britain is eating its young

oh well

yeah i guess

and i was genuinely surprised at how much things had changed. primarily because my cousin (20) has gone from being a precocious schoolboy to basically the chavviest chav that ever chav'd.

well there is a big difference between anyone at 14 and 20 surely, or is this not what you meant?

dont brits always think shit's going to pot?

it always is.

it's all that sand in the weed

I was going to say 'it is', but then the whole 'subjective/objective' thing reared its head again and I really couldn't be sure.

Socially, this country is, I agree, a mess. My own two brothers spend all their time playing World of Warcraft, and they've been (comparatively) really WELL brought-up (I would guess)!

thank god you turned out all right

yeah people playing warcraft is one of the gravest dangers we face.

don't worry, 74% of american males aged 18-24 do the same

make love, not warcraft, south park, etc...

thank god you turned out all right

if by that you're insinuating that i spend far too much of my life getting zung on an internet messageboard.....

it's "zinged".

qed

what a world

Forty percent of UK youth had sex before age 15, compared with 15 percent of Polish teens. They drank nearly four times as much as the Italians, and, perhaps most saliently, had the lowest sense of subjective well-being among all the youth surveyed.

pretty awesome weekend

“The reason our children’s lives are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA,” he said. “So the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates.”

But that last sentence doesn't really explain why things might be worse for young people in the UK than they are in France or Germany?

mandee is right, britain has always been 'going to shit', and london is surely much safer in 2007 than 1984 or 1893

but its a compelling argument about baby boomers fucking this country over, and the next few years may be telling, because whatever its like now, where people generally believe the myth of prosperity, its probably going to be rougher when the next recession hits. debt is extraordinarily high, and we;re goign to have to start paying it back soon (irony is the middle classes so desparate to protect their wealth from chavs, may well wish to swap places with the debt-free chavs pretty soon)

any country that promotes inequality of wealth ultimately promotes unhappiness, because the flipside of haves and have-nots is fear and worry of losing what you have.

i dunno about france, its pretty dire in the major cities. hasnt germany worked more towards stopping people getting rich off the back of property? arent tenants protected in their homes?

any country that promotes inequality of wealth ultimately promotes unhappiness, because the flipside of haves and have-nots is fear and worry of losing what you have.

i wouldn't say it's ultimately promoting unhappiness more than just promoting a choice or the illusion of choice/freedom. fear of loss transcends the nature of an unequal society and affects rich and poor alike.

everyone is in insane debt/facing post-retirement poverty.

i whizzed through that article ... it's more than a little disingenuous to suggest that all so-called "chavs" would "throw dogs from bridges" or are "are every bit as unpleasant as they are damaged". i mean, i've never been in the same room as two people who can genuinely agree what constitutes a "chav" so that whole argument is specious, to put it politely.

mandee is right, britain has always been 'going to shit', and london is surely much safer in 2007 than 1984 or 1893

exactly.

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/cp/vox-pop/images/gny4.jpg

As long as Britain isn't eating my young, as well, I'll be relieved. But still, it can't be any fun growing up in a stagnant or stagnating culture. It wasn't in the '70s, either. Got some good music out of it, though. And "punk fashion" that refuses to die, even after being staked in the heart.

xpost: and that's just 1984

Maria Hampton lives, writes and cycles around Cambridge, UK. She’s currently trying to hatch an escape plan to opt out of a frenetic modern life, but still eat.

Somehow this has an effect similar to the 'formerly the drummer for Gay Dad' tagline.