h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(in reply to posts 33 & 36 )

Morning All

Just been browsing the earlier posts about 'memories' of how good childhood was, and how one poster felt he was beginning to sound like his parents. It rung a few bells!

Of course, as FB said, all summers were long and hot - and it didn't rain, etc etc. Yes, human memory cancels out the bad ( Thank God ! ), but I think there is a common thread within this thread.

Of course I was naughty at school, of course my dad and my grandad could be heard mumbling " When I as a boy....." Every generation thought their lives were perhaps harder ( in the comfort sense ) but were fundamentally honest , caring of family, friends and neighbours and when caught out 'owned up' ( "stood on" as they say up here)

That is the real difference . It is called RESPECT both in terms of SELF RESPECT and RESPECT for others, and their 'rights'

It seems to me , as I get older, that we are producing young parents, and subsquently their kids, who RESPECT nothing. There is an approach around that "I know my rights" but you never hear about "My responsibilities". It is almost as thogh all social progress is materialistically upward, and morally 'downward'

Novo
the second one is Turvy's!

In Buckinghamshire they changed from the 12+ to the 11+ a while back, and as a result the year below mine moved up at the same time and never got a chance to be the eldest in primary school. As a year they were particularly disruptive and a lot of teachers thought that was connected.

Of course, the main reason that conscription/national service will never be re-introduced is that the Army won't let it.

The last thing any modern army (which is made up of intelligent and professional people with an extremely high dgree of specialised training) needs is to be flooded with conscripted idiots.

Of course, this doesn't mean we couldn't adopt a 'new deal' style approach and put them all to work in the public sector for two years or so...

I'm also very wary of the attitude that says 'the streets were safer in my day'. There have always been drunks and violent buffoons on the streets of Britain. In fact, by any *objective* standards, the streets are probably safer than they ever have been, and we certainly don't suffer from the problems of urban blight and slums that were common until some time after the war. Or perhaps 'safer' is a relative term here. The price you pay (probably) for orderly streets in Hampstead is the wholesale degradation of an area like Whitechapel, which was the Victorians found. Certainly the affluent middle classes were safe but areas like Whitechapel, Limehouse and Seven Dials were deadly - often literally.

The streets were safer 40 years ago, and in a very rough part of Merseyside. My mother used to be the Co-Op collecter and regularly walked around some of the toughest slum areas with, in todays value, hundreds of pounds in a cash bag slung around her neck. She never had a momnets trouble in the 10 years she did it. What was the difference. No crack heads or heroin addicts desparate for another fix. The sooner we drop the profit margin out of drugs by legalising them the sooner the streets will become safer.

And I'm sorry I don't go for the E additive argument for disorderly conduct in schoools. Rather I don't go for the . That's part of the problem, nobody wants to take responsibility for themselves or their children. Why don't the lumpen proletariat get off their fat arses and spend some of their cash on decent food for their kids rather than on booze, bling and tobacco. I see the doctors are now whinging for Jamie bloody Oliver to sort out hospital food. For Bobs sake how many dieticians and clinicians are there in the NHS and they need a telly cook to sort out hospital nutrition.

Pass me my coat

So you don't buy the 'E additive' argument but feel that the 'lumpen proleteriat' (whoever that revoltingly offensive phrase applies to) should 'get off their fat arses and buy some decent food for their kids'.

So, why would they need to if the E additive argument isn't to be bought?

Also, I'd suggest you try reading around the subject of foodstuffs and their relative costs before you make any glib assumptions as to why 'the lumpen proletariat' don't feed their kids something more healthy. A good start is George Monbiot's 'Captive State', followed by 'shopped!' and maybe a dose of Polly Toynbee's 'Hard Work' might help your rather warped view of the way people live and what they should be doing with their money.

And I trust I don't need to point out the oxymoron in 'My mother never got mugged in a highly dangerous area of Merseyside'?

The Krays were also good boys who loved their mum and only killed their own, I believe.

You know what crap food is, I know what crap food is. If I had kids I would make sure they knew what crap food was. My God children have been brought up to know what good food is. What's the difference; their parents take responsibilty. If the school wont change it's menu give them a packed lunch.

I've also read about the fresh food deserts on some sink estates. Funny how these deserts never run out of cheap lager or oven chips. Presumably when the shop keeper goes to the cash and carry he stocks his shop with the type of food his customers will buy.

I said tough not dangerous.

Right I love to cook but I think it is something of a misconception that cooking all your meal properly from scratch is cheaper than say frozen foods and ready meals.

If you doubt this then please take a look at the prices in your local Iceland/Aldi/Lidl look how relativly inexpensive the frozen foods are. Now whilst with cooking ability and nutritional knowhow it is possible to eat nice healthy meals on a relative budget it is much harder.

