Don't know if this quote below by 'proudchav' over on CiF (one of us perhaps ;-) ), has been posted before but it does have a ring of truth.
For those posters asking when the riots will start, don't hold your breath. Don't expect anything from the ineffectual Labour Party or the toothless TUC. However, there will be resistance to this attack on the poor.
The resistance will come from people of my class, the underclass. We may not know that we are resisting, but resist we will. Our children will mug your children for things that none of them really need. Some of us, in despair, will turn to drink and drugs, and to fuel our newly acquired habits we will burgle your house, or shoplift from your businesses. Others of us will turn to prostitution, and spread disease and family break-up. If I had my way, our resistance would take a more recognisable form, whereby we would visit the bailiffs, the police and the politicians in their homes and make them regret their attacks. Unfortunately, this would require a heightened political awareness we don't possess.
However, we do have an instinctive political awareness. We know our enemy. I have many happy memories of when, as a teenager, my mates and I would commit acts of petty vandalism in the Tory voting areas we had to pass through on the way back to our edge of town council estate after a night out. We weren't sure why we were doing this, but we knew we were doing it in the right place.
Something to think about anyway when I'm off to the shops.
Nick Davies, in his book Dark Heart: The Shocking Truth About Hidden Britain (1998) says that the poor rob the poor and their lives are separated and sequestered, hidden from the lovely, elegant chattering classes and the dead-eyed people with power.
The problem will be when the ordinary poor spot, like George Orwell's horse never managed, that they actually have power and both the government and those who cannot quite afford to move into the cloistered, gated realms of the moderately rich are actually terrified of them.
Once that happens, once you read about and see the gangs of people with pinprick-pupils in their eyes and a pit-bull on a chain and a crowbar in their fist, exhaling the stink of drink into the faces of lovely, decent, hardworking people who never wanted to think that they were in this together with anyone who was not like them, things might change.
Of course, at that stage, the idea of sniffily telling people how to behave on the internet, the ability to whoop and shout when you see a straw man and the speed with which you can spot a logical fallacy will not be of much help.
At that stage, people might begin to wonder whether it would have been better had their cartoon lives been more like Denis than Walter, as they suddenly try to make a fist and wonder whether you put your thumb on the inside or outside and who it is who gets to say "Go!"
Another 1 post deletion and ban...and on a weekend...this was 'Book em Crocker' ----------------------------------------
Not so much a post, this, as the transcript of a conversation I had giving my daughter and her mate a lift. My daughter told her she hadn't checked facebook lately because I'd been on the computer slagging off the Guardian. "But.." her friend interjects"why would you do that?..the Guardian's one of the good papers...we did it in Citizenship". I had to pull over, kneel down and take several deep breaths before my head exploded..."it's one of the what?" I stammer incredulously.
"You know one of the papers which helps people."
"Which people?"..."they actually teach that at school these days?"
"I dunno...we did it in Citizenship"
So began a lengthy conversation...quite a one sided 'conversation' as it happens...but I'll relate it anyway.
"You see the things is, when people get money something strange happens. Even though they already eat better, live in better houses, have nicer things and can do better things for their children, they always want more; they want political power..not each of them but they want to know someone's looking out for their interests...it's always been that way right through history". They both seem to accept this. "Well the Guardian started in the industrial revolution in Manchester and even though the people who owned the mills had lots of money, they didn't have any political power or any say in how the country was run...so the Guardian was started to help look after their political and economic interests...really..google it...that's what happened. So really the Guardian was born as the servant of the rich middle-classes"...they nod. "Then in 1830 we had a Great Reform Act which gave the vote to all the people the Guardian had asked for, and the Guardian kept up its commitment to free trade so that these factory owners could sell their stuff as widely as possible and meantime the people who worked in these mills had their wages gradually cut...but you can't have everything and I'm sure the Guardian thought it was all for the best as the overall wealth of the nation increased...(and was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands)..but you can't have everything eh?
"Things went on like this for a while then we had the first world war and the people with power realised they couldn't just keep things as they were. Hundreds of thousands of people had died for their country and they deserved a share in its prosperity...or that's the 'official' version...what really happened was that the Russian revolution scared the shit out of everybody and they knew they'd better do something...so we all got the vote.
"Not that it did us much good...not until after the next war when we got a health service, a pension and all the stuff a civilised society should have."
They seem quite happy with the story so far. The hard bit was to try to explain how democracy is being drawn back; the fact that we still get to turn out and put a cross on a piece of paper seemed to indicate to them that we still have a functioning democracy with choices and candidates who wish to represent people and look after their interests. So we had a discussion about whether a democracy was really any such things when all mainstream parties were effectively corporate poodles and politics was now a corporate game which tried wherever possible to wrest effective power away from ordinary people along with any rights and entitlements...so that our 'needs' could be sold back to us at a healthy profit.
"But it's happening everywhere..look around you...the rich don't campaign any more for greater power than other people. The rich get rich these days by belonging to some corporation or institution and it's these that have seized the power...they've left you with a meaningless vote for a politician whose job is not upsetting corporate interests...the wealthy are retrenching democracy...that's what the wealthy do..it always has been..they want power"
"What's that got to do with the Guardian though?"..she asked
"Oh not much..the Guardian's just doing what it's always done...supporting the rich in achieving political power over the rest of us...it's just what they do...but I wouldn't say that makes them 'one of the good papers', would you?"
"No" she replied "I'm gonna tell my Citizenship teacher"
Naturally MIE flew straight in with a rebuttal to defend the Guardian's honour by quoting of all things(the concept of unsound or biased historical sources having yet to penetrate Cordoba's intellectual elite)..the Guardian's own speculative account of its inception..
"The Manchester Guardian was founded by John Edward Taylor in 1821, and was first published on May 5 of that year. The paper's intention was the promotion of the liberal interest in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre"
However, even a quick glance at wiki would have equipped him with a rather different account..
"A moderate supporter of reform, he witnessed the Peterloo massacre in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:
'they have appealed not to the reason but to the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence.' [1]
But the radical press in Manchester, in particular the Manchester Observer did support the protests, and it was not until the Observer was closed by successive police prosecutions that the road was clear for a paper closer to Taylor's mill-owning friends."
Now obviously wikipedia has a deserved Trotskyist reputation and may not appeal to Martyn's social democratic principles...so he's quite at liberty to stand by the Guardian's version...although in doing so he'd never come across the Manchester Observer's fulsome description of its rival as the lapdog and whore of the mill owners...
lapdog?...whore?..splutters Martyn...who can you mean?
Can we wind it back a bit from the confrontational thing? We're both escalating it, I know...
Nick Davies' book wasn't an account of how 'the poor' live - he picked out the worst examples and amplified them, so the whole book only really described less than 30 people. I assume he met hundreds and filtered out all the ones without serious problems with addictions, mental health etc to build a narrative about the literally worst situations you can find.
It was a great book though. But if and when the revolution does materialise, the denizens of Dark Heart will miss it all because they'll be smoking crack in a darkened room somewhere.
This banning business is getting ridiculous. They've probably got a little programme just for you MF, that flashes up on screen whenever you post - under whatever name.
I don't think they need a program for it. There's plenty of Ally's mates over at waddya who keep an eye out and have Jess's number on speed dial.
Bunch of tossers. They never contribute anything to the politics blogs but recycle yet another "how many feminists can dance on the head of a pin" and they're all over it with their tired old platitudes.
Nick Davies' book wasn't an account of how 'the poor' live...
Perhaps not, but I simply said that he says that the poor predominantly steal from other people who are poor. Which he does.
Other than that, what you say is simply speculation and personal assumption and opinion, to which you are entitled, but it does not make it necessarily true.
Also, don't tell me how or what to write. I am really not at all bothered whether it is to your taste or not or matches your mindset or coincides with your opinions or those you want to hear.
Ha, great stuff, MF. Pedants' corner - the First Reform Act was 1832. Other than that, spot on.
Martyn's a strange one. He had a long old ramble on the moderation thread the other night. Couldn't make any sense of it all. WinstonRed responded with
"Step away from the mushrooms, Martyn."
It's not there now. Like one or two others, he seems to enjoy protected status.
I'm glad it isn't just me who finds Martyns stuff hard to understand, he often goes off into weird stream of consiousness stuff that I am sure makes sense to him but leaves me shaking my head.
Philibee - glad you both got back OK. Did oisette enjoy her gig?
Thaum - you were sitting down nicely last time I saw you. Always difficult to really get ratarsed on a worknight. Brilliant you made it though.
LaRit from last night - big squishy hugs! x
(And a hug to everyone else too.)
MF
Was looking back over the thread to try and find BookEm's post - thought it might have been you as it had been zapped so quickly. Glad you posted it over here for posterity.
oisette not too impressed with her gig, which turned out to be quite thrash-y, and then got lost in shoreditch, hence my slightly swift departure from the gathering to try to get her facing in the right direction and on the correct bus...but she was taken off by my mates to a couple of groovy bars last night so is very happy. immensely knackered but lovely to catch up with old friends and meet up with new ones!
Taking about falling over, I had a lovely trip last night, fecking kids round here have decided that mischief night should be a week long affair.
So far I have had my windows egged and my door buzzer rang at regular intervals, a bit annoying but nothing to get upset about.
I did get upset when they decided to take the back gate off and lay it on its side across the opening, in the dark I didn't see it and took a massive header over it, I was lucky to get away with a badly bruised knee and a bruised and cut foot, I could have bloody died.
The little shits are getting laxative chocolate tomorrow night.
Staff nite out was fun. Last days here, halloween fun. At 4pm I will litteraly be being a sock puppet. A snake emerging from a pumpkin, at the end of the kiddies activities.
La Rit, get the bloods it's better to know, and get a scan if the bloods warrant it, is no biggie, glad to hear your sit is improving : )
I can't really have a go at mischief night because I did it myself when I was a kid, I don't think I did anything as dangerous as the gits who could have killed me last night but I did some pretty anti social things.
Luckily I am out of work at the moment and don't have to take the late bus home anymore because apparently they have graduated from throwing eggs at the drivers to throwing fireworks.
They also like to throw rocks at the windscreen, what larks.
"This thread is the place to bring your gripes about moderation. Martyn in Europe will then patiently explain why your case is untenable and how the Guardian is the most open-minded, liberal media organisation in the history of the world."
Is that what he's for these days?..a little trained attack poodle whose mission is to counter claims of bias by the Guardian?..generally by quoting something from the Guardian about how fuckin great they are..
He's either got an ancient mariner style curse which condemns him to wander the internet boring the shit out of strangers or he's got an attention deficit disorder...maybe he should get a doctor's note telling Jess that unless he gets an ATL spot, it could be terminal.
and EnglishFuckwit's gettin all stroppy again...the fuckin resiliance of these people! Comes over here and gets his credibility mashed but he's right back on his horse spouting more crap..you've gotta hand it to him
I'm nipping out anyway unless he nips over here to sort this place out again...sorry..."to nail it to the fuckin wall" again
Map of thursday's mischief in France . If you go south of Cherbourg to coutances, granville, avranches, I'm in the middle of that triangle, so have a choice . Avranches -- 500 turned out, hehe ...
At least it will be all over after Sunday night. The throwing fireworks thing scares the bejaysus out of me though. I had a friend at school when I was about 10 who got a firework thrown at him and it got stuck to his jumper. He was in hospital for about a month and very badly burned.
Even at my age, I get very nervous round fireworks and would never let my lad have more than a sparkler or two in the garden, but would go take him to the big charity fireworks shows locally.
The trouble is, kids have got nothing to do. I know I harp on about France, but the social provisions in even the smallest villages is awesome. Where I used to live there is a population of fewer than 9,000 people, yet there is a big municipal football pitch with floodlights, municipal tennis courts, organised sports and music and hobby clubs of every kind for teenagers, and the nearest biggish town - 15 mins drive away - has everything you can possibly imagine provided for teenagers to be doing something other than hanging out in the cold drinking beer and getting bored.
In this country we have slashed social provision for youth to such a huge extent - in my town there is one mouldy youth centre with a few table-tennis tables and a sound system, and one church-organised "god club" as my lad calls it, and that's it. It is far more interesting for them to bunk on the train down to Gatwick, hang out in the airport causing trouble and getting moved on by armed police, or go and hang out in the local woods smoking and drinking beer.
I am trying to remember if there was anything for us kids to do when I was a teen and I am coming up blank.
I am a child of Thatcher so maybe that is understandable.
But I can't in all honesty say that it was better then, we went to gymnastics on a Saturday morning (if we had the cash) and that was it for organised activities, the rest of the time we were left to our own devices.
We had a great time down the beck, just messing about.
Not sure what I am trying to say here but I do know that things have changed, changed in a bad way.
Back when New Labour was still brand new, there was no shortage of things to do for teenagers - local park, coats on the ground, 5/6 mates, few bottles of 20/20, few cans of hooch, lump of hash with bits of plastic in it, and later the one club in town that let under 18s in as long as they had a fiver. If you're lucky you'll get a snog, spend all your cash and walk home at 3am passing the last spliff round. Happy days.
I am a good 10 yrs older than you at least, I would guess. I was born in 62 and was a teenager in the 70s and early 80s. I lived in a town in the South of a population of about 60,000 but we had about 5 different youth clubs you could go to on different nights of the week, a couple of rather good "god clubs" as well, and on Tuesdays and Fridays it was the 50p disco at the Boys Club.
Then there were the football clubs, cricket club, rugby club and private working clubs - there were a couple of those in the town and you had to know someone whose dad would sign you in.
In the summer there was free tennis, cheap swimming in the open-air pool, cafes selling cheap orange squash and stuff in the Park, after school clubs for special interests, evening classes that were free for kids.
"BeautifulBurnout alleges that my comments can be disregarded on the basis of a punch up with one person. That might have been true a fortnight ago but, as she well knows, the dispute has widened to include those who give support and encouragement to the interloper(s), the self proclaimed enemies of the Guardian, and that, regrettably IMO, includes you, AllyF and you BB.
Sometimes the issues in a dispute become clear cut and this is one of those issues. It boils down to this. There is no middle ground, nor observer status here. Moral relativism won't wash. Whose side are you on, the Guardian or its enemies?"
a line in the sand...drawn by the Grandwizard of the English Nationalist alliance of Hobbit worshipping Real Ale Organic Vegetable Babyboomers....the one and only EnglsihFuckwit..
"Just looked at Waddaya..what a fuckin place" Part III.
This is actually hilarious and, perhaps, things have now got to the stage where I shall be happy to walk away from something which now has all the credibility of someone standing in a strait-jacket, leering and dribbling and shitting himself and saying that the shimmering bluebottle on the disintegrating dog's turd is actually the secret love-nephew of the bloke who invented the intergalactic custard ray-gun.
It began with EnglishHalfwit chastising AllyF for coming over here, suggesting that it must have been someone else pretending...
englishhermit 30 October 2010 11:29AM
AllyF
I don't know if you are aware of it, but someone imitating you was on the UT yesterday, congratulating the interlopers and groveling in a most pathetic manner to the sundry. It didn't fool me of course, so my regard for your reputation has been unaffected.
AllyF 30 October 2010 11:53AM
Actually Englishhermit, rather than speaking in hedged allusions, let me spell out my position re: the UT.
There are some regulars there who I very much like and admire.Many of them have serious ideological issues with the editorial values and policies of the Guardian, some of which are very valid, IMO. Some of them also seem to have a particular bee in their bonnet about this thread in particular, which I find rather silly, although I see where they are coming from.
There are also some of the regulars there who carry nasty personal grudges against individuals, which I sometimes find ugly, but usually find extremely tedious and anti-social.
I very rarely visit the UT, mainly because when I don't want to get sucked into those personal grudges and squabbles, especially since the targets of those grudges and squabbles are sometimes people I like and admire.
If it were possible, there are probably about a dozen different regulars on the UT, all formerly Cif regulars, whom I would dearly love to see posting on Cif again - not here especially, but on the politics threads, the welfare threads, the racism threads, the immigration threads, the feminist threads etc etc etc, because I think they have a lot of important things to say. Unfortunately due to a combination of the moderators policies here and bloody-minded belligerence over there, that doesn't seem possible.
However I absolutely refuse to get sucked into an ongoing feud between here and there and refuse to get involved in any personal feuds and squabbles - I'm perfectly capable of generating my own feuds and squabbles without help from anyone else!
I reserve the right to pop over there occasionally and take my chances (about 50/50) on finding myself in either an interesting chat or a vicious cat fight.
If you have an issue with me going over there and chatting to people, many of whom I consider my friends, then frankly I don't give a shit.
Rather a long reply for someone who does not give a shit.
Thank you for confirming that it was you because the issue I have with you is your allusion to me as a 'mod's nark'. As you may know, that word describes someone who grasses people up to the drugs squad.
It refers to someone who goes sneaking behinds people's backs. I don't. I've made it perfectly clear what I have been doing and why.
