AM glass box for Friday
Hello.... would you like to share your thoughts with us before we go into our meeting at 11am. Has anything struck you today that might be worth discussing further on PM this evening?
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The blog for the afternoon news and current affairs programme presented by Eddie Mair.
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Yes, now you ask...
I popped over to BBC iPlayer to refresh my memory on how the various weather presenters have done this week with the new style format and to jot down their names for their end-of-term report - only to find skulduggery afoot!
Tuesday's podcast is only 54 minutes - ending abruptly after the AA man's tale of being soaked - and there's no weather at all!
Now I know Tuesday's weather wasn't the best of the week - but edited out altogether? I have fears for the poor girl's (her name escapes me I'm afraid) future prospects.
Has she been locked in a Weather Centre basement a la Groundhog Day until she gets it right?
Come on - 'fess up - whaddya done with her??
Enquiring minds want to know!
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Saw this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8309103.stm and was wondering if people would do the same now if parliment burnt down. It would be one way of starting a fresh!
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The Government has dismissed the Cambridge primary Education Review as 'outdated' yet from what I've heard it seems to be based upon evidence as to the way in which young children learn best eg play-based learning up to 6 years old. Are the Government of the opinion, then, that children have evolved radically since the review started 6 years ago? Or are they just objecting because it doesn't fit in with their Education plans and would involve ditching SATS?
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#3. gossipmistress
Many people believe that play based schooling leads to a lack of discipline and that eventually leads on to poor performance.
Many people believe that 1950's style schooling was the best, where kids sat in rows facing the front.
Some people think that the way to learn to read and write is to learn by phonetics.
Some people think that kids learn to read more quickly by recognising whole words.
I think that bright kids will learn whatever the system.
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Let's Go Fly A Kite? That story from the USA was rather alarming last night and this AM I awake and find - well - it was not alarming at all. 6 year old lad safe and sound and hiding in a box seemingly. Safe! Thankfully.
But I am worrying as the TV news I watched also had a piece about people allegedly selling false stories to keep out print media pages full of stories. About miming super chanteureuses perhaps - allegedly.
Now who would try that sort of disgraceful underhanded behaviour? And how come as they are so often immediately printed for us readers edification - how come it didn't work when I tried it - just the once -all those years ago?
Let's Go Fly A Fred Kite! Allegedly lol
Subject: dot dot dot (mount be)
Anagram: Not doubted - MOT dot
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Ln 4, Do you mean phonics? I don't remember using phonics when I was taught to read.
sp 5, The story brought to mind two words: illegal and immigrants.
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Looternite, there's no reason why organised play should be undisciplined. Apart from a few well publicised experiments in the sixties, play based learning does not mean allowing children to run riot and do whatever they feel like. On the contrary it should lead to children being able to behave in a civilised way with their peers, being able to communicate effectively by talking about what they are doing and above all to enjoy learning. Experience in the rest of Europe supports the notion that delaying formal schooling until six does not lead to uneducated children, quite the contrary.
I agree that bright kids will learn whatever the system. I would like however to have a system that served all children and made learning fun not a punishment. As a bright kid in the fifties I did my bit sitting in those disciplined rows, in a state of constant terror. A high proportion of kids in the class were expected only to go down the pit or work in shops, and were belted if they made mistakes. That many of us succeeded should not lead to an over romantic view of fifties education.
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Please do something about the education story! We have already condemned a generation of children to a restricted, boring curriculum - now's the time to let teachers be professionals again. Why does the govt think it knows better than the experts? Did we really elect, in 1997, a govt that knows how to teach children to read? Time for govt to retreat and let teachers do the job.
Incidentally, I've tried all the ways of teaching children to read - and phonics is the best.
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In case you haven't seen it, the education story is here.
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And this is good news!
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3. gossipmistress wrote:
Or are they just objecting because it doesn't fit in with their Education plans and would involve ditching SATS?
Mainly I fear they are objecting bcause the report doesn't fit their tabloid driven "tough on kids, tough on the causes of kids" agenda. In these days of "every penny counts", I wonder how much this report has cost that it can be so quickly dismissed out of hand. Perhaps those set to conduct any future studies should simply phone up the editor of the Sun and ask what conclusions they want to be presented with beforehand.
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AP 7, My fifties education in the US was nothing like that. Or do you mean 1850s? Down the pit??!!
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#7. Anne P.
I also went to infant and junior school in the 50's.
I am not a Daily Mail reader, I personally do not think that the 50's model was adequate.
We learnt to read using the Janet & John phonics system and although me and my brothers and sisters never had a problem there were many kids who struggled.
