Okay, well apparently Blogger just isn't liking Opera right now. Or Opera isn't liking Blogger. Worked just fine in Chrome.
My lovely image will wait until tomorrow, as this one was by request.
Also, if Mr. SelfmadeMan would contact me, I could add him to the list of authors so that his weekly column could appear as a separate thread. Or, he could e-mail me the column and I'll put it up for him.
Just a couple of small observations concerning WADDYA.
1. It would seem that Hanman wants to run a tight ship - for which read: banning used far more as a method of control. Suggest using proxy server for sign-up at least, for anyone who is not supposed to be there and wants to dodge the waggy finger.
2. MarvinInNeverland said that SMM was not funny and had a general swipe at people here. He also gave an example of what he thought was funny. EnglishHelmet thinks he is protecting and preserving the chastity and honour of a maiden - in the form of GMG, personified by JezzaBella - for whom he is besotted with unrequited love.
You are dealing with people from utterly different mental planets.
It is a complete waste of time thinking that they will understand a word which is said.
<at some point I would be interested in your thoughts on the raising of tuition fees for British students - particularly in light of remarks which suggested that overseas student fees had in some way been subsidising home grown students.
Well I think education in the UK should be free and paid for from general taxation. I've written to successive Prime Ministers, via my MP to say I'm prepared to pay more income tax to fund this.
Or at very least let me speak about England in case the minority nationalities feel I shouldn't comment on their national affairs.
And yes the fees of overseas students have been subsidising UK students and will continue to do so, and I'll give you an example.
One of my students in 2008 got a place on a world class computing related course at a middle ranked university in the South of England. The university was fine by international standards, but the particular course was one of the best in the world.
Of the 39 students on the course, all but the five British students were from overseas and paying the full fee, which at the time was over £9,000 (GBP) a year.
I was amazed when I heard that a British university had 39 students on a master's degree course, but I learn something new every day.
So the university grossed over £300.000 (GBP) from overseas students whereas if all 39 had been from the UK the amount would have been closer to £120,000 (GBP), assuming they were all paying the subsidised rate. If they'd all been from poor families, they'd have paid little or nothing in course fees.
In fact given the range of required entry qualifications which are rather too detiailed for me to post here, I think it's doubtful that there would have been 39 British students who'd have qualified for the course.
My student, having pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, is now back in his home town in China, has bought a property close to where his parents live, who saved all their married lives to pay for his education, and following a spell with a small software house, is teaching at a Chinese university. He looks back at the mundane working life he had before he and his mother happened to meet me, as an unfortunate blip in his career progression. I point out to him that without that "mundane working life", which I and most people posting here would consider a worthy and worthwhile career, he would never have been able to afford the evening classes where over a period of five years he acquired the qualifications he needed to get onto to a world class British master's degree course, and he smiles sagely and nods in agreement.
And good morning Montana, you are a beacon of free speech in a sea of censorship.
Morning everyone, and must say it was nice to wake up to all that music posted last night to check out.
Atomboy said...
1. It would seem that Hanman wants to run a tight ship - for which read: banning used far more as a method of control.
Might also be an attempt to cut moderation costs...
@Bitey
Do you see any downsides to exporting our knowledge overseas to nations that can undercut us and stymie attempts to reduce our structural unemployment?
And for anyone who missed my post on CiF before it was removed by the mods:
BeautifulBurnout / PeripheralVisionary
Call me a tinfoil hatter if you like (and I wish I could remember KT's neoligism for it), but does anyone else believe this pile of steaming crap?
According to your linked report, Mark Stephens, Julian Assange's London based lawyer stated:
"Both women have declared they had consensual sexual relations with our client and that they continued to instigate friendly contact well after the alleged incidents. Only after the women became aware of each other's relationship with Mr Assange did they make their allegations against him.
"Media reports had reported the basis for the rape charge "purely seems to constitute a post-facto dispute over consensual, but unprotected sex days after the event," he said.
So certainly not "a steaming pile of crap" by any stretch of the imagination.
This might be a 'sting' perpetrated by the CIA with the women prepared to perjure themselves, assuming that crime exists in Sweden. In which case it would be of major interest to all who have followed the story to date.
Or it could it be that each woman only consented to sex with Assange on the condition that he wasn't having sex with another women in Sweden and elsewhere. This is a quite normal understanding that couples come to before engaging in sex. But having discovered that wasn't the truth and they'd been lied to, they are now seeking a legal redress in the Swedish courts.
I am reminded of the recent case where an Israeli women claimed she was raped because her consent to sex was obtained through lies which resulted in her rapist being jailed. I don't know what the law is in Sweden, my recent knowledge of the country coming from the pen of the late great Stieg Larsson's trilogy, but it appears that Assange's lawyers are treating this case very seriously.
As for Mr Assange practising casual unprotected sex, that alone, for a man in his position may not deserve an international arrest warrant, but it does deserve international censure.
Would those UT posters who still sleep around or have children who might, like to comment on whether having unprotected sex should be a private matter between them and the person they might infect or who might infect them?
Or should we take a more proactive approach to warning young people about the dangers of this particularly nasty aspect of 21st century life which many of their parents chose to ignore in the previous one?
hevers, yes, it was a good UT jam. You could throw in tunes any time you know. I think most of us are willing to hear different tastes and genres, or just your own preferences.
Bitey--Didn't know the foreign students fees accounted for that much. A sizable sum if you include all non UK people.
BTW Bitey, your use of the word 'bootstraps' is in a much more charitable context today.
Spike is at the computer in the living room drinking his second cup of PG Tips. Occasionally, his left hand reaches out for the cigarettes that haven't been there since Wednesday. If a hand could look disappointed, then his would as it moves back to the keyboard.
No work at all today. Well, I really ought to go through the huge tottering pile of papers on my dining table and see if there's anything that needs to be dealt with urgently. And trim and gain-adjust the radio progs I've recorded for my mp3 player before I watch United-Wigan this afternoon.
Anway, I'm still in my comfort zone of enjoying having no work but not yet being worried that no work's coming in since it's only been three or four days.
The walk by the Seine's OK, but the market's a working-class suburban one, so there's no Juliette Binoches fluttering their eyelashes at customers as they present a selection of picturesque cheeses on straw-covered stands.
The traders are more North African guys or extended families of travellers screaming, "Bananas! Get your bananas here! Only one euro a kilo!" and trying to railroad you into taking three kilos of clementines when you only wanted two.
On the Guardian cartoon thread today regarding Lord Young of Gaffeham:
JSMillitant 20 November 2010 12:36AM
"So, you know, I have a feeling and a hope that when this goes through, people will wonder what all the fuss was about. Of course, there will be people who complain, but these are people who think they have a right for the state to support them."
Lord Young is perfectly correct. Only the most egregious sponger could complain about public spending being cut back to the level it was in ... 2005!
Interesting that what we seem to be seeing is the meme being planted that we have no right to expect anything from the state.
Obviously, the fact that the state takes from us tax and National Insurance has now to be detached and decoupled from any ideas we might have that there is an expectation that this will be returned in some way, like universal healthcare and benefits to those in need.
The function of the state will become simply the tax collection arm of big business, into whose coffers it will simply empty what it has extracted from us.
Er, that's it...
Naturally, there will be no suggestion that once we have to pay private companies for all this, we should pay less tax and NI.
Obviously, now that companies cannot simply pillage natural resources to make money and the whole consumer business is coming unstuck, the best way to make a dodgy fortune - er, generate wealth - is simply to get governments to steal money for you.
Welcome to the global protection racket.
Spike - I worked with a bloke some years ago, who would smoke when going out for a drink etc but happily not smoke at other times.
I envied him at the time, but now seem to have achieved the same happy position.
Essentially, I don't smoke. Sometimes, though, I do.
PS Sorry, that was supposed to be encouraging, not big-headed.
"That's it..you're off my list...as you know I'm not a big fan of your politics but I'd have had you around for your entertainment value, your front and out of a pure sense of scientific enquiry...namely..to see how you fared in the boozers around here.."
A dinner table for people I've yet to meet, monkeyfish.
Range is key. I can mix it with scum of the earth in swanky Mayfair and salt of the earth in Blackley.
Your muckers? They'd love me. Might be in Whitley Bay before Xmas. We could go live with the experiment.
Good Morn BB, - Not ignoring you, actually saw your 'Yes' post on WTFyTA (What The Fuck you Talking About), and another's hand hovered over the linky - only to be viciously castigated for going anywhere near it.
I had to have an early night last night, after watching the worst game of Rugby that Wales have played in years. Well done Fiji. (Thanks Shaz). Went to bed 'tired and emotional' - otherwise objects may have started moving around the room.
Some good choons last night - particularly liked BW's 'Cunt of a day'
Turm I was really really pleased to read your good news young sir. Well done my friend.
It's great that at least two UT's (you and LaRit) have recently had a stroke of good fortune on the earning a crust front.
The news form East Yorkshire is that at last the Dept for Work and Pensions have provided some papers on me mates Incapacity Benefit appeal.
A really fascinating read and insight into the minds/twisted methodology of the bastards to say the least.( more of which later for those with an interest)
I can tell you one thing if you write long complex 'pseudo educated' letters to the bastards they seem to take you seriously and pull out their best players for the attempted returned character assassination which is their defence - what you get in return is little more than psycho babble, selective professional amnesia, and pathetic arguments by faux credential (but wrapped in a sneering veneer of aggressive smears).
All intersting stuff for those that like a forensic examination/understanding of the destruction of our language.
Me mate and me will have lots to say at the tribunal and we have lots of ammo to fire before then too
BTW - anybody know much about the journalist that redminer recently flagged up as wanting contacts/insight into ESA/IB medical system?? .
Yeah, I've got two mates who smoke 4 or 5 a day (one just a couple if he doesn't go to the pub).
With me, it's either 40/50 or 0 (quite literally), so I'd best make it 0. Especially since I don't live near the Spanish border and prices have just gone up again.
Why not have a day off and try to think up something original that's more than twenty words long?
Frankly, I would love to take a day off, but haven't had one in a fortnight. Yesterday I put in 14 hours and it will be something similar today, with only about 6 hours tomorrow. And all next week.
So forgive me if my posts are not up to your standards. We don't all have copious amounts of leisure time in which to develop our stalking database.
"Characters such as his - and yes, also those that have been much more outspoken"
I hope you weren't referring to me there?
Good god no, did you miss my use of the word 'character' instead of 'creepy troll'?
Philippa nailed it when she said, your sense of perspective gave up sobbing some time back, didn't it?
the wilder's lot..... can't think of an appropriate adjective scum doesn't really encapsulate it totally.....
Italian parliamentarians are more into tax evasion, association with mafia and fraud...strange that the majority are right wing and are always talking about fighting evasion, the mafia and corruption...
the list of condemned had just gone up in italy by one... Dell'utri founder member of berlusconi's forza italia and senator has been found guilty of mafia association in the court of appeal......significant in itself but also because the links with the mafia without doubt were fundamental in the success of berlusco at the polls...sicily suddenly became right wing and "clean" business started to boom for the mafia...
Keep strong, Spike. Mind you it's been nearly 4 years now for me and I am still on the niquitins.
MsChin - Saturday mornings are made for slobbing about imo. I've still got me dressing gown on at 11am...
Deano
If you were to find someone with access to a scanner and email those DWP docs to me, I would happily take a look, even though it isn't my area of expertise, if it can help your mate.
P-Brax - liking the "scum of the earth in Mayfair" reference.
Tascia - such a shame you didn't listen to that Yes choon. You might have liked it :p
And shame about Wales - W(h)ales! Dirty great fishes are W(h)ales!! They swim in the sea, we eat them for tea, oh dirty great fishes are W(h)ales!!
Boudican, not all non-UK people only those from outside the EU. But still a very considerable sum, without which many lecturers and support staff would be looking for jobs.
But why bother with that when some on the UT seem more concerned with the ethnic purity of our educational institutions.
Interesting bit about the demise of Berlusconi on the Today Prog this morning, although I was dozing and only heard bits of it. John Humphreys laughing at the italian correspondent and going on about Berlusconi's penchant for "women of dubious character" was funny as f00k though.
He reminds me of Caligula really...
AB - I dunno how the French in general manage to appear more sophisticate and elegant than us, but they just do, somehow.
Thaum - I have reduced my response to the bare minimum now with "FOB". Anything else expends far too much valuable energy :o)
"Of the 39 students on the course, all but the five British students were from overseas and paying the full fee, which at the time was over £9,000 (GBP) a year.
I was amazed when I heard that a British university had 39 students on a master's degree course, but I learn something new every day.
So the university grossed over £300.000 (GBP) from overseas students whereas if all 39 had been from the UK the amount would have been closer to £120,000 (GBP), assuming they were all paying the subsidised rate. If they'd all been from poor families, they'd have paid little or nothing in course fees."
You're forgetting the HEFCE component (soon to be history) which effectively 'tops up' the money universities receive for EU students, bringing it closer to the amount the University receives from International Students (EU student fees + HEFCE comes to over £7000 for a student on a band B course - it will be more for students in the 'hard' sciences, where they get extra funding for lab based study etc). The real difference in the amount the university receives for an international vs an EU student is somewhat smaller than your calculation suggests (though it is still significant).
And of course, if the student is on a grant, the university still gets the money - it just comes from a different source.
50% of my masters programme is made up on international students. I don't find that problemmatic at all - it's good to have the varying voices and experiences in the course. However, I do worry about the exploitation of international students for precisely the purposes of 'topping up' that you describe. It is a real phenomenon.
Also, heard on the radio yesterday that he was paying thousands to "repair" some old statues in his official residence, which is causing a kerfuffle in the artistic restoration and antiquities community because he is making such a bloody hash of it. Still, why bother about ruining a priceless work of art that belongs to the nation, eh? If you want the arm stuck back on Venus and a willy stuck back on Mars, and you are Emperor - sorry, President, why the fuck not spend 70,000 euros on it?
Just read last night again...I was a bit 'hazy' for various reasons (largely chemical) when posting
"Your muckers? They'd love me. Might be in Whitley Bay before Xmas. We could go live with the experiment."
..if I'm around...as it happens, I'm probably going to be in Brighton around Christmas...let me know
I've just reread this little nugget though...from the Radical-Feminist-Celtic-Iberian-Jewish-Somali-Disabled-Lesbian that is Martyn...
"One of the great things about being an internationalist are the benefits, so as well as every that I know, and feel part of, I can also adopt anything I take a fancy to, as if it were also my own."
so..basically...he claims his 'internationalism' affords him such a degree of empathy with other peoples and cultures that he actually 'becomes' the person he's writing about and can 'meaningfully' state: eg "I'm Jewish" because his superior powers of identification allow him to accurately recreate the consciousness of an actual Jew...and by extension, I presume...an actual Palestinian...or an actual Afghan woman...or an actual astronaut..
