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( , Sun 1 Apr 2001, 1:00)
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What's made you laugh recently?
Alt: On the radio this morning they were saying that universities are reporting that people with A* mathematics A Levels are inadequately schooled in maths to take on engineering degrees, so it seems that Gove fellow is right to say that our qualifications aren't worth shit these days. Do you believe a return to a two tier sytems like the old CSE/O Levels would help? Save our children's futures, /OT.
Altalt: When I was a boy it seemed to me that I was the only child I knew who regularly went on holiday in Britain. What about you? Have you spent your breaks abroad more than you have here? How well do you know your own country?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:41, 301 replies, latest was 13 years ago)

Seeing as they've been dumbed down to CSE standard, I should be able to knock them both off in a month. When I add them to my CV, I won't mention that I have just taken them.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:47, Reply)

We holidayed in England during the recession of the early 90s, but mainly went abroad. I do not know the 'North' that well but I don't really want to.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:48, Reply)

But the highlands are properly lovely.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:38, Reply)

Less ghastly unintelligible accents and scabies
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:54, Reply)

Fucking lovely.
(also, fucking freezing, mind)
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:11, Reply)

Minus the cake shop.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:14, Reply)

Doesn't help that I'm wearing a suit, like. Or that the air con here is fucking shit.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:21, Reply)

It's one of the few areas that I find truly beatiful.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:37, Reply)

This morning I was listening to Mr Scruff on the train. I also bought Spiderland on vinyl this weekend.
Acquired any vinyl lately?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:50, Reply)

Further maths is the easiest, Methods maths is designed for most standard engineering courses, and Specialist Maths is for those who want to do things like theoretical physics degrees. I did the first year of specialist, and both years of Further, as well as Chemistry maths, and I'm doing pretty okay in my degree.
But then you fuckers over there, there's what, 60 million of you squished into a space the size of my whole state? How many kids are in each class? it might just be that there aren't enough teachers to students.
I laughed at a cheesy glucose song on youtube. I didn't really go on holiday regularly - I think there were two big trips and that was it.
Also: U R GAY.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:51, Reply)

Alt. The system doesn't make much difference, the smart kids will excel the less smart will not. Mind you if everyone magically got a superb education and excelled at it and all got high level qualifications who would do the skilled manual labour? How many people with thier 12 A* and top degrees would want to collect rubbish? to quote a film I'm really in to "The world needs ditch diggers too"
Alt alt. I didn't go abroad until I was old enough to pay for it myself. All my holidays as a kid were going to visit various relatives around the country and once we went to Center Parcs my dad was a skinflint old bastard though.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:54, Reply)

that sounds very funny.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 8:56, Reply)

alt: Not sure of the truth of this,but when I went to uni 20+ years ago we were told only the top 5% went to uni.
It's a much bigger proportion now, have 4 or 5 times as many people really achieved that standard, or has it been lowered in order that more people stay in education to keep them off the unemployment figures?
altalt: Never went abroad till adult, had grandparents who lived by the seaside, which was just great for us kids.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:00, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:02, Reply)

you do have to wade through a lot of dross to get to it though.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:06, Reply)

I was at an S&M party with my cock in this woman's arse when I realised I'd forgotten my toys just as she moaned, "Aren't you going to spank me?"
I thought to myself, "For fucks sake, I'm up shit creek without a paddle."
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:43, Reply)

I saw 21 Jump Street last week, that gave me a good laugh.
Alt: Reducing class sizes would be a good idea, as teachers simply don't have time for 1-1 help when there's 30 people needing it.
AltAlt: Nope, we did the same. I've been on far more holidays in England than anywhere else, and I'm doing it again at the end of August.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:02, Reply)

Re: alt - as I understand it, one of the problems is that schools 'shop around' for the easiest examining boards, to ensure they get the best results for the league tables - end result: everyone passes but few actually know that much. I mean FFS if you have an A* in A Level Maths you should surely be really, really fucking excellent at maths and we're being told people are getting that grade and still turning up at university without a clue.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:06, Reply)

if you make people's jobs depend on statistics, they will find ways of achieving them you hadn't thought of
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:09, Reply)

The annoying thing here is that a lot of students turn up to lectures and expect to be spoon fed everything, when it's really so different from highschool.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:10, Reply)

is that it's a buffer between the cossetting of schooldays and the grim and desolate reality that is self-reliance in 'the real world'. It's a kind of halfway house in a sense.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:14, Reply)