My kids went to infant and junior school in the 80's they were taught whole word recognition and they learnt to read with no problem.
When I started school I was a rising 5 which meant that I started in September although I was not 5 and should have started begining spring term.
My kids went to nursery school for a year before starting infant school and especially my daughter they were eager for school.
I will tell you my view: In the fifties and Eighties the common factor was OVER CROWDING
Class sizes for the critical years 5 to 7 need to be small then the teaching team can give appropiate attention to each child.
I was educated under the Tories and my kids were educated under the Tories. That's 2 generations poorly educated.
I understand that kids now have, in spite of the Daily Mail's views, a better all round education.
It should not be the threat of being hit with a plimsoll or stick that motivates kids to learn but the human need/hunger for knowledge.
My grandparents left school at 13, my parents left school at 14, I left school at 15 and my kids left school at 16.
My grandparents and parents had to leave school when they did because they were poor. Me and my kids left when we did because we were bored.
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Sid 19, I'll bet he won't be visiting the Isle of Man any time soon. I liked his columns in the Indy.
Did you read this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-from-north-carolina-a-model-of-how-to-transform-education-1803563.html
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bcause
Gah! I need a new keyboard or a new set of fingers!
Just one more education related matter. All of the schools around me are currently gripped by waves of illness, mostly noro virus but with some others thrown in. Attendances are right down, with less than 50% quite normal and some down to as low as 5 out of 30 pupils.
The question is, why does this now seem to happen every single year? I don't recall such huge waves of illness when I was at school. How much lesson time is being lost due to this and what is behind it? Lack of hygiene? Too much hygiene leading to lack of resistance? Central heating?
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#12. David_McNickle
Some Tories would like to go back to the 1850's.
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Looternite@4: it's not the bright kids that need (as much) worrying about.
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Ln 16, Some still are in the 1850's.
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I know you aren't too pedantic, so I will tell you this; sometimes I use a comman in dates, like 1850's, and sometimes I can't be bovvered and just say 1850s. And sometimes I use, or misuse, semicolons.
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David (12) Scotland still had a flourishing mining industry in the 1950s, and I lived in a mining village - so yes many of the boys still went down the pit. Not as many accidents as in the 1850s but I remember watching anxiously out of the window and waiting for news of men trapped by an explosion and fire. They were lucky, an elderly miner knew of a way through to a neighbouring pit and walked them all out. For all kinds of reasons I wouldn't want the industry revived but I have huge respect for the men who worked in it.
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#19. David_McNickle
I 'adn't noticed. Like you, I ain't bovvered how fings are spelt as long as the meanin is clear - 'no wot I mean.
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Incidentally, Vernon Coaker insists that he has 'refuted' the views of the primary education report, when what he has actually done is 'reject' them.
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Pedants unite, Sid (22), alongside infer and imply that's one of the most irritating! The reason it is irritating is not because I'm a pedant (which I am of course) but because of the havoc wrought with the meaning.
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The good thing about all this measuring of progress that goes on in schools now, is that fings ain't wot they used t' be, thank gawd.
In my day at school whenever teachers blew it, they blamed the kids. 'Not a good year', 'Rough kids from a rough area' etc.
Now, we know what they get and what the end result is.
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AP 20, I must check to see if they do that in W Va.
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Ln 21, Yeah
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AP 23, Shouldn't you have put a comma after imply?
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D McN - no comma required in Anne P's post.
And, incidentally, it's an apostrophe you sometimes (wrongly) put in '1850s', not a comma (or comman, as you so quaintly put it).
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A handy pointer...
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=refute
Although once a point is reached where 90% of people assume a word has 'the alternative meaning', don't dictionaries have to reflect that at some point ? I'm not just thinking of words like 'gay' but of words like 'default'. For banking bailouts the word 'default' may be particularly problematic. The 'default' position is that banks would NOT be bailed out as this was not a usual procedure. But once the banks were in default then this bailout became,er, the default course of action..
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These debts don't really seem to have done Citibank any harm:
http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=C#symbol=C;range=1y
Of course Goldman Sachs is ripping away:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GS#symbol=GS;range=1y
It's another speculative boom isn't it, Nils, looking at the bankrupt Citibank share climb?
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Indeed 'infer' seems rather more of a grey area...
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?title=21st&query=infer
Lord Bedd "It's not a movie, it's a film!" Gelert..
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By the way, I was taught 'phonetics' when I learnt to read.
But then Welsh is a superior language in so many respects..
Even if 'treigladau' are the bane of our life..
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For 3 billion in profits last quarter G-Sachs is expected to beat 21 billion in bonuses this year.
