Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => The Dressing Room => Topic started by: Jonny on November 04, 2009, 10:32:03 AM
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Just read this on the headlines and apparently we're all screwed? Only thing I'm annoyed about is both influential parties, the Tories and Brown and his cronnies have both let us down with a vote.
So I'm really only annoyed at the fact we were left out of a say, but more on this Lisbon Treaty. It's supposed to unite the EU into a more "more democratic, more transparent and more efficient"?
Sounds to me its just gonna be more controlling on us, bad enough with Brown now we're gonna have some EU President bloke telling us what to do but I'm struggling to put up more of a debate than that.
Anyone have a say on this? Or can educate me more on this fiasco.
PS. Brown wants Blair to be President - ha!
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Me and the other 60% of the Dutch people voted against it in a referendum. Our govt. signed it anyway.
So much for democracy.
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We haven't even had the referendum.
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I am not quite sure how we are supposed to lobby our opposition to it?
Does it actually have anything to do with parliament, or is it more to do with our local MEP?
I occasionally follow Dan Hannan (SE UK MEP) on Youtube, and as many points as he raises there, there never seems to be anyone else there, and if there is, then they don't pay attention to what he says
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I am not quite sure how we are supposed to lobby our opposition to it?
grab pitch forks and torches and march on westminster!
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I am not quite sure how we are supposed to lobby our opposition to it?
grab pitch forks and torches and march on westminster!
Except so called anti terror laws prohibit political protest of any kind within a certain distance of Westminister.
Orwell would be hideously disappointed.
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Howsabout Brussels?
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I am not quite sure how we are supposed to lobby our opposition to it?
grab pitch forks and torches and march on westminster!
Except so called anti terror laws prohibit political protest of any kind within a certain distance of Westminister.
Orwell would be hideously disappointed.
agreed. 1984 is a warning, not a manual
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I suspect the anti-Europe group within the Tories will eventually force Cameron into a simple 'in or out' referendum... and that will be the end of the UK's involvement in the EU :?
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It doesn't sound that amazingly terrible or anything I just would've thought the POPULATION of the UK had a say in it. Rather than an idiot, or another idiot who doesn't like the first idiot.
We'll see what happens in December really.
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all this stuff plays to the BNP a bit... maybe.
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i have to say i did not see this coming... :lol:
I'm not sure about the EU, to be honest. Some things are good, but some are bad. And it doesn't help like it seems there are a bunch of people who seem to have nothing better to do than make up random rules. :lol:
Me and the other 60% of the Dutch people voted against it in a referendum. Our govt. signed it anyway.
So much for democracy.
that sucks. that's arguably even more annoying than what's happening to us.
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg, Dave.
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I wonder how Hunter sees this living in Brussels?
Many moons ago I lived in Strasbourg and the profligacy of the EU was a sight to behold - you cannot believe the amount of money that was wasted there and the number of people who enjoyed tax-free jobs on the back of the EU.
IMHO no politician has ever succeeding in explaining the benefits of the EU to the man in the street. They claim that it is good for business but you can make just as good a case for why being outside the EU is good for you. For the average consumer the advantages have never been clearly and succinctly stated by any of the parties (which makes you wonder if there are any....).
Viva la revolucion....
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all this stuff plays to the BNP a bit... maybe.
It does, but only with the terminally stupid.
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you mean most of the public right?
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Nah, a huge swathe of our public are pretty apathetic, but the majority are still switched on enough not to be wooed by a Nazi with a melty-face, regardless of how upset they might be with mainstream party politics.
The BNP recieved LESS votes than in previous elections when they gained their two MEPs.
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Not that relevant, but I was in Barnsley recently, and apparently 30% of people there vote, and 16% of people there vote BNP.
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true.
i sometimes wonder though. i think there are apathetic people but I also think think there are a lot of idiots. I know where im from in Lancashire and surrounding areas (merseyside and manchester) there was a lot of dodgy talk between people you'd meet. same in the North East. My housemates boss is actually going to start voting BNP apparently BECAUSE of the questiontime debate... that blows my mind. I think the BNP are very calculating in who they target, and what facts they use in that process. migrant workers from within the european union taking british jobs for example. britain being run from brussels. loosing the £... blah blah blah. it all gets to some demographic. My housemate works for a transport for london road crew, and everyone he works with has right wing views of some degree. Apathy is almost more problematic than extreme right wing voters because those people are more likely to actually vote.
