Because they’re unable to attack his background!

Que?

Robert Gordon’s College (Public School) followed by Oxford where he was president of the union?

This is hardly “perfect lefty credentials”

None the less, your pretence that it’s all bluster and ad hom, is nonsense – there are a wealth of criticisms in this very thread which are based on his poorly thought through and indefensible education diktats (to describe them as policies, would be giving them a coherences they so sadly lack).

Never wanted kids, if I went back and did it all again I’d probably avoid having them that little bit better, but for better or worse I’ve got three, I love them all very very much and think they are all ace.

Except the boy when he pisses himself, that’s really really annoying.

He is a man who talks about academic rigour, without accepting that this should also apply to the things he proposes as well.

He talks about academic excellence, whilst simultaneously denigrating every single education academic in the country.

He is taking power away from local authorities over schools on the basis that politicians shouldn’t interfere with education, whilst making it that *only* his department can interfere with education, and boy does he love to interfere.

He is stripping the curriculum to the point that many essential skills for modern life (things like ICT) are pared back, and not part of the core set of subject’s trying to remove creative subjects almost completely, despite the fact that some of the most successful exports this country has are based in the creative industries (music, computers games, films etc.)

He thinks that there is only one way to teach reading and spelling – phonics – and anyone who suggests that this isn’t really the case for English and that a diverse array of techniques are required to teach reading and spelling in English is lambasted and called and enemy of promise.

He thinks it’s essential that 5 year olds are tested, ranked and rated.

That’s before we get to the privatisation, ghettoisation and general inequality fuelling academy and free school programmes, before we get to the boys own hero, 1950’s style remodelling with the curriculum and the absolute distain he has not only for teachers, but for parents.

His final act, it would seem, would be to sack *all* teachers, *all* head teachers, *all* parents and *all* pupils, and replace them with a more acceptable set of people.

As above = copper finings (protofloc and whirlfloc are both irish moss extracts and work as well for less product used) tend to do the job very well, and if not that, then moving the brew from one fermenter to a second fermenter for a day or two also helps drop bright before moving into bottles to carbonise.

Another thing to consider – are you leaving the brew in the boiler long enough for the cold break to drop out? having rapidly cooled the wort to shock those proteins into coagulating (which is no mean feat in itself) are they dropping into the trub or floating about and ending up in your beer, dropping out later. This can end up as a big lumpy floaty mass in the fermenter.

I like both – but woodland wise I prefer deciduous woodland/stand are and coppice to pine plantations – my favourite runs on the chase are all in the older woodland, rather than the fun but too often samey pump track nature of some of pine plantations up there. Outside of the chase (my local) then I tend to go big – peak district, lake district etc. and end up out of trees, up the top of hills where possible.

So you must be getting the real news from somewhere.

facebook and twitter all tend to filter news pretty well, rather than use a single news source.

Can’t beat the Morning Star, Weekly Worker, Socialist Worker and Workers Hammer for a bit of Tory hating.

For actual news, I tend to rely on Newsthump and the Daily Mash.

It’s rubbing very slightly on the seat stays on the rear – however, I think it only rubs when I sit my fat arse on the seat – it runs perfectly when there it is on the stand.

I still don’t understand how uncle pat was on the ballot after this mornings vote on A51. But at least he is gone now.

From what I understand, there was a discussion over the interpretation of the specific standing order for the nomination process*, and this never went to a vote on the request of Cookson to go straight to a vote between him and McQuaid.

On the one side – those who didn;t think he was nominated properly, on the basis that his home federation did do it (i.e. neither Ireland nor Switzerland) but on the other side, the opinion was that any federation of which you were a member could do so – and McQuaid is honorary member of a number of different federations – inc Thailand and Morocco.

I’d suggest that the constitution was intended to be taken in the spirit of the first interpretation, and that McQuaid’s nomination was not valid, not because of what it says in 51.1, but because of the stipulations around membership of the management committee and the representation of the different continents – there is no point in that including the president (which it does) if they are allowed to flip flop where they represent to where ever will support them – if he was president, would he count towards the European, the Asian or the African quota?

That would depend where I was – there are dozens of beers which would do, but I think if I could choose anything, then I’d go for something from the Kernel brewery in London, something from whatever their current crop of beer might be – this time of year, probably darker without too much hop aroma, and a fair about of bitterness.

You can do it with patience and a flat head screw driver as long as it’s not too tight, failing that, pliers, molgrips or similar.

The prices for rail fares (another privatised failed market) are regulated to this degree (and could be forced down under the current system if there was a will for it) the suggestion that it would be illegal or impossible for a government to do this seem misguided at best.

I used to be a union branch secretary in the public sector and this, along with a number of other weird and wonderful “blame sick people for being sick” schemes were suggested – almost always with the aim of “bringing down sickness” and “helping people be more healthy”.

On the basis of the data the employer provided – it was easy to see that time off sick was only over the national average in one area – management – and that all other employees did very well at being healthy and coming in to work. It’s one area where data can be very good at uncovering the nonsense pedalled by prevaricators in HR.

