Findoutnow is also?
Religion is a load of old bollocks to me, and I choose not to believe any of it. Obviously, if some deity does ever take notice of me and says hello, I'll review my options.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
Which tells you everything you need to know about Facebook. I live in roughly the leftiest part of Scotland and people on my local Facebook group talk about running cyclists over and assassinating Ed Miliband.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
Which tells you everything you need to know about Facebook. I live in roughly the leftiest part of Scotland and people on my local Facebook group talk about running cyclists over and assassinating Ed Miliband.
The stuff I see on Farcebook varys according to account (I have several, which all have fake details, so I can see friends baby pics etc). Even not posting, the recommendations (presumably based on the people I have linked to and their likes) vary wildly.
The algorithms of social media have the effect of trying to find extremism you will like, or rage hate on. Mainly the latter, I think.
Religion is a load of old bollocks to me, and I choose not to believe any of it. Obviously, if some deity does ever take notice of me and says hello, I'll review my options.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
Straw poll on Facebook for local election by "Our Bassetlaw": (Self selecting, obviously no weighting or anything), various Notts County council.
Labour 10% Lib Dem 3% Conservative 7% Green 5% Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
This sort of "poll" is absolutely worthless. I don't just say that because it has RefUK doing well (which is clear enough from genuine polls) - just that all such "polls" are pure voodoo.
Rather unfair on voodoo, really.
"My name," a voice said, and Bobby wanted to scream when he realized that it came from his own mouth, "is Samedi, and you have slain my cousin's horse.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
I am sure there is an argument which links the concept of a single self existent uncaused cause of all reality with the tooth fairy and Santa, but I don't know what it might be.
American philosphers at this point would add that you have forgotten to add Linus's Great Pumpkin to your list. It is conventional to invoke it at this point.
Chuck it in. Look, we as humans need to create entities for many reasons. Land grabs in mediaeval times, explaining volcanoes, keeping people scared and compliant. While conversely "we" like to think that we're not just randomly existing and that there is a "purpose" and, more importantly, that it doesn't all end when we breathe our last. Of course we do.
So I perfectly understand religion from all sides. Just that I find it bizarre in particular today that it is so strong among those who are religious.
I would categorise myself, for example, as being in the "anglican atheist" tradition by which I mean that the direction of travel of anglicanism inevitably leads to a place that, where once there were fripperies and icons and gods and paintings and crosses and whatnot, there is now nothing to get in the way of wanting (and trying) to do good in and of itself.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
Yes but 'most of the world' includes large swathes of the third world which is, frankly, whatever euphemisms we may employ, backwards, If you were to look at the developed world, American religious attitudes stick out like the sorest of sore thumbs. It's not just that atheism is much higher everywhere other than America, it's that among the religious, the belief that God is actually interventionist on an individual level in response to this sort of thing is much lower.
In values there is an argument to some that much of the 'third world' you so patronise still holds true to traditional values and morality which were the backbone of humanity for centuries.
In Greece, Poland, much of Italy even rural Ireland and Orthodox Jew Israel attitudes to religion would be similar to red state USA
Well yes there are some splodges elsewhere in the developed world were religious fervour is the norm (though I'd question rural Ireland, nowadays - 30 years ago perhaps). But they are exceptions.
And yes, for centuries, traditional values and morality were the norm. I don't think that's an argument that it should be the norm now. I certainly wouldn't want the value of the Middle East to be the norm here. And plenty of things used to be the norm, like autocracy, outdoor defecation and grinding poverty - I don't think we should be looking to emulate those either.
We were in Donegal a few years ago and met a man talking about looking out for the 'little people' and fairies.
Donegal also rejected abortion in the referendum in Ireland in 2018
Not surprising it doesn't like children or homosexuals either.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
I have a grandson who has a justified belief in Santa, in that he possesses mental assent and has grounds and reasons for so thinking. Which at six is fair enough. But, sorry to give away the secret, there are in fact very good reasons for thinking that this belief does not have the quality of being true. A plethora of far superior explanations for the Santa phenomenon exist. So I don't believe in Santa, though he does. he does not know that Santa exists, even though he thinks he does. Even at 6, epistemology is tough stuff.
