WE started with common factors that characterised the roots of the anger, frustration and hunger for change that has gained much traction not only in the UK but across Europe;
- Increasing inequality
- Living standards down
- People excluded from decision making
- Decline of working class power
- Globalism / AI causing disempowerment
- Cultural loss - damage to cultural identity
The impacts of managerialism and the reach of the corporates into our lives - enhanced by our own unelected officials 'gold-plating' the raft of petty restrictions from those other unelected officials in Brussels mean that a way of life passed from father to son in years past is now gone. I can recall being quite used to removing the cylinder head of a Ford 105E at the age of 13, cleaning the pistons and replacing the bolts in sequence to the right torque before coating the engine bay in Gunk and hosing it clean. Now not only is it not possible for people to service their own vehicles, but the EU wants to prohibit it in law.
It's this combination between technology that deliberately excludes its owners and government regulation that enables the power of the corporates to capture consumers economically, a combination between an oligopolistic service and infrastucture economy that creates dependence on private firms for the basics and essentials of life and disables citizens from self-reliance, and parallel government regulation that gives private firms a quasi-official status. This is all also part of a loss of control that people feel, part of a perceived exclusion from decision-making. Personal car leases, the 'cloud', firms that hold DVDs and CDs and even software that you 'own' digitally and remotely for ransom - at least when I buy my real CD I'm not obliged to remain a customer of the bloke who sold it to me for eternity in order to be able to listen to it.
It may be a generational thing. Certainly the young people I know seem unconcerned at being 'captured' and 'owned' by the dominant corporates, and are simply happy to comply with new laws compelling them to buy LED lamps. Looking at the live video feeds from the Gilets Jaunes in Paris one sees many grey heads as well as many people dressed for middle-class petty posing rather than for the tear gas, suggesting that those on the street come from the full spectrum of the C-E social classes and of all ages, in other words the huge cohorts of the population most affected by negative change.
There are those - mainly amongst the elite establishment, but also amongst those young metropolitan elites who are happy to see 'Leavers' die - whose response to the current and forthcoming plight of those bearing the brunt of change is to leave them to it, and do nothing that might worsen their own wealth or privileged position. I cannot express how vile and repugnant I find this attitude.
As a nation we're all in it together. That's what being a nation means - we share risks, rewards and a common cultural congruence and responsibility. We also owe a duty to our fellow Britons to ensure not only a safety net but, in Australian terms, 'A Fair Go' to allow them to participate in a new economy. It is simply not acceptable in any form for either the deeply selfish old privileged establishment or the deeply selfish young metropolitan elite who will do well from globalism and AI to shrug off a responsibility for those not so advantaged.
The Parties are struggling right now with novel alignments. I will mark my ballot for whichever party stands for justice, freedom, equity, our nation as One Nation, internationalist not globalist, and above all with a vision that Britain can be a exemplar to the world of how to manage stupendous change with care, compassion, dignity and national determination.
And if a 16 year old were to ask me what best to do in life, my advice would be to train as a chef with a good Bangladeshi restaurant - our demand for good curries won't decrease, but the loophole that has allowed the import of curry-house cooks rather than training domestic young people is closing. Avoid the iron slave-collar of student debt. And one of the few things that AI will never be able to displace humans in doing is flame-range cooking with complex combinations of heat, spice, meat, and skill.
28 comments:
It seems to me that over the centuries, various forms of government have used a combination of violence and religion to control the masses. Both are ultimately based on fear.
Now both have lost their potency to force compliance in western European populations. Remember the outrage when the Spanish Government used violent tactics to quell the Catalonian separatists. And, apart from our Muslim populations, religion is no longer the force for control it once was.
So the Elite are simply using new methods to control "the mob." Laws, regulations, propaganda, peer pressure, "nudge" tactics and the economic "capture" Raedwald describes. The snowflake younger generation seem to have completely succumbed to this form of control. The older generation, who remember how the country functioned before it, are resisting.