So...rather than say "OK..I'm not Jewish...you've found me out...I'm a bullshitting tool"...he's invented for himself a process of cultural "transubstantiation" whereby his post actually becomes the post of another person with markedly different life experiences, cultural influences and beliefs
If I could be bothered, I'd invent a new persona, nip onto CIF and rip him to fuckin pieces over this latest-and surely his most ludicrous...if not THE most ludicrous ever-little wheeze
Then I thought...fuck it...why bother..surely Martyn can get in my head and do it for me...if he can inhabit and subsume the mental states of a one-legged Tasmanian Balloon artist, with the click of his fingers...then surely I'd be a fuckin breeze
So Martyn...imagine you're me, and on a mission to ridicule you over your admission that you just make shit up..go for it
here are a few little gems you can throw about; my gift to you: "corpulent Welsh tart"..."self-made hamster".."intellectual imposter"..."Google-Rat"..."Self-hating Celt"...oh...and "LIAR"
"Berlusconi's penchant for "women of dubious character" was funny as f00k though"
well he should be laughing at berlusco rather than the teenage girls that he pays to screw I guess..... I'm just fed up with it.....the scandals are a big distraction (as well as being disgusting) from the shit that we are really in and the politics "ad personam" that this government is brilliant at. They have done fuck all. Berlusconi has said that he won't resign to call him mad is an insult to those with mental health problems the old guy is there protecting his interests and doesn't give a shit about anyone
"he's invented for himself a process of cultural "transubstantiation" whereby his post actually becomes the post of another person with markedly different life experiences, cultural influences and beliefs"
May I just say that MIE (Lets hope he stays there), is by no means a reflection on the good people of Caerphilly, or to the populace of Wales as a whole.
I lived there for over ten years (A mile away from the Miner's Hospital). Neighbours and friends are 'salt of the earth' down there, and most welcoming to anybody new in the community, as I found out.
If the likes of that pompous, self righteous tosser were to frequent 'The Moat House', on a Friday night, my guess is he would end up squarely on his arse !
Come to Paris anytime and I'll be delighted to take you to a lovely, picturesque, traditional market (where everything costs at least twice as much as in my local market, but there you go).
* * *
The saddest thing about Berlusconi's corruption and abuse of power (I'm not that bothered about him shagging anything with a pulse, although it'd be nice if he kept his wrinkly old Viagra'd-up hands off the underage girls) is that the majority of the Italian electorate don't seem too bothered.
they are bothered, believe me, only 26% of the voting population would vote for him now if there was an election tomorrow.........and I reckon they are the types that are exactly like him.......
"May I just say that MIE (Lets hope he stays there)"
I reckon he owns a bar on the costa's and sells "full english" and in his spare time makes cash on the markets, wtf is a courtesan of capitalism? that or lives next door to the truck driver from scunthorpe in a seedy bedsit....
Suetonious on a jaded Tiberias at the end of his life, might be a place to look for descriptions of Berlusconi. Pathetic and vicious old man with a shrivelled willy.
Just been for a stroll through waddya. MEI? What can I say? What Mr Fish has already said - in trumps. His toadying is beyond parody.
Brighton when? I'm almost certainly going to be in Brittany for Christmas, but if ever I was was around, I could always pop across via Newhaven as a foot passenger. Brighton's my usual stamping ground when in England.
BB i was thinking about it but my partner is going away for 2 months and I have the dog...normally xmas is in derbyshire so if i did come it would be a quickie, but i'm thinking about it and a meet up would be a real incentive especially brighton.....
Could I thank both residents and occasional visiters to this site for the advice I've received about how to stop being banned from CiF, but suggest that you're rather missing the point.
It is The Guardian that tells us each day that Comment is free.... but facts are sacred and presents itself to the world as the UK's prime bastion of freedom of speech and democracy.
So every time those who manage CiF ban me for breaking one of it's petty rules but allow any number of foul mouthed, racists, sexist and homophobic posters to remain, as many of you regularly point out, it does itself far more damage in the eyes of those who are responsible for maintaining C. P. Scott's principle.
And while it remains possible to adopt a new identity and I have the inclination to continue to post, that's exactly what I'll do.
Of course it would help if those self-appointed censors here and on CiF didn't do their job with such enthusiasm as my belief is that the moderators really aren't that bothered with me breaking the rules, until one of you demands that they take action. Indeed it's quite clear that some of them quite appreciate my contributions. After all they do tend not to parrot what dozens of others have already said.
But I can live the inconvenience and not having my name above my posts. You know who I am most, but not all of the time and I make it easy for you. And I'll continue to remind you of you past indiscretions, as and when you least want it and always accompanied by your own words.
Not that I particularly want to respond to you, Bitey, but
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred" - doesn't mean what you think it means. It means that it is easy to comment about something and, to that extent, it is of no real value, whence "free", but facts are not to be messed with.
I think the idea is..or was...theoretically...we 'child' them...'woman' them..and then 'man' them...if there's any room left
although I think in practice we tended initially to first-class 'person' them and then enacted the above protocol
I wonder what the rule is these days?...I'm willing to suppose that the arrangements on, say, a Polish passenger liner might be very different from a Hackney council staff river-boat jaunt...by the time they'd figured out when the transgendered got precedence, the boat would be nestled on the bottom of the river in 50 feet of age-old slime.
Thank you for your kind offer sadly even at this early stage just dealing with his visual/blindness disability there are about 100+ pages in the bundle and we've only just got a toe on the ladder and there are three other substantive areas to shoot at. Still some way to go before we will accept an agreed bundle for the tribunal
That being so and the outcome not being especially critical for me mate (he can stand the loss if necessary) I won't waste your valuable time ( just yet)
A quickie that would be currently helpful though:
1. Judicial review - High Court only?? 2. What are the court fees for a Judicial Review?? 3.What's current practice on costs - each side carries their own or looser pays??
I don't want to be accused of idle flattery - but............. I don't share bitey's view of you.......you is a star.
ps I'll remember your kind offer and keep it in reserve if I may.
got go do some paper hanging for me son (why the fuck don't they teach paperhanging at school)
See Dr Feelgood's up to his old tricks...stick up head...scream abuse...duck back down then claim "I'm going shopping (duh..blah)" when his victim hits back...surefire strategy devised after years of analysis (Bayesian inference applied to social group dynamic paradigms...the fact that it bears a striking similarity to an adolescent game of "knock-and-run" is just a sign of my lack of intellectual subtlety and cognitive calcification..whatevs)
...and, incidentally, why does a guy with the appetite of a sparrow and a disdain for material possessions spent so much time down the shops?
as in ...."that cunt of a half baked jumped up pig ignorant Nurse, who conducted the alleged incapacity assessment, was plainly suffering from atrophied delusions or as a learned colleague one described it cognitive calcification"
that must be it...they had him stacking shelves but his love of 'variance' got in the way...kept putting the dog bisciuts and toilet paper in with the frozen sprouts (I'm eclectic duh...it's a trivariate comestible-attribution display)
mind you..don't expect to just turn up and buy something...you need to spend a couple of months wandering the isles to establish some credibility...then, if you make the grade..you're granted a three week "5-items-or-less" trial period
I was always very concerned with the racial purity of my educational institutions. I was particularly disappointed when my primary school ignored my exhortations to invade Poland.
"I was particularly disappointed when my primary school ignored my exhortations to invade Poland."
that's your problem Eddie...and that of all secular institutions
I went to a Catholic primary school...several as it happens...'Sisters of the Perpetual Smack in the Mouth'...we sure as fuck weren't bound by any limp-wristed elf, safety or diversity considerations...we successfully annexed Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Sanjak of Novibazar and would have moved on to a scorched-earth romp through the Urals except the bus broke down and Kenny Mulchay had forgotten his consent form.
Can't compete with you guys on primary invasions. I did once lead one on Staines and another on Box Hill, responding to Ronald Searle's excellent example. Was expelled on both occasions.
"50% of my masters programme is made up on international students. I don't find that problemmatic at all - it's good to have the varying voices and experiences in the course. However, I do worry about the exploitation of international students for precisely the purposes of 'topping up' that you describe. It is a real phenomenon. "
You highlight a serious problem within the British academic sector. Many unviesrities have now opened shiny new 'business schools' aimed solely at the international market, and often with subjects of questionable academic merit. I met a guy from Kazakhstan doing marketing or advertising or something, costing a fortune.
While you could argue it brings money in for British universites, it is unethical, especially as bitey has testified, entire extended families will pool together their entire savings to send their child to study these semi bogus qualifications which could be learned from a few textbooks from amazon and some wikipedia pages.
But I suppose it gives an accurate portrayal of our moral and ethical framework in the free market utopia.
BB and BW blimey this is getting spookey.....trafalgar was there as well....but i was there when I was 4and a half so 1970.....i remember the nit nurse was that your mum BB?
"Is there now any acceptable way to say "métissé" or "métis" in English? I find mixed-race unacceptable, since it suggests that different ethnic groups are actually different races, and I hope "crossbreed" and "half-caste" have been consigned to the dustbin of history. How about "ethnically-enriched"? No, no-one's going to have any idea what I mean."
NK
"How about.... human. We are all mixed race, pigments, freckles, hair colour, hooked or round noses etc, all the result of genetic mutations.
On a more political/social level, I have always thought that inter ethnic marriage is a sure sign of cultural harmony and integration, and it is higher in certain communities, ie Afro Carribean and white people, which is a good thing."
nice post...and a noble sentiment...race 'realism' is an insidious philosophy which genetics and DNA sequencing should have consigned to the dustbin years ago
On a cheerier note, I believe the Human Genome Project has identified genetic markers for carriers of the deadly "Chavscum Syndrome"...and I've heard scientists in Argentina are working on a neurotoxin which, when released into the atmosphere, temporarily (30-35 years or so) prevents them from going down the pub and interfering with the opining of brilliant young intellectuals.
"While you could argue it brings money in for British universites, it is unethical, especially as bitey has testified, entire extended families will pool together their entire savings to send their child to study these semi bogus qualifications which could be learned from a few textbooks from amazon and some wikipedia pages."
This distresses me a good great deal. But it's not just in relation to somewhat dodgy qualifications, it's also in relation to letting people onto courses who don't have the necessary skills and preparation in place to succeed (something I think happens across the UK). It's likely to be something that will only get worse as UK students are put off studying by the spectre of debt and universities and other education institutions turn to international students as a solution to the funding gap this leaves.
Oh Floower o'Scotland When will we see Tha like again? We fought and died for Oor wee bit hill and glen And stood against them Proud Edward's army And sent them homewards Tae think again \o/
I love being an English/Jock metisse myself - I get to choose who I feel like supporting.
Meerkatjie - you're a "Saffy" aren't you? Do you like rugby?
In other news, we went to see the Harry Potter film with the small girl today. I distinguished myself by weeping at the death scene. (In my own defence, I'm pretty sure the blokey shed a few tears too, and the small girl definitely did.) Can't remember who it was who was a bit frothy about grown ups loving Harry Potter. Oh well, sorry about that, whoever it was... )
Meerkatjie - I was just this minute talking about going to see it with Mr BB this evening, but we have both decided it is too cold out and we can't be arsed.
Jennifer and BB - it's actually very good. I didn't much care for the last one, it was a bit diffuse. This was much, much better. The characterisation of the Malfoys has subtled up a bit, and it was a pretty constant stream of action. It even had a few racy bits (I'm quite sure Ginny did not present a naked back to Potter in the book!). Ok, not really racy, but you know, beggars and all that....
Dogs, Thaumaturge: Yeah, you'd be amazed at the heat absorbing powers of a pair of determined jack russels. Plus Sophie's not a baby anymore - I just don't seem to have any photos of her now. She's about 7 months old now, so quite a bit bigger.
MF. I have consistently argued against the denigration of a group of people by calling them all 'chavs' since the term started to come into common parlance (I believe 2004). Yes, I used it on here, wrongly, and perhaps a bit judgmentally, but anyone who has known me in real life has known that I have consistently opposed such labelling of people.
Merkatije The university sector is overbloated and their will be funding gaps. Let them lose some money, and there will be pruning. The growth of universities has been a great con. Here's something I picked up from one of Cif's higher education threads. http://www.the-vibe.co.uk/2010/11/15/student-protestors-must-lose-consumer-mindset/
"One of the greatest dodges British business ever pulled and, thus, one of the greatest burdens ever placed on the higher education sector, was when they persuaded government to allow them to transfer the cost of training and education from employer to prospective employee. Universities and colleges then became the places to facilitate this training. This didn’t happen only in the private sector; the practical element of my undergraduate degree was a cut down version of what was called BBC Elstree training which they externalised to Leeds University and received a nice contract fee to supply the staff to train us to use the equipment.
The net results of that dodge were that businesses externalised huge areas of cost; Tony Blair’s vision of a 50% degree educated society became an achievable feat; universities had to design new degree courses to shoulder this training burden on the promise of greater revenues from tuition fees, whilst the students were told to shoulder the ever-increasing burden of the cost of their own training with no guarantees of employment at the end.
Returning to the consumer angle, if I were forced to buy a product that took me three years to put together myself and even then I had no guarantees it would work and no chance of getting my money back, you’re damn right I’d feel like smashing a few windows at the place that sold me it."
Meerkatjie like jack russells they have a lot of potential to break into the world of showbiz
BB I loved trafalgar despite be shoved in there at 4 and a bloody half as an experiment of early age education.... they still had the anson shelters there in the 70s we all thought there were dead germans inside.....bloody childhood trauma......
You'd be amazed at how big a pair of Jackies can be when they want to get in your way of the fire. Cept they have this inbuilt ability to let you through if you sole intention is to add to the fire. Once done they get big again!
RE overseas students - I see a lot of them in my line of work. Fortunately the government have taken their oversight duties more seriously over the past couple of years, but the numbers of youngsters who have spent all their money to come over here only to find that the college that was on all the right "government approved" list was nothing but a sham, with no viable qualification at the end of it... and then to be told by the UKBA that because it isn't a bona fide education institute - even though it was on their approved list at the time - they haven't made proper progress in their studies and have to go home again... it used to a complete nightmare for them.
Fortunately there are a good few immigration judges who can actually tell shit from shinola and, if they felt in their gut that the student was genuine and had been ripped off (as opposed to trying it on) they would find a way of granting their appeals.
These days the system is much better than it was, although the gubbmint still get it wrong in far too many cases.
thauma 40kgs? mine's 35kg and when he don't wanna moved nobody on earth can move him.......JRs piece of piss just get a fishing net and throw it over em fast buggers........
