Rip off britain

[Snoogans]

Jeez gin, you just made me feel a whole lot better about being a Brit!

Seriously mate, well said. That pretty much encapsulates things here in Old Blighty.
Bloody Colonials, they don't know they're born...

[ginsambo]

I have only been to the USA once. I had previously the typical European/UK anti American brainwashing sentiment and didn't expect it to be fun. You know the stereotype, thick american, too loud, unsubtle and too stupid. Well yeah getting through customs was a nightmare, missed the flight connection and this Italian couple in their '80's whinged and kept queue jumping so much that he was taken off in a headlock and she frogmarched off by the airport security who I think were on steroids....also I was told that if I didn't keep within the lines on the runway departure asphalt I would be arrested or possibly shot..great introduction and all my myths were being confirmed so I thought.

Thing is, once I got there I understood it. It is one of the best places and cultures to live in the world I reckon...and all my indoctrinated stereotypes went straight out the window, where they belonged...I thought fuck, I could live in a trailer with no bullshite anal planning issues and do my Camaro SS up on a Sunday and go watch Nascar....this place is bloody fantastic. Only problem is the speed limits are all 45mph? WTF?

Its all bullshite pushed by the regimes and popular media. The people are always 100% in any country. Damn, even French people are friendly if you attempt to speak French....

Yeah I guess sthe grass is always greener, but mostly its just a different shade of green.

I think the cultural differences are that Brits and many Northern European countries have a very dark, black comedy sort of, dry cynical sense of humour which many Americans take literally at face value, either as an insult to themselves personally or as a confirmation or a statement that the speaker is self defeated, lacks confidence is hopeless or is being passively aggressive, when in fact this is not the case at all. I think the Americans and the Germans have a much wetter, more open sense of humour. That is just the way it is. It is just a cultural difference.

Say if you go to work in an office in the USA, everyone will intially be very friendly, after a few weeks, months even, the ones that don't like you will stop talking to you. In the UK, you go to work in a new office and no one will attempt to talk to you, or talk to you for weeks on end After a month the ones who have sussed out what you are about and like you will start talking to you.

The problems in the 'Third' world are driven by the corrupt and power hungry and by the lack of resources. If there was one stream from which to take water and there wasn't enough water to go around you or I would be fighting over control of it and killing each other trust me. But there is a lot of resources rape and corrupt deals in the background manipulating the situation, its not about being a savage for savages sake. Actually at the monet places like China are doing fairer deals with the Nigerians whilst raping their metals resources, building rail networks and schools etc. than we ever did in the UK when we fecked them up the butt. But they can't be can they? They are Communist.

What I can't grasp is how we are all trained in school that we live in the 'First' world, whilst these other poor fellas, they live in the 'Third' world. Kind of sets you up for a brainwashed life of accepting the status quo doesn't it. Bizarre. We are all equal on this earth man.

[ginsambo]

Endrik, you are right, we take our freedom of speech to spout endless ranting, opinionated nonsense for granted and still think of being at the centre of the world to a degree, although in reality it has dawned on most poeple these days that we are a rainy little piss ant Island in the North Atlantic. We forget that places like Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia etc etc, were traditionally the merchant trading centres of Europe back in the day and are steeped in the richest culture and architecture in Europe or lead decent agricultural lives before the communists got hold of them. But blame your government for the way they are painted. I am frankly embarassed that the average Brit goes over ther on a stag do to get laid and get pissed, pull his pants down and generally have no respect for the place. But byou have to understand that this is how we also act here on a friday night. The worst of it is that popular culture is deriding the Poles and Eastern Europeans with taking our jobs and then going back to Poland or somewhere and building a big house with the money. The reality is that the Romanian gypsies are doing it! Damn same as our gypsies then.

Yeah we went into WW2 on the basis of helping countries from the unjust oppressive national socialists which were threatening us, if we didn't unite and join with them, only to hand everything over on a plate to Stalin so you guys got all your food out of brown cardboard boxes for the next forty years and political prisoners were sent down to the Gulag, never to return. You know Switzerland was in the stone age before WW2. Everyone was a farmer. Now look at it.

Our drinking probably isn't as hard as yours, but this is probably because we are moderated by the maritime island climate. Hell, I've seen slight, local Polish girls, all of 4'9" down a litre of Vodka and still talk and walk and get up for work at 6am the next day. The northern nations do share something of a kindred waether inspired darkness though without doubt though. Its the cold, wet weather, the long nights, the blue light and the barren landscape that inspires suicide not the finances.

If it makes you feel any better, tea was rationed over her up until 1952 and bananas until the early '60's and both my great grandparents died in the trenches. One in the big push in the last week of the war.

A lot of eastern Europeans think Britain is a great place of priviledge to make easy money, they soon discover a pretty harsh and corrupt, gang ridden, politically forgotten, dog eat dog world where the poor are left to rot when they get here. Although you are entitled to benefits, which we cannot afford after being here for three months or more.

Anyway.....how much is a Jackon over there?....mustn't grumble I suppose.

I'd rather live in a country where illiterate, ten year old sons of single teenage mums tell elderly pensioners to 'Fuck off old man' after nearly running them over on the pavement (sidewalk) on their stolen bikes, when they should be in school, than live in a place like Switzerland where everything is seemingly great, all the kiddies politely say 'Grussa' to strangers, when the actual reality under the surface is that the Stazi are cracking down on third class illegal and legal immigrants or dark faces like the National Socialists once did. Yeah I love Blighty!

[Endrik]

A lot of the 100% people are fucking stupid in any country. I never buy the proletariat glamorization of the "real people", "every man", "average folk" who are supposedly warm, friendly, hard working and try to survive against the "evil elites". That stereotype is common everywhere around the world and of course centered mainly on rural, small town, suburban etc. populations. Ever notice that no serious scientist or historian goes along with that rubbish as they are well aware of that the same type of folks have been the most conformist and submissive to leaders. Anti-intelligence, racism, social-conservatism, witch-hunts etc. originate from those settlements.