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Apathy IS the biggest problem. Hell, how many folks actually know what the Lisbon treaty even is?
We should be like Australia and make it an offence not to vote in elections, but add a No Party vote. That'd get cats paying attention.
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thats not a bad idea.
i get frustrated because the only reason i vote is so the BNP have to work a little harder. i don't have faith in anyone.
i don't feel like enough fuss is made about the lack of people that vote.
incidentally muse are on the BBC HD Preview.
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg, Dave.
yeah, probably. same here. when you add up all the other gip which labour or the tories have been up to, this EU referendum is pretty far down the list...
We should be like Australia and make it an offence not to vote in elections, but add a No Party vote. That'd get cats paying attention.
disagree, i have the right not to vote if i so please. And if i hate all the parties sufficiently, i shouldn't be forced to go through the whole rigmarole you have to go through when you vote. at very least they'd need to make it a lot easier to vote, like let everyone have a postal vote or something like that.
My housemates boss is actually going to start voting BNP apparently BECAUSE of the questiontime debate... that blows my mind.
that does not surprise me in the slightest. Question time was a complete joke, and it makes you wonder if the real idiots are the people voting for the BNP, or the people who thought it'd be a good idea to let the BNP on QT, but then tag-team them for the whole show. :? talk about playing into their hands...
not to mention the hypocrisy of it. "oh, we can't trust the public not to see through the BNP, but of course we never take advantage of the misinformed public's votes..."
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We should be like Australia and make it an offence not to vote in elections, but add a No Party vote. That'd get cats paying attention.
disagree, i have the right not to vote if i so please. And if i hate all the parties sufficiently, i shouldn't be forced to go through the whole rigmarole you have to go through when you vote. at very least they'd need to make it a lot easier to vote, like let everyone have a postal vote or something like that.
Oh absolutely, postage paid postal votes all round, that and a no party vote, then I really couldn't see how anyone could complain, and it would encourage huge swathes of people who don't give a hoot currently to get thinking.
We also need to have the vote at 16 or stop 16 and 17 year olds joining the forces (which is far preferable) as it's utterly obscene you can be sent to kill other kids who've never even shaved before you can vote on the government which sends you.
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i dunno, i'd still have to get to the postbox... :lol: but yeah, if you could have some kind of easy method of voting (while meanwhile still minimising fraud), then that wouldn't be as big of a problem. and you'd definitely need a "no party" vote (i'd prefer the term, "you all suck" :D), as you can't be forced to legitimise someone you probably disagree with.
agreed about the army. I don't know about giving the votes to 16 year olds, but i agree about not joining the army. Or at very least (if they don't already; i haven't exactly ever looked into joining the army), once you hit 18 you're given the option to leave, no questions asked. because you can't sign a legally binding contract for anything else until you hit 18, as far as i'm aware. and it should be non-combat roles before 18 (though i suspect that's the case already).
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Well, you Brits are not alone.
This stuff is happening all over Europe. Left wing f*cked up new right wing parties are formed and rising. Situations are remarkably similar. It's going on in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Austria.
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NFE: about 16+ army - I think it would be a bad idea to stop them joining at that age, it must be useful for those who need an institution which may actually teach respect... I think that unless you specifically request to be deployed whilst under 18 you can, but its not normal. May be wrong on that one though.
I like the Australia idea, there is still the option of going to vote but 'spoiling' your ballot (well thats what I was taught in politics class :lol: ) but whether that will really get counted or not?
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Well, you Brits are not alone.
This stuff is happening all over Europe. Left wing f*cked up new right wing parties are formed and rising. Situations are remarkably similar. It's going on in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and Austria.
yeah. i can't speak for anywhere else, but i know that here the problem is new labour. They figured the old labour was unelectable, so they made up this new labour guff, which seems to amount to (by and large) the worst parts of left wing politics combined with the worst parts of right wing. :lol:
I certainly don't want the bnp in. Heck, i don't even want the tories in, it amuses me when people (rightly) complain about new labour, then when given the choice want to vote for the tories, who'd be as bad if not worse, and are led by tony blair mark II.
i mean it's not like there's not a third party. The lib dems might suck too, but they seem to be the lesser of 3 evils.
