It ain’t funny, we got no money…

Peter Davis

funny…

No music tonight, just this.

This.

The Night Duty Boy-First-Class Type Writer, commanding his Chimpanzee Shift, might put some music up as it’s Saturday: we shall just have to see.

Hat tip The Landed Underclass. That blog just gets better and better, and he will outlive us in The Line.

Some people are more equal than others now.

The Policeman concerned has found a clever and opaque way of saying he’s not the friend of all people: just those of them that happen to be powerful today.

Well then.

On totally unrelated matters, readers might like this book.

I’d like to apply for the job of government stooge. Then I can get money.

David Davis

The Landed Underclass notes the concatenation of events and incidents related to Robert Peston, aged 4, “described” as “a journalist”, and the collapse both of Northern Rock and the pants-ripping of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Clearly, there are openings for stooges under this government. I would like a job as one, then I will be rich and famous. theywill of course allow me to keep my (authorised by them) pension, as soon as my usefulness has ended.

Corruption and politicizing of GCSE “science”, in favour of Gramsco-Marxianism.

David Davis

I am obliged to An Englishman’s Castle for bringing to wider notice some ideas I have been banging on about for some time: since the “New” GCSE science syllabuses his the schools in September 2006. The “updated and relevant” “syllabus” consists mostly of repetition of prevailing orthodoxy about issues such as GM foods, global warming, stem cell research, MMR vaccination, the placing of mobile phone masts, and the like.

It’s worth reading the entire thing by the student. preferably before Tomes Online takes it down, as it is wont to do with stuff that gets up the noses of the Enemy Class. In fact I will save it just in case, and it’s here to save time:-

 

February 26, 2009

Can we please have less politics in our GCSE’s: a plea from a 16 year old…..

XXXXXXX is 16. He’s about to do his GCSEs and hopes to study Latin, German, Further Maths and English or History at A Level (so he’s no slouch). After that, he’s thinking of studying Classics and Modern Languages at University. But he’s not happy with the school curriculum, and was inspired to write for School Gate after the Cambridge Primary Review criticised the restrictions for children at a younger age. He thinks that there’s too much politics, that these are pushing out proper learning, and that social issues are being pushed far too hard…

So, over to Joe:

“In recent years, it seems that the school curricula are featuring more and more in public debate. There was considerable press coverage of a study last week which revealed that in primary education, the focus has been steered away from the arts and humanities leaving children “tied to their desks” struggling with the nine times table. The report claims this has “squeezed out” other areas of learning, rendering children’s artistic capacities under-developed and neglected. Furthermore, the report claims not only that the curriculum has been narrowed, but that what remains has become heavily “politicised”.

As a current GCSE student, I can identify with this “politicisation”. It seems to me as if the GCSE curricula, above all for science, no longer focus on understanding the subject. The core biology science curriculum now calls for very little knowledge of the biology that we had studied in the years preceding GCSE, but seems to be a governmental attempt to raise awareness of current social issues. For example, section A of the core biology exam concentrates on contraception, drugs, alcohol, smoking, obesity, anorexia and the MMR vaccines, whilst section B tackles broader issues such as global warming, GM crops, creationism vs Darwinism and alternative energy sources.

Perhaps this is the best solution to the some of the social problems that Britain faces today. Maybe through education, education and education, Labour may finally succeed in reducing teenage pregnancies, child obesity and begin to steer Britain towards a greener way of life. 
Perhaps indeed, learning about the advantages and disadvantages of wind and solar power is vastly more useful to the average sixteen year old than a full understanding of the differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. In this way, the younger generation may begin to have a much clearer idea of current affairs, enabling us to partake more readily in the critical issues of the day, making us more informed voters and leaders of tomorrow.

An important aspect of the “politicisation” of the curriculum is the use of exams. Not only are the social issues agenda studied in class, but students must take exams on these topics, requiring an in depth analysis of the themes, and also meaning that students’ grades at GCSE depend on their knowledge of the subject in hand, encouraging a much more motivated and engaged learning process.

