rodshaw
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Maybe people just appear dumber because there are so many quiz shows on air now to expose their ignorance.
I have two grandchildren at primary school and they do history and geography. I wouldn’t be surprised if they know as much as I did at their age.
I went to RC primary and secondary schools. One thing I remember from the former is one of the teachers asking “How do we know we’re right?” and then proceeding to tell us. I forget the detail, but the gist was that Catholics had the answer and we could consider ourselves superior.
Despite my supposed superiority I was in great fear of damnation by eating meat on a Friday or having impure thoughts. But it was ok as long as you went to confession and offloaded your errant ways onto the priest.
One of our secondary school teachers tried to wise us up by saying that often Catholics only knew the first answer to a sceptical questioner but not the second. In other words, we could be floored by someone probing more deeply. Well, yes, I wonder why that was?
I can’t help thinking it will be somewhat amusing to see how they decide who is working class, and whether they tell us how they are getting on meeting their targets.
I remember watching a programme about class, not that long ago, and one chap said he was middle class because he had a TV. If the BBC use criteria like that, they won’t be recruiting many people.
He also featured on TV in the 80s or 90s, in a programme about the English language. I think he was talking about London dialects. He was also quoted in the book the TV programme was based on.
With Man City top of the Premier League by some distance, their ardent fans probably don’t care that much about a dodgy owner. Love is blind.
Well, Attenbourough did up the ante on the final programme of A Perfect Planet. Kind of. The whole episode was about the various ways in which “humans” are spoiling the planet. Lots of examples of people doing worthy, sincere things to buck the trend, and a talking head who said governments need financial incentives to do more. Needless to say, not a mention of capitalism.
Except by me…I ended up shouting at the TV and mentioning socialism, which for some reason always upsets my wife.
I was watching a live match earlier and spread across part of West Brom’s crowdless stand, in large letters, was a banner saying “The Lord is My Shepherd”.
I know football is often said to be another religion but this is really taking it literally.“My Dad’s just had his first AstraZeneca jab with the second one due on 11 April…”
Interesting that he’s already got a date for the second jab. Did he get this when he had his first one? I don’t know whether there’s a policy on how soon you get a date for the second one.
“There wasn’t time for rigorous testing. Would socialism wait an extra year and a million more deaths before approving a vaccine? Hardly. If you want a vaccine fast, you have to accept some unknowns. That would be just as true in socialism as now.”
Fair point.
I daresay they have to say this because of the lower proportion of older people in the tests. Could there be any medical justification for saying that you suddenly reach 65 and the vaccine is no longer effective? Sounds like witchcraft. If there’s any truth in it, it will surely be on some kind of sliding age scale.
Anyway, it’s what I’ve had so I’m stuck with it now. If I get the virus despite the jab I’ll never know if I had an 82% chance of getting it, a 30% chance of getting it or some other percent chance of getting it through carelessness. Same the other way round if I don’t get it – would it be because of the jabs or simply through precaution? Best to boost your chances of not getting it as best you can anyway.
The chances of such confusion in a socialist society would hopefully be far less through more rigorous testing of vaccines and the like.
“The latest is from Germany with the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) assessment to show the AstraZeneca vaccine to be only 8% effective among the over-65s.”
This could be just a dodgy figure leaked by someone who got their facts wrong. The German govt and Astrazenica are saying the 8% figure refers to the percentage of people taking part in the tests who were over 65.
Anyway, why should it only be 8% effective for older people?
Not that I trust the pharmaceutical industry but this does seem to be a bit of a stretch of credulity.
Meanwhile we get the same platitudes on nature programmes about how we can all do our bit. Such well-meaning effort, what a shame. Attenborough’s latest series, A Perfect Planet, if anything has a weaker message than his one last year. Unless he ups the ante in the final episode on Sunday.
Yes, indeed – we can all do our bit by joining the campaign for world socialism. If only.
