Turn off the phones, lock the kids in the soundproof basement, prepare your food and drink and turn on the telly, ‘cos it’s time for the European cups again.
Prognostication is not my forté, but I’ll give it a bash for the Big Cup matches.
Northampton v Racing 92
I was surprised to discover that Racing 92 are only in 8th position in the Top 14, whereas the Saints are sitting pretty in third place in the English Premiership. However, Racing know how to bring their best game to an important match, so I’m going for les Parisiens by 7.
Cardiff v Toulouse
Can’t see anything other than a Toulousain trouncing of the hosts by about 15 points.
Leinster v Bath
With Bath languishing at the bottom of the Premiership, this can only go one way. Blue Meanies by 40.
Bordeaux v Leicester
The two top teams in their respective leagues, again to my surprise. I’ll raise a glass of Haut-Médoc to the home side by 3.
Clermont Auvergne v Ulster
Having attended this fixture in a previous competition, ordinarily I’d say a safe win for the home side. However, TomPirracas’ sleuthing informs us that Clermont is a Covid-ravaged camp, so that and downright foolish optimism leads me to predict Ulster by a point.
Exeter v Montpellier
Another tough one to predict, so home advantage to provide a narrow win.
Ospreys v Sale
Ospreys must be exhausted after last week, but Sale are not doing very well this year. Ospreys by 7.
Connacht v Stade Français
Connacht are on good form, and have been unlucky to narrowly lose a couple of their matches so far. I have no similar insights on SF, but they are towards the bottom of the table. Connacht by 4.
La Rochelle v Glasgow
Two fifth-place sides competing. Hmm. Chez nous by 3.
Wasps v Munster
Given Munster’s very depleted squad, Wasps by 15. At least.
Onna telly this week
Friday 10th December
| Northampton v Racing 92 | 20:00 | BT Sport 2 |
| Lyon v Gloucester | 20:00 | BT Sport 3 |
Saturday 11th December
| Cardiff v Toulouse | 13:00 | Channel 4 / BT Sport 2 |
| Leinster v Bath | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
| Bordeaux v Leicester | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 |
| Clermont v Ulster | 17:30 | BT Sport 2 |
| USAP v Dragons | 17:30 | S4C |
| Exeter v Montpellier | 20:00 | BT Sport 2 |
Sunday 12th December
| Ospreys v Sale | 13:00 | BT Sport 2 | ||
| Connacht v Stade Français | 13:00 | BT Sport 3 | ||
| La Rochelle v Glasgow | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 | ||
| Wasps v Munster | 15:15 | BT Sport 2 |
Ovally Balls 
Would be interesting to know how this knowledge helps Deller know what the chap is actually going to throw for. Unless Deller can sense when he’s going to miscount and by how much in which case perhaps he ought to be offering his services as a coach. Or a mind reader.
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Anyone seen a child’s report from a secondary school recently? We got the first one for The Eldest the other day. I think the purpose of secondary education may now be to enable the kids to understand their reports by the time they leave at 16.
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Cmw – in one of my reports (might not be secondary school) the teacher said i spent the day dreaming and I was so intent that she didn’t want to disturb incase she ‘interrupted something truly profound’.
She clearly didn’t know me.
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I’ve started watching ‘Wheel of Time’ on Amazon. I haven’t read the books but it looks suspiciously like LOTR. Is this fair? I mean, they’ve had a river crossing and someone stabbed with a poison knife. And are being chased by a guy on a horse with a load not-orcs. But they’ll be OK once they get to a magical place. And there’s a magical witch who protects them and they sing travelling songs.
I mean, move the roles around, change the sexes or types of monsters, but it’s basically the same.
Is this the case for all of it?
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@Craigs – Sounds like you didn’t let her get to know you. You won’t get any of them writing anything now that would let you know they can tell one child from another. At least not from our school anyway. What you get is a set of tables of different numbers and a lengthy accompanying booklet that purports to explain what the numbers all mean interlaced with various inane statements of what may as well be called corporate values.
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Cmw – is there anything to know?
Nice to add corporate values though. Prepares kids for the rating and meaningless prattle they will have to endure in later life.
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I know nothing about ‘Wheel of Time’. However, this from Wikipedia:
“The novel proved extremely difficult to write because characters and storylines changed considerably during the writing process. The series was originally centered on an older man who discovered relatively late in life that he was the ‘chosen one’ who had to save the world. However, Jordan deliberately decided to move closer to the tone and style of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring and made the characters younger and less experienced.[31] Once this decision had been made, writing proceeded much more easily and Jordan completed the second volume, The Great Hunt, at roughly the same time the first book was published.”
suggests that once he decided to rip off LOTR it magically became easy to write.
My instinct is that if what you’ve found is indeed “the case for all of it” you should close up said case, lock it and bury it somewhere deep.
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I thought Robert Jordan got killed by the fascists just after the end of For Whom the Bell Tolls, but it seems he survived to write several Conan the Barbarian books and the ones for this thing you’re now watching.
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Old style school reports at least used to let you see which teachers really couldn’t give a shit, which ones were not much more than semi-literate themselves etc. Oh and sometimes how well the child was actually doing. I find the modern world disappointing at times.
