Re: The Bigger, Badder, Even More Serious Thread [3]

[Orwell]

I guess your police have a different policy to ours, Lance. It's hard to imagine kicking a door in here unless the siege had already gone on for days.

[Pettytyrant101]

A case of double standards?
In todays Sun there is story about a teacher, age 27, who was having a sexual affair with a 17 year old pupil.
This is normally a case of outrage and howls of derision and calls for the teachers head on a pole.
But in this case the pupil was male and the teacher female. When the mother complained to the school after she revealed the affair the school snubbed her saying-  "We have a duty of care to the teacher as an employee."

[halfwise]

We've had several female teachers run out for the same thing, but they are not seen as monsters the way male teachers are. But standards have evolved, back when I was in school a male teacher and his student was having an affair, and we kids were amused by it. He left within a year (probably related in hindsight) but no big stink was made. If he was forced out it was all kept quiet. These days there would be a huge stink.

Same in college, one of the young English professors was absolutely notorious for carrying relationships with his students. This went on for a few years, and eventually he left just as quietly as the high school teacher. I don't think it would be so quiet these days.

[David H]

This case comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Kay_Letourneau
(I had a very good friend who was a teacher at that school at the time.  )

Mary Kay Letourneau (née Schmitz; born January 30, 1962), is an American schoolteacher who was imprisoned from 1997 to 2004 for having sexual intercourse with her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. She gave birth to two of Fualaau's children while incarcerated. After her release from prison in 2004, Letourneau married Fualaau and took his name.
---------
Letourneau first met Vili Fualaau when he was a student in her second-grade class at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington; she later taught a sixth-grade class in which Fualaau was a student. In 1996 her relationship with 12-year-old student Fualaau transformed from friendship into flirtation and sex. Letourneau was arrested in March 1997 after a relative of her husband, Steve Letourneau, notified the police. Her first daughter with Fualaau, Audrey, was born in May 1997 while Letourneau was out of jail on bail.

During the trial she was examined and diagnosed with manic depression. Letourneau pled guilty and was convicted of two counts of second-degree child rape. She was sentenced to six months in the county jail and three years of sex offender treatment. At that time she was not required to register as a sex offender. As part of her plea bargain, Letourneau agreed to avoid any further contact with Fualaau.

On February 3, 1998, Letourneau had sexual relations with Fualaau in her car and at 35 became pregnant with Fualaau's child. She was arrested for violating the terms of her probation and the police found $6,200 in cash, baby clothes, and her passport inside her car. As a result, Letourneau was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in state prison.

In October 1998, while serving her sentence, Letourneau gave birth to her second daughter by Fualaau. In January, 2001, Letourneau's father died, and she was denied a release from prison to attend his funeral. While in prison Letourneau tutored fellow inmates, created audio books for blind readers, participated in the prison choir and "rarely missed Mass." Because of her celebrity status, Letourneau was unpopular with other inmates, "sassed guards and balked at work" and, reportedly as punishment for this, spent "18 of her first 24 months" in solitary confinement.




When I was in graduate school working as a Teaching Assistant, the rule was that, at the first suggestion of impropriety between a TA and one of their students, the grad student would be expelled with no hearing. No double standard. Gender didn't matter.  The grad school didn't want to have that discussion. End of Subject!  

[halfwise]

Pretty draconian, Dave, and no doubt effective. I suspect the school had an incident that got nasty and vowed 'never again!'

[David H]

It definitely sent several unmistakable messages, one of which was that grad students were easily disposable. A tenured professor would have had a union speaking for him/her in such matters.

But yes, there had recently been some allegations of "sex for grades", and at the time the press was still in a feeding frenzy after the Letourneau case. I think the University risk assessment lawyers just figured this was the easiest way to reduce the chances of a salacious headline.

We were instructed NEVER TO CLOSE THE DOOR when we were working with students during office hours.  

