David Thistlethwaite
I’m retired. I am interested in most scientific topics but food production, farming and feeding an increasing population are especially relevant.
Location Scotland
Activity
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I enjoyed the course but agree with some co- learners that the third week would have been better as a stand alone course.
It is certain from the interesting components of the first two weeks that York has many more hidden jewels to explore. -
David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Apart from Rowntree charitable trusts has any other organisation investigated slavery and associated behaviours by the company? If so it would be interesting to compare findings.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Oh dear! It’s not that the course has lost its way, it’s that I remember most of these adverts!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
While I accept that portraying the characters as black represents racial stereotyping it is so common in cartoons to portray images, irrespective of colour, of children with disproportionately large heads, heads and short legs. These are features of a younger child and are used to make the character seem cute and often sassy . These portrayals may be ageist...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I think the article offers incomplete evidence to make a judgement on Rowntrees. Where is the evidence for coerced labour?
Where is the evidence from the African workers themselves?
To offer a view from such one sided evidence would run the risk of a one sided response. -
David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Interesting references. However do any of them relate specifically to how Rowntrees treated their workers and it would be good to learn how African workers considered their working conditions and remuneration.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
As a none historian and one coming late to reading history I think there a great deal of, and increasing, literature concerning colonial exploitation . It is timely and educational.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
To learn more about the history of empire we come to courses like this, from books, radio and tv programmes novels etc. These resources may well trigger relevant thoughts, comments and discussions in certain social situations such as when we see appropriate photographs of coffee growers in Costa. What is unrealistic is Dr de Groot’s implied suggestion that we,...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
In the UK I think that the Joseph Rowntree charitable trusts are at least as important as the chocolate products the company manufactures.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I actually think of those families in and around Dentdale who were instrumental in the founding of the Quaker Movement.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
My ancestors hailed from Dentdale and were of Quaker stock. Certainly there was some intermarriage with Rowntrees and, I think, Frys. Funny, I don’t have a sweet tooth!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Very interesting. Only one Thistlethwaite, so must have been a law abiding lot or clever! The case was heard in the Consitory Court in Richmond in 1580 and concerned wardship/ guardianship for John, son of Marmaduke ( deceased) by siblings James and Janet. Outcome unknown.
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No knowledge at all.
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Margaret’s decisions led to her death and that of her unborn child. I don’t know enough of the Catholic faith to know whether that meant that the child’s soul would be permanently damned. If this is the case then should she not have followed her family’s advice and told the court of her pregnancy and postponed her own death?
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Difficult in that fines were expensive but also there would have been societal pressures which would cause social exclusion and affect business and work.
Many Catholics and non- conformists would simply pretend to conform and go ‘underground’. -
Only that she was a faithful Catholic and, I think , executed for her beliefs.
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Ever the North South decide - nothing changes!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The Pilgrimage of Grace was effective in that it made the government listen but in terms of action on their demands not at all.
The Pilgrimage, supported as it was by a third of the country, and the most distant part at that, would be considered a threat to any government. -
The Pilgrimage was a peaceful rebellion by poor people anxious for what they considered their religious rights and the social support which the monasteries offered. Although centred on York it involved much of the north of England.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I’m interested in The Pilgrimage of Grace having read about it both in novels and a recent history of the northern people of England.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
There is a reference to Warton, the nearest village mentioned to my own birthplace. John Cauchon emigrated there from France and was the Parson of Warton.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Yorkshire and wool go together. I thought wool production and trade with the Low Countries would have been relevant to York.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I imagine that most aliens were traders eg in wool, mercenaries or diplomats. It will be interesting to see.
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York from Roman times was well known in Europe with strong trade links and religious links with Rome. It had been the capital of two nations- Northumbria and Viking Danegeld. I opted for 5%
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Four escapees in four hundred years sounds like successful imprisonment or a remarkable degree of acceptance on the part of the nuns.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Two reasons. They recognised the validity of her case or if she didn’t fit in well with the close community they were pleased to help her leave.