I don't really agree - I don't think it's bloated or a con. I do think that degrees in many places are a bit archaic, and that the system needs a bit of an overhaul. I think better use could I also think that the practice components need to be much more carefully thought through and better integrated into the education processes itself.
Thauma, I've always had German Shepherds till now, so yeah, I know what you mean. But you can't beat jack russels for sheer determination. They put the dog in dogged.
Fair enough..labelling is a thorny issue...although without some degree of labelling we all become an homogeneous mass when we know instinctively that degrees of difference and separation are a concrete reality...we seem to have moved from a schema in which laudable attempts to dispel notions of cultural or moral superiority have led to a blinkered state of wishful thinking in which obvious differences are studiously ignored in the name of...strangely-or rather perversely- enough...'celebrating diversity'.
CIF is perhaps the modern day spiritual home of such thinking (in this country at least...I'm sure most US Cultural Studies or Humanities departments are in a different league.) I mean, personally, there are times when I deplore the anti-intellectual, hedonistic and celeb-obsessive nature of some working class people as much as you...I'd just never call them chavs or dispute their right to make jokes in pubs or shout whatever they like across the street...that kinda censorious bollocks is not on...it's a product of bourgeois guilt and condescension...they want the working class to conform to some idealised misty-eyed, nostalgic Orwellian ideal.
as a for instance (obviously it will include a none too subtle dig at an intellectual 'mentor' of yours but..fuck it..I can't resist...and the example is valid none the less)...would you consider the label 'mendacious fantasist' valid when applied to somebody who claims a fictitious cultural heritage purely to gain some degree of 'authority' in an argument which is slipping away from him?...(slipping in this sense is a euphemism for sinking like a stone).
Certianly it is not all a con Meerkatjie, there are many subjects that need to be in the confiens of academia and studying something 'for it's own sake' is certainly understandable.
However what I have seen is how many jobs are now ring fenced for graduates and that don't clearly require them. It seems to be like it is a symbiotic relationship, the employers and the universities have ganged up to make .
Had I been the age I was now 40, 30 or 20 years ago, people like me could have expected to said into almost any career and expect a chance to work and get training on the job. Now today generation are shafted.
Mobility has vastly decreased- universities are pretty Thatcherite these days.
Jesus that disappeared quickly, has he got some kind of hot line.
I was reading an article on Cif Belief the other day and Martyn did one of his ironic posts (I think it was the Tony Blair thread) he was appealing for calm or something, who knows what he is actually getting at most of the time and one of the religious bods agreed most whole heartedly.
The religious bloke was told that Martyn was being sarky and replied that he had assumed that since Martyn was a moderator he was simply trying to get the thread back on track.
Makes me laugh how fast they hit the abuse button, and one of their cronies deletes. The irony considering the personal abuse and ad homs that they come up with, but they react in horror if any dares respond in kind.
strange that the majority of posts deleted are challenging mediocre in egham--- sad for sure he reports them as personal abuse.....strange his stay even when they quote the "offending posts"
Do you know - speaking of films - I think I must have seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind at least a dozen times in my life (though not recently), and here I am sitting watching it again and it still gives me goosebumps.
"strange that the majority of posts deleted are challenging mediocre in egham--- sad for sure he reports them as personal abuse.....strange his stay even when they quote the "offending posts""
I thought that they all just 'scrolled on by'... ?
Mind you, I didn't report pen's rants about me the other day, and they disappeared pretty sharpish. I'm not sure it's always the person on the receiving end of the abuse that hits the report button.
Still twisting everything Bitey? Surely there are some real misogynists you can bait somewhere else?
Montana can I have my Darwin fish back please? Or you could have at least cleaned the car when you nicked it, the clean patch where it was shows up how dirty the rest of the car is! ;-)
Yes, I used it on here, wrongly, and perhaps a bit judgmentally, but anyone who has known me in real life has known that I have consistently opposed such labelling of people.
MF was kind in not pointing out the bullshittery of this statement. If someone were consistently opposed to using such labels, they would never use such labels in their own comments -- and they wouldn't even need to think about it.
If someone truly believes that a word is always unacceptable, it simply isn't part of their conscious vocabulary. For example, my mother never has to censor herself from saying 'fuck' or any form of it, because that word is simply unacceptable to her.
I never have to censor myself from using words like 'nigger' or 'fag' because, to me, those words are simply unacceptable. Frankly, I'm sitting here squishing right now at the thought of posting this comment with those words fully typed out. I'm funny that way -- I have no problem with 'fuck' -- as you know, I use it all the time. But words that have behind them hatred for an entire group of people, especially for characteristics over which individuals have no control, make me really uncomfortable.
So, you used the word 'chav' because, on some level at least, that is what you think of them. Good on you for recognising that it is wrong to label people that way, but don't try to claim that you "have consistently opposed such labelling of people", because if that were true, you'd have never used the term in the first place.
I liked your comment on moving council tenants on in Waddya, well like probably is the wrong word but you know what I mean, the changes to social housing contracts, not to mention housing benefits are so worrying, I know a few people who are going to be affected and they are really scared.
I think that I am going to be lucky enough to be unaffected for the time being but since I think that the things they are announcing at the moment are only the start, I am not complacent.
You just can't take security of shelter away from people, it is evil.
I sometimes wonder if they are trying to force some kind of societal breakdown, if you pile fear on people until they can't think straight that fear will, at some point, turn to anger.
Maybe they think that if people are scrabbling every hour of the day to survive they won't have the energy or inclination to fight back but the one good thing about having nothing to lose is that you have got nothing to fucking lose.
I'm afraid you'll have to look for your Darwin fish in Northants. Although, I would dearly love to have one on my car, I must say. I'd have the only one in town, a small voice of sanity in a sea of the non-Darwin ones that grace about 80% of the cars in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
hevers, yes, it was a good UT jam. You could throw in tunes any time you know. I think most of us are willing to hear different tastes and genres, or just your own preferences.
I've thrown a couple in before now, when peeps have been posting soul and funk and stuff, as am quite partial to a bit of that.
I'm not sufficiently up on the Blues though, so especially like hearing some of that and last night was especially cool from my perspective in that regard.
@Charles
However what I have seen is how many jobs are now ring fenced for graduates and that don't clearly require them. It seems to be like it is a symbiotic relationship, the employers and the universities have ganged up to make .
Yes, to some extent something we have to thank tuition fees for, as once students start having to pay, they may want something more vocational. So colleges offer something more practical which in turn means employers don't have to do it themselves.
And then there's the dilution that resulted from Thatch's upping student numbers without a concomitant increase in funding to match. HE institutions seeing numbers doubling or trebling in short order.
I think the policy is to build the lives of the sick, the elderly and unemployed people on such shaky foundations that they will cling to anything for support - even the 'leaders' who threaten their wellbeing - even their existence.
"I won't be answering soon, I've gotta go out.... right now."
Wise move...you don't have to answer...it was a bit of a 'hospital pass' I suppose...although...you did ask..
"Who is this mendacious fantasist that is a 'mentor' of mine?"
...to which I would have replied: "Why does the identity matter...is your answer dependent upon it?"
As it happens, it was Martyn, who, it seems, once claimed to be Jewish...for..erm..'effect'...then last weekend he was a 'salt of the valleys' working-class Celt...before going on to point out the 'benefits' of a pan-Celtic revival...no..really..he did. He explained his protean cultural heritage thus:
"One of the great things about being an internationalist are the benefits, so as well as every that I know, and feel part of, I can also adopt anything I take a fancy to, as if it were also my own."
...seems he 'took a fancy to' Judaism once...temporarily...makes me wonder what else he may have taken a fancy to over the years...or maybe his whole present 'persona' is one he took a fancy to in a magazine..or saw in a film...or just kinda dreamt up....it's not as though his 'explanation' precludes this.
By all means ignore this Napoleon..but it's hard to argue against 'mendacious fantasist' as an accurate description, no?
I'll let him know you're disappointed if you like.
I can't help with the HAGLYS but LIFF is defined by Doug Adams and John Lloyd in "The Meaning of Liff" as:
A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words 'This book will change your life.'
BTW - anybody know much about the journalist that redminer recently flagged up as wanting contacts/insight into ESA/IB medical system??
I refer you to a comment of Monkeyfish’s on this subject on 25 October 12.44
That journalist, Amelia Gentleman, is an award-winning social-issues journalist, who is married to the parachuted-into-Orpington Tory MP Jo Johnson, younger brother of the Boris Johnson; and this caring couple reside in Cambden. On 2007 she was named best foreign journalist for India as a result of being a New Delhi correspondent for the Observer and the International Herald Tribunal, where she made a good wage from poverty issues.
I’m not acquainted with the lady, so I cannot comment upon her character; but find myself overwhelmed with a natural suspicion of the motives of anyone whose everyday life is so entwined with Tory-dom, and who is making money by picking up on the serious social issues now more likely to become even more serious because of --- quite.
The piece she produced recently about the hopelessness of an unemployed blackspot in Middlesborough carefully sought out just the type of families which a right-wing paper likes to display to public view to show how undeserving they are, only without quite saying so (because this is a liberal paper) - leaving me wondering what was its motive.
After all, there are quite a few people here, and on cif btl, who already do the ‘job’ of reporting social issues rather better, due to actually knowing what they’re talking about. That is, not being someone on the outside looking in and trying to make sense of something alien to their own-life experience, and who don’t have the purpose of making personal profit from it.
I possess a very good example of a fraudulent (for that’s what they are really) Atos medical report, which had a very quick success at appeal, as it was so much humbug. It even had statements that directly contradicted one another! Although only after half a year of much distress and financial difficulties for the person involved. The written defence was concluded like this: These conditions cannot be changed by words. (That is, if someone can’t do it, they still can’t do it, however much anyone else invents statements that they can do it.)
But I won’t be sending it to the Guardian (it’s a confidential matter anyway) - a paper which so much cosied up to characters like James Purnell, and would rather support him and delete the comments of those pointing out the damage he had helped orchestrate – a paper which kept on spouting forth articles about how this was going to give more opportunities to the disabled long after it had been pointed out to them in many ways by many people that was happening was going in exactly the opposite direction.
The Guarn has a weird pretend-to-themselves socialism which I can’t quite follow – wonder why they bother really.
After which, there’s the problem that people are scared, and if someone has got through the appeal process, they’re not going to risk having anyone looking their way too closely thereafter. The villifiction that’s been whipped up means that mostly someone in that situation doesn’t tell anyone new – definitely nobody sensible would send it to a national paper unless they were very sure indeed, or they’re rather niave.
That’s why the publicised cases are often persons who are somewhat deficient, and so it tends not to help; and it’s why the papers find it hard to find good example cases, even though there are so many out there. Would you want your imperfect domestic situations and/or Incapacity (to be denigrated) splashed all over the national media?
It is that situation of fearfulness, amounting to a permission-to-bully, that Tory-dom has been encouraging through a prolonged right-wing propaganda smeer campaign; and Ms Gentleman is closely involved with a Tory MP and therefore those circles; from which anyone can form whatever opinion they feel appropriate.
Spike - the Meaning of Liff ? Look up 'Kettering' ...
Back later, watching series 3 of The Wire. On this matter, (among many others) Charlie Brooker is always absolutely right on the money - flipping perfect telly !
Leni Oh, I don't know - maybe right after his third hit on the beer bong and just before he sticks some Grateful Dead on and cracks one out I guess..
I wonder if his Vatican advisors ever look at CiF ? Or here even ?? Imagine that:
"Look atthem Kasper!! Iss like a thirda world country!" "Worsa than Sicily" "They a lot of communists; but at least they're smarta than Andrew Brown" "Si. That isn't much. That boysa proper fork in the eye doofus, neary as bad as that joker Rowan Atkinson" "Williams?" "Heh heh. Si. Him also. Wanna some mora wine ?"
Sorry suddenly and dullily to cut through the Pope's prostitutes' condoms (were they waiting all of this time for his opinion about it?), but I'm just on my way out - not there's any connection
I should add to the above (should it manage to appear) that I'm all for the Guarn, or anyone, better making public the carrying-ons of Atos (and suchlike), and at one time I added my 'voice' to the urgings.
But even when they do do something along those lines, it's never in a hit-you-in-the-face way - but like they're only going through the motions somehow, and don't mind if it's not too noticable.
They are welcome to prove this to be wrong as soon and as much as they like.
It is a shame that they feel that they always have to be able to produce individual cases - for surely it can be effectively illustrated from the numbers of appeals that succeed and why they succeed, and soforth?
But then that would take some real investigative journalism; and - like, this is only a - big national newspaper.
Jen
You just can't take security of shelter away from people, it is evil.
Yes, they can, of course, without it seeming to bother them - they're doing it already.
Removing the benefits of someone on IB (or refusing ESA), if they were reliant on that for their accomodation, did/does (will do) that effectively.
Saying that they can take away your home at any time by not covering the rent, or as it's social housing; because you're not... sufficiently successful/capable - presumably that's what it's usually all about - is going to do that effectively.
Then everyone will be so scared that they will become successful and wealthy.
They really have not the faintest, because when someone is scared, they function less well not better.
It's now all about taking away - nothing about giving better job chances or support - or any jobs at all. It's now all the individual's fault - whatever the government/big business/banksters have been doing to cause it.
Yes, it is evil.
Now that would be a good subject for the Pope to pontificate upon - instead of forever obsessing about...
I struggle to understand why people have doubts about the universality of human rights. Human rights either exist for everybody or none have any rights at all.
Bitters
Were the pope to read the UT he would bring back the inquisition.
Hello everyone; @Leni: I am indeed enjoying the spin offs from my sister's luxury lifestyle (my word, how the "other half" live!)
Just finished off a plate of confit de canard with green beans and sauted potatoes all washed down with a thirteen year old bottle of Chateau Neuf Du Pape.
This afternoon we went for a walk in Burnham Beeches after a rendezvous at the house of an old acquaintance who is now one of the "big wigs" at Diageo.
We had to phone ahead of our arrival so that they could open the gates and my jaw dropped when I realised his garage was bigger than my house!
Top bloke though (from Yorkshire stock in Castleford) and never forgot where he came from.
Interesting conversation in the pub over lunch about the banking scam.
Odd how our life choices turn out. Someone once told me I wasted my intelligence when I chose to work with and on behalf of people.
Funnily enough it brought me into contact with the super rich - there are actually a lot of them about.
I think they tolerated me cos they thought I was 'interesting'.
They too were interesting - some genuinely nice people, others had the fascination of something loathsome in a specimen bottle.
I remember a Kuwaiti prince who had an orange Mercedes and the morals of - well of whatever is the most amoral, conceited and viscious personality ever.
I do try, and personally I am fine, getting on with life and not feeling too bad.
