Nice people thread part 5 - nicely does it

silvercar

vivatifosi wrote: »

Silver, I know that free school transport is your personal bete noir, but have you seen this story:

http://www.hertsad.co.uk/news/free_school_transport_axed_for_wheathampstead_pupils_at_harpenden_school_1_1331897

It'll be interesting to watch this one. I don't see how a journey of 3.43 miles can mysteriously become under 3 miles and safe.

Depends which direction the crow flies!

They measure from the front door to the school and then from the bus stop to the school and take the shortest. Or they redefine what is safe and what isn't. At one point a road needed a pavement and walking routes had to be along public roads, reading that article walking through fields is acceptable.

michaels

I did google this and apparently even if a couple have 5 girls it is still 50:50 for number 6..not sure I believe it but stats is stats

GDB2222 wrote: »

I am afraid that there is an inherent assumption in what you said, namely that the sex of a child is totally uncorrelated with the sex of earlier children from the same couple. I have heard it suggested that some couples might be more prone to having boys, and vice versa. That would not affect the overall proportion of boys and girls in the population. However, it would provide a mechanism for your student to be correct. ("One student proposed that if families stopped having babies after they had a boy, that would skew the ratio.")

Curiously enough, if this mechanism were in place and people behaved as your student suggested, this would lead to more girls than boys being born.

Govt said 'don't panic buy' so of course everyone is. Win-win for the govt - if there is a strike it takes longer to bite if tanks are full but more importantly, shifting a couple of billion of petrol purchases from April (Q2) to March (Q1) is likely to result in positive growth for q1 and thus no technical recession (and Q2 is almost certain to be a negative Q with the extra bank holiday)

vivatifosi wrote: »

I went to Stratford today (the Shakespeare one as opposed to the Olympics one). Used quite a bit of petrol so tried to fill up when I got back to my home town as running low. Has the world gone mad? Two filling stations I couldn't even join the end of the queue without blocking the road and the other one was closed as it had run out.

lostinrates

PasturesNew wrote: »

I have absolutely no idea how anybody (nice or not) could possibly, ever, get gravy wrong :P

Oh, there i lots of very bad gravy made, sadly.

GDB2222

vivatifosi wrote: »

I went to Stratford today (the Shakespeare one as opposed to the Olympics one). Used quite a bit of petrol so tried to fill up when I got back to my home town as running low. Has the world gone mad? Two filling stations I couldn't even join the end of the queue without blocking the road and the other one was closed as it had run out.

I filled up a couple of days ago, and there was no queue.

zagubov

vivatifosi wrote: »

I went to Stratford today (the Shakespeare one as opposed to the Olympics one). Used quite a bit of petrol so tried to fill up when I got back to my home town as running low. Has the world gone mad? Two filling stations I couldn't even join the end of the queue without blocking the road and the other one was closed as it had run out.

Went to fill up at local Tescos at 139.9 but the queue looked terrible so drove past the nearby empty 145.9 BP and bought at my 141.9 Esso which did have a queue. So, it's not mad around here. I can'tfigure out how my local BP ever sells any petrol but I suppose they might benefit if the others get low.

Why not have a law against prices ending in 9? or abolish pennies and issue 99p coins?:cool:

silvercar

Call time'd be OK. Too many texts... not enough data.

500mb is enough if you use wifi at home.

50 minutes aren't really enough for a month, less than 2 minutes a day!

michaels

Not forgetting that this part of Herts is short of Secondary school places and the one that was in Wheathampstead has been closed down and turned in to houses.

It may be political of course - the very posh burghers of Harpenden would probably rather not have the chav kids of Wheathapstead sullying St John Lawes (can I say that without being prosecuted for racially aggravated hate crime?)

vivatifosi

michaels wrote: »

Not forgetting that this part of Herts is short of Secondary school places and the one that was in Wheathampstead has been closed down and turned in to houses.

It may be political of course - the very posh burghers of Harpenden would probably rather not have the chav kids of Wheathapstead sullying St John Lawes (can I say that without being prosecuted for racially aggravated hate crime?)

Wheathampstead has chavs? Crikey, never new that.

PasturesNew

silvercar wrote: »

Depends which direction the crow flies!

They measure from the front door to the school and then from the bus stop to the school and take the shortest. Or they redefine what is safe and what isn't. At one point a road needed a pavement and walking routes had to be along public roads, reading that article walking through fields is acceptable.

Where I went to school, there were a lot of kids from the next village that walked the 3 miles home on a completely unlit, winding, country road, without any pavement at all. One of them was my mate and she also had two younger brothers that she walked with... but I know half her village got free transport and half didn't, based on where their home was, even though they used the same bus-stop. These were Fenland villages/village roads, and it was completely dark and kind of spooky... I remember at one point they had to walk past the goat of another school person, which was tethered on the grass verge outside their farm. I'd not fancy walking past a tethered goat in the pitch dark.

silvercar

Not forgetting that this part of Herts is short of Secondary school places and the one that was in Wheathampstead has been closed down and turned in to houses.

Same round here. Knocked down schools and sold off land and playing fields. Builders built houses which got filled with families who now have kids who need a school, but the school went, to make way for the houses.