[Mrs Figg]

times have changed, I remember when I was at the convent the first male teacher arrived and because he was relatively good looking all the 6th formers got a massive crush on him, his name was Mr Want, you can imagine the japes. Once he got chased round the school yard by a pack of them, the look of terror on his face was priceless.

[David H]

the look of terror on his face was priceless.

A fate worse than death!  

[Pettytyrant101]

I wonder who was leading the pack?  

[Mrs Figg]

who me? no I was watching the show.  it was Benny Hill in reverse.

[Pettytyrant101]

Where were you educated? St Trinians?  

[Kafria]

A case of double standards?
In todays Sun there is story about a teacher, age 27, who was having a sexual affair with a 17 year old pupil.
This is normally a case of outrage and howls of derision and calls for the teachers head on a pole.
But in this case the pupil was male and the teacher female. When the mother complained to the school after she revealed the affair the school snubbed her saying-  "We have a duty of care to the teacher as an employee."

I find this slightly incredible.

In light of the many cases that have come to light over the years and following a high profile case of another female teacher a few years ago the rules around this were tightened up. Not only are teachers not to be involved with students they are also not allowed to be involved with students they used to teach after they leave school as the position gives then undue influence over said student. These are prosecutable offences.

[Pettytyrant101]

Well it was the Sun after all Kafria, it would not surprise me if it wasn't the full story. They are almost as bad as the NotP when it comes to choosing between all the facts and a good story.

[Mrs Figg]

hmm we havent had one of those in ages   is the NoTP going the way of Bree, an exinct animal?

[Pettytyrant101]

All I can say on that matter Mrs Figg is that I did not drop that bit of advertising in by accident. Mind you I wasnt payed to either, the tight gits. I really need to start reading the fine print.  

[Eldorion]

Yeah, I never even got a birthday edition.

[Pettytyrant101]

The arguments over the UK's 'bedroom' tax rumble on, with the UN getting involved.

'Conservative chairman Grant Shapps has condemned as an "absolute disgrace" a UN official's critical comments on the government's housing benefit changes.
Mr Shapps said he would be writing to the UN secretary general to protest.
He claimed the UN official Raquel Rolnik failed to meet any ministers or officials, was biased and had wrongly called the "spare room subsidy" policy "the bedroom tax".
He also said that she came from a country, Brazil, "that has 50m people in inadequate housing".

Ms Rolnik says her recommendation is for the policy to be suspended.
She rejected most of the criticisms made by Mr Shapps, although did apologise for referring to the policy as the bedroom tax, telling the BBC it was because "what everyone has been calling it since I got here".
Ms Rolnik told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that she had received "hundreds of testimonies" and said there was a "danger of a retrogression in the right to adequate housing" in the UK.
She cited examples of disabled people, or grandmothers who were carers, and said the measure seemed to have been designed "without the human component in mind".
Her visit included trips to London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast and Manchester.'- BBC


'designed without the human component in mind'- that sums up perfectly this governments thinking on all their policies.

[Mrs Figg]

yup thats true those rich public school boys like Cameron live on cloud cookooland

[Pettytyrant101]

The bit that really annoyed me and seemed to betray that typical Tory rich public school attitude Mrs Figg was when he said - "she came from a country, Brazil, that has 50m people in inadequate housing".

What on earth does where she comes from have to do with her ability to do the job she has been hired to by the UN?

 

He may as well have told her she was a a smelly foreigner with no right or the breeding to come here and tell the British anything and if she didn't get of his lawn he was going to call the grounds keeper.

[Pettytyrant101]

Watching todays Dail Politics, the Emplyment Minister Mark Hoban.
Andrew Neil asked him-

"If everything you are saying is right, about people have got more jobs, and it's all going swimmingly. How come under your government the number of people using food banks has gone  from forty-one thousand when you took office, to three-hundred and fifty thousand a year now? Why?

The Employment Ministers response was the incredible-

"Andrew I think you need to ask the Food Banks that question, we are not responsible for food banks."

WTF!!

[David H]

Yeah, clearly the it's the fault of the food banks for providing free food!  