I look around though and I speak to my friend who is going to have to move if the 30% rule comes in.
I talk to another friend who isn't 35 for a long time and is living in fear of losing his flat (that he has lived in for nearly 10 years, it is his home) and I get so angry and frustrated.
I honestly do feel more angry than sad a lot of the time but what the hell are you supposed to do.
"When is the pope going to use his infallibility to declare peace and love across the world?"
don't ever talk about Papal infallibility...even mentioning it by name gives it substance..here's why..
Papal infallibility on dogmatic assertions can never be repealed...'officially' maybe..but not to the satisfaction of any half-awake logician
If an infallible pope declares himself fallible then he's opening the possibility that he's wrong which would mean he might well be infallible after all...we have a circular..."the statement on the opposite wall is incorrect" situation.
If...surprisingly..the Pope was fallible all along...when he decides he's no longer infallible he could by definition well be wrong..and might have been infallible all the time, unknown to himself...and we're down to the Barber Paradox..."The village where the barber only shaves the men who don't shave themselves. Who shaves the barber?"
either assumption leads to a contradiction...therefore the premise or premises are mistaken...the premise was...'the Pope is infallible in matters of dogma'. This premise itself is an article of Dogma...don't take my word..I give you “Lumen Gentium”...courtesy of the second Vatican Council...
"This Sacred Council, following closely in the footsteps of the First Vatican Council, with that Council teaches and declares that Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father;(136) and He willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. And in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion. And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the meaning and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible magisterium, this Sacred Council again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful."
so...if when he says he's infallible, he's infallible in doing so..since an infallible article of dogma declares him to be infallible...then IPSO FUCKIN FACTO he's infallible. So...if or when he does declare himself fallible, as I demonstrated above he's asserting a contradiction...and he must be wrong...never mind “how”..he just is..so he’s not fallible..ie..he’s absolutely infallible
btw..I'm also infallible...so when I say..."fuck the rest of you"..it's just me and Bendict..there's no point arguing since by definition I'm unable to be wrong..not saying I like the company in the infallible community.. but...you've all gotta do what I say..so that some consolation.
Worship Iceberg Lettuce and Goats and the word ‘wuvfewuv’...NOW
..or...accept that the word infallible has no meaning...it is a pseudo-word...like I say..not that I'm a fan of censorship but accepting it as a meaningful concept..ie one which we can make statements about will always lead to contradictory statements...infallibility is a logical impossibility...as I suppose is the notion that a condoner of organised paedophilia can anyhow be a force for good in the world.
'Dave' is another such example..fuckin pseudo to the core
you don't know what I just smoked...nor do I really...but it has extreme pedantry as a primary side effect...I know this will embarrass me tomorrow...another day etc
i would like to think that hundreds will gather to stop evictions - just make it impossible to reach the house or flat. While I don't condone violence large groups of people refusing to be moved can be effective, especially if it is repeated again and again.
Violent resistance leads to the strengthening of police powers and an escalation of violence.
You have to be pretty lucky to catch Giyus ( or his 'cousin' ) these days, but I thought this was very accurate, and bloody hell there's nothing 'normally' moddable there ---
State0fPhobophilia 20 November 2010 9:07PM
Old World Certainties RIP
''They created a war without borders against an invisible enemy and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a 'troofer'
Then they spent our taxes on bail-outs of the super-trusts and I didn't speak up because my bank went bust too
Then they came for the benefit holders to reassure the bond holders and I didn't speak up because I wasn't on benefits
Then they came for the pensions to reassure the sovereign debt creditors and I didn't speak up because I wasn't retired
Then they created inflation to destroy sovereign debt and I didn't speak out because of the need to fight the 'depression'
The they launches a currency war and I didn't speak out because we realized the old world chaos required new world order
Then they irradiated people in airports and injected children with 'vaccines' to keep them safe and I didn't speak out because of the fear of the alternative
The they told us to respect and adore them and I did speak out ...............but was banned......''
posed the cynic
NN all, sensible living , I'm giving up fags too .
why do infallible statements have to be nonsensical?
Admitting that infallibility allows you to affirm anything as an eternal and absolute truth means that we must forever grapple with the truth or otherwise of the unprovable.
Your infallibility, of course, is unquestioned as is proven by the responses you habitually garner to your pronouncements on cif and by the constancy of your protean self.
"why do infallible statements have to be nonsensical?"
because the notion of infallibility is nonsensical
go on...make an infallible statement on some area of ethics or..er...morality...which is ostensibly the area covered by Catholic Doctrine...Hume's is-ought/naturalistic fallacy...and bourgeois liberal relativistic orthodoxy might suggest you're pushing your luck but I've got a few...in fact, I've got a skinful...how about "needlessly inflicting suffering on another human being for one's own satisfaction is never allowable"?
...then sit back in wonder as people claim their 'satisfaction' consists in fulfilling religious ordnances or cultural traditions to the best of their ability...no matter what depravities those ordnances might contain...watch the 'righteous relativists turn up and call your statement value-laden, culturally imperialist or insufficiently nuanced...please...give it a try.
" means that we must forever grapple with the truth or otherwise of the unprovable."
...exactly..notice your sentence begins "Admitting that infallibility allows you to affirm anything as an eternal and absolute truth.."...I don't..and nor should you..I believe the word to be completely meaningless...let alone allow it its traditional definition...and it's far from unique in that respect..I don't ascribe it anything..if it had any consistent meaning it wouldn't always lead to either contradictions or unfounded statements
...the problem is we seem unable to make definitive statements on any particular incident of 'wrongness' because there's an assumption that the ability to be absolutely right in one particular implies an ability to be absolutely right in general...it doesn't...saying some things are wrong implies nothing more than what it says...'some things are wrong'...why should this imply a generalised facility to always identify wrongness.
"...and by the constancy of your protean self."
...actually...I get this a lot..it's the chemicals...they affect my typing...the sentiment remains pretty much constant
Do you see any downsides to exporting our knowledge overseas to nations that can undercut us and stymie attempts to reduce our structural unemployment?
None whatsoever for us, indeed I think it's our duty. How else will developing countries develop? Or should they stay forever undeveloped?
One of the things we're very good at is teaching and were we to do this more effectively, we could employ thousands more people in education instead of sacking those who currently work there.
What's more if you travel the world you'll come to understand that what its people really admire us for is the way, along with the USA, Australia and New Zealand and to a small extent Ireland, we educate our youth and if they can afford it, theirs.
Yes of course there are downsides for others, but they involve people working 70-80 hours for 6-7 days a week so they can afford to send their children to our universities, and while they're here, convincing them that we have a better way of living than they have in whatever country they happen to come from. Currently we're quite good at the former, but lousy at the latter.
Apologies for the lack of an image. Blogger isn't wanting to let me add one right now, for some reason. And I had such a lovely one picked out.
ReplyDeleteAnd: Congratulations, Turm! Really great news.
Thanks for the Tea Party US. Now all the 'radicals' from Bosnia right through to the Teamsters can unite in their hatred of otherness.
ReplyDeleteCheers.
Tune !
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA20Z_6H4v4
Woohoo!
ReplyDeleteInvisible meerkats eating invisible Jaffa Cakes!
Er...
ReplyDelete...which have just been eaten by a stompy dyslexic fish called Dawkins.
Okay, well apparently Blogger just isn't liking Opera right now. Or Opera isn't liking Blogger. Worked just fine in Chrome.
ReplyDeleteMy lovely image will wait until tomorrow, as this one was by request.
Also, if Mr. SelfmadeMan would contact me, I could add him to the list of authors so that his weekly column could appear as a separate thread. Or, he could e-mail me the column and I'll put it up for him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaF_-tirFeU&feature=related
ReplyDeleteyeh !
Just a couple of small observations concerning WADDYA.
ReplyDelete1. It would seem that Hanman wants to run a tight ship - for which read: banning used far more as a method of control. Suggest using proxy server for sign-up at least, for anyone who is not supposed to be there and wants to dodge the waggy finger.
2. MarvinInNeverland said that SMM was not funny and had a general swipe at people here. He also gave an example of what he thought was funny. EnglishHelmet thinks he is protecting and preserving the chastity and honour of a maiden - in the form of GMG, personified by JezzaBella - for whom he is besotted with unrequited love.
You are dealing with people from utterly different mental planets.
It is a complete waste of time thinking that they will understand a word which is said.
Night, Bitterweed.
ReplyDeleteMorning, Montana.
ReplyDeleteLeni, you asked:
ReplyDelete<at some point I would be interested in your thoughts on the raising of tuition fees for British students - particularly in light of remarks which suggested that overseas student fees had in some way been subsidising home grown students.
Well I think education in the UK should be free and paid for from general taxation. I've written to successive Prime Ministers, via my MP to say I'm prepared to pay more income tax to fund this.
Or at very least let me speak about England in case the minority nationalities feel I shouldn't comment on their national affairs.
And yes the fees of overseas students have been subsidising UK students and will continue to do so, and I'll give you an example.
One of my students in 2008 got a place on a world class computing related course at a middle ranked university in the South of England. The university was fine by international standards, but the particular course was one of the best in the world.
Of the 39 students on the course, all but the five British students were from overseas and paying the full fee, which at the time was over £9,000 (GBP) a year.
I was amazed when I heard that a British university had 39 students on a master's degree course, but I learn something new every day.
So the university grossed over £300.000 (GBP) from overseas students whereas if all 39 had been from the UK the amount would have been closer to £120,000 (GBP), assuming they were all paying the subsidised rate. If they'd all been from poor families, they'd have paid little or nothing in course fees.
In fact given the range of required entry qualifications which are rather too detiailed for me to post here, I think it's doubtful that there would have been 39 British students who'd have qualified for the course.
My student, having pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, is now back in his home town in China, has bought a property close to where his parents live, who saved all their married lives to pay for his education, and following a spell with a small software house, is teaching at a Chinese university. He looks back at the mundane working life he had before he and his mother happened to meet me, as an unfortunate blip in his career progression. I point out to him that without that "mundane working life", which I and most people posting here would consider a worthy and worthwhile career, he would never have been able to afford the evening classes where over a period of five years he acquired the qualifications he needed to get onto to a world class British master's degree course, and he smiles sagely and nods in agreement.
And good morning Montana, you are a beacon of free speech in a sea of censorship.
Morning everyone, and must say it was nice to wake up to all that music posted last night to check out.
ReplyDeleteAtomboy said...
1. It would seem that Hanman wants to run a tight ship - for which read: banning used far more as a method of control.
Might also be an attempt to cut moderation costs...
@Bitey
Do you see any downsides to exporting our knowledge overseas to nations that can undercut us and stymie attempts to reduce our structural unemployment?
And for anyone who missed my post on CiF before it was removed by the mods:
ReplyDeleteBeautifulBurnout / PeripheralVisionary
Call me a tinfoil hatter if you like (and I wish I could remember KT's
neoligism for it), but does anyone else believe this pile of steaming crap?
According to your linked report, Mark Stephens, Julian Assange's London based lawyer stated:
"Both women have declared they had consensual sexual relations with our client and that they continued to instigate friendly contact well
after the alleged incidents. Only after the women became aware of each other's relationship with Mr Assange did they make their allegations against him.
"Media reports had reported the basis for the rape charge "purely seems to constitute a post-facto dispute over consensual, but unprotected
sex days after the event," he said.
So certainly not "a steaming pile of crap" by any stretch of the imagination.
This might be a 'sting' perpetrated by the CIA with the women prepared to perjure themselves, assuming that crime exists in Sweden. In which
case it would be of major interest to all who have followed the story to date.
Or it could it be that each woman only consented to sex with Assange on the condition that he wasn't having sex with another women in Sweden and elsewhere. This is a quite normal understanding that couples come to before engaging in sex. But having discovered that
wasn't the truth and they'd been lied to, they are now seeking a legal redress in the Swedish courts.
I am reminded of the recent case where an Israeli women claimed she was raped because her consent to sex was obtained through lies which
resulted in her rapist being jailed. I don't know what the law is in Sweden, my recent knowledge of the country coming from the pen of the late great Stieg Larsson's trilogy, but it appears that Assange's lawyers are treating this case very seriously.
As for Mr Assange practising casual unprotected sex, that alone, for a man in his position may not deserve an international arrest warrant, but
it does deserve international censure.
Would those UT posters who still sleep around or have children who might, like to comment on whether having unprotected sex should be a private matter between them and the person they might infect or who might infect them?
Or should we take a more proactive approach to warning young people about the dangers of this particularly nasty aspect of 21st century life which many of their parents chose to ignore in the previous one?
Hi All--Still up, not for long.
ReplyDeletehevers, yes, it was a good UT jam. You could throw in tunes any time you know. I think most of us are willing to hear different tastes and genres, or just your own preferences.
Bitey--Didn't know the foreign students fees accounted for that much. A sizable sum if you include all non UK people.
BTW Bitey, your use of the word 'bootstraps' is in a much more charitable context today.
Off to bed. Later All.
I like the stompy fish.
ReplyDeleteit looks stubborn.
It's Day 2 in the Ex Smoker house.
ReplyDeleteSpike is at the computer in the living room drinking his second cup of PG Tips. Occasionally, his left hand reaches out for the cigarettes that haven't been there since Wednesday. If a hand could look disappointed, then his would as it moves back to the keyboard.
Since Thursday, of course. I don't even know which day it is now.
ReplyDeleteMassive congratulations to Turminder, no need to show off by telling us you are putting the heating on though. ;)
ReplyDeleteMorning all
ReplyDeleteFOB
Work to do again today. Sigh. And something really complicated, too, that is going to take a fair bit of research.
I think I might skive til lunchtime though and start on it this afternoon instead.
Looks like I went to bed before the party got going last night. :o)
If a hand could look disappointed...
ReplyDeleteHang in there, Spike!
G'day!
ReplyDeleteGrey, overcast, miserable-looking day here in Yorkshire. Skiving til lunchtime seems very appealing.
@BB
ReplyDeleteNo work at all today. Well, I really ought to go through the huge tottering pile of papers on my dining table and see if there's anything that needs to be dealt with urgently. And trim and gain-adjust the radio progs I've recorded for my mp3 player before I watch United-Wigan this afternoon.
Anway, I'm still in my comfort zone of enjoying having no work but not yet being worried that no work's coming in since it's only been three or four days.
@Phil
ReplyDeleteCheers! I've done it twice before, so no problem. Just an unpleasant chore to go through.
Morning MsC!
We have sun and chill temperatures in Paris, so I'll go for a walk down by the Seine in a bit, after the market.
Spike
ReplyDeleteI'm having problems with my hand as well this morning, trying to stop myself posting "Quack!" over on Waddya.
btw, a Paris market & a walk by the Seine sounds better than a trip to Morrisons.