If you covered it yesterday Nils, surely it bears repeating every day. Like the tune. (Still can't iPlayer the prog for bits I missed)
(It's the trouble with a 'news' driven agenda. Running sores are under reported)
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25 DMcN
Education?
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#32. lordBeddGelert
To infer that "Welsh is a superior language in so many respects" is both racist and insulting.
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25 DMcN
Chickens?
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#32. lordBeddGelert
this site is supposed to be in English.
What is 'treigladau' is that a racist term for the English?
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" #32. lordBeddGelert
To infer that "Welsh is a superior language in so many respects" is both racist and insulting."
This is one of the most fatuous and asinine comments I have read on this blog in a very long time. If you have such serious sense of humour failure that you couldn't understand my comment was about the pros and cons of our respective languages then I think you need to take a bit of a coffee break on the naughty step. 'Ah, yes, I cannot win a debate so let us resort to the use of the r-word at all and every juncture'.
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My good Lord - you may have been taught phonetics when you learnt to read, but phonics is more likely:
The OED has:
Phonetics: The study and classification of speech sounds, esp. with regard to the physical aspects of their production; the branch of linguistics that deals with this.
Phonics: 4. The correlations between sound and symbol in an alphabetic writing system; the phonic method of teaching reading.
I agree with you entirely about words changing meaning. It's not something we can prevent. But the distinctions between infer/imply, refute/reject etc. are useful distinctions, and I think we should hold on to them as long as we can.
I don't agree that Welsh is a superior language (superior to what?, one might ask). I'm not even sure that it makes sense to suggest that one language might be superior to another. (With the possible exception of Esperanto.)
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Anne P. (23):
Don't you mean "wreaked"? ;o)
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Legg
You/They don't get it?
They turned a blind eye to the others doing it
Plus
They pretended they hadn't heard the Parliamentary Authorities telling 'em to make the most of it (as Portillo says they did to every new Member since his day)
Plus
They deliberately got more than they knew was reasonable
Plus
They were fraudulent
Plus
They didn't have the courage to legislate properly for their own salaries
Plus
They didn't criticise the rules
Equals
The whole House full.
They should all be SACKED.
By the sovereign people
I'd take majorities in the polls as legitimating kicking them out if they won't go.
(They have no right, any of them, to hide behind the history and authority of their parties to try to get re-elected at the next General Election. We, the people, endowed the parties with their power, not this bunch)
('plus' means you get double counting, but the components of this sum inclde EVERY MP (for pedants the 'plus' means 'union')
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'for pedants the 'plus' means 'union''
So what does it mean for non-pedants?
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A parable:
Your brother/sister loses all their clothes in a household fire. Short term, you say
'Here's my house key. Take what you need from my chest of drawers and wardrobe'.
When you get back home, there's not a stitch left.
Retrospectively you impose what the rules obviously were, but unspoken, in the first place.
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#38. lordBeddGelert
You said "If you have such serious sense of humour failure". Please tell that to your fellow Welsh next time Anne Robinson mentions the Welsh.
Any English person who in any way mentions Wales or the Welsh has to be extremely careful or else they will be reported to the authorities.
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Money is a public good. When others inflate or deflate it, the suff in your pocket changes its value. You infinitessimally change the value in everyone else's pocket in deciding whether to spend.
If capital (share values) goes up in price, then for the same rate of return, and fixed output, wages and salaries must fall relatively, to accommodate this extra claim on output by capital.
(For a 5 per cent rate of return, capital stock five times output, and a 10 per cent share price inflation, profits rise by the same amount that wages and salaries fall - namely by 2.5 per cent in share).
Capital too is a public good.
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#43. ExpectingtheEnd
Your parable is very apt.
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41 Ete - The following is how your post #41 might have looked had you chosen to format it in a manner which was considerate to other users.
If you made less excessive use of irritating and attention-seeking blank lines then you might find that people are prepared to read and respond to the points you make.
Please accept my advice as it is intended ... to be helpful.
Legg - You/They don't get it?
They turned a blind eye to the others doing it
Plus ...They pretended they hadn't heard the Parliamentary Authorities telling 'em to make the most of it (as Portillo says they did to every new Member since his day)
Plus ... They deliberately got more than they knew was reasonable
Plus ... They were fraudulent
Plus ... They didn't have the courage to legislate properly for their own salaries
Plus ... They didn't criticise the rules
Equals ...The whole House full - They should all be SACKED By the sovereign people
I'd take majorities in the polls as legitimating kicking them out if they won't go. (They have no right, any of them, to hide behind the history and authority of their parties to try to get re-elected at the next General Election. We, the people, endowed the parties with their power, not this bunch)
('plus' means you get double counting, but the components of this sum inclde EVERY MP (for pedants the 'plus' means 'union')
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#47. lucien_desgai
Thanks that's better I will now read it.
