Yes I am worried. Not worried enough to start threads every time somebody gets shot. Maybe that makes me complacent by your standards. I grew up in the troubles i have seen more than i ever wanted. When i return home i live with the effects of shootings and car bombing. Friends without fathers. Fathers,grandfathers maimed. I'm not an imbecile i understand it's a problem that needs dealt with. But, I also know that it is the proliferation of technology and instant access to information via the media that is convincing people the problem is way worse than it is. We (as in me and my friends and colleagues) have all stood in the past watching the news reporting on the war zone that was NI. Phone calls from extended family checking we haven't been blown up or kneecapped after they saw the horrors on the 10 o clock news.We grew up thinking why are they portraying our country like this, it is nothing like this. It is not that bad. So forgive me for thinking that rolling 24 hour news isn't over egging the pudding a bit. We aren't swimming in shark infested waters, there aren't Muslim hoards coming over the hills. Excuse me i have some good news to go and disseminate.
No offence taken I assure you. I suppose it depends what the discipline is like in the schools the teachers are working in. Both my teacher mates have the strong backing from their management teams that enables them to get on with the job of teaching and form good professional relationships with their pupils. On the issue of studying politics and law: you'd be amazed how many politicians used to be lawyers - second in number only to former journalists, it sometimes seems!
well when it comes to manipulating the law for your own benefit. what better careers to come from.:smile:
Politicians are pretty much there to invent law, so being a lawyer must come in extremely handy. Life is like playing Monopoly where the only people who have read the rules are lawyers: "You can't do that!!" "Ah, but I can, you see, because it says here...."
No offence taken I assure you. I suppose it depends what the discipline is like in the schools the teachers are working in. Both my teacher mates have the strong backing from their management teams that enables them to get on with the job of teaching and form good professional relationships with their pupils. On the issue of studying politics and law: you'd be amazed how many politicians used to be lawyers - second in number only to former journalists, it sometimes seems! I agree that we are not swimming in shark-infested waters, and it must have been terrible that you were once forced to endure the fallout from the Troubles. I used the term as an analogy to explain why it was not illogical to feel some fear in the current situation, not as a metaphor for the current, or any other, bout of terrorism. How do you think I felt recently when I shared a carriage on the tube with a rucksack-wearing Asian who started chanting and rolling his eyes? I should just have had some sympathy and thought: oh he's a care-in-the community guy on drugs, But my mind went back to 7/7, so I changed carriages, along with several other people. Was that illogical? What would you have done? The only good news I have to report is that the sun is shining here so I get to go for a ride.
Politicians are pretty much there to invent law ... or do our bidding, via the electoral system. All laws rely on compliance and they could not be enforced unless they are widely accepted. Look how easily the Berlin Wall was pushed over once the population of East Germany learned that Russia would not longer prop up the country's government and decided they would no longer accept it. Policicians make the laws, but we elect them to do so and therefore get the laws we deserve. Unlike theocracies, dictatorships and communist/fascist states that impose divine order or dogma on their citizens.
Illogical? Completely bloody barmy! I'd have changed trains, not carriages! What's the risk on the Tube, they'll be another one along soon.
I'm not quite sure of the point you are making Speedos. My point was purely that in the nitty-gritty of lawmaking, it's a huge advantage if you're a lawyer. It's a handy skillset. I wasn't saying anything else.
Tbh id have seen him as provoking trouble,he'd have left that train via the window or on a stretcher :nod: changing seats/carriages doesnt really help much if a bomb goes off so might as well have a pop at him imo.99% chance hes on the wind up n a good kicking would put him off doing it again.
Just thought, erroneously as it turned out, that you were implying that because politicians make the laws it somehow gives them a greater sense of entitlement and that is then visited on other "players" in the game of life. My mistake!
No. I don't have a problem with lawyers per se ("some of my best friends are lawyers...."). I think they are well suited to being politicians. I do think that being a lawyer gives you a big advantage in life. If you can't be one of those, be an accountant or financier. No good being a marketing person, at all!
As it happens the proportion of MPs who are lawyers has been dropping for many years, and this represents a danger. If those whose job it is to make laws don't understand the law, they are increasingly likely to pass laws which are unworkable, or inconsistent, or have unintended consequences. And this is what has actually happened in recent decades.
Thank you for pointing out that my point about helping ex-muslims was "passive". I had not thought of it in those terms, but maybe you are right. Here is a more active point. Free speech includes freedom to insult, satirise and offend religious beliefs, but it does not include any right to threaten violence or murder. A great number of muslim preachers have been making public speeches explicitly inciting violence and murder, and they have been doing so for many years. This is a crime which has caused great harm and which should result in prosecutions, yet it doesn't. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service have been totally supine over this issue. Even when investigative journalists and whistleblowers provide clear, detailed evidence of specific serious offences committed by identified individuals, nothing is done. In my view the police and CPS should adopt a new policy of vigorously pursuing such cases, giving them a high priority, and maintaining that approach consistently. All muslims and all imams in the UK should be left in doubt that inciting violence is unacceptable in a civilised country, and will result in imprisonment. Anyone agree?
Of course but I fear the "cultural sensitivity" that informed decisions over the issue of the grooming of teenage girls in Northern England will intrude again.
