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

http://www.thefriars.org.uk/visit/visit.html

I will be there this weekend possibly aswell

The whole transportation system should be rethought. At a time when public transport usage is going through the roof, some major systems are close to insolvency. This is not a logical outcome; more revenue from the riders should be making them better off.

Indeed-i cycle around town so it doesnt bother me - only dfoging cars and buses; in my town there are a few nice cycle lanes -but they do not link up-i follow one on my way to work which is meant to be one of the National Cycle Routes(we have even had the Tour de france come through our town twice and the last time they followed some of this route through the centre of town-of course they shut all the roads for them though.
It really is ridiculous-i risk my life and limb on the roads day in day out like everyone else, but i still find it safer riding on the busy road than these silly stop start cycle lanes: which seem to end abruptly in the busiest places where no-one in there right mind would want to leave the path to join the traffic in the road.Pah!

That looks really nice, I like the look of it. There is something very special about a contemplative community. You feel it in the very fabric of the building as though it had absorbed something of the life lived within it over many many years.

Blimey. look out - Christians an' such!


Actually I am very much more than sympathetic to Quakers, and wasn't Aylesford on television a few years back, following a group on retreat? That seemed very congenial to my way of thinking too. As may be gathered here and there across h2g2, I do not believe in the reduction of everything to science. Nor to dogmatism either.


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But the connection with class? A practical question, by-passing a lot of wearying disputation:

1.why should children be subject to the class system? It's nothing to do with work for them, even though it may determine what opportunities become available later.

2.And why does anyone think that the Labour Party fails to tackle class and poverty whenever they're in power? (All right, two questions).

3.The 'Poverty Gap' has widened in the last 12 years of Labour government, which means it's wider (much wider) than in Margaret Thatcher's time. Why? (all right - 3 questions).

Jabs

yes it was where the carmelites first settled in this country in 12 something after a knight brought them back from the holy land after a crusade. After the dissolution of the monastaries they had to wait until the 1940's or 50's before they came back to England (and the priory). It is a nice place-you can stay there if your down this way-it has accomodation at very reasonable rates.


Yes: oh for the simple life-and a shade for my weary eyes from blinking lights.

I have the same answer to your second and third questions, JaBS.

We're not as rich as we used to be. Adjusted for inflation, salaries haven't gone up for decades. Unable to do anything about it, the job of politics (as far as economics goes) is to pretend things are better than they are.

Tricks include encouraging wives to work (increasing prosperity without increasing average wages), blowing up financial bubbles, stuffing credit down our throats and shifting money from the poor to the rich and back again, so there are always winners. All political parties do this, which is why the Beatles complained about both Wilson and Heath in Taxman, and why the poor got poorer and poorer under Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown.

Some notes on all 3 questions on WHY?

We are self-denying and self-policing, aided and abetted by the execrable effects of advertising and, more importantly, popular culture, in order to keep the rich, ruling class rich, ruling, and laughing. East Enders keeps you down, keeps you in your place.

Lefties are called loonies because they might threaten the privilege of the few. And the rest of us, against our own interest (def. of false consciousness) mindlessly join in the abuse.

It's exploitation and false consciousness, making fools out of all of us. It's a permanent feature of the class system, not just a temporary blip. Your answer, Infie, produces some of the details, especially the two working for one livable wage that was squeezed out of feminism, in our present post-colonial crisis, when people in other countries don't work to keep us comfortable (in contrast to their own poverty) and in good health care (for example) any more. Good health care (and pensions) which we never shared with them. They were exploited by us all. We only gave up the Empire when we had to. No wonder we can't afford anything except stupid waste, and impotent loans to banks - no chance - they're a major part of the ruling class...

People in e.g. France or the U.S. or Australia that I've met are astonished at how subservient we are. We don't have the air of free man and women. Because we're not. We're reliable, not- making- a- scene, Subjects, not free Citizens.

The Labour Party betrays the working class every time it gets in, (I used to discuss this before the present shameless lot - worse than ever - got in) because then they're not w/class any more. Blair is now on millions a year just from speaking engagements. According to The Telegraph he's no more than a criminal, in spite of (or including, I should say), his 'Faith Foundation'. What did Jesus live on?