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Have we had this yet?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/14/elon-musk-time-person-of-the-year-worst-ever-choice-say-critics
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“The magazine emphasised that its annual acknowledgement was not an award, but rather, “recognition of the person who had the most influence on the events of the year, for good or for ill”.”
A look at the list of previous winners does back them up on this pretty well.
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CMW, it sounds very disciplinary that school report. Everyone trapped by the rules – rules that make things easy to measure but not having much real value.
Also, https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2021/november/dick-moves
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Reports are boring to write. Add in some teachers are going to have to do write-ups on 200 kids and you can see why it could be sold.
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But it comes down to the audit culture. Everything must be measurable, everything must improve, everything that doesn’t improve is canned. A thousand and one measures that don’t measure anything in reality. Soul destroying.
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@TomP – As far as I can see it’s driven by what the government likes to measure for league-table etc purposes i.e. ‘Value-added’. Everything is based around what these Year 7s are ‘expected’ to get in their GCSEs in nearly five years time and a somewhere along the line a lot of energy must be expended on determining these expectations in the first place. What I don’t get is why this is then dumped on the parents via the reports – to me it’s stuff that should stay behind the scenes (to the extent that it’s necessary at all). We just need to know how they’re getting on, not what GCSE grade down the line will enable the school to pat itself on the back as it exceeds the magical expectation derived from SATS (that they didn’t sit), CATS (which appear to be nonsense), info from primary schools (that may or may not be reliable) etc.
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“Soul destroying.”
One of my first thoughts looking at it was ‘this ought to be enough to put anyone off becoming a secondary school teacher’.
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@tomp
Whenever I see complex things turned into over-simplified measures I’m reminded of Wittgenstein’s Ruler
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I spoke to my brother a while back about CATS when The Eldest was sitting them. He’s an academic in an Education department and his comment was ‘a lot of schools like them because they throw up a lot of low scores for kids who are always going to do perfectly well so the school can use them to claim they’ve improved them’.
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‘What you get is a set of tables of different numbers and a lengthy accompanying booklet that purports to explain what the numbers all mean interlaced with various inane statements of what may as well be called corporate values.’
Sounds fun.
Got first senior report for eldest, comprised a rating (6 ratings from v. good to pish) & a couple of sentences from the teacher for each subject on how he’s doing & what to work on. Fairly clear & simple
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I paraphrase on what the ratings are called, although I prefer my version
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‘audit culture’
*screams*
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Re Elon being da best dude – tbh it makes sense. My spaceships are all tied up fighting rebellions in the xyclephid sector to do anything like return to earth or destroy civilisations.
So it’s fair.
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Cmw – I’ll give it some more episodes but I can’t quite believe this got popular.
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Hope this clicks in from 38 seconds:
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Craigs needs an audit. Only those something to hide should fear an audit.
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OT, I think there’s confidence in the ruler’s reliability and that’s the problem.
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Or better to say that from above there’s the idea that the ruler’s reliable and it’s said that it’s reliable and that’s the problem.
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Chimpie – I am the audit. It flows through my veins.
screams
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@tomp
Not from you and me there ain’t.
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The ruler might be all right, just not appropriate for measuring soup with.
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@tomp
That Stewart Lee character is like a younger version of most of my teachers at school.
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Party at Boris’
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What’s the etiquette or rule there ? Can he switch from delivery to delivery (like over/round) after telling the batsman or is it over by over?
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@trisk
In my experience every time a bowler changes if they are going round or over the wicket the umpire says “right/left arm over/round the wicket”. So I assume the batsman has to be informed every team the bowler switches.
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*time
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You have to tell the umpire but, yes, in theory, you could change it ball by ball.
There was a Lankan lad who did it a couple of years ago I think – in an international game v England.
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Yes, you just have to announce a change of action. I don’t know anyone that can do it (the feet side of it is so awkward) though I know one or two who can bat either way round which you’re also supposed to announce.
I think Jack Leach bowls left arm and throws right arm which is very odd.
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You’d imagine that at the top level the Aussie lad will turn out to be better at one than the other to the extent that he won’t use the other one much whichever handed batsmen he’s bowling to. It could still be a useful thing if someone’s really going after him though and I guess in T20 in general.
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@cmw
As do Tymal Mills and Samit Patel
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Can Samit be bothered to throw it?
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@cmw
I reckon if Samit looked after himself he’d have been a world class player.
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Soooo… covid passports are granted if you are vaxxed, have recently recovered or have recently tested -ve. Is that right?
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And that’s a pcr test?
I’m against mandating the vaccine but struggling to find too much controversy here.
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@craigs
The government can always remove the LFT option.. It was not part of the original plan (it only reappeared last week) and they could remove it next week while parliament is not standing.
If you trust Boris to tell the truth then all is fine. If you assume he is a well proven liar then we’ve got a problem.
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I have no problem at all with mandating vaccinations, of course with the exception of people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons.
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*By ‘mandating vaccinations’, I mean requiring proof of vaccination to go anywhere or do anything outside your own property, not actually tying people down and jabbing them by force.
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@thauma.
By “proof of vaccination” does that exclude people with only 2 jabs?
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OT – once everyone’s had the opportunity to get the booster, yes. Which is not yet.
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craigs, well, the big worry is it’s not going to be a temporary measure. And who’ll be asked to produce it and when.
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