The walk by the Seine's OK, but the market's a working-class suburban one, so there's no Juliette Binoches fluttering their eyelashes at customers as they present a selection of picturesque cheeses on straw-covered stands.
ReplyDeleteThe traders are more North African guys or extended families of travellers screaming, "Bananas! Get your bananas here! Only one euro a kilo!" and trying to railroad you into taking three kilos of clementines when you only wanted two.
On the Guardian cartoon thread today regarding Lord Young of Gaffeham:
ReplyDeleteJSMillitant
20 November 2010 12:36AM
"So, you know, I have a feeling and a hope that when this goes through, people will wonder what all the fuss was about. Of course, there will be people who complain, but these are people who think they have a right for the state to support them."
Lord Young is perfectly correct. Only the most egregious sponger could complain about public spending being cut back to the level it was in ... 2005!
Interesting that what we seem to be seeing is the meme being planted that we have no right to expect anything from the state.
Obviously, the fact that the state takes from us tax and National Insurance has now to be detached and decoupled from any ideas we might have that there is an expectation that this will be returned in some way, like universal healthcare and benefits to those in need.
The function of the state will become simply the tax collection arm of big business, into whose coffers it will simply empty what it has extracted from us.
Er, that's it...
Naturally, there will be no suggestion that once we have to pay private companies for all this, we should pay less tax and NI.
Obviously, now that companies cannot simply pillage natural resources to make money and the whole consumer business is coming unstuck, the best way to make a dodgy fortune - er, generate wealth - is simply to get governments to steal money for you.
Welcome to the global protection racket.
Spike - I worked with a bloke some years ago, who would smoke when going out for a drink etc but happily not smoke at other times.
I envied him at the time, but now seem to have achieved the same happy position.
Essentially, I don't smoke. Sometimes, though, I do.
PS Sorry, that was supposed to be encouraging, not big-headed.
Ah, yes!
ReplyDeleteThose Paris meerkats, even the working-class suburban ones...si sophistiqué!
"That's it..you're off my list...as you know I'm not a big fan of your politics but I'd have had you around for your entertainment value, your front and out of a pure sense of scientific enquiry...namely..to see how you fared in the boozers around here.."
ReplyDeleteA dinner table for people I've yet to meet, monkeyfish.
Range is key. I can mix it with scum of the earth in swanky Mayfair and salt of the earth in Blackley.
Your muckers? They'd love me. Might be in Whitley Bay before Xmas. We could go live with the experiment.
Good Morn BB, - Not ignoring you, actually saw your 'Yes' post on WTFyTA (What The Fuck you Talking About), and another's hand hovered over the linky - only to be viciously castigated for going anywhere near it.
ReplyDeleteI had to have an early night last night, after watching the worst game of Rugby that Wales have played in years. Well done Fiji. (Thanks Shaz). Went to bed 'tired and emotional' - otherwise objects may have started moving around the room.
Some good choons last night - particularly liked BW's 'Cunt of a day'
Turm I was really really pleased to read your good news young sir. Well done my friend.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that at least two UT's (you and LaRit) have recently had a stroke of good fortune on the earning a crust front.
The news form East Yorkshire is that at last the Dept for Work and Pensions have provided some papers on me mates Incapacity Benefit appeal.
A really fascinating read and insight into the minds/twisted methodology of the bastards to say the least.( more of which later for those with an interest)
I can tell you one thing if you write long complex 'pseudo educated' letters to the bastards they seem to take you seriously and pull out their best players for the attempted returned character assassination which is their defence - what you get in return is little more than psycho babble, selective professional amnesia, and pathetic arguments by faux credential (but wrapped in a sneering veneer of aggressive smears).
All intersting stuff for those that like a forensic examination/understanding of the destruction of our language.
Me mate and me will have lots to say at the tribunal and we have lots of ammo to fire before then too
BTW - anybody know much about the journalist that redminer recently flagged up as wanting contacts/insight into ESA/IB medical system?? .
laters - busy weekend/few days ahead.
regards
@Atom
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've got two mates who smoke 4 or 5 a day (one just a couple if he doesn't go to the pub).
With me, it's either 40/50 or 0 (quite literally), so I'd best make it 0. Especially since I don't live near the Spanish border and prices have just gone up again.
Spike
ReplyDeleteSo it's more like Shepherd's Bush market then? Ah, well.
Bitey, you sad little bastard.
ReplyDeleteWhy not have a day off and try to think up something original that's more than twenty words long?
Frankly, I would love to take a day off, but haven't had one in a fortnight. Yesterday I put in 14 hours and it will be something similar today, with only about 6 hours tomorrow. And all next week.
So forgive me if my posts are not up to your standards. We don't all have copious amounts of leisure time in which to develop our stalking database.
"Characters such as his - and yes, also those that have been much more outspoken"
I hope you weren't referring to me there?
Good god no, did you miss my use of the word 'character' instead of 'creepy troll'?
Philippa nailed it when she said, your sense of perspective gave up sobbing some time back, didn't it?
morning all
ReplyDeleteduke
the wilder's lot..... can't think of an appropriate adjective scum doesn't really encapsulate it totally.....
Italian parliamentarians are more into tax evasion, association with mafia and fraud...strange that the majority are right wing and are always talking about fighting evasion, the mafia and corruption...
the list of condemned had just gone up in italy by one... Dell'utri founder member of berlusconi's forza italia and senator has been found guilty of mafia association in the court of appeal......significant in itself but also because the links with the mafia without doubt were fundamental in the success of berlusco at the polls...sicily suddenly became right wing and "clean" business started to boom for the mafia...
Ahhh... French markets. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThe best I have ever been to is the covered market at Royan.. Bloody lovely.
Keep strong, Spike. Mind you it's been nearly 4 years now for me and I am still on the niquitins.
MsChin - Saturday mornings are made for slobbing about imo. I've still got me dressing gown on at 11am...
Deano
If you were to find someone with access to a scanner and email those DWP docs to me, I would happily take a look, even though it isn't my area of expertise, if it can help your mate.
P-Brax - liking the "scum of the earth in Mayfair" reference.
Tascia - such a shame you didn't listen to that Yes choon. You might have liked it :p
And shame about Wales - W(h)ales! Dirty great fishes are W(h)ales!! They swim in the sea, we eat them for tea, oh dirty great fishes are W(h)ales!!
:p
Boudican, not all non-UK people only those from outside the EU. But still a very considerable sum, without which many lecturers and support staff would be looking for jobs.
ReplyDeleteBut why bother with that when some on the UT seem more concerned with the ethnic purity of our educational institutions.
Gandolpho
ReplyDeleteInteresting bit about the demise of Berlusconi on the Today Prog this morning, although I was dozing and only heard bits of it. John Humphreys laughing at the italian correspondent and going on about Berlusconi's penchant for "women of dubious character" was funny as f00k though.
He reminds me of Caligula really...
AB - I dunno how the French in general manage to appear more sophisticate and elegant than us, but they just do, somehow.
Thaum - I have reduced my response to the bare minimum now with "FOB". Anything else expends far too much valuable energy :o)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteBB - I know, but I'm waiting for a job to finish running and it's like watching paint dry. ;-)
ReplyDelete"Of the 39 students on the course, all but the five British students were from overseas and paying the full fee, which at the time was over £9,000 (GBP) a year.
ReplyDeleteI was amazed when I heard that a British university had 39 students on a master's degree course, but I learn something new every day.
So the university grossed over £300.000 (GBP) from overseas students whereas if all 39 had been from the UK the amount would have been closer to £120,000 (GBP), assuming they were all paying the subsidised rate. If they'd all been from poor families, they'd have paid little or nothing in course fees."
You're forgetting the HEFCE component (soon to be history) which effectively 'tops up' the money universities receive for EU students, bringing it closer to the amount the University receives from International Students (EU student fees + HEFCE comes to over £7000 for a student on a band B course - it will be more for students in the 'hard' sciences, where they get extra funding for lab based study etc). The real difference in the amount the university receives for an international vs an EU student is somewhat smaller than your calculation suggests (though it is still significant).
And of course, if the student is on a grant, the university still gets the money - it just comes from a different source.
50% of my masters programme is made up on international students. I don't find that problemmatic at all - it's good to have the varying voices and experiences in the course. However, I do worry about the exploitation of international students for precisely the purposes of 'topping up' that you describe. It is a real phenomenon.
"He reminds me of Caligula really"...
ReplyDeleteAlso, heard on the radio yesterday that he was paying thousands to "repair" some old statues in his official residence, which is causing a kerfuffle in the artistic restoration and antiquities community because he is making such a bloody hash of it. Still, why bother about ruining a priceless work of art that belongs to the nation, eh? If you want the arm stuck back on Venus and a willy stuck back on Mars, and you are Emperor - sorry, President, why the fuck not spend 70,000 euros on it?
Just read last night again...I was a bit 'hazy' for various reasons (largely chemical) when posting
ReplyDelete"Your muckers? They'd love me. Might be in Whitley Bay before Xmas. We could go live with the experiment."
..if I'm around...as it happens, I'm probably going to be in Brighton around Christmas...let me know
I've just reread this little nugget though...from the Radical-Feminist-Celtic-Iberian-Jewish-Somali-Disabled-Lesbian that is Martyn...
"One of the great things about being an internationalist are the benefits, so as well as every that I know, and feel part of, I can also adopt anything I take a fancy to, as if it were also my own."
so..basically...he claims his 'internationalism' affords him such a degree of empathy with other peoples and cultures that he actually 'becomes' the person he's writing about and can 'meaningfully' state: eg "I'm Jewish" because his superior powers of identification allow him to accurately recreate the consciousness of an actual Jew...and by extension, I presume...an actual Palestinian...or an actual Afghan woman...or an actual astronaut..
So...rather than say "OK..I'm not Jewish...you've found me out...I'm a bullshitting tool"...he's invented for himself a process of cultural "transubstantiation" whereby his post actually becomes the post of another person with markedly different life experiences, cultural influences and beliefs
If I could be bothered, I'd invent a new persona, nip onto CIF and rip him to fuckin pieces over this latest-and surely his most ludicrous...if not THE most ludicrous ever-little wheeze
Then I thought...fuck it...why bother..surely Martyn can get in my head and do it for me...if he can inhabit and subsume the mental states of a one-legged Tasmanian Balloon artist, with the click of his fingers...then surely I'd be a fuckin breeze
So Martyn...imagine you're me, and on a mission to ridicule you over your admission that you just make shit up..go for it
here are a few little gems you can throw about; my gift to you: "corpulent Welsh tart"..."self-made hamster".."intellectual imposter"..."Google-Rat"..."Self-hating Celt"...oh...and "LIAR"
"But why bother with that when some on the UT seem more concerned with the ethnic purity of our educational institutions."
ReplyDeleteUm, you what, bth?
BB hi
ReplyDelete"Berlusconi's penchant for "women of dubious character" was funny as f00k though"
well he should be laughing at berlusco rather than the teenage girls that he pays to screw I guess..... I'm just fed up with it.....the scandals are a big distraction (as well as being disgusting) from the shit that we are really in and the politics "ad personam" that this government is brilliant at. They have done fuck all.
Berlusconi has said that he won't resign to call him mad is an insult to those with mental health problems the old guy is there protecting his interests and doesn't give a shit about anyone
MF
ReplyDelete"he's invented for himself a process of cultural "transubstantiation" whereby his post actually becomes the post of another person with markedly different life experiences, cultural influences and beliefs"
Beautifully put.
May I just say that MIE (Lets hope he stays there), is by no means a reflection on the good people of Caerphilly, or to the populace of Wales as a whole.
ReplyDeleteI lived there for over ten years (A mile away from the Miner's Hospital). Neighbours and friends are 'salt of the earth' down there, and most welcoming to anybody new in the community, as I found out.
If the likes of that pompous, self righteous tosser were to frequent 'The Moat House', on a Friday night, my guess is he would end up squarely on his arse !
@MsC and BB
ReplyDeleteCome to Paris anytime and I'll be delighted to take you to a lovely, picturesque, traditional market (where everything costs at least twice as much as in my local market, but there you go).
* * *
The saddest thing about Berlusconi's corruption and abuse of power (I'm not that bothered about him shagging anything with a pulse, although it'd be nice if he kept his wrinkly old Viagra'd-up hands off the underage girls) is that the majority of the Italian electorate don't seem too bothered.
spike
ReplyDeletethey are bothered, believe me, only 26% of the voting population would vote for him now if there was an election tomorrow.........and I reckon they are the types that are exactly like him.......
@MF
ReplyDeleteIf you're in Brighton round Christmas time, a few pints might be in order.
Yay! Just got a message that my services are not needed today after all. So I can stop feeling like I am skiving now! \o/
ReplyDeletetascia
ReplyDelete"May I just say that MIE (Lets hope he stays there)"
I reckon he owns a bar on the costa's and sells "full english" and in his spare time makes cash on the markets, wtf is a courtesan of capitalism? that or lives next door to the truck driver from scunthorpe in a seedy bedsit....
gandolpho
ReplyDeleteSuetonious on a jaded Tiberias at the end of his life, might be a place to look for descriptions of Berlusconi. Pathetic and vicious old man with a shrivelled willy.
Just been for a stroll through waddya. MEI? What can I say? What Mr Fish has already said - in trumps. His toadying is beyond parody.
PeterJ and MF
ReplyDeleteA Brighton UT meet?! Now we're cooking... Doesn't Mr Reilly of this parish come from down there too? And gandolpho, are you home for Crimbo?
I'm up for a drink...most of the time as it happens
ReplyDeleteThink I'm down between 23rd and 28th
@MF, BB
ReplyDeleteExcellent.
Brighton when? I'm almost certainly going to be in Brittany for Christmas, but if ever I was was around, I could always pop across via Newhaven as a foot passenger. Brighton's my usual stamping ground when in England.
ReplyDeleteBB
ReplyDeletei was thinking about it but my partner is going away for 2 months and I have the dog...normally xmas is in derbyshire so if i did come it would be a quickie, but i'm thinking about it and a meet up would be a real incentive especially brighton.....
Could I thank both residents and occasional visiters to this site for the advice I've received about how to stop being banned from CiF, but suggest that you're rather missing the point.
ReplyDeleteIt is The Guardian that tells us each day that Comment is free.... but facts are sacred and presents itself to the world as the UK's prime bastion of freedom of speech and democracy.
So every time those who manage CiF ban me for breaking one of it's petty rules but allow any number of foul mouthed, racists, sexist and homophobic posters to remain, as many of you regularly point out, it does itself far more damage in the eyes of those who are responsible for maintaining C. P. Scott's principle.
And while it remains possible to adopt a new identity and I have the inclination to continue to post, that's exactly what I'll do.
