May I have a quick rant please?

[SamNichols]

Arch - I accept that her behaviour is untoward verging on nuts. My point was similar to the one you made yourself - if you had described her as Jewish, black, Chinese, or even Australian there would have been a collective intake of breath. For some reason it's open season on 'Americans'. Sure you can take a view on the Bush regime, which is, as somebody pointed out, a terrible advertisement for the country - but that's a different thing.

Err... anti-American sentiment isn't racist - it's xenophobic. American isn't a race, you can be a black American, a jewish American. They're not showing a dislike of Americans because of race, but because of nationality. It can also be described as jingoism, but not racism.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

Now that is a non-inclusive comment! Nutters make a valuable contribution to society

and this forum in particular

 

[Arch]

Arch - I accept that her behaviour is untoward verging on nuts. My point was similar to the one you made yourself - if you had described her as Jewish, black, Chinese, or even Australian there would have been a collective intake of breath. For some reason it's open season on 'Americans'. Sure you can take a view on the Bush regime, which is, as somebody pointed out, a terrible advertisement for the country - but that's a different thing.

The thing is, the fact that she is American matters when she bangs on all the time about things here being crap, as opposed to America... She's anti-Bush, so I can't blame her for him. I just feel that if she feels Britain is so crap, and the US so much better, why not go back there? If she was Australian, or any other nationality and did the same thing I'd feel it was pertinant. If she was black American, in the same situation, I'd feel her nationality was pertinant, not her colour. If I went to live in another country, and then complained about it, I'd expect the locals to feel that my nationality was relevant...

Anyway, she's not a morning person and rarely in before lunch, so the mornings up here are quite peaceful at least...

 

[Canrider]

Have to agree with the mixer taps - why do they never actually mix anything in this country? Instead of warm water, all you seem to end up with is two separate streams, boiling hot at the back and icy cold at the front or vice versa. Why do mixer taps seem to work perfectly well outside the UK???

Because in other countries, the mixing happens far from the spout. Instead of having two separate tubes, one hot one cold, with separate outlets so the 'mix' happens after the water exits the tap (UK system), in other countries the hot/cold inlets are nearer the valves, so the mixing happens along the length of the spout and the water emerges already mixed.

It took me about four years to realise this.

Why they are so, I suspect the Universe would fold up on itself should anyone know the answer.

And just for Arch, It's CRAP! CRAAAAP!!

On the positive side, your ready-meal technology is far in advance of ours..

 

[Arch]

And just for Arch, It's CRAP! CRAAAAP!!

On the positive side, your ready-meal technology is far in advance of ours..

BTW, what IS Kraft Dinner? It's mentioned in a Bare Naked Ladies song. I think Tom once told me it was some sort of macaroni cheese, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that right.

 

[Tetedelacourse]

BTW, what IS Kraft Dinner? It's mentioned in a Bare Naked Ladies song. I think Tom once told me it was some sort of macaroni cheese, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that right.

We'd just buy really expensive ketchups... mmmmm, dijon ketchup.

Ignoring the generalisations, on which I happen to agree with Simon and Deafie, like Chuffy says, just go and tell her how unbearable she's being. She'll probably thank you for it.

Seriously, that's what I'd do - if I had to put up with it for long.

 

[Tetedelacourse]

p.s. in answer to your thread title question, clearly the answer is NO!

 

[Kirstie]

BTW, what IS Kraft Dinner? It's mentioned in a Bare Naked Ladies song. I think Tom once told me it was some sort of macaroni cheese, but I'm not sure I'm remembering that right.

Kraft dinner is Canadian slang for packet macaroni cheese, usually marketed by Kraft. You have it when you can't be arsed to cook anything else.

 

[andy_wrx]

For Arch (and Asterix, Mickle, etc)...

I once had to walk round a large group of American tourists, standing blocking Coney Street and pointing their cameras at the church.

One said 'Gee, it sure looks bigger in the pictures'

I assumed they thought they were looking at the Minster...


After all, they're nearly identical
http://www.docspics.co.uk/yorkscenes/yspage11.htm

http://www.docspics.co.uk/yorkscenes/yspage02.htm

 

[Canrider]

Yup, a box of noodles and a packet of cheese mix that you combine with butter and milk to reconstitute. It's entirely possible I bring a few back with me each time I visit La Patrie.

