OneGuyFromBarlick

"Believe nothing that doesn't accord with your own reason".
I almost posted that but when I looked it up I found that it is a mis-translation....
I knew that about Walton being ashamed of his accent and I too thought he was a bit of a class traitor, but they were different days I suppose......

Andy Burnham - current favourite (just) for the Labour party leadership,
and former Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

" I did get an ‘A’ in my ‘O’ level - not just GCSE - in Maths.
‘O’ level was pretty demanding I would say.”

So what?

He did better than me at maths!

A jet fighter pilot and land speed record holder who was a maths graduate was talking on the Radio 4 `Infinite Monkey Cage' the other day about how to get over difficult concepts to youngters. He was saying how exciting things such as the land speed record were a way to get kids to take in science and maths and look for careers in those subjects. His comment was "It's like hiding peas in the mashed potato".

Seventy years ago when I was being taught maths there were two main divisions, algebra and trigonometry. I was mildly interested in algebra but where I really caught fire was in what was then called 'spherical trigonometry'. Trig in three dimensions. I could see the point in this because you were given very practical problems to solve. I can remember the master (Was he called Huxley?) trying to encourage me to go further but I never did. Who knows? I might have had an entirely different life course!

Sir Alexander Fleming in his 1945 Nobel Prize-winning speech:
"It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily under dose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug, make them resistant."

Here we are 70 years later with a massive antibiotic resistance problem and many countries don't even require a prescription or doctors appointment for antibiotics, they are available `over the counter'. LINK

I didn't know that.... He was dead right of course....

GPs and the BMA are now trying to wriggle out of their responsibility but they've always known about the danger of resistance but have ignored it and carried on over-prescribing antibiotics. Governments are as bad, they should have tackled the problem long ago.

From a Chinese teacher after a four week secondment at an English school -

Wei Zhao said: ‘Even if they don’t work, they can get money, they don’t worry about it.
‘But in China, they can’t get these things so they know, “I need to study hard, I need to work hard to get money to support my family”.

I wonder if any of the Chinese teachers will be going on secondment to schools in Finland? In today's news is the announcement that the Finnish government is proposing to establish a `basic income' which every citizen will receive regardless of whether or not they are in work. A similar idea was proposed by the UK's Green Party.

Isn't it amazing how a small country like Finland can do something totally enlightened like that! Of course they have no pretensions to world power or dreams of empire. (They don't have Trident either)

Tripps wrote:Mario Sconcerti, writing in Corriere della Sera, neatly summed up the Balotelli phenomenon as

“ The strange talent of making everyone happy when he arrives and even happier when he leaves ”.

Good luck Liverpool - what could possibly go wrong?

I see that he has left today, to return to Milan. Whilst at Liverpool he scored just one goal, when - showing great determination - he hijacked the ball, and took a penalty, against the instructions of the manager.

" History is memory, and memory served is justice done"

Uncle Bob, Bob's Bits 27 August 2015.

Oliver Sacks neurologist and writer, (author of 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat'), who has died today - on being told he was dying. . .

"Sacks said he would no longer watch the evening news, or pay attention to arguments over politics or climate change".

I might just try that myself - I don't think it would make a lot of difference.

They did his autobiography as Book of the Day on R4 not long ago. Fascinating story......

In The Times, some correspondence about the lawyer F.E. Smith. Someone reported this exchange:
Judge: "Sir, I've listened to your peroration at length and I am none the wiser."
Smith: "That may be so, M'Lud, but you are better informed."

Ouch! You can't beat a good put down!

"Don't beat yourself up about it!".........Marilyn

Thanks Maz for that advice, it's become a frequently heard phrase in this house!

I often repeat that dictum to myself, particularly when I have cocked up and the kitchen is covered with pea soup!
Ethel in New York had another one that's closely related..... "Give me a break!" My favourite Ethel quote is something she said to a NY taxi driver one day when he pulled up about two feet from the kerb on a rainy day.... "It's all right! I can walk from here!"

Gordon Brown's former aide Damian McBride writes in the Mail on Sunday that Jeremy Corbyn, MP for Islington North, may be the "best thing since Clement Attlee".

"The last Labour leader to represent an inner London seat, indeed the last leader of any major party to do so, was in his 60s by the time he became Prime Minister. He was unfashionable, disdainful of the media and he stood on a platform that promoted peace and investment in public services and housing, even with the country facing massive debts.

"Clement Attlee went on to be Labour's greatest Prime Minister. And while few may believe that Jeremy Corbyn can follow in his footsteps as he slips into the leader's shoes today, one thing is for sure: He comes from the right place."

Email from my son -

"Phone not working - puppy ate the cables! Use the mobile or email if you need me."

It's a cross - chihuahua x spaniel. Sounds crazy but it's very cute.

Joe, the renegade Lurcher once ate my binoculars..... Later on he took the roof lining out of the Yellow Shed!



The Lurcher's Revenge! He objected to being left alone for half an hour.....

The Today programme interviewing people in Doncaster. One of them criticised Jeremy Corbyn for "lacking subsidence".

" You have emptied my resilience bucket"

Well it is a Designer Village - and proving it.

There was a big article in yesterday's BET about the school. In it the governors say they have 'taken measures'. I see Mrs Tomlinson says she 'is positive about the future'.... On the whole every quote is a bad case of management speak. The best primary teachers I have ever known have been strict but fair and you always knew exactly where the boundaries were. Stand by for news from our Barrowford correspondent......