I think the behaviour of the interlopers is utterly despicable. This is the Guardian - a newspaper that I hold in high esteem although I may not always agree with it. Persistent rigging of the recommendations and posting with fake multiple identities is undermining the integrity (cleanness) of this newspaper.
BeautifulBurnout alleges that my comments can be disregarded on the basis of a punch up with one person. That might have been true a fortnight ago but, as she well knows, the dispute has widened to include those who give support and encouragement to the interloper(s), the self proclaimed enemies of the Guardian, and that, regrettably IMO, includes you, AllyF and you BB.
Sometimes the issues in a dispute become clear cut and this is one of those issues. It boils down to this. There is no middle ground, nor observer status here. Moral relativism won't wash. Whose side are you on, the Guardian or its enemies?
Yep, you are probably right. Or maybe the damage had been done by the time you were out and about... Thatcher was leeching the soul out of this country from 79 onwards, remember.
I think in fairness, you could probably provide limitless tennis clubs, social clubs, parks, music events etc and some kids would still not go to them.
BB I often think that my immediate family should be used as an example of what growing up in the Thatcher years was like.
One a go getter (but miserably unhappy in her marriage), one a heroin addicted prostitute (she is clean now, but lost her children), one a self obsessed anorexic who lives her life through her daughter, one who gave up her chances of becoming a scientist because she got pregnant (whilst drunk) and then me.
I am a miserable drunk who never lived up to her potential, a born loser you might say.
Each of us could have had a better, more productive life if we were not expelled from the wrong vagina.
I dunno about the preferring knives bit - there was no doubt that there was weed floating about when I was 14 or 15, and we all thought we were very daring and radical smoking it. But we still went and did stuff instead of just getting stoned and hanging around being annoying.
I can't help thinking that if there were more facilities for teens that they would still do the drugs but go off and enjoy themselves as well instead of looking for trouble to cause because there is nothing for them to do unless they have money.
Part of the problem aswell is that Saturday working has all but disappeared for the under 16s. Sure, you can get a paper round, but there were loads of shop jobs etc. available for the 14-16 age group. Although my folks were not on the breadline by the time I was a teen, my pocket money stopped when I was 14 and I was expected to take a Saturday job and pay for stuff myself from that point on. I used to work on a market stall selling undies from starting the laying out at 6.30am to finishing the clear-up at 6pm for £2.50. But £2.50 would buy you an album (or six visits to the Boys Club disco) in those days, so it's all relative I guess.
I can't remember exactly how much 10 Embassy were then, but I think it was less than 50p. I remember trying to give up smoking in 1980 when a pack of 20 went up to 75p or somesuch...
Afternoon all, I was going to shout at some of you for pointing me toward waddya, but then I realised waddya made me laugh. Blimey some people are so far up themselves, they need advice from the Chilean miners rescue team.
An interesting link to the GMG site from EnglishHermit.
It portray's a version that can be construed to be an Historical record, but one that can obviously, and effectively smooch the gullible. The Duke's version posted a while back is a more plausible Historical outline about the formation of the Manchester Guardian.
But here is a contradiction for EnglishHermit, taken from the website:
More than that, though, it is recognised around the world as the ultimate statement of values for a free press, asserting:
'comment is free, but facts are sacred' 'the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard’
However, I think we probably accepted that smoking and drinking were just parts of life, which also involved working, as you say, doing jobs at home, going to school and having ideas and dreams which could be projected against the screen which we imagined would be our future.
Vonnegut says that people want to take drugs intended for horses or chemicals for cleaning drains because their lives are so hopeless.
You probably had enough of the hope bit in your brain.
Jen & BB wonderful to learn of your experiences, but I'm afraid you are mere spring chickens in comparison. Fifty two was my year so I grew up in the 60s with all that it offered. My one regret was not taking up the offer of going to a Jimi Hendrix concert when a guy at school had tickets. I went to the Handel museum in London the other week to view the (sparse) memorabilia they had on show. Oh yes, it was easy in them days to price things. We reckoned that going decimal the base unit was the price of a single No6 fag - 1 new pence! Everything followed from that.
AB, not sure what you are saying in response to my earlier post. Do you mean that the poor will rob the poor? Sorry, not widely read, my excuse was I went the the crappiest school in town, a CofE dump.
"Each of us could have had a better, more productive life if we were not expelled from the wrong vagina.
I am getting a bit het up here aren't I? "
You are entitled to get het up, Jenn. And that has brought a huge lump to my throat because it is so bloody true.
But how dare you describe yourself in that way, woman! So what if you bloody drink? I have had times in my life where I have taken to drink for months on end to self-medicate.
The thing is, Jenn, you have got a brain, and you are using it, and will continue to use it and eventually things will start to get better. Been there. Done that. It may seem like everything is absolutely fucking hopeless at the moment, and that there is no way out, but, without wanting to get too buddhisty about thing, when you do something positive, something positive results from it. Keep doing the positive things and gradually a wellspring of positive effects builds up and "luck" changes.
God, I don't want to sound all preachy and shit. I know how lucky I have been in life, living most of my life in the South East and having access to a shedload more opportunities than most people.
I can't remember how it came up in conversation with my lad yesterday - it might have been in the context of Christmas presents and him saying "I don't want anything this year because it's not right that I get so much money spent on me when so many people don't". He was born with a huge sense of social responsibility too.
I was trying to explain to him that giving him presents was more about making me happy than making him happy because I could remember times when I was little when my family was the "have-nots", living in two bed prefab, and us three kids having to share the same bed in the winter to keep warm. Christmas presents - although I only know this because I was told later - were second-hand wooden toys bought and repainted by my dad to make them look new, second-hand teddies or dolls given a wash and brush-up and a new set of clothes or a new ribbon by my mum.
I started talking about how lucky I was that I was born to parents who cared about me and encouraged me, who struggled hard and made life better for us and that I was lucky enough to have a good brain and good opportunities thanks to them. I started saying "From each according to their abilities..." and he finished off the sentence for me and had a long long chat about it.
Some round here (mentioning no names *cough* Hank *cough*) accuse me of middle class liberalism and fake guilt. There is no two ways about it that by the time I was 25 my Dad was a reasonably well-off man, having decided to go and work in the middle east for a few years, and in later life I have been able to benefit from the bank of Mum and Dad. But prior to that I had left home at 17 without finishing my formal schooling because I wanted to get away from the constant "you must do better than us" pressure I was put under all the time as the eldest child. I eventually did my studies later in life and regret not listening to them at the time - but on the other hand I wouldn't have had the huge variety of life experiences that I did if I had stayed at home and been a good girl.
I don't feel guilty, though, about having money now because as far as I am concerned there is nothing wrong with having money or a certain position in society as long as you use it to the benefit of society, not just you and your family. And I am trying to persuade my lad that he needs to see it that way too.
I am rambling now and seem to have gone off point. I think the bottom line is this:
Don't be hard on yourself. You have every right to feel the way you do. You have every right to seek solace in drink if it takes the edge off. And please know that if you decide you don't want it to be that way any more, you can change it. You are already changing it by studying instead of sitting watching the telly all day.
Screams of laughter at Chateau Frog when I had a nowadays very rare read of waddya. The Pilot Officer's 12.53PM speech on Fifth Columnists was a masterpiece.
Never think you need to apologise for not having read a book someone else mentions. We have all only read a few books and there remain millions of which we have never heard and never touched. I try to avoid referencing books for this reason, but sometimes it happens anyway.
Your own ideas are more valuable than being able to recite those of someone else.
Anyway, you quoted this, which I thought was good:
The resistance will come from people of my class, the underclass. We may not know that we are resisting, but resist we will. Our children will mug your children for things that none of them really need. Some of us, in despair, will turn to drink and drugs, and to fuel our newly acquired habits we will burgle your house, or shoplift from your businesses. Others of us will turn to prostitution, and spread disease and family break-up.[...]
However, we do have an instinctive political awareness. We know our enemy. I have many happy memories of when, as a teenager, my mates and I would commit acts of petty vandalism in the Tory voting areas we had to pass through on the way back to our edge of town council estate after a night out. We weren't sure why we were doing this, but we knew we were doing it in the right place.
Traditionally, revolutions have been precipitated by middle-class "intellectuals" who have been dissatisfied with the way things were going, but they have prodded and bullied and tricked the working-classes into doing the actual punch and kick routine with the agents of the state.
Overheard recently: "Something has got to happen soon. It cannot go on the way it is. The problem is, people like you and I have too much to lose to be the ones who throw the first brick."
I tend to think that we have strange ideas about how segregated we are because we habitually pass in close proximity with what we imagine is a spectrum of social groups.
Most of us (by which I do not mean people here, but people generally) do not know how the very poor or the very rich live because they do not occupy spaces which we ever encounter.
In terms of the poor robbing the poor, that is what happens generally.
If it was a situation of general riot and unrest, they would rob shops or anything else which seemed "robbable" but these situations are very temporary and do not really lead to cultural change, other than entrenchment of established positions.
The current and future situation is probably more likely to lead to middle-class unrest and disenchantment because they always thought that they were insulated against any of the harms usually suffered by the poor.
The other thing with revolutions is that they tend to happen when people have been given nice things and then had them taken away.
You can keep people in line and brutalised forever, as long as you never give them treats.
If people find that their lives do not simply get better and better, however this may be financed and resourced, they will be angry.
Jenni --- I've mentioned before the usefulness of writing as therapy,started by Jung iirc, the wiki is pretty good but here's a different one for a change ... if it's too preachy go to wiki !
If I printed out the six weeks' e-mail correspondence with ex-gf ( or semi-gf ... ) , it would now be well over sixty pages, and progress in understanding made that would be imposssible face to face . Diary writing, particularly on-screen has given me real results in the past. Outside now ! XX
But where the hell did you get the idea that I am smarter than you? I am just like the hedgehog that knows one big thing. I am pretty limited when it comes to anything outside of what I do - politics, philosophy, arts etc.
Hi Jen, the Hendrix thing was in jest, there are many more important things in life as we all know.
AB thanks for the fulsome response. You could well be correct. The Poll Tax was led by the middle class at least that is the urban myth. I was just reading what Redminer said about the removal of CB from the 'rich' and how that relates to your ideas. He thought that was a deliberate ploy to get that 'class' de-coupled from the masses.
I quote it here as he puts it well:
The cut to universal child benefits has to be seen in the wider context of the Tory mission to dismantle the Welfare State.
It's a cynical attempt to alienate wealthier voters from the very concept of a Welfare State. You only have to read the Telegraph pages a while to appreciate how much middle class voters despise benefits going to the poor; with this cut in their entitlement, they will be recruited to the cause of complete abolition.
Britain's sickness is people who can't bare the thought of another person receiving an entitlement they don't get. This will be magnified by the ending of universal benefits.
Part 1b of the wider campaign to end the Welfare State...and liberal fools are clapping their hands in glee.
He is a prolific poster and is worth reading for that perspective.
Positive actions produce positive results. Very often, yes.
The problem is some folk can get beaten down, trapped in negativity, addicted, hopeless (I can be in this group..)
Others get the shit kicked out of them and come back stronger and more determined.
I published a magazine in '93 it ran for 5 issues, was critically well recived, but went bust as we printed 15k and sold <1k. That experience has almost paralysed me from trying some thing again.. What's the point, it's all shit.. Etc.
I know that if I controlled my addictions I'd probably feel better and 'empowered'. I know Becket's 'You've failed, so what, fail again, fail bigger'. I lack the will or impetus to act on this knowledge...
"The problem is some folk can get beaten down, trapped in negativity, addicted, hopeless (I can be in this group..)"
I've been in that group more times that I could shake a stick at. And I am very much aware that something could land on my head tomorrow and I would be back down there too. So there is no way I will ever EVER criticise anyone for it.
@Jen for what it's worth, you're not on your own. Ok xxx
@IanG Nice posts. My mate Mick saw them all - Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Cream, the Byrds, the fucking lot. He even saw the Doors. The DOORS for christ sake. I asked him once what was that like... He said it was at the Roundhouse. "That's about all I remember. We'd each taken six tabs of acid."
AB, MF, you guys are on fire these days. Hank we need you too. Generally - FFS - write a book.
And finally quote of the day has to be:
"(You are) undermining the ...cleanness... of this newspaper."
waddya is hilarious....englishhermit's smarming is unbelievable. I'm assuming he's a grown up but he's increasingly reminding me of a particularly unpleasant little goodie two shoes and snitch we had at school.
I should ignore him really, but he is being quite funny this afternoon. He's pretending he's seen "my performance" at work.
Either he is really Judge Lyons from Wood Green in disguise - and the personality almost fits... (sorry, Your Honour, if you're reading this but you know I'm right) or he is making it up to try and creep me out - which it hasn't.
"(You are) undermining the ...cleanness... of this newspaper."
weird that...I really thought they were all just pissed off because they'd had their little playground invaded...that the place that they went to try and sound clever or funny was being used to take the piss out of the Guardian's self-image. Why that should have bothered them I don't know...obviously if they were to answer this they'd come piling in with "yeah but what about the vile, obnoxious blah blah blah..." but tbh I don't recall ever having a go at anybody who hadn't had a go first...seriously..name one
so other than the obvious motive that some posts were and still are attracting far more attention than the usual drivelling fare served up over there, what was the fuckin problem?...answer...there wasn't one..it was jealousy, pure and simple...they weren't as incisive, cutting or witty as they seemed to think; and maybe they thought this made them look bad in front of the millions they imagined were reading.
or at least that's what I thought until now...obviously, they were never going to say "Look, I think I'm a pretty interesting and funny guy and you popping up here all the time distracts from my cleverness and wit and steals my thunder"...they'd look like real pretentious dickheads..even they realised that...so what could they say?
well there was the 'abuse' line of course...the vile obnoxious intimidation etc...but that's just not remotely sustainable and only survives as an 'urban myth' because they all get wiped and it's impossible to present evidence indicating otherwise..
so having exhausted that one, we now arrive at this..
"On many issues there are indeed many nuanced shades of grey. The integrity of the Guardian isn't one of them. It cannot be. It must not be. For if it were allowed to happen, the integrity of the Guardian would be a relative concept and therefore undermined. It really is a black and white issue. Yes or no. Good or bad. It is that simple."
...so my real crime was to hint that the Guardian might lack a certain amount of integrity
and my slanderously factual account of the Guardian's origins is refuted by MIE by quoting the fuckin Guardian
I'm tempted to believe this pair are genuinely stupid enough to stand by that drivel...but I think it's doubtful...really I think they're just jealous that they don't get more attention but can't actually come out and say so..
but, being an understanding guy, I'm just gonna assume that's what they mean and their statements are basically a cry for help..so I'm gonna help..with this advice..
Just reading through Waddya now ... haven't got to this yet though:
"On many issues there are indeed many nuanced shades of grey. The integrity of the Guardian isn't one of them. It cannot be. It must not be. For if it were allowed to happen, the integrity of the Guardian would be a relative concept and therefore undermined. It really is a black and white issue. Yes or no. Good or bad. It is that simple."
Heh heh, reminds me of nothing but Wossname's "you are either for or against the baby Jesus". At least he had the grace to come back on the thread the next day and admit he was PWP (posting while pissed).
I think he comes out at weekends to take advantage of the lighter modding. In abstract I pity him, Cif is probably his only interaction in English. When I read his spew, I want to panell the wee shit bag...
Sheff - I am in comparatively fine fettle. My cough is clearing up, I had a good night's sleep, my lad is practicing his guitar and my beloved is dozing in the chair next to me. It's been raining so I can't do the garden, so I have nothing better to do than bat away inanities with one eye on Cif, while watching Thunderball on t'telly with the other.
Ah well..another one bites the dust..one ban. Not even my words this time. Actually wrote you a lengthy reply BB but it was sucked into the ether
-----------------------------------------------
somehow, this seems relevant "And on the other you have the multicultural argument: diversity is good, but it has to be policed to minimise the friction that it generates. The imposition of moral and legal restraints on being offensive is one form of such policing. I take the opposite view. It is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In a homogenous society in which everyone thought in exactly the same way, then the giving of offence would be nothing more than gratuitous. But in the real world where societies are plural, then it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. Almost by definition such clashes express what it is to live in a diverse society. And so they should be resolved openly, not suppressed in the name of ‘respect’ or ‘tolerance’. But more than this: the giving of offence is not just inevitable, it is also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged. Human beings, as Salman Rushdie has put it, ‘shape their futures by arguing and challenging and saying the unsayable; not by bowing their knee whether to gods or to men.’ The notion of giving offence suggests that certain beliefs are so important or valuable to certain people that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted, or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority."
Blimey, it's been kicking off a bit on waddya, hasn't it? Just to lighten the mood a bit here's a wry observation - if MIE posts another few comments, his archive will hit the magical 1000 page mark. That's 20,000 comments in a few years. That must be a cause for a Sat night celebration!
