Stolen 90's back!!!

Mother"

Well, I'm using that same service and it (obviously) made it here. However, there have been a few net-hiccups this evening ... posts headers ok, no content which is possibly more irritating. Also a few posts seem to be constantly 'unread' - well for several re-reads.

maybe something up in Deutchland - I'd assumed a client glitch

Yes, but the 'respect' agenda has been hijacked to become more of a punitive social order / control debate - and f*ck-all to do with values and and standards IMO. I have absolutley no idea how a society can expect people to show respect for others when they have no respect for themselves. There are two ways of getting people to do what you want them to do;

Offer them something nice as an incentive or Remove something from them if they do not comply

I see too much removal of liberty in one sense or another an all too little reward (and in this sense, 'reward' need not be directly tangible in any commonly accepted sense).

I firmly believe the greatest reward for all of us, is 'collective harmony'.

I could live under the rule of a benevolent dictator if that was his/hers belief.

You get my vote for world leader......

So do I. 'specially as I post via NIN :-)

Why??!

Because they need the money to pay for their old folk homes where they die miserable, bitter selfish old gits perhaps? (I've spent too much time in these places as you can tell, wife used to work in one ;-)

Perhaps you think that the sixty odd pounds a month the goverment gives parents per child is more than adequate to cover the child's entire costs?

A little forward thinking here would show that children grow up and work, pay their taxes and contribute towards a stable economy, more than "paying for themselves" in the long run. Therefore those who do decide to have children help the country financially, and you're suggesting that parents should be penalised even though they are financially poorer because they've had children.

Now, if you were to talk about how our labour goverment has screwed things up so that WORKING families and individuals are the ones paying to encourage single parent families and made it possible for people to be better off on the dole rather than working then I'd understand your feelings. But I'll take offence to the suggestion I make a profit from the goverment paying me to be a parent, the goverment will get far, far more back from my children than it will ever pay me.

Regards

William MacLeod

Well said Willie. Badger.

On or around Fri, 20 Jan 2006 10:28:28 +1300, Brian enlightened us thusly:

I've long thought that benevolent dictatorship or monarchy are probably the best form of government. The difficulty is when you get the wrong dictator/monarch. At least with the current system we get a chance to change the people in power (although it doesn't seem to work reliably. Try to find anyone who'll admit to voting for the current bunch... but they're still in power) every so often.

On or around 19 Jan 2006 14:22:11 -0800, " snipped-for-privacy@macleod-group.com" enlightened us thusly:

Mind, there's also the fact that the world population is rapidly becoming unsustainable.

Because they don't make use of schools - is how the argument usually goes I believe.

hrmm - I think my post has been taken out of context ("There is a very strong argument ... should be given rebates") and I would be grateful if you'd hold back from 2nd guessing my opinions. With 4 kids, I'll leave you to decide how accurate you have been with your analysis.

Toodle pip.

Don't matter who you vote for the Govt. always gets in.

I think the word is "respect"?

Only if the members of a society obey the rules set out by that society. Once a significant number of members stop following the rules the society collapses.

and the Opposition has always got all the answers.

Richard

This one has struck a chord with me. Not sure how many of you have met my daughter R'Vanneth. She's only 9, and is dealing on a regular basis with being virtually ignored at school. She is never late, she's intelligent, she's not disruptive, apparently she's a joy to have in the classroom.

Sometimes she comes home, sighs deeply and asks why the "naughty" children get all the praise, the prizes (for working hard apparently) and extra time from the teachers. Obviously *WE* can understand what is being attempted - but it's being taken to such a degree that the hard workers are now being ignored because they are "always good". A little praise goes a long way - and for her to constantly work hard for some recognition and lose it to some little oik that hasn't sworn at a teacher for a week upsets her (and me).

Society is changing. I'm not sure if it's for the good.

In article , Mother writes

Kids have no concept of how hard they'll be hit by the real world of work. We face global competition with a vengeance now, India, China and Latin America too, and our current social structure is wholly unsustainable.

