louisiana

As the OP, maybe I should remind peeps that the original point of this post was to draw attention to this stunningly poor 'faith school' in our borough, not a couple of miles from our front doors.

silverfox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > If "... parents pretend to believe the > aforementioned mumbo-jumbo in order to get their > children into the best performing schools..." > then, yes it is wrong. However, if parents believe > the mumbo-jumbo why is that wrong? There are > plenty of believers who can't get their children > into some of the best faith schools for the simple > reason they are oversubscribed. > > Secularisation has plenty of mombo jumbo of its > own. Faith schools exist because we live in a > democracy. Where everybody is fed the same line > that's usually found in totalitarian states. Maybe you haven't grasped what secular means. To apply secular criteria means to exclude *all forms of mumbo-jumbo*. All. There is no "line'. We may live in a democracy, but that doesn't mean all should have to *pay* for your child to be inculcated with a set of beliefs akin to magic (just as I should not have to foot the bill for me to have my child forcibly inculcated with same: religous assemblies are still very much a legal obligation in this country). Surely you should pay for all that yourself, if you wish to have it. A democracy merely gives you the right to do so, from your own pocket.

Or who only stop talking when their battery runs out.

If this "Sixty teenage boys at St Michael and All Angels academy in Camberwell were on a police watchlist for gang involvement, a former teacher said." and this "Police figures show 21 criminal allegations at the school in the past academic year including five of actual bodily harm, two of common assault, a rape, burglary, threats to kill and possession of a knife and offensive weapon." are true, then the Ofsted report seems like an amazing exercise in understatement, carefully avoiding the elephants in the room.

Some say faith schools produce 'better results' in one way or another. At the Conservative conference, the deputy head of a Camberwell Church of England Academy made this speech. There was a related article in the Standard. Latest Ofsted report

Tonight, I took a posse to see a pre-premiere screening of The Flaw, with post-film chat with the director and some of the participants. Interesting in terms of data (it's all US), explanations (commentators form both sides of the pond), and personal stories. http://theflawmovie.com/ Premieres as the Sheffield International Documentary Festival next month.

ianr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I thought East Dulwich was twinned with a small > town on Nog? It was. But relations have cooled since we offered them lemon sherbets rather than lemon sorbet during their last intergalactic twin-town visit. And there was of course also the issue of their Noggini (offspring) drowning in Dulwich Park. (Which is of course the reason why work took place on the Park to build 12" high fences around the pools concerned. Don't listen to all that nonsense about geese.)

Are special sunglasses required?

Applespider Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There's a helicopter going round too... These days police helicopters chasing after scoundrels of various sorts (and even military machines) seem to be a daily occurrence. I'd be slightly more surprised if a spaceship from the planet Nog decided to hover overhead and blast us with death rays.

pablogrande Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > dont want to piss in your bonfire scarlet. Full HD > means nothing other than the resolution its > capable of no guarantee of quality. Why settle for > 47inch when you can have 100+ and I am yet to see > an LCD that matches the best plasmas. LCD image quality is worse than CRT. IS this an example of progress? :-S

...which is part of the Punctuation Abuse Division.

Chinese lanterns. There was another bunch on Sunday.

bad men

http://www.wildfrontiers.co.uk/wildfrontiers/destination.jsf?id=4

Captain Scarlet, do you have the exclamation mark key taped to your middle finger? It really is very non-U to scatter your text with meaningless random punctuation.

Two prints and frames from the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the 2011 ED WI calendar. I overheard some bloke saying he'd "have it open at May all year round'.

Pick-pocketing has also in the past been reported in the Hospice shop on LL. I wonder if they target charity shops because there are a number of people slowly browsing (rather than rushing in and out). Also wonder if pick-pockets are usually creatures of habit i.e. would they go back to the same locations regularly? (I know the ones that work the metro in Barcelona always seems to stick to the same escalators, exactly the same MO.)

What kind of hair?

Huguenot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There's a fantastic bike route in Bali from the > top of Mount Agung. It's downhill for about 40 > miles. :) That's like the opposite of the 25 miles uphill from Cork city going west. With three weeks of luggage etc. I speak from experience. Passing motorists were lovely though - offering endless lifts on what they considered an impossible journey. :)

Aw gawd, this tedious thread again. Thanks for perking it up Woof.

MP5 every time.

Huguenot, I'm sorry that I have to go and do some painting now (before certain workmen turn up) but... Decentralisation of power gen is fab in that it saves on HUGE loses in transmission (one third?). It also makes people more resiliant, self sufficient. 'Make power where it is used' is no bad thing. There's a massive UK corporate interest in giving power to big business (our friends) when local generation could sometimes work as well if not better. However, I'm not seeing the impact vis a vis water supply. I'm looking to southern Europe and what I am seeing is huge areas very short of water that are proposing massive infrastructure for e.g. desalination plants that are massively energy intensive; because they don't want to tell people to use less water (charged at far less than cost hence unlimited demand). I'd love for you to explain your reasoning on this.

S-W, I'm a road cyclist too (cycling across Cuba was my biggest trip). It would be great to hear about the nitty gritty.

Well that's the great unknown, as you say, SM. We cannot predict what the future will hold, how people will respond. And also bear in mind DJKQ's comment: Aye I think we will have to pull together and share more as well. That's why I also work on green/sustainability/community stuff. Because despite certain models being kind of broken, there is stuff we can work through. It may be that in 20, 30, 50 years' time the power brokers of the world will be in a different location, and we may have problems that we never imagined in our youth. But there's still a sustainable life here, eh? Well, that's what I like to hope. Now others may think that the battles will be played out at another level e.g. corporate banking. Maybe some of them will be. The power game. But I'm kind of thinking though that even those rules will have changed (for many people). I just don't think all the proponents of 'global' actually realised what 'global' meant. And in a way I don't care. My view is that nobody's responsible for me apart from me. But I'm happy to help where I can.

Absolutely, quids. We're now in the terrain of Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies. In the terrain of 'this model has failed', and this or that society is on the downhill path. I forget to mention in the previous post: China is of course buying up sources of raw materials across the world. Some of this (e.g. their strategy on rare metals) can be dealt with: there are other sources that we can re-develop in other global locations. But some maybe not. The balance of power is certainly changing. It would be foolish to ignore this.