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lucien_desgai (47) - You could have lost all those brackets as well. (They're not necessary (and don't balance).
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Afghanistan:
This US-UK slaughter will go on, 'cos this time the Great Powers are on the same side and they think they can win.
They shouldn't be allowed to. They/We are the problem not the solution.
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There was some interesting stuff on bonuses and the future of capitalism on yesterday's Democracy Now, including an interview with the philosopher Slavoj Žižek (who could be an honorary Glaswegian).
Democracy Now is an indie-media daily US news broadcast, always worth checking out.
http://www.democracynow.org/index.shtml
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Well, thanks for the repetition, but for me, it changes the meaning of 'plus' from 'plus' in the senbse of 'add on the number of MPs this applies to:' to 'and ', until you get to 'equals'.
Which reminds me:
Plus****, the whole lot have failed to discuss what standard of living we should all enjoy, 'cos second home cover (tax relief?, expenses?, by salary?) raises the question. And their answer should apply to everyone, not a penny more nor a penny less for anybody.
Hence the introductory 'You' to the overpaid at the BBC and everywhere else.
***** = and.
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SSCat (40) thank you fellow pedant - I probably do. I think I recall a discussion about this previously. If iron can be worked (wrought) then could not havoc also be carefully created?
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52 Ete
I doubt that anyone cares about your meaning of 'plus' or would have bothered reading as far as 'equals'.
I'm just trying to suggest that you might have a better conversation with other blog users if the layout of your posts was more considerate and less LOOK AT ME!
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#53. Anne P.
Bloody hell - What you and SSScat make of my English usage must leave you speechless or worser.
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People keep suggesting we sell off the banks.
No, we should take them all into public ownership.
Could Nils help out here, by telling us how other state banks have fared handling mortgages.
The Post Office Card Account is handling benefits, in my experience, very sympathetically.
That, plus the National Girobank taken back within the Post Office from the (by then in public hands) Alliance and Leicester
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girobank
would give the PO a real financial basis (as suggested late last night by aberitzwyth)
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It's not as easy to avoid the big banks as you might think, from the Posr office website...
Post Office™ card account is offered by J. P. Morgan Europe Ltd through Post Office Ltd.
The best bet is to go with one of the few remaining building societies or the Co-op.
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I trust PM will be featuring Geert Wilders entry to the UK after a frankly fascist ban by Jacqui Smith was overturned. Funny how people who claim to oppose fascism/racism are the first to deny someone the right to say what they think. Wilders has a point of view shared by many [and increasing], and it does no good to shut him up any more than it does to attack the BNP in the street as some so-called anti-fascists did recently; gives them more power.
Gilders may or may not be far right, a label that's increasingly used of anyone who criticises multiculturalism or uncontrolled immigration, which thus drives more people who are critical towards the far right. The left-liberals have got themselves stuck, and can't think out of the multicultural box, and as a result are losing support from anyone who doesn't follow the party line on immigration.
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Bedford Mayoral Election … Lib Dems’ Dave Hogdson WINS!
Result just in …
First preferences:
Lib Dem 9428
Con 9105
Indy 7631
Indy 4316
Lab 3482
Green 1183
After second preferences:
Lib Dem 13352
Conservative 11543
Turnout: 30%
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Sid 28, Thank you. Now answer the posts I send to you.
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#59. Sid
To quote Lib/Dems after every election. "Hovever most people did not vote or voted for other people"
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L_d (pick a number), Send children down coal mines.
Sid (pick a number), At least I was right about phonics.
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Went to the Brum Symphony Hall, yesternite to see Prokofiev's 20th Anniversary (of the Russian Rvloution) Cantata and Berlioz's Requiem.
By the Mariinski Ensemble from St Petersburg.
Good for us PreStalinite Socialists (as in Raphealite)! The Prokofiev was saluted with a couple of choruses of the Red Flag and the Berlioz by shouts of 'Opium of the People!'
Prokofiev gave the then Cossacks a hard time, but the Odessa Steps was still a living memory.
I wish it had been performed by the Kirov from Leningrad.
Any chance of an item on name changes we don't need, forced on us?
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Ln 44, Did you hear what John Cleese said about the Welsh?
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L_d, Yeah, nothing worse than unbalanced brackets ().
