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UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.
- Thread starter Chinner
- Start date
Kaltagesta
Banned
zomgbbqftw said:
Absolutely. And it's why I always think it's a bit odd when people try and make him and Cameron into a sort of Blair-Brown heir style system. They're fundamentally different situations. Osborne actively revels in being the bad cop to Cameron's good cop. He's also the Tory party's main political strategist and I think it's more of the back-room, late night phone stuff that he likes, not the BBC Breakfast crap Cameron has to do.
Gosh, the suspense over the Euro crisis is killing me! Something has to give, but what and when? Just do it and get it over with!
I'm considering a move to Germany, because I think they have better jobs for mechanical engineers. And since they too have introduced Bachelors now my qualification would be recognised there. And I speak fluent German.
But if the ECB starts printing money to save south Europe and Germany starts going downhill (exports would become too expensive)... damn. Then I'd be just as unemployed over there.
I just don't know. Fuck.
I'm considering a move to Germany, because I think they have better jobs for mechanical engineers. And since they too have introduced Bachelors now my qualification would be recognised there. And I speak fluent German.
But if the ECB starts printing money to save south Europe and Germany starts going downhill (exports would become too expensive)... damn. Then I'd be just as unemployed over there.
I just don't know. Fuck.
TCRS said:
haha, just read this article about this firm not being able to get ENOUGH engineers!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-15735691
J Tourettes
Banned
Meadows said:
Germany vs Gloucester? Think I'd go to Germany if I could already speak German, experience what it's like to live in an other country.
frankie_baby
Member
ACtually its tewkesbury not gloucester, tewkesbury is very nice but very small though its close to cheltenham which is very niceJ Tourettes said:
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Gaaraz said:
Google News?
J Tourettes
Banned
frankie_baby said:
My mistake, meant to write Gloucestershire as in the headline. I've been Cheltenham a few times and my main memory is being blown away by the sheer amount of busty girls. Don't know what they put in the water there...
frankie_baby
Member
I live just down the road so go there all the time, they're busty and easy, win winJ Tourettes said:
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Anyway, surprised no one has mentioned the dire unemployment figures. 197k jobs lost in the past three months and in the last year more than 90% of jobs created (over 700k) have gone to non-UK nationals so the economy is creating jobs in the private sector but they not going to UK nationals so the overall unemployment figures are not coming down as fast as they should.
I have not spoken about this here, but I believe it is because the UK middle classes are too entitled because of a complete lack of competition from the working classes for jobs and university places. This complete lack of social mobility has lead to an entitled middle class (in terms of school places, university places and jobs) and an entitled working class (in terms of benefits). That system worked fine in the 80's and 90's before cheap, skilled workers from the EU ad beyond were able to come to the UK and outcompete local people. The UK is maybe a few years away from being wholly dependent on immigrants and their children for unskilled and skilled labour and it will leave a generation of local people unemployed and on benefits. We are already seeing this with a massive rise in long term unemployment among British nationals.
Solutions? There are a few easy, reactive steps that can be taken. The first would be to cut immigration from EU and non-EU countries, but I fear this would have a knock on effect on economic growth because the UK has a very acute skills shortage in many fields right now because of piss poor educational standards over the last 20 or so years. Another way would be to handicap immigrants in low skilled positions by having a special rate of minimum wage for long term unemployed to incentivise business to take on the long term unemployed instead of immigrant labour, that is a short term fix for a long term problem though and needs to be backed up with government incentives for training. Really though, the best way to get young people back into work is to increase school standards. In 2000 the UK was ranked 6th internationally for combined teaching standards and last year we were ranked 21st. The UK has fallen behind the rest of the world in schooling achievement and this is where our skills shortage comes from. We have stagnated while the rest of the world has improved. Shanghai is now the world's number one area for schools followed by South Korea. Just 10 years previous we were ahead of both by a long way.
We need a much bigger emphasis on basic education of maths, English, science and history. I'm pleased that Gove is making headway against the "progressive" alliance of teachers unions who seem to not want to teach kids the basics (stuff like the EBacc really helps) and instead concentrate on idiocy like citizenship and other such inanities, but it is a long road ahead. The UK must improve it's schooling otherwise we will fall further behind and become further reliant on immigrant labour and see more young people out of work and on benefits.
Education is the single most important policy area for the government and making sure we don't have a second generation of kids who need to be taught how to read and write at work is imperative.
