let he who hasn't botched the response to an international incident or three cast the first stone
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Jeremy Corbyn - Not Not Labour Party(?), not a Communist (BBC)
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Not that I disagree with you, but my point was literally just that the pair of them have exactly the same opinions that they express in exactly the same way. Like identically so. Didn't mean it any deeper than that.
I do think the utter disdain being shown here by Honest John towards the idea that the 'kids', by which we have to mean anyone younger than 48, might want an alternative after years and years of utter shite is indicative of an complete failure to recognise that the world has changed since the 70s and empathise with the issues facing, well, basically everyone in my generation, the one before it, and the one after it. By every measurable statistic it's significantly harder to achieve what he did and plenty of people are putting in the same hard yards just to stay afloat and subsidise some BtL landlord's mortgage. I'm sure John will argue with me and tell me I'm wrong and a spoiled brat or something, but it's completely indicative of that generations general failure to listen to important concerns affecting young (although not even that young anymore because it has been going on for so fecking long) people in this country. That doesn't mean it was easy for them either, or that people didn't earn what they have or whatever (as so often the defence is) just that changing circumstances (many of which are a result of the boomers pulling up the ladder behind them) have made it significantly harder.
Unfortunately I do not recognise this analogy. I left school in 1975 and higher education did not feature in any way shape or form in the choices available to me. It wasn't just me it was everyone that came out of the same shite secondary modern that I went to. I actually do not know anyone from my year that went into HE. Nor anyone from my neighbourhood. As far as I was concerned, HE and University was for the rich. Apprenticeships were my only option, which I took. At first I hated it but my step-father was a vicious bastard demanding that I pay my way in the house and was on my case from day one- that I was too scared not to go to work. Ironically, I am still in that industry and the place where I served my apprenticeship is now my biggest customer.
It was not until 1987 that I went back into HE as a mature student on my own volition. My fees were paid and I received a mature student grant of £3,500. I moved off the part time course because I took a job in the Institution (now University) that I was in. This allowed me to move onto the part-time curriculum and to go beyond that which I went back for in the first place. So I gained a BEng and then Masters. From that point of view we have some agreement. With manufacturing (and hence apprenticeships) disappearing the big push was to provide more HE opportunities to a wider number of young people and so the University population grew dramatically as they vied to get bums on seats. PCFE funding depended on Full Time Equivalents. Whether that was good or bad I don't know, but the predominant view was that they were lowering the standards to get more students in. They threw the baby out with the bath water in my opinion. We created a load of 2:1 Business Degree graduates who were flipping burgers. Now we have a skill shortage and they are finally waking up to the fact that they should have not let apprenticeships all but disappear.
If apprenticeships can gain more credence as a decent alternative to University then I think that the opportunities will return for young people who may not be in the academic elite. In my business for example I have CNC Programmers who with the overtime regularly P60 over £65k
We don't need free Higher Education - it would lead to rationing by the government and a lowering of standards. What is needed is pathway choices.
I don't believe that things are worse now than when I was young. I have been lucky but I have worked hard too.
I do think though, that sometimes young people today expect too much on a plate and are not prepared to find a way to get it.
Beware of looking to a nanny governments to solve all your problems.
Ninj - "Utter Disdain" is not what I intended. If that is how you see it then I am sorry. But your stereotyping me as some baby-booming privileged fogey that has lost touch with reality doesn't really scan either.
Blaming 70's Britain on 'The Unions' is pretty simplistic too.
The funny thing is you've written two paragraphs above on how you didn't have it all that easy which lists a bunch of opportunities and chances that are simply unrecognisable to people leaving school nowadays – some of which you even admit to in your post! God, fees paid and a grant. What a dream!
I'm sorry, but – for all the hard work I really do believe that you did – the chances are if you were born in the 90s from the background you were from and the school you said you attended you'd most likely currently be on a zero hours contract in a shop working just as hard struggling to pay rent. I don't mean that as a criticism of you, but that's the extent that social mobility has broken down since you were a child to now and the crisis of opportunities facing our generation. Sure, if you're in the right place at the right time you might still be able to do it, but the proof is in the pudding and every measure you can possibly use to measure it points to the fact you had a significantly better chance to do well in life.