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i sometimes wonder though. i think there are apathetic people but I also think think there are a lot of idiots. I know where im from in Lancashire and surrounding areas (merseyside and manchester) there was a lot of dodgy talk between people you'd meet. same in the North East. My housemates boss is actually going to start voting BNP apparently BECAUSE of the questiontime debate... that blows my mind. I think the BNP are very calculating in who they target, and what facts they use in that process. migrant workers from within the european union taking british jobs for example. britain being run from brussels. loosing the £... blah blah blah. it all gets to some demographic. My housemate works for a transport for london road crew, and everyone he works with has right wing views of some degree. Apathy is almost more problematic than extreme right wing voters because those people are more likely to actually vote.
This is true. I don't know anyone who actually says they'd vote BNP, but I'm amazed how many otherwise sensible, intelligent people of my own acquaintance are saying things like "well, I don't support the BNP of course, but some of what they say makes sense". :?
And when they're debated on news websites, the vast majority of comments are pro BNP. Of course there's the argument that rabid supporters are more likely to get off their arses and comment (the same argument that's used to "explain" their votes at elections). But you'd think there'd be at least as many people strongly opposed to them.
I don't for a minute think the BNP will get into a position of real power, but I also think it's dangerous just to dismiss them. We live in worrying times. :|
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i dunno. there was a pretty big protest at the bbc around question time. also i guess you could argue that anyone campaigning for a different political party is technically against the BNP, and most of the tories/labour/lib dems are going to be spending more time pushing their own candidate than doing down another. Maybe.
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If the BNP ever get into power I would gladly lead an exodus of all the rational people of Britain away as refugees (wouldn't be the first time my family was forced to leave by a nationalistic political power. The difference this time would be that I was doing it volunarily and without the naive expectation that we would they able to return after the violence died down. They were Germans Living in Yugoslavia at the time of the Nazi Invasion; few enough generations for the BNP's ridiculous policies to directly affect me personally.).
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I'm not surprised the BNP gets so much support.
It's the pendulum effect. The further it's going to the left the further it will swing back to the right.
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I occasionally get BNP flyers through the door and now go to the door each time I hear anything coming through so I can give the moron posting those flyers a piece of my mind and tell them where to shove their flyer.
The state of the Labour party is a real shame, people are looking at the opposition as an alternative, but think of all the good things Labour have done which would never happen under the tories:
* minimum wage - you can laugh, but I remember the average wage for student-jobs before this and it was no joke (being a student at the time)
* investment in eduction - the schools where I live were crumbling when I left in 2000 under the tories, now we have two schools in a 5 mile radius that have been rebuilt and offer facilities more in line with a good uni.
* investment in the NHS - tories fundamentally don't believe in the NHS and I believe we'd see further privatisation.
* the civil partnership act - can you imagine the tories putting this before the house for consideration? (me neither)
* better pensions, winter fuel allowance, free public travel for pensioners
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I'm not surprised the BNP gets so much support.
It's the pendulum effect. The further it's going to the left the further it will swing back to the right.
But we haven't been anywhere near the left since the mid '70s. We've been wobbling back and forth around the centre for decades.
I think it's more to do with the state of the economy and a general disenchantment with the mainstream parties because none of them seem to represent "an alternative".
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I occasionally get BNP flyers through the door and now go to the door each time I hear anything coming through so I can give the moron posting those flyers a piece of my mind and tell them where to shove their flyer.
The state of the Labour party is a real shame, people are looking at the opposition as an alternative, but think of all the good things Labour have done which would never happen under the tories:
* minimum wage - you can laugh, but I remember the average wage for student-jobs before this and it was no joke (being a student at the time)
* investment in eduction - the schools where I live were crumbling when I left in 2000 under the tories, now we have two schools in a 5 mile radius that have been rebuilt and offer facilities more in line with a good uni.
