Today I'm angry about.....

[Lord Kangana]

They do.

Ken Clarke's bezzie mate in parliament is Alastair not now Darling.

[bobo the clown]

Clark despite being a Tory is one of the good guys IMO. Ridiculous to say he should be sacked. Its the point scoring and endless bullshit that turns folk off. You'd think they'd all learn but they haven't.

Worst thing is that after all these heated debates and exchanges they probably all go to the pub together and have a jolly good knees up!

Happy to read this as he IS one of the good 'uns.

He's being hung out to dry by people wilfully 'misunderstanding' his honest intent yesterday. It's a very emotive subject, rightly ... but had he said "all rapes are evil .... but some are especially so" it would have been exactly the same, but have built UP on the evil rather than seemed to reduce it.

It would be awful to see a good man damaged by petty people point scoring whilst abusing the situations of people already damaged by what has happened to them.

[William the White]

Clark despite being a Tory is one of the good guys IMO. Ridiculous to say he should be sacked. Its the point scoring and endless bullshit that turns folk off. You'd think they'd all learn but they haven't.

Worst thing is that after all these heated debates and exchanges they probably all go to the pub together and have a jolly good knees up!

Happy to read this as he IS one of the good 'uns.

He's being hung out to dry by people wilfully 'misunderstanding' his honest intent yesterday. It's a very emotive subject, rightly ... but had he said "all rapes are evil .... but some are especially so" it would have been exactly the same, but have built UP on the evil rather than seemed to reduce it.

It would be awful to see a good man damaged by petty people point scoring whilst abusing the situations of people already damaged by what has happened to them.

This is possibly the first time I agree with bobo on politics (tho do often enough on football, well, sometimes anyway)... Clark did a good job tonight on QT, and was quite clearly the closest to Shami Chakrabarti of all the panelists (the odious Melanie Philips and the political jobsworth, Jack Straw being the others). The attacks on Clark by Milliband are just opportunistic froth. But totally at one with the opportunistic froth of New Labour - Ed offers nothing new, folks...

I'm thinking of rereading Bakunin sometime soon...

[bobo the clown]

This is possibly the first time I agree with bobo on politics.

An unholy alliance indeed folks.

Be scared .... be really scared.

[Lord Kangana]

Thats nowt William. Norman Tebbit agrees with my views on public services and how they should be run.

I nearly fainted.

[Hoboh]

This is possibly the first time I agree with bobo on politics.

An unholy alliance indeed folks.

Be scared .... be really scared.

Start worrying when he agrees with me!

[Big_Sharps]

My penis size.

[thebish]

Amazon have a "one-click" ordering option which is supposed to make it quicker as they have stored your payment and delivery details.

however... if you use "one-click" it defaults to the "first class" postage option even if the item is eligible for free delivery.

this means that you have to go and edit the order to get the free postage - which negates the "one-click" benefit..

[Big_Sharps]

Amazon have a "one-click" ordering option which is supposed to make it quicker as they have stored your payment and delivery details.

however... if you use "one-click" it defaults to the "first class" postage option even if the item is eligible for free delivery.

this means that you have to go and edit the order to get the free postage - which negates the "one-click" benefit..

If shit like that bothers you then I can only assume you are hung like a horse.

[a1]

Amazon have a "one-click" ordering option which is supposed to make it quicker as they have stored your payment and delivery details.

however... if you use "one-click" it defaults to the "first class" postage option even if the item is eligible for free delivery.

this means that you have to go and edit the order to get the free postage - which negates the "one-click" benefit..

if you pony up for their amazon prime unlimited next day postage thing, (its about £20 a year iirc) it defaults to that instead *i think*.

[clapton is god]

Another thing about Amazon, whilst we're on about them, is that I ordered an 'in stock' item on the 15th May (and paid for postage) and the order was locked within 24hrs as 'preparing for delivery'. Its still being prepared now and the estimated delivery date is the 6th June! How much preparation does one small item need for goodness sake?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

This is possibly the first time I agree with bobo on politics.

An unholy alliance indeed folks.

Be scared .... be really scared.

Anyway, just had a quick scan through this thread, as I do from time to time, and came across this:

Essentially what he is talking about is a side issue - reprehensible nevertheless but a side issue.
Education will only become a conduit for social mobility in this country when our best universities are forced by quota to accept a higher percentage of their intake from state schools. Until then they will still allow their own kind in in disproportionate numbers through interview, post code etc. and thus perpetuate the educational division between haves and have nots.
Ah but wont that mean some students with inferior grades getting the places of "higher achieving" students?
yes it will initially but it may also prevent the de facto situation that my students encounter every year when they get turned down for Oxford and Cambridge despite having the necessary grades because they have either not got the social graces or accent or "life experience" to shine at interview or have the wrong post code.

you cant do medicine at University these days unless daddy is a doctor.

affirmative action - but it will never happen while our entire political class is drawn from the same social class.

