Mailwatch(ed) Forum

I come across a lot of that. "I don't get it".

My response:

Just because YOU don't understand doesn't make it incorrect

Quite. I have found that people who look a bit dim usually are, and wrong 'uns tend to look like wrong 'uns.

So we are to believe that when Iago tells Brabantio that 'an old black ram is tupping your white ewe' there is no racist undertone?

I would suggest that she has either not read Shakespeare in any detail or she is too dim to understand it.

Or, of course, she's lying to please her paymasters.

She's another one who says that Shakespeare should be ruffs and tights, and hey nonny nonny, and now they've gone and cast a black woman as Juliet and here come the end times.

It's performative bollocks, there to be lapped up by people who don't want to think too much, and while they may not know a lot about Shakespeare, they know he's public property and that means you do him right (meaning, what they vaguely recall from school).

This is something that ought to be picked up on more. (The OP corrects that they do offer Geography now, but says that's recent). The LA comp next door to my flat in Tower Hamlets offers more subjects and still gets very good results.

https://bsky.app/profile/localnotail.bs ... pn2tu3n22j

Colonial expansion was more or less the raison d'etre of the Act of Union that created the British state. It's not a fringe lefty counter culture narrative but an obvious statement of fact. What's her point?

Algebra? You mean Muzzy Maths? Don't want to be decolonising the maths curriculum like that. Give one of That Lot a calculator and you see what happens. Gives them all kinds of ideas. See also Geometry, which was all invented by those Greek fellows. Say no more.

No, better to stick with Standard British Maths (note the s). Nice and sensible arithmetic and socks-on long division.

Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 1:12 pm Algebra? You mean Muzzy Maths? Don't want to be decolonising the maths curriculum like that. Give one of That Lot a calculator and you see what happens. Gives them all kinds of ideas. See also Geometry, which was all invented by those Greek fellows. Say no more.

No, better to stick with Standard British Maths (note the s). Nice and sensible arithmetic and socks-on long division.

Proper British Maths, like kings do: with a Roman IIII.

Woman's got an IQ of LXXV.

Bones McCoy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 1:52 pm Proper British Maths, like kings do: with a Roman IIII.

Should only be used on clocks.

I see that she is on Question Time again, in the BBC’s relentless drive to give a platform to all shades of opinion.

It's even worst than that. It's a special edition about growing up in the 21st century. She'll get to sound off with apparent authority rather than getting a range of questions where she swiftly exposes herself as a crank.

Jon Stewart speaking to Armando Ianucci on R4's Strong message Here (give it a listen if you haven't, Ianuuci co hosts with Helen Lewis) praised Question Time very highly as a great broadcast institution that America sorely lacked. In theory yes but imagine the US show featured Margerie Taylor Green or Ron De Santos every week spouting unchallenged bullshit. QT have done some US shows and they were very good but they attracted quality guests rather than nutters who run the government on the panel being held to account.

See also PMQs. I think it was you who made the point (?) there are a few people round the world who'd like to see their head of government put on the spot like that.

How's she doing, you probably haven't wondered. She's on to brown Christmas elves, because this breaks the unwritten rule that elves have to be the same colour as the majority of the country where they're on sale. Quite a nifty variant on the "Friar Tuck isn't black!" meme. With added War on Christmas.

Katherine has got to raise her game because the Sun have uncovered a headteacher who is trying to take her tittle as Britain's strictest headteacher.

I’m Britain’s ‘strictest’ headteacher waging war on soft parents who use kids’ ‘mental health’ as excuse for laziness

BRITAIN’S strictest headteacher is on a “common sense” crusade and claims learning difficulty diagnoses mean we often forget many kids are simply “naughty, lazy and disruptive”.

Serge Cefai says he has no time for “do-gooders” or “flaky” mental health issues – and while he insists his survival of the fittest attitude does not him lock horns with his own colleagues – he has axed any who “don’t care enough”.

The 68-year-old’s methods at St Thomas the Apostle School in Peckham, South London, sees pupils treated with military precision, while individual performance rankings are plastered on billboards in every classroom.

Phones are collected at the start of each day, one-way corridors and staircases are completely silent, and detentions are held on Friday nights and Saturday mornings.

But his strict methods appear to be working, with the school ranking fifth across all of Greater London – and he claims parents have never voiced any concerns since he arrived in 2013 because his results are so good.

Mr Cefai told The Sun: “You’ve heard about all the labels in school these days, dyspraxia, dyslexia, whatever it is.

“Well, I’ll give you a couple of labels that maybe need to be reintroduced: naughty, lazy, disruptive.

“It’s as though those sorts of kids don’t exist anymore.”

He added: “Much as I have been described as strict and so on, I care more about our kids than the so-called do gooders who only do bad, who would prefer to patronise them.”

I can only assume he gets away with this nonsense because no other teacher is willing to touch the school with a barge poll.

If he really is so great and his methods are so wonderful why has he stayed at the same school for 12 years. Surely there are bigger and tougher schools for him to tackle.

Fuuuuck...

So wrong on so many levels....

Yet again, “do-gooders” as a pejorative. Isn’t doing good supposed to be, well…… good ?

He's certainly learned from Katherine in the media department. I wonder if he were a fairly mainstream sort before that?

"Silence in the corridor" isn't exactly some completely new idea. Nor is detention. `Nor is calling kids "lazy" when they're lazy. Nor indeed is putting up marks on the wall.

You need to know what the entry selection criteria are, who the target population is and what the expulsion/exclusion rates are (by ethnic group).

Lazy journalists never ask (or understand) these questions.