A belief in santa is just as sensible as a belief in god. No one has seen either and some of their works have been shown to be by the hand of humans.
You cannot create a distinction between santa, the tooth fairy and god. Because they are all the subject of a belief (I won't say irrational) and none can be proved to exist. You might make condescending noises towards children who believe in santa (and, presumably, adults who believe in Thor or Osiris) but have no logical basis to do so. You can epistomolgise up your wazoo but it makes no odds.
this price point will likely change now that Trump has tariffed cotton imports.
If only there was a way of growing cotton in the US using very cheap labour...
Ouch.
I’ve discovered from discussions on social media, that Americans who believe that slavery was a kind of finishing school for Africans, are not outliers.
Though a good example I think it would be difficult to find something which would lower most peoples expectations of the average American than at the moment. (WilliamGenn excepted)
71% of Brits favour the UK retaliating on tariffs according to YouGov .
Starmer is looking increasingly spineless .
Retaliatory tit for tat has always been popular with electorates. The results of such a policy, far less so.
That’s true but the public mood has had enough of the Trump arselicking. And where is Farage has he said anything about the tariffs !
Why is the UK media not nailing him to the wall over his Trump fawning .
The Tories should be. Also, Trump's tariffs not being imposed on Russia, Cuba, North Korea - should be some toxic guilt by association there. Farage has chosen a very poor friend in Putin.
Starmer is screwed either way now . Any deal is likely to be just what Trump wants and will look like abject surrender.
He got a 10% tariff on UK imports, which is less than the tariffs the EU, China, Japan, India and Canada and South Africa got on their imports in the US.
He should just take that and forget a trade deal with Trump
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
First, I’m not a left liberal but thanks for dictating what you think I am so wrongly.
Secondly, if you listened to it, you would understand how far away from saying “prayers in the event of an accident”, it was almost medieval in the belief that it was prayers that stopped infection, got the ambulance to the hospital quickly etc.
If people want to pray etc that’s great but to ascribe the things they did and the absolutist handover of modern life to religion was extreme - if we hear Muslims or any other religion claiming allah or others did these things we would scoff.
Of course you are, you are a left liberal who dislikes conservatism and rightwing politics.
Evangelical Christians and many Roman Catholics even here would think that prayer can genuinely save someones life, you just live in a left liberal echo chamber.
You don't have to be a left liberal to dislike right wing politics. There are plenty of centrists who feel the same way.
IOW, you're wrongly implying that your opinions are those of the majority.
The biggest shock for HYUFD is to have been told today, by Algakirk, that he is an agnostic.
Algarkirk is operating from the logical basis that its impossible to know, thus everyone is agnostic.
But he's not counting for the fact that HYUFD is, like his God, omnipotent. He knows everything. Even the stuff he's wrong on, he knows that he is right, even if he's not.
Quite correct. I am happy to be opposed on this issue, but whether or not we 'know' something is not entirely in our own gift to decide. Assuming with Plato, if I may, that knowledge is 'justified, true, belief' I have no problem with faith in God being 'belief' (mental assent) and 'justified' (there are loads of excellent grounds and reasons, which I cheerfully uphold) but as to whether it also has that meritorious quality of being 'true' I am not bold enough, along with Kant, to claim.
Absolutely. Strictly. But I think we have to rub along as we can. We cannot say with absolute certainty that Tooth fairies, Santa, and god (the holy triumvirate) exist.
But I am happy to enlist an amalgam of philosophical giants and operate under the assumption that none of them do.
Based on your posts (and particularly that one) I think it is fair to say that there is also a very large body of individuals both past and present who have intellectual capacity far greater than your own that still profess faith, or at least the possibility of a higher supreme being or universal intelligence.
Drawing comparison between religious faith and Santa and the tooth fairy is about as pathetic and unimaginative an analogy as comparing every politician with Hitler.
"Religion is based primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things."
That seems to suit you as you appear to be a coward.
Sometimes, if you ever really need it, you get a reminder that the US is largely a crazily different country to us.
I was listening in the small hours to a world service programme about a teenager in Ohio who was shot twice at school and survived - all quite a remarkable story in itself how it played out.
