Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

fred - apologising when you're wrong was taught in childhood as was saying please and thank you, and opening doors for ladies .... i know such things are pretty alien to many today

pdate - Labour lead at 2
by YouGov in Politics
Thu March 27, 2014 6 a.m. GMT

Latest YouGov / The Sun results 26th March - Con 35%, Lab 37%, LD 9%, UKIP 11%;

Tory vice chair – unqualified teachers hired “on the cheap” in UK schools
26 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Tom Pride in cynicism

The education secretary Michael Gove has decided that unqualified teachers can teach our children.

And now even senior Tories are questioning the decision.

According to the Times Educational Supplement, Tory vice-chairman Richard Harrington has written to Gove expressing his “worry” that the policy will be used to ‘hire on the cheap’ and fill classrooms with unqualified teachers not because they have valuable experience but because they are lower cost.

Of course, this is all being said in private – in public Harrington supports Gove’s policy of dumbing down teaching and we only know about Harrington’s concerns because someone leaked his letter.

God forbid that actual parents of actual children should be involved in the discussions.

Manuel,

I was also taught to try not to make mistakes, or at least not repeating them.

That meant thinking more and saying less, rather than being blasé and tossing out excuses for being indifferent to reasoning.

The real winners, if they play it right, could be Cameron and Miliband


By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: March 26th, 2014

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100265160/the-real-winners-if-they-play-it-right-could-be-cameron-and-miliband/



The fact of holding the debate will have bolstered both participants



Who won? They both did – simply by holding their debate à deux. Ukip are used to being a small party that must fight for every second of airtime; but it's the Lib Dems who, according to the every poll, need the oxygen most.

Nick Clegg's strategy of playing up his party's pro-EU credentials may seem insane: why go on and on about the single policy area where you are most at odds with the electorate? The answer has to do with niche marketing. Say the committed Euro-enthusiast vote out there is 20 per cent. Twenty per cent is still well above the 8 per cent that Cleggie is polling now. If he can persuade just a few soggy Blairites, just a few hoary-headed Tory grandees, to come over to "the party of in", he may yet rescue some Lib Dem MEPs.

Conversely, Nigel Farage wants Eurosceptic voters to back him on 22 May even if, as he knows most of them will, they return to their traditional allegiances for the general election. The two big parties want to talk about the economy, but the third and fourth are quite happy to bang on about Europe. Both leaders used their closing addresses quite nakedly to appeal for support in the Euro-elections.

Who had the edge? I'd be surprised if many people changed their position after listening to the arguments. Twitter saw an hour of uncomplicated cheerleading: "Another devastating point by my man! The other man is a hopeless imbecile! This is a walkover!" And, in truth, we are all primed to note the facts that sustain our starting assumptions, and to screen out those that don't. A snap poll afterwards by YouGov showed that 57 per cent of viewers gave the victory to Nigel, though I suspect that that's fairly close to the number who preferred him all along.

Cleggie's tactic, predictably enough, was to try to be tempered, measured and cool, in the hope of showing up Nigel as bombastic. Actually, the Ukip leader trotted out some impressive statistics on trade and investment but, as I say, people tend only to hear the data that accord with their prejudices.

How should the leaders of the two larger parties react? Well, the immigration officer at the Eurostar yesterday had rather a good idea. Having very discreetly wished me luck – there are still a few Conservative voters in the public sector – he suggested that David Cameron and Ed Miliband could now plausibly argue that Clegg and Farage had had their debate, and that the general election debate should be only between the potential prime ministers. "Or if they really wanted, sir, the other two could have a separate two-way debate again in a year's time, a sort of third-fourth play-off".

The temptation must be overwhelming. They could hardly, on the basis of the current polls, have included Clegg but not Farage. Now they have an excuse to exclude both.

fred - i forgot that you think you think you're always right

sticky - it seems to me that all parties have had the education system messed up for years and years .... it's prob a non seq, but i think an awful lot goes back to this nonsense whereby teachers are forbidden to discipline pupils - shame it's not done at home either - and that "you lost/failed" became a totally banned phrase

Cynic,

I am not always right, just usually.

Still working on the few remaining faults I was born with.

=======

Part of the problem with Education and NHS and other institutions is the constant change, rather than allowing changes (many quite reasonable) to bed down and given time for changes to bed down and the minor faults to be dealt with, each new administration wants to rush in changes often ideological in attempt to get glory points.

