Sheaf Saint

Yeah I wouldn't expect any greater sense of balance from the Express, and those quotes from the usual suspects are absolutely hilarious. I ran through it again at lunchtime today and had a go at another scenario, making sure to choose what would definitely not be considered the 'leftie' options. This one is all about an ageing population and what to do about it... When asked if I wanted to spend more money on healthcare or enact reforms to improve efficiency, I chose the latter and it gave me +1 points on both economy and public health. In a question about a minority community wanting to hold a festival to celebrate their culture, I chose to let them get on with it themselves rather than spending money on getting involved and promoting it. This resulted in +2 for public health while saving money. An finally, when asked what to do about a shortage of doctors and nurses, I chose to train locals instead of using migrant workers. This resulted in +2 points for economy. The suggestion that this game is a deliberate attempt by the BBC to indoctrinate children into an extreme left-wing ideology is just utter hysterical horseshit. It's all based on the KS3 Geography curriculum and developed by a third party in conjunction with BBC Bitesize. True to form, the right wing press has just picked one tiny element of it and reported it totally out of context to further enrage drooling idiots who will fully engage their confirmation bias and accept it as 'evidence' to support their existing anti-BBC views. The DM even claim the game is called Increasing Immigration in their article. It's not, it's called Planet Planners, and increasing immigration is just one minor element of one of the many scenarios the game contains. That's not an innocent mistake, it's deliberate rage-bait. And you'd have to be monumentally fucking stupid to take it.

And there were plenty of those at BP. I was probably one of them in certain classes as well. I wasn't a 'bad' kid - never got into fights or owt - but I was always trying (and mostly failing) to be the class clown. Interestingly though, and coming back to the thread topic, I have since been diagnosed with ADHD myself, and my entire school experience now makes so much more sense when viewed through that prism. As part of the assessment, the clinician asked me to provide copies of my school reports so I dug them out of the attic and was just stunned when I read through them again. I always knew there was a common theme in there about not paying attention, but it was so stark. Literally every one of them from age 6 right through to the final year of secondary had pretty much the same message: "Sheaf is a bright pupil but needs to learn to concentrate and stop daydreaming and/or being disruptive". Nobody connected the dots at the time, because ADHD was barely known about in the 1980s and schools (especially BP) didn't have the pastoral support for kids that they do now. It was still very much a one size fits all approach to education in those days, and kids who would now be clearly identified as having ADHD would just be told to try harder or be ejected from class if they couldn't conform. Some people just don't have it in them to sit still and learn in a classroom environment. It doesn't make them stupid or worthless, because neurodiverse people usually still have plenty of other skills which, if nurtured properly, can make them very successful. Telling these kids that they just don't have enough boundaries and that they are using ADHD as an excuse for poor behaviour is failing them massively. I left school with terrible GCSE results and was told by my teachers/parents that I wouldn't amount to anything if I didn't buck my ideas up. I subconsciously leaned into that narrative and spent the next 10 years of my life drifting from one crap unskilled job to another. The fact that I've since gone on to earn a first class degree would seem to prove that it was never me and my own ability that was the problem, it was a school system that was incompatible with the way my brain works.

Yes, that was him! I wasn't in his set for GCSEs but definitely had him for at least one year. He had a fearsome reputation.

I recall us discussing school once before and realising we were both at BP around the same time, and I think I know which maths teacher you're talking about but can't for the life of me remember his name. If it's who I'm thinking of, he once took me out into the corridor and threatened to give me so much homework that I'd wish I had never been born if I so much as said one more word in class! I'm with you on a lot of this, and I remember very well that working out what you could get away with in certain classes was all part of navigating secondary school (which I obviously got wrong in that particular instance!). But none of it has anything to do with genuine cases of PDA, which goes way beyond just kids with few boundaries just being deliberately defiant. My wife has dealt with some cases of it in her line of work (teaching SEN kids in long term hospital care) and it's an extremely challenging behaviour that can't simply be resolved by just being stricter with them. It's more likely to have the opposite effect if anything, because if a kid is experiencing shutdown of executive function then no amount of shouting at them to do what they are told is going to overcome that.

Play the game yourself. See for yourself. It's a total fucking non-story intended to provoke knee-jerk anger among people who can't/won't think for themselves. And you've fallen for it - hook, line and sinker.

I rest my case.

I just played the game myself to see if this hysteria is justified. As expected, it's been wildly exaggerated by the DM, as usual, because in no way does it actually teach kids to promote open borders as they claim. The bit they've got themselves so apoplectic about is a tiny segment in a 'mission' that asks players to balance the pros and cons of using migrant labour to fill a shortfall. Having already decided if you want to increase immigration or secure the borders, this point in the game then asks if you want to deport some migrants already in the country or grant them amnesty to plug some employment gaps, and accurately points out that deportation could be dangerous for them and will be legally challenged. That's it. Nothing whatsoever to do with current UK policies and nobody is being brainwashed (except for the unthinking morons who blindly take Daily Mail headlines at face value, of course).

If the DWP is as under-resourced and over-stretched as the rest of the public sector then this comes as no surprise whatsoever.

A frustrating day, no doubt. But look at it this way... This time last week, who among us would have claimed to be unhappy with 3 clean sheets and 7 points from those games? Not many, I suspect.

Some tired legs out there at the end. 3 games in less than a week has taken its toll clearly. We can point to the stonewall penalty not given, but based on how terrible our finishing was today I'm not confident anybody would have put it away. Badly missed Flynn and his energy in the middle. Larin clearly out of sorts is a worry, given Spors' total failure to sign an adequate backup. If Tonda still doesn't trust Mubama in those circumstances then what a pointless signing he has been. James Bree with miss of the fucking century 🤦‍♂️ At least some of those above us also dropped points today, so it's not a total disaster, but it's still not good enough. We just need to keep in touching distance with them until January so we can get some attacking reinforcements in.

It's not like he's had to play well to get it though. We've handed it to him with some awful finishing. Only two shots on target. Inexcusable.

He can say it, but he can't follow through with it. You can't give someone a straight red for a professional foul unless they are the last man.

Now Matsuki booked for what wasn't even a foul. This ref is a fucking joker.

Fuck me. How is it even possible to miss that?

Only one team looking like they're likely to score here, and it ain't Saints. Wake the fuck up!