The older generation also remember a time when the nation truly was a nation. Fairly limited amounts of immigration had not had a discernible, negative, effect. That has changed dramatically in the past 25 years and it can no longer be covered-up by the Elite. Even former champions of a multicultural society have admitted that it hasn't worked how they imagined and we live in ghettoised communities who rarely interact voluntarily. The deluge of mixed-race families featuring in adverts on the telly are intended to instil a belief that this is how the country actually functions when, for the vast majority, it doesn't. The violent deaths in London this year are, mainly, carried out by and to members of one "community." The grooming rape gangs are almost entirely from another immigrant community.
I understand that immigrants come her for economic advantage and I don't blame them individually. I DO blame the politicians for failing to care for the working class native population who would be most affected by the influx. I don't see that I owe immigrants any national loyalty. They may have been given a British passport, but in my eyes that doesn't automatically make them British. We are not "one nation." We are different communities, living apart together.
Part 1:
My first engine strip down and rebuild was that very engine, not the Anglia but the 1963 Cortina, my first car. When you reminded me of that Raedwald, all those memories of hours spent in the front yard in the freezing cold, came flooding back. That car cost me £60 and was an absolute pile of s.
I don't know whether the previous owners had fiddled the mileage but it only had around 70K on it, but the rust was epic and the cam followers were cylinders, rather than mushrooms. I changed the doors and boot lid... unfortunately for poor Jessie, they were of a different colour, rather than the yukky powder green, they were a pale blue colour. But it is the car that not only did I learn to drive and pass my test in, but also understand the hows, whats and why-fors of the motor car.
At nine years old, it was in a shocking condition, but anyway, it rattled around for over a year, before some sucker bought it from me. My current vehicle is 15 years old, there is no rust, it's Japanese/American, rather than British/American and apart from the rather dated look, it is in remarkable condition. I am not really interested in driving, London is too crowded, the traffic moves too slowly, there is too much litigation in the air and too many cameras... and anyway I will get into trouble trying to drive into some areas due to non-compliance issues. Besides, I've got my free bus pass! :)
Cont:
You are absolutely right about the dependence culture that is being built, I have hated the word "consumer", ever since "the Consumers Association" became known to me and the BBC started to repeat it endlessly, and push that "Which" magazine in such a big way.
I mentioned the other day, that I had recently referenced Sean Gabb, having not thought about him for a while. I even joined his YouTube channel, and there... are a small collection of videos of classical records, played by him on an old Columbia portable record player.
On a whim, I did a bit of research, took a look on the Bay, and aimed for an HMV 102D portable record player. I won the auction, there was a collection of records and lots of spare needles and a nice drive out to the country to collect it. A good all round experience.
When I got it home, I wound it up, I didn't change the needle, there was a chipped record already on the turntable, so I launched it. It barely moved, so I moved the speed controller to full speed, and this awful racket started to emerge from the horn... Something had to be done.
I downloaded the manual that some helpful individual had posted, and read all four pages. I went to a clean desk with a single flat bladed screwdriver, and followed HMV's instructions. Very soon, I had a pile of bits, and a jar full of screws. I fiddled around, pulling this lever or prodding that knob, and realised that there was absolutely nothing wrong that a bit of cleaning and lubing would not address. HMV from Hayes, Middlesex were aware that their product was very simple, but very well made and robust. Even a mechanical nincompoop could open it up, understand it, and repair it.
I judiciously applied a few squirts of WD40 as I had seen my friend Gerry Wells of the Vintage Wireless Museum do on many occasions. Reassembled the machine twice before I got everything right, took it to the place where the records were. I wound it up and put that old record on with a new needle... And Bing Crosby started to sing. Absolutely marvellous, the record was a bit crackly, it was damaged and I don't recall the tune, but the speed adjuster was dead on 78rpm, the sound was room filling and the cat ran for his life... always a good sign.
Later, I realised what a great little allegory this was:
One of the dooberies that one encounters during the above mentioned procedure, is an arrangement of steel spheres on a metal spindle, set between two pivots. When the spring is wound, and the motor brake released, this thing starts to spin, quite wildly, and the balls change their position, it sort of clattered a bit.