Your mission, UT peeps, should you decide to accept it, is to identify a single comment from Martyn (with a Y!, in Europe! that craaaazy guy!} that is interesting, humourous, original, enlightening, or in any way memorable, If you UT peeps decide to accept this mission, and are successful, then I will buy everybody who has ever posted on waddya a large drink (even bitey). I've got about kr220 in small change at the moment - will I need it?
I didn't realise that was you, although I guessed it from the link to Kenan Malik.
I can't believe they zapped it - what the fuck is going on when an eejit like bitey gets to post whiney rubbish over and over again under a different nick every time, yet when you post something thought provoking and intelligent, they zap you straight away?
I replied to it, although it wasn't a very good reply. Did they zap that as well?
Sorry, MF, my offer is restricted only to his 20,000 comments on Cif. Martyn's 'liberation' on this site where he felt 'empowered' to call people niggers and wish painful cancer deaths on people he doesn't like doesn't really qualify (please read the small print).
Still, good effort. Post your PayPal details and I'll bung you the price of a can of Stella.
Your mission, UT peeps, should you decide to accept it, is to identify a single comment from Martyn (with a Y!, in Europe! that craaaazy guy!} that is interesting, humourous, original, enlightening, or in any way memorable, If you UT peeps decide to accept this mission, and are successful, then I will buy everybody who has ever posted on waddya a large drink (even bitey)."
I gotta better chance in winning the lottery.....1 in 14 million..... My round... what you having?
This is fucking awesome. Can I heartily recommend climbing into a compost bin in order to be a snake glove puppet for a group of 6-10 year olds? It totally recharges the happiness batteries. Nite in with the good lady so i'll bid you all adieu. P x
Just before I go off to do other things, a couple of people have mentioned JezzaBella's handmaiden who arrived on WADDYA with the embarrassing awkwardness of a Joyce Grenfell impression and then disappeared without trace.
Whatever happened to her?
Did someone mention that she had landed the job of nursing auxiliary on a leper colony and she decided to row and paddle like the wind to the next island?
EnglishFuckwit Ahhhhh..... downtcha just love 'im? The self-appointed keeper of the gates of purity and decency on CiF - waging war where he sees fit against anyone who dares 'threaten' the integrity of the Guardian and it's lofty virtues and insodoing threatens him - part of the CiF/Waddaya leviathan.
Been playing catch up on the thread - it's just pure joy to read ;) bit knackered but was a good days work.
Turm:
Will get the tests done. Fo' sho'.
AB/BW/MF/HS/Jen - I can't keep up, but am filled with recognition of joy and sadness and anger in equal measure - not to mention rolling on the floor fucking laffing my stupid twatty head off ;0)
BB - back at ya!
Lover of Horses - PB - hey Shoreditch eh? Completely full of twats!! Glad you were OK ;)
Just before I go completely, I shall mention without comment that Channel 4 News has just said that Dave Clegg has admitted that people have posted dog's mess through his letterbox and spat at him in the street.
I also forgot to thank you for letting Craig Bellamy move to Cardiff on a season long loan. No you can't have him back.
Deepest Sympathy on your loss today. Mick Mc must be as smug as a cheshire cat with his first win at home !. As you said - they can spend as much money as they like, but you can't buy a TEAM. Wasn't that levelled at Chelsea not too long ago ?
"Just before I go off to do other things, a couple of people have mentioned JezzaBella's handmaiden who arrived on WADDYA with the embarrassing awkwardness of a Joyce Grenfell impression and then disappeared without trace."
Yeah..hang on..someone'll lay that one at my door next...see from what I'd been told she was some feisty salt-of-the-earth colleen who could take a bit of banter...turns out otherwise..no doubt she was another appointee who got the call cos mummy and daddy were at uni with such and such...or however it works and couldn't stand the thought of being held to account by the riff raff..in which case...so what?...if however she took one look around the place and thought..."I'm fucked if I'm working with this bunch of pampered middle-class tossers"..then so what?..good for her
either way...so what?..I doubt if she was any great loss to 'awesome' interweb journalism.
Or maybe she'll be back now they've got me banned before I can even post...maybe Daddy rang Rushbridger and said "Get rid of that fuckin obnoxious abuser,or she ain't comin back"..in which case...so what?
anyway...shouldn't they have brought in a fella just for diversity...which reminds me...shouldn't they also be encouraging a diversity of opinion for the sake of..erm..diversity...I thought celebrating diversity was a CIF 'thing'...or did they mean a diversity of moderation standards?
As far as I can see, the Guy in Scunthorpe and the Greek Delia apart, the main objection to my activities comes from young Napoleon and Halfwit..both of whom have irredeemably proved themselves complete fuckin flakes in the last 24 hours alone...and the irrepressibly desperate and boring Martyn who would censor his own grandmother for a chance to go ATL...so why the instant bannings?...would anything I post really corrupt others and bring the site into disrepute if it lasted 12 hours or so?...I'm starting to think I must be winning...Waddaya will be mine.
I see Atomboy has already asked about Jessica's new sidekick Christine who seems to have only lasted a day on waddya.Wonder what happened to her?More importantly is Spurs gonna turn around their away game at Man United.We're 1-0 down at the moment.
Deary me, I've been modded for suggesting that EnglishKermit might be Gollum. Thought he'd've liked that, being a LOTR fan an' all. Or maybe it was the Guardian=Precious bit they didn't like.
Thx, gandolfo. Mine's a small Perrier with a twist of lemon and lots of ice. I know it offends bitey that some people here might drink too much, so I'm a bit scared that he might fly from Cambodia to London to watch BB's cases in Southwark, and then fly to Copenhagen to let down my bicycle tyres if I.
PS, if bitey's not around I'd rather have a large absinthe poured through a flaming cube of soaked fair-trade Cuban sugar on a 19th century French absinthe spoon.
PPS have I ever told you that both my chidren have now been taken into care because of my excessive internet use?
"Deary me, I've been modded for suggesting that EnglishKermit might be Gollum."
that's nothing
I got modded for suggesting CIF's new 'assistant' might not have got the job on merit...the very fuckin thought!!..where would anyone get a weird notion like that?
I did try the absinthe and suger thingy many moons ago - although I didn't have the proper spoon for it, and we warmed the spoon rather than flaming the sugar - but... fucking hell it was awesome.
"Most of us (by which I do not mean people here, but people generally) do not know how the very poor or the very rich live because they do not occupy spaces which we ever encounter"
I worked in a restaurant for nearly a year - habituated by some extremely wealthy people (both very old money and new money) the new money brigade were, almost without exception, tight-fisted, greedy, shouty, demanding fuckers (not least the odious Jade Jagger and her then squeeze, Dan MacMillan) but there were some (not many) who had lead a life of extreme privilege and good fortune, but who were, nonetheless, people of great humility, understanding and generosity, possessed of an uncanny humanity which until then, I thought was not in the genetic make-up of such people. They remain extremely rare in the upper echelons, but you will find them in abundance amongst the extremely poor - there is something which connects them both - consciousness.
"They remain extremely rare in the upper echelons, but you will find them in abundance amongst the extremely poor - there is something which connects them both - consciousness. "
tell you what have a "Four Loko" energy drink known in Hawaii as liquid cocaine......what dya fancy blue raspberry, lemonade or cranberry.....? I think they are popular on friday evenings with the Brussels set..........
K folks gotta go ;( Being harassed to get my early Birthday celebrations arse into gear (even though I feel like dog poo)
BB - hehe! Ebeneezer. Looks like it'll be a weedy night instead....grrr... BUT - if you're up for it, Mr Kenny Dope Gonzales playing (hiphop set) in Brixton soon..... Woopee-doop-doop!!!!
"IanG's comments speaks to me also. When he says 'the rights of indigenous workers' right there is one of those places where racist cretins try to insinuate themselves. 'Yes, yes', they'll say, "It's all the fault of those foreign workers.' And THAT is where the racist interpretation versus mine and I think IanG's, divide.
To make the observation about foreign workers doing jobs more cheaply is not to put the blame on them. It is simply to state a fact. If I was poor and was offered a job, I'd take it too. There is no blame in wanting to provide for your family.
Those shipping the jobs off-shore or hiring cheaper foreign labour would like nothing better than for us to blame the 'foreigners'. It distracts us from the real issue.
For twenty years we have believed those who claim the unfettered free market and its logic CANNOT and MUST NOT be resisted. Our entire poltiical class, left and right, has swollowed this argument and rolled over for the markets, stripped us of any protections and delivered us and our society naked into the market machine.
The company bosses and our politicians chose to believe that the market logic is all powerful. And some of them really believe the market knows best and cannot be resisted. They are moral cowards and feeble thinkers. OR they are simply making too much money to care.
They tell us there is noting we can do. But that is not true. Not true politically nor economically. It is the great lie of neo-liberal free-market ideology.
It is a lie we had better stand and face and defeat in argument if we do not want to see our children impoverished.
We are a group of people on a planet still abundant and rich in resources. We are divided by fears and bigotries. But it is not beyond us to find a better logic than the one that insists that only when the greediest among us are aboslutely sated, only then can the poorest be spared a crumb. That is the logic of the unfettered market.
Wow, that's spooky; just fired up the laptop and it's working perfectly again. Dunno what that was all about. Apparently the net crashed in some areas last night over the demand for tickets for Take That's forthcoming tour so that might have something to do with it. On the other hand, it's Hallowe'en! Like I said; spooky.
I just nipped on here in the break in the X Factor...and had a look at waddaya and actually thought some of it was funny..I fuckin give up..seriously..why do I bother?
As an aside, one of my friends is going out with their current guitarist... I should perhaps be a bit nicer about them seeing as he is making a fair whack out of it.
Just got caught up on the carnival that is Waddya. Currently nursing a bruise on my forehead from where I banged it on the desk in frustration with that Angie124 numpty.
MF, you really ought to try a proxy server thingummy. They've obviously got your IP address flagged.
Oh, and I wanted to say that I'm with Jen on the magical thinking business. One of the reasons why I had to give up on the notion that I believed in a god was because my "faith" was actually damaging me much more than it was helping me.
You tell yourself that there's this loving, merciful being that hears your prayers. You work hard, you treat others with kindness and respect. And everything you do seems to land you flat on your face. If there's this loving, merciful god who answers prayers, the only conclusion you can draw when that happens is that you're not loving him enough, you're not praying hard enough, you're just not a good enough person.
And yes, I know that there's no "god" in Buddhism. But the principle is kind of the same -- you do everything the way you're told you're supposed to and still everything that you try to do explodes in your face, the only conclusion that you can come to is that you're just not doing it right. You're still the one who's not good enough.
So I came up with another conclusion: there is no god, there is no karma. There's just life. Some people go through it relatively painlessly. Some people go through shit and then things work well for them. Some people never get much of anything but shit thrown their way. The people who never get much of anything but shit aren't bad people. They don't deserve it any more than anyone else. It's just the way things are.
I hope you don't think I believe that people deserve the shit life throws at them. I really don't. That isn't what it is about at all. But I will leave it there - agree to disagree and all that. :o)
Jenn - you have no need to apologise for anything. Hugs.
Back in a bit - Wallander's on but in original version and I can't type here and read the subtitles at the same time. And swedish sounds like scots dialect but not enough for me to be able to understand what the fuck is going on... :o)
I'd have thought that Angie being bitey's soulmate would have been enough.
* * *
Anyway, I must go and read the analyses of United's second goal against Spurs. Bizarre and even more bizarre since the TV coverage was showing an action replay when it was scored, so we didn't see it live.
Spike, that was one freaky goal. As you say, this will have a long life. I like United as well, but that is one abysmal decision. Or was it 2 or 3? Good game overall though. BTW-Good on Wolves too. Sorry Philippa.
No, I'm not saying that you think that people with shitty lives deserve them. I'm saying that, when you're one of those people living a shitty life and you're trying to hold onto a belief system that tells you that if you pray or meditate or think positively or whatever, your life will get better but yours never does -- then you start to believe that your life is shitty because you somehow deserve to have a shitty life.
There are few things less helpful/more hurtful to a person who has had a lifetime struggle with depression than to be told by someone that happiness is a choice or that positive thinking is all they need to turn their life around.
If I could simply choose to be happy, I'd fucking choose it.
Nicely said Montana, if I could choose I wouldn't be living the life I am.
I actually had a counsellor say to me that I only thought my life was bad because of the way me brain worked.
Once I had climbed down from the ceiling and stopped swearing I told her exactly what my life was like, she agreed with me that the reason I thought my life was shit was because it was indeed shit.
She was a decent counsellor once she stopped regurgitating pop psych feel good nonsense but she left the NHS to go into the private sector.
well, my last comment got eaten, which was probably a good thing as nobody needs to read my views on dan brown's the last symbol.
but wolves, for fuck's sake.
wolves.
plus - harperson going on about 'ginger rodents' when she's been in the same party as hazel blears for several years, just strikes me as inconsistent, as well as bloody offensive.
ok, no, have to vent. dan brown books are a bit like mcdonalds, for me - when your willpower is low (tired / hungover / both) then you just can't help yourself. and then you feel really dirty / sick afterwards.
so - i'm as wooly-minded and liberal on religious issues as the next karmic hippy failing to address their own cultural context, but that book sucks balls to such a magnitude that i am setting aside my normal anti-censorship stance. someone should stop him ever writing anything ever again. cut his hands off, or something, that would be an eminently reasonable response.
@Montana and Jenn: I'm with Woody Allen on this one: "life's a bitch and then you die!" Since I outed myself on Thursday as a closet Elton John fan (his early stuff anyway) here's one of my faves;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYBKcuWowM
BBC 2 currently running a documentary on his career.
good point, jen, we should add putting a bag on his head as well.
i mean - i like shit books a lot (my ludlum collection is currently propping up the right side of my father's desk) but....
"...you're familiar with the Bible's account of 'manna from heaven'?" Langdon saw no connection. "You mean the magical substance that fell from heaven to nourish the hungry?" "Exactly"
Has he ever actually met people, and heard them talk?
Oh bollocks, I might have known I had spoken too soon; the laptop has crashed again! Still, I suppose that could be a good sign in that it is refusing to be contaminated with a virus. Anyway I'm not touching it, I'll wait and get some one qualified to diagnose and fix the problem 'cos anything I try will probably make it worse!
Has he ever actually met people, and heard them talk?
Dan Brown: "I spend my life essentially alone at a computer. That doesn't change. I have the same challenges every day."
so a RESOUNDING NO he hasn't phillipa but that's no excuse, Giyus writes better and is a computer........ I read about 20 pages of the da vinci code and almost lost the will to live........
BTW: my team(Sheffield United) lost again today but I'm not surprized; their performance against Donny Rovers last week was embarrassing. I know they are a bit strapped for cash but that dosn't alter the first principle of football tactics, which is, learn how to pass the ball to a member of your own team rather than lobbing it up in the air and hoping one of your mates gets on the end of it!
he was listed, i'm sure, as a 'professor of creative writing' at a US uni. i swear to god...
the da vinci code was funny, mainly, and you got to see paul bettany naked in the film (bonus) but one of the others just seemed to ignore basic biology, and this latest one, he's so desperate to be 'deep' but without pissing off the fundies, that he manages to say simultaneously that religion is essentially humanism but humanism isn't as good as religion. or some other such bollocks.
and it's so badly written...
tomorrow i will no doubtt have a mcdonalds and it will be a more spiritual experience.
Re Da Vinci Code - I quite enjoyed the film, but the book was so badly written it was cringemaking. I thought Angels and Demons was shite though.
If you like that sort of thing, Tascia, a much better written and more interesting variation on a theme is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, which is basically about a conspiracy theory created by a bunch of friends that suddenly becomes real. You got all the knights templar and suchlike in it too. I really enjoyed that.
Jenn and Montana - I seriously hope I haven't pissed you off because it wasn't my intention.
tascia - i mainly remember ian mckellen in the film hamming it up so much I'm fairly sure he was flirting with the support cast on-screen....
plus naked bettany. that's always good.
i do have to get hold of foucault's pendulum, though, a lot of people have recommended it to me and i love the name of the rose.
got that latest cj sansom while in london - didn't know there was a new one, saw it in bookshop window, squeaked loudly and dived sideways into shop. scared oisette silly. those are good books....
I'm sorry philippa but your pain over being defeated by Wolves is nothing compared to the pain i'm feeling over the second goal at Old Trafford.Some perspective is called for here:-)
Damn you, BB. I was about to say that I read the DVC in a fury of thinking, but he's ripped the whole thing off from Foucault's Pendulum, but you got there first!
Fuckinell, EnglishKermit is on the telly with Elton John at the mo!
"MF, you really ought to try a proxy server thingummy. They've obviously got your IP address flagged."
I really can't be bothered...actually I'm sure I used to be making a point but I just seem to have amassed such a collection of online grievances and feuds, some with a history and strange narrative twists, that I'm not at all sure I know what I'm doing there anymore. I used to find it diverting and genuinely entertaining and would have it on if I was doing something else...now I find myself comin on and just basically looking for people in order to tell them they're "wrong on the internet". Which would be fuckin great if they say: "yeah, I am..thanks for that mf"...but the miserable twats never do.