* investment in the NHS - tories fundamentally don't believe in the NHS and I believe we'd see further privatisation.
* the civil partnership act - can you imagine the tories putting this before the house for consideration? (me neither)
* better pensions, winter fuel allowance, free public travel for pensioners
And that if superficially true benefits who.. :?
The wealth gap has never been higher and social mobility is a thing of the past - all the labour party ministers benefited from free University education but happily pulled up the ladder.
Investment in education infrastructure via PFI which means the private sector own all the assets and the taxpayer rents these back and never owns them at massive cost.
The standard of basic literacy has dropped with more children falling through the net. They can't even read.
Foxhunting and civil partnership legislation bulldozed through parliament for minority concerns but no debate on European Union or ID cards despite being manifesto promises.
don't even make me start on the pensions crisis and fuel poverty....
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And that if superficially true benefits who.. :?
The wealth gap has never been higher and social mobility is a thing of the past - all the labour party ministers benefited from free University education but happily pulled up the ladder.
Investment in education infrastructure via PFI which means the private sector own all the assets and the taxpayer rents these back and never owns them at massive cost.
The standard of basic literacy has dropped with more children falling through the net. They can't even read.
Foxhunting and civil partnership legislation bulldozed through parliament for minority concerns but no debate on European Union or ID cards despite being manifesto promises.
don't even make me start on the pensions crisis and fuel poverty....
agreed. those things hth listed were good (on the surface, anyway, if you don't dig too deep), and i agree that it's doubtful the tories would have pushed them through, but they've done a lot of harm too.
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i think it takes a special kind of person to want to be a politician and those able to get real far in that world have to shape themselves accordingly as situations arise. I don't class them as normal people. i think they mostly have something fundamentally sinister about them, more so in the upper echelons. I can't swallow the line that most politicians just want to selflessly serve the people in their constituency or the country as a whole.
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agreed. :lol: though i think plato maybe got there first.
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agreed. :lol: though i think plato maybe got there first.
i know ef all about plato. i aint that well read or cultured. i hear he's a solid bro though
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agreed. :lol: though i think plato maybe got there first.
i know ef all about plato. i aint that well read or cultured. i hear he's a solid bro though
A large percentage of British kids probably think Plato is a game character.
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true.
I know who he is. I just didnt know what i said related to him in any way.
i hope you're not calling me a kid and suggesting i'm ignorant?
i feel i have to stick up from British kids, or anyone in British schools. obviously we have some big problems with that age group in relation to the rest of europe but i don't always think that it's their own fault.
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There are lots of very intelligent kids in this country who present themselves as F**k shite stupid....
Blame the education system / fashion/ absent parents - the result is the same - It's shameful.
I don't blame them unless they choose to stay that way & have babies. :x
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There are lots of very intelligent kids in this country who present themselves as F**k shitee stupid....
Blame the education system / fashion/ absent parents - the result is the same - It's shameful.
I don't blame them unless they choose to stay that way & have babies. :x
Unfortunately they have babies while they still are that way....
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I talk with loads of young adults and the disparity between those who have role models who display a modicum of eloquence, education & responsibility is frightening.
For 99% of kids it's not what your born with but what you value...
Many kids don't ever get the chance to be engaged in a conversation because no one is around.
Just a PS3 or Wii.
F**king upper middle class kids acting like "street thugs" are the worst - they make me sick....
Daddy will pay for their education then get them a job in the city later but for now it just adds to the number of f**king morons I have to deal with.
I do want to cry sometimes when I think how hard it is now for a young and intelligent person to get an opportunity in this country.
It has not been this hard to move upward socially or economically since the 19th century.
The "new labour project" has abused more children than all the paedophiles on the register ever could.
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I wonder if the UK really is worse than other countries in this respect?
In a way, it would be comforting to think we're no worse than anywhere else.... although that would mean the whole world is $%&#ed.
If there are other countries who are "getting it right", we really need to do whatever we can to learn from them.
Edit: Actually, I'd like to ask Ratrod: I know your comment wasn't aimed at Dmoney personally, but is there a perception in Holland that British kids are particularly ignorant and/or badly educated?
I'm not trying to be confrontational or inflammatory, just curious.