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York had already had experience of being a capital city for two nations- Northumbria and the region of the Danegeld. So there will be a lot of history prior to the Middle Ages.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Immigrants and their experiences will be interesting.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I’m a retired Lancastrian but do recognise that good things go on over the border too! York,I’m sure, will be be a case in point.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
York is pivotal to the history of Northern England and its people. I am looking forward to learning more about it.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
As a Northerner myself I realise the importance of York from the kingdom of Northumbria to the present time and am looking forward to adding to my understanding of its trajectory through history.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The point is that these stories are for children who can accept the impossible. Children who are animistic, who live in the world of imaginary friends. Who take to bed and talk to animals which are far more dangerous than wolves.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Fairy stories don’t pose problems of believability for most young children - they are animistic and believe in magic and talk to their teddy bears ( far more dangerous creatures than wolves!!).
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
We should remember that these are stories for very young children not adolescents. It is for the adults reading them to translate the warnings and if considered appropriate describe them to the child in an age appropriate way. For most parents they simply want a good story to read. So the questions asked cannot have a single answer.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
We should remember that this is a fairytale and while enjoyable bears no resemblance to reality. So I don’t see that asking ‘real’ questions adds to insights into the story. Our questions are better directed to the magic world in which the story is clearly set.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The pleasure gained from reading stories for young children is that they are often written at two levels- for the child and the adult reader. The Mistermen series is a good example. Looked at in this way Perrault was able to tell a story to the child and at the same time get the moral message to the parent as a tool for the child’s upbringing.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Is not the fact that repetition is fundamental to a child’s language and memory development the main reason that it is a must in young children’s literature. Of course it brightens up a story too.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
While Perrault’s re-writing of these stories and adding a moral is a laudable attempt to protect children, it is interesting to learn that in fact they were folk-tales and hence may have been better known to rural parents than the urban elite. The question of strangers is a difficult one. In life children and young people have to learn whom they can trust and...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I don’t think running after butterflies, gathering conkers is only in the experience of middle class children. As a farm boy my mother taught us the names of wild flowers, Thomas Hardy’s families had holidays and poverty stricken John Clare was steeped in the essence of the natural world.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I remember at school reading an historical novel entitled‘The Cloister and the Hearth’ . The author, Charles Reade, describing the travels of a young artist, conjures up beautifully the peril and fears of travelling through the forests of 15th century Europe.
Coming back to today, Edward Wilson, famous American biologist, reports a study in one of his books,... -
Charles Perrault answers my previous question - both were devoured, but my granddaughter is quite sure only gran was eaten and LRRH’s screams saved her - we’ll see.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I remember LRRH commenting on certain of ‘grandma’s’ facial features but I can’t remember if LRRH was rescued alongside gran before or after she became a second vulpine lunch - my excuse is advanced years and many gory stories along the way!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
There may be different versions in different languages, times and editions. Or wishful thinking!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Stories, which were told or read to me, usually by my mother, of animals or humans, frequently children. The stories could be happy or dark. The ‘hero/ine was often in a scary situation but always came out on top. The story and it’s outcome engendered a moral which was, in early stories the authors’ raisin d’etre. Later fairy tales were more likely simply to...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The course sounds interesting and I have grandchildren!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
See previous comment.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Clara Thompson’s oral history was brilliant, told in a matter of fact way which was evocative and real. It said as much in a few minutes as any written history could.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Germany is in a period of economic strength and wishes to increase this by establishing an empire. The British navy stands in the way but is stretched by worldwide commitments. It has no North Sea base and this coupled with a perception of a weak army indicates that the quickest way for Germany to achieve it’s aim is by invasion.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
My mothers beloved brother died in France in WW1. This was never forgotten and in respect to the love and memory a subsequent son born to the family was given the same first name.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
As an outsider I found the lesson on correct nomenclature informative.
Regarding Wargan, I like Crows, they’re so intelligent. I think Wargan was really a Wood pigeon in disguise. -
David Thistlethwaite made a comment
What about an Australian equivalent of Scotland’s Burns’ Night. Does Australia have a poet, artist, national hero that all Australians could rally round? As a ‘Pom’ I would suggest Shayne Warne!!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I have read novels such as Robert Hughes’ brilliant ‘The Fatal Shore’ and ‘The English Passengers’ which tend towards an Anglo-Saxon view of Australian history, and having visited Australia and seen Aboriginal art in museums and galleries I would like to learn of the history of Aboriginal Australians as it is viewed by academics today especially those from an...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I am looking forward to learning of the Aboriginal people of Australia. I feel I know a little of the early convict period from Robert Hughes’ brilliant book‘The Fatal Shore’ but know little of the lives, culture and history of Australia’s indigenous people.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I found the section on diversity (or lack of it in picturebooks) interesting and concerning. There are so many brilliant writers who I’m sure are sensitive to this issue. Is it publishers who are standing in the way of a wider diversity of books for financial reasons?