After I cleaned and lubed and poked, the clattering stopped and everything else seemed to run more smoothly. It turns out that this thing is called "the governor", and its purpose is to control the speed and even-ness of the spindle that eventually causes the turntable to turn. The speed adjuster allows a bit of external manual control. The listener, knows when the sound is right, although some people have made paper things that allow a nerd to check the speed with a strobe light.
I like the idea that a governor (government) has a limited role, which is to stop the engine running out of control. The owner/user hand winds the spring and drives the turntable, and requires a few extra winds following every couple of tunes. The folded horn that is unseen underneath the turntable and emerges at the back of the case, passively fills the room with the music that "I" want to play. A new needle ensures that the sound is clear and unmuffled. And it will do these things, until I am tired and wish to sleep. Notably however, others can take up where I leave off, and have little dance, as long as the small number of pre-requisites are dealt with, it will keep playing its tunes.
Wonderful, our politicians and civil servants should ALL be issued with an HMV 102 as part of their "establishment" ceremony. lest they forget what they are there for.
Learn to make curry, really? that's it? I expect more.
The people who benefit most from 'culture; are those who would destroy it.
Culture is produced by the 'somewheres', the people who stay in one place and who adapt to the local environment. Meanwhile the 'nowheres' flit around the world 'oohing' and 'aaahing' at 'the locals' while doing deals to promote the global, homogenous brands that slowly destroy what they have seen. On their brief return to the place of their birth, (they have no home), they promote 'multiculturism' which destroys the local culture and may even intoduce apartheid. A country is no longer a 'club' to which people 'belong', they give and take, but instead a 'hotel', where as long as the bill is paid the hotel delivers 'international' service, the same the world over.
my advice would be to train as a chef with a good Bangladeshi restaurant -
-Raed
That mirrors the advice I tend to hand out to the underage smokers who congeal in tunnel/archway downstairs. Leave school at 16 and go learn a skill. Doesn't have to be a 'proper' apprenticeship (although if you can one one then take it) nor does it have to be a formally 'recognized' skill- it can be 'learn on job'. Doesn't really matter what, just that you can stick it for 2 years. Curry Cooker would very definitely be a good example. One lad I know started cleaning food processing plants at night, which required some training because the chemicals they use are 'fuckin' nasty' (that's technical jargon I think for 'liable to cause serious injury'). 2 years or so of experience with acids and pressure washers , he will be able to find work almost anywhere. Maybe not well paid work (although i was surprised at just how much he does earn) but enough to live on with some left over for a slab of Tesco's fake Wife Beater at the weekend. That's the point; acquire a marketable skill and you can find some sort of work everywhere you happen to be.
@Jack:
It certainly didn't do Jeremy Beadle any harm apart from wearing his fingers down. He was trained to steam bread at the local "Tip Top" bakery.
I remember hearing him talk about these Polish blokes who spent their lives on the day shift cleaning out the ovens, so they rarely saw the light of day, as such they were sheet white, the sun never reached their bodies.
Of course, it was all downhill from there for Jeremy.
I always though an HGV licence or Accountancy qualifications were to way to go. There are still plenty of jobs - but home grown HGV drivers appear to be losing out to European HGV drivers and many accountants lead lives of quiet desperation...
Yes, learn skills, but don't expect those skills to last you a lifetime.
HGV drivers are one of those jobs AI/Automation will do away with. As Tucker Carlson noted, in the US, truck driving is the number one job of non college educated men, but driverless technology will wipe those jobs out.
Yes, learn skills, but don't expect those skills to last you a lifetime.
-Discovered Joys
A point I make to my own offsprungs. Youngest got a sweet deal with a local bus/coach firm. They paid him to work as a cleaner and at the same time put him through the Bus licence on their dime (5 times infact cos he has problems with tests-was the same with his bike licences and car). All he had to do is agree to work for them for 2 years. Now he gets phone calls from 'head hunter' firms who supply British trained drivers to Germany- where the shortage of bus drivers has reached, apparently, breaking point....despite all the immigrants(Raed, is Austria experiencing the same "Busfahrerknappheit" do you know?). But I'm on at him to learn something more, it not being smart to have all your eggs etc. Not only AI is a threat to skill sets but, as I have pointed out to him, your body can break down at any moment leaving you unable to drive but also bus drivers tend to see some horrific things...such as the young chap here recently who drove his bike into the front grill of a bus. Physically the bus driver gets to walk away (usually) but mentally , as with people who attend RTAs, there is a limit. Small kid runs out infront of your bus-chances are you will never want to drive one again.
