Twitter

[Steve_Wilkos]

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

Dont know this Angela Haggert person but find myself blocked on twitter. What is she? Regardless she must be actively looking for tweets criticising the outrageous racist behaviour of Nicola Sturgeons friend and blocking them.

[Thorongil]

1 hour ago, milton75 said:

Many of the ones in question were used to having a platform where the public had little to no practical right to reply. They hate that they now get called out on their crap, but at the same time are too vain to step away from maintaining a profile online.

This is it precisely. I will never forget a particular meltdown from Douglas Fraser on the old Herald comments section. Back when he was doing politics rather than business he would post incredibly biased, garbage articles and the pieces would be mercilessly taken to pieces by commenters. 
 

one Friday night he appeared on the comments section himself ranting about “internet vermin” etc etc. 
 

similar used to happen on Brian Taylor’s blog on the BBC, though he would never, ever reply. Eventually comments were banned, and this meant that all public comment was banned on all BBC stories in Scotland. I think that is still the case, but have not looked in some time. Many news stories for other parts of the UK have comments enabled but absolute none on the Scotland page.

[Highland Capital]

Is it just me who feels that this has always been inevitable?  I've never really paid that much attention to Godley as I don't find her funny and I didn't care for her Twitter style which from what I could see could be pretty toxic.  Even then though I'd seen and read about some of her troublesome tweets ages ago.  Was there not some beast hunter guy who seemed very close to exposing her even a few months ago?  I seem to remember him going at her quite publicly and it was one of the few times I'd seen Godley on the defensive and unable to whip up her usual adoring superfans into a frenzy.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Highland Capital

[Genuine Hibs Fan]

They should do another 9/11 so we get more of these great cartoons 

 

 

[AndyM]

Godley has always been ultra aggressive on Twitter responding to those she sees as trolls. Even when someone tweeted abuse at her the response  was the equivalent of a two footed tackle and often had me going "Christ that's a bit much" so I can't say I'm surprised at this turn of events.  To be fair to her she gets loads of abuse on Twitter, most of it fairly brain dead stuff, but the fact she engages with them and responds with vitriolic, bullying, personal abuse is what has got her into trouble. However the resulting pile on from the usual idiots is poor and reminded me  of when that twat Galloway and his cabal of mental followers attacked that Scots word of the day lassie.  

Lesson to be learned, be careful what you tweet. The internet never forgets.

 

Edited September 10, 2021 by AndyM

[Radford]

About 8 years ago, Saints were due to play Celtic on Boxing Day. I think they'd played away at Dundee the year before and it had been carnage. The decision was taken not to allow flags into the stadium as they were, the police believed, being used to smuggle stuff in and with 5,000 away fans it was presumably considered too time-consuming and not practical to check every flag and banner. 

Straightforward enough you'd think. 

Not for Angela Haggerty, who decided this was an attempt by St Johnstone to prevent the Irish tricolour being flown and a display of anti-Irish racism.

[milton75]

2 hours ago, Thorongil said:

This is literally the placing of your own prejudices over basic logic and reason. 
you don’t like faith schooling. That’s fine. I don’t particularly like it either. 

However, lots of people do. And not all of them are the lowest common denominator underclass bigots. It’s hard to argue that we should massively reform our education system NOW in order to pander to a small subset of people who can’t behave and will not behave even if you do. 

Countries all around the world have diverse education systems  and schools in Scotland have never been more culturally diverse than they are today. Progress is being made as the lowlives fade further into irrelevance with every passing day. 

Vandalising that now, at this point, is a ridiculous notion and would make a lot of people very angry, some morons and some not. 

So what is it you really want? For things to improve (as has undoubtedly happened) or to impose your own personal preferences on other for your own satisfaction?

I don't think you're being quite fair there. I have plenty of prejudices, but not approving of faith schools (or indeed religion in general) is precisely based on logic. It's exactly the same rationale I apply when disapproving of stuff like the NHS spending money on homeopathy, despite there being zero scientific support for the process.

To put it bluntly, we shouldn't be frittering taxpayers' money away on things that are Not Real.

I'm yet to have anyone properly justify religion to me. It never really happens. The debate tends to skirt around that fundamental point and gets bogged down with ancillary points about how we should respect the right of others to have faith (we should). Thus the debate is always skewed because it takes place in the prism of religion already existing, and therefore instead of questioning whether we should support or facilitate it at all, it's a de facto "it's here, what do we do with it?".
And maybe that's sensible if only that it's immediately practical. I appreciate that we are stuck with it, but I don't think that, to cite the point in your earlier post, trying to avoid the "inflamed tensions" of believers should be the reason we do anything.

