david_carnell

Any photos from Mr Black, our resident Tarantino extra, of the night in question?

I'm in. Not been to Mirash so all good.

Oh very well, if it's that vernacular that bothered you so.... ...my apologies. I won't do it again. Leeds fan who also supports Sutton Utd, Wasps RFC, Surrey CCC, England and the Lions - see, we do have something in common!

Just discovered this guy, marvellous stuff: Hope it meets with teacher's approval. What says you PGC?

Wo-there. I was only poking fun at SimonM - something I do often and he does back in good spirits. I have no idea what your problem is but to answer your questions: League One. Why? Do we have to play my team's better than yours again? I'll probably lose. 0-0 then we had a man sent off in the 9th minute before going on to win. Do you see why that's a good result? The rest of your sentence makes little sense - are you a Man Utd fan by any chance? In which case I now realise why.

David Carnell (deliriously happy at having seen Leeds win away from home, with 10 men for 85 mins, and having seen the scum and the Blades lose - a good weekend) :)

Except that in the real world this isn't really feasible. I know what you're saying (at least I hope I do otherwise this'll sound awfully patronising) and it would be lovely if we had a selection of "specialist" schools that had expertise in perhaps sciences, arts, technology or sport. Sometimes, by the age of 11, it is clear what a child does well in (although not always) and a school could focus on these. There are two problems with this though, imo: 1) Specialist schools often neglect the "big picture" to concentrate on the narrow. I'd rather have a child educated as a generalist for as long as possible before specialising later on at degree level. Would changing from one specialty to another be easy - if for example Joe Bloggs lost interest in cricket and football at 15 and instead wanted top pursue drama? 2) In all but the most populous parts of major cities the infrastructure for this just doesn't exist. In most parts of the country the option to exercise choice in which senior school to attend is more down to geographic location than anything else. Without lots of schools within commuting distance (via public transport) the options for a wide range of specialist schools is very limited. Ergo - comprehensive education would seem to be a better route.

What that seems to suggest is that some parents will stoop to almost any level to send their child to the "choice" of school - be it mysteriously converting to a religion, moving out of the area or cutting back on the odd ski trip to pay tuition fees. A riot in Brighton? What did they do - storm the delis? Set fire to the vegan cafes? Hurl molo-tofu cocktails?

If you make each child go to their nearest school it affects house prices causing the poor to be priced out of areas with good schools. There seems a aconvincing argument that you shouldn't make the decision based on educational attainment at 11; ergo one school full of the brights and another the dims. The easiest way would be a tombola. You get the "choice" of the three/four/five nearest schools to you and pick one out of a metaphorical hat (which would in reality be allocated by a computer somewhere). The number of schools could be increased/decreased according to population density:number of schools ratio. I don't believe in choice. No one really wants a choice of schools because in an ideal world you wouldn't need one. All schools would be roughly equal and as long as the school was near to your home all would be well. My real bugbear is league tables. It harks back to choice because it allows parents to see how certain schools are doing and "choose" a good school for their child. Of course not everyone can go to that school and so eventually some children have to go to the schools at the bottom. So what do they achieve? In reality it forces schools to teach children to pass exams - nothing more. No longer is education a higher purpose in itself but merely a means to an end. To me, this is a tragic state of affairs. If it won't help you pass an exam you don't learn it. I was luck, I had excellent teachers who fostered learning environments where being more than an automaton was encouraged - but I'm aware I was lucky. I went to a grammar school which was near the top of the borough's league table. The pressure to maintain that place was high but taking only the speccy kids at 11 gave them a head start. But now I've opened a whole other can of worms. I know there are some teachers on here (get back to work you idle swines!) so perhaps if they feel able they could put their side of the argument compared to a parents - or maybe they're both.

CitizenED = smart alec. I need to think, then type.

Supercilious,smug AND pompous...do I win a prize? And it was said with tongue in cheek. Never mind. I'll learn one day.

Tony.London Suburbs Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Mek I tell u likkle scinting,zimi ya? me a tawk > how me waan fi tawk. > Bout clear Hinglish, a wah dat? Me a mek yoo know > seh dis ya part a fi me lexicon,seen?? > You betta move a guh weh wid ya hung,drarn an > quartaB) Tony, I don't think I'll be alone when I say, this is only marginally less intelligible than your normal posts.

All-boys grammar school from 11-18. Due to this I have been rendered inept when dealing with women. I wouldn't recommend it.

I know it's the Daily Mail, and as such should be ignored, but really?! OBSCENE!! Now unlike most Daily Mail readers I actually bothered to watch this show and I was fairly impressed. It wasn't a dry, turgid medical show and that's a good thing. It was entertaining without being titilating. At no point did it descend into pornography. Yes, the women presenting it is attractive - good. Who wants to imagine ugly people bumping "uglies"?! Her "tantric" sex was conducted fully clothed. If that turns you on - god knows what olympic wrestling does for you. If you want children to be interested you have to make it fun. Not naughty and embaressing. And yes it was on at 8pm before the watershed but again with good reason - any later and some of the kids this should be targeting will be going to bed. In a country with the highest rate of teeneage pregnancies in Europe we're still getting our knickers in a twist over a limp cock on tv? Pur-lease. The fact that they couldn't even show sex in it's biological sense without resorting to cartoons shows how far behind as a country with some ridiculous puritan hangovers. Pictures of women's breasts on a4 paper were as close as we got to explicit. Please, people, whoever you are that "flooded" the OfCom switchboard to complain....grow up.