However, one of the key problems with sitting exams about topics of this nature is that the exam board are required to write mark schemes clearly detailing the answers that they want within a rigid framework. This leaves no room for debate on the part of the student, meaning that instead of producing insightful, perceptive and interesting answers, pupils tend towards putting down what they think the mark scheme is most likely to have as an acceptable response. For example, in a question about embryo screening, the advantage of screening embryos in accordance to the mark scheme was to reduce health care costs for the parents. I found it a little disconcerting, if not positively concerning, to discover that my answer that it would improve the quality of life for the child, did not feature. Is it right to present these issues to pupils in such a way that they are blinkered into one channel of thought? Is it not more productive to allow pupils to debate current affairs in such a way that they are able to access all viewpoints and form their own opinions? Arguably, the government is now more concerned with indoctrination than discussion.

In my view, it must be asked if the science curriculum is really the right place for these social issues to be debated and taught. Indeed, if education is really the process by which someone’s innate intelligence is led out, then perhaps topical issues should be addressed elsewhere. Arguably, in the hours that we spend in full time education, it is more important to develop an understanding of the basics of the world around us; to understand the science behind the issues as opposed to an awareness of the actual issues, and indeed problems, that science can both cause and solve.

Furthermore, those who are employed to teach Biology, Chemistry and Physics may well become frustrated by the deviance of the curriculum from their chosen subject. Thus, their passion for the subject, presumably because of which they chose teaching in the first place, diminishes. Can pupils really find a topic which frustrates their teachers engaging?

For the pupils, this intervention and politicisation can become annoyingly transparent. Having studied global warming in all three sciences, Geography, English, French, German and Spanish, I have found that its initial shock has now ceased to have an impact. The topic has become stale, and my will to change for the better has been weakened.

There is no doubt that there are a number of social issues, concerning young people, which need to be addressed in one way or another. My question is whether GCSE science is really the place for it. Maybe PSHE is a more obvious option, but the problem is that PSHE is not regarded with anywhere near the same level of importance. I think that as young people, we do need to understand the current topics being debated, but it is possibly more beneficial to be invited to participate seriously in balanced discussion, as opposed to having to show we know the effects of smoking in part b) of question nine.”

Read School Gate on:

How secondary schools stop kids from being creative

Should we have academic selection at 14?

Why do so many bright teenagers drop out of education?

POSTED AT 09:03 AM IN EXAMS, SECONDARY SCHOOL |PERMALINK

I didn’t know Philip Pullman was this good a writer about liberty

UPDATE2:- Little Man What Now? has also republished it. What this exercise shows is the utter futility of an Enemy Governimg Class trying to supress stuff it does not approve of, until its Terror-Police have effectively removed the publication-tools from us all. They clearly know nothing whatever about the history of England in the 1620s-to-1640s, as the new and revolutionarry technique of “imprinting” was at last getting going on a large scale, and at a difficult time for the battling of ideas which was then going on.

UPDATE:- THE TIMES took this piece down off its site some hours ago, to the original link to the Times OUT OF landed Underclass is broken. ( ARRSE have the full text.) The Cato Institute also quotes some of it. Good job I virally-pasted the whole thing….

David Davis

UPDATE:- Here in full is the big and angry discussion thread about this piece on the Army Rumour Service at http://www.arrse.co.uk/cpgn2/Forums/viewtopic/t=117552/postdays=0/postorder=asc/start=20.html

Hat tip to the Landed Underclass for exposing the true significance of this prescient piece of writing:-

©Philip Pullman 2009

Are such things done on Albion’s shore?

The image of this nation that haunts me most powerfully is that of the sleeping giant Albion in William Blake’s prophetic books. Sleep, profound and inveterate slumber: that is the condition of Britain today.

We do not know what is happening to us. In the world outside, great events take place, great figures move and act, great matters unfold, and this nation of Albion murmurs and stirs while malevolent voices whisper in the darkness – the voices of the new laws that are silently strangling the old freedoms the nation still dreams it enjoys.

We are so fast asleep that we don’t know who we are any more. Are we English? Scottish? Welsh? British? More than one of them? One but not another? Are we a Christian nation – after all we have an Established Church – or are we something post-Christian? Are we a secular state? Are we a multifaith state? Are we anything we can all agree on and feel proud of?