It's short, and very worth reading: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/gerald_warner/blog/2009/01/14/tony_blair_must_not_be_denied_credit_for_his_part_in_destroying_britain

The same old song -

The working class
Can kiss my ar**
I've got the foreman's
job at last.

All made easier by a shrinking, union-free (largely) powerless working class, mutating into a powerless and very falsely-conscious, if conscious at all, lower middle class. The people who used to be the butlers and stewards and policemen (not women then) - servants who tended to side with their masters.

Jabs

all governments want, is a flock of , give'em a field of grass and they're happy, the have forgot how to aim for pastures new.
Thatcher started the ball rolling

To start with a discursive thought that will eventually rejoin the main path of discussion:

Many economists right now are shame-faced about not having seen the recent crash coming. However, there will always be a few who were, in fact, warning us all along, but were treated as buffoons. James Grant, for instance, has been railing against the prevalent economic stupidity for more than a decade. He has a new book out, called "Mr. Market Miscalculates."

Ravi Batra (also a prolific author) has for some time been worrying about the growing gap between the highest wage-earners and lowest. He is mostly concerned about the U.S., but in this age of linked economies, the whole world should have been concerned. After the Great Depression and the war that followed, many corporations were under tacit pressure not to pay their chief executives more than about 7 times what the lowest-paid fulltime employees were taking home. A few decades earlier, Henry Ford famously raised his workers' wages with the explanation that he wanted them to be able to afford to buy one of his cars.

I really know very little about economic life in Britain. What I know about the U.S. is that the mimimum wages was frozen under Reagan (early 1980s) and did not begin to be raised again until about 20 years later. Inflation was not high during this period, but cumulatively it was at least 40% (by my calculations), which had the effect of making people dependent on it take a 40% cut ion purchasing power. Sure, Wal-Mart and similar super-low consumer outlets were there for rock-bottom versions of common commodities, but there was no WalMart selling houses or cars.

Maybe, just maybe, a society puts itself at economic risk sooner or later if it pushes a lot of people at the lowest income levels into near-insolvency through too-rigorous restrictions on what they can earn. That was clearly Ravi Batra's intent. It wasn't the sort of thing that might bite you tomorrow (because of various crosscurrents in society, i.e. grocery store baggers who are teenagers who get higher and higher wages as they get older and better-educated), but if the stars all get aligned in the wrong way, and nobody spots impending doom, you could get what we have got now.

How long will it last do you think-is there a prevelent view on your side of the pond, as to how long this crunch will last-are people saying its gonna be worse than the 30's?

Poeple are saying a lot things, actually. Unfortunately, the ones who are saying these things are the discredited economists who were so ineffective in the years leading up to it.

But anyway, one economist has said that there's a 20% or 30% chances of it being as bad as the Depression of the 1930s. These are not trifling odds. The conditions that must be met to avoid the worst are as follows: a quick response by government, no lengthy dickering by congress as the country goes down the drain, and no pork-barrel stuff from congressmen who put their own dictricts ahead of everybody else.

It's good that Barack Obama goes into office with the good will of the electorate behind him. He will need it.

Yes , good luck to him! well the sun will be out tomorrow-as they say; and the tide will wash overmy feet at the beach if i spend too long pondering it.

Actually, the tide is something we can really depend on.

you mean the sun might not be out tomorrow-but i still get wet feet in the morning?

Lofty - I want to give you Respect for the stand you're taking on this. Like halfway in the water.

Jabs

Yet - Good news. The sun only appears to rise. In fact the Earth goes round the sun, not vice versa. Relative to us, the Sun hardly moves at all. Yay!

But, are you two saying our Sun could go out? Soon? Within the next few billion years? That's a bit of a bummer, I must say

Sure beats discussing class though

See - I told you time doesn't really exist! It's just a device to create the appearence of order among the chaos of the universe and incidentally to control the masses - hence the clocking-on card!

Time exists. So does Newsweek.

the sun will not go outsomeone will put a bob in the meter