Not aware of any shortage, but there bloody well ought to be; from here to Villach is only 400m lower altitude but the last time I did it in the postbus it was like the final escape in 'Where Eagles Dare' - he was screeching round steep downhill hairpins in the snow, hitting blind bends at high speed - it was a bloody miracle we weren't all killed. My knuckles were white as I gripped the seat, but the old farmers' wives on board just kept on nattering as though it was quite normal ...
I was a globe trotting fault-fixer in marine electronics for many years but semi-retired to now make and sell curries quite successfully (on a local basis - attracting UK national media coverage at one point!) so I loved the Bangladeshi curry chef statement! Fits like a glove.
But in all my global travels I always (*always*) took time to learn the local cultural rights/wrongs and how to say please/thank you and 'can I have a beer' no matter what the language or how long I was in 'their' country. I felt OBLIGED to fit with THEIR culture and not just stamp in like the Costa Brit-abroad demanding fish and chips and a Watneys Red Barrel.
All I want from immigrants to 'my' country is the same bloody courtesy. Is that too much to ask?
Raedwald, You say it is not the fault of the immigrants. That is not strictly true. Some of the problems are down to our own politicians, some down to our politicians aping EU politicians, and gold-plating EU rules, it is true. But the failure to integrate is largely down to the immigrants themselves. For "failure" read - a determination not to integrate, and even to impose their world-view on the British natives.
You leave out of your list (Inequality; Living standards; Imposition; etc) not only the failure to integrate but also the sheer numbers - net migration of a city the size of Newcastle every year since 2007. Both of those together with the fact that our "elites" carefully avoid the bad consequences of their own policies, are more important than your listed points, I believe.
but semi-retired to now make and sell curries quite successfully - Dave G
I hope Raed will excuse me taking things a bit further off topic but I am, and I expect others here are too, fascinated; why curry? And what about your curry makes you successful do you think, I would have imagined the craft-curry market is over saturated?
@Jack - my fascination for foreign food (due to global travel) taught me to appreciate spices and I made many for my own/family consumption, freezing surplus.
Friends/relatives used to deplete my home stock and joked that we should start selling them so we took them at their word and 'chucked a freezer in a shed' and put a road sign up. The rest, as they say, is history.
The local media got wind of it due to our remote location - I'm in the middle of an Argyll forest - and did an article in the local paper that soon went national. Must have been a slow media week!
The publicity was a two-edged sword that nearly overwhelmed us but we coped and things have settled down to a more regular trade but we still have visitors coming from far and wide asking for selfies!
It was never really planned - it's one of those 'it just happened' sort of things.
Apologies to Radders for the mini thread hijack. We'll shut up now.
"don't blame immigrants for immigration.They're just doing what is economically rational and best for themselves and their families"
One supposes that men out at night trying car and house doors would argue the same, as would the ones out with hammers, battering rams, or axes.
No one is the villian of their own story
Don't be fatuous, Domo. There's no equivalence as well you know.
You need more water with it.
"I can recall being quite used to removing the cylinder head of a Ford 105E at the age of 13, cleaning the pistons and replacing the bolts in sequence to the right torque before coating the engine bay in Gunk and hosing it clean. Now not only is it not possible for people to service their own vehicles, but the EU wants to prohibit it in law. "
There's a few issues here.
As you say, you were quite used to servicing the engine at home, but thats because poorly forged and machined parts, poor quality fuels and poor quality lubricants needed it. A modern car needs a relatively minor and infrequent service and will last several times what a labour intensive old car did. 50 years of steady advances in metallurgy and chemistry.
