Talk Story

Stop the world, I wanna get off!

POSTED BY: Anonymouse
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 13:55
VIEWED: 8034
PAGE 2 of 2

WISHIMAY

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 1:18 AM

I understand your problem...and so does the idiot next to you who had no moral compunctions and already has the job...

Life isn't fair...and the days that it seems to make sense are primarily because you delude yourself into believing it does...

Hope you find a job you like, and this day becomes BUT A MOMENT IN TIME!

ISROUSRO

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 1:45 AM

Perhaps it is time to contact your MP?

passoniatetly indifferent

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 5:05 AM

>_>

Britain doesn't have a police state?

<_<

You can't even legally buy guns from what I hear. Public health and their welfare maybe isn't so bad, but it does seem to also require big brother looking over the shoulder. And if you're going to the free medical clinics, they don't give a damn about privacy, they'll release your name in research and turn you over to government scrutiny in a heartbeat. The schools also are just TERRIBLE, I mean you think that American schools have funding issues and too much security and abusive teachers, I hear horror stories about the British boarding schools quite a bit, they're like if Frem's hellcamps were standardized.

The experiences people I know have had actually make England sound like a scary place to live. No eternal wars or endless debt yet, but bad in other ways.

ANONYMOUSE

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 3:06 PM

Hmm. I was just sounding off; I didn't expect vitriol.

First, sorry for putting my original post in the wrong area. :)

Second, I didn't take it personally. However:

The dole isn't "income". £65 a week can hardly be called an income.

We DO have a police state, but it's shadowy and subtle; we don't have a Constitution which protects - or should protect - citizens from state abuse; the last three UK governments have been steadily nibbling away at civil rights and liberties. Ironically, the current erosion was started by the "War on Terror" - RIPA is sort of an equivalent of the Patriot Act and has been abused in a variety of ways. The Crminal Justice & Immigration Act is a further erosion, and slipped in virtually un-noticed.

(Hey, Echelon! It's me again!)

We DO have gangs. Admittedly not quite as bad as some parts of the States, but they're here too.

How close can protestors get to the White House in order to protest? I imagine it's a lot closer than 1 mile - no political protest, organised or otherwise, can be held anywhere near Westminster, and even then you have to tell the police beforehand. One mile is as close as you can get.

We have one CCTV camera for every 14 people, and the ratio is increasing steadily.

What public transportation? It's all been sold off - without the electorate's permission, I might add - and it sure as hell wasn't improved as a result, despite what was claimed. Certainly nobody asked ME if I wanted it done. The same with our public utilities, British Telecom and others - paid for by the public. They were OURS, and as far as I'm concerned they have been STOLEN! There is a world of difference between ownership and control, which Thatcher and her cronies didn't understand (or, more likely, care about) - the government did NOT own the utilities, it merely controlled them. Now it doesn't control a damn thing except the population - and they're even telling us what we can and can't do in our bedrooms, with the possible outlawing of consensual BDSM acts at some point in the future; at least it seems to be heading that way.

We have a so-called government which betrayed the very founding principles of half of it, i.e. the Liberal Democrats. Did anyone here see the Doctor Who episode "The Sound of Drums", in which Harry Saxon, a.k.a. the Master, berated his own cabinet after they "betrayed your own parties and jumped on the Saxon bandwagon"? Substitute "Tory" for "Saxon" and you've got a pretty accurate picture of what happened here.
Of course the Master did gas his cabinet to death, so it isn't *quite* parallel, but there are times when it seems a good idea to me.

The point about the pointless unending war is fair enough - though for a clearer picture, Americans could do a lot worse than read Naomi Klein's excellent book "The Shock Doctrine". I'm halfway through it, and it's sure as hell been an eye-opener.

As for our schools - well, I despair. Dumbing-down is rife, but at least our employers have the sense to complain about applicants who write letters and CVs in textspk, talk in slang at interviews and yet expect starting salaries of £35,000 or more. I'd be more than happy on less than half that.

Yes, I would have to switch my brain off to do the kind of job I'm going for. What I didn't mention earlier is that I've already had to do that for over 9 years; from 2000 to 2009 I worked in a warehouse. I have a degree and a string of other qualifications, mostly in IT...I did all that work precisely in order to AVOID ending up in that sort of job. But in the UK there is NO industry harder to get into than IT if you don't have "commercial experience", i.e. you've already worked in IT. Classic Catch-22. I took the warehouse job because it was literally all I could get; I was still there 9 years later because I couldn't afford to leave unless I was pretty much guaranteed to get an IT-related job...which was virtually impossible. And at 45, the age I am now, the IT industry reckons I'm way too old anyway. All my qualifications are out of date; I got my degree in 1993 when

BYTEMITE

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 3:51 PM

Really, it seems like most of the first world nations have become police states, quietly, without anyone noticing unlike the more obvious ones (USSR, fascism, military dictatorships).

The trick they've pulled is conniving us into thinking we have choices when there are none, then we become psychologically invested in those choices, because we want to believe we still have some say in our own lives when really we never have. Money talks, lobbyists talk, and the old powers with some truly scary ideas hold even more sway than either.

KWICKO

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:00 PM

Quote:
Hardware: Your statement scares me, pure and simple. I can't imagine a society much worse and frightening than a Nazi-run society.

But he's really into their snappy uniforms and the way they treated "liberals"!