And tbh, I'm feeling a bit of a cunt over the girl who nipped on waddaya for the day..I mean why I think it's any of my business..or why I care or am surprised? I'm sure I was just making a generic anti-Guardian jibe...and since I've really lost interest in the place I wonder why I'm bothering...or why I think it's gonna change its mind over just sitting schtum over everything it knows it should be screaming about...it doesn't seem to be that kind of a beast any more.
I might once have rated the Guardian "tend to agree" from time to time twenty odd years ago...there was a "neither agree nor disagree" phase and now it just gets on my nerves...so I suppose, in a weird way it's a sign of how much importance I once attached to the Guardian but I just don't think we suit each other any more...and I'm just looking to find fault..and once you start doing that..
so I think I'll just ignore it from now on...I'd read it off and on but if I do then I've got to say something..so I won't bother
Gawd they've rolled out jack straw to reinforce "the terrorist threat is real and we need to be shit scared of that rather than having our lives painfully and slowly destroyed by bastard governments and their mates in the finance industry" ideology........
"People are not daft – they implicitly know that there can be no 100% guarantee of safety. But they also, quite rightly, need reassurance.
They want confidence in those who are "in charge". So you have to get on top of the issue right away; provide the maximum information – never, ever, downplay the possible consequences. You have to abandon every call on your life until the acute stage of the crisis is over, and then prepare for the inevitable official inquiries that will follow."
what a load of bollocks.........do they really think people believe this shite....
Apparently the 'thing' from the Adams family is playing a duet with Elton (Leon Russell), this is after he had some bloody awful karaoke bloke sing the last song pitifully badly.
Good to see Elton's Syrup is still visible, or is that the intention ? Man with all his moolah could do better !
paul - after the 3am start this morning to get back on easyjet's 'early bird' flight, i made one half-arsed attempt to stream the match and then gave up and retired to the sofa for a nap, so wasn't actually aware of the score until logging on this evening...am sort of pretending it didn't happen....
plus, had money on you to draw, so am at least sighing in your direction....
BB - Fraid so, but maybe that's the intention ?. There is a definite colour change from side to top of bonce. Maybe he's dyed the implants to look like a syrup.
One of the silliest things I have seen, though, was film footage from some of the Hague trials of Yugoslavian war criminals. There was a serbian barrister who was really pissed off that the court had decided that barristers wigs were not to be worn so, in protest, he dyed part of his black hair blonde in the shape of a wig...
Think Tascia has already got there, but: vaguely man-looking creature with biblical proportions of white hair and beard all meeting in a straggly way somewhere around the waist.
Worse, pin-stripe suit reminiscent of chimp's tea party stuff.
plus - this bomb thing, not quite caught up yet, but - when we flew out this morning, nobody checked or passports. that was gatwick.
easyjet looked to checked the name, but the borders check was boarding cards only. so basically only showed proof of identity to the yawning teen doing early duty in zone c. which seemed weird at the time...i mean - have to take your shoes off and all, but they don't actually check you're on a valid document? because you could pull all sorts of switches between checkin and departures.
anyway. have crashed now - bed calling. night all.
Come on, we were already ahead! A bit of perspective! And, as they said on MOTD, "There's a lesson there, you should always play to the whistle."
* * *
As a Paris resident, I read two chapters of The Da Vinci Code and I was laughing so hard I was struggling for breath. Apparently Brown not only doesn't have a tourist guide to Paris or an Internet connection, he can't even afford a street map. What a wanker!
* * *
@Tascia
There's a lot of early Elton John I like. Mind you, I adore early Rod Stewart. Some people just surrender to the dark side.
S'funny ... I have a mate - well, actually a mate's husband - who claims to be a Buddhist but who is always going off on one about bloody immigrants, the price of beer in pubs these days, kids nowadays, etc. etc. Yer perfect Daily Mail reader, although I don't think he actually is.
When he goes off on his wilder rants, I smile sweetly and say, "that isn't very Zen of you, is it", and he shuts up. Lovely.
"easyjet looked to checked the name, but the borders check was boarding cards only. so basically only showed proof of identity to the yawning teen doing early duty in zone c. which seemed weird at the time...i mean - have to take your shoes off and all, but they don't actually check you're on a valid document? because you could pull all sorts of switches between checkin and departures."
I gave up buying into all their bollocks the week before the first Iraq march. During that week we were told we couldn't have the rally at Hyde Park due to health and safety reasons and we were under such a high level threat of terror that tanks were brought out to surround Heathrow.
I had call to pop over to the airport the evening before the march. Not even so much as an armed copper to be seen, much less tanks and guns...
Just read your 23.13pm post.FWIW i hope you don't throw in the towel.Earlier today i re read your now deleted post from yesterday's waddya but with a clearer head.And IMO it was pure class .Because what you did in that single post was highlight not only what's wrong with the Guardian but more importantly what IMO is fundamentally wrong with leftwing politics in this country.In other words there is an important debate to be had emitting from that single post of yours.
Anyways thats my two pennyworth .I've said before that people like you,AB,BW and Hank are desperately needed back on CIF- but legit- in order to help up the ante with the BTL political debates.But obviously that's your call.And if you feel CIF is not worth the effort then there's no reason why that debate can't take place here instead.
BB - your thing about time has just stirred a faint memory of some French quotation: something like le temps s'envole ... it's annoying me now; what is it?
Think it's late 17th or early 18th century, but je ne m'en souviens pas....
I'm well aware we were 1-0 down but to lose 2-0 the way we did was gut wrenching.However i will concede that losing 1-0 to West Ham was worse.BTW i'm looking forward to see how Alex Ferguson gets his revenge on Rooney.
Spike - prolly not, as I have the bastard somewhere on my bookshelves, but filed in the 'to read some day' category. ;-)
Not having actually read it, it's filed in my brain with Ulysses and (worse) Finnegan's Wake as basically unreadable without huge reference works at one's side. Maybe someday....
Not satisfied with the belle dame sans merci explanation though.
Btw; there is a difference between lobbing the football into the air and hoping one of your comrades might latch onto it and passing the ball to the feet, through the air, to a member of your team with deadly accuracy which Tony Currie did week in and out at Bramall Lane for Sheffield United in the early 1970's. I don't know what Tony Currie was drawing as a wage back in the seventies but Wayne Rooney isn't fit to tie his boot laces!
Il a mis le café Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait Dans la tasse de café Il a mis le sucre Dans le café au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tourné Il a bu le café au lait Et il a reposé la tasse Sans me parler
Il a allumé Une cigarette Il a fait des ronds Avec la fumée Il a mis les cendres Dans le cendrier Sans me parler Sans me regarder
Il s'est levé Il a mis Son chapeau sur sa tête Il a mis son manteau de pluie Parce qu'il pleuvait Et il est parti Sous la pluie Sans une parole Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris Ma tête dans ma main Et j'ai pleuré
I know what you mean about the goal. I'd have been seething. Actually, I like Spurs, just not when they're playing against us. I won't say what gave me the most pleasure today because I'd get flamed :-z. Anyway, fucking Blackburn! Couldn't they have kept it up in the second half?
@thaum
Oh, read Ulysses! Well worth the effort! And you won't spend as much time with reference works as you would with Will Self (but I'd recommend everyone to read Will Self too). Re the French, there's Leo Ferré's "Avec le temps", but that's very 20th century.
Avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va on oublie le visage et l'on oublie la voix le cœur, quand ça bat plus, c'est pas la peine d'aller chercher plus loin, faut laisser faire et c'est très bien
avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va l'autre qu'on adorait, qu'on cherchait sous la pluie l'autre qu'on devinait au détour d'un regard entre les mots, entre les lignes et sous le fard d'un serment maquillé qui s'en va faire sa nuit avec le temps tout s'évanouit
avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va mêm' les plus chouett's souv'nirs ça t'as un' de ces gueules à la gal'rie j'farfouille dans les rayons d'la mort le samedi soir quand la tendresse s'en va tout' seule
avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va l'autre à qui l'on croyait pour un rhume, pour un rien l'autre à qui l'on donnait du vent et des bijoux pour qui l'on eût vendu son âme pour quelques sous devant quoi l'on s'traînait comme traînent les chiens avec le temps, va, tout va bien
avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va on oublie les passions et l'on oublie les voix qui vous disaient tout bas les mots des pauvres gens ne rentre pas trop tard, surtout ne prends pas froid
avec le temps... avec le temps, va, tout s'en va et l'on se sent blanchi comme un cheval fourbu et l'on se sent glacé dans un lit de hasard et l'on se sent tout seul peut-être mais peinard et l'on se sent floué par les années perdues- alors vraiment avec le temps on n'aime plus
Woohoo!
ReplyDeleteMaxfield Parrish!
Morning, brothers and sisters.
ReplyDeleteWorking. Bah.
Chekhov - how very dare you suggest that I was falling over the other night. You are confusing it with Northampton! ;-)
Morning all.
ReplyDeleteDon't know if this quote below by 'proudchav' over on CiF (one of us perhaps ;-) ), has been posted before but it does have a ring of truth.
For those posters asking when the riots will start, don't hold your breath. Don't expect anything from the ineffectual Labour Party or the toothless TUC. However, there will be resistance to this attack on the poor.
The resistance will come from people of my class, the underclass. We may not know that we are resisting, but resist we will. Our children will mug your children for things that none of them really need. Some of us, in despair, will turn to drink and drugs, and to fuel our newly acquired habits we will burgle your house, or shoplift from your businesses. Others of us will turn to prostitution, and spread disease and family break-up. If I had my way, our resistance would take a more recognisable form, whereby we would visit the bailiffs, the police and the politicians in their homes and make them regret their attacks. Unfortunately, this would require a heightened political awareness we don't possess.
However, we do have an instinctive political awareness. We know our enemy. I have many happy memories of when, as a teenager, my mates and I would commit acts of petty vandalism in the Tory voting areas we had to pass through on the way back to our edge of town council estate after a night out. We weren't sure why we were doing this, but we knew we were doing it in the right place.
Something to think about anyway when I'm off to the shops.
Morning all! Have just made it back home to find Montpellier is largely under water. Made the weather in London look near-tropical in comparison.
ReplyDeleteAnyway - lovely to see everybody at the drinks, when find login for the gallery will put up a photy or two.
That Julianne Moore gets around, dun she?
Well - given the 3am start and the various easyjet-related dickings around so far today, may be napping for the foreseeable future, but back later.
IanG
ReplyDeleteNick Davies, in his book Dark Heart: The Shocking Truth About Hidden Britain (1998) says that the poor rob the poor and their lives are separated and sequestered, hidden from the lovely, elegant chattering classes and the dead-eyed people with power.
The problem will be when the ordinary poor spot, like George Orwell's horse never managed, that they actually have power and both the government and those who cannot quite afford to move into the cloistered, gated realms of the moderately rich are actually terrified of them.
Once that happens, once you read about and see the gangs of people with pinprick-pupils in their eyes and a pit-bull on a chain and a crowbar in their fist, exhaling the stink of drink into the faces of lovely, decent, hardworking people who never wanted to think that they were in this together with anyone who was not like them, things might change.
Of course, at that stage, the idea of sniffily telling people how to behave on the internet, the ability to whoop and shout when you see a straw man and the speed with which you can spot a logical fallacy will not be of much help.
At that stage, people might begin to wonder whether it would have been better had their cartoon lives been more like Denis than Walter, as they suddenly try to make a fist and wonder whether you put your thumb on the inside or outside and who it is who gets to say "Go!"
Another 1 post deletion and ban...and on a weekend...this was 'Book em Crocker'
ReplyDelete----------------------------------------
Not so much a post, this, as the transcript of a conversation I had giving my daughter and her mate a lift. My daughter told her she hadn't checked facebook lately because I'd been on the computer slagging off the Guardian. "But.." her friend interjects"why would you do that?..the Guardian's one of the good papers...we did it in Citizenship".
I had to pull over, kneel down and take several deep breaths before my head exploded..."it's one of the what?" I stammer incredulously.
"You know one of the papers which helps people."
"Which people?"..."they actually teach that at school these days?"
"I dunno...we did it in Citizenship"
So began a lengthy conversation...quite a one sided 'conversation' as it happens...but I'll relate it anyway.
"You see the things is, when people get money something strange happens. Even though they already eat better, live in better houses, have nicer things and can do better things for their children, they always want more; they want political power..not each of them but they want to know someone's looking out for their interests...it's always been that way right through history". They both seem to accept this.
"Well the Guardian started in the industrial revolution in Manchester and even though the people who owned the mills had lots of money, they didn't have any political power or any say in how the country was run...so the Guardian was started to help look after their political and economic interests...really..google it...that's what happened. So really the Guardian was born as the servant of the rich middle-classes"...they nod.
"Then in 1830 we had a Great Reform Act which gave the vote to all the people the Guardian had asked for, and the Guardian kept up its commitment to free trade so that these factory owners could sell their stuff as widely as possible and meantime the people who worked in these mills had their wages gradually cut...but you can't have everything and I'm sure the Guardian thought it was all for the best as the overall wealth of the nation increased...(and was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands)..but you can't have everything eh?
"Things went on like this for a while then we had the first world war and the people with power realised they couldn't just keep things as they were. Hundreds of thousands of people had died for their country and they deserved a share in its prosperity...or that's the 'official' version...what really happened was that the Russian revolution scared the shit out of everybody and they knew they'd better do something...so we all got the vote.
"Not that it did us much good...not until after the next war when we got a health service, a pension and all the stuff a civilised society should have."
continued
ctd.
ReplyDeleteThey seem quite happy with the story so far. The hard bit was to try to explain how democracy is being drawn back; the fact that we still get to turn out and put a cross on a piece of paper seemed to indicate to them that we still have a functioning democracy with choices and candidates who wish to represent people and look after their interests. So we had a discussion about whether a democracy was really any such things when all mainstream parties were effectively corporate poodles and politics was now a corporate game which tried wherever possible to wrest effective power away from ordinary people along with any rights and entitlements...so that our 'needs' could be sold back to us at a healthy profit.
"But it's happening everywhere..look around you...the rich don't campaign any more for greater power than other people. The rich get rich these days by belonging to some corporation or institution and it's these that have seized the power...they've left you with a meaningless vote for a politician whose job is not upsetting corporate interests...the wealthy are retrenching democracy...that's what the wealthy do..it always has been..they want power"
"What's that got to do with the Guardian though?"..she asked
"Oh not much..the Guardian's just doing what it's always done...supporting the rich in achieving political power over the rest of us...it's just what they do...but I wouldn't say that makes them 'one of the good papers', would you?"
"No" she replied "I'm gonna tell my Citizenship teacher"
"You do that love"
Monkeyfish
ReplyDeleteThat was lovely and well worth a banning.
Naturally MIE flew straight in with a rebuttal to defend the Guardian's honour by quoting of all things(the concept of unsound or biased historical sources having yet to penetrate Cordoba's intellectual elite)..the Guardian's own speculative account of its inception..
ReplyDelete"The Manchester Guardian was founded by John Edward Taylor in 1821, and was first published on May 5 of that year. The paper's intention was the promotion of the liberal interest in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre"
However, even a quick glance at wiki would have equipped him with a rather different account..
"A moderate supporter of reform, he witnessed the Peterloo massacre in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:
'they have appealed not to the reason but to the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence.' [1]
But the radical press in Manchester, in particular the Manchester Observer did support the protests, and it was not until the Observer was closed by successive police prosecutions that the road was clear for a paper closer to Taylor's mill-owning friends."
Now obviously wikipedia has a deserved Trotskyist reputation and may not appeal to Martyn's social democratic principles...so he's quite at liberty to stand by the Guardian's version...although in doing so he'd never come across the Manchester Observer's fulsome description of its rival as the lapdog and whore of the mill owners...
lapdog?...whore?..splutters Martyn...who can you mean?
monkeyfish
ReplyDeleteBrilliant.
It looks like the Hanman woman held back the moderation thread until they had got the new banning system installed and running.
Obviously, if you can zap and neutralise people as soon as they post, a lot of people are going to be very happy.
By a lot, obviously I mean the few dozen usual suspects.
It's like watching a small child slowly strangling its favourite teddy bear.
Or the plastic doll with disturbing eyes which hiccups "Momma!" every time you squeeze it in the right place.
@Atomboy
ReplyDeleteCan we wind it back a bit from the confrontational thing? We're both escalating it, I know...
Nick Davies' book wasn't an account of how 'the poor' live - he picked out the worst examples and amplified them, so the whole book only really described less than 30 people. I assume he met hundreds and filtered out all the ones without serious problems with addictions, mental health etc to build a narrative about the literally worst situations you can find.
It was a great book though. But if and when the revolution does materialise, the denizens of Dark Heart will miss it all because they'll be smoking crack in a darkened room somewhere.