Uni is only there to show you how to learn and fend for yourself
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:18, Reply)

So they don't really learn anything about working at all until after uni.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:21, Reply)

However, a good part of it is as Poppet says above, so much of it is spoonfed to you. ICT at GCSE in particular is guilty of this, I didn't learn anything, as the teacher showed us how to do every single step of every exercise. Then again, he was a shit teacher*, so I'm not certain that's universal.
Spent more time having a laugh with the chavs in the class than he did actually teaching, this later extended to 'losing' work he'd already marked, and blaming us for not handing it in.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:15, Reply)

In the last 3 years, they have changed the qualifications for GCSE level IT 3 times
I frequently went abroad as a kid and also holidayed in the Lakes, Norfolk Broads, etc. From working round the country for many a year I think I know it quite well
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:17, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:25, Reply)

If universities are saying (as businesses have also been saying IIRC) that people are coming to them unprepared even for their degree courses, doesn't that support his claims? I also think he's a massive cunt, but the supporting evidence for at least that part of what he's being saying is rather mounting up, no?
Or do you genuinely believe that the children of today are all super-gifted wunderkinden (correct German? I learnt all mine from war comics, soz), hence them all getting five billion A* etc.?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:28, Reply)

This then prepares you for a degree
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:31, Reply)

the standard of each level has fallen so degrees are not as difficult as they used to be, what has been said today is that to actually do the level fo work reuqired for a degree 20 years ago you need a higher standard of maths than is currently being taught.
As a guy on the radio said this morning its also the fault of the Universities for accepting people with these shit A level standards, if they told the schools and colleges what they would accept then the schools would soon start teaching to that level again. But it come down to Uni's accepting shit students just to get more money.
And that is actually Tony Blairs fault for insisting that 50% of people should attend Uni.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:38, Reply)

What a fucking crock of shit, I was looked down upon by so many people because I left at GCSE. In the meanwhile, aside a few doctors'n'stuff, I would say I'm more successful in my field than most people who did the whole degree thing are in theirs. Litterally I'd say 90% of anything I would have potentially learn't in a degree would be 100% defunct now. The game has changed so much, the goal posts have moved.
Not everyone is mummy's little scholar, some people learn by 'doing stuff' rather than by 'learning stuff'. Ok, you can't do that if you're a doctor or accountant, but there are _many_ industries that work like that.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:46, Reply)

Yes, exam standards have been dropping for years, decades even, but nobody in government seems willing to address the problem.
But Gove's solution is to simply privatise all the schools, still being funded from the taxpayer mind, but being run by an unaccountable company.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:31, Reply)

and bring in harder ones?
If I've understood this correctly and that is so, how is that related to privatisation? I'm not being pedantic here - perhaps just a bellend, but I am genuinely asking.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:37, Reply)

And again, on an individual basis maybe not every single thing that he said is bullshit, I daresay he asks for a cup of tea when he actually wants a cup of tea, but his overall ideas for the education system are all leading towards his goal of having schools run for profit.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:41, Reply)

If you can answer that, you get an A* 'A' Level in Maths.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:47, Reply)

If you passed you got to go to a grammar school and got taught to a high standard and could go to uni, if you failed you went to a different school which taught you at a lower standard.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:47, Reply)

You just 'didn't get in to Grammar School'.
Which is sort of like failing, you hippy fucks!
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:49, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:39, Reply)

among the questions were "I have a parcel coming thursday, could you come round and wait in for it?" And "Have you ever wanked off a horse?"
hashtag #AskMOwen, twitter fans.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:36, Reply)

smartly he didn't say he would answer.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:43, Reply)

https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23askMOwen?q=%23askMOwen
on a scale of 1 to Alex Ferguson, how much whiskey do you drink?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:51, Reply)

but we were middle class so did Eurocamp and Canvas Holidays where the tent was already set up for you.
We did go to Cornwall a lot when I was small, though.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:38, Reply)

You just need to say it out loud, like if you want to have a grid with 3 columns, like a table, I just say to myself.
"Ok, make X = 1. Then go through the loop, if X is 1, then we do a row start. Then we put in the cell with all the stuff we want in there. Then after that, if X is 3, we'll close the row and make X = 1, otherwise, we increase X by 1."
but in code, all that looks like is
$x = 1;
foreach($products as $product) {
if ($x == 1) { echo "NEW ROW"; }
echo "ALL THE STUFF WE WANT FOR A CELL;
if ($x == 3) { echo "END ROW"; $x = 1; } else { $x = $x + 1;}
}
It's easy.
$x = 1..... means you're make X be 1
$x == 1.... means you're seeing if X is 1.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:39, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:45, Reply)