I have not spoken about this here, but I believe it is because the UK middle classes are too entitled because of a complete lack of competition from the working classes for jobs and university places. This complete lack of social mobility has lead to an entitled middle class (in terms of school places, university places and jobs) and an entitled working class (in terms of benefits). That system worked fine in the 80's and 90's before cheap, skilled workers from the EU ad beyond were able to come to the UK and outcompete local people. The UK is maybe a few years away from being wholly dependent on immigrants and their children for unskilled and skilled labour and it will leave a generation of local people unemployed and on benefits. We are already seeing this with a massive rise in long term unemployment among British nationals.
Solutions? There are a few easy, reactive steps that can be taken. The first would be to cut immigration from EU and non-EU countries, but I fear this would have a knock on effect on economic growth because the UK has a very acute skills shortage in many fields right now because of piss poor educational standards over the last 20 or so years. Another way would be to handicap immigrants in low skilled positions by having a special rate of minimum wage for long term unemployed to incentivise business to take on the long term unemployed instead of immigrant labour, that is a short term fix for a long term problem though and needs to be backed up with government incentives for training. Really though, the best way to get young people back into work is to increase school standards. In 2000 the UK was ranked 6th internationally for combined teaching standards and last year we were ranked 21st. The UK has fallen behind the rest of the world in schooling achievement and this is where our skills shortage comes from. We have stagnated while the rest of the world has improved. Shanghai is now the world's number one area for schools followed by South Korea. Just 10 years previous we were ahead of both by a long way.
We need a much bigger emphasis on basic education of maths, English, science and history. I'm pleased that Gove is making headway against the "progressive" alliance of teachers unions who seem to not want to teach kids the basics (stuff like the EBacc really helps) and instead concentrate on idiocy like citizenship and other such inanities, but it is a long road ahead. The UK must improve it's schooling otherwise we will fall further behind and become further reliant on immigrant labour and see more young people out of work and on benefits.
Education is the single most important policy area for the government and making sure we don't have a second generation of kids who need to be taught how to read and write at work is imperative.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/n...london-tube-train?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038
God, I can just imagine the person hearing the announcement and in their more holy/liberal than thou "mental bubble" thought how many 'hipster points' they'd get from their friends in writing a super-duper anti-racist letter to the guardian.
God, I can just imagine the person hearing the announcement and in their more holy/liberal than thou "mental bubble" thought how many 'hipster points' they'd get from their friends in writing a super-duper anti-racist letter to the guardian.
radioheadrule83
Banned
So now the unemployed are illiterate and have no numeracy skills, as well as being feckless and idle, got it 
I think to some degree, some of what you said (zomg) is true. People aspire to doing more with themselves and look down on certain kinds of work -- or they're just not prepared to do it for the wage that a first or second generation European immigrant might. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with aspiration or expecting certain standards of care in life -- but I don't believe that people with that attitude are the common denominator amongst the swathes of unemployed anyway. There's not a lot that can be done about cheap labour coming in from outside of the country, it is our obligation to some extent as a member of the EU... in any case, I don't think such talk helps as it only helps to demean the circumstances the unemployed find themselves in and allow unscrupulous racists to scapegoat hardworking immigrants.
Outside of the M25, there are parts of this country that have never been great for jobs: towns in valleys and rural areas, villages on the outskirts and under the shadows of other cities, places with poor transport links and atrophied local economies. In times like these those places suffer more still -- the problem in places like that is simply that businesses are not represented in the scale needed in order to hire. We can either support people through bad times like these - as National Insurance is intended to do - or abandon them, perhaps exploiting them along the way. In larger urbanised towns and cities there aren't enough opportunities either, and the school you are fated to attend can often be decided by the religious parish you belong to or the numbers on your post-code. The ghettoisation of some suburbs up and down the country isn't solely down to education problems, there are structural problems in our society that mean that crime and cultural subversion pay better - not just in terms of actual money but in terms of the actual social/living experience. I don't think Governments, and with respect, people in financially well paid jobs like yourself, really understand the mindset and motivations of an underclass that feels largely divorced from and shat upon by everyone and everything else. And I certainly feel its true that Governments only give a toss about what is going on outside of the M25 in this country when it comes to getting people to vote a certain way... and when it comes to lining the pockets of huge companies that live in our cities and ports.