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I wonder if the UK really is worse than other countries in this respect?
Edit: Actually, I'd like to ask Ratrod: I know your comment wasn't aimed at Dmoney personally, but is there a perception in Holland that British kids are particularly ignorant and/or badly educated?
I'm not trying to be confrontational or inflammatory, just curious.
The main experience I have in this is when I give guest lectures at universities. The courses I lecture to tend to be very multi-national and I've asked the question you ask to the lecturers who say there is a big difference. One course head said that he noticed the biggest difference in British kids' attitudes came from those who'd been through the national curriculum for their whole school life. His theory was that because the kids just get tested and tested on easy to mark questions that then feed into league tables that lead to funding levels, teachers had little option other than to simply teach kids to pass these tests rather than teaching them to actually think. He said it took a year of the degree course to start to get the British students to break this narrow focus on grades and testing and to actually develop a bit. He said that students from the Scottish education system or the rest of Europe did not suffer in this way.
I feel very sorry for children going through the state education system today, I don't think that they're deliberately ignorant or that they're choosing to be disinterested in their education it just seems to be that their whole education experience is based on making sure that some boxes gets ticked in Whitehall so that the school will get next year's funding.
All of this is not to say that there aren't exceptions and that there aren't schools who rise above this and actually educate their students but I do think that, countrywide, the national curriculum has done terrible damage to generations of British children and young adults.
My two pence based on what I see when I visit universities and on the people I get at work straight from college.
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yo i just wanted to say i didnt take that comment personally.
It just gets to me sometimes because the kids where talking about are the people i grew up with, and while im not from a very bad area i had friends who where teenage parents, and who got drunk at 13. It doesnt mean those kids are dumb or that they don't care about their situations. i know ratrod wasn't getting at all that, i just get defensive.
the drummer is my band is polish ex-aristocracy, born in vienna, attended international school with diplomats kids, and he's a great but when we play shows in Hull for example, the first thing he'll do is rant about how scummy everyone he can see is. whats more worrying is i've not found where that ends because he'll call people from working class backgrounds, who've been through the same university as him "uncultured" in a derogatory sense. Even in other countries he'll be like "oh that guy speaks really bad german, if you could understand german you'd assume he is a mechanic or something like that. he's just not that bright. kind of like a thugish ape"... i mean! jesus!
so yeah, im use to having to deal with that rubbish. which is why i may have seemed to take rotrod more personally than i actually did.
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People like your drummer (nothing personal - I don't know him to judge) - lack class.
Being of/from a class is very different to having it.
That is why I keep banging on about social mobility - it shouldn't matter where you start but where you finish & the people you affect positively on the way.
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I was interested to read what Andrew W said concerning the long term affect of the obsessive testing forced on the school system. The result I suppose of people (the Government) who have no background in a subject having hold of the reins. Vis a vis this topic Ian Hislop pertinently said, "You don't fatten a pig by weighing it."
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I occasionally get BNP flyers through the door and now go to the door each time I hear anything coming through so I can give the moron posting those flyers a piece of my mind and tell them where to shove their flyer.
The state of the Labour party is a real shame, people are looking at the opposition as an alternative, but think of all the good things Labour have done which would never happen under the tories:
* minimum wage - you can laugh, but I remember the average wage for student-jobs before this and it was no joke (being a student at the time)
* investment in eduction - the schools where I live were crumbling when I left in 2000 under the tories, now we have two schools in a 5 mile radius that have been rebuilt and offer facilities more in line with a good uni.
* investment in the NHS - tories fundamentally don't believe in the NHS and I believe we'd see further privatisation.
* the civil partnership act - can you imagine the tories putting this before the house for consideration? (me neither)
* better pensions, winter fuel allowance, free public travel for pensioners
And that if superficially true benefits who.. :?
The wealth gap has never been higher and social mobility is a thing of the past - all the labour party ministers benefited from free University education but happily pulled up the ladder.
Investment in education infrastructure via PFI which means the private sector own all the assets and the taxpayer rents these back and never owns them at massive cost.
The standard of basic literacy has dropped with more children falling through the net. They can't even read.
