The Politics Thread

[TANGODANCER]

One of my mates is training to be a surgeon, and he's one of the most twitchy and nervous people you could ever hope to meet

I still know a guy (now a consultant surgeon) who once came back to my house for a drink after a night out. He was still there at 3-30, well-oiled and was operating at Bolton Hospital early the following morning. Fxxking glad it wasn't me on the table.

[William the White]

One of my mates is training to be a surgeon, and he's one of the most twitchy and nervous people you could ever hope to meet

I still know a guy (now a consultant surgeon) who once came back to my house for a drink after a night out. He was still there at 3-30, well-oiled and was operating at Bolton Hospital early the following morning. Fxxking glad it wasn't me on the table.

Aren't doctors really high up on the alcoholism table?

Third, i heard. To journalists and recreational dancers.

[Montreal Wanderer]

One of my mates is training to be a surgeon, and he's one of the most twitchy and nervous people you could ever hope to meet

I still know a guy (now a consultant surgeon) who once came back to my house for a drink after a night out. He was still there at 3-30, well-oiled and was operating at Bolton Hospital early the following morning. Fxxking glad it wasn't me on the table.

Aren't doctors really high up on the alcoholism table?

Third, i heard. To journalists and recreational dancers.

It is probably high up there, WtW, though may vary with locale. I understood that of the professions (as opposed to occupations) that dentists had the highest suicide rate but lawyers led the alcoholics. Here in Catholic Quebec there is a very high incidence of alcoholism amongst priests (which may be preferable to other things they might do I suppose). I'll have to see if I can find any reliable data.

[Bruce Rioja]

A mate of mine is a neonatal surgeon. There isn't a man on Earth that I admire more by way of what he does. When he says he's switching onto the orange juice at nine o'clock, that's why.

[Montreal Wanderer]

Turns out I needed a dictionary. I have trouble with studies that begin:

Alcoholism is almost certainly multifactorial in its etiology. Moss and Beresford-Davies
(1967) suggest that there are 'intrinsic' factors, such as possible genetic
predispositions. Also, there are 'extrinsic' factors such as the social environment.
Research shows that the prevalence of alcoholism varies considerably between
different social groups (Kessel and Walton, 1971). In view of these variations,
'extrinsic' factors may be crucial.
The popular stereotype of the alcoholic depicts an unemployed 'skid row' vagrant.
In fact, the great majority of male alcoholics are employed during the development of
their alcoholism. Due to the importance of employment to the total life experiences of
males, it may be revealing to identify work situations particularly associated with
deviant drinking. Some occupations are traditionally purported to carry a high risk of
alcoholism. Even so, little has been done to examine why this is so, if indeed it is so.
This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship of alcoholism and occupations.
The purpose of this review is to determine whether or not risk factors are evident and to
discuss the implications of these if they are identified.

However, in England and Wales they find:
The patients in this study group were from all occupational levels, but some occupations were overrepresented in
relation to the overall community; seamen, public house, hotel and restaurant workers, publicans and hoteliers, nurses, medical practitioners and company directors (not to mention BWFC fans).
.

(Okay, I added the last bit.)

[thebish]

Why though?

Why anymore difficult than science?

And maths is very important and I'm not talking about stopping that. I'm saying that the modern world has moved on from some of the antiquated subjects that are still taught and the ways the subjects are neatly broken up into separate parts.

In an ideal world past a certain age IT should simply be embedded into the rest of the curriculum. Every lesson should involve computer use rather than kids writing in text books. They could learn basic programming skills to solve scientific/mathematical problems for example, type notes on their laptops and compose essays on their PC's.

As an example, past a fairly basic level do kids need to know how to spell, what with spell-checking now? I used to do weekly spelling tests, but nowadays is that a really necessary skill for most? (Not saying it isn't just testing the water, so to speak).

Because with IT, unless you're trying to teach specific programming languages (or theoretical aspects), you need to decide what it means to be IT literate.

Which, in effect, means that I agree with the fourth paragraph you've written - learning IT, unless you want to study programming languages or "computer science", should be done as part of learning other subjects. So you learn how to navigate a PC (or whatever machine you use), get to grips with becoming comfortable with it, etc. This isn't best done by having lessons devoted to it by itself, because there's no immediate objective in that situation.