MF, ever considered a lecture tour?
ReplyDeletePhilippa - glad to hear you and Oisette made it back safely!
Morning comrades
ReplyDeleteThis banning business is getting ridiculous. They've probably got a little programme just for you MF, that flashes up on screen whenever you post - under whatever name.
"This banning business is getting ridiculous."
ReplyDeleteI don't think they need a program for it. There's plenty of Ally's mates over at waddya who keep an eye out and have Jess's number on speed dial.
Bunch of tossers. They never contribute anything to the politics blogs but recycle yet another "how many feminists can dance on the head of a pin" and they're all over it with their tired old platitudes.
I to the Vizzo
ReplyDeleteNick Davies' book wasn't an account of how 'the poor' live...
Perhaps not, but I simply said that he says that the poor predominantly steal from other people who are poor. Which he does.
Other than that, what you say is simply speculation and personal assumption and opinion, to which you are entitled, but it does not make it necessarily true.
Also, don't tell me how or what to write. I am really not at all bothered whether it is to your taste or not or matches your mindset or coincides with your opinions or those you want to hear.
Fair enough AB, too early in the day for beef.
ReplyDeleteHa, great stuff, MF. Pedants' corner - the First Reform Act was 1832. Other than that, spot on.
ReplyDeleteMartyn's a strange one. He had a long old ramble on the moderation thread the other night. Couldn't make any sense of it all. WinstonRed responded with
"Step away from the mushrooms, Martyn."
It's not there now. Like one or two others, he seems to enjoy protected status.
I'm glad it isn't just me who finds Martyns stuff hard to understand, he often goes off into weird stream of consiousness stuff that I am sure makes sense to him but leaves me shaking my head.
ReplyDeleteMorning all
ReplyDeletePhilibee - glad you both got back OK. Did oisette enjoy her gig?
Thaum - you were sitting down nicely last time I saw you. Always difficult to really get ratarsed on a worknight. Brilliant you made it though.
LaRit from last night - big squishy hugs! x
(And a hug to everyone else too.)
MF
Was looking back over the thread to try and find BookEm's post - thought it might have been you as it had been zapped so quickly. Glad you posted it over here for posterity.
oisette not too impressed with her gig, which turned out to be quite thrash-y, and then got lost in shoreditch, hence my slightly swift departure from the gathering to try to get her facing in the right direction and on the correct bus...but she was taken off by my mates to a couple of groovy bars last night so is very happy. immensely knackered but lovely to catch up with old friends and meet up with new ones!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI slept like a baby last night.
ReplyDeleteScreamed for eight hours and woke up rolling in shit.
Taking about falling over, I had a lovely trip last night, fecking kids round here have decided that mischief night should be a week long affair.
ReplyDeleteSo far I have had my windows egged and my door buzzer rang at regular intervals, a bit annoying but nothing to get upset about.
I did get upset when they decided to take the back gate off and lay it on its side across the opening, in the dark I didn't see it and took a massive header over it, I was lucky to get away with a badly bruised knee and a bruised and cut foot, I could have bloody died.
The little shits are getting laxative chocolate tomorrow night.
"The little shits are getting laxative chocolate tomorrow night."
ReplyDeleteHeh. My kind of treat.
Jenn
ReplyDeleteWe don't have mischief night down here - not that I've noticed anyway. Sound like a right bloody barrel of laughs...
ffs Jenn. Little toerags!
ReplyDeleteStaff nite out was fun. Last days here, halloween fun. At 4pm I will litteraly be being a sock puppet. A snake emerging from a pumpkin, at the end of the kiddies activities.
La Rit, get the bloods it's better to know, and get a scan if the bloods warrant it, is no biggie, glad to hear your sit is improving : )
I had my first cough-free night's sleep in three weeks, which was excellent. I slept from 12 right through til 10! Awesome.
ReplyDeleteHey Jenn, you could slip some acid in the choccies, a trip for a trip...
ReplyDeleteBB
ReplyDeleteDistilled benylin. It's the only way forward.
BB
ReplyDeleteI can't really have a go at mischief night because I did it myself when I was a kid, I don't think I did anything as dangerous as the gits who could have killed me last night but I did some pretty anti social things.
Luckily I am out of work at the moment and don't have to take the late bus home anymore because apparently they have graduated from throwing eggs at the drivers to throwing fireworks.
They also like to throw rocks at the windscreen, what larks.
Turm
ReplyDeleteIf I had any acid I would not be wasting it on sociopathic children. ;)
Good news BB. x
ReplyDeleteChest infections are very horrible and waking yourself up with your own coughing is a scary thing.
Just looked at Waddaya..what a fuckin place
ReplyDeleteIt should have a strapline..
"This thread is the place to bring your gripes about moderation. Martyn in Europe will then patiently explain why your case is untenable and how the Guardian is the most open-minded, liberal media organisation in the history of the world."
Is that what he's for these days?..a little trained attack poodle whose mission is to counter claims of bias by the Guardian?..generally by quoting something from the Guardian about how fuckin great they are..
He's either got an ancient mariner style curse which condemns him to wander the internet boring the shit out of strangers or he's got an attention deficit disorder...maybe he should get a doctor's note telling Jess that unless he gets an ATL spot, it could be terminal.
and EnglishFuckwit's gettin all stroppy again...the fuckin resiliance of these people! Comes over here and gets his credibility mashed but he's right back on his horse spouting more crap..you've gotta hand it to him
I'm nipping out anyway unless he nips over here to sort this place out again...sorry..."to nail it to the fuckin wall" again
Hi jenni --things going better here merci !
ReplyDeleteMap of thursday's mischief in France . If you go south of Cherbourg to coutances, granville, avranches, I'm in the middle of that triangle, so have a choice . Avranches -- 500 turned out, hehe ...
Thanks Jenn!
ReplyDeleteAt least it will be all over after Sunday night. The throwing fireworks thing scares the bejaysus out of me though. I had a friend at school when I was about 10 who got a firework thrown at him and it got stuck to his jumper. He was in hospital for about a month and very badly burned.
Even at my age, I get very nervous round fireworks and would never let my lad have more than a sparkler or two in the garden, but would go take him to the big charity fireworks shows locally.
The trouble is, kids have got nothing to do. I know I harp on about France, but the social provisions in even the smallest villages is awesome. Where I used to live there is a population of fewer than 9,000 people, yet there is a big municipal football pitch with floodlights, municipal tennis courts, organised sports and music and hobby clubs of every kind for teenagers, and the nearest biggish town - 15 mins drive away - has everything you can possibly imagine provided for teenagers to be doing something other than hanging out in the cold drinking beer and getting bored.
In this country we have slashed social provision for youth to such a huge extent - in my town there is one mouldy youth centre with a few table-tennis tables and a sound system, and one church-organised "god club" as my lad calls it, and that's it. It is far more interesting for them to bunk on the train down to Gatwick, hang out in the airport causing trouble and getting moved on by armed police, or go and hang out in the local woods smoking and drinking beer.
"Just looked at Waddaya..what a fuckin place"
ReplyDeleteIt's like peeking through the dressing room window of an Am-Dram club in Surbiton.
My old man and his mates used to fire fireworks at eachother. Things was different then. Nowadays they just want giros.
ReplyDeleteBB
ReplyDeleteI am trying to remember if there was anything for us kids to do when I was a teen and I am coming up blank.
I am a child of Thatcher so maybe that is understandable.
But I can't in all honesty say that it was better then, we went to gymnastics on a Saturday morning (if we had the cash) and that was it for organised activities, the rest of the time we were left to our own devices.
We had a great time down the beck, just messing about.
Not sure what I am trying to say here but I do know that things have changed, changed in a bad way.
I feel all Daily Mail now. ;)
Back when New Labour was still brand new, there was no shortage of things to do for teenagers - local park, coats on the ground, 5/6 mates, few bottles of 20/20, few cans of hooch, lump of hash with bits of plastic in it, and later the one club in town that let under 18s in as long as they had a fiver. If you're lucky you'll get a snog, spend all your cash and walk home at 3am passing the last spliff round. Happy days.
ReplyDeleteJenn
ReplyDeleteI am a good 10 yrs older than you at least, I would guess. I was born in 62 and was a teenager in the 70s and early 80s. I lived in a town in the South of a population of about 60,000 but we had about 5 different youth clubs you could go to on different nights of the week, a couple of rather good "god clubs" as well, and on Tuesdays and Fridays it was the 50p disco at the Boys Club.
Then there were the football clubs, cricket club, rugby club and private working clubs - there were a couple of those in the town and you had to know someone whose dad would sign you in.
In the summer there was free tennis, cheap swimming in the open-air pool, cafes selling cheap orange squash and stuff in the Park, after school clubs for special interests, evening classes that were free for kids.
Then Thatcher happened.
"BeautifulBurnout alleges that my comments can be disregarded on the basis of a punch up with one person. That might have been true a fortnight ago but, as she well knows, the dispute has widened to include those who give support and encouragement to the interloper(s), the self proclaimed enemies of the Guardian, and that, regrettably IMO, includes you, AllyF and you BB.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the issues in a dispute become clear cut and this is one of those issues. It boils down to this. There is no middle ground, nor observer status here. Moral relativism won't wash. Whose side are you on, the Guardian or its enemies?"
a line in the sand...drawn by the Grandwizard of the English Nationalist alliance of Hobbit worshipping Real Ale Organic Vegetable Babyboomers....the one and only EnglsihFuckwit..
"Where were you when War was declared daddy?"
Aye, you try telling that to the kids today though. They don't believe you.
ReplyDeleteVizzo
ReplyDeleteYou lived in a better place than me. ;)
I didn't see my first spliff, or get drunk, until I left home at age 18 (to go to uni).
Damn my (very) working class parents and their strict ways, they would have beaten me sensless if I came home drunk.
I got very mixed messages from my parents, my dad was a raging alcoholic who would have seriously beaten any of his daughters who came home drunk.
Working your issues out online is such fun.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Just looked at Waddaya..what a fuckin place" Part III.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually hilarious and, perhaps, things have now got to the stage where I shall be happy to walk away from something which now has all the credibility of someone standing in a strait-jacket, leering and dribbling and shitting himself and saying that the shimmering bluebottle on the disintegrating dog's turd is actually the secret love-nephew of the bloke who invented the intergalactic custard ray-gun.
It began with EnglishHalfwit chastising AllyF for coming over here, suggesting that it must have been someone else pretending...
englishhermit
30 October 2010 11:29AM
AllyF
I don't know if you are aware of it, but someone imitating you was on the UT yesterday, congratulating the interlopers and groveling in a most pathetic manner to the sundry. It didn't fool me of course, so my regard for your reputation has been unaffected.
AllyF
30 October 2010 11:53AM
Actually Englishhermit, rather than speaking in hedged allusions, let me spell out my position re: the UT.
There are some regulars there who I very much like and admire.Many of them have serious ideological issues with the editorial values and policies of the Guardian, some of which are very valid, IMO. Some of them also seem to have a particular bee in their bonnet about this thread in particular, which I find rather silly, although I see where they are coming from.
There are also some of the regulars there who carry nasty personal grudges against individuals, which I sometimes find ugly, but usually find extremely tedious and anti-social.
I very rarely visit the UT, mainly because when I don't want to get sucked into those personal grudges and squabbles, especially since the targets of those grudges and squabbles are sometimes people I like and admire.
If it were possible, there are probably about a dozen different regulars on the UT, all formerly Cif regulars, whom I would dearly love to see posting on Cif again - not here especially, but on the politics threads, the welfare threads, the racism threads, the immigration threads, the feminist threads etc etc etc, because I think they have a lot of important things to say. Unfortunately due to a combination of the moderators policies here and bloody-minded belligerence over there, that doesn't seem possible.
However I absolutely refuse to get sucked into an ongoing feud between here and there and refuse to get involved in any personal feuds and squabbles - I'm perfectly capable of generating my own feuds and squabbles without help from anyone else!
I reserve the right to pop over there occasionally and take my chances (about 50/50) on finding myself in either an interesting chat or a vicious cat fight.
If you have an issue with me going over there and chatting to people, many of whom I consider my friends, then frankly I don't give a shit.
Cont/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMF
ReplyDeleteIt's all gone FGTH and Two Tribes this morning...
..cont
ReplyDeleteenglishhermit
30 October 2010 12:53PM
AllyF
Rather a long reply for someone who does not give a shit.
Thank you for confirming that it was you because the issue I have with you is your allusion to me as a 'mod's nark'. As you may know, that word describes someone who grasses people up to the drugs squad.
It refers to someone who goes sneaking behinds people's backs. I don't. I've made it perfectly clear what I have been doing and why.
I think the behaviour of the interlopers is utterly despicable. This is the Guardian - a newspaper that I hold in high esteem although I may not always agree with it. Persistent rigging of the recommendations and posting with fake multiple identities is undermining the integrity (cleanness) of this newspaper.
BeautifulBurnout alleges that my comments can be disregarded on the basis of a punch up with one person. That might have been true a fortnight ago but, as she well knows, the dispute has widened to include those who give support and encouragement to the interloper(s), the self proclaimed enemies of the Guardian, and that, regrettably IMO, includes you, AllyF and you BB.
Sometimes the issues in a dispute become clear cut and this is one of those issues. It boils down to this. There is no middle ground, nor observer status here. Moral relativism won't wash. Whose side are you on, the Guardian or its enemies?
Actually BB you are only nine years older than me, I was born in 71 but I take your point.
ReplyDeleteIt must have been different down south, no insult meant to you (or people who live down there) but I can only comment from my own experience.
When I told Halfwit he could work his way up to being WADDYA Sentinel, he obviously decided to pull out all the stops.
ReplyDeleteThe Laughing Policeman's uniform is in the post by the way.
The whistle comes with full instructions, but I've arranged for paramedics to be on standby.
You know, just to be safe.
Dagga, dagga dagga and all that.
Did Martyn really say 'whose side are you on?'.
ReplyDeleteWhat a perfect arsehole he is.
Yep, you are probably right. Or maybe the damage had been done by the time you were out and about... Thatcher was leeching the soul out of this country from 79 onwards, remember.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
Oh it was English Hermit who said that, he is a perfect arsehole too.
ReplyDeleteNo, Jen, that was EnglishHalfwit.
ReplyDeleteI think you can buy them both as a BOGOF offer in Asbo, though.
The parts are interchangeable and they share the same brain, which is solid plastic, so not - you know - actually functional.
I think in fairness, you could probably provide limitless tennis clubs, social clubs, parks, music events etc and some kids would still not go to them.
ReplyDeleteSome kids just prefer knives and drugs...
BB I often think that my immediate family should be used as an example of what growing up in the Thatcher years was like.
ReplyDeleteOne a go getter (but miserably unhappy in her marriage), one a heroin addicted prostitute (she is clean now, but lost her children), one a self obsessed anorexic who lives her life through her daughter, one who gave up her chances of becoming a scientist because she got pregnant (whilst drunk) and then me.
I am a miserable drunk who never lived up to her potential, a born loser you might say.
Each of us could have had a better, more productive life if we were not expelled from the wrong vagina.
I am getting a bit het up here aren't I?
AB
ReplyDeleteI dunno about the preferring knives bit - there was no doubt that there was weed floating about when I was 14 or 15, and we all thought we were very daring and radical smoking it. But we still went and did stuff instead of just getting stoned and hanging around being annoying.
I can't help thinking that if there were more facilities for teens that they would still do the drugs but go off and enjoy themselves as well instead of looking for trouble to cause because there is nothing for them to do unless they have money.
Part of the problem aswell is that Saturday working has all but disappeared for the under 16s. Sure, you can get a paper round, but there were loads of shop jobs etc. available for the 14-16 age group. Although my folks were not on the breadline by the time I was a teen, my pocket money stopped when I was 14 and I was expected to take a Saturday job and pay for stuff myself from that point on. I used to work on a market stall selling undies from starting the laying out at 6.30am to finishing the clear-up at 6pm for £2.50. But £2.50 would buy you an album (or six visits to the Boys Club disco) in those days, so it's all relative I guess.
I can't remember exactly how much 10 Embassy were then, but I think it was less than 50p. I remember trying to give up smoking in 1980 when a pack of 20 went up to 75p or somesuch...
No, Jen.
ReplyDeleteHearing the real lives of real people should always be better than watching little strutting dogs dance and beg and yap.
Get het up Jen, for you are in fine company.
ReplyDeleteAfternoon all,
I was going to shout at some of you for pointing me toward waddya, but then I realised waddya made me laugh. Blimey some people are so far up themselves, they need advice from the Chilean miners rescue team.
An interesting link to the GMG site from EnglishHermit.
ReplyDeleteIt portray's a version that can be construed to be an Historical record, but one that can obviously, and effectively smooch the gullible. The Duke's version posted a while back is a more plausible Historical outline about the formation of the Manchester Guardian.