BACKGROUND

• £34bn cost of state-run surveillance databases

• Former spy chief says UK is now a police state

• First ID cards are to be issued within weeks

• COMMENT: that’s a bit rich, Dame Stella

The new laws whisper:

You don’t know who you are

You’re mistaken about yourself

We know better than you do what you consist of, what labels apply to you, which facts about you are important and which are worthless

We do not believe you can be trusted to know these things, so we shall know them for you

And if we take against you, we shall remove from your possession the only proof we shall allow to be recognised

The sleeping nation dreams it has the freedom to speak its mind. It fantasises about making tyrants cringe with the bluff bold vigour of its ancient right to express its opinions in the street. This is what the new laws say about that:

Expressing an opinion is a dangerous activity

Whatever your opinions are, we don’t want to hear them

So if you threaten us or our friends with your opinions we shall treat you like the rabble you are

And we do not want to hear you arguing about it

So hold your tongue and forget about protesting

What we want from you is acquiescence

The nation dreams it is a democratic state where the laws were made by freely elected representatives who were answerable to the people. It used to be such a nation once, it dreams, so it must be that nation still. It is a sweet dream.

You are not to be trusted with laws

So we shall put ourselves out of your reach

We shall put ourselves beyond your amendment or abolition

You do not need to argue about any changes we make, or to debate them, or to send your representatives to vote against them

You do not need to hold us to account

You think you will get what you want from an inquiry?

Who do you think you are?

What sort of fools do you think we are?

The nation’s dreams are troubled, sometimes; dim rumours reach our sleeping ears, rumours that all is not well in the administration of justice; but an ancient spell murmurs through our somnolence, and we remember that the courts are bound to seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and we turn over and sleep soundly again.

And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth

Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours

We have a better friend called hearsay, who is a witness we can always rely on

We do not want to hear you talking about innocence

Innocent means guilty of things not yet done

We do not want to hear you talking about the right to silence

You need to be told what silence means: it means guilt

We do not want to hear you talking about justice

Justice is whatever we want to do to you

And nothing else

Are we conscious of being watched, as we sleep? Are we aware of an ever-open eye at the corner of every street, of a watching presence in the very keyboards we type our messages on? The new laws don’t mind if we are. They don’t think we care about it.

We want to watch you day and night

We think you are abject enough to feel safe when we watch you

We can see you have lost all sense of what is proper to a free people

We can see you have abandoned modesty

Some of our friends have seen to that

They have arranged for you to find modesty contemptible

In a thousand ways they have led you to think that whoever does not want to be watched must have something shameful to hide

We want you to feel that solitude is frightening and unnatural

We want you to feel that being watched is the natural state of things

One of the pleasant fantasies that consoles us in our sleep is that we are a sovereign nation, and safe within our borders. This is what the new laws say about that:

We know who our friends are

And when our friends want to have words with one of you

We shall make it easy for them to take you away to a country where you will learn that you have more fingernails than you need

It will be no use bleating that you know of no offence you have committed under British law

It is for us to know what your offence is

Angering our friends is an offence

It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.

And those laws say:

Sleep, you stinking cowards

Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms

Freedom is too hard for you

We shall decide what freedom is

Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum.

fakecharities.org has been noticed by charitable trough-piggers themselves. That was quick….

…..and shows that they must have been waiting, pooing their pants in fright, to get rumbled by someone. God, how slow can bloggers be sometimes? (But    _IF_    you go here, you will see that the Libertarian Alliance’s duty-Chimpanzee-Type-Writing-Shift for 2004 (in the unheated Nissen-hut, not the other one) had indeed spotted ASH already!) (And if you go here, we have a raft of ancient writings about fake-charity and its iniquities, or even real charity, and its role in a liberal civilisation.)

David Davis

The Landed Underclass notes today that Charity Finance (whatever that is for) has logged the existence of fakecharities.org, a site set up by the estimable Devil, to expose and monitor the use of public funds directly by “charities”.  

The “charities” named in fakecharities.org are almost entirely engaged in fake lobbying: lobbying, it may be added, for mainly liberty-restricting ends such as more persecution of smokers, alcohol-likers, drivers, people who enjoy tasty food such as burgers and chips, other kinds of poor people, and suchlike.