The worst bit about it is that it's not even consistent. Would I get tax breaks to start a school if I claimed to believe in Norse Gods, the Greek Pantheon, or even just a bunch of Pagan spirits or Trolls and Goblins? o, they'd tell me to bolt, and quite rightly. But millions of people have quite sincerely believed in those things over the years, so how stupid are they really? They only seem silly because we view them through the same prism I mentioned earlier; that of society today, and not because they are empirically any better or worse than a virgin birth or a burning bush. There are millions right now who truly believe Flat Earth Theory, but they're mocked while Young Earth Creationism is actually deemed an acceptable and "protected" belief.

I'm not even trying to be a militant atheist about this. Atheism is merely a position of absence, not opposition. If someone can prove a particular religion to me then fair enough, I'll go with it. And in doing so they'll also have justified my taxes going towards faith schools. I'm open to it happening any time.

[mizfit]

About 8 years ago, Saints were due to play Celtic on Boxing Day. I think they'd played away at Dundee the year before and it had been carnage. The decision was taken not to allow flags into the stadium as they were, the police believed, being used to smuggle stuff in and with 5,000 away fans it was presumably considered too time-consuming and not practical to check every flag and banner. 
Straightforward enough you'd think. 
Not for Angela Haggerty, who decided this was an attempt by St Johnstone to prevent the Irish tricolour being flown and a display of anti-Irish racism.

I remember that shitstorm well. f**k me I think even some Celtic fans were heavily embarrassed by her interference.

[Clown Job]

2 minutes ago, mizfit said:

 

 

I remember that shitstorm well. f**k me I think even some Celtic fans were heavily embarrassed by her interference.

 

 

I think you’ll find quite a lot of Celtic fans don’t have much time for her or her pal Phil

Especially when they try to position themselves as some sort of spokesperson for the fans.

[Thorongil]

1 minute ago, milton75 said:

I don't think you're being quite fair there. I have plenty of prejudices, but not approving of faith schools (or indeed religion in general) is precisely based on logic. It's exactly the same rationale I apply when disapproving of stuff like the NHS spending money on homeopathy, despite there being zero scientific support for the process.

To put it bluntly, we shouldn't be frittering taxpayers' money away on things that are Not Real.

I'm yet to have anyone properly justify religion to me. It never really happens. The debate tends to skirt around that fundamental point and gets bogged down with ancillary points about how we should respect the right of others to have faith (we should). Thus the debate is always skewed because it takes place in the prism of religion already existing, and therefore instead of questioning whether we should support or facilitate it at all, it's a de facto "it's here, what do we do with it?".
And maybe that's sensible if only that it's immediately practical. I appreciate that we are stuck with it, but I don't think that, to cite the point in your earlier post, trying to avoid the "inflamed tensions" of believers should be the reason we do anything.

The worst bit about it is that it's not even consistent. Would I get tax breaks to start a school if I claimed to believe in Norse Gods, the Greek Pantheon, or even just a bunch of Pagan spirits or Trolls and Goblins? o, they'd tell me to bolt, and quite rightly. But millions of people have quite sincerely believed in those things over the years, so how stupid are they really? They only seem silly because we view them through the same prism I mentioned earlier; that of society today, and not because they are empirically any better or worse than a virgin birth or a burning bush. There are millions right now who truly believe Flat Earth Theory, but they're mocked while Young Earth Creationism is actually deemed an acceptable and "protected" belief.

I'm not even trying to be a militant atheist about this. Atheism is merely a position of absence, not opposition. If someone can prove a particular religion to me then fair enough, I'll go with it. And in doing so they'll also have justified my taxes going towards faith schools. I'm open to it happening any time.

The status quo doesn’t have to be justified. Changing the status quo does, especially if you want to change the status quo for reasons which don’t stack up and which are likely to do more harm than good in the social context. 
 

There are plenty of people who don’t believe in anything who will not want to have their children’s’ educations disrupted with an immense change for the purpose of dealing with the lowest common denominator and outright outlier minority in society. It’s also clear that it would not make them behave any better anyway.

You’re repeatedly bringing the subject of the validity of religion into the discussion. I’m not interested in that, only in social cohesion and in undisrupted education. 

[milton75]

4 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

The status quo doesn’t have to be justified.

Of course it does. We are constantly evaluating an adjusting things. If the status quo didn't have to be justified it would still be illegal to be gay.

[milton75]

8 minutes ago, Thorongil said:

You’re repeatedly bringing the subject of the validity of religion into the discussion. I’m not interested in that, only in social cohesion and in undisrupted education. 