But that has downsides too, precision engineered componants with nm tolerances can't be taken apart and put back together by enthusiastic hobbyists, or anyone without the correct tools and a clean room.
Whereas the enforced introduction of CFLs was horrific, LEDs are simply better than incandescents.
I personally don't rent a music collection, but I don't hold much disdain for those who do, 8 tracks lasted 20 years, cassettes 30, I can't see cd players being a thing much longer, your "owned" VHS films aren't really owned once your tape player dies.
Domo - Yes, the technology, black box electronics etc make it physically impossible for a normal garden shed engineer to service their own vehicle - but why do the EU then want to make this both illegal and retrospective? My biker brother and his mates were incandescent with fury at a draft directive that would have prohibited them from assembling modded bikes - or even, he told me , changing a spark plug themselves. Clearly, this was just another exhibition of the government-corporatist complex acting in concert - to stop folk keeping old but serviceable vehicles on the road rather than buying new from the globals.
And with music, film etc it's not the format that matters but the digital content; once I have an actual CD, I can transfer that digital content to any other format myself - in my case to an Ents Server that can stream content to any room in the house. If I have the physical recepticle, I can do this - but if it's held remotely as ransomware I can't.
And personally I hate LED light - an an ex high-end amateur videographer I know light colour better than most, and LED light is dead light, mortuary light, robbing life and colour from anything it hits, presenting the world in a plastic pixar glow that chills me. But hey, I wouldn't want to stop anyone using whatever light source they want - I just want the freedom to do so myself. That's why I'm a Libertarian and I hate the authoritarian EU.
The reason that "white" led lights appear as Raedwald has it - "dead", is because white leds are not full spectrum. What our brains are fooled into believing is white actually consists of RBG (Red, Blue, Green) leds combined, so the spectrum is extraordinarily spikey.
Raedwald FYI:
Qobuz is a French outfit where you can buy most music outright.
There is also a streaming contract for a tenner that allows you to listen before you buy.
As a result, I have only bought a couple of CDs in the last five years, and I have quite esoteric tastes.
CDs are so last year.
R-W yep I know it - problem is that the €9.99 a month streaming option only gets you MP3 quality - which I hate almost as much as LED light, and buying CD quality downloads costs here an average of €15 an album. Whilst I can still pick up good quaity CDs on eBay for £1.99 plus £1.40 postage which I can then load on the server, it's a lot cheaper (though with a bit more wait and a bit more work)
They'll all be happy when my sort - who grew up with HiFis and vinyl, and lovely pink tungsten filament lighting - die off I suppose.
I have this theory that one of the drivers of increasing social division is the increasing credentialism of society, especially the spurious requirement for people to have degrees as an entry ticket to many jobs, where the degree has zero relevance to job at hand.
We have a system now that divides society in two at age 18 - either you go to uni and get a degree, which is your entry ticket into the 'good job' world, or you don't and are condemned to live in the non-degree world, where the competition for work from immigrants etc is ferocious and the idea of secure employment has disappeared. And because of the iron ceiling of degree requirements there is very little way for someone who doesn't go to uni at 18 to cross the divide. Yes you could go to uni at a later stage in life, but that becomes harder and harder as people take on responsibilities of families etc and stopping earning for 3 years is rarely an option.
This system also has the effect of alienating the non uni 50% from the other half, the uni class often don't have any contact with other non-uni people. We have recreated the class system - the white collar workers are the aristos, and the shop floor is the working class. And never the twain shall meet. Its why the Brexit vote has proved so divisive - the non-uni class has voted for Brexit, and the uni-class has voted for Remain, and being the bosses, don't like being told what to do by the uppity workers.
We need to return to a tertiary education system whereby only those who need to study for their future career go to uni, and study the hard stuff, that will a) help their earning potential, and b) help the nation as a whole. Thats probably no more than 30% of any age cohort. All the other jobs that current require a degree should be made by law open to anyone to apply for and discrimination on degree holding made illegal, unless there is a specific knowledge requirement - ie being a doctor, lawyer, scientist, engineer etc. Careers need to be made as open to people from all levels of education post age 18, not limiting them to 50% of the population. Then we might see some more social mobility and more social mixing, instead of the stratification we see today.
