Gove on the Offensive. Blackadder content.

I was talking about (parts of) the argument being potentially interesting, not him!!!!!

Nope – when it comes to Gove, we should play the ball and the man. The twonk.

Stephen Collins in the Guardian sums up nicely the chasm between Goves opinion of his own abilities, and The reality

sums up nicely the chasm

Indeed. A man who wouldn’t last five minutes in front of a secondary modern class… pontificating about how “the left” has skewed our understanding of industrial-scale slaughter.*

He makes me wanna puke.

*I have no problem with the notion that the British effort in WWI was just a little bit more complex than lions led by donkeys (not that this necessarily excuses the horror), but I have a big fugging problem with the Education Secretary – the friggin’ Education Secretary! – dribbling about it in such crass Daily Fail fashion, harnessed to his own profoundly-narrow vision of what History is, and embellished with cheap flag-waving. The ghastly, oleaginous twonk.

baldrick strikes back

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25612369

Wow, Ad Hominem attacks against Gove – Fresh!

Boris skewers Hunt:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10552336/Germany-started-the-Great-War-but-the-Left-cant-bear-to-say-so.html

One of the reasons I am a Conservative is that, in the end, I just can’t stand the intellectual dishonesty of the Left. In my late teens I found I had come to hate the way Lefties always seemed to be trying to cover up embarrassing facts about human nature, or to refuse to express simple truths – and I disliked the pious way in which they took offence, and tried to shoosh you into silence, if you blurted such a truth.

read that as I am a selfish **** and i think everyone is like me [ yes I am that arrogant] and therefore it is human nature to be a self serving ****.
Boris I am not like you for I have never needed to publicly apologise for being a racist nor for having numerous affairs whilst married….are we all greedy and unable to control our loins ? To be fair he does not seem able to control his hair or his mouth so it is slightly unfair to single out his penis here.
Once I have finished laughing at his lack of irony , especially when you consider what this debate is actually about and them trying to “rebrand” history and our nation to one we all put on a pedestal and adore- did thatcher not try and do this?
Surely you can love your country and have an accurate view of it?

What is it next week

Slavery – well we did give them trains and cricket and education [ and it existed before us and we ended it]so really why do the lefties have to say it was bad.
Empire – Brilliant wasnt it eh etc.

FWIW you can take either view on those or try to see some balance- politicised history is pointless

If Tristram Hunt seriously denies that German militarism was at the root of the First World War, then he is not fit to do his job, either in opposition or in government, and should resign. If he does not deny that fact, he should issue a clarification now.

It was one of the causes but not the only one – it ignores the fact they were only trying to have a force as large as ours and we would not let them. It takes two [ at least] countries to have an arms race. See cold war for a recent example. It is also to suggest there is only one cause for the war – again does anyone think that to state this you would get high marks at GCSE History?

Lets not forget what the DM said about the serving “traitor” that is “red ed” dad for historical accuracies that the right support. Anything that does not fit witht their highly right wing historical view is called left wing – they are so skewed they view the truth as a left plot. Dangerously paranoid – I am picturing the cabinet in a Dr starveling style meeting of minds.

Boris skewers Hunt:

The replies to his article are interesting. You might expect the Telegraph readership to be in natural agreement with him but this is evidently not the case. There are several good replies that highlight the poverty of his analysis.

It seems that right-wing politicians are saddled with the inability to see causes and effects only as far as the end of their own noses.

If you look at the immediate cause of the War, yes it’s possible to take a simplistic view that “Germany’s imperialistic desires caused it”. But it doesn’t take a genius to realise this didn’t happen in a vacuum, WW1 was the culmination of centuries of war and imperialism in europe in which just about everyone had a shot at being the aggressor, and it wouldn’t have played out the way it did without this history of friction, rivalry, and bloodshed.

There’s a reason it was described as the war to end war- you would think to hear some people talk that Germany shattered a golden age of peace.

borris is famous for quoting facts that arent true, the linked article is an excellent example of that; contrary to borris’ basic premise- at no point did Hunt say German imperialism wasnt to blame,

for some unfathomable reason gove and now borris are desperately trying to politicise the centenary of WWI, its very sad and an insult to those who suffered and died

I always you new you were one of the lefties NW – flashes scornful look

FFS look it was Germany they were the baddies and we were the goodies…its not a complicated messages being served 😉

the shocking thing is this analysis would be so one sided it would get low marks in an exam and these two like to think they are brainy.

No one would deny imperialism [ from all sides] was a factor, you could even argue it was the largest factor, but only a moron would argue it was the sole factor and we were just stood at the sides singing peace songs till we had to act against the aggressor

Personally i think a myriad of factors, arming, expansionism, empire, alliances and egos combined to make war , at some point, pretty much inevitable. Neither side blinked. To be fair most wars had been quick and swift so no one expected the length or carnage of WW1

Boris, Gove and Hunt are all doing the same thing – scoring heavily on the irony meter – making crass political points from something that the historians are perfectly able to discuss on a more elevated level. None are better or worse that each other IMO. Just doing what there “breed” (sorry been reading the new dog thread) seems conditioned to do. All pose risks to children concerned whether rescued from other roles or bred for purpose. 😉 Sad that the new pup has inherited the unattractive characteristics of the breed.

Gove can’t let his running battle with Evans go and vice versa. Perhaps one day they will both grow up a little.

Cheers kona I will bear that in mind and change the advice I give to students, oh and ignore…

Maybe you should, as it’s a load of **** – what we were taught to describe as “a self-evident fallacy” in ToK. 😉

The logical and factual fallacies in the quotes you selected are also self-evident. For example, the choice is not a binary one between just a typical US HS programme and an IB one – a US HS education is customizable with AP classes and realistically no-one gets into top tier tertiary institutions without them. Equally, it’s hardly surprising that a single provincial uni would be able to say that none of a small number of mostly privileged students has completed failed out of their courses ie without transferring, suspending or otherwise walking away with at least something.

