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bully_baiter

Listed below are comments made by bully_baiter between Sunday, 21st June 2009 and Monday, 2nd November 2009.

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Why was David Nutt sacked? 08:36am on 02 Nov 2009 Dr Nutt was employed to advise and he has taken that to mean that if his employers will not listen then the public need to know he has been ignored. Mr Johnson may feel justified in sacking him when he should be chewing on the knotty problem that his Government's policies have created.

Cannabis prevention is "impossible", and so, in truth, is almost any other drug we care to name. A lot of time, effort and misery could be prevented by changing our legislation to make "drug abuse" the crime - not "drug use".
Would YOU give him another chance? 10:03am on 30 Oct 2009 Marlon King used his "status" as a Premiership footballer to attack a young woman. It is justice that his "status" should be removed afetr he has completed his sentence. Let him re-earn the respect of a society he has harmed.
Map of the Week: Addressing educational underachievement 07:01am on 20 Oct 2009 As a Londoner who grew up in underprivileged areas where police patrolled in pairs at all times I have watched my roots become gentrified. The home where I was nurtured into adolescence would now cost in excess of £1.5m; the home where I grew into a young adult would have fetched £3k in 1966; it would now cost in excess of £1.25m. This has nothing to do with education but everything to do with assets and income, as prices leapt up when middle classes fought to get as close to central London as possible.

My marriage home cost £11k. At divorce it was valued at over £600k. That had occurred in 20 years. "Ordinary folk" were driven out of areas they simply could not afford any more. Those with more robust introductions to life were more likely to attend university for the "obligatory" degree just to prove their "superiority" and this is still true. But intelligence has NEVER concentrated on the size of your purse or wallet. High IQs are still an elusive puzzle to crack and understand and it is worth remembering that an IQ of 100 is still enough to guarantee you a 2:1 degree if you want it.
Is primary education threatened by authoritarianism? 06:37am on 19 Oct 2009 There is a Chinese proverb "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember.
I do and I understand." which, in my opinion, heightens the argument that teaching is a skill that cannot be taught especially at primary level. As R_O_S summarises at 101 much has to do with making teaching a vocational choice because of reward rather than desire.

As with most things in life the more you attempt to bridle in skills the greater their potential to become elusive. Teaching kids can never be without pressure because there will always be moments when you wish to, or have to, check out your students. But the skill of the teacher is to defeat that pressure until it is desirable for the charges to know.

Intuitive teachers do not need measuring devices for their children but they know their parents and the authorities do. We have messed education up because we have not understood the components of learning and ministers have failed to collect the best advice they can find.
Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 06:58am on 16 Oct 2009 When Britain considered racism in the fifties and sixties it wished to prevent a "majority" from targeting a "minority", to ostracise that minority, or to treat them as less equal than others. Slowly but surely the "minorities" came to include indigenous "nationals" such as Welsh and Scottish. The English never were a minority so we came out with no parliament of our own, no voice in ethnicity matters, and no right to question the judgements of people like Trevor Philips because we would be termed "racist".

The supremely flawed logic of this is that we are all minorities of one; having cultural "links" to the past is pie in sky psycho-babble. We all have "links" to the past otherwise we wouldn't be here would we? So excuse me for my pedantry but wasn't the establishment of assemblies for Wales and Scotland an idiotic and divisive step? Are we not all in this together - as equals? Or is someone playing a game of charades whereby "class" division (hard to argue against) is replaced with "ethnicity" division (hard to justify unless you are a minority and of course we are all a minority of one).

So by being born white, and English, I am somehow marked out as potentially flawed - a racist, a bigot, a tormented soul with no cultural heritage, understanding or depth. Even my language can be savagely plagiarised without a right of protest.

I must treat everyone else with respect but they can trample all over me? Is that what equality means?
Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 09:36am on 15 Oct 2009 @49

Recommended reading wappaho. Thank you for that.
Map of the Week: Forgotten white working classes 09:09am on 15 Oct 2009 Isn't it dangerous to focus on a symptom of a problem and not the cause?

Years of social statistics, of sampling, of opinion polls, of vague reports by academics, consultants, and quangos are not ever going to penetrate the core of the destruction of our working classes.

The Welfare State did indeed deliver after WW2, even until and just after the time we encouraged immigration to bolster our public services employment deficit in the fifties and sixties. But something went wrong in the tussle between the workers, on the one hand, and the employers on the other. One was disavowed the franchise whilst the other was cleverly edged in. Thatcher delivered the final blow but the body was mostly a tattered wreck of what it once was.

So the poorest sank into a muddy muddle where earth should have been poured in. Instead politicians and their manipulators poured on more water and many sunk without trace. Only the fittest stand on the shoulders of those already gone. And then we, the onlookers at what crimes we have done, puzzle the cost.

An intriguing example of how we have failed to honour commitments to the poorest in society is the Royal Mail dispute packaged by a partisan media into Unions (Luddites from a bygone age) versus Management (visionaries desperate to bring a company forward). No one considers the alternatives - a worker buy out on the kind of terms that the Government love to offer to "big" companies. Five years of subsidies to get Royal Mail back on its feet; no selected out "profitable" services that make the playing field like a mountain. A chance for the working classes to show just how "good" they can be given half a chance.

We have gotten into a "closed shop" mentality far worse than that demonstrated by trade union leaders in 1978/9. Except it is a "forgiveable" closed shop because it is occupied by a load of business, academic and political dodos.
An important story 07:39am on 05 Oct 2009 @11

Indeed. It is a pity the BBC have not given prominence to every deceitful move that the US and its allies (including Israel) have made in the lead up to and the delivery of their strategy to make disagreeable states pay. 911 has shown up the BBC for what it is.

Bush obtained his presidency undemocratically and he wanted the world to have identical capability. In Iraq and Afghanistan he sure delivered.
Consulting other parties 1:11pm on 21 Jun 2009 #209 & 211

Both posts provide excellent reasons for Anne Widdecombe having a shout! If her high pitched voice grates then perhaps MPs will not wish to get quite so excited...

But on a more serious note I agree with Susan-Croft: we don't appear to have anyone with the guile and panache required to sort all the naughty boys and gals out... and do not have a stain on their character.

It is a great pity the Speaker cannot be co-opted.
Consulting other parties 11:06am on 21 Jun 2009 #213

Surely we are way beyond the "things we said in the past", into the realms of the things that have been said up to very recently about Iraq and Afghanistan and now Iran and Pakistan. And we are surely too embroiled in the scandals that took place in Downing Street, the Palace of Westminster, and the restaurants and diners attended by MPs, civil servants and hacks from the BBC and elsewhere, for this to be another "old boy's chat".

And a war is not something to get sanctimonious about since the lives it has taken are not those of the people who sent us into battle. The ire over Iraq has not been developed through sedition; it has arisen from ordinary people being incredulous over the many lies that have masqueraded as explanations as to how we got to be in these countries at all. And don't we owe all those of our own who have died and the many thousands who have perished as a consequence of our presence in Iraq a decent and honest recounting of what really went on?

The US has been lining up Iran for a long time. Obama may not be prepared to be manoeuvred into a corner but will he last longer than four years? If only to prevent another game of charades when the US call for aid to "invade" Iran by force or stealth we must learn from our past mistakes and at least know what we must do to prevent another tragedy of misjudgement occurring. Maybe we do not have Blair at the helm but isn't there another slick customer waiting in the wings to make us pay for not having a leader to elect?

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