Of course it would help if those self-appointed censors here and on CiF didn't do their job with such enthusiasm as my belief is that the moderators really aren't that bothered with me breaking the rules, until one of you demands that they take action. Indeed it's quite clear that some of them quite appreciate my contributions. After all they do tend not to parrot what dozens of others have already said.
But I can live the inconvenience and not having my name above my posts. You know who I am most, but not all of the time and I make it easy for you. And I'll continue to remind you of you past indiscretions, as and when you least want it and always accompanied by your own words.
That's quite fair don't you think?
Excellent
ReplyDeleteI love it when a plan comes together...
Not that I particularly want to respond to you, Bitey, but
ReplyDelete"Comment is free, but facts are sacred" - doesn't mean what you think it means. It means that it is easy to comment about something and, to that extent, it is of no real value, whence "free", but facts are not to be messed with.
"Should we human the lifeboats or person them?"
ReplyDeleteI think the idea is..or was...theoretically...we 'child' them...'woman' them..and then 'man' them...if there's any room left
although I think in practice we tended initially to first-class 'person' them and then enacted the above protocol
I wonder what the rule is these days?...I'm willing to suppose that the arrangements on, say, a Polish passenger liner might be very different from a Hackney council staff river-boat jaunt...by the time they'd figured out when the transgendered got precedence, the boat would be nestled on the bottom of the river in 50 feet of age-old slime.
Back in a bit. Small person wants to nick netbook for music-making purposes.
ReplyDeleteBut I can live the inconvenience
ReplyDeleteWe can live with the 'inconvenience' of having you post here too, as your presence is so inconsequential and easy to ignore.
BB - you are a delight young miss.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind offer sadly even at this early stage just dealing with his visual/blindness disability there are about 100+ pages in the bundle and we've only just got a toe on the ladder and there are three other substantive areas to shoot at. Still some way to go before we will accept an agreed bundle for the tribunal
That being so and the outcome not being especially critical for me mate (he can stand the loss if necessary) I won't waste your valuable time ( just yet)
A quickie that would be currently helpful though:
1. Judicial review - High Court only??
2. What are the court fees for a Judicial Review??
3.What's current practice on costs - each side carries their own or looser pays??
I don't want to be accused of idle flattery - but............. I don't share bitey's view of you.......you is a star.
ps I'll remember your kind offer and keep it in reserve if I may.
got go do some paper hanging for me son (why the fuck don't they teach paperhanging at school)
xx.
...."Comment is free, but facts are sacred" - doesn't mean what you think it means....
ReplyDeleteCareful BB - readers as well as writers have rights......
See Dr Feelgood's up to his old tricks...stick up head...scream abuse...duck back down then claim "I'm going shopping (duh..blah)" when his victim hits back...surefire strategy devised after years of analysis (Bayesian inference applied to social group dynamic paradigms...the fact that it bears a striking similarity to an adolescent game of "knock-and-run" is just a sign of my lack of intellectual subtlety and cognitive calcification..whatevs)
ReplyDelete...and, incidentally, why does a guy with the appetite of a sparrow and a disdain for material possessions spent so much time down the shops?
LOL
ReplyDeleteyour posts make me feelgood MF - some are pure class
meerkat - loved the pictures.
I is a big fan of dogs. I owe my sanity (such as it is) to mine.
"why does a guy with the appetite of a sparrow and a disdain for material possessions spent so much time down the shops? "
ReplyDeleteCos he's on the tills ?
"...cognitive calcification...."
ReplyDeleteThat is brill - I'm determined to write it into our Incapacity Benefit appeal
"MF, "person; "human", etc - we should be able to "gay" a lifeboat surely ?"
ReplyDeleteNo reason why not..
I certainly heteroed a few lilos in my dim and distant youth
as in ...."that cunt of a half baked jumped up pig ignorant Nurse, who conducted the alleged incapacity assessment, was plainly suffering from atrophied delusions or as a learned colleague one described it cognitive calcification"
ReplyDeleteYou really are a star MF
"Cos he's on the tills ?"
ReplyDeletethat must be it...they had him stacking shelves but his love of 'variance' got in the way...kept putting the dog bisciuts and toilet paper in with the frozen sprouts (I'm eclectic duh...it's a trivariate comestible-attribution display)
mind you..don't expect to just turn up and buy something...you need to spend a couple of months wandering the isles to establish some credibility...then, if you make the grade..you're granted a three week "5-items-or-less" trial period
I was always very concerned with the racial purity of my educational institutions. I was particularly disappointed when my primary school ignored my exhortations to invade Poland.
ReplyDelete"I certainly heteroed a few lilos in my dim and distant youth"
ReplyDeleteThat's too grim an image, cheers mate !!!
Off out now, can you look after the bloke in aisle 8 for an hour or so ? He's mistakent his meds for Kenomeat again. Cheers.
@mf
ReplyDeleteExcellent 12:16!
* * *
Right, I've been to the market and bought far too much as usual so I'll have to go and see people and give some bananas and clems away.
Kibbeh au four tonight. Mmm...
Arsenal in front already...
ReplyDelete"I was particularly disappointed when my primary school ignored my exhortations to invade Poland."
ReplyDeletethat's your problem Eddie...and that of all secular institutions
I went to a Catholic primary school...several as it happens...'Sisters of the Perpetual Smack in the Mouth'...we sure as fuck weren't bound by any limp-wristed elf, safety or diversity considerations...we successfully annexed Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Sanjak of Novibazar and would have moved on to a scorched-earth romp through the Urals except the bus broke down and Kenny Mulchay had forgotten his consent form.
@Rapid
ReplyDeleteMy prep school did invade Poland.
Not all it's cracked up to be.
Not all it's cracawed up to be surely ?
ReplyDelete@bw
ReplyDeleteGroan.
Sorry.
ReplyDeleteOff for a walk. Later!
ReplyDeleteHi Bitterweed
ReplyDeleteGoing to see this guy: Ben Prestage next weekend. I see you commented on one of his Youtube clips !!
WTF has been spammed !!
Can't compete with you guys on primary invasions. I did once lead one on Staines and another on Box Hill, responding to Ronald Searle's excellent example. Was expelled on both occasions.
ReplyDeleteNice one tascia - my comment was actually in awe, not condemnatory !
ReplyDeleteSheff
ReplyDeleteI was in Horsham at my first primary school, and we used to go up to Box Hill. I'm impressed with that campaign !
BW - Guessed that just listening/watching Part 2 of 3. Fuckin Brill can't wait to see him.
ReplyDeleteAh Horsham, Bitters, - robustly defended as I recall. My school was in Mickleham, between Leatherhead and Dorking.
ReplyDeleteWhaddya dorking about ???
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Again, sorry.
Must go get some lunch.
Great stuff tascia. the man is clealry fucking insane. Is he playing the assmebly rooms ?
ReplyDeleteBitterweed
ReplyDeleteNo, he'll be in Leicester playing with this guy:
Ian Siegal
Apparently they do a good duet at the end of the gig - Can't wait..
Off down the pub to watch the Rugby... Back Laters
Horsham????
ReplyDeleteBW where did you go to school? BB and I share a past.............and now maybe you can complete the final side of the triangle........
BW was in primary school in Horsham - my home town from the age of 10 onwards. :o)
ReplyDeleteSheff was in Mickleham!
Small world. :o)
deano - JR is high court, yes.
ReplyDeleteDon't know what the fees are but they will be available online somewhere.
As for costs, it is loser pays, usually, unless there is a good reason why not.
Trafalgar then Chesworth - only a year though, got dragged of to flatlander cambs when I was 8 ...!!!
ReplyDeletetascia
ReplyDeleteSiegal rocks, love his stuff.
BW - when were you at Trafalgar? My mum was the school nurse there for a while in the 70s.
ReplyDeleteCongrats to Spurs! That was a hell of a comeback.
ReplyDeleteBB er, 73-74 !
ReplyDeleteBW - hmmm... could have been. Do you remember Mrs B, the nurse?
ReplyDeleteMeerkatije
ReplyDelete"50% of my masters programme is made up on international students. I don't find that problemmatic at all - it's good to have the varying voices and experiences in the course. However, I do worry about the exploitation of international students for precisely the purposes of 'topping up' that you describe. It is a real phenomenon. "
You highlight a serious problem within the British academic sector. Many unviesrities have now opened shiny new 'business schools' aimed solely at the international market, and often with subjects of questionable academic merit. I met a guy from Kazakhstan doing marketing or advertising or something, costing a fortune.
While you could argue it brings money in for British universites, it is unethical, especially as bitey has testified, entire extended families will pool together their entire savings to send their child to study these semi bogus qualifications which could be learned from a few textbooks from amazon and some wikipedia pages.
But I suppose it gives an accurate portrayal of our moral and ethical framework in the free market utopia.
I certainly see a lot of it in glasgow.
BB and BW
ReplyDeleteblimey this is getting spookey.....trafalgar was there as well....but i was there when I was 4and a half so 1970.....i remember the nit nurse was that your mum BB?
Napoleon
ReplyDeleteThought you'd gone?
Noticed this on waddayayayaya..ya..ya
BTTP
"Is there now any acceptable way to say "métissé" or "métis" in English? I find mixed-race unacceptable, since it suggests that different ethnic groups are actually different races, and I hope "crossbreed" and "half-caste" have been consigned to the dustbin of history. How about "ethnically-enriched"? No, no-one's going to have any idea what I mean."
NK
"How about.... human.
We are all mixed race, pigments, freckles, hair colour, hooked or round noses etc, all the result of genetic mutations.
On a more political/social level, I have always thought that inter ethnic marriage is a sure sign of cultural harmony and integration, and it is higher in certain communities, ie Afro Carribean and white people, which is a good thing."
nice post...and a noble sentiment...race 'realism' is an insidious philosophy which genetics and DNA sequencing should have consigned to the dustbin years ago
On a cheerier note, I believe the Human Genome Project has identified genetic markers for carriers of the deadly "Chavscum Syndrome"...and I've heard scientists in Argentina are working on a neurotoxin which, when released into the atmosphere, temporarily (30-35 years or so) prevents them from going down the pub and interfering with the opining of brilliant young intellectuals.
"While you could argue it brings money in for British universites, it is unethical, especially as bitey has testified, entire extended families will pool together their entire savings to send their child to study these semi bogus qualifications which could be learned from a few textbooks from amazon and some wikipedia pages."
ReplyDeleteThis distresses me a good great deal. But it's not just in relation to somewhat dodgy qualifications, it's also in relation to letting people onto courses who don't have the necessary skills and preparation in place to succeed (something I think happens across the UK). It's likely to be something that will only get worse as UK students are put off studying by the spectre of debt and universities and other education institutions turn to international students as a solution to the funding gap this leaves.
Well done Scotland! May Ireland also defeat the southern invaders.
ReplyDeleteOh Floower o'Scotland
ReplyDeleteWhen will we see
Tha like again?
We fought and died for
Oor wee bit hill and glen
And stood against them
Proud Edward's army
And sent them homewards
Tae think again
\o/
I love being an English/Jock metisse myself - I get to choose who I feel like supporting.
Meerkatjie - you're a "Saffy" aren't you? Do you like rugby?
@ Deano: Dogs rule. I love my cats too.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWT2qHVftGk
In other news, we went to see the Harry Potter film with the small girl today. I distinguished myself by weeping at the death scene. (In my own defence, I'm pretty sure the blokey shed a few tears too, and the small girl definitely did.) Can't remember who it was who was a bit frothy about grown ups loving Harry Potter. Oh well, sorry about that, whoever it was... )
BB - hehehe. Stirrer.
ReplyDeleteGandolpho - no, my mum wasn't there in '70 and was the permanent nurse, as it were, when she did work there, in the sick bay.
ReplyDeleteThaum!
ReplyDeleteI wasn't stirring!!
:p
Meerkatjie - I was just this minute talking about going to see it with Mr BB this evening, but we have both decided it is too cold out and we can't be arsed.
Meerkatjie
ReplyDeleteI am taking my niece next week, she isn't that bothered but is kindly pretending that she is so that I won't have to go alone.
I'm not that fussed myself but after seeing the rest I feel obligated to see it through to the bitter end.
Meerkatjie - just looked at the puppy photos: awww!
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am now questioning Tim's comments the other night about the fire. How could dogs of that size block anything? ;-)
Well done England, too...
ReplyDeleteMeerkatjie - off to see Harry Potter later - have streaming cold so can hopefully disguise any potential excess of sentimentality!
Jennifer and BB - it's actually very good. I didn't much care for the last one, it was a bit diffuse. This was much, much better. The characterisation of the Malfoys has subtled up a bit, and it was a pretty constant stream of action. It even had a few racy bits (I'm quite sure Ginny did not present a naked back to Potter in the book!). Ok, not really racy, but you know, beggars and all that....
ReplyDeleteDogs, Thaumaturge: Yeah, you'd be amazed at the heat absorbing powers of a pair of determined jack russels. Plus Sophie's not a baby anymore - I just don't seem to have any photos of her now. She's about 7 months old now, so quite a bit bigger.
MF. I have consistently argued against the denigration of a group of people by calling them all 'chavs' since the term started to come into common parlance (I believe 2004). Yes, I used it on here, wrongly, and perhaps a bit judgmentally, but anyone who has known me in real life has known that I have consistently opposed such labelling of people.
ReplyDeleteMerkatije
The university sector is overbloated and their will be funding gaps. Let them lose some money, and there will be pruning. The growth of universities has been a great con.
Here's something I picked up from one of Cif's higher education threads.
http://www.the-vibe.co.uk/2010/11/15/student-protestors-must-lose-consumer-mindset/
"One of the greatest dodges British business ever pulled and, thus, one of the greatest burdens ever placed on the higher education sector, was when they persuaded government to allow them to transfer the cost of training and education from employer to prospective employee. Universities and colleges then became the places to facilitate this training. This didn’t happen only in the private sector; the practical element of my undergraduate degree was a cut down version of what was called BBC Elstree training which they externalised to Leeds University and received a nice contract fee to supply the staff to train us to use the equipment.
The net results of that dodge were that businesses externalised huge areas of cost; Tony Blair’s vision of a 50% degree educated society became an achievable feat; universities had to design new degree courses to shoulder this training burden on the promise of greater revenues from tuition fees, whilst the students were told to shoulder the ever-increasing burden of the cost of their own training with no guarantees of employment at the end.
Returning to the consumer angle, if I were forced to buy a product that took me three years to put together myself and even then I had no guarantees it would work and no chance of getting my money back, you’re damn right I’d feel like smashing a few windows at the place that sold me it."
It's all a con.