A post so perfectly formed I want to give it a kiss on each and every cheek...

Like Jimbo, I can't help but find this a bit simplistic.

If you honestly think that Oxford and Cambridge select their students based on post code or accent then I would seriously question how in touch you are with the reality of admissions at both of those universities.

Teaching at Cambridge (and I believe similar practices exist at Oxford) takes places in very small discussion groups - usually with about 3 students taking part, but it can even be one-on-one, on occasion. This is perhaps the main way in which the learning experience differs from other universities.

Now, in order for this to work, students have to be more than merely bright - they also have to be articulate and confident enough to sustain conversations on difficult subject matter with academics, who are often the leading thinkers in their field, as well as other very bright students. My feeling is that some of what you write off as 'social graces' are actually crucial attributes to get by in this (seriously unusual) environment.

It's a fact that, for a whole variety of reasons, private schools prepare students better for this odd environment. They do more things like running debating societies and entering public speaking competitions, for example. I agree that it would be desirable for more state school candidates to get into Oxbridge (although well over half of Oxbridge students come from state schools already, incidentally), but surely the answer is to work on preparing them better to flourish (and to demonstrate that they would flourish) in that environment, rather than to impose artificial quotas (even if such a thing were possible) on the universities themselves, who have every incentive to secure the brightest students available anyway?

My parents both came from working class northern families - my dad from Little Lever and my mum from Salford - and made big sacrifices to put me through a good private school on the Wirral. I can't have it that the desirable thing would be to tell people like them, who care for their education of their children, that they had put their offspring at a disadvantage to other kids, including those whose savvy middle class parents who had played the system and invested in other ways to ensure that they got into the best (remaining!) grammar schools or other best-performing state schools.

[lovethesmellofnapalm]

I didn't come back on this thread because i certainly did not want to leave the impression that i denigrated the achievements of students like yourself who work hard to achieve the grades necessary and have cultivated the necessary attributes and skills to gain admission.

however now that it has been re-opened i'll try and explain my position.

if we are to genuinely have an educational system that allows for "social mobility" then, what you describe as essential attributes to get in to the ("seriously unusual"??- should it be so?) environment of our best universities discriminate against bright, state educated students who invariably though not always come from lower aspirational families. we seem to basically agree on this.
where we disagree is that you don't seem to anything wrong or harmful to society in this. Of course i don't think universities purposefully discriminate (although why father's occupation and " whether anyone in your family went to University" appears as questions on UCAS applications mystifies me unless it is to discriminate in some way) but, if the criteria for selection depends partly on attributes that middle class students are immersed in from an early age through family and throughout their academic pre-18 lives if attending public school then i suggest that is in itself discriminatory.
As Lyndon B Johnson said
"You do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair . . . "
Students from poorer families and from state schools are not as you rightly say routinely coached in the sort of interview techniques you describe- although i do run debating clubs with success and have attempted, for the students who do apply to Oxbridge to provide mock interviews (less successful)- resources, class sizes, grind of examinations don't allow that sort of flexibilty.

so ultimately we are in a quandary - students with high ability, good attainment in terms of exam results but of (apparently) lower suitability in terms of aspiration or "polish" because thay have not attended a particular sort of environment either family or school will always be discriminated against unless we a) apply different admission criteria or b) positively discrimate in terms of quotas and accept that some of the skills can be cultivated whilst at University.

The Yanks call it "affirmative action" -we use the more loaded term "positive discrimination"
- either way if we are to break out of the current oligarchical "school tie" system - i argue that it is necessary

[bobo the clown]

This has taken a turn towards the Politics Thread again.

I have loads of views that I can't be arsed adding here, except to point out that, for all it's flaws ... and there were many .... the greatest aid to social mobilty was destroed by Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins & a whole bunch of well intentioned but short sighted egalitarians when Grammar Schools were ended and replaced by, to quote a Labour PM, "bog-standard comprehensives".

That's it, not another murmour from me.

[thebish]

This has taken a turn towards the Politics Thread again.

I have loads of views that I can't be arsed adding here, except to point out that, for all it's flaws ... and there were many .... the greatest aid to social mobilty was destroed by Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins & a whole bunch of well intentioned but short sighted egalitarians when Grammar Schools were ended and replaced by, to quote a Labour PM, "bog-standard comprehensives".

That's it, not another murmour from me.

Bobo - I wish you'd keep the politics for the politics thread.....

[William the White]

Teaching at Cambridge (and I believe similar practices exist at Oxford) takes places in very small discussion groups - usually with about 3 students taking part, but it can even be one-on-one, on occasion. This is perhaps the main way in which the learning experience differs from other universities.