What was more than eye-opening was the unbelievable religious fervour of the town and people involved.
Everything was “praying. The school nurse - a former combat medic - praying to Jesus whilst helping the boy. The boy, praying for the shooter, everyone praying non stop.
The ladies who had a prayer room above a shop apparently saved him by praying.
The whole town prevented the shotgun pellets from giving him infection in his heart and lungs by praying - forget the skilled doctors - praying.
If it had been a story from, say an Islamic country, we would likely mock and raise eyebrows but this was like something out of 1600s Salem or Cromwell’s England - everyone sodding praying and genuinely believing that everything worked out ok because they all prayed.
Loons. No wonder you get Trumpism when there is a huge swathe of the country who are so credulous and backwards.
Hardly, in most of the world prayers would be said in the event of a serious accident or crime leading to injury, it shows how militantly secular left liberals like you in the UK are you think that is worthy of mockery!
Yes but 'most of the world' includes large swathes of the third world which is, frankly, whatever euphemisms we may employ, backwards, If you were to look at the developed world, American religious attitudes stick out like the sorest of sore thumbs. It's not just that atheism is much higher everywhere other than America, it's that among the religious, the belief that God is actually interventionist on an individual level in response to this sort of thing is much lower.
In values there is an argument to some that much of the 'third world' you so patronise still holds true to traditional values and morality which were the backbone of humanity for centuries.
In Greece, Poland, much of Italy even rural Ireland and Orthodox Jew Israel attitudes to religion would be similar to red state USA
Well yes there are some splodges elsewhere in the developed world were religious fervour is the norm (though I'd question rural Ireland, nowadays - 30 years ago perhaps). But they are exceptions.
And yes, for centuries, traditional values and morality were the norm. I don't think that's an argument that it should be the norm now. I certainly wouldn't want the value of the Middle East to be the norm here. And plenty of things used to be the norm, like autocracy, outdoor defecation and grinding poverty - I don't think we should be looking to emulate those either.
We were in Donegal a few years ago and met a man talking about looking out for the 'little people' and fairies.
Donegal also rejected abortion in the referendum in Ireland in 2018
Not surprising it doesn't like children or homosexuals either.
It did vote for same sex marriage in 2015 but by less than the Irish average, it rejected divorce in the 1995 referendum
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Some logic there but you won't win many votes by banning Easter, Eid, Diwali and Hannukah celebrations in non faith schools
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Some logic there but you won't win many votes by banning Easter, Eid, Diwali and Hannukah celebrations in non faith schools
Maybe not. I suspect I am close to one end of the spectrum with my uncomfortablity with religion. I'm not furiously opposed to religion in its place, but I don't want it creeping into my place!
1. Tech bros took pride of place at Trump's inauguration two months ago 2. They showed up in the expectation that the new administration would help their companies soar even higher
3. They figured that Trump would push Europe to loosen regulation - and put pressure on China. 4. To show fealty, some dropped DEI policies (Meta), others interfered with editorial policy (WaPo) and others prepared to serve (DOGE)
5. That has turned out to be one of the worst bets in history. The values of their companies went down by c.$1tr yesterday in one day. Apple alone lost more than $300bn. 6. Finally, Trump has done the impossible: to join Liz Truss in the Economic Mismanagement Hall of Shame
The other alternative is that the billionaire techbros now buy cheap stock, Trump then withdraws his tariffs, the stock market booms, and the billionaires become even richer.
I want Reform over 30 and both Lab and Con under 20
Brown's very tired looking government managed a 20% in summer 2009. I don't think that a sitting Labour government has ever had a proper poll in the teens.
1. Tech bros took pride of place at Trump's inauguration two months ago 2. They showed up in the expectation that the new administration would help their companies soar even higher
3. They figured that Trump would push Europe to loosen regulation - and put pressure on China. 4. To show fealty, some dropped DEI policies (Meta), others interfered with editorial policy (WaPo) and others prepared to serve (DOGE)
5. That has turned out to be one of the worst bets in history. The values of their companies went down by c.$1tr yesterday in one day. Apple alone lost more than $300bn. 6. Finally, Trump has done the impossible: to join Liz Truss in the Economic Mismanagement Hall of Shame
The other alternative is that the billionaire techbros now buy cheap stock, Trump then withdraws his tariffs, the stock market booms, and the billionaires become even richer.