I disagree that we have some kind of horrendous decline in national educational standards -- I judge us on what we do rather than where we sit in some statistical league table. We have a lot to be proud of. We are a country that is increasingly a victim of international industrial espionage because we have great minds at companies like Rolls-Royce, which has went from building iconic cars to aeronautical engineering, defence companies like BAE Systems, a huge presence in international media thanks to our expertise in film and television, companies like Dyson, Cadbury, gaming companies like Crytek UK, Rockstar North, or IOS/Android/SocNetworking devs like BigPixel and YoYo. We pioneer in things like Moog motion control and low power consumption ARM-based processor design. And of course, we have a thriving financial sector of which you are a part. A lot of the great minds working in such industries do tend to come from predictable areas though.
I agree that English, Science and Maths knowledge should be a strong focus at least up until the point that a person decides their core disciplines in life. They are literally the only subjects that matter if you don't plan to do a language or design/technological discipline at GCSE level. But what I think is more important beyond that, is a rationalisation of A-Levels and University degrees. University should be for the more academic subjects. For things which are more vocational, hands-on and experience based (I include digital arts, non-computer-science IT subjects, and other such things) - we should not be sending people to University for that. We should be making it clearer to kids that if they are going to study humanities type subjects at University, that they are taking a huge risk with their time and money. Let them do it if they want to and believe they can make something of it, but lets get out of this situation we have now where we have a degree for everything and everyone goes purely because its whats expected of them.
I think creative classes at schools are probably just as important as the English, Maths, Science trinity in some respects - because I think downtime and fun are part of a healthy childhood, and creative freedom is what fosters the entrepreneurial spirit. We should be encouraging kids to look at things that people 'make' and allowing them to discover fun ways of making them better. We should be listening to them and learning from them as well as trying to teach them. At the moment we're just forcing a rigid prospectus upon them, scoring them against an arbitrary league table and later in life - leaving them on the sidelines when they're fresh out of school or they've graduated in anything other than the school of life. All while we pursue austerity and force a tired, aging workforce into working longer with little or no reward. We are not making the best uses of our resources imo.
that's a reference to the other thread going on at the moment
I think to some degree, some of what you said (zomg) is true. People aspire to doing more with themselves and look down on certain kinds of work -- or they're just not prepared to do it for the wage that a first or second generation European immigrant might. I actually don't think there's anything wrong with aspiration or expecting certain standards of care in life -- but I don't believe that people with that attitude are the common denominator amongst the swathes of unemployed anyway. There's not a lot that can be done about cheap labour coming in from outside of the country, it is our obligation to some extent as a member of the EU... in any case, I don't think such talk helps as it only helps to demean the circumstances the unemployed find themselves in and allow unscrupulous racists to scapegoat hardworking immigrants.
Outside of the M25, there are parts of this country that have never been great for jobs: towns in valleys and rural areas, villages on the outskirts and under the shadows of other cities, places with poor transport links and atrophied local economies. In times like these those places suffer more still -- the problem in places like that is simply that businesses are not represented in the scale needed in order to hire. We can either support people through bad times like these - as National Insurance is intended to do - or abandon them, perhaps exploiting them along the way. In larger urbanised towns and cities there aren't enough opportunities either, and the school you are fated to attend can often be decided by the religious parish you belong to or the numbers on your post-code. The ghettoisation of some suburbs up and down the country isn't solely down to education problems, there are structural problems in our society that mean that crime and cultural subversion pay better - not just in terms of actual money but in terms of the actual social/living experience. I don't think Governments, and with respect, people in financially well paid jobs like yourself, really understand the mindset and motivations of an underclass that feels largely divorced from and shat upon by everyone and everything else. And I certainly feel its true that Governments only give a toss about what is going on outside of the M25 in this country when it comes to getting people to vote a certain way... and when it comes to lining the pockets of huge companies that live in our cities and ports.
I disagree that we have some kind of horrendous decline in national educational standards -- I judge us on what we do rather than where we sit in some statistical league table. We have a lot to be proud of. We are a country that is increasingly a victim of international industrial espionage because we have great minds at companies like Rolls-Royce, which has went from building iconic cars to aeronautical engineering, defence companies like BAE Systems, a huge presence in international media thanks to our expertise in film and television, companies like Dyson, Cadbury, gaming companies like Crytek UK, Rockstar North, or IOS/Android/SocNetworking devs like BigPixel and YoYo. We pioneer in things like Moog motion control and low power consumption ARM-based processor design. And of course, we have a thriving financial sector of which you are a part. A lot of the great minds working in such industries do tend to come from predictable areas though.