That's not even to mention the fact that you could buy a comparatively affordable house and not chuck away over half of your pay cheque to pay someone else's mortgage, a house, which has since increased in value far beyond inflation for years through no work of your own.
You can keep saying you 'don't recognise' the picture being painted of you or that it 'doesn't scan' to be called a baby boomer, but nobody thinks of themselves in those terms. And as I said, I don't for a second believe you're being untruthful with what you're saying about your own work ethic, just we've long since reached a point where hard work alone isn't enough.
If you can't appreciate why younger generations are sick to the back teeth of having their lives on pause then you're simply never going to understand why telling people 'vote for the status quo caus it could be worse' is going to piss people right off.
And I apply the same logic to the Leave vote too, btw, as much as I hate the fact that we left – and see it as the final act of your generation and the ones before you pulling the ladder up behind you as went – there were plenty of people who were lied to and were told that it was a meaningful way to improve their situation. Ironically it has just entrenched the control of the feckers actually responsible for the problems faced, but there you go.
Harold Wilson won in 64 on the oft-repeated mantra '13 years of Tory mis-rule'.
It was possible Porton Down might have been be able to source the exact location based on trace elements, but unlikely. The case against Russia never relied on that degree of specificity. The real issue is Boris's imprecise language (again) - unforgivable, totally unforgivable in the head of our diplomatic service.
I know, but due to not being accustomed to British politics much I have deliberately not engaged in that particular discussion so far. I kind of realized on my last attempt elsewhere that it can be difficult, so I figured it's better to read along. (But what I'm quite sure of: it doesn't seem too accidential that he visited an anti-Zionist Jewish group.)
Still, these threads are also open to discuss related side issues, and that's where this leaflet & the general info about that group comes in. Jewdas' apparent attempts to combine anti-Zionism with opposition to open antisemitism have implications beyond the Corbyn debate, while touching crucial issues of that debate as well (Israel-criticism, (anti-)Zionism, antisemitism, etc.).
This part is something I think I'm able to comment on, so I did. After all, Israel-related antisemitism is more or less the same everywhere in the Western world, as are the problems in combating it.
They invited him and I'm pretty sure they are based in his constituency. Corbyn going to the group really is a non story.
That's all fair enough and I can appreciate you worked hard to get where you are but Apprenticeship schemes have had funding cut from them so now aren't as easy to get into. Perhaps if you had an unsupportive step father today and couldn't get on a apprenticeship scheme you would of been in a more menial job that paid you much less.
They used to be fully funded by government and not they aren't. My dad is probably a little bit older than you, came from a deprived background got an apprenticeship, did nightschool and got into Uni with his costs fully paid.
Nursing training has funding cut too, my sister in law is studying nursing and they've removed the bursery which means it's harder to train while paying your living costs. They prefer to import nurses from overseas because it's cheaper to bring in foreign labour. The same with other skillsets, just bring in people other governments have trained so we don't have to pick up the bill.
I absolutely agree with you about apprenticeships being more useful than expensive 'junk degrees' like media studies or sociology, unless someone is perhaps in the elite in those fields. But they obviously need full funding for apprenticeships and more career's advice pushing them in that direction. I'm sure you'd agree that without the opportunity for an apprenticeship you would have been worse off and hence cutting funding for apprenticeships is fundamentally wrong.
I think we need subsidised degrees and apprenterships in skillsets that are in demand and no subsidisation in degrees that aren't in demand. We should subsidise those that are highly capable but not subsidise those who have poor academic achievement. At the moment Unis that offer kids places with 2 Es at A level that would see them get a junk degree and still have no skills to offer the world of employment. They will have racked up a government debt they're never earning enough to pay off and the government pays that off for them. This simply needs government loan funding cutting from it and funeling into more useful educational schemes. And cut off loans from the rich kids who don't actually need them too.
There's clearly efficiencies to be had and costs to be cut while subsidising those that perhaps have a great need of being subsidised.
Getting on the housing ladder is definitely harder than when I did and when my parents did. I got on the housing ladder in 2002 and within a year local house prices around a deprived Yorkshire city had nearly doubled. But wages remained the same. We wouldn't have got on the housing ladder a year later and if we did it would have been a much smaller house. And that's the cheapest housing in the country.