Good post Citizen. I wonder if such research into the economic performance of homosexuals has ever been conducted? It would be interesting but what would you do with the results? If gays were found to be under-performing in the workplace in terms of average earnings compared to their straight counterparts would this be grounds for legislation? I would think that it's already illegal to pay different wages based on sexual orientation. I would think gay people of ethnic minorities get it pretty rough (boom boom). I would summise that there is a sliding scale of vocabulary that could be used in a derogatory way to describe those of a homosexual bent (if you pardon the deliberate pun). See what I mean? Surely though - as has previously been suggested - context is all. Accompanied by threatening or aggressive behaviour nearly if not all synonyms for "gay" are pretty unpleasant. Apologies for all Alan Carr jokes in this post

Sooo....should one be feeling nefarious and looking to download music for nowt where would one hypothetically look? When I was a younger man, WinMX was the thing to use but I have no idea if it still is. I once looked (and, god help me, tried) at Kazaa and the thing nearly took over my computer with pop-ups and adverts and icons all over the bloody place. Secondly, if, hypothetically, someone was to download this stuff is it possible to then put it onto one's ipod or iphone or do they only accept files from itunes?

cAPS LOCK THAT STAYS ON TOO long before you notice Poor grammer and speeling Yotam Ottolenghi Uzbekistan Dwarves People's inabilites to load dishwashers with any sense of logic and orderliness Excessive use of lists

I think we may have done that one (before my time - before Carnell, or B.C. as I like to refer to it) but an excellent choice nonetheless. Are we on for the 17th? I'm tempted to try curry elsewhere - perhaps Forest Hill if anyone knows of anywhere with a good reputation. Will also settle for a takeaway at Mike's flat though!

Ah, but will it be curry? Did we decide on a plan? See above.

Can I belatedly add my recognition to the fine spread put on by the Duke - the best scotch eggs ever - and to say I had a lovely time. But the big poser - where to next month? I heard talk of trying out the "new Mag(nolia)" which sounds good although we were there only recently. Other options in SE22 seem to have been exhausted so is it time to look a little further afield - say the Montpellier nr Peckham Rye station? - or go back to old favourites?

Quite. But my pubic hair isn't on my head a la Sandler!

Moos Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Personally, I find it comfortable to sit knees > together. > > I can see why a man wouldn't want to close his > legs completely. The thing that I find puzzling > is the menwho sit at a 90-degree plus angle - is > it really uncomfortable to sit with legs only > slightly wide? When wearing lycra I normally go for the full 180 - is this sooo wrong?

The original link works (back on pg 1)

As for the whole "men with legs open" thing I may be able to shed a little light on the matter and have my own little whinge. Without going into grpahic details the size of a man's "third leg" is not to blame for the legs apart seated position. This is normally due to f^%&ing train designers who seem to believe that everyone is 5ft tall. On trains I cannot fit in seats with another seat back infront of me without spreading my legs and crossing the boundary into my commuter-neighbours seat. Ditto on those deats facing each other. If I keep my legs firmly close my knees stretch close to the other side leaving no room for the poor person opposite me. Ergo I open my legs, create a little more room and hope the attractive women opposite me doesn't think I'm a sleaze. Ditto all this for buses. Men on tubes have no excuse - they're just hung like donkeys obviously.

Sounds like a pretty standard and shocking response MM. I posted here last night and have only just checked back now. A right little hornets nest we have ourselves. Our resident Singapore expat seems to have had a Mai-Tai too many and thinks he's landed in the garden of Eden where heavy-handed state policing is to be encouraged: The rate of crime has dropped 35% since 1995 (nobody was calling us the surveillance society then, so can we assume that the introduction of CCTV has had an impact?). Right - because nothing else has change since then? I think you're making a fairly simplistic error of cause and effect. My apple consumption has also risen in the same period - do you think there is a link?? How about looking at other factors such as the introduction of a minimum wage or the reduction in child poverty and homelessness for a reduction in crime rate. As can be easily deducted from my previous post I'm firmly in the anti-CCTV camp. Although Keef quotes me as being happy to have them high streets what I said was I unhappily tolerate them there as I can, at a stretch, see they may have some benefit in certain locations in targeted policing projects. What shocks me is that this forum is normally a hot-bed of "nanny-state" whingers - people whose right to drive fast, smoke themselves (and others) to death or drop their litter around, jump on their high horse, and yet now everyone suddenly adopts the "I ain't done nuffink wrong - I' alright guv" schtick. As an earlier poster noted the truely scary things are not merely the presence of cameras but a) just how many are there and where? b) how owns/operates them and c) what is done with the images? To put it crudely, "who watches the watchers?"