Also this section introduced some statistical analysis. The whole course covers a very... -
David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I have some difficulty with the use of ‘bias’ as it relates to infants of three months. ‘Familiarity with’ leading to ‘preference for’ might more reflect development at that age.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
This certainly shows how important diverse characters and their narratives are; words are important too. The text refers ‘to a recent study in the UK shows that the number of children who say they ‘own’ a book is decreasing.’ For young children ‘have’’ is a much better word in this context.
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The statistics appear to highlight an important societal problem. To make them more meaningful it would be helpful to compare these percentages with the percentage each group constitutes in the whole population.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The book I’ve chosen is entitled ‘Die Kleiber Rote Henne und die Wezenkorner.’ As ‘The Little Red Hen and the Grains of Wheat’, it was our children’s favourite. In this edition the first title is German in bold type with the English title below in a bold but more italic type. Within the book the print types are maintained with German always above the English...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I have heard educationists say that learning a second language helps students in other aspects of their education. It would be interesting in this course to have psychological studies on the benefits to learning of the course points in relation to text placement, font size, even colour ie a bit more science background.
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Yesterday I went to our city library to look at Gaelic children’s picture books. There was a good collection. All were written in Gaelic only, with no English translation. Only 1.1 % of Scots speak Gaelic. Perhaps it reflects a confidence on the part of parents and teachers in their own wish and ability to teach their language unhindered by translation....
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In Scotland there are many bilingual books for children. These usually have Gaelic first and English second. On one cover is the sentence ‘a great resource for teaching and learning Gaelic and English as a second language. Gaelic is seeing a resurgence. In the West of Scotland, the Hebrides and the Outer Isles place names are first in Gaelic and then English.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
As I was watching and listening to the video I thought about young children leaning to understand and enjoy stories and rather older ones learning to read. In one way they are all coming into contact with two languages on the page - the ideas and concepts they know and those they don’t understand and words they can read and those they can’t. Parents and...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
In all the years of reading to children and grandchildren I have never really considered the ‘anatomy’ of the pictures. This has been interesting and instructive. I am now looking forward to the physiology- the words, meaning and context.
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I have resurrected a book which our son was given as a Sunday School prize- he is now in middle age! It is in the Ladybird Well- loved tales series- The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids. The picture on page 21 illustrates salience and facial expression, the wolf is dominant, with mouth open, teeth obvious, he is ready to pounce. The kids are petrified as shown...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Interesting, especially in relation to line. I shall pay attention to line when I next read with the grandchildren. The other components are self explanatory.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
We need more of the children’s perspective. Obviously many authors and illustrators get it right because their books are so popular. If this popularity is because parents like them that’s a good thing but picturebooks may read and look different with a greater knowledge of what children think and want.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
An interesting but very adult centred summary. It would be very useful to have properly researched studies on what young children think and want.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I’m David a retired grandfather from Scotland. When I was a child in WW2 there were few picture books probably because paper was at a premium during the war. I remember nursery rhyme books with coloured pictures and there were story books with pictures often in black and white. My mother was my main storyteller- I still remember her stories, and my favourite...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
A nice way of introducing colleagues. I did think with Hairy Maclary I would be taken to the Hebrides but I’m happy to remain in New Zealand.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Unlike the times of our children and grandchildren, eighty years ago there were relatively few picture books. There were stories with pictures which were in black and white as often as colour. One series I loved was about Rupert Bear. These took the form of a series of coloured pictures with an underlying rhyming couplet which related to the picture. The...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
I’m David. My interest in the course is that my ancestors were Quakers living in Dentdale the most western of the Yorkshire Dales. While not religious myself I am looking forward to learning about their faith in what was a close knit community.
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An excellent and thought provoking course. It is a credit to the school that this course is the equal if not superior to to many university level courses.
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These are all vast questions . The young deserve a greater say since they are the future in a broken world. So start with a lowering of the voting age. Get youngsters used to expressing an opinion and preference through ballots during the school years and in relevant activities outside school. If these can be shown to make a difference perhaps they will be...
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Riots no - political protest and civil disobedience yes.
