Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week September 16, 2012
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
I read the quote below and decided I couldn’t be bothered going any further.
MIDDLE-INCOME families who have been hit hardest by austerity and stealth taxes cannot take another “hammering” in the Budget, senior Fine Gael Minister Leo Varadkar has said in what will be seen as a blunt warning to Labour that the ‘coping classes’ have had enough hardship.
The Transport Minister has warned that a property tax is just about the limit of extra taxation that ordinary working people can take in the December Budget and that raising extra revenue from middle-class voters — such as taxing child benefit — was not sustainable.
So, “middle-income families” (i.e. the Celtic Tiger middle class who gambled everything in the property casino) are now defined as the “ordinary working people”.
In fairness, they’re just copying the US where the Republicans have defined $100,000+ incomes as working class.
‘teachers to work 40 hour week’ says the Sindo front page. Reaction from the teacher at my breakfast table: ‘at last a bit of good news. Now what am I going to do with the spare twenty hours?’
Yes, it makes no sense to push an unenforceable 40 hour work-week when there is no reliable data on the hours currently worked outside the classroom.
And if people are going to self-report a 2:1 prep-to-facetime ratio, giving a 12 hour work-day … you might as well not bother.
Far better to tackle the institutionalized productivity-sinks embedded in the system. Traditional noon finishes the day before every holiday. Gaming of secondary timetables to give Friday or Wednesday afternoons off every week. Summer holiday durations designed a century ago when children were needed as seasonal farm labourers.
Addressing these specific issues would give measurable increases in educational productivity, as well as plugging some of the massive productivity losses in the wider economy among working parents.
Yes, it makes no sense to push an unenforceable 40 hour work-week when there is no reliable data on the hours currently worked outside the classroom.
And on and on it goes.
“Traditional noon finishes the day before every holiday.”
How is that “traditional”? It never happened in any school I went to. Oh, and while I’m here – fuck off, Bartley.
Don’t rise to it. He is blatantly trolling.
How is that “traditional”? It never happened in any school I went to.
“Traditional” and “ubiquitous” are two quite different words.
… fuck off, Bartley.
Nice. Those extra hours in school were obviously put to good use.
“educational productivity”
http://jacobinmag.com/2012/09/lean-production-whats-really-hurting-public-education/
And what Dr. X said.
An interesting read, thanks.
Also brightened up my morning with the shoo-in candidate for Dumb Stats-factoid of the Year 2012 …
… increase in teacher turnover “by 1 standard deviation corresponded with a decrease in math achievement of 2 percent of a standard deviation.”
Obviously this was preceded by a precipitous decline in statistical literacy among the faculty, by at least a banana\’s worth of standard wots-its multiplied by a fruitcake.
Check out the big brain on Bartley!
He also had all this time on a Monday morning to read the above.
Yet, he has a monomania about a lack of productivity amongst those who teach.
Hmm…curious. Very curious.
“Summer holiday durations [were] designed a century ago when children were needed as seasonal farm labourers.”
I’ve often read this and it puzzles me. If it was true, wouldn’t the holidays be in August and September, the harvest season?
If September was among the traditional peak months for agricultural labour, then yes, school holidays would extend to the end of that month.
Also Friel\’s masterpiece would be called Dancing during Mean Fómhair, and we would look forward to the All-Ireland Hurling Final on the first Sunday in October.
Lughnasa was the festival that marked the start of the harvest season, and was at the beginning of August. So if holidays corresponded to the harvest, they would have started at that time. I didn’t realise that the hurling final marked the end of the harvest. Why not the football final? If you ended the holidays on the third Sunday of September, then you’d have August and September, as I suggested.
To reinforce your point, bartholmew, the end of harvest/beginning of Autumn was marked by the feast of Michaelmas on the 29th of September.
The courts and the Oireachtas still observe the old terms and recommence around the feast of Michaelmas. The Oireachtas starts a little earlier in recent times but Michaelmas was the traditional time. TCD, if I recall, still refers to the term from Sept. to Dec. as ‘Michaelmas term’.