Foxhunting and civil partnership legislation bulldozed through parliament for minority concerns but no debate on European Union or ID cards despite being manifesto promises.
don't even make me start on the pensions crisis and fuel poverty....
looking around me where I live I can't say that I agree with you, we've seen massive investment in local schools. I remember my comprehensive school virtually falling apart and the resources being very poor. I also worked in this school for a year while I was studying in the early 90s and the budget they were getting to run the place was insane - the music teacher had something like £500 a year as a budget; hence pretty much everything there was his own stuff. the schools around my area now are more like universities in terms of facilities and I know that the average grades have improved lots too (Jarrow was historically very poor in the league tables).
its easy to slag off the labour government and sure as hell they're not perfect, but there is no way on this earth that the tories would have done anything for the working classes - minimum wage makes a difference to many people working shitety jobs and winter fuel allowance is a start at least. I work in the gas/elec sector, so I'm well aware of fuel poverty and there are schemes in place to help with this, though more could certainly be done to help.
The basis state pension is a joke for sure, but you're only gonna get that if you've never really paid into the system - I know my parents worked all their life and we weren't well off by any stretch of the imagination, but my parents' state pension is pretty decent. its a drop from the wages they were used to while working, but they can certainly afford to heat the house and do pretty much everything they've been used to.
again, ID cards - yes its a bollocks idea, but that wouldn't change under any government.
uni fees, Labour certainly dropped a bollock on that one, but I can't see the other parties reversing that decision if they get in, can you? in reality, the people who really need the help in paying for fees still get it.
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^ i just think the fees should be dropped. You should be encouraging people to go to university. and the lib dems were considering dropping them, but then clegg changed his mind. :(
i know ef all about plato. i aint that well read or cultured. i hear he's a solid bro though
oh i haven'y read the republic either. :lol: i always mean to...
In a way, it would be comforting to think we're no worse than anywhere else.... although that would mean the whole world is $%&#ed.
hehe.
you could copy our system. I know our schools have the rep of being pretty good (compared to england), and people actually want to be teachers so much here that there's actually competition for getting into teacher training colleges.
then again we still have grammar schools (i know some areas in england do, too- and actually i think we're starting to get rid of them, which sucks). and you probably don't want to copy the whole terrorism thing. plus we still do the curriculum, which is pretty poor.
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The ONLY party in favour of ID card are the Labour Party. At a cost of £18 billion.
Nothing has changed since bailing out the banks...
Labour have sold all the countries assets Govt buildings / schools / hospitals into private company PFI initiatives.
THAT is where your investment came from.
We (the tax payers & future generations) will rent what was ours back for billions without end.
well at least we have an end to boom and bust... we only have bust.
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hehe, true.
just to add to what i said about the universities: my problem was this line- "in reality, the people who really need the help in paying for fees still get it. " I'm not sure you can assume that, because people always fall through the cracks. And it's based on the parents' income, and some people's parents are just, to be blunt, dicks. it doesn't necessarily follow that if someone's parents are rich that they'll get tons of money handed to them. I know i got money out of my parents far handier than plenty of other kids who had richer parents. My parents weren't poor or anything (teachers), but yeah. it's certainly a valid point.
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My view on the testing ethos in secondary education is that it is probably a good thing. After all, endless testing and preparation was what distinguished public school kids from state school kids when it came to exams in the good old days. When I was at a state school with a mix of disadvantaged (I won't say working class, as their parents largely did not work) and lower middle class kids, it was noticeable that the teachers focused all their extra energies on getting 2 or 3 nice well spoken kids into Oxbridge and ignored the rest - at least uniform and perpetual testing means teachers can't systematically prejudice the majority of students anymore (well in theory, anyway). It also means that students who are failing can't slip through the net until its too late (again, in theory).
As to this idea that it takes a year to knock the secondary school education out of people, I am slightly skeptical that this is a new thing. I used to teach at Cambridge University in the late 90s and this stuff was said in tutors' meetings then, so it has always been a factor in higher education. A levels as a format do not encourage intellectual risk taking, or anything other than a bland formulaic approach to a problem - in most subjects at University this sort of methodology condemns you at best to a lower 2:1. I remember it normally took students at least a term of being challenged one-to-one in the supervision system to get over that way of thinking. As most University's do not have that system it probably takes longer to get it out of them.