The trouble is, every school wants to be a performing arts college (I exaggerate, but you get the drift), and nobody's telling the children just how tough it will be and how hard they'll have to compete for even ordinary jobs in future.

Now this next bit looks like a complete switch of topic, bit it isn't - bear with me as it's horribly relevant:

I'm incensed by the mass immigration we're seeing, not because of race or creed, but because it operates to take low-end work and thus dignity from people already here, and will eventually cause the collapse of society.

We have a Normal distribution of intelligence, as with every other society on the planet, but immigrants can reasonably be expected to be on average brighter than those who don't move. Thus, irrespective of background, you'd generally expect them to out-compete the existing population for low-end jobs in the first instance because they're better and far more motivated (Maslow), and then rapidly move up the social scale.

This is indeed what the figures show - and good for them! They have the humility and determination to do jobs our children don't want. Unfortunately, that's creating a massive and permanent imbalance in society.

The net economic benefit is less than nil, because all immigrants are aspirants too. They want to progress, have pensions, et mortgages, send their children to Oxford, etc., and why not? The second and subsequent generations are just like my children. Neither they nor their parents want them to do the menial jobs their parents did. Again this is quite reasonable and understandable, BUT, if you fall for the rhetoric, it also means we need more immigrants for those unwanted jobs. Thus the cycle continues, with an ever- increasing population and demand on social provision of all kinds.

As for immigration counterbalancing an ageing population - this argument is so stupid it just makes me angry: immigrants age just as anyone else does. Shouldn't they have a right to pension and health-care provision like the rest of us, or is the government actually proposing a discriminatory two-tier society?

It turns out that immigrant workers are far more expensive for a society like ours in the long run, because to the normal lifetime public-sector cost you have to add the considerable expenses of the support and integration phases. Without double- digit economic growth (and, thanks to 'Imprudence' the UK economy is teetering on a precipice right now), the present situation - never mind the immigration expected over the next decade or more - is quite unsustainable economically, never mind socially. It will eventually end in societal break down and anarchy.

The only fix - and it's a sticking plaster - is cramming as much education into our children as possible. There is no such thing as a sustainable knowledge-based economy (because of the bottom half of the normal distribution - they have to do something!), but we can stave off societal collapse for a while by ensuring our children are the best educated they can possibly be, such that we can out-compete other places for creative work (but we still do need to stop mass immigration immediately).

Thus the discipline problem is crucial. Rude and intractable children, indulged by their parents and the education sector's child 'psychologists', are destroying their own futures and those of the children they share classes with. It's not the street crime rate we should be worrying about, it's the mass unemployment of the next generation, caused by them being rendered unemployable by poor education and social systems, and a global economy that cares not where a job is done as long as it happens. "Their" jobs will end up elsewhere on the planet, done by well educated Chinese and Indians ('good for them!' says I).

Forget whatever nasty racist rubbish you may hear from the BNP- the real issues are economics, together with discipline and quality in education. Nobody with children, of whatever background, living in this country now can afford to let the present situation obtain for much longer.

If the British population, _all_ of us, don't wake up and smell the coffee soon, our kids will be making it with acorns. I exaggerate, obviously, but the crisis remains real.

Regards,

Simonm.

"Dave Liquorice"wrote ((snip))

Which brings us back to driving standards again. :-)

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:52:24 +0000 (UTC), "Neil Brownlee" scribbled the following nonsense:

as a teacher I think it fair to say that you notice the "naughties" first, because they are the ones who you get to know. The quiet kid at the back who just goes along producing work without disruption, just absorbing everything like a sponge takes a while to get to know, and requires the least assistance with their work. A current think tank proposes praising the naughties when they behave and getting stuff right..... at the detriment of the quiet intelligent ones.....

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:29:13 GMT, SpamTrapSeeSig scribbled the following nonsense:

we're a Technology College - speciliasist in the DT subjects........

Delirium Tremors?