But here is a contradiction for EnglishHermit, taken from the website:
More than that, though, it is recognised around the world as the ultimate statement of values for a free press, asserting:
'comment is free, but facts are sacred'
'the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard’
SO it is obviously Black and Grey..
>>He's either got an ancient mariner
ReplyDelete>>style curse which condemns him to
>>wander the internet boring the shit
>>out of strangers.
*snort* : )
BB
ReplyDeleteI was being flippant.
However, I think we probably accepted that smoking and drinking were just parts of life, which also involved working, as you say, doing jobs at home, going to school and having ideas and dreams which could be projected against the screen which we imagined would be our future.
Vonnegut says that people want to take drugs intended for horses or chemicals for cleaning drains because their lives are so hopeless.
You probably had enough of the hope bit in your brain.
Jen & BB wonderful to learn of your experiences, but I'm afraid you are mere spring chickens in comparison. Fifty two was my year so I grew up in the 60s with all that it offered. My one regret was not taking up the offer of going to a Jimi Hendrix concert when a guy at school had tickets. I went to the Handel museum in London the other week to view the (sparse) memorabilia they had on show.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, it was easy in them days to price things. We reckoned that going decimal the base unit was the price of a single No6 fag - 1 new pence! Everything followed from that.
AB, not sure what you are saying in response to my earlier post. Do you mean that the poor will rob the poor? Sorry, not widely read, my excuse was I went the the crappiest school in town, a CofE dump.
"Each of us could have had a better, more productive life if we were not expelled from the wrong vagina.
ReplyDeleteI am getting a bit het up here aren't I? "
You are entitled to get het up, Jenn. And that has brought a huge lump to my throat because it is so bloody true.
But how dare you describe yourself in that way, woman! So what if you bloody drink? I have had times in my life where I have taken to drink for months on end to self-medicate.
The thing is, Jenn, you have got a brain, and you are using it, and will continue to use it and eventually things will start to get better. Been there. Done that. It may seem like everything is absolutely fucking hopeless at the moment, and that there is no way out, but, without wanting to get too buddhisty about thing, when you do something positive, something positive results from it. Keep doing the positive things and gradually a wellspring of positive effects builds up and "luck" changes.
God, I don't want to sound all preachy and shit. I know how lucky I have been in life, living most of my life in the South East and having access to a shedload more opportunities than most people.
(End of Pt. 1)
(...Pt 2)
ReplyDeleteGoing off at a tangent.
I can't remember how it came up in conversation with my lad yesterday - it might have been in the context of Christmas presents and him saying "I don't want anything this year because it's not right that I get so much money spent on me when so many people don't". He was born with a huge sense of social responsibility too.
I was trying to explain to him that giving him presents was more about making me happy than making him happy because I could remember times when I was little when my family was the "have-nots", living in two bed prefab, and us three kids having to share the same bed in the winter to keep warm. Christmas presents - although I only know this because I was told later - were second-hand wooden toys bought and repainted by my dad to make them look new, second-hand teddies or dolls given a wash and brush-up and a new set of clothes or a new ribbon by my mum.
I started talking about how lucky I was that I was born to parents who cared about me and encouraged me, who struggled hard and made life better for us and that I was lucky enough to have a good brain and good opportunities thanks to them. I started saying "From each according to their abilities..." and he finished off the sentence for me and had a long long chat about it.
Some round here (mentioning no names *cough* Hank *cough*) accuse me of middle class liberalism and fake guilt. There is no two ways about it that by the time I was 25 my Dad was a reasonably well-off man, having decided to go and work in the middle east for a few years, and in later life I have been able to benefit from the bank of Mum and Dad. But prior to that I had left home at 17 without finishing my formal schooling because I wanted to get away from the constant "you must do better than us" pressure I was put under all the time as the eldest child. I eventually did my studies later in life and regret not listening to them at the time - but on the other hand I wouldn't have had the huge variety of life experiences that I did if I had stayed at home and been a good girl.
I don't feel guilty, though, about having money now because as far as I am concerned there is nothing wrong with having money or a certain position in society as long as you use it to the benefit of society, not just you and your family. And I am trying to persuade my lad that he needs to see it that way too.
I am rambling now and seem to have gone off point. I think the bottom line is this:
Don't be hard on yourself. You have every right to feel the way you do. You have every right to seek solace in drink if it takes the edge off. And please know that if you decide you don't want it to be that way any more, you can change it. You are already changing it by studying instead of sitting watching the telly all day.
Nuff respect.
Screams of laughter at Chateau Frog when I had a nowadays very rare read of waddya. The Pilot Officer's 12.53PM speech on Fifth Columnists was a masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteFrogDeux
ReplyDeleteIt was rather...erm...drama queenish wasn't it?
I thought I would be the one winning that title in the Ciffies when it was mooted yesterday. I think I've got a serious rival now though.
BB lovely comment but it is wrong.
ReplyDeleteBeing a good person, being nice just doesn't help.
Karma is a nice idea but when the world shits on you over and over it is insulting.
Karma just does not work.
Jenn
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about being nice, but about doing positive things to increase the likelihood of getting positive results.
But yes it was a bit preachy, and I am sorry for that.
For all my supposed eloquence, there are times when I know what I want to say but just can't seem to be able to say it right.
Fair enough, Jenn. We will have to agree to disagree then.
ReplyDeleteIanG
ReplyDeleteNever think you need to apologise for not having read a book someone else mentions. We have all only read a few books and there remain millions of which we have never heard and never touched. I try to avoid referencing books for this reason, but sometimes it happens anyway.
Your own ideas are more valuable than being able to recite those of someone else.
Anyway, you quoted this, which I thought was good:
The resistance will come from people of my class, the underclass. We may not know that we are resisting, but resist we will. Our children will mug your children for things that none of them really need. Some of us, in despair, will turn to drink and drugs, and to fuel our newly acquired habits we will burgle your house, or shoplift from your businesses. Others of us will turn to prostitution, and spread disease and family break-up.[...]
However, we do have an instinctive political awareness. We know our enemy. I have many happy memories of when, as a teenager, my mates and I would commit acts of petty vandalism in the Tory voting areas we had to pass through on the way back to our edge of town council estate after a night out. We weren't sure why we were doing this, but we knew we were doing it in the right place.
Traditionally, revolutions have been precipitated by middle-class "intellectuals" who have been dissatisfied with the way things were going, but they have prodded and bullied and tricked the working-classes into doing the actual punch and kick routine with the agents of the state.
Overheard recently: "Something has got to happen soon. It cannot go on the way it is. The problem is, people like you and I have too much to lose to be the ones who throw the first brick."
I tend to think that we have strange ideas about how segregated we are because we habitually pass in close proximity with what we imagine is a spectrum of social groups.
Most of us (by which I do not mean people here, but people generally) do not know how the very poor or the very rich live because they do not occupy spaces which we ever encounter.
In terms of the poor robbing the poor, that is what happens generally.
If it was a situation of general riot and unrest, they would rob shops or anything else which seemed "robbable" but these situations are very temporary and do not really lead to cultural change, other than entrenchment of established positions.
The current and future situation is probably more likely to lead to middle-class unrest and disenchantment because they always thought that they were insulated against any of the harms usually suffered by the poor.
The other thing with revolutions is that they tend to happen when people have been given nice things and then had them taken away.
You can keep people in line and brutalised forever, as long as you never give them treats.
If people find that their lives do not simply get better and better, however this may be financed and resourced, they will be angry.
Sorry BB, I really don't mean to be a bitch but getting help when you a a true unbeliever is hard.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in the stuff you do believe in but considering you are smarter than me it does not mean I dislike you.
Jenni --- I've mentioned before the usefulness of writing as therapy,started by Jung iirc, the wiki is pretty good but here's a different one for a change ... if it's too preachy go to wiki !
ReplyDeleteIf I printed out the six weeks' e-mail correspondence with ex-gf ( or semi-gf ... ) , it would now be well over sixty pages, and progress in understanding made that would be imposssible face to face . Diary writing, particularly on-screen has given me real results in the past. Outside now ! XX
Jenn
ReplyDeleteNo worries, hon. :o)
But where the hell did you get the idea that I am smarter than you? I am just like the hedgehog that knows one big thing. I am pretty limited when it comes to anything outside of what I do - politics, philosophy, arts etc.
It's not smarts, just book-learnin'
Hi Jen, the Hendrix thing was in jest, there are many more important things in life as we all know.
ReplyDeleteAB thanks for the fulsome response. You could well be correct. The Poll Tax was led by the middle class at least that is the urban myth. I was just reading what Redminer said about the removal of CB from the 'rich' and how that relates to your ideas. He thought that was a deliberate ploy to get that 'class' de-coupled from the masses.
I quote it here as he puts it well:
The cut to universal child benefits has to be seen in the wider context of the Tory mission to dismantle the Welfare State.
It's a cynical attempt to alienate wealthier voters from the very concept of a Welfare State. You only have to read the Telegraph pages a while to appreciate how much middle class voters despise benefits going to the poor; with this cut in their entitlement, they will be recruited to the cause of complete abolition.
Britain's sickness is people who can't bare the thought of another person receiving an entitlement they don't get. This will be magnified by the ending of universal benefits.
Part 1b of the wider campaign to end the Welfare State...and liberal fools are clapping their hands in glee.
He is a prolific poster and is worth reading for that perspective.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@ Jen & BB
ReplyDeletes'funny, cos I agree with you both.
Magical thinking, fo sho.
Positive actions produce positive results. Very often, yes.
The problem is some folk can get beaten down, trapped in negativity, addicted, hopeless (I can be in this group..)
Others get the shit kicked out of them and come back stronger and more determined.
I published a magazine in '93 it ran for 5 issues, was critically well recived, but went bust as we printed 15k and sold <1k. That experience has almost paralysed me from trying some thing again.. What's the point, it's all shit.. Etc.
I know that if I controlled my addictions I'd probably feel better and 'empowered'. I know Becket's 'You've failed, so what, fail again, fail bigger'. I lack the will or impetus to act on this knowledge...
buddisam = magical thinking.
ReplyDeleteNo thanks.
I know you are buddist BB but no thanks you magical thinking fool.
Bugger. Made the mistake of responding to Bitey's new nick on WDYWTTA. No good will come of it...
ReplyDeleteLOZ shaz
ReplyDeleteHe was aiming for me - he knows the best way to get to me is via my son, and he will push that button as many times as it takes.
I am trying my best to bite my fingers....
Jenn - no worries xx
Turm
ReplyDelete"The problem is some folk can get beaten down, trapped in negativity, addicted, hopeless (I can be in this group..)"
I've been in that group more times that I could shake a stick at. And I am very much aware that something could land on my head tomorrow and I would be back down there too. So there is no way I will ever EVER criticise anyone for it.
@Jen
ReplyDeletefor what it's worth, you're not on your own.
Ok xxx
@IanG
Nice posts. My mate Mick saw them all - Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Cream, the Byrds, the fucking lot. He even saw the Doors. The DOORS for christ sake. I asked him once what was that like... He said it was at the Roundhouse. "That's about all I remember. We'd each taken six tabs of acid."
AB, MF, you guys are on fire these days. Hank we need you too. Generally - FFS - write a book.
And finally quote of the day has to be:
"(You are) undermining the ...cleanness... of this newspaper."
Awesome acolade.
Bloody hell BB, is Bitey still after you ?
ReplyDeleteThat boy's got stamina, LOL.
Wrongness
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_BstJzcQNA&feature=share
waddya is hilarious....englishhermit's smarming is unbelievable. I'm assuming he's a grown up but he's increasingly reminding me of a particularly unpleasant little goodie two shoes and snitch we had at school.
ReplyDeleteI should ignore him really, but he is being quite funny this afternoon. He's pretending he's seen "my performance" at work.
ReplyDeleteEither he is really Judge Lyons from Wood Green in disguise - and the personality almost fits... (sorry, Your Honour, if you're reading this but you know I'm right) or he is making it up to try and creep me out - which it hasn't.
EWWWWWW!
ReplyDeleteThat vid has made me feel sick!
"(You are) undermining the ...cleanness... of this newspaper."
ReplyDeleteweird that...I really thought they were all just pissed off because they'd had their little playground invaded...that the place that they went to try and sound clever or funny was being used to take the piss out of the Guardian's self-image. Why that should have bothered them I don't know...obviously if they were to answer this they'd come piling in with "yeah but what about the vile, obnoxious blah blah blah..." but tbh I don't recall ever having a go at anybody who hadn't had a go first...seriously..name one
so other than the obvious motive that some posts were and still are attracting far more attention than the usual drivelling fare served up over there, what was the fuckin problem?...answer...there wasn't one..it was jealousy, pure and simple...they weren't as incisive, cutting or witty as they seemed to think; and maybe they thought this made them look bad in front of the millions they imagined were reading.
or at least that's what I thought until now...obviously, they were never going to say "Look, I think I'm a pretty interesting and funny guy and you popping up here all the time distracts from my cleverness and wit and steals my thunder"...they'd look like real pretentious dickheads..even they realised that...so what could they say?
well there was the 'abuse' line of course...the vile obnoxious intimidation etc...but that's just not remotely sustainable and only survives as an 'urban myth' because they all get wiped and it's impossible to present evidence indicating otherwise..
so having exhausted that one, we now arrive at this..
"On many issues there are indeed many nuanced shades of grey. The integrity of the Guardian isn't one of them. It cannot be. It must not be. For if it were allowed to happen, the integrity of the Guardian would be a relative concept and therefore undermined. It really is a black and white issue. Yes or no. Good or bad. It is that simple."
...so my real crime was to hint that the Guardian might lack a certain amount of integrity
and my slanderously factual account of the Guardian's origins is refuted by MIE by quoting the fuckin Guardian
I'm tempted to believe this pair are genuinely stupid enough to stand by that drivel...but I think it's doubtful...really I think they're just jealous that they don't get more attention but can't actually come out and say so..
but, being an understanding guy, I'm just gonna assume that's what they mean and their statements are basically a cry for help..so I'm gonna help..with this advice..
stop writing such boring pointless shite.
There's no such thing as shades of gray, MF. I've just been told.
ReplyDeleteManichaean ThinkRs R Us
MF
ReplyDeleteJust reading through Waddya now ... haven't got to this yet though:
"On many issues there are indeed many nuanced shades of grey. The integrity of the Guardian isn't one of them. It cannot be. It must not be. For if it were allowed to happen, the integrity of the Guardian would be a relative concept and therefore undermined. It really is a black and white issue. Yes or no. Good or bad. It is that simple."
Heh heh, reminds me of nothing but Wossname's "you are either for or against the baby Jesus". At least he had the grace to come back on the thread the next day and admit he was PWP (posting while pissed).
bitey seems to be on a bit of a mission this afternoon BB.
ReplyDeleteAfternoon to visitor from Taiwan !
ReplyDeleteDear god, I hope Bitey's not having a weekend away in order to refresh his database....
ReplyDeleteI think he comes out at weekends to take advantage of the lighter modding. In abstract I pity him, Cif is probably his only interaction in English. When I read his spew, I want to panell the wee shit bag...
ReplyDeleteSheff - I am in comparatively fine fettle. My cough is clearing up, I had a good night's sleep, my lad is practicing his guitar and my beloved is dozing in the chair next to me. It's been raining so I can't do the garden, so I have nothing better to do than bat away inanities with one eye on Cif, while watching Thunderball on t'telly with the other.
ReplyDeleteLovely.
Ah well..another one bites the dust..one ban. Not even my words this time. Actually wrote you a lengthy reply BB but it was sucked into the ether
ReplyDelete-----------------------------------------------
somehow, this seems relevant
"And on the other you have the multicultural argument: diversity is good, but it has to be policed to minimise the friction that it generates. The imposition of moral and legal restraints on being offensive is one form of such policing.
I take the opposite view. It is precisely because we do live in a plural society that we need the fullest extension possible of free speech. In a homogenous society in which everyone thought in exactly the same way, then the giving of offence would be nothing more than gratuitous. But in the real world where societies are plural, then it is both inevitable and important that people offend the sensibilities of others. Inevitable, because where different beliefs are deeply held, clashes are unavoidable. Almost by definition such clashes express what it is to live in a diverse society. And so they should be resolved openly, not suppressed in the name of ‘respect’ or ‘tolerance’.
But more than this: the giving of offence is not just inevitable, it is also important. Any kind of social change or social progress means offending some deeply held sensibilities. Or to put it another way: ‘You can’t say that!’ is all too often the response of those in power to having their power challenged. To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged. Human beings, as Salman Rushdie has put it, ‘shape their futures by arguing and challenging and saying the unsayable; not by bowing their knee whether to gods or to men.’
The notion of giving offence suggests that certain beliefs are so important or valuable to certain people that they should be put beyond the possibility of being insulted, or caricatured or even questioned. The importance of the principle of free speech is precisely that it provides a permanent challenge to the idea that some questions are beyond contention, and hence acts as a permanent challenge to authority."