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i don't have a problem with tests, i just have a problem with grade inflation, and poor quality testing. There's something wrong when you can get the marks as long as you've put in the correct key word, even if you've actually got the answer wrong! For example (and this is an obvious simplification/exaggeration), say in history, if the key words wanted were "reichstag" and "communists", if the person doing the marking were not a specialist, they might give the marks to an answer saying, "the reichstag burned down, but hitler did not blame it on the communists". :lol:
No joke, our teachers used to tell us stuff like that (and that was maybe 10 years ago, so on your timescale, elliot), where you got more marks for knowing the key words than actually proving that you understood the subject.
you also often would lose marks if you had a higher level of knowledge than the exam required, which is a bit dodgy when several gcses (thinking about chemistry here) were actually telling you stuff at gcse which wasn't quite right. and by that, i mean flat-out wrong.
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I wonder if the UK really is worse than other countries in this respect?
In a way, it would be comforting to think we're no worse than anywhere else.... although that would mean the whole world is $%&#ed.
If there are other countries who are "getting it right", we really need to do whatever we can to learn from them.
Edit: Actually, I'd like to ask Ratrod: I know your comment wasn't aimed at Dmoney personally, but is there a perception in Holland that British kids are particularly ignorant and/or badly educated?
I'm not trying to be confrontational or inflammatory, just curious.
No it wasn't aimed a Dmoney.
I just read an article that said a certain percentage of British kids thought that Adolf Hitler was a football coach and Joseph Goebels was someone who wrote a diary. It's funny and sad at the same time.
Dutch edjumacation ain't all that either. Most kids can hardly write a flawless sentence , do maths and are very ignorant about history and current events. The decay of Dutch education has been going on since the seventies.
Maybe some of the news we get from the UK is a tad exadurated but I do think the UK is in the worst state of all western European countries.
And what's this thing I read somewhere? That it's forbidden in certain streets to have a decorative piggy bank on your window-sill because it might offend someone?
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One problem here is that if you anything resembling a deep interest you're labelled as a geek, nerd or an anorak. Knowledge, outside of buzz subjects, seems to be unfashionable.
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Nothing has changed since bailing out the banks...
agreed, Labour couldn't have handled this worse. the banks should have been nationalised and be done with it. it would have been interesting to see exactly what the other parties would have done though.
oh, and this third stimulus has the added condition of 'only people earning under £39k' will be eligible for bonuses :roll: maybe Gordy might have thought of putting conditions on the previous stimulus' instead of the banking sector saying 'ooh, thank-you, we can all have our bonuses now and big fat retirement payoffs'. what a joke! :x
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And what's this thing I read somewhere? That it's forbidden in certain streets to have a decorative piggy bank on your window-sill because it might offend someone?
I've never heard that one before, but in Brown's Britain anything is possible. :lol:
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Found it.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html)
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm)
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Found it.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html)
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm)
Actually, it's not funny at all when you read it. Idiots. :|
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surely you should be teaching kids about cowboy builders?
One problem here is that if you anything resembling a deep interest you're labelled as a geek, nerd or an anorak. Knowledge, outside of buzz subjects, seems to be unfashionable.
oh yeah, definitely.
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Found it.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2005/10/toy-pig-ban-climbdown.html)
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm)
Actually, it's not funny at all when you read it. Idiots. :|
Excessively 'Politically Correct' actions (such as above) are fuel for the BNP's fire. In the UK, there always seems to be someone making political capital by taking offence on another persons behave. There was a recent story about the Police being instructed not to use the tradition term 'evening all' as some community groups don't understand the phrase. How misguided and patronising is that?
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agreed. :lol: though i think plato maybe got there first.
i know ef all about plato. i aint that well read or cultured. i hear he's a solid bro though
A large percentage of British kids probably think Plato is a game character.
When I was small, thanks to the "Little Golden Encyclopedia" I knew Plato was a philosopher but I also thought he was the character shown on the "Play-Do" cans.
In my mind, still picture Plato that way to this day.