Agreed. I went to University in 1984, just in time to take advantage of no tuition fees, a maximum grant throughout (note to the young - in the mid-1980s this was a means-tested grant that had a minimum value of £400), and the ability to access housing benefit in final year.
However, this was also an era when only 10% of school-leavers went to one of the 80-odd Universities in the UK. Then the better FE colleges became Polytechnics, and finally Universities. Edinburgh now seems to have three Universities, but only one FE college.
Looking at a large University, Edinburgh eats £750 million a year. It's a bit of a beast, and World class, but the other "old" universities can't be too far behind; that's not the kind of cash that a Scottish Government is going to find down the back of a sofa...
...I'd prefer a Further/Higher Education system that was free at the point of use, but it's harder to argue for funding some of the less practical courses.
Similarly, we've got a mismatch between graduates and jobs; I've got a niece with a Law degree and another with a postgraduate qualification in criminology, and both graduated to work in Tescos (although one just got out and is working towards her accountancy exams). A young lad who I've coached has his Masters in Astrophysics, and is working in Tescos Garage while he applies to the Police. Yes, we need to keep producing graduates for when the economy turns, but what if that turning economy just grabs that year's graduates, not the ones who now have a couple of years skill fade?
]]>If Charlie was an extreme free speech believer, I'd accept that. But to use a USA example, calling President Obama "weak willed" is considered different to calling President Obama "nigger". Words reveal attitudes.
My understanding, on which I'm happy to be corrected by better-informed feminists, is that men calling women - any women - "bitch" online is not considered a sign of healthy debate. And men calling women "mad" has some unpleasant historical associations with women who undertook activities considered non-feminine, such as politics.
I'm disturbed that on this otherwise excellently behaved blog, anything goes when the target is Margaret Thatcher. Regardless of her policies.
]]>But, I don't.
I only point out the outliers and the obvious plays.
Or do you think symbols don't do anything? [YouTube: music: 4:43]
I have not looked closely into the tragic affair in sweden. I'm quite sure the young man was profiled and prodded, if that means that racist assholes recognized each other on the interwebs or meatoshpere and encouraged each other to carry out something drastic. Quite publoc in all likelyhood
You've rather missed the point, which is fine, given you're probably a well adjusted member of your society.
The point is that the majority of what that young man was 'liking' is only nihilistic in a certain mental schema (sigh... and all miss the joke: much of it can be healthy done right; it was a meta-commentary on the state of your culture). Is a lot of it retrograde? Of course; however, so is the binary opposition being offered up these days. (And that is why Breibart etc have risen, it's due to the paucity of their opposites).
However, a lot of it is perfectly fine once coupled with some critical theory and other (more positive) material. Material that 100% isn't found in the mainstream.
If you want to get really dirty, I can give you a predictive paper from 2008-9 and then 2012/3 on how this would all play out, and it's been absolutely correct so far. (Looking at you, MET, having grab gangs and men shouting "cunt" in popular protests since '97 and running Black Flag OPs. Ahh, you see? Not saying what you think it's saying).
Put another way:
GamerGate leads to U.N. paper. If you're not amazed by that kind of pull, then you don't know who is playing. I do: I even warned you all. Think Tank begins with a "M" btw, thing Greek Goddesses. Then again, who knows that the Koch Brother's Father founded the John Birch society, the #1 Conspiracy Theory anti-NWO, anti-Agenda 21, anti-JKF outfit?I do.
Strange: billionaires funding Conspiracy Societies and it's considered "non-mainstream".
And yes: the rather harder core (male) types will absolutely, 100%, find a patsy and prod it until it breaks or goes wild if it fits the narrative. (Hello Mother).
You don't even know how the Game is played, and you're lecturing me on The Protocols of Zion.
Now, that's funny.
TL;DR
Of course it was staged. You don't get that type of fucking splash, timing and laundry list without pros running it.
The last songs were fucking signatures. (Note: week delay; that's usual in these cases).
~
Enjoy naivety.
]]>It's how Power functions.
]]>The world needs less of opposites wearing earplugs and screaming the party line and more of people seeking and speaking truth so that partisans have to ask them "eh...which side are you on?" If it's true it will have power and rightly so. If it supports one side or another, so be it. This is a good way to actually strengthen the side that has truth on its side, and purge it of elements designed to appeal to it but which aren't really good for it.
For instance, all this about "white privilege" (and it's kin such as male privilege etc...)needs to go right now. What is called "white privilege" is merely right treatment. I have a right not to be shot by the police for no reason. This is not a privilege, and when we start redefining it as privilege, as is so tempting, what does that really do, what does that really lead to? It's the same as re-iterating the old antebellum southern plan of making all the poor whites feel "privileged" not to be slaves, so even though they were mere subsistence farmers they were happy to go die for this perceived privilege. But removed from context and said by a putative leftie it only acts to make liberals feed guilty and to make conservatives circle the wagons. When you point out that blacks are pulled over more often than whites for traffic offenses, and that that is an example of white privilege (rather than black victimization) you might as well be that cop saying "fend for me now that I've been caught, remember that time I gave you a break?". Calling lack of victimization "privilege" is tantamount to a raised fist of oppression. Rights are not privileges and the pigs must never be allowed to redefine them as such.
]]>No, seriously: my reflexive response to seeing her face on TV was equalled only by the sight of George W. Bush, or Tony Blair in later post-Iraq days (and, gradually growing, a similar response to George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith). All of whom are disciples or fans of hers, you will note. I don't even find Hitler that triggery.
]]>You might think so, but the reality is that for most people the State they live in is far more oppressive and far less enabling than you seem to think.
We can do away with white privilege as a marker when we can do away with [everyone else-]-loss-of-privilege. Until then, it's a useful reminder.
(This is a glass-half-full/glass-half-empty distinction, but I think it's a useful enough one to be worth arguing about.)
]]>This includes ramjets: there are no moving parts, true, but there is still compression, achieved by the interaction of the moving incoming air stream with the geometry of the engine to "convert" its momentum into pressure.
Greg @ 561: yes, far more civilised.
]]>Basically, you have still missed the point I made in my previous reply: that its use is dictated purely by linguistic convention. For another example of this convention, see Vimes's response to Nobby shouting "Why don't you fight the bastard?" Were I posting in a language which had an equivalent word but without an equivalent convention then it seems to me that this point would never have arisen.
Your comparison with insults to Obama is flawed, since you are conflating an insult based purely on physical appearance with one based on mental qualities. Replace the word you postulated with "bastard" for a more accurate comparison which will (I hope) make the flaw obvious.
Part of your objection appears to be based on the assumption that I am a man. I do not think this assumption is valid, because I don't think I've posted anything here that makes it obvious one way or the other (though I can't positively remember, and cba to check).
But mainly, your objection seems to me to be along the lines of "certain insults may not be used by a man of a woman, irrespective of their applicability, because it is sexist" - which is itself sexist, and therefore self-contradictory. If I consider someone's actions/beliefs/personality/attitudes make them worthy of insult then I consider the matter of which particular subset of humanity they are a member of to be just as irrelevant to my use of insult as I do to my assessment of them to be an unpleasant person in the first place. I will only eschew insults on the grounds that they themselves are irrelevant; hence I would not insult Obama with the word you postulate no matter what I thought of his policies, because it is a specific reference to his degree of melanisation and that has nothing to do with his policies or anything else I might think of him.
However, since my usage has been misunderstood, and since despite one explanation already I have failed to dispel the misunderstanding, I will endeavour to refrain from using the word you objected to on Charlie's blog in future, so that my use of it is not misunderstood again.
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