Blimey, it's been kicking off a bit on waddya, hasn't it? Just to lighten the mood a bit here's a wry observation - if MIE posts another few comments, his archive will hit the magical 1000 page mark. That's 20,000 comments in a few years. That must be a cause for a Sat night celebration!
ReplyDeleteYour mission, UT peeps, should you decide to accept it, is to identify a single comment from Martyn (with a Y!, in Europe! that craaaazy guy!} that is interesting, humourous, original, enlightening, or in any way memorable, If you UT peeps decide to accept this mission, and are successful, then I will buy everybody who has ever posted on waddya a large drink (even bitey). I've got about kr220 in small change at the moment - will I need it?
MF
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise that was you, although I guessed it from the link to Kenan Malik.
I can't believe they zapped it - what the fuck is going on when an eejit like bitey gets to post whiney rubbish over and over again under a different nick every time, yet when you post something thought provoking and intelligent, they zap you straight away?
I replied to it, although it wasn't a very good reply. Did they zap that as well?
scherfig
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I think it was monkeyfish who suggested that MIE should be given a thread completely to himself.
I guessed the rationale for this was a bit like isolating someone infected with cholera.
This is not quite a serious entry for your competition, so I will tell you what I did.
I pulled up Martian's back catalogue and thought I would just pluck whatever was in the middle, so I went to page 500.
There it was and here it is.
The very distilled essence of Martyn Richard Jones and an exemplar of his output.
Bring socialism in from the cold
MartynInEurope's comment 26 May 2009 3:15PM
... capitalists are neither hypocrites nor doing something unnatural.
LOL
Recommended (1)
The bit in italics is something he is quoting, so Martian's input is actually - "LOL."
Says it all.
Including the single recommendation.
Sorry, MF, my offer is restricted only to his 20,000 comments on Cif. Martyn's 'liberation' on this site where he felt 'empowered' to call people niggers and wish painful cancer deaths on people he doesn't like doesn't really qualify (please read the small print).
ReplyDeleteStill, good effort. Post your PayPal details and I'll bung you the price of a can of Stella.
MF
ReplyDeleteI didn't realise that was you,
Neither did I BB - can't believe it was zapped either. They really do need to get their priorities sorted at the groan.
scherfig:
ReplyDeleteYour mission, UT peeps, should you decide to accept it, is to identify a single comment from Martyn (with a Y!, in Europe! that craaaazy guy!} that is interesting, humourous, original, enlightening, or in any way memorable, If you UT peeps decide to accept this mission, and are successful, then I will buy everybody who has ever posted on waddya a large drink (even bitey)."
I gotta better chance in winning the lottery.....1 in 14 million.....
My round... what you having?
The single recommendation was probably from himself - after all that was some shit hot creative writing !
ReplyDeleteThis is fucking awesome. Can I heartily recommend climbing into a compost bin in order to be a snake glove puppet for a group of 6-10 year olds? It totally recharges the happiness batteries. Nite in with the good lady so i'll bid you all adieu. P x
ReplyDeleteJust before I go off to do other things, a couple of people have mentioned JezzaBella's handmaiden who arrived on WADDYA with the embarrassing awkwardness of a Joyce Grenfell impression and then disappeared without trace.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to her?
Did someone mention that she had landed the job of nursing auxiliary on a leper colony and she decided to row and paddle like the wind to the next island?
Sounds cracking, Paz
ReplyDeleteHave a good one xx
EnglishFuckwit Ahhhhh..... downtcha just love 'im? The self-appointed keeper of the gates of purity and decency on CiF - waging war where he sees fit against anyone who dares 'threaten' the integrity of the Guardian and it's lofty virtues and insodoing threatens him - part of the CiF/Waddaya leviathan.
ReplyDeleteBeen playing catch up on the thread - it's just pure joy to read ;) bit knackered but was a good days work.
Turm:
Will get the tests done. Fo' sho'.
AB/BW/MF/HS/Jen - I can't keep up, but am filled with recognition of joy and sadness and anger in equal measure - not to mention rolling on the floor fucking laffing my stupid twatty head off ;0)
BB - back at ya!
Lover of Horses - PB - hey Shoreditch eh? Completely full of twats!! Glad you were OK ;)
Just before I go completely, I shall mention without comment that Channel 4 News has just said that Dave Clegg has admitted that people have posted dog's mess through his letterbox and spat at him in the street.
ReplyDeleteGood evening, best wishes and perhaps back later.
Gandolfo:
ReplyDeleteI thought the odds were 18 million to one?
That should be easy then.
OK MrLarit's - rockin' em out.... Planet Eeeee anyone???
ReplyDeleteAtomboy
ReplyDeleteRecommended (1)
@ Phillipa -
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you two got home safely.
I also forgot to thank you for letting Craig Bellamy move to Cardiff on a season long loan. No you can't have him back.
Deepest Sympathy on your loss today. Mick Mc must be as smug as a cheshire cat with his first win at home !. As you said - they can spend as much money as they like, but you can't buy a TEAM. Wasn't that levelled at Chelsea not too long ago ?
Says it all really ;)
ReplyDeleteBloody hell - vapid doesn't even begin to describe it...
LaRit
ReplyDeleteA great philosopher once wrote:
"Naughty naughty, very naughty..."
"Just before I go off to do other things, a couple of people have mentioned JezzaBella's handmaiden who arrived on WADDYA with the embarrassing awkwardness of a Joyce Grenfell impression and then disappeared without trace."
ReplyDeleteYeah..hang on..someone'll lay that one at my door next...see from what I'd been told she was some feisty salt-of-the-earth colleen who could take a bit of banter...turns out otherwise..no doubt she was another appointee who got the call cos mummy and daddy were at uni with such and such...or however it works and couldn't stand the thought of being held to account by the riff raff..in which case...so what?...if however she took one look around the place and thought..."I'm fucked if I'm working with this bunch of pampered middle-class tossers"..then so what?..good for her
either way...so what?..I doubt if she was any great loss to 'awesome' interweb journalism.
Or maybe she'll be back now they've got me banned before I can even post...maybe Daddy rang Rushbridger and said "Get rid of that fuckin obnoxious abuser,or she ain't comin back"..in which case...so what?
anyway...shouldn't they have brought in a fella just for diversity...which reminds me...shouldn't they also be encouraging a diversity of opinion for the sake of..erm..diversity...I thought celebrating diversity was a CIF 'thing'...or did they mean a diversity of moderation standards?
As far as I can see, the Guy in Scunthorpe and the Greek Delia apart, the main objection to my activities comes from young Napoleon and Halfwit..both of whom have irredeemably proved themselves complete fuckin flakes in the last 24 hours alone...and the irrepressibly desperate and boring Martyn who would censor his own grandmother for a chance to go ATL...so why the instant bannings?...would anything I post really corrupt others and bring the site into disrepute if it lasted 12 hours or so?...I'm starting to think I must be winning...Waddaya will be mine.
Evening all
ReplyDeleteI see Atomboy has already asked about Jessica's new sidekick Christine who seems to have only lasted a day on waddya.Wonder what happened to her?More importantly is Spurs gonna turn around their away game at Man United.We're 1-0 down at the moment.
Deary me, I've been modded for suggesting that EnglishKermit might be Gollum. Thought he'd've liked that, being a LOTR fan an' all. Or maybe it was the Guardian=Precious bit they didn't like.
ReplyDeleteMy round... what you having?
ReplyDeleteThx, gandolfo. Mine's a small Perrier with a twist of lemon and lots of ice. I know it offends bitey that some people here might drink too much, so I'm a bit scared that he might fly from Cambodia to London to watch BB's cases in Southwark, and then fly to Copenhagen to let down my bicycle tyres if I.
PS, if bitey's not around I'd rather have a large absinthe poured through a flaming cube of soaked fair-trade Cuban sugar on a 19th century French absinthe spoon.
PPS have I ever told you that both my chidren have now been taken into care because of my excessive internet use?
"Deary me, I've been modded for suggesting that EnglishKermit might be Gollum."
ReplyDeletethat's nothing
I got modded for suggesting CIF's new 'assistant' might not have got the job on merit...the very fuckin thought!!..where would anyone get a weird notion like that?
Bloody Chris Paterson.
ReplyDeleteScherf
ReplyDeleteI did try the absinthe and suger thingy many moons ago - although I didn't have the proper spoon for it, and we warmed the spoon rather than flaming the sugar - but... fucking hell it was awesome.
Scherfig - thanks, mate, I got a proper belly laugh out of that!
ReplyDeleteAtomboy & IanG:
ReplyDelete"Most of us (by which I do not mean people here, but people generally) do not know how the very poor or the very rich live because they do not occupy spaces which we ever encounter"
I worked in a restaurant for nearly a year - habituated by some extremely wealthy people (both very old money and new money) the new money brigade were, almost without exception, tight-fisted, greedy, shouty, demanding fuckers (not least the odious Jade Jagger and her then squeeze, Dan MacMillan) but there were some (not many) who had lead a life of extreme privilege and good fortune, but who were, nonetheless, people of great humility, understanding and generosity, possessed of an uncanny humanity which until then, I thought was not in the genetic make-up of such people. They remain extremely rare in the upper echelons, but you will find them in abundance amongst the extremely poor - there is something which connects them both - consciousness.
LaRit - that's my experience too: the nouveau riche are far more obnoxious than those who've grown up with riches. It's a strange thing.
ReplyDeleteDon't you know who I am?
"They remain extremely rare in the upper echelons, but you will find them in abundance amongst the extremely poor - there is something which connects them both - consciousness. "
ReplyDeleteYup.
scherfig
ReplyDeletetell you what have a "Four Loko" energy drink known in Hawaii as liquid cocaine......what dya fancy blue raspberry, lemonade or cranberry.....? I think they are popular on friday evenings with the Brussels set..........
K folks gotta go ;(
ReplyDeleteBeing harassed to get my early Birthday celebrations arse into gear (even though I feel like dog poo)
BB - hehe! Ebeneezer. Looks like it'll be a weedy night instead....grrr... BUT - if you're up for it, Mr Kenny Dope Gonzales playing (hiphop set) in Brixton soon..... Woopee-doop-doop!!!!
BB, here's Coppola's take on it. dracula
ReplyDeleteDegas has this and the less said about Lautrec and Van Gogh the better.
A little quote from our mate Golem --
ReplyDelete"IanG's comments speaks to me also. When he says 'the rights of indigenous workers' right there is one of those places where racist cretins try to insinuate themselves. 'Yes, yes', they'll say, "It's all the fault of those foreign workers.' And THAT is where the racist interpretation versus mine and I think IanG's, divide.
To make the observation about foreign workers doing jobs more cheaply is not to put the blame on them. It is simply to state a fact. If I was poor and was offered a job, I'd take it too. There is no blame in wanting to provide for your family.
Those shipping the jobs off-shore or hiring cheaper foreign labour would like nothing better than for us to blame the 'foreigners'. It distracts us from the real issue.
For twenty years we have believed those who claim the unfettered free market and its logic CANNOT and MUST NOT be resisted. Our entire poltiical class, left and right, has swollowed this argument and rolled over for the markets, stripped us of any protections and delivered us and our society naked into the market machine.
The company bosses and our politicians chose to believe that the market logic is all powerful. And some of them really believe the market knows best and cannot be resisted. They are moral cowards and feeble thinkers. OR they are simply making too much money to care.
They tell us there is noting we can do. But that is not true. Not true politically nor economically. It is the great lie of neo-liberal free-market ideology.
It is a lie we had better stand and face and defeat in argument if we do not want to see our children impoverished.
We are a group of people on a planet still abundant and rich in resources. We are divided by fears and bigotries. But it is not beyond us to find a better logic than the one that insists that only when the greediest among us are aboslutely sated, only then can the poorest be spared a crumb. That is the logic of the unfettered market.
We can do better.
30 October 2010 10:20
Link
Dave - I mostly agree with the post you've quoteed.
ReplyDeleteBut: We are a group of people on a planet still abundant and rich in resources.
Resources are running out and being hotly contested; this situation is only going to deteriorate. Migration is tied into resource depletion.
Wow, that's spooky; just fired up the laptop and it's working perfectly again. Dunno what that was all about.
ReplyDeleteApparently the net crashed in some areas last night over the demand for tickets for Take That's forthcoming tour so that might have something to do with it.
On the other hand, it's Hallowe'en!
Like I said; spooky.
I just nipped on here in the break in the X Factor...and had a look at waddaya and actually thought some of it was funny..I fuckin give up..seriously..why do I bother?
ReplyDeleteI'd blame Take That if I were you.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, one of my friends is going out with their current guitarist... I should perhaps be a bit nicer about them seeing as he is making a fair whack out of it.
Hi folks!
ReplyDeleteJust got caught up on the carnival that is Waddya. Currently nursing a bruise on my forehead from where I banged it on the desk in frustration with that Angie124 numpty.
MF, you really ought to try a proxy server thingummy. They've obviously got your IP address flagged.
Angie124 is infuriating. Straw (wo)men erected at every turn, elastic goal posts and obfuscation are the order of the day.
ReplyDeleteI think I will just stop replying to her, tbh. Let her whine on about getting men banned from gender threads. It will never happen.
thauma 1954 -- long post just lost! Wordpad next time .
ReplyDeleteOh, and I wanted to say that I'm with Jen on the magical thinking business. One of the reasons why I had to give up on the notion that I believed in a god was because my "faith" was actually damaging me much more than it was helping me.
ReplyDeleteYou tell yourself that there's this loving, merciful being that hears your prayers. You work hard, you treat others with kindness and respect. And everything you do seems to land you flat on your face. If there's this loving, merciful god who answers prayers, the only conclusion you can draw when that happens is that you're not loving him enough, you're not praying hard enough, you're just not a good enough person.
And yes, I know that there's no "god" in Buddhism. But the principle is kind of the same -- you do everything the way you're told you're supposed to and still everything that you try to do explodes in your face, the only conclusion that you can come to is that you're just not doing it right. You're still the one who's not good enough.
So I came up with another conclusion: there is no god, there is no karma. There's just life. Some people go through it relatively painlessly. Some people go through shit and then things work well for them. Some people never get much of anything but shit thrown their way. The people who never get much of anything but shit aren't bad people. They don't deserve it any more than anyone else. It's just the way things are.
@BB:
ReplyDeleteYep. I think that's the best way to deal with her.
@Dave:
There was nothing in the spam folder. :-(
Jesus I've just looked back on the thread and whilst I stand by my assertion that buddism is stupid I am sorry about how rude I was to BB.
ReplyDeleteBB I apologise fully, I can't believe I was so dismissive of you, it really isn't like me, I don't know what the fuck is going on in my head lately.
I really am sorry.
Montana
ReplyDeleteI hope you don't think I believe that people deserve the shit life throws at them. I really don't. That isn't what it is about at all. But I will leave it there - agree to disagree and all that. :o)
Jenn - you have no need to apologise for anything. Hugs.
Back in a bit - Wallander's on but in original version and I can't type here and read the subtitles at the same time. And swedish sounds like scots dialect but not enough for me to be able to understand what the fuck is going on... :o)
ReplyDeleteEvening all!
ReplyDelete@bb
I'd have thought that Angie being bitey's soulmate would have been enough.
* * *
Anyway, I must go and read the analyses of United's second goal against Spurs. Bizarre and even more bizarre since the TV coverage was showing an action replay when it was scored, so we didn't see it live.
Woo, Clattenburg! That one's going to run and run!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, as a United supporter, I'm prepared to say that we should only have beaten Spurs 1-0. I'm all heart.
Hi All
ReplyDeleteSpike, that was one freaky goal. As you say, this will have a long life. I like United as well, but that is one abysmal decision. Or was it 2 or 3? Good game overall though. BTW-Good on Wolves too. Sorry Philippa.
@BB:
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not saying that you think that people with shitty lives deserve them. I'm saying that, when you're one of those people living a shitty life and you're trying to hold onto a belief system that tells you that if you pray or meditate or think positively or whatever, your life will get better but yours never does -- then you start to believe that your life is shitty because you somehow deserve to have a shitty life.
There are few things less helpful/more hurtful to a person who has had a lifetime struggle with depression than to be told by someone that happiness is a choice or that positive thinking is all they need to turn their life around.
If I could simply choose to be happy, I'd fucking choose it.
Nicely said Montana, if I could choose I wouldn't be living the life I am.
ReplyDeleteI actually had a counsellor say to me that I only thought my life was bad because of the way me brain worked.
Once I had climbed down from the ceiling and stopped swearing I told her exactly what my life was like, she agreed with me that the reason I thought my life was shit was because it was indeed shit.
She was a decent counsellor once she stopped regurgitating pop psych feel good nonsense but she left the NHS to go into the private sector.
well, my last comment got eaten, which was probably a good thing as nobody needs to read my views on dan brown's the last symbol.