Do you have children? Are they on the housing ladder? To get on the housing ladder in your neck of the woods I'd imagine to be incredibly expensive and unattainable for most young people in their 20s. Nevermind buying a house that you could raise a family in. 40-50 years ago it would be far easier and cheaper to buy a house in your region than it is today.
If you couldn't get on an apprentership scheme today you'd be in a worse position too.
And no I don't believe in a 'nanny government solving all my problems' because A) they aren't my problems I'm 38 and have a nice house in a decent area now and B) I don't believe in people being entitled upon the state. But that doesn't mean it's okay that the rich increasingly exploit the poor.
Aye, no doubt they were problematic in certain respects and probably needed curtailing, but a problematic 70s left-wing government doesn't inherently mean all left-wing governments are bad. Especially when anyone who suggests raising taxes to levels they were a few years back is being branded as some delusional leftie in that respect.
''I've worked hard for what i have'' is one of biggest load of bollocks going. No one works harder than the people under slave labour in the Congo, digging up minerals for iPhones or the Chinese workers in foxconn yet they get feck all. You didn't work hard you got lucky.
I think there's a middle-ground to be had. There's obviously an element of hard work needed to do well in life and to advance in a field, but a lot of luck-related factors come into it as well - just happening to meet the right person at the right time connection wise, or having someone you happen to know who can open doors for you within that field etc.
Plus there's the simple fact that if you already come from a reasonably settled financial background then you're going to have automatic advantages over other people - you may be able to afford to take an unpaid internship for a month or two, for example, to again get your foot in the door, while someone who's easily as skilled as you are might not be able to do that because they can't afford to go a week/month without earning in whatever job they're currently doing.
So working hard is important, but equally people ignore a lot of chance-related factors which can greatly impact how you do professionally. And that's me only talking financially - social factors, sudden family events at the wrong moment, and health problems etc can all impact this greatly as well.
Well, I guess it's simply down to them being part of his crowd. So a non story and politically relevant at the same time, depending on the angle.
I just find it annoying as the whole ''All I've done is worked hard, politics never effected me, so stop complaining'' is essentially used to depoliticise our lives. Now granted when people say this they genuinely believe it(Although I would say this just shows how deep rooted ideologies can become) it is in the end used to take away the power of political decisions.
And also everyone wants to believe and say that they've work hard for their house, car, job/business because to get these things did involve giving up large parts of your life, doing monotonous, dull, tiresome work. So surely that must be the reason you have all these things and the reason others don't is simply - they didn't work as ''hard''(And of course the younger generation have it better, they all have iPhones and iPads) as the alternative to this is that the things you have in life were mostly down to the fact you were in a certain generation at a certain time in a certain country all of which was almost completely out of your control because if that's the reason then you've just wasted a feck load of your life doing monotonous work for nothing or worse for someone else's benefit.
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Pretty much. I understand why a paper like the Telegraph or the Daily Mail would cover it (possible the Guardian as well) but it had no business being covered by the BBC(Who also also made false claims about the jewdas group)
I feel like the generational splits/differences have largely come about because of the different experiences groups have had growing up.
Baby boomers mostly grew up after the war - they were aware first-hand of the experiences many of their parents/grandparents had to go through abroad during the World Wars, and so thus find our complaints about economic hardship to be minimal in comparison. A lot of them grew up when resources were more scarce and when families were (generally speaking) living in poorer conditions than we are now with less luxuries.
But at the same time, we look at them as a generation who - despite that hardship - were generally in a position where they were, for the most part, on an upward trend, with constantly improving living conditions, the implementation of a welfare state and reasonable job security, insofar as even people who didn't go into HE generally had stable work they could rely upon for the rest of their lives, perhaps until the late 70s and the Thatcher years. As a consequence of the greed we've seen from large corporations/bankers, we're now in a position where, in spite of our increased luxury and improved tolerance/improved living conditions back then, we're going to be the first generation in a long time who're worse off than our parents when there's no real need for that to be the case.