Another alternative is they shorted the stock and have already made untold billions.
THEN they buy cheap. But - not yet. Further to fall...
Starmer is screwed either way now . Any deal is likely to be just what Trump wants and will look like abject surrender.
He got a 10% tariff on UK imports, which is less than the tariffs the EU, China, Japan, India and Canada and South Africa got on their imports in the US.
He should just take that and forget a trade deal with Trump
"He" - Starmer - didn't get anything. The tariff rates applied were completely independent of any relationship Trump has with any other leader or country (except maybe Russia, which didn't have any tariff rate announced). Britain would have had exactly the same rate if he'd acted with the same force and vigour as Carney.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.
(I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
1. Tech bros took pride of place at Trump's inauguration two months ago 2. They showed up in the expectation that the new administration would help their companies soar even higher
3. They figured that Trump would push Europe to loosen regulation - and put pressure on China. 4. To show fealty, some dropped DEI policies (Meta), others interfered with editorial policy (WaPo) and others prepared to serve (DOGE)
5. That has turned out to be one of the worst bets in history. The values of their companies went down by c.$1tr yesterday in one day. Apple alone lost more than $300bn. 6. Finally, Trump has done the impossible: to join Liz Truss in the Economic Mismanagement Hall of Shame
The other alternative is that the billionaire techbros now buy cheap stock, Trump then withdraws his tariffs, the stock market booms, and the billionaires become even richer.
The average Trump voter doesn't give a shit about billionaires on the coasts, they want tariffs and rustbelt jobs back and to send illegal immigrants home.
So that would be even more political suicide for Trump, indeed while Trump beat Harris US wide last year Harris won the billionaire vote with 83 US billionaires openly backing her to just 52 for Trump
1. Tech bros took pride of place at Trump's inauguration two months ago 2. They showed up in the expectation that the new administration would help their companies soar even higher
3. They figured that Trump would push Europe to loosen regulation - and put pressure on China. 4. To show fealty, some dropped DEI policies (Meta), others interfered with editorial policy (WaPo) and others prepared to serve (DOGE)
5. That has turned out to be one of the worst bets in history. The values of their companies went down by c.$1tr yesterday in one day. Apple alone lost more than $300bn. 6. Finally, Trump has done the impossible: to join Liz Truss in the Economic Mismanagement Hall of Shame
The other alternative is that the billionaire techbros now buy cheap stock, Trump then withdraws his tariffs, the stock market booms, and the billionaires become even richer.
The average Trump voter doesn't give a shit about billionaires on the coasts, they want tariffs and rustbelt jobs back.
So that would be even more political suicide for Trump, indeed while Trump beat Harris US wide last year Harris won the billionaire vote with 83 US billionaires openly backing her to just 52 for Trump
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Some logic there but you won't win many votes by banning Easter, Eid, Diwali and Hannukah celebrations in non faith schools
Maybe not. I suspect I am close to one end of the spectrum with my uncomfortablity with religion. I'm not furiously opposed to religion in its place, but I don't want it creeping into my place!
I share some of your discomfort. My children go to a CofE school due to few options locally; against stereotypes of CofE, there's quite a lot of religion, taught as fact. Goes with the territory (church school) but I'm not best pleased that my taxes fund this indoctrination in state schools, specifically my children's! They do also cover and celebrate/mark at least Eid and Diwali etc and they learn about other religions (I'd be fascinated to see how this is done "Muslims believe... And they're WRONG!"? ). I'm in favour of schools teaching religion - as in what the major faiths and their beliefs and histories are - it encourages tolerance and understanding of others and an understanding of the world and history, but I'd like there to be the space in such teaching for acknowledgement that these are not uncontested truths.
The interesting thing about the tariffs is that they were trailed bigly by, amongst others, the very person who said he was going to introduce them and for some reason the market didn't discount that and seemed to be shocked that it happened.