I agree that English, Science and Maths knowledge should be a strong focus at least up until the point that a person decides their core disciplines in life. They are literally the only subjects that matter if you don't plan to do a language or design/technological discipline at GCSE level. But what I think is more important beyond that, is a rationalisation of A-Levels and University degrees. University should be for the more academic subjects. For things which are more vocational, hands-on and experience based (I include digital arts, non-computer-science IT subjects, and other such things) - we should not be sending people to University for that. We should be making it clearer to kids that if they are going to study humanities type subjects at University, that they are taking a huge risk with their time and money. Let them do it if they want to and believe they can make something of it, but lets get out of this situation we have now where we have a degree for everything and everyone goes purely because its whats expected of them.
I think creative classes at schools are probably just as important as the English, Maths, Science trinity in some respects - because I think downtime and fun are part of a healthy childhood, and creative freedom is what fosters the entrepreneurial spirit. We should be encouraging kids to look at things that people 'make' and allowing them to discover fun ways of making them better. We should be listening to them and learning from them as well as trying to teach them. At the moment we're just forcing a rigid prospectus upon them, scoring them against an arbitrary league table and later in life - leaving them on the sidelines when they're fresh out of school or they've graduated in anything other than the school of life. All while we pursue austerity and force a tired, aging workforce into working longer with little or no reward. We are not making the best uses of our resources imo.
frankie_baby
Member
Meadows said:
Did the guy not complain to London underground? That driver should be sacked
lo escondido
Apartheid is, in fact, not institutional racism
sorry I'm on my phone so I can't shorten your quote but haven't you guys already made it harder for foreign workers under Cameron. I remember looking at some new law because I'm interested at studying and maybe working over there that its now much much harder to get work permits. You have to be sponsered to even get one nowadays i think. At least that's what I remember reading.zomgbbqftw said:
frankie_baby
Member
Whatever the letter writer was thinking it still doesn't excuse a drives making racist comments to a packed tube train, its easy enough for the drives just to tell people to beware of pickpockets he doesn't have to go to the extra effort of slagging off Europeans, if he wants to do that he can do it on his own time not while working a public service jobMeadows said:
radioheadrule83
Banned
Meadows said:
It always brightens my day when I get on a Virgin or Cross Country train and the driver is making jokes over the intercom, but yeah - I'm not surprised he had a complaint about the European comment -- take that out and warn about recent pick pocketing and its a useful public service announcement! And tbh, I think most tube stations in London could come with such warnings -- "commuter beware, we are now arriving at another shithole"
lo escondido
Apartheid is, in fact, not institutional racism
WTF. so am I wrong about the laws of is there that law there and she is just woefully inept? I thought i read it on the home departments (i don't know what you guys call it) website.Meadows said:
I think I'd count as skilled labor because I'd hopefully have a masters.
J Tourettes
Banned
Meadows said:
Fixed for accuracy.
lo escondido
Apartheid is, in fact, not institutional racism
Meadows said:
aye, when the time comes I´ll figure it out.
StealthGoblin
Banned
With regards to Education, one of the biggest problems we've had when trying to make effective changes to our system is that we look at other countries models and try to apply them to Britain. Some of these work, such as the Dutch methods for teaching primary maths (there are multiple ways of teaching multiplication and division now, far more than most people would imagine) whereas others fall flat on their face because Britain is in a rather unique situation.
Take for example teaching English. The government routinely ask teachers what they think is best, but they tend to focus on foreign teachers towards the end of the process and it tends to influence policy. Its no good asking Finnish and Swedish language teachers what works best because we have a much more challenging environment because of the sheer number of children who have English as an additional language. There isn't a one size fits all approach to this, and as much as people love phonics, the English language is an absolute swine because there are so many exceptions to the many rules. We have 44 phonemes for just 26 letters and then we have to pile on variations in accent.
As a knock on effect, secondary Vernacular Language education is likely to hit a brick wall in the coming years because there will be a large number of pupils who are behind their peers. The average scores will go down, but the scale of improvement will be much larger for those pupils.