Meerkatjie
ReplyDeletelike jack russells they have a lot of potential to break into the world of showbiz
BB
I loved trafalgar despite be shoved in there at 4 and a bloody half as an experiment of early age education.... they still had the anson shelters there in the 70s we all thought there were dead germans inside.....bloody childhood trauma......
Whoo-hoo, Birmingham! United go level top on points!
ReplyDeleteYou'd be amazed at how big a pair of Jackies can be when they want to get in your way of the fire. Cept they have this inbuilt ability to let you through if you sole intention is to add to the fire. Once done they get big again!
ReplyDeleteHave uploaded one of #2 child's many lemur pics from Madagascar...
ReplyDeleteRE overseas students - I see a lot of them in my line of work. Fortunately the government have taken their oversight duties more seriously over the past couple of years, but the numbers of youngsters who have spent all their money to come over here only to find that the college that was on all the right "government approved" list was nothing but a sham, with no viable qualification at the end of it... and then to be told by the UKBA that because it isn't a bona fide education institute - even though it was on their approved list at the time - they haven't made proper progress in their studies and have to go home again... it used to a complete nightmare for them.
ReplyDeleteFortunately there are a good few immigration judges who can actually tell shit from shinola and, if they felt in their gut that the student was genuine and had been ripped off (as opposed to trying it on) they would find a way of granting their appeals.
These days the system is much better than it was, although the gubbmint still get it wrong in far too many cases.
Tim & Meerkatjie - yeah okay ... try shifting my 40-kilo girl when she doesn't want to move! ;-)
ReplyDeleteEnjoy HP, Shaz. I'll wait for the DVD release.
ReplyDeleteMeerkatjie, a death scene in part 1? I can't remember who died halfway through the Deathly Hallows. Ah well.
We are back in the relegation zone, and we bloody deserve to be, isn't football supposed to be a pleasurable hobby?
ReplyDeletethauma
ReplyDelete40kgs? mine's 35kg and when he don't wanna moved nobody on earth can move him.......JRs piece of piss just get a fishing net and throw it over em fast buggers........
I don't really agree - I don't think it's bloated or a con. I do think that degrees in many places are a bit archaic, and that the system needs a bit of an overhaul. I think better use could I also think that the practice components need to be much more carefully thought through and better integrated into the education processes itself.
ReplyDeleteOops, sorry, that post was to charlie.
ReplyDeleteThauma, I've always had German Shepherds till now, so yeah, I know what you mean. But you can't beat jack russels for sheer determination. They put the dog in dogged.
ReplyDeleteOK, she's lost me. What does "HAGLYSLIFF" stand for???
ReplyDeleteMeerkatjie
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to work that out, I will bet a fair amount on it not being complimentary.
I like Lizzy.
Beats me. I'll submit Have A Good Life You Sad Little Inconsequential Festering Fool.
ReplyDeleteNapoleon
ReplyDeleteFair enough..labelling is a thorny issue...although without some degree of labelling we all become an homogeneous mass when we know instinctively that degrees of difference and separation are a concrete reality...we seem to have moved from a schema in which laudable attempts to dispel notions of cultural or moral superiority have led to a blinkered state of wishful thinking in which obvious differences are studiously ignored in the name of...strangely-or rather perversely- enough...'celebrating diversity'.
CIF is perhaps the modern day spiritual home of such thinking (in this country at least...I'm sure most US Cultural Studies or Humanities departments are in a different league.)
I mean, personally, there are times when I deplore the anti-intellectual, hedonistic and celeb-obsessive nature of some working class people as much as you...I'd just never call them chavs or dispute their right to make jokes in pubs or shout whatever they like across the street...that kinda censorious bollocks is not on...it's a product of bourgeois guilt and condescension...they want the working class to conform to some idealised misty-eyed, nostalgic Orwellian ideal.
as a for instance (obviously it will include a none too subtle dig at an intellectual 'mentor' of yours but..fuck it..I can't resist...and the example is valid none the less)...would you consider the label 'mendacious fantasist' valid when applied to somebody who claims a fictitious cultural heritage purely to gain some degree of 'authority' in an argument which is slipping away from him?...(slipping in this sense is a euphemism for sinking like a stone).
Certianly it is not all a con Meerkatjie, there are many subjects that need to be in the confiens of academia and studying something 'for it's own sake' is certainly understandable.
ReplyDeleteHowever what I have seen is how many jobs are now ring fenced for graduates and that don't clearly require them. It seems to be like it is a symbiotic relationship, the employers and the universities have ganged up to make .
Had I been the age I was now 40, 30 or 20 years ago, people like me could have expected to said into almost any career and expect a chance to work and get training on the job. Now today generation are shafted.
Mobility has vastly decreased- universities are pretty Thatcherite these days.
gandolfo and shaz
ReplyDeleteJinx. :D
Who is this mendacious fantasist that is a 'mentor' of mine?
ReplyDeleteI won't be answering soon, I've gotta go out.... right now.
ReplyDeleteJesus that disappeared quickly, has he got some kind of hot line.
ReplyDeleteI was reading an article on Cif Belief the other day and Martyn did one of his ironic posts (I think it was the Tony Blair thread) he was appealing for calm or something, who knows what he is actually getting at most of the time and one of the religious bods agreed most whole heartedly.
The religious bloke was told that Martyn was being sarky and replied that he had assumed that since Martyn was a moderator he was simply trying to get the thread back on track.
Out of the mouths or babes. ;)
since Martyn was a moderator he was simply trying to get the thread back on track.
ReplyDeleteGood grief. Hell and handcart!
Makes me laugh how fast they hit the abuse button, and one of their cronies deletes. The irony considering the personal abuse and ad homs that they come up with, but they react in horror if any dares respond in kind.
ReplyDeletestrange that the majority of posts deleted are challenging mediocre in egham--- sad for sure he reports them as personal abuse.....strange his stay even when they quote the "offending posts"
ReplyDeleteJenni
ReplyDelete"isn't football supposed to be a pleasurable hobby?"
It is, but sometimes it hurts. Makes you a proper fan when you go through that shit.
habib
ReplyDeleteI know but it just seems to be all pain and no pleasure lately, well in the last several years.
They bloody led me on, misery for decades, a few years of excitment and fun and now back to the misery.
I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship.
Do you know - speaking of films - I think I must have seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind at least a dozen times in my life (though not recently), and here I am sitting watching it again and it still gives me goosebumps.
ReplyDeleteA really well-directed film...
I can see that, Jenni, they hurt you and you take them back. Makes me realise a lot about stuff I always mocked.
ReplyDelete"strange that the majority of posts deleted are challenging mediocre in egham--- sad for sure he reports them as personal abuse.....strange his stay even when they quote the "offending posts""
ReplyDeleteI thought that they all just 'scrolled on by'... ?
Mind you, I didn't report pen's rants about me the other day, and they disappeared pretty sharpish. I'm not sure it's always the person on the receiving end of the abuse that hits the report button.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi All,
ReplyDeleteStill twisting everything Bitey? Surely there are some real misogynists you can bait somewhere else?
Montana can I have my Darwin fish back please? Or you could have at least cleaned the car when you nicked it, the clean patch where it was shows up how dirty the rest of the car is! ;-)
She stole it from my fridge Dot - I can see the clean spot from where I'm sitting.
ReplyDeleteAm watching it too BB - haven't seen it in years
Good innit, sheff?! :o)
ReplyDeleteYes, I used it on here, wrongly, and perhaps a bit judgmentally, but anyone who has known me in real life has known that I have consistently opposed such labelling of people.
ReplyDeleteMF was kind in not pointing out the bullshittery of this statement. If someone were consistently opposed to using such labels, they would never use such labels in their own comments -- and they wouldn't even need to think about it.
If someone truly believes that a word is always unacceptable, it simply isn't part of their conscious vocabulary. For example, my mother never has to censor herself from saying 'fuck' or any form of it, because that word is simply unacceptable to her.
I never have to censor myself from using words like 'nigger' or 'fag' because, to me, those words are simply unacceptable. Frankly, I'm sitting here squishing right now at the thought of posting this comment with those words fully typed out. I'm funny that way -- I have no problem with 'fuck' -- as you know, I use it all the time. But words that have behind them hatred for an entire group of people, especially for characteristics over which individuals have no control, make me really uncomfortable.
So, you used the word 'chav' because, on some level at least, that is what you think of them. Good on you for recognising that it is wrong to label people that way, but don't try to claim that you "have consistently opposed such labelling of people", because if that were true, you'd have never used the term in the first place.
leni
ReplyDeleteI liked your comment on moving council tenants on in Waddya, well like probably is the wrong word but you know what I mean, the changes to social housing contracts, not to mention housing benefits are so worrying, I know a few people who are going to be affected and they are really scared.
I think that I am going to be lucky enough to be unaffected for the time being but since I think that the things they are announcing at the moment are only the start, I am not complacent.
You just can't take security of shelter away from people, it is evil.
I sometimes wonder if they are trying to force some kind of societal breakdown, if you pile fear on people until they can't think straight that fear will, at some point, turn to anger.
Maybe they think that if people are scrabbling every hour of the day to survive they won't have the energy or inclination to fight back but the one good thing about having nothing to lose is that you have got nothing to fucking lose.
@Dot:
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid you'll have to look for your Darwin fish in Northants. Although, I would dearly love to have one on my car, I must say. I'd have the only one in town, a small voice of sanity in a sea of the non-Darwin ones that grace about 80% of the cars in the Wal-Mart parking lot.
Montana
ReplyDeletei have a sticker of an anonymous god with the warning that s/he is about to get somebody, somewhere, sometime.
@Boudican
ReplyDeletehevers, yes, it was a good UT jam. You could throw in tunes any time you know. I think most of us are willing to hear different tastes and genres, or just your own preferences.
I've thrown a couple in before now, when peeps have been posting soul and funk and stuff, as am quite partial to a bit of that.
I'm not sufficiently up on the Blues though, so especially like hearing some of that and last night was especially cool from my perspective in that regard.
@Charles
However what I have seen is how many jobs are now ring fenced for graduates and that don't clearly require them. It seems to be like it is a symbiotic relationship, the employers and the universities have ganged up to make .
Yes, to some extent something we have to thank tuition fees for, as once students start having to pay, they may want something more vocational. So colleges offer something more practical which in turn means employers don't have to do it themselves.
And then there's the dilution that resulted from Thatch's upping student numbers without a concomitant increase in funding to match. HE institutions seeing numbers doubling or trebling in short order.
Jenni
ReplyDeleteI think the policy is to build the lives of the sick, the elderly and unemployed people on such shaky foundations that they will cling to anything for support - even the 'leaders' who threaten their wellbeing - even their existence.
Lovely try from Brian O'Driscoll...
ReplyDeleteYes, shaz ... just need 3 more in 8 mins!
ReplyDeleteHave read dog stuff ... nice ... but taken up by rugby & bloody work.
Napoleon
ReplyDelete"I won't be answering soon, I've gotta go out.... right now."
Wise move...you don't have to answer...it was a bit of a 'hospital pass' I suppose...although...you did ask..
"Who is this mendacious fantasist that is a 'mentor' of mine?"
...to which I would have replied: "Why does the identity matter...is your answer dependent upon it?"
As it happens, it was Martyn, who, it seems, once claimed to be Jewish...for..erm..'effect'...then last weekend he was a 'salt of the valleys' working-class Celt...before going on to point out the 'benefits' of a pan-Celtic revival...no..really..he did. He explained his protean cultural heritage thus:
"One of the great things about being an internationalist are the benefits, so as well as every that I know, and feel part of, I can also adopt anything I take a fancy to, as if it were also my own."
...seems he 'took a fancy to' Judaism once...temporarily...makes me wonder what else he may have taken a fancy to over the years...or maybe his whole present 'persona' is one he took a fancy to in a magazine..or saw in a film...or just kinda dreamt up....it's not as though his 'explanation' precludes this.
By all means ignore this Napoleon..but it's hard to argue against 'mendacious fantasist' as an accurate description, no?
I'll let him know you're disappointed if you like.
Nice lemur pic, shaz.
ReplyDeleteAm in very bad mood.
ReplyDeleteWhat's up Thauma?
ReplyDeleteI can't help with the HAGLYS but LIFF is defined by Doug Adams and John Lloyd in "The Meaning of Liff" as:
ReplyDeleteA book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words 'This book will change your life.'
Aww Thaum. Well if you are going to lose to someone, it has to be the Kiwis really, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteMontana,
ReplyDeleteGet yourself one, and just get yourself one of these too....
;-)
Hello All ;)
ReplyDeleteBeen trying to catch-up (badly)
Wanted to pass on my heart-felt and warmest congrats to TurminderX - such fableeous snews about the job ;)
Am completely cream-crackered so hope to join in tomorrow....
Deano
ReplyDeleteBTW - anybody know much about the journalist that redminer recently flagged up as wanting contacts/insight into ESA/IB medical system??
I refer you to a comment of Monkeyfish’s on this subject on 25 October 12.44
That journalist, Amelia Gentleman, is an award-winning social-issues journalist, who is married to the parachuted-into-Orpington Tory MP Jo Johnson, younger brother of the Boris Johnson; and this caring couple reside in Cambden. On 2007 she was named best foreign journalist for India as a result of being a New Delhi correspondent for the Observer and the International Herald Tribunal, where she made a good wage from poverty issues.
I’m not acquainted with the lady, so I cannot comment upon her character; but find myself overwhelmed with a natural suspicion of the motives of anyone whose everyday life is so entwined with Tory-dom, and who is making money by picking up on the serious social issues now more likely to become even more serious because of --- quite.
The piece she produced recently about the hopelessness of an unemployed blackspot in Middlesborough carefully sought out just the type of families which a right-wing paper likes to display to public view to show how undeserving they are, only without quite saying so (because this is a liberal paper) - leaving me wondering what was its motive.
After all, there are quite a few people here, and on cif btl, who already do the ‘job’ of reporting social issues rather better, due to actually knowing what they’re talking about. That is, not being someone on the outside looking in and trying to make sense of something alien to their own-life experience, and who don’t have the purpose of making personal profit from it.
I possess a very good example of a fraudulent (for that’s what they are really) Atos medical report, which had a very quick success at appeal, as it was so much humbug. It even had statements that directly contradicted one another! Although only after half a year of much distress and financial difficulties for the person involved. The written defence was concluded like this: These conditions cannot be changed by words. (That is, if someone can’t do it, they still can’t do it, however much anyone else invents statements that they can do it.)
But I won’t be sending it to the Guardian (it’s a confidential matter anyway) - a paper which so much cosied up to characters like James Purnell, and would rather support him and delete the comments of those pointing out the damage he had helped orchestrate – a paper which kept on spouting forth articles about how this was going to give more opportunities to the disabled long after it had been pointed out to them in many ways by many people that was happening was going in exactly the opposite direction.
