Thread 44 Sunak: Hung parliament and Rishful thinking.

[DuncinToffee]

prevoius thread
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5066068-thread-43-sunak-seriously-scapegoating?page=40&reply=135107360

MN claim to have blocked it and are looking at where it came from - but it would appear unsuccessfully, as it's still popping up.

This is just what happens when you plug an ad network into your website for the lucre. Decent ad brokers will do their best to respect a sites demographics and reach. The only problem being there are no decent ad brokers.

Think it's bad now. Wait until they are "forced" to pass a law making it legal for Ai to do what would be illegal for you and I because the expertise involved in proving it will cost business too much.

When our Dear Leader bangs on about the UK leading the world in AI, that's what he's really getting at. A legal system which allows it to make money without any oversight.

My guess is that what happened here was two different culture war topics met each other.

So the people who have a problem with sex Ed particularly in primary wanted everything pushed upwards including contraception because they couldn’t get abstinence only on on the guidance.

And then they had to include the internet/smartphones/technology is bad and dangerous for our children culture war people so put in the revenge porn stuff. And nobody has looked at the whole document and thought ‘does including both these things make any sense at all at the ages we’ve put them in.’

https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1790782177812021292

Oh FFS. We’re now going to forcibly send failed asylum seekers to Rwanda if we can’t deport them back to places like Syria and Afghanistan because it isn’t safe.

Probably...

My year 12 girls were regaling me with their sex ed lessons. They remembered being made to watcha film of a baby being born in about year 6.

Prior to this they watched an animated film of a couple having 'fun times'. This involves the man chasing the woman round the room with a peacock feather. One girl said she thought for ages that feathers got women pregnant.

This was all they recalled,other than labelling body parts in about year 3.

Reading a really interesting Twitter thread. It is attracting so many people who really do believe teaching sex ed is nanny state, 'there were no problems in the 70s' (ermmmmm....) and it should be left to parents.

Quite how Nicky Campbell managed not to implode during his phone in I am not sure.

Johnson's favourite donor

https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/15/jcb-built-supplied-equipment-to-russia-months-after-saying-exports-stopped

There have been a few threads in the primary Ed section here that have gone along similar lines.

Those videos are from a Channel 4 schools program from years ago I think. That series gets complained about a lot. Not sure how many schools still use it.

Oh! Has KS committed to something else before the official manifesto? I hope so.

https://apple.news/An-WAsOQDSLqErNxC3Au3uA

If only the Conservatives would call the election - we could then see the whole manifesto.

When Glasgow City Counvil revised its "Sexual Health and Relationship Education" (pronounced "Shree") course, ds' primary and the neighbouring one were the last two to have it introduced, because they had (have) a very large proportion of ethnic minorities, mostly Muslim.

Before doing so, they had a couple of parent meetings and went through the entire 3-16 curriculum. Yes, from three They provided the folders with everything that would be covered - but we couldn't take them out of the school.

As they explained, the "sexual" bit of it was the smallest part of it, but they had to include it in the name as otherwise people would have claimed they were hiding it.

The reason it was from three was that it included (accurate) naming of body parts from three, as well as the importance of respect in friendship. By calling body parts their real names (teachers said it took them a while to get used to seeing them on a diagram of a body written in comic sans serif ), so arm, leg, head, vulva, foot, penis.... , it actually reduced incidences of child abuse and/or helped identify cases earlier, as the children didn't talk in euphemisms and also knew that they deserved respect - both from friends, family (most abuse is by family members ) and others.

I know that's a wee bit of a diversion from the topic of this thread

That's so important, though, isn't it.

@prettybird I did a bit of Sexual Health Education as part of my degree and that is exactly the main argument for sex ed; so many kids were not aware of what adults were allowed to do to them in the 70s (seeing as it was mentioned upthread Jimmy Saville) to various parts of their bodies that someone had touched their "foof" or "bits" wasn't enough. We have to remember the PIE party wanted to go mainstream in the 1970's and I think were only banned in 1980.

In my course it was the more religious (not to be racist but African majority) who had issues with Sex Ed and always took their kids out of those classes. Even when it was explained within the degree they still refused to accept their children might benefit. Edited to say that it is a cultural aspect that might be being picked up by their data researchers connected to religion, but really barking up the wrong tree to think white St George flag waving Brits who aren't churchgoers are bothered.

To be fair, most of the Muslims (school was over 60% Muslim) were fine with it, especially once it was explained that it was teaching about respect, which is an important part (I understand) of the Q'ran.