I agree it is not a binary choice – we chose a different course for our kids. But that doesn’t negate the advantages of IB or justify the instant dismissal. That would be a waste of TOK and other educational training.

There’s plenty more evidence….the quotes were merely used to falsify the hypothesis that “from a broader academic perspective etc…” was “a rubbish point”. It isn’t.

The IB is a good idea but the education sector is a large leviathan that needs to be turned slowly as it takes times to adapt to change – they cannot just swap overnight
Its not a bad idea to have students studying from a broader church rather than doing what they need to study medicine or engineering or whatever at Uni

Gove did handle it spectacularly badly and whilst the education brief is a bit of a poisoned chalice , none are linked by teachers, i think it requires someone with greater diplomacy and tact levels than he posses to implement broad ranging change.
Whether it is good or bad – i tend towards good- i dont think he has the skill set to implement it or any of his other ideas about change
Banging on in a simplistic politically motivated historical polemic not supported by the facts will hardly endear him to the profession.

“The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”.

Ironic that the article finishes with Gove being quoted about people being led by ‘an out of touch elite’

weare138 – Member
“The conflict has, for many, been seen through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”.

I view it through the prism of battles like Loos, and there is no difficulty in coming to a firm opinion that the war was “a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite”

No compunction in sending people they saw as an inferior species to walk (not run) into machine gun fire. Have MPs handy to shoot any who turned back. Jolly good show if a few got through, well done chaps, now do it again tomorrow.

Wow, Ad Hominem attacks against Gove – Fresh!

The jumped-up get deserves to be attacked by whatever means necessary. Personally, I want to tread his rubbery countenance into the freezing mud of a freshly-reconstructed shell hole. 👿

My paternal great-grandfather – a sapper at Gallipoli, and later Lt Col RE – was half-German, and what utterly boils my pish more than anything else is the attempt by a fugging Minister of State to reduce the mind-bending complexities and horrors faced by that generation to the level of cheap political soundbite. Previously I simply loathed him – now, tbh, I would have to be physically restrained from slapping his silly OU loser face.

but this is evidently not the case

It is most amusing to see the out-of-touch elite attempting to beat off the rabble with rolled-up copies of the Daily Failograph – in the original Mail article, and using a crude ratings-as-democracy measure, Gove gets torn apart by the readers. Refreshing to see, but my current favourite is this comment – in the responses to the Conservative Home article on Paterson’s woeful ‘biodiversity-offsetting’ plan:

In some cases we would be talking about trees that were around before the Tory party came into existence, and rather than put the axe to those trees I’d prefer to see it put to the Tory party.

Chin-chin… or perhaps chop-chop. 😉

Love the Michael Gove vs. A Turtle on a Stick!!! 😆

teamhurtmore – Member

Boris, Gove and Hunt are all doing the same thing – scoring heavily on the irony meter – making crass political points from something that the historians are perfectly able to discuss on a more elevated level. None are better or worse that each other IMO.

TBH I think Gove deserves maximum pelters for starting it off, the others can at least say they’re just responding, not setting agendas.

Possibly NW but hard to draw a line when politics and education became messily inter-twined. In this specific case, I would agree but I am thankful for Gove for highlighting the Sheffield book. Starts well and a good read for 2014! That and the team sky book at the moment.

Love the Michael Gove vs. A Turtle on a Stick!!!

Enjoyed that too! 😆 It’s not argumentum ad hominem either, despite what any poor tory, upset on his behalf would like to claim.

The European Powers wern’t trying to create armies as big as that of the British Empire, for the simple reason they already had bigger armies than Britain did. Britain’s land forces were tiny before the first war, some 8 regular divisions. It really was no more than a colonial gendarmerie and completely outsized by the armies of Russia/France/germany/Hapsburg Empire.
However, the Royal Navy was huge, 25% of Britain’s annual income was spent on the Navy and it was the heart of the Empire’s power as Britain’s trade was spread across the world.
Even so, the Navy wasn’t feared by the Kaiser, as he sneered “Dreadnaughts have no wheels”

the quotes were merely used to falsify the hypothesis that “from a broader academic perspective etc…” was “a rubbish point”. It isn’t.

Weird that you’re suggesting I “instantly dismissed” the IB (I did two years of fairly in-depth field research, so hardly instant) and negated its advantages when I said I was responding to the suggestion that:

But from a broader academic perspective (and if you plan to work/study overseas) it has a lot of merit IMO.

which is, indeed, a rubbish point.

Well we can agree to disagree then kona!

I wish I could get back the time I wasted reading this pish

TBH I think Gove deserves maximum pelters for starting it off

In a nutshell, this. For all his comments about undergraduate cynics playing to the crowd, Gove’s dire article in the Fail is clearly drenched in his own sex-wee, excitedly spurting as he uses the centenary as an opportunity to bash “lefties”, FFS. He could have made the simple point that Blackadder = fictional comedy series, but no – this pintpot of political pish, in his capacity as a State Minister, had to wave his own little flag. It doesn’t even seem to have occurred to the twonk that there is room here for both satire and dispassionate analysis (even if the tabulations of academia are generally at a very safe distance…).

Anyway, a truly staggering number of men died whilst undertaking their duty – some because they were forced to, some because they did what they felt was necessary… many (inc some of the fêted/derided war poets) finding satisfaction in warfare & getting the job done. On this showing, the best way for Gove to respect their memory would be to keep his gob shut.

nice pinko piece