I like mountain chub’s version best, but without cheating, the first of yours.

Here’s my 5 minute effort though

Can we have a look at the pic as it came out of the camera?

Its not something new and different

OK hands up ANYONE who has EVER had massage in school.

Maybe it’s just me and in fact massage has been a regular part of behaviour management in every school in the country for all of history…

…except the ones I went to?

So how is that different?

Because listening to stories is not being hyped up as some new magic bullet means of getting kids to behave.

I’m not really against massage per se. What I’m against is the introduction of “quick fix” solutions as a response to poor behaviour.

We don’t need more techniques, we need better application of the techniques that we’ve already got.

It’s typical consumerist behaviour.

The answer is always “do/get something new and different” when it should usually be “do things better”

That way, when it doesn’t work you just blame the new thing and no one has to take responsibility – just find another new thing.

So unless you object to teachers doing actitivies designed to calm down kids after playtime, which only an idiot would

What if I object to massage, but not to any of the many other tried and tested ways?

Does that still make me an idiot?

what is it that people object to about massage in particular?

The same thing I already said once, in the post immediately before your first post.

Come on, only an idiot would ask someone what it is they object to just after they had said what they object to.

Kids benefit from time to calm down after they get excited. That much is bleeding obvious to anyone who has ever put a kid to bed, taken them to the park, or generally looked after kids at all.

What’s also bleeding obvious is that most schools have been managing to do this without massage for the entire history of schools.

No, not compared with 1939-45, or the middle ages, or even outside Barbarella’s in the 70s.

Would that be Barbarella’s in Plymouth?

Do you wash down your maccy d with some sunny d?

It sounds more like a way to alter the kids’ mood from belting around the playground mode to concentrating on work

I also find this explanation unpersuasive.

One way that this sort of thing can go is that it gives the kids an excuse not to behave well and removes responsibility for their good behaviour from them.

“Sorry miss, I couldn’t help hitting him/smashing it/throwing it/shouting – I haven’t had my massage so I’m still in boisterous mode”

It’s “modern parents” type nonsense.

I’ve got a double wheeled sharpener thingy at the moment for sharpening my Global knives but I don’ think it get the knives as sharp as they could be. Would I get a better edge using a whetstone?

No, it would be a complete waste of money.

Presume you have something like this:

Which is what I’ve got, and is bloody brilliant, except that eventually the wheels will break in half and you’ll need to replace them.

If you can’t get a sharp edge it may be that your knives are too new and need to be sharpened a lot to get the angles matching the angels of the sharpener.

Once you’ve got that sorted an occasional bit of maintenance (like every time you want to slice a soft tomato) will do the trick and put a new razor sharp edge on your knives.

If you start messing about with a stone (or the Global sharpener G45) you will like as not just screw the edge up.

OTOH it’s pretty hard to see any benefit to this.

I sometimes have some sports massage because I’m old and creaky and prone to injury. I’m also able to “relax” sufficiently to get some de-stressing benefit from it. Hard to imagine that the kids won’t to some extent just be messing about and tickling/poking each other.

Sounds to me like another dumb idea by someone who thinks kids are just small adults.

New Forest is a bit boring – where do you live?

Flare does the pulse thing rather than on/off

I’ve got Flare too + whatever the front one is called – very good. You need to get the rechargeable batteries for it though as it runs a bit brighter with them than with the non-rechargeable ones – so quite expensive for the whole setup.

I think we all need to have a think about this sobering message.

Do the Govt still bother trying to educate children about anything as basic as road safety? Or is it too expensive these days?

Interesting that back when this was made the footage of Willy Weasle actually being hit by the car was obviously thought of as far too scary for kids!

Interesting how many have had similar experience.

Actually I think this is likely to happen a lot more frequently in coming years as I have noticed that many people seem unable to cross the road safely these days.

Frankly, cycling the kids to school every morning has become an obstacle course at one junction where our path crosses the path taken by kids going to the local secondary school. Essentially they nearly all seem to step off the pavement into the road without looking and we frequently have to change course/stop to avoid them.

Bloody lemmings.

Having just thought about this a bit more – I’m coming round to the “isn’t this exactly the sort of thing that your insurance is supposed to cover?” point of view.

Just as a matter of interest, what happens when you hit a deer that jumps out of a hedge?

Does your premium go up?

The timing of the Olympics couldn’t come at a better time for Britain

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Las Vegas is pretty amazing tbh.

IYHO

On R4 this morning they interviewed someone from (I think) the Daily Mail where they have a campaign for a new Royal yacht that would be privately funded, with no taxpayer funding.

Right, then I’m definitely against it.

I don’t think we would survive the smugness overload that would happen at the Daily Mail if it were to go ahead.

I think that would perfectly capture the spirit of the times.

Wondering if this karma thing really will balance its self out

Life is about the journey, not the destination.

You know you did the right thing and just reliving the story with your mate over the years will be sufficient payback.

Nothing in teaching is simple.

My wife is an outstanding teacher in an outstanding school. The school is outstanding despite, not because of the head who (from what I hear) is poor, verging on incompetent. She is disliked by governors, teachers and parents due to her total lack of empathy and chaotic management style. However, the LEA think she is great because of their results and it really is virtually impossible to get rid of a poor head.

Several times a week she stuns me with some tale of idiocy from the school.

Last night she was asked by the head to fill in a risk assessment for driving her own car to and from courses that she might attend!

It is a complicated form supplied by the LEA and needs to be returned with copies of her driving license and insurance!

If my wife were to complete it it would probably take an hour. She already works a circa 60 hour week.