The family that weren't were converts to Islam and were a real pain (they'd already moved from one school because they weren't happy). The stories that her children told to the other kids about how awful sex/periods etc were were quite horrific (headteacher had children coming to her in tears ).

The school made people who wanted to take their children out of the SHRE classes out of the school: to be fair, the school was bursting at the seams and there was quite literally nowhere to leave them safely.

Funny story though: at the end of the week one of the Muslim mums (who wore a hijab) asked to see the headteacher. She'd had a foul day, finished off by having to separate two parents fighting in the playground at pick-up time . Wee Muslim mum went into the headteacher's room, pulled herself up and said.... "I think what is proposed is really good and I'm telling the Imam so"

Made the headteacher's day

Good age appropriate sex education started young is safeguarding children.

This government is going backwards as it does in everything else.

@prettybird I should probably have been clear, these were Christians. Why I suspect their data may have sucked up some squiffy ideas not in line with the "stop the boats!" mantra.

Absolutely agree
i have nothing coherent to add except they are total utter fuckwits & I fucking hate this government (I’m having a mare of a week my stress level is through the roof)

I realised that @fabio12

I know in South Africa, some of the teaching of certain Christian sects helped contribute to (perhaps more fairly, didn't help address) the spread of AIDS due to their fundamentalist beliefs.

We lived in KSA for a few yrs. No sex Ed, even in the international schools.

And not just non mainstream ones either. The Catholic Church’s stance on this has not been helpful at all.

As well as going backwards on safeguarding issues, it’s likely to be going backwards on underage pregnancy rates and STIs. In an ideal world that wouldn’t happen in the real world it does however much some people pretend it doesn’t. I doubt many pregnant 13 year olds would express the opinion they wish their school/parents had taught them less about safe sex.

2 days after Sunak's speech

https://twitter.com/YvetteCooperMP/status/1790808635662065679?t=p0JLGp73U7wNuD7EUqjRyQ&s=19

The Conservatives have just voted against banning the sale of ninja swords. It will still be possible to buy them online with barely any checks. Deeply disappointing & shameful failure to take strong action needed on lethal weapons that have been used to kill on Britain’s streets

It's the old lie that if you talk to children about sex, contraception etc you are encouraging them to start having sex.

I worry that there's some correlation with parents taking children out of sex Ed classes not wanting to fill in the gap at home either.

I've banged on before about my dm going into schools to facilitate discussion and information about sex etc in the 1980s. She also worked as a social worker for what was termed "unmarried mothers" in those days. They were the pariah of Thatcher Britain and it "wasn't nice" to talk about such things. We had some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy then.

It's also not a case of not having the information, it's that the information they gather from other sources; friends in the playground for example, is often wrong. "You can't get pregnant the first time you have sex" being a common one.

However, I think it's important that classes should be taught single sex on this. And also parents are informed etc.

@RafaistheKingofClay - indeed

Glasgow City Council's SHRE curriculum only applies in the non-denominational schools: the Catholic schools follow their own curriculum. So some parents try to make the schools follow, eg abstinence and no reference at "sinful" things , whereas others, like my SIL, have to stay on the Parent Council for much longer than they want to, in order to ensure that they have at least half decent sexual health and relationship education in their school.

Isn’t there a Diocesan standard across all the Catholic schools in the area @prettybird ? Individual schools in my area can’t follow a different RSE curriculum to others, it’s very rigidly applied across all of them. And I have to say I don’t recognise the abstinence/‘sinful’ aspect of the teaching either, certainly not at primary level. It’s all age appropriate and based on bodily autonomy, safeguarding, respect and non-euphemistic, designed with the aim of helping children navigate a journey to adulthood. I mean, that journey is guided by God, as you’d expect in a faith school, but that God doesn’t want children to be ignorant of sexual reproduction.

That’s what I don’t get about grand announcements by the govt on this. No one is teaching 6 year olds about sex, just the correct words for body parts, consent at a level they can understand, respect for others etc (the very basics of which start in Reception, sort of summed up as “keep your hands to yourself”, I suppose!).

@tobee knowledge is power.

I went through the Dutch education, and sex ed was absolutely not taught single sex. And we had really open discussions about absolutely everything. However, the Netherlands is a completely different culture, as I found out when I went to fencing competitions in the UK and saw women in the changing rooms laboriously changing under a towel . That was just completely outside my experience.

Without a culture where talking about sex is normalised, you're probably correct in saying sex education in the UK should be single sex.

Ah that's interesting about your experience in Dutch education @pointythings