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

RIONAEIRE

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 11:58 PM

Hi Mouse, I'm sorry people turned this into a place to spew vitriolic talk, you might as well have written it in RWED. :) with the attitudes that some posters brought to the proverbial table. I want you to find a sollution that works for you. When I first got my degree I had to volunteer at NAMI for a year before I got paid. But I was still getting experience in the field and that was what I lacked, the experience. You're getting income currently, so maybe you could volunteer in the field you want to be in to get experience and then you'll have that experience you've been unable to get. You're in a position to where you could volunteer for six months or something and get that experience and then go look for a job that pays. Just an idea.

Yeah, I'm really glad I live in the states. Even though it isn't perfect here I think it has a lot of advantages, sure there are some things that we don't have, but I guess no where is perfect. I know immigration is really hard now adays, but I thought since the EU has such wussy immigration rules between EU countries that it would be possible in some situations for you to move, though I don't know your specific situation, you might have family you need to stay near etc. I think though upon considering it that England is a country that has held out against the EU monster, at least you guys are doing one thing right. :) You've still got your own currency after all.

Even though others were snotty to you I know this is frustrating for you and you were looking for a place to vent and have a conversation.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 1:14 PM

ETA: God, this post is way too long, I have to delete stuff.

Mouse

Huh. I guess you're not a sockpuppet. Sorry, was half thinking that you were. We have a lot of politically minded users, and Haken deliberstely silenced politics to keep it off his main page. He wants firefly stuff on the main page. You can see where someone with a political agenda might want to reach a wider audience for their rant, and how Haken might take them to task for this, so they might create a second account for the purposes of doing so. I kinda was assuming this was the case, so sorry about the rant.

Quote:
Originally posted by Anonymouse:
Hmm. I was just sounding off; I didn't expect vitriol.

In politics? [/snark] (sorry. If ranting, politically, expect vitriol. Especially here

)

Quote:
First, sorry for putting my original post in the wrong area. :)

It was an honest mistake. I did it my first time here, I said something political in General and got my head handed to me. Now I understand why.

£65 a week - I knew that, i was being snarky. But you guys get a housing allowance. I assume the test placed you out of free training because they judged you "employable". In all fairness, in the US we have a serious issue with entitlements. All income under $100k pays a 15% entitlement tax.

Quote:
We DO have a police state, but it's shadowy and subtle;

Come to america sometime ;) We have millions of people employed in *internal* military paramilitary to keep americans in line. Now, if you do come here, you'll meet people from El Salvador who will mock our police state and say "come to El Salvador" and they have a point.

Our last three admin. Have been chipping away at our Bill of Rights and now, alas, it's basically gone. There's not one item left you can expect the US govt. To uphold. (BTW, we have the bill of rights not because we have a constitution: the federalists created the constitution to get rid of the bill of rights, it just failed, as a tactic. We have the bill of rights because we were british colonies when it was signed into law in 1689.) Ergo, you should be protected by the original text.

Quote:
RIPA is sort of an equivalent of the Patriot Act ... Criminal Justice & Immigration Act

Yes, you have our bad economic models too. Now you have the FSA which is like the FED, and the whole subprime nonsense, thank Bliar for that, but it's pretty clear that our countries are run by the same people.
Re: Gangs, sorry, that was a reference to Africa, not America. Our gangs are nothing compared to Africa.
Re: protesters: not as close as they used to get, and of course the white house now has snipers on the roof. They proposed a wall around the Mall, and a glass wall where you could see the govt from a distance but not touch, in the name of terrorism, but it didn't pass. The media hyped it a lot about five or six years ago. Doesn't matter though, neither your politicians nor mine have any power.

Re: Public Transportation? tranports the public. Doesn't mean it's publically owned. The Burlington Northern is a public transportation system, it serves the city of Chicago, but it's never been part of the govt. It has competition, too. It's still public transit. Meaning, it's possible to get around Chicago without owning your own car. Did they shut down the system?

"The Sound of Drums" is one of the few I missed. "The Shock Doctrine". Ill take a look. Obama has added some radical ideas to Bush's already radical doctrine, but right now he has everyone drinking the Koolaid over his Osama mock up.

Re: IT, You can work online. My neighbor works for a company in Denver, CO, from NY. But hey, it could be in Bangalore. Think outsided the box. I have no IT education but I've had lots of these jobs. Skip the resume, write a piece of code and show it to them and say "hey, look what I can do" and their usual response is "you're hired." You don't need to buy anything. All this stuff is online. That's how I learned it, and yes, you have to keep up, but it doe

BYTEMITE

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 1:55 PM

Quote:
Tranports the public. Doesn't mean it's publically owned. The Burlington Northern is a public transportation system, it serves the city of Chicago, but it's never been part of the govt. It has competition, too. It's still public transit. Meaning, it's possible to get around Chicago without owning your own car

In the most egregious cases I'm aware of, this doesn't mean the UK government sold to private companies, it means they decommissioned some of their public transportation to try to save money.

This is what happened with the London airports this year. Even in the US we got loads of reports about a December "blizzard" that shut down half the country. I actually went over there to see my brother over Christmas, and the "blizzard" was two freaking inches. The problem was they'd gotten rid of their winter road maintenance fleet, and so were actually unequipped to deal with any amount of snow. And they didn't give it over to a private business to do instead, they just completely cut them out. Very short-sighted.