ReplyDeletebut wolves, for fuck's sake.
wolves.
plus - harperson going on about 'ginger rodents' when she's been in the same party as hazel blears for several years, just strikes me as inconsistent, as well as bloody offensive.
wolves
ReplyDeleteok, no, have to vent. dan brown books are a bit like mcdonalds, for me - when your willpower is low (tired / hungover / both) then you just can't help yourself. and then you feel really dirty / sick afterwards.
ReplyDeleteso - i'm as wooly-minded and liberal on religious issues as the next karmic hippy failing to address their own cultural context, but that book sucks balls to such a magnitude that i am setting aside my normal anti-censorship stance. someone should stop him ever writing anything ever again. cut his hands off, or something, that would be an eminently reasonable response.
wolves.
ffs.
He needs to die Phillipa, if we cut his hands off he could still dictate.
ReplyDelete@Montana and Jenn: I'm with Woody Allen on this one: "life's a bitch and then you die!"
ReplyDeleteSince I outed myself on Thursday as a closet Elton John fan (his early stuff anyway) here's one of my faves;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grYBKcuWowM
BBC 2 currently running a documentary on his career.
Phillipa - get over it - it's only Wolves.
ReplyDeleteAnd you can't have CB back. We have won every game he's started in.
good point, jen, we should add putting a bag on his head as well.
ReplyDeletei mean - i like shit books a lot (my ludlum collection is currently propping up the right side of my father's desk) but....
"...you're familiar with the Bible's account of 'manna from heaven'?"
Langdon saw no connection. "You mean the magical substance that fell from heaven to nourish the hungry?"
"Exactly"
Has he ever actually met people, and heard them talk?
unbelievably bad.
Oh bollocks, I might have known I had spoken too soon; the laptop has crashed again!
ReplyDeleteStill, I suppose that could be a good sign in that it is refusing to be contaminated with a virus.
Anyway I'm not touching it, I'll wait and get some one qualified to diagnose and fix the problem 'cos anything I try will probably make it worse!
Has he ever actually met people, and heard them talk?
ReplyDeleteDan Brown:
"I spend my life essentially alone at a computer. That doesn't change. I have the same challenges every day."
so a RESOUNDING NO he hasn't phillipa but that's no excuse, Giyus writes better and is a computer........
I read about 20 pages of the da vinci code and almost lost the will to live........
Phillipa
ReplyDeleteI have only read the Da vinci Code but that was bad enough, the least thrilling thriller ever.
"Vittoria slipped off her robe. 'You've never been to bed with a yoga master, have you?"
ReplyDelete— Dan Brown (Angels & Demons)
class...........better than Babs cartland
BTW: my team(Sheffield United) lost again today but I'm not surprized; their performance against Donny Rovers last week was embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteI know they are a bit strapped for cash but that dosn't alter the first principle of football tactics, which is, learn how to pass the ball to a member of your own team rather than lobbing it up in the air and hoping one of your mates gets on the end of it!
he was listed, i'm sure, as a 'professor of creative writing' at a US uni. i swear to god...
ReplyDeletethe da vinci code was funny, mainly, and you got to see paul bettany naked in the film (bonus) but one of the others just seemed to ignore basic biology, and this latest one, he's so desperate to be 'deep' but without pissing off the fundies, that he manages to say simultaneously that religion is essentially humanism but humanism isn't as good as religion. or some other such bollocks.
and it's so badly written...
tomorrow i will no doubtt have a mcdonalds and it will be a more spiritual experience.
wolves. ffs.
BTW: where's Deano? You all right mate?
ReplyDeleteI read the Da Vinci code in a straight 24hr period. Bought it for a flight read.
ReplyDeleteCan anyone tell me what was in it - cos I truly can't remember. It has had such a lasting impact on me ! I think...
Still got it somewhere. Maybe the next time I need to waste 24hrs, I'll dig it out again.
tascia
ReplyDeleteThere was something in it about someone in the Last Supper painting being a woman (or something) cos yes, it was painted from life.
He could have put a giraffe in the picture but that wouldn't mean jesus was into bestiality, the whole thing was daft from start to finish.
Re Da Vinci Code - I quite enjoyed the film, but the book was so badly written it was cringemaking. I thought Angels and Demons was shite though.
ReplyDeleteIf you like that sort of thing, Tascia, a much better written and more interesting variation on a theme is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, which is basically about a conspiracy theory created by a bunch of friends that suddenly becomes real. You got all the knights templar and suchlike in it too. I really enjoyed that.
Jenn and Montana - I seriously hope I haven't pissed you off because it wasn't my intention.
tascia - i mainly remember ian mckellen in the film hamming it up so much I'm fairly sure he was flirting with the support cast on-screen....
ReplyDeleteplus naked bettany. that's always good.
i do have to get hold of foucault's pendulum, though, a lot of people have recommended it to me and i love the name of the rose.
got that latest cj sansom while in london - didn't know there was a new one, saw it in bookshop window, squeaked loudly and dived sideways into shop. scared oisette silly. those are good books....
I'm sorry philippa but your pain over being defeated by Wolves is nothing compared to the pain i'm feeling over the second goal at Old Trafford.Some perspective is called for here:-)
ReplyDeleteDamn you, BB. I was about to say that I read the DVC in a fury of thinking, but he's ripped the whole thing off from Foucault's Pendulum, but you got there first!
ReplyDeleteFuckinell, EnglishKermit is on the telly with Elton John at the mo!
*apologies to Leon Russell for the slur.
ReplyDeleteI stayed up all night in order to finish Foucalts Pendulum, it is a fine bit of nonsense.
ReplyDeleteYou haven't pissed me off BB, I seem to be forever going over the top lately, it's probably hormones. ;)
Foucault's Pendulum is bloody good. One of those books where you get to the end of it and want to start reading it all again...
ReplyDeleteEH and Elton?! We're watching another police thingy on ITV3, so you will have to describe it to me, Thaum. :o)
"MF, you really ought to try a proxy server thingummy. They've obviously got your IP address flagged."
ReplyDeleteI really can't be bothered...actually I'm sure I used to be making a point but I just seem to have amassed such a collection of online grievances and feuds, some with a history and strange narrative twists, that I'm not at all sure I know what I'm doing there anymore. I used to find it diverting and genuinely entertaining and would have it on if I was doing something else...now I find myself comin on and just basically looking for people in order to tell them they're "wrong on the internet".
Which would be fuckin great if they say: "yeah, I am..thanks for that mf"...but the miserable twats never do.
And tbh, I'm feeling a bit of a cunt over the girl who nipped on waddaya for the day..I mean why I think it's any of my business..or why I care or am surprised? I'm sure I was just making a generic anti-Guardian jibe...and since I've really lost interest in the place I wonder why I'm bothering...or why I think it's gonna change its mind over just sitting schtum over everything it knows it should be screaming about...it doesn't seem to be that kind of a beast any more.
I might once have rated the Guardian "tend to agree" from time to time twenty odd years ago...there was a "neither agree nor disagree" phase and now it just gets on my nerves...so I suppose, in a weird way it's a sign of how much importance I once attached to the Guardian but I just don't think we suit each other any more...and I'm just looking to find fault..and once you start doing that..
so I think I'll just ignore it from now on...I'd read it off and on but if I do then I've got to say something..so I won't bother
Gawd they've rolled out jack straw to reinforce "the terrorist threat is real and we need to be shit scared of that rather than having our lives painfully and slowly destroyed by bastard governments and their mates in the finance industry" ideology........
ReplyDelete"People are not daft – they implicitly know that there can be no 100% guarantee of safety. But they also, quite rightly, need reassurance.
They want confidence in those who are "in charge". So you have to get on top of the issue right away; provide the maximum information – never, ever, downplay the possible consequences. You have to abandon every call on your life until the acute stage of the crisis is over, and then prepare for the inevitable official inquiries that will follow."
what a load of bollocks.........do they really think people believe this shite....
Apparently the 'thing' from the Adams family is playing a duet with Elton (Leon Russell), this is after he had some bloody awful karaoke bloke sing the last song pitifully badly.
ReplyDeleteGood to see Elton's Syrup is still visible, or is that the intention ? Man with all his moolah could do better !
paul - after the 3am start this morning to get back on easyjet's 'early bird' flight, i made one half-arsed attempt to stream the match and then gave up and retired to the sofa for a nap, so wasn't actually aware of the score until logging on this evening...am sort of pretending it didn't happen....
ReplyDeleteplus, had money on you to draw, so am at least sighing in your direction....
"what a load of bollocks.........do they really think people believe this shite...."
ReplyDeleteMy immediate reaction when I heard about it too.
If they told me the grass was green I would have to get a second opinion before I believed them...
Tascia - I thought he'd had hair implants? Does it still look like a syrup then?
BB - Fraid so, but maybe that's the intention ?. There is a definite colour change from side to top of bonce. Maybe he's dyed the implants to look like a syrup.
ReplyDeleteHe has a sense of humour ?
Leon Russell - Addams family - Cousin Itt.
ReplyDeleteGot there in the end !
tascia
ReplyDeleteBloody weird.
One of the silliest things I have seen, though, was film footage from some of the Hague trials of Yugoslavian war criminals. There was a serbian barrister who was really pissed off that the court had decided that barristers wigs were not to be worn so, in protest, he dyed part of his black hair blonde in the shape of a wig...
Nutter.
Stop moaning about your footie teams everyone, try being a Boro fan, even St Tony Mowbray won't be able to save us from going down.
ReplyDelete@BB:
ReplyDeleteNo, you didn't piss me off -- not at all. Sorry if it seemed that way. I just understand how Jen feels and wanted to say so.
@MF:
Admirable bit of introspection. Don't ignore us, though.
BB
ReplyDeleteyou will have to describe it to me, Thaum
Think Tascia has already got there, but: vaguely man-looking creature with biblical proportions of white hair and beard all meeting in a straggly way somewhere around the waist.
Worse, pin-stripe suit reminiscent of chimp's tea party stuff.
plus - this bomb thing, not quite caught up yet, but - when we flew out this morning, nobody checked or passports. that was gatwick.
ReplyDeleteeasyjet looked to checked the name, but the borders check was boarding cards only. so basically only showed proof of identity to the yawning teen doing early duty in zone c. which seemed weird at the time...i mean - have to take your shoes off and all, but they don't actually check you're on a valid document? because you could pull all sorts of switches between checkin and departures.
anyway. have crashed now - bed calling. night all.
Cheers thaum
ReplyDeleteNow that he has told me it was cousin It, I remember what he looks like!
Jenn - I'm a Liverpool supporter which is why I have been avoiding footy talk for weeks now.
Sigh.
@Paul
ReplyDeleteCome on, we were already ahead! A bit of perspective! And, as they said on MOTD, "There's a lesson there, you should always play to the whistle."
* * *
As a Paris resident, I read two chapters of The Da Vinci Code and I was laughing so hard I was struggling for breath. Apparently Brown not only doesn't have a tourist guide to Paris or an Internet connection, he can't even afford a street map. What a wanker!
* * *
@Tascia
There's a lot of early Elton John I like. Mind you, I adore early Rod Stewart. Some people just surrender to the dark side.
Another fave of Elton's back catalague:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GAKOLOnfV4
S'funny ... I have a mate - well, actually a mate's husband - who claims to be a Buddhist but who is always going off on one about bloody immigrants, the price of beer in pubs these days, kids nowadays, etc. etc. Yer perfect Daily Mail reader, although I don't think he actually is.
ReplyDeleteWhen he goes off on his wilder rants, I smile sweetly and say, "that isn't very Zen of you, is it", and he shuts up. Lovely.
Philibee
ReplyDelete"easyjet looked to checked the name, but the borders check was boarding cards only. so basically only showed proof of identity to the yawning teen doing early duty in zone c. which seemed weird at the time...i mean - have to take your shoes off and all, but they don't actually check you're on a valid document? because you could pull all sorts of switches between checkin and departures."
I gave up buying into all their bollocks the week before the first Iraq march. During that week we were told we couldn't have the rally at Hyde Park due to health and safety reasons and we were under such a high level threat of terror that tanks were brought out to surround Heathrow.
I had call to pop over to the airport the evening before the march. Not even so much as an armed copper to be seen, much less tanks and guns...
Gatwick airport I mean, not Heathrow.
ReplyDeleteAnd philippa, your body clock is going to be all over the place. You lost an hour today, you're going to gain another one tonight. Heh. :o)
monkeyfish
ReplyDeleteJust read your 23.13pm post.FWIW i hope you don't throw in the towel.Earlier today i re read your now deleted post from yesterday's waddya but with a clearer head.And IMO it was pure class .Because what you did in that single post was highlight not only what's wrong with the Guardian but more importantly what IMO is fundamentally wrong with leftwing politics in this country.In other words there is an important debate to be had emitting from that single post of yours.
Anyways thats my two pennyworth .I've said before that people like you,AB,BW and Hank are desperately needed back on CIF- but legit- in order to help up the ante with the BTL political debates.But obviously that's your call.And if you feel CIF is not worth the effort then there's no reason why that debate can't take place here instead.
I could be wrong but I think I'm in the spam filter. Anyone who has authority to check it out want to give it a whirl!
ReplyDeleteBB - your thing about time has just stirred a faint memory of some French quotation: something like le temps s'envole ... it's annoying me now; what is it?
ReplyDeleteThink it's late 17th or early 18th century, but je ne m'en souviens pas....
@thaum
ReplyDeleteI've been racking my brains, but the only thing I can think of is Proust's à la recherche du temps perdu.
NapK's having a wobbly on WDYWTTA..........about UT.....
ReplyDeleteChekhov - nada in the spam folder.
ReplyDeleteRe French thingy: might be thinking of où sont les neiges d'antan?
Thaum - like Spike I can only think that it might be Proust.
ReplyDeleteSpike - you know what I said about that bottle of Muscadet? I lied. Cheers, mate. It's lush! xx
Gandolpho - I know. I still think it is down to his age and that he is not deliberately daft.
Spike
ReplyDeleteI'm well aware we were 1-0 down but to lose 2-0 the way we did was gut wrenching.However i will concede that losing 1-0 to West Ham was worse.BTW i'm looking forward to see how Alex Ferguson gets his revenge on Rooney.
Spike - prolly not, as I have the bastard somewhere on my bookshelves, but filed in the 'to read some day' category. ;-)
ReplyDeleteNot having actually read it, it's filed in my brain with Ulysses and (worse) Finnegan's Wake as basically unreadable without huge reference works at one's side. Maybe someday....
Not satisfied with the belle dame sans merci explanation though.
Btw; there is a difference between lobbing the football into the air and hoping one of your comrades might latch onto it and passing the ball to the feet, through the air, to a member of your team with deadly accuracy which Tony Currie did week in and out at Bramall Lane for Sheffield United in the early 1970's.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what Tony Currie was drawing as a wage back in the seventies but Wayne Rooney isn't fit to tie his boot laces!
Love this 'un (Jacques Prévert):
ReplyDeleteDéjeuner du matin
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder
Il s'est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis son manteau de pluie
Parce qu'il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j'ai pleuré
@bb
ReplyDeleteEat, drink and be merry! Glad you liked it. :-)
@Paul
I know what you mean about the goal. I'd have been seething. Actually, I like Spurs, just not when they're playing against us. I won't say what gave me the most pleasure today because I'd get flamed :-z. Anyway, fucking Blackburn! Couldn't they have kept it up in the second half?
@thaum
Oh, read Ulysses! Well worth the effort! And you won't spend as much time with reference works as you would with Will Self (but I'd recommend everyone to read Will Self too). Re the French, there's Leo Ferré's "Avec le temps", but that's very 20th century.
Léo Ferré - Avec Le Temps
ReplyDeleteAvec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
on oublie le visage et l'on oublie la voix
le cœur, quand ça bat plus, c'est pas la peine d'aller
chercher plus loin, faut laisser faire et c'est très bien
avec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
l'autre qu'on adorait, qu'on cherchait sous la pluie
l'autre qu'on devinait au détour d'un regard
entre les mots, entre les lignes et sous le fard
d'un serment maquillé qui s'en va faire sa nuit
avec le temps tout s'évanouit
avec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
mêm' les plus chouett's souv'nirs ça t'as un' de ces gueules
à la gal'rie j'farfouille dans les rayons d'la mort
le samedi soir quand la tendresse s'en va tout' seule
avec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
l'autre à qui l'on croyait pour un rhume, pour un rien
l'autre à qui l'on donnait du vent et des bijoux
pour qui l'on eût vendu son âme pour quelques sous
devant quoi l'on s'traînait comme traînent les chiens
avec le temps, va, tout va bien
avec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
on oublie les passions et l'on oublie les voix
qui vous disaient tout bas les mots des pauvres gens
ne rentre pas trop tard, surtout ne prends pas froid
avec le temps...
avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
et l'on se sent blanchi comme un cheval fourbu
et l'on se sent glacé dans un lit de hasard
et l'on se sent tout seul peut-être mais peinard
et l'on se sent floué par les années perdues- alors vraiment
avec le temps on n'aime plus