I was more covering the "maths is easy in code bit" really
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:48, Reply)

i don't thinkk he was saying he was covering all of maths in his job, badge.
do you find simple things difficult?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:49, Reply)

but what you said is not the same as what he said, now is it?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:50, Reply)

he did not say 'I DO ALL OF THE MATHS AND FIND ALL OF IT EASY' at any point.
Its not wonder our universities are going to shit with people like you working there
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:52, Reply)

stupid prick
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:54, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:55, Reply)

I don't even really lecture that much, I'm mostly research.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:56, Reply)

"fuck about on google all day"
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:11, Reply)

Cancer would be cured YEARS ago, possibly on a spaceship, if you had performance reviews and deadlines that mattered.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:17, Reply)

Deadlines in academia are if anything more brutal than in industry, because it's someone elses money you're justifying spending.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:19, Reply)

Pull the other one. Michelin star restaurants to sweet talk into a contract that would make millionaires out of everyone if the PROFIT was shared out.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:30, Reply)

therefore I spend more time doing research than teaching.
I mean, obviously, Gove does have a lot to answer for, but my laziness isn't down to him.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:09, Reply)

(in geneneral, I mean you could be doing War Studies at Kings, most 5 year olds I know could piss that).
Universities are also places of research as well as teaching.
Age doesn't specifically come into it, but you need teh equivalent of school qualifications to get into University.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:40, Reply)

it's apparently our schools. Do try and keep up, Q.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

you were wrong and i was right.
for once
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

like knowing how things flow and effect other things. Like if you wanna center something on the screen, you'll have to know where to place the top left point of that object. Or creating a chart with a veriable number of bars at different levels.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:48, Reply)

But give me some chemistry maths and I'll be right.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:45, Reply)

Unless you're talking about the mol of substance, in which case to calculate it you either need the Ideal Gas Equation, the Concentration and volume, or the mass and molar mass of the substance in question.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:51, Reply)

I'm ashamed of myself. Bully.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:52, Reply)

but the only thing that really translates from maths into code is algebra
and logic, to satisfy Bartleby, but I'm never convinced logic is really maths. see also: statistics.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:50, Reply)

Or knowing how to handle resources in that 8,16,32,64 etc stuff, whatever that progression is called. Or counting the seconds (or miliseconds sometimes) since The Epoch (1st Jan 1970 00:00:00).
I don't really know about different types of maths to tell you the truth, my point is, if you learnt how to code before you did maths, then you'd be able to do maths a lot easier.
* You're a mug if you do this today though; so many bits of code you can knick to do this for you, and they'd animate it.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:58, Reply)

is that it *isn't* maths.
In maths saying
a=10
b=20
a=b
is just wrong. In programming it's the whole point.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:45, Reply)

AltAlt: We split is almost 50/50 I reckon. We went on 'big' holidays every couple of years, but then we also went to Yorkshire, the Lakes, Cornwall, etc. a lot. Also, I'm from Essex so we went to Menorca a few times too.
Also - there's a video of a cat jumping off a windowsill and falling off it. There's something about it that makes me guffaw every time, I don't know why.
AND: That bit in Men Behaving Badly where Tony, having been offered an Oyster, says "no thanks, they disagree with me" and then Gary, who is holding an Oyster says "NO WE DON'T". Even thinking about it I'm starting to giggle.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:44, Reply)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g85wBkhFhjo
Next you'll be saying that CatCopter is cruel or something.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:48, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:48, Reply)

Apart from series one with Harry Enfield.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

I think the reason for this is that the whole time, in the back of my mind, there's a little voice scoffing at how not-that-bad their so-called 'bad behaviour' is. Having a few pints and having some silly conversations ain't SHIT, bruv. I was behaving considerably more 'badly' than those two when I was 14.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:57, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:58, Reply)

The slapstick opportunities are tremendous.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:04, Reply)

we've always re-taught maths for engineering courses at Uni because it's a different subject. (for "always" I mean "in the 20 years I've had experience of")
I'd suggest teaching methods are changing and it's getting easier to get higher grades, but to suggest someone with an A* is incapable of an engineering degree is horseshit. They may well be incapable of the degree, to clarify, but it won't be their maths letting them down.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:47, Reply)