Its why the Brexit vote has proved so divisive - the non-uni class has voted for Brexit, and the uni-class has voted for Remain, and being the bosses
-Sobers
Yeah I've noticed that division too, although I assumed it was an age 'thing' as much as an Education 'thing'. My generation (now 50), Thatcher's Children, were the first generation who assumed, almost as a right, that they could and often did, go to uni...with a full grant.
"My generation (now 50), Thatcher's Children, were the first generation who assumed, almost as a right, that they could and often did, go to uni...with a full grant."
I don't think thats true. I'm 47 and going to uni was not the 'expected' thing back then. And there were all manner of ways into professional careers that you could take aged 18 with some A levels, and study for professional qualifications as you went along. A degree (in some random subject, anything really) was not a prerequisite.
This chart (https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-17b036af5c8c82dcbb95b21575fc93a2.webp) shows that the percentage of students going to Higher Education only breached 20% by the end of the 80s, having started to rise from the long term level of 15% in about 1987. So 80%+ did not go to HE in the 80s. It was in the 90s that the real rise occurred, and has continued ever since to its current 50/50 split.
Raedwald, I have only just seen your comment regarding Qobuz...
I would say several things about that:
First, all modern recordings, even, though to a lesser extent, classical or choral recordings, suffer from the the modern disease that are the loudness wars... Dynamic range is reduced in order to make an initial impression, by making every note a loud note, as Phillipe Starck once explained when he was talking about contrasts in design. This affects all compression models, even .wav or the analogue LP., it is relatively modern. Decent reproduction equipment, like my Linn Kilmax streamer and pre-amp, Klout power amp (the last great Linn analogue amp, not as good as the Electrocompaniet though) and Sara loudspeakers make a pretty good fist of conveying this, regardless of the format. The latter are what is left from my analogue system, which consisted of a Meridien CD player and a Linn Sondek LP12 (very old). What can I say, I like their sound.
Second, I formerly had the top of the range streaming account with them, which streams CD quality, but also makes available the high-res recordings at "their' CD prices. I concluded after a 6 month sulk due to a belt tightening exercise, that I would rather have the MP3 account than nothing at all... Just listening to some rather pleasant Vivaldi as I write, "Vespri per l'Assunzione di Maria Vergine".
But you are right about the price of CD's vs the price of a Qobuz download, I just buy a lot less recordings, since I can stream most stuff for as long as I want to. If I really can't live without it, biographical information that is big enough for my 63 year old eyes to make any sense of is on the web, and I don't have to wait for cracked plastic box that I can't open because it is sealed up so tightly, I just hit the tit, in whatever format I want, even wav... I usually go for flac, better tagging than wav, and the difference in sound is minimal.
Finally, as I explained above, it is good to be adaptable, the HMV 102D makes for a shock in terms of dynamic range, but it has its charm, and when the beast from the east and incompetent government contrive to deprive us of electricity for lengthy periods, I can always wind her up and listen to Bing, Celeste (Holm), Perry or Louis.
If you Google "light spectrum of bulbs" and "light spectrum eye" you'll see that the human eye sensitive to blue, red and yellow light, incandescents produce very little blue, but lots of red and yellow, hence why we see them as "warm", CFLs produce lots of narrow spikey light, especially blue, which can by why it seems cold, but modern LEDs can fairly closely match the visible spectrum of the eye, or sunlight, which incandescents don't.
Now, that's not a reason to ban anything, but it does explain the youths lack of complaining about it.
I do sometimes wonder if ketch realises he's such a cliche of himself.
"My generation was the first where everyone went to Uni"
No ketch, your just so limited in your knowledge of the rest of society that everyone you know is from the 15% that did....
"My generation was the first where everyone went to Uni"
A Domo misquote.
If I had said that then you would be right. However I spoke of my generation being the first to assume it had a god given right to go to Uni(grades and UCAS willing of course).
For the generations before it was only an assumed 'right' for the better off, for everyone else , such as my own parents, it was still a 'privilege'.
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