In general, it’s an emotive subject, and one where campaigns from the union side (the local press can often be useful and on side) can be very effective at impressing upon the employer the need to maintain decent levels of sick pay – no one benefits from a sick workforce, and making people come in when they are sick (which is the aim of such schemes) will only make this worse. If there is a question over the honesty of someone’s sickness, then there are proper processes to deal with that.

1. Many undergrad courses haven’t started yet, so I’d say definitely yes.
2. Depends on the course
3. Depends on the course – ask a tutor before hand
4. Depends on the subject area and how far you are willing to travel
5. Yes, definitely.

I use a Tascam IM2X – http://www.thomann.de/gb/tascam_im2x.htm for field recording and mobile recording, interviews and a whole host of stuff, the quality is very good for such a small package and will be significantly superior to anything which uses the analogue ins on the phone/ipad – the main problem is that it is only old docking connector compliant, and won’t work with the new lightning connector.

Yup, I rode my “commuter*” the mile to work.

*AKA pink bike, which is a pink ladies shopping bike which is too small for me, but it was free, has panniers and no one is going to nick it.

Staff costs of that order are don’t seem too outlandish in service industries.

Transfer of wealth from the richest to the poorest is the definition of “progressive” as opposed to “regressive” (like taxation…) Socialism isn’t about wealth or value, it’s a theory of power structures:

I’ve certainly heard pig like snorting in the undergrowth, but that could be any number of the “wild life” one finds on the chase.

The closest which we can get to viewing what happens when a democratically elected marxist government is elected is to look to September 11th 1973 – the forces of capital stormed La Moneda in Santiago and overthrew Salavador Allende, ending 48 years of democracy in Chile, and starting the rule of one of histories more brutal dictators…supported by the US and UK governments including, very significantly, Thatcher.

More concretely, the purest for of socialised ownership within a capitalist system (and Greg Shazer talks about the problems of that and it’s lack of potential to change the world in his book No Local, really interesting) would be large scale cooperatives – such as Mondragon in the Basque country – which includes bike manufacturer Orbea. It’s significantly more than just a small scale hobbyist cooperative project, and its internal democracy is significantly better than the Co-op in this country.

The slight flaw in the plan (as Blackadder would say) is, was, and awlays will be, human nature. So long as you can reinvent humans into societal beings who do not favour their own race, gender, religion, family etc, then you can achieve utopian marxist nirvana.

I think that’s a misrepresentation of socialism and communism. The real reason that socialism is a realisable goal is that it is fundamentally about self interest not the interests of others.

Capitalism is about doing things in the interests of others – those who hold the capital – to the detriment of you and everyone like you.

Socialists don’t support other people because they are nice, they do it because it is in their self interest – if other people are allowed to be persecuted then what is there to stop me being persecuted? If other people’s wages are slashed what is there to stop my wages being slashed – I fight to defend my wages, but I support other people fighting to save theirs as well – because I’ll be next, and it would be nice to get support. It’s not about some utopian Nirvana where everyone cares about everyone else – it’s about a functioning state of being where people look out for themselves, and not capital.

Wouldnt you think it fair to say that many of us get hung up on the fact that all of these failed ideologies end up the same ie. a lot of dead innocent people, misery and hardship followed by criminal/oligarchical rule

How is that different to the current prevailing successful ideology? War after war after war, millions of innocent people dead in the service capital, the crushing misery of relentless enforced wage slavery, ruled by war criminals and their friends.

I’m not detecting a clear distinction between that which you criticise and the current situation – except perhaps that the real horrors are kept at arms length and justified through some backwards logic of helping.

The government have re-classified swathes of public sector jobs as private sector (e.g. all of Further Education Colleges – paid for by the taxpayer, are now considered to be private sector jobs…) this is a good way of increasing the number of private sector jobs figures, but changing nothing. Deckchairs/Titanic.

In this sense, communism and Nazism are very similar, the only real distinction is how each system defines ‘the enemy’.

Given that communists define the enemy as “capital” and the related extraction of surplus value from labour – both of which are abstract concepts and not people – it seems odd to even start to compare it to a system which explicitly outlines a group or groups of actual people as “the enemy”.

Capitalists are only capitalists because they are the ones holding the capital (or more accurately, the capital is holding them…) there is nothing wrong with them as people and I would argue that it is in their long term (as in 7 generations and all that) interest for them not to be capitalists, they act against their own interests by advancing the interests of capital.

Well, that’s fine. I shall stop worrying about it. Not that it stopped me riding, or anything.

It’s good to know that I’m not alone on the chase – pig-man sounds like a right hoot, and the children with black eyes, I could dress my kids up like that for a laugh and get them to scare the crap out of people.

E-mails – one big archive folder, one small to do folder and an empty inbox

I use categories and smart search folders to navigate the archive (s – I have 5 e-mail addresses to deal with) and use filters to categorise stuff automatically as it comes in, leaving a minimum of stuff to deal with by hand, and a good idea of what stuff I can safely ignore.

bokonon – is it one member, one vote? Hardly. How can you possibly defend a system as democratic when you automatically affiliate your members to a political party then effectively use that vote on their behalf

Is parliament one member one vote? No, it’s not – it’s one delegate one vote.

