Heartland

the fact that kids will have to resit their SATs tests (age 11) when they get to secondary school.

emilystrange wrote:the fact that kids will have to resit their SATs tests (age 11) when they get to secondary school.

Its all just BS and f**king pointless, the testing does nothing to indicate how good schools are for the development of children, just how well they can train for tests. Really winds me up, note private schools do not have to do them either, I am not against teacher set tests to see how the pupils are doing by subject per say just the pre set tests that are just there as they have to be seen to be doing something.

i think that mostly sums it up...

another reason why we are all going to vote against the tories, yes?

not that any were needed, but everything helps.

emilystrange wrote:not that any were needed, but everything helps.

indeed. i find it scary that there's a whole new generation of voters come after us who had to find out about the tories the hard way -i.e. living through a tory administration. let's hope one term was enough for that lesson to have been learned.

Didn't they do away with the 11+ 40 years ago? It really bothers me that people focus on a single test (like the GCSEs) and don't follow the thing through. When they reworked O levels they left A levels alone, and the gap between the skills required was huge - I'd support a root and branch re-envisioning of education, get away from this "everyone goes to university" bullshit, start doing something constructive about apprenticeships, making sure that kids who had talents that lay in places other than academia weren't dumped on a production line somewhere because they didn't have a university education.
Then again, that would require that we started thinking about schools as a "common good" (like hospitals), not something that is expected to turn a profit or perform relative to other schools. And no-one seems very interested in pursuing that line of argument... [le sigh]

eastmidswhizzkid wrote:another reason why we are all going to vote against the tories, yes?

But what are the choices? Labour? I'd vote LibDem but I fear that any credibility they had has been flushed down the proverbial thanks to the coalition. UKIP? Monster Raving Loony? Is there any group that you would point to and say "They have good ideas and I trust them to see them through"? Is the answer to take to the barricades?

I don't see any difference between the Tories and Labour these days, our local Labour MP Gemma Doyle voted with the Tories on a further £30bn austerity cuts, voted with the Tories for Trident renewal and abstained in the Fracking vote. Ed Balls has said there is nothing in the Tory budget he would reverse. Labour introduced tuition "costs" to Scotland ( a £2000 graduate fee).They want to reverse free prescriptions, introduce £6000 tuition fees , tax people in England more and spend it on the Scottish NHS. Normally at a General election I would vote Labour without thinking twice but the policies mentioned and their behaviour during the Referendum has left me stumped.Voting SNP and having a loose agreement with a Labour minority govt to keep the Tories out does have a certain appeal.

Debaser wrote:On another note - it's nice to see, that on the whole, the rest of Heartland are dealing so well with real-life and that things haven't annoyed them since 1st March.

I think that's what is known as "the kiss of death"

emilystrange wrote:the fact that kids will have to resit their SATs tests (age 11) when they get to secondary school.

Ridiculous. HOWEVER, I could use this as an opportunity and offer my services to local secondary schools to mark them!

Every cloud

Pista wrote:

Debaser wrote:On another note - it's nice to see, that on the whole, the rest of Heartland are dealing so well with real-life and that things haven't annoyed them since 1st March.

I think that's what is known as "the kiss of death"

Good work there, Ness!

The sesamoids in my left foot have been f... oh wait there's a sweary filter, so they've been bothered for about a year now, and they're clearly not healing, and apparently the only option to deal with this malarkey is to cut them out.
Although some googling revealed that there are bone graft procedures for athletes, so maybe there is a way for me to request something like that? Haven't got much hope, though.
((

So, I work for quite a well-known company that operates a means by which people (anyone, really) can buy and sell pieces (for want of a better word, let's call them 'shares') of companies. Part of the company's revenue stream involves encouraging companies to become part of this wizard capitalist wheeze. Part of that encouragement involves (quite legal) financial incentives, like, "If you decide to join us then we'll put some business your way." Quite legal and all above board.

As a result of these incentives, there is a company that we have been saddled with to build a new desktop application, which we hope to sell to subscribers, for, you know, money. Sadly, this company is an absolute shower of shit - we gave them a "code-complete" deadline of November 28 2014, so that we could do a beta release on Jan 31 2015. They didn't deliver. They didn't deliver on December 31 either. On Jan 15 2015 they delivered, and our chaps took a look at what they'd done. It was so full of bugs that it has taken them since then to fix them, and we are still finding problems.

We can't fire them, and we can't invoke the penalties clause of the agreement, because the people who run the other part of the business won't let us. Those people, incidentally, who got paid big commissions for getting these numbskulls to go public.

So we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Our product is sh[b[i[/b]te and can't be released to the paying public, so we (my business unit) are losing revenue as of today (when we were supposed to go live with v1.0). My management can't do a thing about it, just keep saying, "we have to work with them," I'm supposed to own the relationship with them but have no way of making them actually do anything, and the crowning turd in the waterpipe is that I was given an official reprimand today because the product is not ready to ship, this despite warning everyone for 5 months that the vendor couldn't code their way out of a wet paper-bag.

P!ssed off isn't terribly accurate right now.
In pieces at the moment. The vet's just been round to put Millhouse to sleep

Was inevitable really. He was really crook & eventually couldn't even eat his food even if I put it in a blender first.

Pista wrote:P!ssed off isn't terribly accurate right now.
In pieces at the moment. The vet's just been round to put Millhouse to sleep

Was inevitable really. He was really crook & eventually couldn't even eat his food even if I put it in a blender first.

Ah man. That's horrible. So sorry.

Pista wrote:P!ssed off isn't terribly accurate right now.
In pieces at the moment. The vet's just been round to put Millhouse to sleep

Was inevitable really. He was really crook & eventually couldn't even eat his food even if I put it in a blender first.

Oh my, that's saddening ... ... may he have great times in cat heaven now!

Pista wrote:P!ssed off isn't terribly accurate right now.
In pieces at the moment. The vet's just been round to put Millhouse to sleep

Was inevitable really. He was really crook & eventually couldn't even eat his food even if I put it in a blender first.

Oh no.

Sending good vibes your way.

Thanks folks.
Still trying to process it really & even though it was on the cards, it's still hit me for six .

Sorry to hear about Millhouse No amount of "he had a good innings" or "it was the kindest thing, really" can make up for the loss. Hope you find a way to cope.

Sorry for your loss.
My 15 year old dog is nearing the Rainbow Bridge & she's my little soul mate

sajnalom Pista:(

on my side of the planet, I am tired, weak, have not progressed on assignment, too much work not enough fun. no strenght blahblah blah and a very good colleague of mine is leaving the company.

EvilBastard wrote:Sorry to hear about Millhouse No amount of "he had a good innings" or "it was the kindest thing, really" can make up for the loss. Hope you find a way to cope.

Well said that man.

Condolences, Pista. I almost feel like I know Millhouse, so it's very sad.