Trump still has some way to go to match Hoover though, who presided over the Dow losing almost 90% between 1929-32 - although to be fair, Hoover didn't personally kick things off in the say Trump has.
Lots of possible answers to this but in a political context, what separates a Six Nations Rugby match from an Arsenal home game or a Sabrina Carpenter concert?
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Some logic there but you won't win many votes by banning Easter, Eid, Diwali and Hannukah celebrations in non faith schools
Maybe not. I suspect I am close to one end of the spectrum with my uncomfortablity with religion. I'm not furiously opposed to religion in its place, but I don't want it creeping into my place!
I share some of your discomfort. My children go to a CofE school due to few options locally; against stereotypes of CofE, there's quite a lot of religion, taught as fact. Goes with the territory (church school) but I'm not best pleased that my taxes fund this indoctrination in state schools, specifically my children's! They do also cover and celebrate/mark at least Eid and Diwali etc and they learn about other religions (I'd be fascinated to see how this is done "Muslims believe... And they're WRONG!"? ). I'm in favour of schools teaching religion - as in what the major faiths and their beliefs and histories are - it encourages tolerance and understanding of others and an understanding of the world and history, but I'd like there to be the space in such teaching for acknowledgement that these are not uncontested truths.
Religious parents also have to fund non faith state schools via their taxes
The interesting thing about the tariffs is that they were trailed bigly by, amongst others, the very person who said he was going to introduce them and for some reason the market didn't discount that and seemed to be shocked that it happened.
I wonder if said person has ever promised to do something and then not done it?
Starmer is screwed either way now . Any deal is likely to be just what Trump wants and will look like abject surrender.
He got a 10% tariff on UK imports, which is less than the tariffs the EU, China, Japan, India and Canada and South Africa got on their imports in the US.
He should just take that and forget a trade deal with Trump
"He" - Starmer - didn't get anything. The tariff rates applied were completely independent of any relationship Trump has with any other leader or country (except maybe Russia, which didn't have any tariff rate announced). Britain would have had exactly the same rate if he'd acted with the same force and vigour as Carney.
This is correct.
2024 US exports of goods to the UK were more than imports, so the UK got the baseline 10% rate. Starmer did nothing to get the 10% rate.
The interesting thing about the tariffs is that they were trailed bigly by, amongst others, the very person who said he was going to introduce them and for some reason the market didn't discount that and seemed to be shocked that it happened.
When people tell you they're going to do something harmful it's a good idea to believe them.
"Only a shallow person fails to judge by appearances."
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
So I assume you would also ban Ramadan, Eid, Hannukah and Diwali themed assemblies too in non faith state schools?
Yes, I would. I am at least equally uncomfortable with these. (Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.) I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it. I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'. But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Some logic there but you won't win many votes by banning Easter, Eid, Diwali and Hannukah celebrations in non faith schools
Maybe not. I suspect I am close to one end of the spectrum with my uncomfortablity with religion. I'm not furiously opposed to religion in its place, but I don't want it creeping into my place!
I share some of your discomfort. My children go to a CofE school due to few options locally; against stereotypes of CofE, there's quite a lot of religion, taught as fact. Goes with the territory (church school) but I'm not best pleased that my taxes fund this indoctrination in state schools, specifically my children's! They do also cover and celebrate/mark at least Eid and Diwali etc and they learn about other religions (I'd be fascinated to see how this is done "Muslims believe... And they're WRONG!"? ). I'm in favour of schools teaching religion - as in what the major faiths and their beliefs and histories are - it encourages tolerance and understanding of others and an understanding of the world and history, but I'd like there to be the space in such teaching for acknowledgement that these are not uncontested truths.
Religious parents also have to fund non faith state schools via their taxes
Yes, but the point of schools is (should be?) to educate. You can do that, including on religion, while offering both sides of an argument where there are contested facts.
This comes down, largely, I guess to our intertwining of church and state. If there's a state church then there is logic to state schools promoting that church. So perhaps it's that more fundamental fact that I should wish to change.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.
(I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
Even now secularists aren't in the majority even here.
Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many
The interesting thing about the tariffs is that they were trailed bigly by, amongst others, the very person who said he was going to introduce them and for some reason the market didn't discount that and seemed to be shocked that it happened.
When people tell you they're going to do something harmful it's a good idea to believe them.
"Only a shallow person fails to judge by appearances."
I do not think I have ever seen a book that cannot be judged by its cover.
Off thread - I've just been to my youngest's Easter assembly. I will favour you all with a few thoughts:
Again, a religious theme for Easter. I am mildly uncomfortable with this: I would imagine the large proportion of the school with a non-Christian heritage (I've mentioned before: from about 2% English-as-a-foreign-language 5 or 6 years ago, we are now at about 40%, with the bulk being Asian - along with of course a lot of Asians born here who speak English perfectly well but do not have a Christian heritage) are also rather uncomfortable with it. It's not like the Christmas story - which is part of our culture almost aside from the religious element - it's the actual stating-that-Jesus-came-back-to-life bit. Feels a bit uncomfortable getting Muslims and Hindus doing that. Also, it's rather harder to deliver the Easter story than the Christmas story in a primary school setting: a birth in difficult circumstances is believable and relatable; a man getting tortured to death is not relatable and a man coming back from the dead is not believable. Anyway, it was - because this is how primary school assemblies go - a retelling of the Christian Easter story, from the point of view of the trees which provided the wood for the manger, a fishing boat, and the cross, together with some twee and unnecessarily drawn out songs and one surprisingly jaunty and enjoyable one. Of its sort, it was actually quite good, though unfortunately the child who delivered the moral at the end delivered it so quietly that it was lost (possibly that we can all overcome disappointments and succeed in our dreams despite setbacks?). Happy to report my rather unfocused daughter delivered her couple of lines as Mary quite capably, before, unfortunately, going to sit behind the fat girl* behind whom she was lost from sight thereafter. Though enjoyably, for a primary school performance, the star of the show was tree #2, who with a few words and actions and a confident manner managed to be the centre of attention and managed somehow to knowingly catch the eye of everyone in the audience.
So: uncomfortably religious, not really primary-school=appropriate, trite, some tedious songs with too many choruses - and yet from the efforts of kids and staff, actually rather charming. Realised with a jolt coming out that there's only a couple of these left, and the long kids-at-primary-school stage of my life, which has lasted almost a quarter of a lifetime, is - well the end of it is almost in sight. Feeling a little wistful about that.
*the fat girl has all the hallmarks of one in my day who would have been socially shunned. I'm happy to report that this is not the case and she is as included in whatever it is 10 year old girls do as the rest of them and that they judge her purely by her personality. Also happy to report that she is surprisingly brilliant on stage. I hope this keeps up for her at secondary school.
Surely you can’t be seriously complaining about an Easter thing having a religious theme - sort of the whole point of Easter and the therefore the holiday.
I just find it a bit weird having religion at all in a school. I know it was a feature of my primary schooling in the 80s, but it seemed an incongruous going-through-the-motions-which-no-one-seriously-believed-in even then - mildly embarrassing for both staff and children*. I'd have thought we'd have moved beyond that by now. Leave religion to the religious and keep schools secular.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Against that, the C of E primary schools I'm familiar with which taught a Christian ethos - as opposed to faith - did so pretty effectively.
That's fair enough Nigel. And I don't mind the existence of CoE schools, and actually my understanding is where they have a monopoly - which is much of rural England - they don't exploit that by ramping up the religious aspect and the CoEness is kept pretty light touch. But I'd quite like the option to send my kids to a secular school, and they aren't really allowed to exist. They all still have this background religiosity. It baffles me, because my understanding is that we secularists are in the majority. But as I said to HYUFD, I'm close to one end of the spectrum of secularists in my discomfort with religion - most people care less than I do and many just want to see a primary school like their own primary school experience.
(I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
Oh, I hold plenty such grudges - and equally I resent religious indoctrination. I don't think we're that far apart, other than that my level of religious tolerance is perhaps a little higher.