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D McN: here are some answers to your questions:
Yes, No, Not usually, Sometimes, Chris Huhne, The Tories, New Labour, Stalin, The United States, Raspberry jam, Cabernet Sauvignon, Twice, Standing up in a hammock, Playing the saxophone.
I'd be grateful if you could cut these out and use them as and when needed.
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57 Thanks. In fact self doubt (born of a view that may be taken to coincide with what could be taken to be Bin Ladin's attitude to US capitalism ('theft at the point of market makers' mark-ups')) was clearly an instrumental force in the market collapses. That is, of course,the Keynesian view ('animal spirits') but with the, in part, moral dimension that market makers begin to believe they won't get away with inflating their own stocks any more.
Marxists believe the crash has purposes (disciplining competing forces at home and abroad) for US capitalism, with these moral doubts doing the job of the hard nosed theorists (in this case, those advocating the triggering US interest rate rises).
The Bank of America's results suggest stage 2 of the Second Great Slump may not have to wait for Shameron**** to get power, after all.
**** A useful Looternite coinage.
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Sid 66, You missed whether or not you read the J Hari column. Unless that was the yes or no. Typical Lib Dem if it was both.
I'm a copy and paster.
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Sid (66) - :o)
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#64. David_McNickle
I can not remember.
Would you be allowed to repeat it here.
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EtE 63, Did you wave a red flag?
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Ln 70, It was on that recent program about Monty Python. With reference to Terry Jones, he roughly said something about the size of the Welsh and that they were born to be slaves for the English.
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L-D, Better yet, ().
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#72. David_McNickle
Oh Yeah, I remember now, carn't remember exactly what he said.
I wonder if it was shown on Welsh TellyWelly or whatever they call it.
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Ln 74, I probably didn't get it exactly right, but it was funny.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Ln, Ain't Google wunnerful?
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#76. + #77 David_McNickle
Thanks. I remember it now.
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D McN - it was yes.
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Sid 79, Are you going to replace that 'yes' with another one?
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Are we going to let the middle class chattering classes protect themselves by simultaneously seeming to fight racism whilst giving it audience and cred? For by allowing BNP platform and 'fighting racism by argument (chattering)' they manage to avoid their own'worst of all possible worlds', which is repaying the economic exploitation they owe, by doing proper jobs.
Let's at least point out that that is why the upper and upper middle classes here, plead Voltaire (would they really?), the First Amendment (when they variously think of themselves as in the 51st State (painfully, the upper middle class case) or the true Federal District, still running things over there from over here (the upper class case)) Human Rights Legislation (forgetting everywhere the Brits have ever been) etc, in allowing the BNP their say.
Oh, for work-redistributive justice!
If teachers would stop trying to teach them what they already know, and labelling them as unworthy, we'd all know the genuine under classes are ready willing and able to take over.
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D McN - no - you can use the one from your #80.
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David (76):
Yes, this is an example of what we call, "a sense of humour".
Anne P. (53):
Yes, I'd accept that. A planned, workmanlike havoc can certainly be wrought. 'Course these days you don't get properly wrought havoc. It's all spur-of-the-moment, chaotic wreaking havoc for these young-uns.
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I loved the strapline in the Independent article:
"Johann Hari - The proof that our education is failing so badly."
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SSC (83) :-)
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SSC 83, I thought it was funny. But then I've noticed your lack of a sense of humor.
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SSC 83, However, somebody didn't think it was funny as it has been removed. Like nobody read it. Maybe I should have put quote marks around it.
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#87. David_McNickle
I thought the John Cleese comment that you repeated in your #76 was funny.
I find it strange that a well known BBC star makes a funny jest regarding a colleague who he worked with on a well known BBC programme. Gets his comments made on a BBC tv programme removed from a BBC blog.
Something "funny" is going on here.
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Ln 88, Should I try to post it again in quotes and giving credit to Cleese for saying it on a BBC TV program?
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#89. David_McNickle
Worth a try, but the people who come from a part of Britain beginning with "W" are very sensitive.
When I complain about negative comments regarding the English, I am accused of:
"This is one of the most fatuous and asinine comments I have read on this blog in a very long time. If you have such serious sense of humour failure that you couldn't understand my comment was about the pros and cons of our respective languages then I think you need to take a bit of a coffee break on the naughty step. 'Ah, yes, I cannot win a debate so let us resort to the use of the r-word at all and every juncture'."
From someone who is Welsh!
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Ln 90, Ask Anne Robinson.
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#91. David_McNickle
I would but her mouth doesn't seem to work properly now.
Has she had a stroke?
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Ln 92, Possibly, but not a stroke of genius.
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