Messages

The union have suggested a series of plans tailored to meet his needs but patricia lewesly claims it 'villifies' the pupil.

His needs? He needs a boot up the hole.

This is the whole problem in society, all this "god love the little rascal" bullshit makes my blood boil.  Kick the wee c**t outof the school, let his parents deal with him - it will probably be news to his parents taht it's not teachers who should be bringing up their child though- and let everyone else get on with it.

Next thing he'll have some attention deficit disorder or some other bullshit. 

I think you got it in one here.
Disruptive pupils very often come from disruptive homes. In rare cases, this might not be the case but nine times out of ten it is.
If parents were little f**kers themselves, you can't expect anything different from their kids. As regards the legal end, there is probably little or no difference between the situations here in the south and what seems to be the case up north.
Our government is running scared of its constitutional obligation to provide schooling for all children up to the legal leaving age of 15.
Because this is the main priority, little or no attention is paid to the problems parents, teachers or boards of management face on a daily basis and those three groups are hardly likely to protest at the same time or to demand  that their rights and those of the innocent kids involved be respected.
It is impossible to expel a pupil in the Republic. A school can get rid of one okay- provided it can come up with a suitable facility in the area willing to take him or her in. Even at that, parental consent has to be obtained.
Given that parental attitudes are usually at the root of the problem, that doesn't happen very often!
The situation changes, once a kid passes his or her 15th birthday. For one thing, backup in the form of counselling services and home visits drops away and the messers can be expelled.
Up until their constitutional rights to an education has ended, those trouble makers can do much as they please because our government is unwilling to spend the money needed to provide extracurricular facilities for them.
The tragedy is that one or two uncontrollable kids can disrupt the work of the whole school and put the safety and best interests of all other pupils at risk. I've seen enough of this codology down here to say it's a total farce and ties up a huge amount of teaching and supervision resources.
Janey! When there was more money in the kitty in recent times, schools down here had an overdose of child psychologists and social workers, not to mention counselling consultants, hopping up all over the place. None of them did a blessed bit of good and very few teachers were sorry to see them withdrawn. Absolutely nothing was done to stand up to aggressive pupils or their parents.
I feel the situation is much the same up north.

I'd be very slow to comment on this specific case as I'm certain the full facts of the case are not being reported. They seldom are in public disputes because of the potential for libel or slander suits arising.
I can only compare what seems to be happening in Moyvilla with what I know about such situations in the Republic.
Twenty eight teachers will not go on strike anywhere at any time if a pupil merely pushes a teacher.
You can put your shirt on that.
For one thing, there is the matter of salaries being withheld; I doubt if any teachers' union has enough money to hand to pay the full equivalent of members' salaries for an indefinite period.  A union might do that for a short period alright, but not if a strike is called at short notice.
I'm guessing that the strike pay is around £100 weekly –certainly no more than £150. How many of the group on strike can afford to take such an abrupt hit to his or her income? My bet is that there are some in dire straits already and still the strike goes on.
Besides all that, most responsible teachers are very much aware of their duties to the kids they teach and I assume most in question here would return to work if they felt it was practical to do so.
I haven't heard of any of the strikers breaking ranks either.  Only very serious and determined people would maintain solidarity over such a long period with no immediate end in sight.
Like I say, the actual facts of the case have not been disclosed.

I thought that this topic had run its course and was going to sink out of sight. However, as the last poster was a Sligo lad, I thought I'd add this before the thread drops down the line.
An elderly couple lives in my neighbourhood and I call around regularly to keep an eye on things generally and to bring the old boy out to the supermarket or the post office and the likes.
Jonjo, the man in questions, hails from Culfadda, near Ballymote and is as black and white an individual as you could meet; if I used the word, 'precognition,' he'd think I had problems starting the car!
Friday afternoon, I dropped in as usual and JJ was on the point of taking his dog out on a lead to walk around the park nearby.
He had always claimed that the dog could sense when they were going to go out and would commence barking and running up and down the hallway. He would also start jumping up to try and pull his lead down from its peg just inside the front door.
I asked JJ to stay in the hallway, while his wife and I brought the dog into the sitting room and closed the door.
I told him to go to the peg and take the lead off the hook as if ready to go out.  I also asked him to make as little noise as possible and to repeat the procedure a few times if we got no reaction from Buttons, the mutt. About five minutes at most I told him and the pair of them could go. (JJ is not a patient man!)