"IT" is a bit of a nebulous term - and at gcse it is little more than how to turn on the machine...

it's hard to argue about something so nebulous as so much comes under that heading. My son is currently doing double ICT a-level - and he says it's pretty much common sense dribble

he's going on to do computer games programming at teesside (probably) (the coding not the graphics or the marketing - all of which also come under the "IT" heading) - and they are much less interested in his A level ICT than in his Maths and physics. they can teach the coding - no problem - but not the maths or the physics.

if you are asked to code an arrow-flight - and you don't know physics (for instance) - then it won't look right - the parabola will be wrong (early games have arrows flying in dead straight lines - summat that has always irritated me)

[Lord Kangana]

Turns out I needed a dictionary. I have trouble with studies that begin:

Alcoholism is almost certainly multifactorial in its etiology. Moss and Beresford-Davies
(1967) suggest that there are 'intrinsic' factors, such as possible genetic
predispositions. Also, there are 'extrinsic' factors such as the social environment.
Research shows that the prevalence of alcoholism varies considerably between
different social groups (Kessel and Walton, 1971). In view of these variations,
'extrinsic' factors may be crucial.
The popular stereotype of the alcoholic depicts an unemployed 'skid row' vagrant.
In fact, the great majority of male alcoholics are employed during the development of
their alcoholism. Due to the importance of employment to the total life experiences of
males, it may be revealing to identify work situations particularly associated with
deviant drinking. Some occupations are traditionally purported to carry a high risk of
alcoholism. Even so, little has been done to examine why this is so, if indeed it is so.
This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship of alcoholism and occupations.
The purpose of this review is to determine whether or not risk factors are evident and to
discuss the implications of these if they are identified.

However, in England and Wales they find:
The patients in this study group were from all occupational levels, but some occupations were overrepresented in
relation to the overall community; seamen, public house, hotel and restaurant workers, publicans and hoteliers, nurses, medical practitioners and company directors (not to mention BWFC fans).
.

(Okay, I added the last bit.)

I'm twice f*cked off that list then....but anyway its interesting that the study hints at potential genetic predisposition. A friend of mine (an historian) has always claimed there must be some link, because of the ferocious drinking that took place before we discovered how to boil water to tame water-borne disease. I might also add that I've heard mention of a study that claims a similar genetic link with smoking. I think this is a little bit of a digression from politics, mind.

[Verbal]

One of my mates is training to be a surgeon, and he's one of the most twitchy and nervous people you could ever hope to meet

I still know a guy (now a consultant surgeon) who once came back to my house for a drink after a night out. He was still there at 3-30, well-oiled and was operating at Bolton Hospital early the following morning. Fxxking glad it wasn't me on the table.

Aren't doctors really high up on the alcoholism table?

Third, i heard. To journalists and recreational dancers.

As an employee at RBH (in my university vacations, anyway), I wouldn't be terribly surprised. I worked in a+e quad (i.e. where the proper gnarly shit goes down) over the summer, and some of the occurences there gave me sleepless nights, and I was only doing admin stuff. Imagine trying to be trying to save the life of someone who has just been stabbed, or someone who just had a haemorrage after originally thinking it was a headache, or a child who got run over by a driver who sped off? It'd take a lot of getting used to, either way.

Bear it mind this is just summer as well. Come winter, the traffic of people coming in is doubled, easily. I've not had to work in wintertime, but these docs (and nurses, who do not get the credit they deserve) do it all year around, seeing things only you and I can imagine. As I say, I wouldn't be surprised.

[William the White]

Turns out I needed a dictionary. I have trouble with studies that begin:

Alcoholism is almost certainly multifactorial in its etiology. Moss and Beresford-Davies
(1967) suggest that there are 'intrinsic' factors, such as possible genetic
predispositions. Also, there are 'extrinsic' factors such as the social environment.
Research shows that the prevalence of alcoholism varies considerably between
different social groups (Kessel and Walton, 1971). In view of these variations,
'extrinsic' factors may be crucial.
The popular stereotype of the alcoholic depicts an unemployed 'skid row' vagrant.
In fact, the great majority of male alcoholics are employed during the development of
their alcoholism. Due to the importance of employment to the total life experiences of
males, it may be revealing to identify work situations particularly associated with
deviant drinking. Some occupations are traditionally purported to carry a high risk of
alcoholism. Even so, little has been done to examine why this is so, if indeed it is so.
This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship of alcoholism and occupations.
The purpose of this review is to determine whether or not risk factors are evident and to
discuss the implications of these if they are identified.

However, in England and Wales they find:
The patients in this study group were from all occupational levels, but some occupations were overrepresented in
relation to the overall community; seamen, public house, hotel and restaurant workers, publicans and hoteliers, nurses, medical practitioners and company directors (not to mention BWFC fans).
.

(Okay, I added the last bit.)

I'm twice f*cked off that list then....but anyway its interesting that the study hints at potential genetic predisposition. A friend of mine (an historian) has always claimed there must be some link, because of the ferocious drinking that took place before we discovered how to boil water to tame water-borne disease. I might also add that I've heard mention of a study that claims a similar genetic link with smoking. I think this is a little bit of a digression from politics, mind.