Comments
My late father-in-law worked for a Town Council in the North West which did a lot of slum clearance/council house building. He joined the department straight from school, after School Certificate, and was advised to put his name down for a house. When he protested that he didn't want one, it was pointed out that by the time he got to the top of the list he would. And indeed, on marriage, he and his new wife were able to move into a new council house, and lived for around 30 years.
Surrey evens
And note this is from before Trump took office.
The only thing tariffs are likely to do is to allow everyone in the production chain to raise their prices.
American philosphers at this point would add that you have forgotten to add Linus's Great Pumpkin to your list. It is conventional to invoke it at this point. For example you will find it in Plantinga's 'Faith and Rationality'.
Find Out Now seem to consistently be outliers in terms of the REF vote shares and lead.
That doesn't mean they are wrong as they may be picking up on something the others are missing, but it is noteworthy.
They are all at skool to learn presumably and learning about Easter seems rather appropriate given that it is almost Easter and the event has played, and to a lesser extent still plays, a huge part in the religious culture and history of this country.
India provides a significant amount of textiles to the US, where it has a competitive (cost) advantage. If, as is possibly perhaps likely, they reduce tariffs to zero both ways then India will benefit greatly.
https://www.business-standard.com/industry/news/trump-s-tariff-gives-indian-textile-exporters-an-edge-over-competitors-125040300158_1.html
Incidentally, textile imports to the US were last year US$110bn. Or 0.4% of GDP before anyone gets too carried away. Computer hardware is by far the biggest component of US imports and who the hell knows how much a MacBook is these days. The price could go up by $1,000 and no one would know if it was tariff-induced or Apple's marketing strategy. No wonder the tech bros were at the inauguration.
https://x.com/adamcooperF1/status/1908086952785768514
China finance ministry: Beijing to impose tariffs of 34% on ALL US goods
https://x.com/juliamacfarlane/status/1908100520440402256
*Tariff war etc...
By contrast, words written down *by men* 1500-3000 years ago may have some merit but I'll take them in context.
Labour 10%
Lib Dem 3%
Conservative 7%
Green 5%
Reform 68%
1,363 votes.
And there is such a large proportion of the school which is of a religion other than Christianity - it seems odd to get them to participate in an assembly setting out in however primary-schoolish a way the basic tenets of a religion of which they are not part.
*The more so, to our ten year-old-brains, when a substitute teacher came in who clearly believed all this - I remember her getting very agitated after a lack of attention to a prayer that we were begrudging God five minutes of our time, a complaint which drew as much blank incomprehension from the children as it did from the headteacher whom she needlessly drew into the whole palaver.
Both my paternal and maternal families moved out from Inner London as part of the slum clearances. My mother's family were in Forest Gate and moved to West Wickham in 1935 while my father's family were in Clapton and moved to Shirley, Croydon in 1934.
All of it was public housing built by the London County Council, sadly abolished. The peak of the housebuilding was in the 1930s but it did continue briefly after the war - the St Helier Estate suffered bomb damage during the Blitz and later as a result of V1 and V2 rockets and there was a lot of work done from 1945-50 to restore the Estate.
Reform is Farage and Farage is Britain Trump.
But in the Christian version why would God allow Satan in? Why put the tree of knowledge there? How could an omniscient being not know Lucifer was crawling about?
It then copies the follow-up story of Epimetheus and Pandora, Pandora being Eve, of course.
Reform 327, Labour 150, LDs 56, Tories 50, SNP 37
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=N&CON=20&LAB=22&LIB=13&Reform=28&Green=11&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=&SCOTLAB=&SCOTLIB=&SCOTReform=&SCOTGreen=&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2024base
China decries “unilateral bullying” of the US as it hits back with a 34% tariff on all US imports from next Thursday.
European markets tumble 5% again.
Drawing comparison between religious faith and Santa and the tooth fairy is about as pathetic and unimaginative an analogy as comparing every politician with Hitler.
Donegal also rejected abortion in the referendum in Ireland in 2018
For one thing, Apple is the single company most affected by the tariffs. Their overseas manufacturing costs (assuming tariffs are indeed imposed) are going to rise by something like 40% for their US sales.
Textiles might be a small component of the economy, but they're a much larger proportion of the sorting of the Trump voter you were waxing lyrical about earlier this morning.