Amway, I could hear him pacing about outside the door and muttering to himself. Buttons was lying quietly at my feet – the little fecker knew I'd usually be given a cuppa and a few bikkies and was waiting for his share.
He suddenly shot up after about three minutes or so and began his going out routine.
"Janey Mac," I thought, "that dog has sharp hearing. He must have somehow heard JJ taking the lead off the wall."
I pulled the door into the hallway open; JJ was standing outside, with the lead still on its peg at the other end of the hallway.
The reason he has been so agitated was that when I mentioned the term, ESP, he thought I was talking about his free electricity allowance.  He had walked up and down with the blessed lead in his hand, swishing it about and worrying that his allowance was going to be cut. He had taken the lead down two or three times already and when Buttons hadn't barked he decided he had enough and he was on the point of opening the door to tell me to quit the effing messing about.
Now the point of the post is this:
Buttons hadn't reacted when his owner had taken down the lead or carried it about. The split second when JJ raised his hand to push the door open and barge back into the sitting room he came to life!
Also, JJ is quite adamant that he had not yet touched the door when the craic began.
That sequence of events took place exactly as I have described. Unfortunately, I have managed to scare the wits out of my two old friends but Buttons seems totally unconcerned by it all. 

Knockcloughrim is a funny place, from what I've read on the board.

This thread sounds like recent Irish Eurovision entrants.

I like that.
Thankfully, I'm still a Dustin.

My good friend, Tommy Spratt,  is in charge of buying fish for the Superquinn chain.

No, Zap, I am not on a wind up here.
This story has been widely reported and is out forward as a classic case by people who uphold this view. I can't, off hand, give you sources but I suppose I will be able when I have some time tonight to search Google.
I'm not saying it happened as reported but I have read contemporary newspaper accounts that reported the bursting of the dam and the mass exodus of people and animals to higher ground before the calamity occurred.
Again,  I am not saying that what I wrote about  is the complete unvarnished truth; there has been a lot of ongoing controversy about the incident since but the theory of animals sensing a disaster that was still to happen has never been debunked to my satisfaction either.
What you write, Mentalman is very interesting.
I think there are people who seem to possess some degree of precognition but I wouldn't go further than that. I have an open mind.
There is a link below to an article that some of you may find interesting; again, I am drawing no definite conclusions from it.
I went to school at St. Nathys in Ballaghadereen in the 60s.
There was one lad who wasn't the brightest but he did have some extraordinary abilities.
One day a gang of first years were sent to pick stones out of a ploughed filed.
There were loads of earthworms squiggling about and I remember a group of us passing worms around from hand to hand.  Every time a worm was dropped onto this lad's open hand it shot upwards as if struck by an electric charge.
I'm deadly serious about this. The worm shrivelled up and died every time one was dropped onto one of this boy's hands.
This young fellow said he did not experience anything out of the ordinary. He knew he could do this sort of thing for as far back as he could remember.
He gained a reputation for his ability to get watches to work again after they stopped.
Some priests in the college certainly believed in this and passed it off as a gift from God. No doubt, the fact that it saved them a few bob at times also played a part in their thinking.
I cannot explain any of this and it doesn't bother me much, one way or the other—but it can't be explained by rational thinking..

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=20000701-000034&page=2

I have a theory that I feel may go some way towards explaining many of the phenomena we would regard as being outside the normal course of events. I'm referring to ESP, the so-called sixth sense.
There's considerable debate about the matter, with some psychologists claiming it is a fact that humans, at least some of them some of the time, do get forewarnings about events that lie in the future. Others disagree and claim nothing has been established so far that would conclusively support this theory.
I'm inclined to believe that mankind did indeed possess this "sixth sense" at a much earlier stage of evolution. But as humans developed and evolved into more complex and self-sustaining types of beings, this extra means of taking in information became surplus to requirements and succeeding generations gradually lost the ability to use it.
Vestiges of it may still remain deep in our subconscious minds and some indeed may have greater ability than others to tap into it.
Again, I don't think anyone can prove or disprove this theory but I've read enough from scholarly sources to make me think that there is substance to the notion.
Animals appear to possess this sixth sense to a greater degree than humans.
There's one well-documented case I recall about a dam burst somewhere in mid-America in the 1930s. [I'm afraid it isn't well-documented enough for me to recall exact details off the top of my head.]
Early one morning in a little riverside town, downriver from the dam, the animals and birds in the area began to exhibit signs of distress much to the puzzlement of the local people.
As the morning wore on, this exhibition of unease got worse and people became alarmed as animals and birds began to leave the town—at least those who were free to do so began moving to higher ground.
The townspeople did the same, without knowing why.
Just as well they did, because the dam burst when it happened released a torrent of water that washed their dwellings away.
Did the animals and birds foretell the future and did their collective sixth sense save the townspeople from catastrophe?
All I know is that newspaper accounts of the time did report than dam burst and the fact that many lives would have been lost if the people had not inexplicably decided  to move en masse to higher ground.