I'm bringing the validity of religion into it because those schools only exist because we treat religion as valid. And my personal opinion is that having them harms social cohesion. You might disagree, but that's fine, just explain why. And please don't talk about "disruption" as though I'm suggesting that one day I start padlocking gates up. I would of course, in my ideal world, examine how to phase the faith element out. If a debate is to be had I'd prefer it to be a fair one without putting words in each others' mouths please.

 

EDIT - apologies if sounding grumpy there, I appreciate your position is in good faith (excuse the pun).

Edited September 10, 2021 by milton75

[GordonS]

25 minutes ago, milton75 said:

I'm bringing the validity of religion into it because those schools only exist because we treat religion as valid. And my personal opinion is that having them harms social cohesion. You might disagree, but that's fine, just explain why. And please don't talk about "disruption" as though I'm suggesting that one day I start padlocking gates up. I would of course, in my ideal world, examine how to phase the faith element out. If a debate is to be had I'd prefer it to be a fair one without putting words in each others' mouths please.

 

EDIT - apologies if sounding grumpy there, I appreciate your position is in good faith (excuse the pun).

The problem with that line of thinking is that it values cultural assimilation over diversity. Should we all have the same political views too, in the name of social cohesion? Should we all socialise in pubs, live in the same boring suburban boxes and drive to our boring jobs? Should we all dress the same and eat the same?

Is it really up to any atheist to decide whether religion is "valid"?

Folk talk about social cohesion with faith schools, but the real dividing line is parental income and nobody seems to care about that. A quarter of kids in Edinburgh go to private schools, and very few school catchments in Scotland are representative.

Seems to me that what's most important is learning about, understanding and respecting differences.

Anyway, can we please get back on topic.

 

[milton75]

5 minutes ago, GordonS said:

The problem with that line of thinking is that it values cultural assimilation over diversity. Should we all have the same political views too, in the name of social cohesion? Should we all socialise in pubs, live in the same boring suburban boxes and drive to our boring jobs? Should we all dress the same and eat the same?

Is it really up to any atheist to decide whether religion is "valid"?

Folk talk about social cohesion with faith schools, but the real dividing line is parental income and nobody seems to care about that. A quarter of kids in Edinburgh go to private schools, and very few school catchments in Scotland are representative.

Seems to me that what's most important is learning about, understanding and respecting differences.

 

Much of that is fair comment, particularly the private schools bit as most of them also seem to get charitable status for who knows what reason.

Your points about diversity, however, don't take into account the fact that the rest of society has to subsidise these things. No-one says to me that I have to pay towards them going to the pub even if I don't want to go myself, so I don't see that as an apt simile. 

And it's not up to me to decide anything for religions, or indeed for any way of thinking. If someone can prove something, anything, to me, then I give it credence. If they can't then we're back in Flat Earth territory.

RE twitter:

 

I would like the prices to be higher. Fuds wanting to see Ian Brown and Liam Gallagher should be taxed till they squeak.

 

[Detournement]

I've heard of hard seltzer but I have no idea what it is. Posh Hooch?

Edited September 10, 2021 by Detournement

[NotThePars]

I find it weird when someone has an entrenched opinion on this but that’s maybe cause it’s one topic I’m a boring centrist about. I get the arguments about them being regressive but Irish Catholics were (and still are I guess) such a substantial minority in Scotland that faced historic persecution that it’s understandable why so many Catholic schools were formed. Even if persecution of Catholics is largely a thing of the past these days (especially legally) we still face some discrimination. I know myself that I got called all sorts in school despite growing up in the east of Scotland and coming from a family who were massively lapsed and that wouldn’t have been the case if I hadn’t gone to a non-denom.

[Thorongil]

52 minutes ago, milton75 said:

Of course it does. We are constantly evaluating an adjusting things. If the status quo didn't have to be justified it would still be illegal to be gay.

Relaxing or replacing existing laws is less contentious than creating new ones, and to change the status quo you need to have public will for it. 

I think the overwhelming majority of people are less than arsed about the existence of faith schools and those who are opposed to them tend to be the outlier. People with a close eye on football, sectarianism etc aren’t your ordinary member of the public. All this stuff is a minority sport, despite what the tabloids would have us believe.

I would be interested to hear of a respectable example of an education system which has made such a change, and what has been achieved through the change.

[jagtastic]

3 minutes ago, Detournement said:

I've heard of hard seltzer but I have no idea what it is. Posh Hooch?

Flavoured alcoholic fizzy water.

[ParsJake]

8 minutes ago, Detournement said:

I've heard of hard seltzer but I have no idea what it is. Posh Hooch?

Think 4% or so "sparkling flavoured water".

Never tried it but it doesn't seem particularly appealing...

 

EDIT - Beaten to it.

Edited September 10, 2021 by ParsJake