And 95% of US apparel is imported.
The pain will be felt at both ends of society.
(Well, 'ban' is a strong word. I don't know how I'd enforce it. But still.)
I think religion is a perfectly reasonable pasttime for those who choose it.
I also think it's a reasonably subject of study for those who choose it - my daughters at senior school both did RS in years 7-9, and it is taught a lot more interestingly than it was in my day - it is more like philosophy, whereas ours was just checkbox learning of 'this is what Jews do on a Saturday'.
But I don't think it's something we should be presenting as truth or celebrating. The sectionalisation of our society isn't really anything to celebrate.
Strong "outsmarted by a red bus" vibes.
The algorithms of social media have the effect of trying to find extremism you will like, or rage hate on. Mainly the latter, I think.
Starmer is looking increasingly spineless .
"My name," a voice said, and Bobby wanted to scream
when he realized that it came from his own mouth, "is
Samedi, and you have slain my cousin's horse.
He hasn't gotten any better at governing, though.
So I perfectly understand religion from all sides. Just that I find it bizarre in particular today that it is so strong among those who are religious.
I would categorise myself, for example, as being in the "anglican atheist" tradition by which I mean that the direction of travel of anglicanism inevitably leads to a place that, where once there were fripperies and icons and gods and paintings and crosses and whatnot, there is now nothing to get in the way of wanting (and trying) to do good in and of itself.
The results of such a policy, far less so.
Why is the UK media not nailing him to the wall over his Trump fawning .
You cannot create a distinction between santa, the tooth fairy and god. Because they are all the subject of a belief (I won't say irrational) and none can be proved to exist. You might make condescending noises towards children who believe in santa (and, presumably, adults who believe in Thor or Osiris) but have no logical basis to do so. You can epistomolgise up your wazoo but it makes no odds.
He should just take that and forget a trade deal with Trump
That seems to suit you as you appear to be a coward.
He's bringing oil prices down.
BIGLY!!!
I want Reform over 30 and both Lab and Con under 20
Of course, when he flattens Iran's hydrocrbons facilities at the start of June, they will bounce back.
Even more so when Ukraine flattens Russia's.
The Saudi's will cash in their investment in Clan Trump.
It's Dems in disarray.
And somebody called Karen Read.
And a college footballer run over by an immigrant.
EDIT: There was an 18% in May 2009
THEN they buy cheap. But - not yet. Further to fall...
(I'm still, 40 years later, angry about the inadequacy of my own primary school - which was no more than averagely crappy by the standards of its day. I didn't have an unhappy time there, but even at aged 10 I could tell the teachers were no great brains, and I resented that. But few hold this specific grudge.)
So that would be even more political suicide for Trump, indeed while Trump beat Harris US wide last year Harris won the billionaire vote with 83 US billionaires openly backing her to just 52 for Trump
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-harris-has-more-billionaires-prominently-backing-her-than-trump-bezos-and-griffin-weigh-in-updated/
If say, I went there for a week, would you recommend seeing all of Khiva, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Tashkent, or just one or two of them?
2024 US exports of goods to the UK were more than imports, so the UK got the baseline 10% rate. Starmer did nothing to get the 10% rate.
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c4120.html
"Only a shallow person fails to judge by appearances."
This comes down, largely, I guess to our intertwining of church and state. If there's a state church then there is logic to state schools promoting that church. So perhaps it's that more fundamental fact that I should wish to change.
In the last census 56% of England and Wales said they were Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Buddhist and 37% said they had no religion.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021
Yet only 37% of state primary schools are now faith schools, 63% secular and just 19% of state secondary schools in the UK are faith schools, 81% secular. So if anything we have too few religious and faith schools not too many
https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/choosing-a-school/state-schools/faith-schools-in-the-uk#:~:text=There are nearly 8,000 mainstream,of secondaries are faith schools.
Lab 24%
Ref 24%
Con 23%
LD 13%
Grn 8%
SNP 3%
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1908109232332763361
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/03/westminster-city-council-staff-white-privilege-test/
I don't think we're that far apart, other than that my level of religious tolerance is perhaps a little higher.