At least it’s only our second highest circulation paper. Thank goodness the highest selling is The Sun! :smack:
An African or European bus?
Yeah but you can cut hash.
Now that’s something Lobby needn’t know, and you don’t need to know how I know. 
I think it’s naive to assume everyone should know this. I don’t.
Exactly. My drug education classes were heavily influenced by the ‘just say no’ idiocy. And not all history curriculums get anywhere near the Opium Wars - the English system is thoroughly focussed on other things.
A while ago, the Mail ran this story (now corrected).
This was the original image (as proof, look at the URL) (!)
So I learned about a war England fought in an American public high school history class, but people in England don’t? 
That’s kind of weird.
Yeah, there’s all sorts of important stuff that never gets taught in history classes in Britain. The Golden Revolution is hardly ever mentioned. We spent a whole year talking about crop rotation and the agricultural revolution!
Well, honestly the Brits don’t come off too well in the Opium Wars. Something about “forcing another country to accept your imported opium” or something like that. I can see how they would want to gloss over that fine example of The White Man’s Burden. 
In all seriousness: You are correct.
My memory of high-school history consists of vague reccolections of mott and bailey castles, a fat bloke called henry, a pasty woman with red hair… etc…
And then in the final year History was optional (could choose History or Geography) I chose Geography.
I will be the first to admit the UK’s education system pre-college is a big steaming bag of wank.
The Mail is a regular over at the Photoshop Disasters blog. Here is the best recent effort by their graphics monkeys: PSD: Photoshop Disasters: Daily Fail: What Is Your Major Malfunction?
Also, the Mail, like most other British papers, completely failed to do any fact-checking and claimed a dog could be seen from space.
Er, that would be a plane a couple of thousand feet up. :rolleyes:
Hey, we fought in a LOT of wars!
The principle of the curriculum isn’t to try and cover every aspect of national history, as this would be a futile exercise. The compulsory curriculum takes kids up to age 14, and with regards to the 18th & 19th centuries is focussed more around the industrial revolution and the slave trade, having a greater immediate and tangible connection to the emergence of the country we now live in. After that age any number of topics can become the fields of study: for me it included the opening up of the American west, and Communist China, both of which I think are still standard options. At this level the principle is very much that research skills and the ability to assess sources are the useful things to take on into adult life.
Wait … uh … what?
He’s saying, “How am I supposed to know pot doesn’t turn into heroin - I’m not a drug user,” is equivalent to, “How am I supposed to know lambs don’t turn into cows - I’m not a farmer.”
Yeah but, how does he … um … know they don’t turn into cows? Is jjimm a farmer? I mean, like, if a farmer knew of lambs turning into cows … um … and he … anyone got any Fritos?
Dude. Just because THC can’t turn into an opioid doesn’t mean you should inject bongwater into your eyes.
So, there’s the Daily Fail, the Grauniad, and the Sun. What papers do intelligent Brits read?
Are you serious? That’s like saying it’s naive to assume that everyone should know that you can’t turn salt into sugar. They’re totally different substances.
Not to mention the spelling of “Colombia” as “Columbia”.
Still, I would have guessed poppies -> opium/morphine/heroin was fairly common knowledge. It certainly shows up in pop culture. And it’s also good to know since ingesting poppy seed can trigger positives on drug tests for opiates.
The Chicago Reader, of course. Or at least one of the columns…