Maybe if the mods could organise it so this appears at the end of all of Bartleys posts.
http://bluntobject.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/trollface.jpg
Here’s Romney’s definition of ‘the middle’
http://gothamist.com/2012/09/14/romney_thinks_middle_class_is_250k.php
I thought it had been established that Bartley is a Fine Gael Special Adviser. He finds it amusing when not writing neo liberalism for beginners documents for his Ministers to wind up the lefties on Cedar Lounge.
Yup, as became clear long ago, there’s no point engaging with the clown – his arguments are destroyed every time he pops his head up, whereupon he moves the goalposts and comes out with more drivel to wind people up. This has long been obvious, so I’d respectfully suggest that variations on the theme of ‘fuck off, Bartley’ be the only response he gets.
The question, Bartley, is who’s Seoirse?
(You’ll need to remember sixties RTE children’s programmes, to understand the question).
I see Eoghan Harris’s piece yesterday was entitled “Jim Larkin would have lashed the Labour Party.” And he probably would have, though not for the reasons that Eoghan suggests
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/eoghan-harris/eoghan-harris-jim-larkin-would-have-lashed-the-labour-party-3230030.html
The piece ends on a typically modest note: “As the author of a play called The Ballad of Jim Larkin and a lifelong admirer of this least nationalist of Irish socialists, I am certain that if Larkin was around last week he would have been outside, not inside, Carton House. Giving two fingers to the Irish Labour Party.”
But did not this “least nationalist of Irish socialists” work with Fenians in opposition to the Allied war effort? Did he not oppose the Anglo-Irish Treaty? For more (though not much more: it’s a short piece), see Emmet O’Connor’s, “Red Jim was a Green Man”:
http://www.irishdemocrat.co.uk/features/larkin/
All good points. I guess in EH’s world you integrate the data that you want to and ignore that which you don’t.
Can I suggest that we all pretend Eoghan Harris is dead and start talking about all the radical socialist measures he would have supported if he were alive?
Lol. I’d upvote this suggestion if there was a button…
While I would be dismayed at O’Brien gaining total control over IMN,
it would be amusing to see how Eoghan, his ex-wife and
his cronies would fare if they were booted out of Sindo
Towers. What other Irish media outlet would take them,
after they savaged them all?
Torygraph?
@bartholomew
So if holidays corresponded to the harvest, they would have started at that time.
I referred to the peak period for agricultural labour.
Labour-intensive tasks would have started as early as June, with the traditional cutting of hay when the grass is in flower. This would have been followed by several turns of the drying hay through July, before the hay was saved in early/mid August.
I didn’t realise that the hurling final marked the end of the harvest.
Ever hear the phrase “the hay is saved and Cork is bet”?
Anyhow, as I said before, the All-Ireland coincides with the end of peak seasonal labour. Not necessarily that every spud and berry has been harvested by the first Sunday in September.
Why not the football final?
Hurling is a summer game, so the hurling final is held first, when the weather is likely to still be relatively fine. The traditional pre-weave surface in Croker needed more than a week to recover, hence the gap until the football final.
@bartley
Re “This would have been followed by several turns of the drying hay through July, before the hay was saved in early/mid August.” If my recollections of my small farm childhood are any guide, hay that wasn’t saved within a week of cutting was rotten and useless hay.
Re “the hay is saved and Cork is bet”. This refers to the Munster final not to the All-Ireland
The Munster championship, exactly, which finishes in early/mid July, after the end of the grass harvest. That would have begun, as Bartley says, in June – before the schools closed. So it doesn’t look like school holidays are determined by the labour demands of haymaking either, and I’m still not buying this theory.
@Rosencrantz
The courts and the Oireachtas still observe the old terms and recommence around the feast of Michaelmas. The Oireachtas starts a little earlier in recent times but Michaelmas was the traditional time. TCD, if I recall, still refers to the term from Sept. to Dec. as ‘Michaelmas term’.
I doubt that the Oireachtas, the courts or even good old Trinners ever designed their calendars with a thought to the best time for the cutting of turf or the saving of hay.
When I worked in a high school in St Louis, Missouri, our summer vacation began in the first week of June and ended after Labor Day. Longer than here.No turf or hay involved, as far as I can remember.