Libertarians of all kinds will know that under liberal or what we call “free” societies, history shows the greatest rate of expansion of private charity. This is contrasted with the situation of charities under a Big State, which forcibly confiscates so much of people’s resources that charities actually suffer and attenuate. The only way they can survive is to actually abdicate their caring role in favour of the Big State tkaing it over, and than “caring” on behalf of “the people”. Naturally, the “charities” which then do best out of the pig-trough are those with the most Statist ends themselves. Small charities which actually do charity may survive in odd niches and localities, such as this one: but those which don’t trough-pig mega with the sharpest elbows will eventually go down.

Of course, this is what a Big State wants.

Or you could have a charity like this one, which not only has been doing something supremely useful for many decades, but takes no money from Big States.

Kicking Anthropogenic Global warming downhill before it’s too late

The Devil spots this Japanese report: let’s hope more scientists break ranks.

Alex today

David Davis

Very droll.

God help us if this is not an early April Fool wind-up

David Davis

This madman plans to fire trillions of mirrors into space, to “stop global warming. I really do begin to believe that some of these mountebanks are starting to believe their own witchcraft.

Read the whole thing: it’s eitherw ritten by an imaginative but scientifically-illiterate hobbledy-hoy, or else by some very evil and wicked men.

People who haven’t built a gun before ought not to be allowed anywhere near where extra-powerful ones are to be constructed.

…..so hold your fire!

David Davis

Legiron says don’t riot. Please. Not until there’s been a general election to wipe out ZanuLieBorg.

Hat tip The Landed Underclass.

Facebook Twitter Bebo Myspace children: Susan greenfield is of course quite right, but….

…..people have to grow up in order to use these powerful tools.

David Davis

You wouldn’t just hand a child of, say, 13, a chain-saw, simply because he/she said he could cut down a tree faster with it. You train it (the child, not the saw.) Then, since our homes are now bursting at the seams with computers and networks, you train a child about what’s important: that’s all.

Then, he does not think he needs a Facebook account. His dad’s got one, immature dude that he is.

Frank Field is a liberal! I knew it all along.

Now he admits cryptically as much in this piece.

A bit of a maverick one, to be sure, consorting for so long with fascist lefty Nazi scumbags in ZaluLieBorg – but a liberal all the same.

David Davis

Hat tip Guido Fawkes. Let me guess: he’s the one site that nobody _ever_ confesses to reading…..

Bentleys and “bio Ethanol”: the trouble with all modern cars is that Green-fascism has made them look identical.

David Davis

The new Bentley looks suitably impressive and expensive. But hardly different from any other executive-express. It also can run on “E85″, available at Morrisons, no less! I doubt that buyers of this car shop there much… This stuff is an 85% mixture of bioethanol with petrol. So when using that fuel instead of nice, famine-free fossil fuels, you can be sure you’ve just starved a few more Africans.

 

I'll have it in British Racing Green please

The trouble with big modern car firms like VW (yes it owns Bentley I think, so really this is a re-bodied Phaeton or Bugatti Veyron but who cares?) is that they feel bound to emply phalanxes of PR “executives” in various “communications” departments. This makes them vulnerable to assaults by greenazis, with whom the PR chappies and chappesses went to “uni” probably, and may well have shagged each other while students.

If they didn’t bother to employ these useless wastes-of-rations, in “communications”, then they’d be…

(a) functionally deaf to media-assaults about “non-renewable fuels”, and about “polluting the environment” by not using “bio fuels”

(b) able to afford more engineers and guys at draftsmen’s tables, producing even nicer cars,

(c) not make all their cars look like one another, by passing the desings through fascist-filtering wind-tunnel-software,

(d) able to bring the crypto-terrorist inclinations of the greens out in the open: frustrated as the greens would become, they would turn to terrorism and destruction of car plants, and THEN we will see where “governments” stand. Placate the greenazis or the labour unions?

Some engineering education

Wish things like this would be taught now.

I wonder what radio set they used? I will have to find out.

Very nice. And Greek terrorists can write well.

Humans are human after all.