Now, in order for this to work, students have to be more than merely bright - they also have to be articulate and confident enough to sustain conversations on difficult subject matter with academics, who are often the leading thinkers in their field, as well as other very bright students. My feeling is that some of what you write off as 'social graces' are actually crucial attributes to get by in this (seriously unusual) environment.

It's a fact that, for a whole variety of reasons, private schools prepare students better for this odd environment. They do more things like running debating societies and entering public speaking competitions, for example. I agree that it would be desirable for more state school candidates to get into Oxbridge (although well over half of Oxbridge students come from state schools already, incidentally), but surely the answer is to work on preparing them better to flourish (and to demonstrate that they would flourish) in that environment, rather than to impose artificial quotas (even if such a thing were possible) on the universities themselves, who have every incentive to secure the brightest students available anyway?

My parents both came from working class northern families - my dad from Little Lever and my mum from Salford - and made big sacrifices to put me through a good private school on the Wirral. I can't have it that the desirable thing would be to tell people like them, who care for their education of their children, that they had put their offspring at a disadvantage to other kids, including those whose savvy middle class parents who had played the system and invested in other ways to ensure that they got into the best (remaining!) grammar schools or other best-performing state schools.

I don't doubt that your parents worked damned hard and made sacrifices to try to buy their beloved son an advantage over others.

I certainly don't blame them or criticise them either.

But do you expect me to praise it as a social model?

What you describe are universities for the privileged, staffed by the privileged and, as you describe, with a teaching practice designed for the articulate (but not necessarily more intelligent than others) children of the privileged. No other universities can come close to being able to afford this pedagogy. You are happy with this, indeed seem to celebrate it...

I'm not surprised. Most beneficiaries of it will...

Others may feel it's a way of ensuring the continuation of privileged education denied to others of equal intelligence and, apart from where they were born, potential...

Still, I'm pleased to find an articulate voice from the right returning... You been busy since graduation?

[mummywhycantieatcrayons]

I don't doubt that your parents worked damned hard and made sacrifices to try to buy their beloved son an advantage over others.

I certainly don't blame them or criticise them either.

But do you expect me to praise it as a social model?

I suppose the only answer is: do you expect me to see it as a 'social model'?

I'm sure you find my thinking depressingly limited in commenting on what the world is, rather than that what is could be, but in this imperfect world in which less money is spent on educating on children than there should be, I find it impossible to conclude that the right thing to would be to punish the offspring of parents who have invested in their education by instituting quotas that work against them.

Incidentally, what quotas do you propose? I don't have the numbers to hand, but the state/private school divide is not as stark when one simply looks at all those who met the grade requirements or even simply at all those who actually applied to Oxbridge. Another complication is that Oxbridge offer courses in subjects that most state schools don't teach (e.g. classics).

What you describe are universities for the privileged, staffed by the privileged and, as you describe, with a teaching practice designed for the articulate (but not necessarily more intelligent than others) children of the privileged. No other universities can come close to being able to afford this pedagogy. You are happy with this, indeed seem to celebrate it...

I'm not surprised. Most beneficiaries of it will...

Others may feel it's a way of ensuring the continuation of privileged education denied to others of equal intelligence and, apart from where they were born, potential...

Still, I'm pleased to find an articulate voice from the right returning... You been busy since graduation?

Universities for the privileged? Yes, it's an enormous privilege to go to Oxford or Cambridge, but in what sense were the many many friends I had at Cambridge who went to 'ordinary' comprehensives priviliged before they were admitted there?

It would be great if our other universities could afford to teach in the same way, but if they can't, is the correct response to that to change the practices of two places that you yourself argue are so good that it's a social disaster if not everyone has equal opportunity to attend them?

And yes, I have been busy since moving to London and have fallen out of the habit of going on the internet in my spare time! Incidentally, I don't know if it received any attention on here, but your excellent contributions to the matchday programme were the highlights of an otherwise largely miserable Wembley semi-final day.

[William the White]

you yourself argue are so good that it's a social disaster if not everyone has equal opportunity to attend them?

No I didn't make that argument. It's a long way down my disaster index.

In the end the gulf between us is - as always - unbridgeable.

Glad to hear you've been busy. And many thanks for your comments on the Wembley programme. A couple of others have said nice things also. For me - and others in my family - the fact that a dedication to my dad was possible was the most important thing.

[Gooner Girl]

today i am angry about i-tunes. It somehow lost all my music switching to IE 9 or whatever it is. Just taken Mr Gooner Girl and myself ages to figure out what was going on.

[thebish]

today i am angry about i-tunes. It somehow lost all my music switching to IE 9 or whatever it is. Just taken Mr Gooner Girl and myself ages to figure out what was going on.

it'll be a relief getting all that ABBA off your hard disk...