Reading some doggie tales here reminds me of something that I cannot logically explain....
Some years back, when my mother died, the family dog acted in a way that half scared me at the time. Matter of fact, it still does.....
The poor mutt was more or less left to himself for some days afterwards and I suppose wasn't fed at times and wasn't receiving the attention he was used to from my mother. 
One morning my father and one of my brothers were sitting in the kitchen with me when the dog walked in- the back door was open.
Now, the said dog never came into the house before. That was in part because he wasn't encouraged to do so, but also because he never showed the much inclination to come in anyway.
He walked by us and went straight to the ma's bedroom door and pushed against it to get in, this was possible as the bloody door was ajar anyway. We were all speechless and no one moved to stop him.
Then he started to howl. 
Cripes! I've heard some howling in my time, both before and after, but nothing matched this. After ten or fifteen seconds, he came back out and went straight out the door, without paying any attention to those of us who were there.
Now the really interesting thing is that he returned to his old form again and was as normal as he ever was, but he absolutely refused to ever come back in after that performance.
He lived on for about three years after that and one could play with him or stroke him but if someone tried to coax him or carry him across the threshold, front or back, he'd get mighty upset and could bare the teeth if he was brought too close.
Now, it is just possible that my mother had taken him in sometime but I could never see her letting him wander about or allow him into her bedroom.
I have seen or heard of a couple of things in my time that may be hard to explain but I wouldn't regard them as being totally out of this world either. Nothing came within an asses's roar of the dog's behaviour on that morning.

Anyone with experience of publishing a website and getting it indexed on Google ?
How long should it take ?
What can you do to speed up the process.

I've done all that google has asked,  verified the site and submitted a sitemap, which was fine. I've checked the stats on the site and it has been visited a few times by a google bot.
But a week later still nothing on google.  Does it take that long.

Any advice would be welcomed by a webmaster virgin.   

A week??
I'm afraid it won't happen for a long time yet.
Googlebot may indeed have visited your site and added it to Google's site index, but I'm afraid it may be months before your keywords start appearing in a web search.
I hope you can follow me here; if you type in your site URL, it should come back at top of the list, once it's indexed.
However, if you want your site to turn up near the top of the pile in a general search that may include some or all of your keywords, you may have to wait a long time.

(Now, I am no expert on web sites or search engine rankings but I am a Microsoft Office instructor (an MMI) so I tend to read articles on the matter from time to time without ever getting too involved.)
From what I know, you've got good advice already from Hardy and The Iceman.
It seems search engines, Google in particular, won't disclose the exact techniques they use to determine rankings.
But it seems from what I read that good quality incoming links are high on their lists of priorities. A text hyperlink that contains some of the keywords found on your site is apparently the best way to go.
Some people tell me that the following strategy is an effective way to go about this:
Advertise your site on some of the business or free classified directories you will find all over the place.
gumtree.ie is a free classified site where you can place ads for almost anything              - put an ad for your own site there and give yourself a descriptive link back to your site and it will be a start.
Gumtree is popular in its own right but even if you get no direct business from it, you will have a good quality incoming link at the very least.
There are loads of others, local.ie, add.ie. everything.ie and the rest. Google for Irish business directories or Irish classified sites or something like that and see what you get.
Most of them will allow you to place your own add and include a text link back to your own site. If you like the look of a site but are not allowed to use a hyperlink unless you take out a paid listing, you should be able to include the URL as a line of text somewhere. People then could do a copy and paste job to at least get to your site.
I'm told this approach is effective in getting your Google ranking improved but I never used it so I can't guarantee results - at least it's free!

