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forum
Handed in my Notice Today…
Three months from now, it will be bye bye shithole Britain.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
Latest Forum Topics
Latest Comments
- IanMK 1 sec ago
Sounds like the APPGCW report is going to be interesting reading.
- grasen 11 min 13 sec ago
are you a complete numpty??? it doesn't have disk brakes......
- theJewishcyclist 12 min 30 sec ago
Yes, but all religious Jews are by default Zionists. We beseech G-D 3 times a day in our prayers to gather us to the Land of Israel and "Gather us...
- andystow 16 min 31 sec ago
Isn't that basically what we did to our High Streets & Main Streets in the 1960s?
- Dnnnnnn 31 min 1 sec ago
Almost - but apparently not quite. There are in Northern Ireland.
- john_smith 1 hour 29 min ago
If you'd read it a bit more carefully you'll see that it also requires each new home to have at least three parking spaces. So it shouldn't be a...
- FionaJJ 1 hour 51 min ago
It took me ages to make sense of the story, because the bit about having bike parking is irrelevant to the issue about access. ...
- chrisonabike 2 hours 32 min ago
But how on earth do you expect people to know that's not allowed?...
- David9694 2 hours 59 min ago
Man flees after crashing into grade II listed Dorset home https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/24263845.man-flees-crashing-grade...
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127 comments
When I see programmes from the 70s it seems to me that people were uglier back then and muscle definition didn't seem to have been invented.
However, I've recently been finding old rare groove/funk tracks on YouTube and damn, the music was so much better.
I think that iPhones and the Internet aside, most things were better. It was unquestionably a more 'caring' society than the one that we have known since 1979.
I often hope that reincarnation is a thing, and that when I die, I can come back for another bite at the cherry, but not now. Not a year after I die, or five years, or ten years or whatever. But back in the sixties and seventies, like I was as 'me'.
That would be rather nice.
Funny, I look back to the 70's at least as a decade of power cuts, rubbish in the streets, my Father digging up the garden to grow vegetables due to the 3 day week and intransigent fat cat union bosses systematically dismantling this country's ability to compete against technologically superior foreign manufacturing in numerous industries with their refusals to modernise. Industrial action, secondary picketing and disruption all the way through to the miners strike and the Wapping disputes of the 80s.
I look back on the popular TV and film genres of the time and cringe with embarrassement at the casual racism, misogyny and homophobia.
Also the carefree days of youth. Summer of 76 and other hilights. Bit like today, a mixed bag certainly not utopia. I do however respect that other people grew up in very different circumstances to my white middle class privilege in a 'nice' Essex village and I also rail against the current corporate culture of utterly indefensible greed at the top levels based on exploitation of workers and paying customers, though I have the luxury of doing so as a shareholder rather than burning other people's possessions in the street as some sort of protest.
Well, this is laughable, and is really nothing but parroting the right-wing mantra about ‘the winter of discontent’ - a myth which has been firmly cemented in the public’s mind by incessant repetition of this lie by the right-wing media and politicians. The ‘winter of discontent’ one is as false as ‘Labour overspent before 2008’ and ‘Hitler was a socialist’, but they have been repeated so often and with such fervour, that they have passed into the public’s minds almost as ‘facts’.
For one thing, high inflation in the 1970s was not caused by Labour or by the trade unions, but principally by the decision by OPEC to double the price of a barrel of oil as retaliation for US support of Israel during the Yom Kippour war. This led to an increase in prices across the board, which led to the workers demanding wage increases in order to be able to eat. Hardly ‘greedy’ or ‘fat cat’. And as for those unions, it’s curious that trade union support of Labour is portrayed as somehow ‘bad’ or as ‘undemocratic’, whereas massive (and in many cases, undocumented and unregistered) contributions from billionaires into the coffers of the Conservative Party are almost completely ignored. Why is that, do you think?
Your memories are flawed - if they are indeed memories and not tales passed down by your father - as the misery you cite didn’t really exist. UK quality of life reached a peak in 1976 (source: New Economic Foundation ‘Measure of Domestic Progress’) and has yet to reach the same high. The strikes were in reaction to attacks on the right to withhold labour - such as the Industrial Relations Act 1972 - and after the election of the Labour government in 1972, the unions did not demand the wage increases that they have always been accused of demanding. Labour adhered to a form of ‘social contract’ whereby rent was controlled, as were utilities bills. But all of this is little use as capital fled the country that year, just as it always does when Labour is in power.
If you’d like an idea of the extent to which the right has ‘mythologised’ the so-called 'winter of discontent', I can recommend The Establishment and How They Get Away With it, by Owen Jones.
Along with other myths like ...
And so on.
Maybe I need to write that book.
I think you should read one first.
This. Use it or lose it.
I set 'em up…
Hahahaha, cos that would be a completely impartial read.
When was this wonderful time that we look back on with rose tinted nostalgia?
https://youtu.be/gsyEQk6OQi0
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
-- A E Housman
Well, I certainly look back to the late sixties and early seventies as a time before neoliberalism. That particular ideology has all but destroyed society.
The future was so much better in those days.
When books are written about the last decade, they will lay the blame for its social ills squarely at the door of ZIRP. As a method of inflating the value of assets held by the already rich, bailing out the profligate and enriching unproductive, rentier sectors of the economy, it's unparalleled. Brexit and Trump are merely the result of awful central bank policy, as will PM Corbyn be.
And it's not going to change until currencies are trashed. We live in interesting times.
That's what my dad would say. And his dad, and his, and his .........