Interesting list though - seamen (maybe a mix of cultural factors - wtf else do you do?) - and occupational - the serving of 'grog' (rum and water) twice a day - followed by people working with booze, pub and restaurants (bit obvious really) - followed by nurses and doctors, which is what i'd heard, that they were really high on the list... what's going on there? Really high levels of stress, with sick people, matters of life and death, constant important decisions? Or a sort of, feck it, we're all going to die of summat horrible so let's get psissed now? and company directrs? similar high level pressure on decisions? and high level celebrations when you're in the money?

[Lord Kangana]

This is a good article:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=7

Whilst Mummy has to worry, the underlying factors seem to be long hours/stressful job. In other words, alcohol becomes the release valve. Seamen spend a great deal of imposed time away from home, people in my industry not only work those long hours, but have incredibly easy access to free booze, an incendiary cocktail, as I've witnessed many times. The medical profession similarly imposes very long, highly stressful hours, at least for the first few years, and I guess thats when habits form. That, and apparently the boredom of usually intelleigent people with the mundanity of being a GP (so I read some time ago).

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

This is a good article:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... html?cat=7

Whilst Mummy has to worry, the underlying factors seem to be long hours/stressful job. In other words, alcohol becomes the release valve. Seamen spend a great deal of imposed time away from home, people in my industry not only work those long hours, but have incredibly easy access to free booze, an incendiary cocktail, as I've witnessed many times. The medical profession similarly imposes very long, highly stressful hours, at least for the first few years, and I guess thats when habits form. That, and apparently the boredom of usually intelleigent people with the mundanity of being a GP (so I read some time ago).

Hmmm - in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens uses the phrase "the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities".... and I'm sure that's still the case.

[blurred]

I understood that of the professions (as opposed to occupations) that dentists had the highest suicide rate

Aye, they always look a bit down in the mouth...

[Bruce Rioja]

I understood that of the professions (as opposed to occupations) that dentists had the highest suicide rate

And according to the WHO, Lithuania has the highest suicide rate in the world, thus leaving little prospect for Lithuanian dentists, one surmises.

[Hoboh]

Mmmmmmmmmmm I.T.

X-Box and PS3?

(Or how many ways can you rob/kill a person)

[BWFC_Insane]

Mmmmmmmmmmm I.T.

X-Box and PS3?

(Or how many ways can you rob/kill a person)

Are you on drugs?

Seriously.

Cos ya know. I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say!

[Puskas]

Mmmmmmmmmmm I.T.

X-Box and PS3?

(Or how many ways can you rob/kill a person)

Are you on drugs?

Seriously.

Cos ya know. I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say!

I think he may be making a joke about popular computer game Grand Theft Auto.

His point is, however, as elusive as ever.

[BWFC_Insane]

Mmmmmmmmmmm I.T.

X-Box and PS3?

(Or how many ways can you rob/kill a person)

Are you on drugs?

Seriously.

Cos ya know. I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say!

I think he may be making a joke about popular computer game Grand Theft Auto.

His point is, however, as elusive as ever.

Yes I kinda got the first bit but like you, what this has to do with the previous discussion in this thread is beyond me.

[Hoboh]

Mmmmmmmmmmm I.T.

X-Box and PS3?

(Or how many ways can you rob/kill a person)

Are you on drugs?

Seriously.

Cos ya know. I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say!

I think he may be making a joke about popular computer game Grand Theft Auto.

His point is, however, as elusive as ever.

Yes I kinda got the first bit but like you, what this has to do with the previous discussion in this thread is beyond me.

Oh dear me!!
The nearest the vast majority of kids in state ed schools get to IT is games on X-Box, PS3, so making a statement about it being the most important lesson will serve as usufull to about 25% of pupils (hardly worth investing millions in if thats the case) most of the 25% would more than likely be at Grammer schools were this sort of cash investment would be far better spent and reap better rewards of performance in this field.
My sister is a teacher, my son in law is a teacher, his parents are a retired head master and a still working head mistress and they will all backup that the lowest folk in classes bring the others down to their level, very rarely the other way unless there is streaming.

[CAPSLOCK]

Hobo - my daughter attends a catholic secondary school in Bolton...her brother a primary feeder

Both schools are heaving with 'puters

JSL

Cos I really can't be arsed arguing the merits or otherwise of Grammar Schools, with folk who in many cases reaped the benefits now decide its shite

All sounds a bit anntaylorish to me

[Hoboh]

Hobo - my daughter attends a catholic secondary school in Bolton...her brother a primary feeder

Both schools are heaving with 'puters

JSL

Cos I really can't be arsed arguing the merits or otherwise of Grammar Schools, with folk who in many cases reaped the benefits now decide its shite

All sounds a bit anntaylorish to me

I like the Ann Taylor bit.