How maths lessons have changed over the years...

[Deleted]

OK let's take SS as an example if she will allow me.
Lala and co call her all kinds of things like dumb, thick, racist stupid etc.
She tries to articulate the kind of feeling that is occurring where she lives, and the unrest there.
It doesn't matter whether people aren't the sharpest tools and have few skills.
They are experiencing something which presents them with problems.
But you are too clever and sophisticated to listen, because it's easier to pigeon hole those ideas into a neat slot.
I have the feeling that you will go on patronising such people until the day that something does 'go off' and then you will all slither away into the undergrowth and never be heard of again.

[Deleted]

Me, I'm a cola capitalist.
I like the way that I can communicate and obtain service for goods etc in the private sector.
Nothing flashy like stock broking, just everyday interaction with banks and shops.
I say something and they say OK Madam, Mrs Thingamy and that's it.
No confusion or anything. Just a polite hello and good bye.
That's all I would like.
With the services I don't 'pay' for there seems to be a lot of confusion.
So it can't be me.
So what is it?

[ricklinc]

Yeah, SS does get a lot of stick from the unintelligentsia around here. At best she is treated as some mentally crippled creature who doesn't even dimly understand what she sees around her. At times there appears to be genuine venom. Yeah, I find her style a bit irritating sometimes, what with the frequent unbroken string of short postings but that's apparently at least partly down to posting from a phone. Something I would never consider doing because I haven't the patience. Or the phone.

But she often types about what she can actually see in a Yorkshire town. Not in some leafy suburb down South. Not in a sheep-shagging ranch in New Zealand. But about where she actually is. And posters attempts to try and tell her that she's wrong seem a bit stupid. But if she says anything the dweeb unintelligentsia don't like then it's off on the racist BNP schtick. I've yet to see her lecture LaLa about Maoris or Kiwis. Or even sheep about which she may be qualified to speak based on at least hearsay in Yorkshire.

But she's a racist bigot who reads the Mail and is therefore not considered an unbiased source of information. Even after she told us about the mood in Yorkshire concerning immigrants and was to some extent proved right by the BNP winning a Euro seat there.

When it comes to real information you get more from SS than you do from LaLa. And Omnipresent just parrots his latest figures from Labour Morale-Boost Weekly.

[feral]

I have the feeling that you will go on patronising such people until the day that something does 'go off' and then you will all slither away into the undergrowth and never be heard of again.

Yes.It's all very well saying it's nonsense to have such racist feelings and misplaced and and and but it changes everything when there are many many people who all feel that way .Whether they are right or wrong is beside the point really .The unrest is there and it's going to get worse I believe .I wouldnt even attempt to comment on what it's like in certain cities and towns because I dont live in them ( An aside just for Brittles -I'd make that statement if I lived in UK as well ) I do know that I get some feel for it when I talk to me mum and dad on the phone .Here are two people who I never considered racist really ( well me dad was always an" I'm not racist but " type ,but me mum never was ) and who live in a place that rarely gets mentioned as an immigrant hotspot area and there they are now spouting vitriol about the amount of immigrants !And the vitriol is directed at the immigrants .And far more by me mum than by me dad. It's all very well saying its only the ignorant and misinformed that are getting uptight but its not .Me mum and dad are neither ignorant nor misinformed ( usually )
Anyway ,I listen to them and mumble about how they shouldnt blame the immigrants but think at the same time that here are two reasonably intelligent people who are up in arms and if it's got to them how many more has it got to and where on earth is it heading

[ricklinc]

This anecdotal evidence from two clearly racist facists who obviously read the Mail is playing into BNP hands.

Dismiss the report. If it happens again despatch the UAF to chant slogans.

[watchman]

Aug 13, 2009 22:59:19 GMT puffin said:

If keeping the workers obedient and subservient was the aim of poor education then China wouldn't be desperately raising their education standards as fast as they are able.

It's a good point, Puffin, and I think this is a real dilemma for the Chinese leadership. They do want to keep their workers obedient and subservient - but they also need the scientists, engineers and administrators to keep expanding that emerging superpower economy.

And as the West discovered, the more educated the workforce becomes, the greater its aspirations. There'll be "interesting times" ahead in China, that's for sure...

[ricklinc]

Producing mathematicians, engineers and scientists is one thing. Treating them well enough to keep them is another. The UK is going to be maxed out on media studies graduates who might find that their transferrable skills aren't worth spit except to teach media students to cut out sticky coloured plastic shapes. On the other hand most engineering and science might be happening in the East with people in the West busy trying to sell sticky coloured plastic shapes to each other for a living so that they can buy the stuff that Chinese engineers design.

An intellectually liberated China might stand with a shopping bag in front of a tank. I don't think that there's any way to tell how that would go.