[Lancebloke]

I imagine it is partly the fault of a lot of food banks. When you have Sky to pay for, why waste money at Tesco when you could get it free? Do they do background checks to make sure people are eligible?

Wonder how robust those stats are too.

[Pettytyrant101]

"Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden specifically defended Section 702 of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), which provides the legal basis for the PRISM program.
Asked whether the United States's promiscuous surveillance was setting a harmful example for other nations, Hayden suggested that the Internet's origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA's conduct. If the Web lasts another 500 years, he said, it may be the thing the United States is remembered for "the way the Romans are remembered for their roads."

Um the world wide web was invented by a Brit!  -

"Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA (born 8 June 1955), also known as "TimBL," is a British computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989,[3] and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid November.[4]
Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development. He is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation, and is a senior researcher and holder of the Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[5] He is a director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI),[6] and a member of the advisory board of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence.[7][8]
In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work.[9] In April 2009, he was elected a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences.[10][11] He was honoured as the "Inventor of the World Wide Web" during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, in which he appeared in person, working with a vintage NeXT Computer at the London Olympic Stadium.[12] He tweeted "This is for everyone",[13] which was instantly spelled out in LCD lights attached to the chairs of the 80,000 people in the audience- Wiki

Typical America claiming everything for their own, reminds me of Communist Russia claiming Shakespeare was a ruskie.  

Anyway, back to the speech-

'"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."
That response may not comfort U.S. technology companies who are already seeing suspicion of the NSA hurting them with overseas customers. One report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) earlier in the summer predicted U.S. cloud service providers would lose out on $21.5 to $35 billion over the next three years due to recent revelations. More recently, the CEO of CloudFlare, a Web site security firm and network provider, said the gag orders on government requests for data are "insane" and the whole scandal is costing them customers.
Hayden also conceded that the United States. "could be fairly charged with the militarization of the World Wide Web."

Some interesting points raised here, firstly that it is costing US companies as trust in the net in the US plummets globally.
And secondly the admission they have 'militarized the internet'- one I think they are indeed guilty of.

"At one point, Hayden expressed a distaste for online anonymity, saying "The problem I have with the Internet is that it's anonymous." But he noted, there is a struggle over that issue even inside government. The issue came to a head during the Arab Spring movement when the State Department was funding technology to protect the anonymity of activists so governments could not track down or repress their voices.
"We have a very difficult time with this," Hayden said. He then asked, "is our vision of the World Wide Web the global digital commons -- at this point you should see butterflies flying here and soft background meadow-like music -- or a global free fire zone?" Given that Hayden also compared the Internet to the wild west and Somalia, Hayden clearly leans toward the "global free fire zone" vision of the Internet."- Washington Post

I think this last bit is very telling- the one thing Government want and need is control- and the internet puts all the control in the hands of the individual- a horrific prospect for a ruling elite.
Its also worth noting the deep depth of the mocking of the very idea of a free internet where knowledge and information is shared between individuals without any government interference or oversight.

[Eldorion]

Some interesting stuff.  I hope that the option of Internet anonymity remains in the future, but it's been evident for some time that the "wild west" days of the Internet are ending as more and more people use it and governments and corporations start to catch up with advances in technology.  Interestingly though, the most immediate threat to Internet privacy is the increasing merger of people's online experiences into a small handful of sites, mostly social media accounts attached to primary e-mail addresses, all of which have people's real names attached.

Typical America claiming everything for their own, reminds me of Communist Russia claiming Shakespeare was a ruskie.  

The Internet was developed by the U.S. military, though, and the United States government still exercises a large amount of control over the infrastructure of the Internet. America has been gradually relinquishing control over the basic functions of the Internet but, for example, the Domain Name System is administered by ICANN only through an agreement with the US Department of Commerce, though ICANN will likely assume full control over the system in the near future.

[Pettytyrant101]

True Eldo but the speech refers not to the internet but to the 'web'. Which is a British scientists invention, not an American one.