I’m not defending it as democratic, I’m suggesting that as a country we remove the plank from our eye – the hilariously undemocratic parliament system we use, and as for the lords…before we need to address the mote in the eye of the Labour party – which the Labour party has decided to use, on it’s own, for itself. If you don’t like it, perhaps you should join and then you can have a say in it. Personally, I’m not a member, and couldn’t give a stuff how decrepit their internal democracy is – the political party I am a member of only operates on a one member one vote system for everything.

None the less, if we’re talking internal party democracy, at least in Labour CLP delegates get 50% of the votes – in the Conservative party, they don’t even get a chance to vote, not on the leader, or on policies – so Labour is a paragon of virtue by comparison.

No matter what your political leanings, the union block vote is a pretty indefensible, totally undemocratic way to take decisions.

The union block vote for leadership elections was abolished a long time ago, the only “block vote” they get is as delegates to conference, and then there it’s a delegate system anyway, they don’t wield millions of votes on the basis of union membership.

It’s as democratic, or undemocratic in fact, as any other representative democracy process – like MP’s voting on behalf of their constituents – 50% of the voting and delegates and CLP’s carry 50% of the voting. Given it was the unions who set up the Labour party to provide a political voice for trade unions, it seems pretty reasonable…

Even Bob Crowe must know that.

Given that he is general secretary of a trade union which is not affiliated to Labour, and has precisely no votes what so ever in the Labour party, his opinion seems moot. (The RMT are however pumping funding back into the ill fated No2EU party for next years Euro elections.)

I’m continually surprised by trade unionists I meet who still support the Labour party, and given the alegation that unions have so much control of Labour, it seems odd that it enacted over a decade of neo-liberal, anti-working people legislation, much of which was opposed by trade unions, not supported, and there was no repeal or even reform of the most restrictive anti-trade union laws in the developed world – which remain on the UK statutes.

Funkier 7 panel basic shorts under my baggies – £18 from CRC, have done me really well 12hrs in the saddle, days on the trot – seems like I could get multiple pairs for the price of some on here…

You have just reminded me that I should’t have been out savouring the last of the dry summer on my bike, I should have been picking hops so they don’t take weeks to dry…damn.

My wife has a s/h Pashley Princess, it weigh’s more than me and the gearing is only suitable for pottering along the flat – to quote her: “but it looks pretty” – I tried the lighter but slightly different looking approach and it had to be loop framed, it had to have a basket and it had to be black. we went for a family ride round carsington water, and my 6 year old (on a Jamis X20) burned past her on a number of climbs, she spent a lot of the time uphill walking.

I moved really close so I can ride my bike home for lunch as well.

Early
Hank Williams – any compilation
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger – First Rays of Protest

Classic
Johnny Cash – Live at San Quentin, Live at Folsom Prison

Alt/Americana
Neko Case and her Boyfriends – furnace room lullaby
Steve Earle – The Low road

P.S. It’s a good opportunity to try and get union recognition, having been an employee rep through the process (and fought for and won union recognition) more traction was gained as a union rep.

Para 2 is just a statement of fact – they do have to do this.

Para 3 is saying, having gone through the bother of finding employee reps, we want to keep them in position to rubber stamp the other changes we want to make to T&C’s in the future for reasons “not related to the transfer” because that would be illegal.

Content ownership is about a lot more than money (coming from someone who makes virtually no money from the content I create) – it’s about attribution to you as the person who created it and creative control of where your work eventually ends up, both of which are essential if you are going to be serious about doing it long term.

I think it’s a great opportunity, and good on them for doing it, but there are questions to ask:

It would clearly ideally suit a student/recent graduate with an interest in biking wanting to get a start in journalism etc. but the applicant must be over 25 – which closes down that avenue completely.

The more problematic thing is that it doesn’t mention anything about the copyright for the content that is created – who owns it (well, the person creating it owns it by law…) and what payments could the owner expect for such a wide spread usage. Clearly Cycle Scotland won’t be getting direct income, but it’s part of an income generating scheme in a broader sense, and as such the content owner should expect some kind of payment for their content.

I fully support fire fighters taking strike action over their pensions, just as I’ve voted for, and taken strike action more than once to defend mine. I’ll visit the pickets and support them any way I can.

I was in Leighton Buzzard.

http://www.guoman.com/en/hotels/united_kingdom/london/the_royal_horseguards/index.html – stayed here when it first opened, got a really nice view of the river etc.

I must be getting jaded in my old age, its more of the same to me.

This – too many gratuitous product shots (slow-mo on the rockshox bottle? please no).

I think it was nicely shot and composed and had lots of nice visual elements, but the audio was sorely lacking – the music was bland as anything, and where there was audio, it was poorly placed and completely understated.

I found the grading a little tedious, the end of the summer/summer evening colours are a little tired, and it would have looked nicer with a more natural grade.

Broadly, i’d have preferred to see some kind of narrative arc to it – this starts off like there might be something, even a weak arc – but the stuff on the jumps which it ends on completely destroy that, and it ends up like a compilation of stuff they shot, rather than a ‘film’ – if it had finished at the bottom of the hill (however constructed that might be) then it would have been better, and shorter…