The Guarn has a weird pretend-to-themselves socialism which I can’t quite follow – wonder why they bother really.
After which, there’s the problem that people are scared, and if someone has got through the appeal process, they’re not going to risk having anyone looking their way too closely thereafter. The villifiction that’s been whipped up means that mostly someone in that situation doesn’t tell anyone new – definitely nobody sensible would send it to a national paper unless they were very sure indeed, or they’re rather niave.
That’s why the publicised cases are often persons who are somewhat deficient, and so it tends not to help; and it’s why the papers find it hard to find good example cases, even though there are so many out there. Would you want your imperfect domestic situations and/or Incapacity (to be denigrated) splashed all over the national media?
It is that situation of fearfulness, amounting to a permission-to-bully, that Tory-dom has been encouraging through a prolonged right-wing propaganda smeer campaign; and Ms Gentleman is closely involved with a Tory MP and therefore those circles; from which anyone can form whatever opinion they feel appropriate.
Turminder - I'm glad for you.
I've been missing your posts La Rit, I hope your job isn't tiring you out too much.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if it is your social life that is tiring you out then I have no sympathy. ;)
Hi LaRit
ReplyDeleteI too have missed you. What is your new job? It seems to be exhausting you - I hope you are receiving mucho moolah in return.
Leni
Hi BB, I barely remeber anyone, but must have metter when I had my jabs ! I remeber Mrs Lorriman. She had orange knickers. Always liked oranges.
ReplyDeleteSpike - the Meaning of Liff ? Look up 'Kettering' ...
ReplyDeleteBack later, watching series 3 of The Wire. On this matter, (among many others) Charlie Brooker is always absolutely right on the money - flipping perfect telly !
Laters.
BW
ReplyDeleteI have the first two series of the Wire downloaded and I keep meaning to watch them but something is stopping me.
I'm daft like that, the more people tell me something is fantastic and just my kind of thing the more I resist even engaging with it.
I'm sure I have missed out on a lot of good stuff because of this weird personality trait but I really can't help it.
ALERT - my comment of around half an hour ago has been gobbled up.
ReplyDeleteWhoah, the pope says that prostitutes can use condoms.
ReplyDeleteMeerkatjie
ReplyDeleteI thought it was only male prostitutes. ;)
We wouldn't want them getting pregnant now would we.
"I'm daft like that, the more people tell me something is fantastic and just my kind of thing the more I resist even engaging with it."
ReplyDeleteYeh, know where you're coming from. The more hype the more skeptical I am. I didn't even listen to Nirvana till Kurt Cobain died, lol.
"the pope says that prostitutes can use condoms. "
ReplyDeleteReally ?? Awesome. He's infalible you know ?
When is the pope going to use his infallibility to declare peace and love across the world?
ReplyDeleteLeni I can imagine it now.
ReplyDeletePeace and love for everyone, except you, and you and you (carries on into infinity).
Leni
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't know - maybe right after his third hit on the beer bong and just before he sticks some Grateful Dead on and cracks one out I guess..
I wonder if his Vatican advisors ever look at CiF ? Or here even ?? Imagine that:
"Look atthem Kasper!! Iss like a thirda world country!"
"Worsa than Sicily"
"They a lot of communists; but at least they're smarta than Andrew Brown"
"Si. That isn't much. That boysa proper fork in the eye doofus, neary as bad as that joker Rowan Atkinson"
"Williams?"
"Heh heh. Si. Him also. Wanna some mora wine ?"
Ooh, get her !
ReplyDeleteSorry suddenly and dullily to cut through the Pope's prostitutes' condoms (were they waiting all of this time for his opinion about it?), but I'm just on my way out - not there's any connection
ReplyDeleteI should add to the above (should it manage to appear) that I'm all for the Guarn, or anyone, better making public the carrying-ons of Atos (and suchlike), and at one time I added my 'voice' to the urgings.
But even when they do do something along those lines, it's never in a hit-you-in-the-face way - but like they're only going through the motions somehow, and don't mind if it's not too noticable.
They are welcome to prove this to be wrong as soon and as much as they like.
It is a shame that they feel that they always have to be able to produce individual cases - for surely it can be effectively illustrated from the numbers of appeals that succeed and why they succeed, and soforth?
But then that would take some real investigative journalism; and - like, this is only a - big national newspaper.
Jen
You just can't take security of shelter away from people, it is evil.
Yes, they can, of course, without it seeming to bother them - they're doing it already.
Removing the benefits of someone on IB (or refusing ESA), if they were reliant on that for their accomodation, did/does (will do) that effectively.
Saying that they can take away your home at any time by not covering the rent, or as it's social housing; because you're not... sufficiently successful/capable - presumably that's what it's usually all about - is going to do that effectively.
Then everyone will be so scared that they will become successful and wealthy.
They really have not the faintest, because when someone is scared, they function less well not better.
It's now all about taking away - nothing about giving better job chances or support - or any jobs at all. It's now all the individual's fault - whatever the government/big business/banksters have been doing to cause it.
Yes, it is evil.
Now that would be a good subject for the Pope to pontificate upon - instead of forever obsessing about...
Moonwave, that needs repeating as loud and as often as possible.
ReplyDeleteWhen you scare someone they perform less well not better.
moonwave
ReplyDeleteI struggle to understand why people have doubts about the universality of human rights. Human rights either exist for everybody or none have any rights at all.
Bitters
Were the pope to read the UT he would bring back the inquisition.
Jenni
ReplyDeleteThose who believe terror is the spur will constantly upgrade the terror until resistance becomes futile.
Early one for me the night, on my way - here's Allan Holdsworth being absolutely stellar, mesmeric.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcAVpvQAwm4&feature=grec_index
Laters
Hello everyone;
ReplyDelete@Leni: I am indeed enjoying the spin offs from my sister's luxury lifestyle (my word, how the "other half" live!)
Just finished off a plate of confit de canard with green beans and sauted potatoes all washed down with a thirteen year old bottle of Chateau Neuf Du Pape.
This afternoon we went for a walk in Burnham Beeches after a rendezvous at the house of an old acquaintance who is now one of the "big wigs" at Diageo.
We had to phone ahead of our arrival so that they could open the gates and my jaw dropped when I realised his garage was bigger than my house!
Top bloke though (from Yorkshire stock in Castleford) and never forgot where he came from.
Interesting conversation in the pub over lunch about the banking scam.
Jenni
ReplyDeleteWe have to defy and subvert them. Never admit to defeat - that means they are already winning.
chekhov
ReplyDeleteglad you are enjoying yourself.
Odd how our life choices turn out. Someone once told me I wasted my intelligence when I chose to work with and on behalf of people.
Funnily enough it brought me into contact with the super rich - there are actually a lot of them about.
I think they tolerated me cos they thought I was 'interesting'.
They too were interesting - some genuinely nice people, others had the fascination of something loathsome in a specimen bottle.
I remember a Kuwaiti prince who had an orange Mercedes and the morals of - well of whatever is the most amoral, conceited and viscious personality ever.
leni
ReplyDeleteI do try, and personally I am fine, getting on with life and not feeling too bad.
I look around though and I speak to my friend who is going to have to move if the 30% rule comes in.
I talk to another friend who isn't 35 for a long time and is living in fear of losing his flat (that he has lived in for nearly 10 years, it is his home) and I get so angry and frustrated.
I honestly do feel more angry than sad a lot of the time but what the hell are you supposed to do.
"When is the pope going to use his infallibility to declare peace and love across the world?"
ReplyDeletedon't ever talk about Papal infallibility...even mentioning it by name gives it substance..here's why..
Papal infallibility on dogmatic assertions can never be repealed...'officially' maybe..but not to the satisfaction of any half-awake logician
If an infallible pope declares himself fallible then he's opening the possibility that he's wrong which would mean he might well be infallible after all...we have a circular..."the statement on the opposite wall is incorrect" situation.
If...surprisingly..the Pope was fallible all along...when he decides he's no longer infallible he could by definition well be wrong..and might have been infallible all the time, unknown to himself...and we're down to the Barber Paradox..."The village where the barber only shaves the men who don't shave themselves. Who shaves the barber?"
either assumption leads to a contradiction...therefore the premise or premises are mistaken...the premise was...'the Pope is infallible in matters of dogma'. This premise itself is an article of Dogma...don't take my word..I give you “Lumen Gentium”...courtesy of the second Vatican Council...
"This Sacred Council, following closely in the footsteps of the First Vatican Council, with that Council teaches and declares that Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father;(136) and He willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world. And in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion. And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the meaning and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible magisterium, this Sacred Council again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful."
so...if when he says he's infallible, he's infallible in doing so..since an infallible article of dogma declares him to be infallible...then IPSO FUCKIN FACTO he's infallible. So...if or when he does declare himself fallible, as I demonstrated above he's asserting a contradiction...and he must be wrong...never mind “how”..he just is..so he’s not fallible..ie..he’s absolutely infallible
btw..I'm also infallible...so when I say..."fuck the rest of you"..it's just me and Bendict..there's no point arguing since by definition I'm unable to be wrong..not saying I like the company in the infallible community.. but...you've all gotta do what I say..so that some consolation.
Worship Iceberg Lettuce and Goats and the word ‘wuvfewuv’...NOW
..or...accept that the word infallible has no meaning...it is a pseudo-word...like I say..not that I'm a fan of censorship but accepting it as a meaningful concept..ie one which we can make statements about will always lead to contradictory statements...infallibility is a logical impossibility...as I suppose is the notion that a condoner of organised paedophilia can anyhow be a force for good in the world.
'Dave' is another such example..fuckin pseudo to the core
you don't know what I just smoked...nor do I really...but it has extreme pedantry as a primary side effect...I know this will embarrass me tomorrow...another day etc
Jenni
ReplyDeletei would like to think that hundreds will gather to stop evictions - just make it impossible to reach the house or flat. While I don't condone violence large groups of people refusing to be moved can be effective, especially if it is repeated again and again.
Violent resistance leads to the strengthening of police powers and an escalation of violence.
You have to be pretty lucky to catch Giyus ( or his 'cousin' ) these days, but I thought this was very accurate, and bloody hell there's nothing 'normally' moddable there ---
ReplyDeleteState0fPhobophilia 20 November 2010 9:07PM
Old World Certainties RIP
''They created a war without borders against an invisible enemy
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a 'troofer'
Then they spent our taxes on bail-outs of the super-trusts
and I didn't speak up because my bank went bust too
Then they came for the benefit holders to reassure the bond holders
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't on benefits
Then they came for the pensions to reassure the sovereign debt creditors
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't retired
Then they created inflation to destroy sovereign debt
and I didn't speak out because of the need to fight the 'depression'
The they launches a currency war
and I didn't speak out because we realized the old world chaos required new world order
Then they irradiated people in airports and injected children with 'vaccines' to keep them safe
and I didn't speak out because of the fear of the alternative
The they told us to respect and adore them
and I did speak out ...............but was banned......''
posed the cynic
NN all, sensible living , I'm giving up fags too .
Not even a "Hic !" . XX
But Monkey
ReplyDeletewhy do infallible statements have to be nonsensical?
Admitting that infallibility allows you to affirm anything as an eternal and absolute truth means that we must forever grapple with the truth or otherwise of the unprovable.
Your infallibility, of course, is unquestioned as is proven by the responses you habitually garner to your pronouncements on cif and by the constancy of your protean self.
Leni-- i would like to think that hundreds will gather to stop evictions
ReplyDeleteIt's been done before, and changed government policy, see the US experience in the 30's , georgewashington2 link yesterday am.
XX
Hi Frog
ReplyDeleteTrust all is well with you. xx
Why do infallible statements need to be nonsensicle?
ReplyDeleteThat is a good question.
Why do banannas need to be umbrella stands.
Lovely gibberish.
Frog
ReplyDeleteThey did that in Scotland over the poll tax too. whenever there was to be a poinding people gathered en masse to prevent it.
Scottish anti poll tax campaign
Has anyone read Stephen Kings new book?
ReplyDeleteIt is all about Novellas.
I have listened to the first one and it has left me all fecked up.
I cant stop thinking of Arlette, Wilf and Henry (Hank).
"why do infallible statements have to be nonsensical?"
ReplyDeletebecause the notion of infallibility is nonsensical
go on...make an infallible statement on some area of ethics or..er...morality...which is ostensibly the area covered by Catholic Doctrine...Hume's is-ought/naturalistic fallacy...and bourgeois liberal relativistic orthodoxy might suggest you're pushing your luck but I've got a few...in fact, I've got a skinful...how about "needlessly inflicting suffering on another human being for one's own satisfaction is never allowable"?
...then sit back in wonder as people claim their 'satisfaction' consists in fulfilling religious ordnances or cultural traditions to the best of their ability...no matter what depravities those ordnances might contain...watch the 'righteous relativists turn up and call your statement value-laden, culturally imperialist or insufficiently nuanced...please...give it a try.
" means that we must forever grapple with the truth or otherwise of the unprovable."
...exactly..notice your sentence begins "Admitting that infallibility allows you to affirm anything as an eternal and absolute truth.."...I don't..and nor should you..I believe the word to be completely meaningless...let alone allow it its traditional definition...and it's far from unique in that respect..I don't ascribe it anything..if it had any consistent meaning it wouldn't always lead to either contradictions or unfounded statements
...the problem is we seem unable to make definitive statements on any particular incident of 'wrongness' because there's an assumption that the ability to be absolutely right in one particular implies an ability to be absolutely right in general...it doesn't...saying some things are wrong implies nothing more than what it says...'some things are wrong'...why should this imply a generalised facility to always identify wrongness.
"...and by the constancy of your protean self."
...actually...I get this a lot..it's the chemicals...they affect my typing...the sentiment remains pretty much constant
btw
for those who are interested...why do I bother
X Factor was good tonight
I'm offski
Yes Monkeyfishm that is what I was getting at, but never mind.
ReplyDeletehevers, you ask:
ReplyDeleteDo you see any downsides to exporting our knowledge overseas to nations that can undercut us and stymie attempts to reduce our structural unemployment?
None whatsoever for us, indeed I think it's our duty. How else will developing countries develop? Or should they stay forever undeveloped?
One of the things we're very good at is teaching and were we to do this more effectively, we could employ thousands more people in education instead of sacking those who currently work there.
What's more if you travel the world you'll come to understand that what its people really admire us for is the way, along with the USA, Australia and New Zealand and to a small extent Ireland, we educate our youth and if they can afford it, theirs.
Yes of course there are downsides for others, but they involve people working 70-80 hours for 6-7 days a week so they can afford to send their children to our universities, and while they're here, convincing them that we have a better way of living than they have in whatever country they happen to come from. Currently we're quite good at the former, but lousy at the latter.