I'm actually in favour of lengthening the number of hours of 'core' subject teaching in the primary environment. We currently have schemes such as 'Literacy Hour' and 'Numeracy Hour' which sound good on paper, but the reality of that is that each hour is broken down into sub-sections and the children will not be practising their skills for long enough each day. Sometimes it feels like a circus in a classroom, particularly if several of the pupils are struggling. Again, what I consider a lack of 'practice' in numeracy will surely have an impact at the secondary level. When we throw in differentiation due to learning styles (Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic) into the mix, we'll have quite a fragmented secondary numeracy environment, particularly if the secondary schools do not have the same level of provision for different learning methods.
Science is the big worry. Big, big, worry. Most primary school teachers like it the least out of all of the 'core' subjects, so it tends to get neglected and not taught with enough enthusiasm. . .and when children get to secondary school, the difficulty ramps up astronomically and pupils lose enthusiasm for it.
I hope the new curriculum takes into account Britain's unique circumstances instead of steamrollering home a lot of utopian ideas.
Take for example teaching English. The government routinely ask teachers what they think is best, but they tend to focus on foreign teachers towards the end of the process and it tends to influence policy. Its no good asking Finnish and Swedish language teachers what works best because we have a much more challenging environment because of the sheer number of children who have English as an additional language. There isn't a one size fits all approach to this, and as much as people love phonics, the English language is an absolute swine because there are so many exceptions to the many rules. We have 44 phonemes for just 26 letters and then we have to pile on variations in accent.
As a knock on effect, secondary Vernacular Language education is likely to hit a brick wall in the coming years because there will be a large number of pupils who are behind their peers. The average scores will go down, but the scale of improvement will be much larger for those pupils.
I'm actually in favour of lengthening the number of hours of 'core' subject teaching in the primary environment. We currently have schemes such as 'Literacy Hour' and 'Numeracy Hour' which sound good on paper, but the reality of that is that each hour is broken down into sub-sections and the children will not be practising their skills for long enough each day. Sometimes it feels like a circus in a classroom, particularly if several of the pupils are struggling. Again, what I consider a lack of 'practice' in numeracy will surely have an impact at the secondary level. When we throw in differentiation due to learning styles (Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic) into the mix, we'll have quite a fragmented secondary numeracy environment, particularly if the secondary schools do not have the same level of provision for different learning methods.
Science is the big worry. Big, big, worry. Most primary school teachers like it the least out of all of the 'core' subjects, so it tends to get neglected and not taught with enough enthusiasm. . .and when children get to secondary school, the difficulty ramps up astronomically and pupils lose enthusiasm for it.
I hope the new curriculum takes into account Britain's unique circumstances instead of steamrollering home a lot of utopian ideas.
radioheadrule83 said:
Your examples are not really the education system as whole though, they really just reflect the very top echelons, i.e. private schools & the very top universities, which are among the very best in the world. However, the vast majority of England will not go to an Eton or Harrow, or get into a Russell group university. For these peoplethe data does appear to suggest that in general the education they receive is of a worse standard than in previous decades.
phisheep
NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
lo escondido said:
That's the key thing. And it might even be more important than education (it's too late now to have a go a zomg's post, but I might try tomorrow).
Example: there's a well-known company near me that has quite suddenly recruited lots of EU foreigners (that's suddenly as in over the last year or two). Over this time it has reduced the hours worked by local people to accommodate the new staff (and yes, they can do this because they have zero-hours contracts, even for supposedly 'full-time' staff) - in a couple of cases that I know of the work hours were reduced, quite quickly, to about four hours a week. Now we're not talking education or skilled work here - this is rank minimum wage stuff. But even so, it doesn't seem right. Especially when you get less than a week's notice about when your four hours are, which makes it pretty difficult to do anything else that requires preplanning and/or commitment.
Of course the company would claim (and indeed does claim) that it gets more applicants from abroad, and that many of the local workers leave. But that's not down to the education of the foreigners or the laziness of the locals, it is down to the fact that the company in question advertised for staff extensively in (one area of) Eastern Europe while its advertising in the UK was one postcard in one jobcentre. And of course that the local people are pushed out as a consequence.
And you can't apply for a job that you don't know about.
And of course the company sponsors the work permits for its new employees, so they get them.
