sime42

Phase 2.

Tandoori Chicken - phase 1.

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Shame, he was, (is), a nice guy. Made good contributions to the site. Notwithstanding his dissing of the West Country.

When did that happen? I didn't know he'd left.

I think pétard is the French word for banger, firecracker. I remember the thrill of being able to buy them freely from le tabac on a French exchange at school.

Nice weather for ducks. Miserable for us.

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If only I were that accomplished at propaganda.

The most valuable thing I learnt last week was how to include "-ai" in any Google search. To avoid having to see that bloody annoying AI Overview garbage that normally crowds out anything useful at the top of the page.

Yep, we're ****************ed.

I bet old Farage is feeling nervous this week.

I heard earlier that the Polish PM Donald Tusk is suggesting that Epstein was a Russian spy. It's not inconceivable at this point.

I don't know about in education; maybe it's changed since my time, and my son is only in infant school, so there's obviously nothing with any political implication yet. Though I do think that there is now too much emphasis put on trans rights, slavery and other such "Wokery" in the public discourse. (In the case of slavery, let sleeping dogs lie, no point raking it all up again. Regarding trans rights, its fairly straight forward in my mind. If a person, of whatever label, has a male member, then they're not a member of the female toilet club. Simple.) However, I don't believe that it's indoctrination, and it's certainly not creating sick kids and young adults who want to kill and maim as many other people as possible. That's a far more serious issue that we should be discussing. IMO. I can't say that what children are learning or being indoctrinated in at school or uni is anywhere near the top of my list of concerns. It's what happens outside the education environment that really matters I think. Individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent Programme, April 2024 to March 2025 - GOV.UK WWW.GOV.UK

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Firstly, I'm sorry to hear that your son has fallen foul of the system in this case. That must be a hard situation for all concerned. I take your point regarding the establishment, and it's failures, I'm sure that is a driver for social division. But the educational establishment specifically, no I don't see that. Not unless it's changed significantly since I was in it. Though I do admit, I wasn't remotely interested in politics as a child, or even a young adult. I don't believe that I was atypical in that. So it's hard to see exactly how much influence schools and universities actually exert, if most of their fodder is not politically minded at all. Hands up anyone who took any notice of all the political shenanigans in their young years? Are you sure about those Prevent figures? I'm not. I tried to have a similar discussion with Johnsond on this subject last year, to no avail. Shortly after the latest Prevent report had come out. I'll see if I can find it if I get some time. The largest type of referrals is for individuals judged to have no identified ideology, not RW. Personally, I'm glad that schools take the matter of radicalisation, of any persuasion, seriously. It's obviously far from ideal, but I'd rather that they be over cautious, than miss stuff that later turns out to be a problem. (Not applicable in your case obviously, so not a consolation. I don't know the details of course, nor would I wish to discuss them on an open forum.) Thinking about it some more though, in most of the recent high profile case, with tragic consequences, it's the Prevent program that's been at fault. They've missed things, or not acted on information that's been passed to them by other agencies or institutions. That's what happened with the Southport attack, and I'm sure some more that've made the headlines for plotting or actually carrying out awful attacks. That youth in Luton, Nicholas Prosper, wasn't even flagged on the system. It was only through luck that he didn't claim far more young victims. In some ways kids like these, with no identified ideology, but just a sick fascination with extreme violence are more of a concern, hinting at deeper societal problems. Which links back to the point about the deluge of unregulated extreme content on social media. Not to mention the numerous attacks driven by extreme Islamic ideology. So yeah, more clearly needs to be done on this issue. Probably not by schools, but certainly by Prevent and similar intelligence agencies and also some attempt at online content regulation. Even, dare I say it, parents should take more responsibility over the behaviours of their children. Too much is shirked and pushed onto schools these days, as I think you agree.

All hopes now rest on Peter Jones coming through with a last minute offer.

That brings a whole new meaning to the term "dirty bomb". There's nowt so queer as folk.