Also when are these young parents supposed to learn about this if their parents dont teach them? Alltough I did home ec at school up to the age of 14 I didn't take in a great deal. It still didn't teach me how to plan meals around shopping trips ect...

In addition to this buying fresh food, and shopping around to get the best prices is fine if you say have a car, however if you cannot afford to run a car and need to have children in tow when you shop it can be a nightmare. Much easier to just go to iceland and pack of on 7x(number of family) worth of ready meals, burger and oven chips.

I think it is incredible arrogance on the part of comfortable middleclass people with cars who have been taught to cook to just lambast the diets of the poor.

If I come over as arrogant I apologise. What I'm getting at is how we improve society by getting people to take resposibility for their own lives and the lives of their children.

I agree 100% about getting 'useful' subjects back onto the curriculum. Domestic Science, Woodwork, Metalwork, Gardening or Rural Studies, they all pepare yougsters for coping with RL. And, while on the subject, where are all the apprentice plumbers, joiners and brickies. My personal take on that is that a wizzy new scheme called NVQ displaced a well proven craft system called City and Guilds. My biggest critiscm of NVQ is the ethos that nobody is incompetent, just not yet competent. Again society sending the message that it's not your fault, you don't have to take responsibility for your life.

What FB said, basically.

And 'tough' in this instance, as used *in context* by yourself was clearly meant to indicate that there was a high level of crime or something similar on that estate. If it wasn't, then there is NO POINT WHATEVER to your story. It effectively amounts to 'Man walks down street without incident'. In which cae that happens millions of times a day without comment all over the country. Even on council estates.

Thanks for correcting my context. Read what I wrote. I was referring to the streets being safer. Tough referred to: high unemployment, hard working, poor families, high incidence of broncitis and other environmental and work place disease, heavy drinking, poor social housing, no institutional support etc. etc.

Which was any council estate up until about 1970.

Are we to believe that these 'hard working' council tenants are somehow more likely to have committed crime than hard working middle class families of the same period? If not, what is the point of your story?

If the council estate in question was 'tough', not 'dangerous' then it hardly seems remarkable that people could walk around with cash in their pockets.

That however does mean that the 'streets' were safer - it means that one, isolated council estate of your experience, which by your own admission was not 'dangerous', had no crime to speak of. I can show you council estates like that where I live, now.

'Funny how these deserts never run out of cheap lager or oven chips.'

Incredibly arrogant, and ignorant to boot. My local town, of some 40, 000 inhabitants is not a sink estate, yet it has one grocers shop (a fly blown stall in the middle of the high street. It has no specialist butchers, or fishmongers. There is a farm shop some 2-3 miles outside town. Accessible IF YOU DRIVE.

Other than that you are stuck with Sainsbury's, producers of tasteless fruit and veg and on any terms yoyu look at it, committed to the pumping of junk food into the population.

The streets were populated, kids played out, skates, bikes, trolleys, footie or cricket. You walked or bussed to school. People kept their gardens tidy, or their bit of the pavement clean. Only teachers went to school in cars. A big problem at my wife's school is the number of parents dropping kids off and the number of kids with their own cars.

City centres weren't no go areas after 10 o'clock because of drunken, drugged teens and twenties, spewing, pissing and fighting. Oh sorry, it isn't their fault. A big boy made them drink so much that they can't stand up. And they've got a right to spew up in front of your missus.

Well I know for a fact that where I lived 10 years ago this was the case. Because I used to do it.

I dont know but I bet 15 year old kids got drunk in town in 1985 as well.

My father tells me he did it in 1975....

Like I said rose tinted spectacles.

Also, I have walked (and still walk) about in my town centre, London - both central and outlying (including Hackney) and many other cities to boot and have never been aware that they were 'no go areas'. And this is both during and after chucking out time.

As to the 'ship junior to school by SUV' brigade, well, they are daft enough to believe everything they read in the Daily Hate Mail.

My kid get sandwiches and fruit. She complains that the other kids get crisps and chocolate, but she understands why and accepts it.

There is nothing affluent or middle class about this, bread, cheese, marmite, a couple of carrots or an apple all cost less than a packet of crisps. I don't need to drive 20 miles to the nearest big town to find these items. If I can do it anyone can; there is no excuse.

Bad diet is down to the parent's unwillingness to give in to their offspring's short-term childish desires. Arguing with a child can be irritating and time consuming. It is always easier in the short term to let them have their way, and yes, when they get fat we can all blame the government for providing chips in schools.

Hilarious. So we don't want the 'lumpen proletariat' blaming anybody else, but it's ok to blame them?

The double-standard is alive and well, and living in Britain.