The constant changes demoralise the staff working in those fields as they have moving goals to contend with and the reasonable plans they had are torn up.

Evolution is useful, revolution may often be useful in the long term but often messy and painful for many in the short term.

===========

I was told when I bought a new (old) house and was looking at the garden in winter and considering what to do with it, to leave it for 12-18 months in order to see what grew, and what each of the seasons looked like in turn, as the garden had been there for many years and a lot of work had already been put into it.

The advice was correct when the bulbs flower and the clematis blossomed.

Fools rush in where ------------ !

I took my car in for a service and decided to walk back. I walked past a church that had a sign outside. It read

I know I am someone because
God, my father
He don't make no rubbish.
Psalm ...

I might take a photo of it when I go back.

He don't make no rubbish.

He recycles it

Ah, Yes.

What is missing from Ch..ch?
'UR'

Honk if you love Jesus.
Text him whilst driving if you want to meet him.

Don't let worries kill you.
Let the church help.

Whoever is praying for snow...
Please stop!

Where will you be in Eternity?
'Smoking' or 'Non Smoking'?

Execline

Did you read my post 38900 above?

I think everyone can love anyone, any prophet, etc. That's its choice, but imposing its choice to others is wrong. No matter how powerful or weak the guy is....
....
I wonder why the media do not talk about 529 death penalty verdict in Egypt. Aren't they considered as human?
If it was in China, or any other country, the media would talk about it every second.

Even the mud slide death in Washington appears not so interesting these days!

We are getting used to crises. The headlines are getting like

"Massive earthquake; not too many dead"

I was working somewhere about 40 years ago. The site manager sent everyone a memo that said,

"Please be vigilant as acts of god are on the increase".

But ignoring life of 529 people with death penalty for killing one policeman in Egypt, 90 people missing in mud slide in the US, and 239 people missing due to airplane disappearance is disgusting.

858 human life.... How can they ignore these and sleep at night?

By the Way, Kiev couldn't imagine receiving this much money. Thanks to Crimea and Russia, they are celebrating receiving the cash!! Crimean are probably happier with Russia support and investment, and no increase in gas prices.

Perhaps!!! With Egypt there may be consideration that the majority of death penalties are commuted and provoking the "Judiciary" and "henchmen" may lead to them choosing the death penalty, rather than the more preferred route of prison.

Also, Egypt seems a confusion and while the Military Cabal of Egypt is "unattractive", Morsi and the Moslem Brotherhood are equally so.

Also, the present government is more interested in their back pockets and selling arms or weapons to the the highest bidders than "morality". (Sorry, market forces.)

The media seems as ineffective The Ukraine and Egypt, because of the confusion.

arms dealing
same all over the world in any country you want to mention
in your utopian world, you may be able to ban it, but in the real world that is never ever going to happen


egyptian purge
very unsavoury, but not hugely surprising i'm afraid
not entirely sure the logic is right either, as making martyrs of people has a habit of enhancing their cause

Anyone know if halifax is okay? He used to post quite a lot on the shares threads and I haven't seen him around for some time.

I don't bother about muslin brotherhood, but ignoring the verdict and not punishing the country is fundamentally wrong. In Crimea only two people died, one Crimean (pro-Russian) and one Ukrainian, even though it is not clear who killed the two.

90 missing is US and airplane loss are more important than initiating war because of Russian supported referendum in Crimea.

Destruction and Initiating war is always easy, it just needs an excuse.

Haystack

Sorry. Yes, I did read it.

The story sounds extremely credible and it only really leaves TWO important unknowns (I'm sure there must many more, though).

"...238 people may have died because of one person’s suicide plot. But while this theory may answer why the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean, it raises another question: Why did the pilot want to take his own life, and the lives of so many others?"

So why did he commit suicide?

Possible answer: The pilot of doomed flight MH370 was distraught over his wife’s decision to move out of their family home

And why did he take the passengers with him?

I guess he was so utterly pissed off with his wife and life in general, he 'road raged' about things, 'totally flipped' and thought, "Well, if that's what you get for being a good guy all your life, then why not!" ie. A sort of 'revenge act ' against the whole of the human race and society in general with all of its injustices, difficulties and all of the horrible situations it puts people in and then just expects them simply to be able to deal with all of such stuff and then simply move on.

Perhaps this guy just couldn't do that?