There is a note on the form saying that it should be completed annually.

This is the reality of teaching.

Are they supposed to fall off?

Saw a ton of Daffodils round the Quantocks at the weekend.

That’s not right is it?

They are not energy efficient eiother.

This is rather a silly sweeping thing to say. The implication is that the development of the electric car has stopped, whereas it is still in the rather early stages. Batteries are getting better all the time and materials are getting lighter. Also, it depends where the electricity comes from. Various people have talked about using the batteries in electric cars as a way of storing/using off peak energy in a way that might help make overall production of electricity more efficient.

Imagine if the development of the bicycle had ended with the penny farthing – efficient?

You know all those rich bankers that we all hate?

One of the reasons that they are rich is because they’re in charge of our pension funds.

I have an (almost insignificantly) small pension from back in the day when I used to work for a large industrial company.

My wife is a teacher and so has a (still) reasonable pension provision, though money she “invested” in a private scheme became practically worthless during recent financial troubles.

The only shares I’ve ever owned (in Bradford and Bingley) went from being worth about £2000 to worthless over a few years.

I can’t see myself ever putting any of my money into the hands of fund managers (via a pension or otherwise) because they don’t seem to produce results any better than random investment.

My personal strategy is to put any spare money I have into paying down the mortgage.

Once that is clear I’ll start worrying about what to do next.

I like the look of that lovely golden crust, but there’s a reason that that butterfly cutter never got used – it’s odd/disconcerting seeing butterflies on a pie.

I’ll be making a marmalade bread and butter pudding later on for tea – does that count as baking?

There’s no current minister that I’d like to give a slice of fist pie to more than Micheal Gove, but this revamp might well change my opinion of him.

Even dictators get the odd thing right.

I used my washed passport to cross the channel on a ferry. Duane guy looked at me in a weary way and said “washing machine”? I said yes. He waved me on.

I think I might get it changed if I thought I might fly again.

Don’t tell everyone, they’ll all want one.

It’s not schools that are the problem, it’s the government. Loads of ICT teachers would love to teach computing and there’s a big push to get it proper recognition.

Clearly this forum is more influential than one might think

ICT curriculum scrapped

fuel is environmentally unfriendly so each month it costs more.

It’s also running out (if you mean oil) – peak production was a few years ago and more to the point EROEI (energy return on energy invested) is going down fast – that means that the amount of energy you have to put in for every barrel of oil you get out is increasing rapidly – so production is becoming less efficient! That’s the main reason it’s getting (and will continue to get) more expensive.

Food costs more because it has to be delivered

And more to the point also need lots of oil in the manufacture of fertilizer and pesticides – see above for why this is inevitably becoming more expensive.

Fuel ‘duty’ might just line the goverments pockets but it is so high because they can call it an environmental tax.

But we have never paid the real costs of our oil based economy – we have never bothered to put a price on the real value of things like clean water, biodiversity, worker safety in far off places, cost of disposal of plastics etc etc. In fact the real “stealth” was in keeping all of these real costs hidden. It is true that now we are starting to have to recognise some of these but I think it is the opposite of stealth – it is the revealing of the true costs.

It’s “The Children’s Illustrated Bible”

My daughter got given one when she was about 4 by happy clappy aunt and uncle.

I don’t recall being asked to explain what any illustrations of sodomising and gomororising(?) were about so I assume it has already been made child friendly.

Given that my daughter had to stop watching Jason and the Argonaughts the other night because she found Talus too scarey I’m sure she would have let us know if she found the Bible worrying.

She was actually very keen on it for a while but eventually moved onto Rainbow Fairies and is currently very keen on Malory Towers books by Enid Blyton which my wife claims are full of absolutely vile characters and set a terrible example.

In short, my advice would be answer the questions as best you can and don’t worry about it.

I’m planning on using one to break the bank at Monte Carlo – luckily I have very large feet so it will easily fit into the heel of a cowboy boot. I’ll be playing blackjack under the alias Dorset Slim sometime towards the end of summer.

its been used as a vehicle for stealth tax.

It is very easy to trot out this glib phrase.

What tax do you consider to be a “stealth tax”?

What is that tax being used for that you don’t agree with?

But hasnt that sort of thing been happening for millenia, before we humans were even here? In fact isnt that the sort of thing that shaped our blue planet in the first place?
We humans seem to think that we are that important that we can change the world….

The bit that people seem to find it hard to get their heads round is the timescale.

Scientists point out that ice is thinning, oceans warming, glaciers retreating, floods becoming more frequent/chaotic etc and sceptics say “but that sort of thing has always happened”

Well, that’s true to a degree, except that in the past these natural events (excepting things like volcanic eruptions, which are just bad luck) happened over much longer periods of time.

We are currently forcing changes which could turn out to be quick, catastrophic and irreversible (in the short term – and in the long term (as the saying goes) we’re all dead anyway).

I’m not too concerned about the next ice age, but I am very concerned about flooding, droughts, crop failures etc in mine and my kids lifetimes – the question is – what is it that we are trying to create that is so fantastic that it is worth playing Russian Roulette for?

Ahh…….

……. takes me back to the excitement of waiting for my first BBC computer.

Brilliant idea.

I believe some “scientists” came up with it?

I’m sure they did.

The trouble starts when ignoramuses (ignorami?) start interpreting what the scientists say.

The scientists may well have said that the next ice age (maybe due in 1500 years) might be delayed.

But I’m sure that they didn’t say that that would be a good (or bad) thing.

In the meantime, I’m a bit more worried about what might happen in my lifetime or the lifetime of my kids.