Well if an overall United Ireland has the quality of debate in this one, where the discussion seems to be about the rate of motor tax and petrol, then it won't shed much light on the subject.

I suggest that such issues would figure high on most people's agendas.
In hard economic times people are more concerned about providing a livelihood for themselves and their families than they are about what happened in the past.
I've heard from a number of loyalist sources, who are reasonably pragmatic folks, that they see a united Ireland on the cards inside of fifty years.
I'm using 50 as a ballpark figure here; at least two out of five would feel it will come about a lot sooner than that.
The Brits are finding it hard enough to make out for themselves and no longer require military bases in the region. My unionist contacts tell me they know very well that the vast majority of the British public don't feel any sort of solidarity or kinship with them. (Many don't even know they exist or give a hoot that they do, but that's another story.)
The reasoning here is that from an economic point of view, England would be glad to get rid of the whole sorry mess that is Norn Iron and shell out enough money in the short term to bring a united island about. 
Most people down south aren't too happy at being saddled with the likes of , say, Neil Anderson or his equivalents on the other side of the political fence either.
But there is one overriding factor that is pushing all elements on the island together and that is the need to present a united front where it comes to attracting overseas investment.
The IDA and its counterpart up north have been canvassing together on this one for many years and their respective political bosses seem to think the same way. Money talks and multinational concerns don't take too kindly to possible political unrest or cross-border tariffs either.
When things start to pick up in the north again, it will be found that many prime sites in Belfast city centre and other towns around the north will be in the hands of foreign investors who bought them up for a song at the height of the troubles.
Even here in Dublin, without sectarian strife, foreign interests already own most of the city centre.
I think herein is the reason why Ireland will have to unite, whether any of us wants this or not.

Any Mayophiles on this thread?
We useda have a tidy half back years ago named Ollie Dolly.
An old C of I dearie who lived up the road from me glorified in the name, Fanny Wright.

How is it pointless.

Might the inflated minimum wage not have something to do with the perceived increased cost of living in the south .

My Kevin Myers moment ...

Most trips north are to purchase drink .

I think if a tax on bullsugar had been introduced, Kevin Myers would have considerably less to say.
That guy has long passed the stage where he considered himself mortal and now act ass if he thinks his pontificating should be taken as ex cathedra. I think Myers delights in publicity and won't let fats ever get in the way of his prejudices.
On my road, I can count at least three householders where the monthly run to Newry is part of the routine and God knows how many others in the area are dong the same.
It's a case of heading to Sainsbury's or to the Buttercrane and stocking up with toilet rolls and washing powder and the likes for them.
I don't imagine that drink is a major consideration either.
Even if Myers got it right in the case of some who go North for alcohol, I still say he is missing the point; time was when the same people would head for a trendy pub and buy their poison, be it daiquiris or pints of Guinness over the counter.
Newry is a lovely spot and I go there regularly, but it's not for cheap booze.
Dental charges are so much cheaper there that it is worth my while to put €20 in the tank and head up.
Myers can keep his opinions and I'll not part with any of my money if I can help it.

lads, can you translate procrastination for me?

How about:
"Ag tóiníocht thart?"

Bullshit:

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/pds-phone-scam.html

I dunno, Mac, I'd be reluctant to dismiss the story as bullshit, just because Hoax-Slayer picks it up.
Like rosnarun said, there are emails being sent out with more or less the same scam and if the crowd in Belize  were rumbled, there is sweet damn all to stop them closing down and starting up somewhere else.
If full back heard it on the news yesterday, then some one somewhere is trying it on again; it's as simple as that.

BTW, if you read down the page you are using for reference, you will see it was a real scam but was discontinued in 2005.
That makes it a scam, not a hoax and there is no guarantee that it isn't being used again.

Who is/was the Bard Of Dunclug? What did I miss when I was away?

http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=9661.0

You have a lot of catching up to do! 

I'm afraid, Maguire, that one will have to search a bit further than that to catch up..
Seems the erudite bard's opinions have been removed from that thread and from teh board also. There is nothing from him to be seen anywhere, so I guess the mods have been at work.
Maybe you or some of the others who knows what went on would fill the rest of us in.
I have the gist of the story alright from comments by yourself and other posters, but a quick rundown of what he did would be much appreciated.