Hilarious
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:48, Reply)

Another Irish doc worth watching on iplayer is Knuckle, it's about gyppo bare knuckle fighting
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

Scary as fuck if I am honest.
Battered was the clear winner, obv.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:55, Reply)

than two lads who know how to fight and are seriously out to hurt each other.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:07, Reply)

The Riddler was making silent movies and secretly filmed Batman and Robin and put them in his film. His laugh whenever they appeared on screen was quite infectious.
Alt: "They" seem to have far too fucking much to say about everything. Fuck "They" I say.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:52, Reply)

The 'chicks' on it were 'well fit' and all.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:53, Reply)

The Riddler had a female cohort, the name of whom escapes me, who had some gratuitous midriff on display. They really knew how to dress female characters back then.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:57, Reply)

in every possible meaning of the term.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:05, Reply)

The Dark Knight Rises again and chubby Batman running around the docks with an ACME bomb I'd choose the latter as it has more tension, structure and plastic sharks.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:17, Reply)

"Roll out the red carpet on open days, save the badly ripped lino for when they arrive" is the message we've been given. I have several students appealing their degree result this year because "I worked hard and paid my money and it's not fair that I only got a 2:2/third/pass".
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:57, Reply)

It's the sense of entitlement I can't stand. You worked hard, did you? Well, perhaps you should have worked harder, you little shit.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 9:59, Reply)

although somewhat more diplomatic so they don't give us bad reviews in the National Student Survey.
Anyway, those aren't ground for appeal so they have to go and think of better reasons. Dead grandmother or the like. Bueller...
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:00, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:01, Reply)

That should not have been humanly possible due to 'men behaving badly' activities, see above.
To this day I take this as confirmation that I must be some kind of super-genius.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:01, Reply)

but then, meh, we're so oversubscribed it doesn't seem to matter.
Doesn't stop a proportion of them being fucktards, of course, but it seems better this year since tuition fees came in down south - our retention rate from 1st to 2nd year is better than it's been for years.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:17, Reply)

but was costing the country billions.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:02, Reply)

And every time I think "the owner of that place is a weapons-grade dickwipe".
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:09, Reply)

His son on £120,000 to look after 6 staff answering phones? WTF?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:17, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:23, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:25, Reply)

there's nothing 'fair' about salaries, just look at our angles on the hospital wards
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:28, Reply)

The fucking cunts.
I thought 'I won't get a local chap as you probably get knocked every time, so I will try a bigger firm to be sure that a genuine price structure is adhered to'. What a price structure it was, un-fucking-believable.
PS no, I didn't but could not be less surprised. Fucking highwaymen.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:09, Reply)

are you some sort of womangay?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:13, Reply)

turn off tap, drain radiator, unscrew, attach new radiator, turn on tap
no?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:18, Reply)

but essentially, yeah. Changing filters on a car or replacing a computer hard drive is piss-easy, but people don't want to do that either.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:20, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:32, Reply)

Them things are taps and can be used to isolate the radiator. If you don't have them then you have a fucking pikey heating system.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:34, Reply)

one in my hall doesn't for instance
all the others do, and i have a very modern system
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:36, Reply)

They're not taps, they're thermostats.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:37, Reply)

otherwise all the hot water goes to the first radiator and it's red hot, and the others in your house are stone cold.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:39, Reply)

but I can categorically say that I have one boiler, three rads on a linear circuit, a centrally controlled thermostat in the sitting room and not a blessed thing on any of the radiators save the drainage valve on the one by the front door.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:40, Reply)

the water isn't static, it gets pumped around the system so while the rads at the end of the system may be cold until the water gets to it, it shouldn't be forever unless you've got a blockage.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:44, Reply)

www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/jeffhowell/8278429/Home-improvements-What-is-radiator-balancing.html
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:46, Reply)

I've never come across a system that didn't have taps of some kind at either end.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:38, Reply)

I'm absolutely shit at that sort of thing. My father taught me nothing as we had maintenance men from the College who'd do everything. Our hall ceiling was really fucking high, and these chaps would even come round to change the lightbulbs.
My brother can do all that shit because he spent 10 years as a squatter but not me, I am hopeless.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:21, Reply)

and what with the internet these days it's easy to look up how to do things
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:22, Reply)