[puffin]

I'm very happy to accept anecdotal evidence about what people actually experience for themselves, in their own town and neighbourhood and within their immediate circle of family and friends. We all do that and , of course our personal experiences have validity...as personal experiences.
Things start to take on a different perspective when those personal experiences are then touted as being everyone's experiences or feelings about any matter concerning the UK, regardless of the personal expereinces of anyone else, statistics , related news etc.
Very limited anecdotal and parochial doesn't translate well to a wide ranging discussion about a full range of social and polical topics.

[ricklinc]

a wide ranging discussion about a full range of social and polical topics.

Which sounds awfully like a committee is about to spend months debating stuff in such places as Bermuda and eventually conclude that the country desperately needs to form a committee to discuss the findings of the previous committee. At some point there will be a steering group. And better do something about diversity just to be on the safe side.

Meanwhile the police could do with a bit of a break from the forms that one of the previous committees compiled to ensure that policy was being observed. The police sometimes have this thing about wanting to patrol the streets if they get time.

And schools would quite like to spend a bit of time teaching children to read, write and count if they could just be given a bit of slack from the mandatory suggested guidelines for promoting social awareness that another committee determined to be essential to create a well rounded and balanced individual in today's vibrant and dynamic multicultural and multiethnic society. That's not working, by the way.

Maybe a bit of anecdotal evidence and the will to respond might be a good idea sometimes.

[Deleted]

Well at the risk of deviating from the thread topic, i'm just saying that maybe we should listen to people when they experience difficulties.
That's not the same as pandering to them or doing something prejudicial.
We have to come up with a formula that makes things in their lives more agreeable.
That goes for whites, English, ethnic Muslims and everyone else.
It isn't easy to give up the things which you have always known, and it leaves a vacuum.
Jobs and prospects become uncertain.

[lala]

I don't read the Mail. Or the Telegraph.[/i]

How can you possibly comment on them, in anyway shape or form? After all, commenting on a newspaper you don't read is akin to commenting on a country you don't live in.

But does he ever actually find out anything?[/i]

I like to think I've dispelled the odd misconception and exposed the odd lie.

He seems to spend his leisure time looking for why things aren't true.[/i]

Only when people post them here.

Does he ever give the same brutally critical treatment to dweeb newspapers?[/i]

I eviserated an Indie article about Afghanistan recently. But, on the whole, people don't link Indie articles with the ferocious enthusiasm that they do stuff from the Mail.

[lala]

Lala and co call her all kinds of things like dumb, thick, racist stupid etc.
She tries to articulate the kind of feeling that is occurring where she lives, and the unrest there.
It doesn't matter whether people aren't the sharpest tools and have few skills.
They are experiencing something which presents them with problems.
But you are too clever and sophisticated to listen, because it's easier to pigeon hole those ideas into a neat slot.[/i]

You're missing the history here. SS brands anyone who disagrees with her, 'apologist' or 'traitor.' This goes right back, to long before she started getting stick back for it. She's been asked a million times to explain her self, she's been asked millions of questions. She never reposnds, prefering to shoot off in a whelter of one line posts announcing her batteries are running out or she's got to go to work. So don't make out this is big mean nasty too-clever-for-his-own-good la la picking on poor, innocent, hapless and defenceless little SS.

[lala]

And posters attempts to try and tell her that she's wrong seem a bit stupid. But if she says anything the dweeb unintelligentsia don't like then it's off on the racist BNP schtick. I've yet to see her lecture LaLa about Maoris or Kiwis.[/i]

What on Earth oes "tell her she's wrong" mean? If she's incorrect about something, why the Hell shouldn't she be told so? Is this some new PC thing where people aren't allowed to be corrected in case it hurts their self esteem?

As far as I'm aware, SS doesn't give a dman about New Zealand. Idf she does, she's more than welcome to offer her opinions on it.

[puffin]

No-one is beyond criticism.
Everyone on here has been subject to it at one time or another. Some deserve it, some get it even when they don't deserve it and some appear to actively court it.
The idea that any individuals should somehow be exempt from others voicing their disagreement is very strange indeed, particularly if they regularly dish out criticism of the opinions of others in no uncertain manner.

[lala]

For what it is worth, I don't think Puffin and I have ever exchanged harsh words. For all that she's a mangy bird with a big bill, votes Tory and worships a Skygod. Because she's pleasant. She also reads posts and responds. Pleasantly.

[voice]

Politically I'm always on the other side of discussions from Puff, but she has not felt the need once to fall back tor dismissing those who don't agree with her as dweebs ect.
You can disagree without being a Rick about it

[voice]

oh and talking of SS when did she flounce this time and over what?

[voice]

on second thoughts I don't really care

[lala]

You can disagree without being a Rick about it [/i]

You dropped a 'p' there.

oh and talking of SS when did she flounce this time and over what?[/i]

Ask here when she slithers back in next week.

[voice]

I'm happy just to get a bit of fresh air on here, she stinks up the place with all that BNP propaganda crap