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Each would have understood that under certain circumstances civil disturbance can occur. Hobbes ‘any state is better than no state’ may have called for increased police powers, Locke ‘government subservient to the people’s will’ would call for more control over the organs of the state ie the police, while it is difficult to know what Rousseau would have...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
While one has a gut feeling that policing has improved without evidence, which the course does not supply, it is not possible to say in regard to the whole of Britain.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The various bodies aimed at assessing police behaviour probably does moderate excesses but what people want in their localities is confidence in ‘their’ police from regular contact both on the streets and in formal meetings.
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While the question of progress is an important one it is difficult to determine without detailed information. How many police from ethnic minorities are serving in the force, what are the stop and search statistics and how are they apportioned between ethnic groups, what are the crime statistics, and are there studies of what local people’s attitudes are?
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
1. In each region the people elect a Police Commissioner
2. A local force whose makeup reflects the community it serves
3. Better training of the police in the SUS laws and their implementation. -
David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Benet Hytner got a good response from the community. Had the Chief Constable been prepared to give evidence in a spirit of compromise and progress this could have been very beneficial. In fact the recommendations would not have been very different and seem to have had a reasonably good outcome.
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At a time of high knife crime ‘stop and search’ is a necessary tool for the police. It is only one approach and its fair use requires training and experience.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
These views reflected a pronounced racism in Britain which persists today to a lesser but definite degree.
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Newspapers in England particularly are not neutral. However there are journalists (a few) who give a reasoned argument for their point of view. The secret is to read a cross section of these views.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
William Blake had something when he wrote,’ To tell a truth with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent.’
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The community of Moss Side was under stress because of a mixture of high unemployment, especially among the youth, loss of social cohesion because of unsatisfactory rehousing development and strained relationship with the police. In the light of this the events following the Nile Club disturbances were understandable and avoidable and it will be interesting to...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
In the 1980s there were few people from the ethnic minorities in the police force and those that were often suffered antagonism if not abuse. This meant that there was not enough understanding of mores and perceptions of communities on the part of the police leading to misunderstanding on both sides causing violent confrontations. The answer lay in recruitment...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The State did fail black youngsters in Moss Side and many other populations too. It was clear from the 1960s that there was progressive economic decline in Britain. One important reason for this was inherent in the British democratic system where the sitting Prime Minister could determine the date of elections. This led to short term planning solely aimed at...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
This more than anything we have heard so far indicates how toxic was the relationship between the police and some ethnic groups in poor parts of the inner cities.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Difficult to know without more information on factors such as unemployment and housing in Brixton but the fractured relationship between the community and the police is similar and there is likely to have been a copycat element in the Moss Side riots.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Increasing poverty both financial (as reflected in unemployment rates , especially youth unemployment) and in terms of unfulfilled and unfulfillable expectations led to disillusionment of a large part of the community. Under these circumstances it only takes a spark to set off civil unrest.
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I lived and worked for more than a quarter of a century in Burnley, Lancashire. The town was built on the cotton industry and much of its housing stock is in the form of terraces as shown in the video. While these houses can become slums if neglected equally they can be modernised to produce comfortable, warm homes. The terrace system has for a century or more...
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Whether at national, regional or local level ( eg Moss Side) the greater the disparity in income between the richest and poorest, the greater are societal ills such as suicide, mental illness and drug addiction. If governments are to govern for all the people these differences have to be defined and addressed otherwise eventually there will be societal...
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
An unemployment rate of 60% of young people is serious and likely to cause societal problems. Any inclusive government would see this as a problem for which remedial action is called for. We shall see if such action was forthcoming.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Their ideas remain fundamental to the functioning of modern democracies.The question of how to deal with a government which breaks the Social Contract is a difficult one - a fully functioning and independent judiciary is vital in this situation.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
We need more information to answer this question.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
The problem is how do you determine ‘the general will’? Is it the will of the majority- 51%!!? How does it relate to public opinion which is notoriously fickle? Who’s to say- social media!
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Yes, if the people of Moss Side feel that the organs of the state are not acting in their interests, and this is a long held perception, they may feel that civil disobedience is an appropriate response. This does not condone violence.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
Again there is not enough evidence to answer the question. How many people on the streets were arrested? How many were found guilty of riot or affray?How many were injured especially by vehicles? Did the enquiry find the police guilty of unprofessional conduct ?
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The information given is inadequate to come to a balanced view.
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David Thistlethwaite made a comment
In the biodynamic system perhaps The Planets Suite by Holst would increase grape production.