So 'fixing education' is a bit of a long, hopeful and not-immediately-helpful sort of policy. Fixing some of the employment and job-advertising rules might be.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Since we don't have a Brit-GAF thread anymore I suppose this is the best place to put this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj75brLCTtg&feature=related
First song in ages to really make me nostalgic and want to go back to the 90's. I get the feeling the coming decade is really going to suck and the previous decade was built on the worst kind of quicksand and our wealth is based on nothing but debt. The 90's were awesome, school was awesome, the music was fucking great and we had a decentish football team that wasn't a complete embarrassment, reality TV was non-existent so no X-Factor rubbish. I sound like a fucking old person - "in my day things were better", but for the first time I actually feel like my generation is going to have a worse quality of life than the previous one and the next generation worse still.
It feels like we, both as a country and as a world, are past the peak of our civilisation which was about 1995-1999 and it has just been down hill since then. Bring back Bill Clinton, John Major and sensible governance. Bring back the first tech boom, along with Marconi and all of the other fallen British titans of industry.
Does anyone else agree that the next generation are even more fucked than ours? I mean I have a decent job right now, but if I lost it I don't see myself finding another job too quickly since I haven't got a finance based degree and there are thousands of graduates who can do the same job I can do but for less money, and I have been out of Physics/Chemistry for far too long to go back into serious science. I have a 1st class masters degree and I'm not particularly optimistic about the future should my job no longer exist so I can't imagine what it will be like for kids without qualifications coming out of school looking for work.
NB - I have been drinking tonight...
Also, however bad anyone thinks the financial crisis is, it's worse. I guarantee it - the government and media keep most of the bad news out and unless one is exceptionally good at reading the runes of finance it just goes unnoticed by the public. As someone who works in finance I can see very, very dark clouds on the horizon and the only "protection" we have against it is that France and most of the rest of the EU are in a comparatively worse position than us. The problem is that we have a government full of incompetents and a PM who has never really done a hard day's labour or lived on an estate for even a day so doesn't understand modern Britain one fucking bit. Worse still we have an opposition party full of even worse incompetents who seem to think the world includes Westminster and Islington and nothing else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj75brLCTtg&feature=related
First song in ages to really make me nostalgic and want to go back to the 90's. I get the feeling the coming decade is really going to suck and the previous decade was built on the worst kind of quicksand and our wealth is based on nothing but debt. The 90's were awesome, school was awesome, the music was fucking great and we had a decentish football team that wasn't a complete embarrassment, reality TV was non-existent so no X-Factor rubbish. I sound like a fucking old person - "in my day things were better", but for the first time I actually feel like my generation is going to have a worse quality of life than the previous one and the next generation worse still.
It feels like we, both as a country and as a world, are past the peak of our civilisation which was about 1995-1999 and it has just been down hill since then. Bring back Bill Clinton, John Major and sensible governance. Bring back the first tech boom, along with Marconi and all of the other fallen British titans of industry.
Does anyone else agree that the next generation are even more fucked than ours? I mean I have a decent job right now, but if I lost it I don't see myself finding another job too quickly since I haven't got a finance based degree and there are thousands of graduates who can do the same job I can do but for less money, and I have been out of Physics/Chemistry for far too long to go back into serious science. I have a 1st class masters degree and I'm not particularly optimistic about the future should my job no longer exist so I can't imagine what it will be like for kids without qualifications coming out of school looking for work.
NB - I have been drinking tonight...
Also, however bad anyone thinks the financial crisis is, it's worse. I guarantee it - the government and media keep most of the bad news out and unless one is exceptionally good at reading the runes of finance it just goes unnoticed by the public. As someone who works in finance I can see very, very dark clouds on the horizon and the only "protection" we have against it is that France and most of the rest of the EU are in a comparatively worse position than us. The problem is that we have a government full of incompetents and a PM who has never really done a hard day's labour or lived on an estate for even a day so doesn't understand modern Britain one fucking bit. Worse still we have an opposition party full of even worse incompetents who seem to think the world includes Westminster and Islington and nothing else.
PJV3
Member
zomgbbqftw said:Since we don't have a Brit-GAF thread anymore I suppose this is the best place to put this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj75brLCTtg&feature=related
First song in ages to really make me nostalgic and want to go back to the 90's. I get the feeling the coming decade is really going to suck and the previous decade was built on the worst kind of quicksand and our wealth is based on nothing but debt. The 90's were awesome, school was awesome, the music was fucking great and we had a decentish football team that wasn't a complete embarrassment, reality TV was non-existent so no X-Factor rubbish. I sound like a fucking old person - "in my day things were better", but for the first time I actually feel like my generation is going to have a worse quality of life than the previous one and the next generation worse still.