Thus we end up with this divide. Older people think the young are entitled and workshy; the young think the old are greedy, selfish and ignorant. And obviously there have always been generational differences, but the sheer contrast between old people voting Tory and young people voting Labour is as stark as it's been in a long, long time, to the point where it's become the divide that class used to be. Something will have to give though, and with most of the working population voting Labour, disillusioned with the direction of the neoliberal economy, we'll likely see that shift result in a fairly left-wing Labour government at some point, I think.
Political point scoring over this Russia thing has put me right off Corbyn.
If there's ever a time to show unity in terms of politics, its in the face of thugs like Putin. Us showing divisiveness will be LOVED by the Kremlin, that's literally rule 1 of their propaganda playbook - get your enemies to argue among themselves while you plunder their neighbours.
If there's ever a time to show unity in terms of politics, its in the face of thugs like Putin. Us showing divisiveness will be LOVED by the Kremlin, that's literally rule 1 of their propaganda playbook - get your enemies to argue among themselves while you plunder their neighbours.
it might help if the people accusing him of being a kremlin stooge weren't lining their pockets with rubles
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I don't disagree with a word, bar this point. I'd argue that it's still about class. Just that class boundaries have broadly just split into two groups (which can be subdivided further) and people haven't noticed. Rather than traditional class boundaries we now simply have an owner class made up of, generally, older people; and a renter class made up of, generally, younger people. Eventually some of that boomer wealth will trickle down a generation and form the basis for peoples deposits, but that's not true for everyone and we face the very real prospect that (with the home ownership rate of 25-34 at near historic lows) we're looking at huge chunks of the population simply never owning their own home and wealth increasingly being funnelled into the hands of those that own multiple through rent.
If nothing changes then I can't see how Generation Rent reaching retirement age isn't going to cause a crisis on biblical proportions.
Er.. Boris was lying.
This is what Russia DO.
Whataboutism and plausible denial are literally rule 1 in their playbook. feck Corbyn for helping them play their game.
They're further fecking us on this point by trying to shut the borders, which will remove the people we need to collectively pay enough taxes for people to get pensions.
That's not whataboutism. That's the foreign secretary, Britain's most senior diplomat who has taken hundreds of thousands of pounds the Russians, chatting shit.
Sure. And Boris still fecked the response by being a giant shit eating, ruble grabbing, moron. His foot in mouth syndrome isn't Jeremy's fault. Perhaps they should listen to him and get the Russian money that's used to sponsor these killings out of the country. But no, that'll hurt their pals in the city.
You should see what they do to our precious bodily fluids.
Look I would say this was most likely Russias doing but you lot need to realise or admit that the UK is not beyond this type of thing and have done some pretty shady shit in Northern Ireland and other places.
I love this.I know I've not been on my best behaviour murdering all those people and such, but who in this world can ever claim to be the best person ever? *nonchalant pause* Nobody can, so I must get all the prizes.
That is fair comment. The management were shite too. It was a pathetic situation and the ruination of our car and motorbike industry. Low hanging fruit for the Japanese and others.
It's all relative. By the same yardstick all those on here bemoaning how dreadful things are and how us baby-boomers are clueless about anything and how the government has completely made their lives a misery should also look to the starving of the third world.
That's capitalism.
But really the government the baby boomers overwhelming voted for destroyed Libya and is now giving bombs to the Saudi's so the same can happen to Yemen. ''I may have voted way your free education and a working health service but consider your lucky because if you were brown and poor I would have voted to bomb your house'' isn't a great argument.
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Waaaaay out of context
I know I've not been on my best behaviour murdering all those people and such, but who in this world can ever claim to be the best person ever? *nonchalant pause* Nobody can, so I must get all the prizes.
All this because I dared to venture that I have worked hard.
You're very good at playing the victim, that's clear.
Yes telling the truth is political point scoring now.
The fact is we got the whole world to support us based on the idea that we had genuine information backing up our claim that the Russian State tried to murder so one on our soil. As soon as truth that it was all based on a lie came out we were going to look like clowns. Having someone around that didn't peddle the lie is a good thing.
Twice now Prime Minsters have tried to get him to accept a lie so that they could start an international incident. Both times he refused and spoke out against the wrongness of making up facts to support your agenda. Both times he was right.
And others haven't been?