I need to make a will.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:23, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:30, Reply)

where some office full of sadistic cunts trawl he country to heap debt upon the recently bereaved?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:38, Reply)

who we all know are above the law
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:39, Reply)

Or that the new radiator is 1mm shorter than before.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:22, Reply)

and the bit where you try to turn it off has so many layers of fucking paint on it from imbecilic previous tenants that it doesn't work etc etc.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:26, Reply)

I took the old one to B & Q to make sure it was the same size and the threads were OK. I have common sense.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:33, Reply)

i'm no genius, but i'll be damned if i'm gonna pay a REAL man to come in and do it for me
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:34, Reply)

No offence, like.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:45, Reply)

and got this
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:53, Reply)

true story*
*may not be 100% true
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 11:15, Reply)

and then open the drainage valve to drain the rad system.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:28, Reply)

and put a hose over the drainage valve and run that out of the front door. Don't do what a friend of mine did and assume the washing up bowl would be enough as "it was only the one radiator :("
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:32, Reply)

many radiators these days have taps so you can cut off supply to them
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:33, Reply)

then it's been put in completely wrong.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:40, Reply)

but all the other radiators are adjustable except that one
i'll shut up now as i don't know what i'm talking about
also, fuck you, just cos
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:42, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:05, Reply)

in the same week as he paid his gardener in cash to get the VAT saving passed on.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:08, Reply)

i'm pretty sure i'm supposed to hate cows. but i'll make an exception for you.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:26, Reply)

pigeons fight over our remains on the high street.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:29, Reply)

I am truly sorry.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:22, Reply)

i appreciate you letting me have a look.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:25, Reply)

how does it work over here, who are the bad guys, and who are the good guys?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:29, Reply)

I'm terribly dull and everyone else is a prick.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:33, Reply)

kill it. kill it with FIRE.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:44, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:47, Reply)

I hope you find a rotting dog carcass in your bed.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:47, Reply)

And I'm afraid if you fucked my sister* I'm going to have to let you know you should probably get yourself checked out pretty soon. You might not have long left.
*I don't have a sister, so I can only assume it was my brother in drag.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:33, Reply)

but he was so persuasive, and i had had at least 3 breezers.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:34, Reply)

He's very cruel to his characters and writes ridiculously well. From interviews I've read, he seems like a sarcastic, prickly bastard. I think we'd get on like a house on fire.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:31, Reply)

My mother occasionally played with Martin Amis when she was a little girl.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:34, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:48, Reply)

went to see "posh" last night, thoroughly recommend it. excellent play. nicely cynical. this also made me laugh.
alt: they dumb down the exams every single year and then they wonder why kids don't know shit. duuuuh. also, scrap the crap universities and the pointless degrees.
altalt: we went to cornwall when i was very little, but other than that, always abroad. i'm going to my house in cornwall for the first time this september, though. woo.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:44, Reply)

but is there any evidence for the exams being dumbed down?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:50, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:52, Reply)

( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:53, Reply)

or the teachers are now teching kids how to pass exams, rather than teaching them broad knowledge about their subject.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:54, Reply)

There's a lad on here who is retraining to be a teacher for this very reason.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:56, Reply)

You'd think he would try and improve his lot, but no, he keeps getting tattoos of cartons on his back to attract more kiddies.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 11:00, Reply)

The sneaky peaedo git. Kids LOVE milk.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 11:07, Reply)

little bit from column b.
I've seen no evidence that the kids are getting less able once they get to uni, though. I've not particularly changed the content of my courses or exams over the last 6 years and the pass rate has stayed similar.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 11:02, Reply)

university is almost completely filled by people who want to learn (maybe after a bit of a party in their first year) where as schools have to contend with trouble pupils and disrupted classes and yet still provide pass rates and hit targets.
I think maybe whats his fac up their is right and we should just go back to grammar schools and the 11+ and start training the little road sweepers nice and early.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 11:05, Reply)

but anecdotally my brother is a headmaster and on the board for one of the examining boards, and he says so. for one example, latin has lost the requirement to translate english into latin, which is a million times harder than the other way round.
but be argumentative if you like.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:55, Reply)

but it would seem a silly thing to do, as i'm sure the teachers and exam boards have targets for pass rates etc, if they keep making it easier, eventually everyone gets A* and then what?
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:57, Reply)

The final exam was never as hard as those.
( , Tue 24 Jul 2012, 10:58, Reply)
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