Sorry you're off mate. All the best. I have to say that I don't blame you. I scarcely recognise this country these days. Just what the fuck has happened to us? I always planned to retire to France in a few years but of course this Brexit clusterfuck is likely to put paid to that. Again, all the best and hope the cycling is good.
A few years ago I began to wonder if I was the problem; that nothing had changed except I'd got older and started getting all cynical and misanthropic.
I now realise that I was wrong: the country *has* changed. Not for the better. And you can't blame immigrants or any external forces.
Its our own political class and financial sector has grown more and more evil, trying to imitate the free range market of murica. Gravy train. Pigs with their snouts in the trough. Claims about free market, except when they need massive government subsidy to keep the wheels turning.
Sorry, where was I?
Oh yeah: good luck, Legs11 - I hope all goes well for you, and that your Dansk is coming on
There are a lot of irrational and unfounded fears among expat retirees that we will all be sent home after Brexit. I retired to France 2 years ago in my late 50's, and due to the timing, was burn't badly by the post referendum exchange rate, but then those of you still living in the UK buy everything from Orange Juice to Corn Flakes in dollars anyway so we were all burnt by 17M people voting to screw their own currency. But apart from exchange rate, the practicalities of moving have not, and will not, change. There are loads of Australians, Canadians and Americals retired here!
If the worst case scenario of no deal had happened, then we would simply have been treated as 3rd country citizens and subject to the same 3 questions that the immigration policy of most countries in the civilised world is based upon: 1) Are you coming to take a job away from a local French person - No! 2) Are you coming to sponge off the state - No! 3) Do you have independent means, eg a pension - Yes! At which point you will have the red carpet laid all the way to the local tax office where you will pay a fraction of the contribution HMRC would demand, and be rewarded with a standard of healthcare which makes the NHS look Dickensian. Put simply, retirees have a golden visa, and are welcomed by most open minded countries as the tourists who never go home.
In my case this was never about thinking Britain was a shithole, although I never found the 300 days per year of cloud pleasant, and I find the recent rise in xenophobic behaviours in the UK distasteful. For me it was that I always thought the way to live long and healthy is to continually develop and challenge yourself into old age. ie retire at 66 in your same house in the same neighbourhood and you may well slide into long grey days of Sudoku and daytime TV. Why spend all your life in the same back yard? Life for me is about doing new stuff, and a new country with 300 days per year of sunshine helps! Learning a new language for example is reckoned to be one of the best ways to maintain brain activity.
So don't let Brexit deter you. I have never for one second regretted the move, I have a quality of life in excess of what I would have had retiring in the UK, and every day is a schoolday.
I loved Denmark on my visits there but was 20 years ago now, have beautiful memories and a person that could have changed my life forever managed to slip through my fingers, ah well.
I really hope it brings you the peace and harmony you're after.
Good luck.
I had a similiar experience in Paris in 1985. Her name was Anna and I was so drunk that I kept correcting her English. Unsurprisingly, she fucked off.
As you say - ah well.
Lol, mine wasn't quite like that, neither us were ready and I was a single parent so it was complicated.
as for France ... Dorathee, Christine, wonderful days of touring around and hopping from one village to another, I should be back there this year away from the madding crowd and the only plundering will be good food and drink!
The only way the police will give two shits about bad driving's impact on cyclists will be when their budget has been cut so much that they can't afford to drive around in cars and are all on bikes...
Best of luck Legs! I regret not moving to Scandinavia long ago. I'm sure you'll keep us posted.
It has its problems, but there are plenty of worse places to live. Denmark, for one. Wrap up warm...
Obligatory book recommendation: The Almost Nearly Perfect People.
Good luck.
I'm planning our family hols in The Netherlands this summer, to check it out. I’m also keen to abandon Britain. Only problem is I would feel bad about uprooting our kids from their friends and schools they are happy at. But then again, I read an article that put teenagers in The Netherlands as the happiest in the world...
I also hate the aggression, but it's the "distracted" that really terrifies me, and no amount of "remorse" will ever be enough.
Good luck with the move and please keep us all updated from out there. I like your phrase of 'unwarranted aggression' - I'm truly fed up with it too; it's almost everytime I go out on the bike.
Well, do something about it.
There used to be a poster on the NYC underground back when crime in the city was 'out of control', to quote the tabloids. It was a photograph of a hand holding a revolver, and the weapon had just been fired. Visible was smoke and muzzle flash. The caption was 'fight back'.
I'm not suggesting that you get a ... actually, fuck it. I am suggesting that you arm yourself.
Well actually I have tried. I even sent bike camera footage to the Police and when after several prompts to them when no response was received, I complained to the Police Complaints Commissioner. Weeks later I got a response from the Police that it was too late to take action. I even had a very lengthy telephone conversation with the Police road safety team in that area. The long and short of it was that the police decided to add the VRNs of the offending vehicles to their intelligence database. Not very satisfactory I’ll admit but we’re fighting against almost total Police and political apathy. Once all this Brexit nonsense is over, I’ll write to my local MP about what needs to be done. I’ve written to him on other subjects in the past and usually received cut and pasted responses that don’t directly answer the issue - so, not expecting anything meaningful from him. I also sent a suggestion for a safe passing distance poster to British Cycling about 3 weeks ago - no response received!
And shit like this makes me want to revolt…
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/apr/17/who-owns-england-thousand-...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/05/the-guardian-view-...
https://www.thenational.scot/news/17572347.on-the-trail-of-the-dark-mone...
Bourgeois in the streets, proletariat in the sheets
me-after-reading-one-page-of-the-communist-manifesto-30999712.png
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