I'm going to piggyback my rant:
I'm marking essays. The standard of grammar is abysmal (something shared with their NAmerican counterparts: they are, after all, students between the ages of 18 and 40). BUT, since I have to pass the papers on to the second marker, and we don't in fact return the papers to the students but instead send them an anodyne and summarised 'feedback form', I can't correct all their spelling and grammar mistakes, thus guaranteeing that on their next essay, exactly the same mistakes will be made.
In Canada America, we'd be allowed to write on the student papers, and the papers would be returned to the students with a grade on them, so the students could at least potentially use those marginal comments to improve for the next time.

This 'Oh, don't muss up the script' attitude appears to be common to every HE institution in the British Isles I'm familiar with. And it's a helluva way to run a railroad.

 

[User482]

I don't get this topic at all. So someone works with a person who gets on their nerves. That is not a rare thing. Work isn't meant to be enjoyable, that's why it is called work, and why people stop doing it if they win the lottery. If work was enjoyable, you'd be charged for doing it instead of being paid for doing it. If you enjoy your work, that's a bonus, but if you don't, for reasons including obnoxious colleagues, then that's no reason to gripe.

I enjoy my work. My work colleagues are mostly an agreeable bunch, my work is challenging, and I believe that it makes a positive contribution to the organisation. I'm paid to do this work because my employer perceives a need for it to be done. If it wasn't enjoyable, I would leave and they would have to recruit somebody else. Given that they seem happy with the quality of my work, isn't it better to make sure that I enjoy it enough, and earn enough so that I am not minded to look elsewhere?

If I believed in God, I would be thanking Him that you don't work in my organisation - it must be a right barrel of laughs working with you.

 

[Smeggers]

If work wasnt enjoyable / challenging (delete as appropriate), then we wouldnt get paid for it.

The "non-enjoyable" work is usually the repetetive stuff low paid stuff and the "challenging", vice versa.

So you're both right.

 

[Carwash]

Yup, a box of noodles and a packet of cheese mix that you combine with butter and milk to reconstitute. It's entirely possible I bring a few back with me each time I visit La Patrie.

I'm going to piggyback my rant:
I'm marking essays. The standard of grammar is abysmal (something shared with their NAmerican counterparts: they are, after all, students between the ages of 18 and 40). BUT, since I have to pass the papers on to the second marker, and we don't in fact return the papers to the students but instead send them an anodyne and summarised 'feedback form', I can't correct all their spelling and grammar mistakes, thus guaranteeing that on their next essay, exactly the same mistakes will be made.
In Canada America, we'd be allowed to write on the student papers, and the papers would be returned to the students with a grade on them, so the students could at least potentially use those marginal comments to improve for the next time.

This 'Oh, don't muss up the script' attitude appears to be common to every HE institution in the British Isles I'm familiar with. And it's a helluva way to run a railroad.

This might be something new, or it might be something peculiar to the Northern Isles. From personal experience, at both York and Uppsala I always got my essays back with marginalia and corrections from whoever had marked them - sometimes with a feedback form as well!

 

[Arch]

This might be something new, or it might be something peculiar to the Northern Isles. From personal experience, at both York and Uppsala I always got my essays back with marginalia and corrections from whoever had marked them - sometimes with a feedback form as well!

When I was marking last year, I wrote on the margins, marked spelinge errers and did feedback...

Yup, Tete, that's the song. Everytime I hear it and they say Mmmmmm, Dijon ketchup, it makes me laugh...

Andy-wrx: I hear a tourist (from a place on the other side of the Atlantic) once asked a Minster guide "Is this building pre-war?" "Madam", he replied, "this building is pre-America..."

 

[Canrider]

Maybe she meant pre-Hastings?

I'm not sure that those marginal comments ever got back to your students, unless you handed them back in person. Ah, just remembered: there is a distinction made between formative and summative assessment. I'm referring to summative.

This would be another bugbear of mine: The assignment that doesn't affect your grade in any way, shape or form, provided you do it.