It feels like we, both as a country and as a world, are past the peak of our civilisation which was about 1995-1999 and it has just been down hill since then. Bring back Bill Clinton, John Major and sensible governance. Bring back the first tech boom, along with Marconi and all of the other fallen British titans of industry.
Does anyone else agree that the next generation are even more fucked than ours? I mean I have a decent job right now, but if I lost it I don't see myself finding another job too quickly since I haven't got a finance based degree and there are thousands of graduates who can do the same job I can do but for less money, and I have been out of Physics/Chemistry for far too long to go back into serious science. I have a 1st class masters degree and I'm not particularly optimistic about the future should my job no longer exist so I can't imagine what it will be like for kids without qualifications coming out of school looking for work.
NB - I have been drinking tonight...
Also, however bad anyone thinks the financial crisis is, it's worse. I guarantee it - the government and media keep most of the bad news out and unless one is exceptionally good at reading the runes of finance it just goes unnoticed by the public. As someone who works in finance I can see very, very dark clouds on the horizon and the only "protection" we have against it is that France and most of the rest of the EU are in a comparatively worse position than us. The problem is that we have a government full of incompetents and a PM who has never really done a hard day's labour or lived on an estate for even a day so doesn't understand modern Britain one fucking bit. Worse still we have an opposition party full of even worse incompetents who seem to think the world includes Westminster and Islington and nothing else.
Speaking as somebody in his 40's, the 90's were utter shite, the 80's were utter shite and so were the 70's.
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Chinner said:
Anyplace, anytime. I'm heading out to China in a few weeks, going to get fucking wasted in Sanlitun and party like it's the fucking 90's (which is always feels like in China!) if anyone wants to join me I'll be in Beijing from the 8th to the 13th and Shanghai from the 14th to the 16th.
Z
ZombieFred
Unconfirmed Member
Hey, don't you dare insult the 90s any of you (I was born in 1990), it was one of the golden times of English TV; Crystal Maze, Catchphrase, Bottom, UK Gold (Dads army, yes minister, young ones, only fools and horses), Batman animation series, ground force, Sega Megadrive, etc.
I fucking loved the 90s.
I fucking loved the 90s.
I was born in mid '91. Early 2000s were pretty good. PS2 was the shiz but it wasn't long enough ago that people have got nostalgic about it.
Anyway, watching QT, the audience is actually good for a change, my favourite was a "local employer" who said that business owners didn't give a shit about the Tories changing workers rights, but what he actually cared about what a stimulus to give companies an incentive to hire.
Good stuff so far (15mins in)
Anyway, watching QT, the audience is actually good for a change, my favourite was a "local employer" who said that business owners didn't give a shit about the Tories changing workers rights, but what he actually cared about what a stimulus to give companies an incentive to hire.
Good stuff so far (15mins in)
radioheadrule83
Banned
ZombieFred said:
It doesn't seem fair to use UK Gold, which used to be 90% comprised of 70s and 80s reruns, to claim that the 90s was awesome for TV.
I agree it was a good decade for stuff though. Super Nintendo, Megadrive, N64 and PlayStation. Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Mario 64. Tomb Raider. The original Metal Gear Solid. The X-Men cartoon. The Golden Age of Nickelodeon - Ren & Stimpy, Rocko's Modern Life, Clarissa Explains it All (<3), Are You Afraid of the Dark? Bill Clinton getting blow jobs (bring him back and give him as many as he wants), Britpop wars, Radiohead's best albums, Nirvana, lovably terrible Nu-Metal era, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV show and movie, The Fifth Element...
J Tourettes
Banned
One of the best (and also worst) things about the nineties was 'indie' getting massive as before that good looking indie chicks were slim pickings.
Guerrillas in the Mist
Member
Eurozone crisis to dominate Cameron talks with Merkel
They both want very different things, this may end badly.
They both want very different things, this may end badly.
The press are fucking sickening
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15788275
God, just...poor lady, just had her kid and getting threatening calls from paparnazis
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15788275
God, just...poor lady, just had her kid and getting threatening calls from paparnazis
JonathanEx
Member
In lighter news, Children in Need tonight. Soap "stars" singing songs! Newsreaders "singing" songs! Popular artists "singing" "songs"!
And a Doctor Who sketch.
And a Doctor Who sketch.