From Mr Eugenides.

I was also amused by what these guys in Greece said….

The group, Sect of Revolutionaries, first appeared earlier this month when it opened fire with a submachine gun on an Athens police station, spraying the precinct with bullets but injuring nobody. [...] On Tuesday, the group carried out a similar attack in the parking lot of the private Alter television station, again causing no injuries.

In a statement published by the daily Ta Nea, the group says its latest attack was a message to journalists that “the time that you were ‘untouchable’ is over.”

“They manipulate our minds daily so that we fill the reserves of our disciplined time with values and functions that feed the system,” the group says, adding: “Let the slugs of media journalism know that apart from the mucus they leave behind them… soon they will also leave blood.”

“Mister journalists, this time we came to your door, but next time you will find us in your homes,” it said.

The assaults culminated on Wednesday with an attempt to detonate a car bomb outside the headquarters of Citibank in Athens. The 60 kilogram device, assembled with ammonium nitrate fuel oil – the explosive used in the Oklahoma City bombing – could have destroyed the four-storey building and killed hundreds.

“From now on, the life of every cop is worth as much as a bullet, while their bodies are the ideal target practice,” the Sect of Revolutionaries declared in its maiden proclamation. “They, like the doughnuts that they eat, are no good without a hole in the middle.”

They may be bloodthirsty lefty lunatics, but those boys can write…(aka Mr Eugenides.)

Sir “David Ormond” knows best. And, the Libertarian Party of the UK tells it to you like it is.

David Davis

“Personal Privacy” will have to be sacrificed in order to fight “terrorism” and suchlike.

We already knew that, but now they’re saying it out loud. And the LPUK has a much better-argued and fuller rendition (ha ha ha ha ha! Rendition! is this another word for the lefties to lynch or have they merely invented it to sound like clever-clogs?) of the matter.

You’d all better get your knickers down for him now, democrat girlies and war-haters that you are.

David Davis

A couple of hours ago, we posted this stuff here, ripping as it does the public-trousers (if you can call them that) off the bugger Kim Jong-Il.  He shot a woman on the Wireless Tele Vision. Hillary Clinton can’t want that, even though Monica Lewinski was also a woman.

Now, we learn that “North” Korea can point a missile at the continental USA. Personally I doubt that, but we have to be sure either way. It also means that he can point it at China, India, Japan, Russia, Pakistan (he won’t, it’s where he probably got it from at a Bootle-type-boot-fair) Persia, Arabia, Australia and New Zealand (better watch out just in case) Indonesia (he won’t) and so on.

Israel….NOW you’re talking! Everybody of course hates the Jews because they are so clever and thus they have to be killed in culls all the time, or they’ll rumble you and cause you to lose your tenured-university-job-teaching-Gramsco-Marxianism-to-those-who-have-been-Big-Brothered. He’ll get away with that one.

He can’t quite reach South Africa, but it’s gone Nazi so he will leave it.

I’ve never seen any Interior Minister behaving so shallowly…..

…..in my entire life, and I have lived past a quite a few now. (Interior Ministers are now always younger than I am.)

David Davis

Interesting pic on An Englishman’s Castle. Don’t know what you make of it, nor do I, but it says some things that she wants you to know. Here’s the thing:-

 

Good, I can go for a pizza, safely now!

Let’s give some tyrant or other another tiny kick downhill

It is not suitable to shoot women. Only communists, Gramsco-Marxians and the Prussian general Staff (as a tactic to be used in the terrorising into passivity of occupied regions) sanctioned it. Stalin learned it, rather quickly.

Sorry. It’s just that our strategic-focus-video-incorporation-outreach-Chimpanzee-Typewriter-Group-deputy-chief-assistant-activities-co-ordinator, er, pointed out that, we had not thrown rotting cabbages at Kim Jong-Il for some time, and it was high time we did. At least 9% of the duty-Chimps on this shift found themselves involuntarily typing about him, even without pre-briefing.  

Just so he knows we have not forgotten him, and all his works.

Tornado: here we are again

That’s much, much better: that’s the real thing. There’s quite enough energy in the Universe for trains to be just like that all the time. Much more intresting.