But all the troubles are blamed on the elite city folk like all so called elite are fascists while in fact fascist elite was a handful of powerful industrialists who the same rural right wing common folk have always loved to support and the fascists ideology of course became extremely popular among the common "warm" middle class people yet hated in "elitist" Bologna.

I was just in Sicily where people are extremely friendly and hospitable. The average tourist makes the mistake to judge the characters by superficial contacts. They don't know that many of those nice people can also be very corrupt and even extremely criminal. But the touristy glamorization of the "real folk" is very popular. Obviously a smile and a bowl of spaghetti makes one forget all the complexities and troubles. It's the same everywhere, in US I've had some of the best conversations with so called "arrogant" and "rude" New Yorkers while many friendly suburbanites couldn't say a sincere thought to say their lives.

It's always easy to blame the government, "leaders", politicians, "elite" etc. While most of it stands because the masses let it happen. The masses love to complain yet they also have loved brutal leaders too. Yet the most of the humanistic ideas originate from the cities where the fancy dressing and fancy talking people came together to drink coffee and chat in their "pretentious" lingo. Modern society was born because of them, their ideas brought the western world out of aristocratic and church hegemony. I'm personally glad that some people shoot for the starts because otherwise we would be stuck in a mud hole.

[ginsambo]

Yeah I think I agree with you. A guy I know, thinks everything is cheap in the USA, like gas etc. and that the people are so polite and courteous, mostly because they are tied up with the hospitality sector, or relaxing on vacation themselves. But what he doesn't realise is what exactly an average USA salary will buy and he hasn't stayed there long enough for people to start hating him and stop talking to him.

What I am trying to say is that most people are morally decent, although granted each of us is completely different. Killing and presecution is something that the human has to be trained and conditioned for through culture, necessity or the military. Rich or poor, Greed, status envy and snobery and reverse snobbery and economic naivity is the biggest killer of society.

To be honest I tryed to get eight neighbours, each with their own interests, to agree on a consensus recently. It didn't work. If eight people cannot agree on a common way, what hope is there for democracy?

Yeah, you are right, we ARE all truely fucked.

The difference with the UK, as opposed to Europe, and why the British are so embittered is because rich and poor will not mix, in cafes, socially at functions etc. We are separeted at birth and go to different schools etc. So the divide gets ever greater. these guys cream off record salaries from infrastructure ad utilities companies, which is basically another form of private tax on the poor, whilst the rest of us struggle with higher prices and lower wages. I say bring back National Military or Civil Service, where you build up confidence on your acheivements, not by your families pedigree or wealth and break down the socio-economic barriers once and for all and let the super rich understand the life and obstacles in the way of the super poor and the super poor the aspirations of the super rich.

I am not against inequality in pay but I think EVERYONE should have an equal shot at acheiving it based on their talents or desires. I don't want to be rich. I like the simple life, but a person who is born rich should not look down unto those who are born without and a poor person should not look down on the self acheived.

[Endrik]

The rich and the poor mixing or not mixing has a lot to do with the living environment. Many South and Western European countries have such a dense population in urban areas and the dominant business model is the small, family owned store or something like that. Rich and poor grow up in the same areas, go to same stores etc. They know each other. There's some sympathy. It's very common to find a rich business owner with a 5k€ custom tailored suit eating a baguette during a lunch with the workmen in a dirty garage or a factory room and bullshiting about women, food etc. Not everyone's like that but there it's more in common than anywhere else in the Western world.

Britain has made a mistake copying the North-American urban planning model (which was actually created by socialist European immigrants), creating more urban sprawl, more hideous suburbs, more traveling by car, more people distancing themselves from each other etc. The distance made by the rich from the country homes and the working class in industrial cities long time ago doesn't have much chance coming together if the urban settlement is in decay. My country has made the same mistake, the cities have come drive-by's for suburban nouveau riches to visit offices and concrete supermarkets with their ridiculous SUVs. Fuck those tossers for ruining my city. And in the weekends of course they perhaps may visit an opera house or a jazz club, just to show off their new clothes as they have no fucking idea about the music nor about class and style. Truly, this is the country of capitalist bolsheviks.

[ginsambo]

Spot on Endrik. Problem was the communist style social housing experiment in the 50's and 60's to replace even the housing stock that survived the bombing during the war. This was a failed social engineering experiment and then further steamrolled, rampant development in the 80's and 90's where nothing was linked by foot and traditional city focal points and residential areas were further fragmented by that or road development to support the growing number of suburban commutor workers .

Of course, on the table, there is (Or was - construction industry has been devastated) talk of regulated mixed socio economic households in new developments. The reality is that the developer has a stranglehold on the council, promises a few token low cost houses as bait, then blackmails the council with withdrawing all investment if they don't let them do exactly what they like and as they please. The result is more banal suburbs and out of town shopping centres. There is no money to be made from low cost housing and with their relative freedoms, because they are providing the investment, the developer can more or less do what they like, Whether it be an out of town supermarket/USA type block of chain stores or a new high end housing development. Meanwhile the country has become an overpriced luxury only the rich professionals can afford. And so it continues.

Anyway, whatever, we have got to a stage where the super rich do not even understand what it is like to not be able to afford heating or you next meal and how the poor are getting poorer. They give themselves 'Justified' payrises in closet board rooms and arrange peer salaries for their 'Hard work' and 'To attract the best worldwide talent competitively'. Whilst the majority of us, working two jobs, look at the super rich and wonder how the hell they can morally justify their outrageous pay rises, when they do nothing to invest back into British infrastructure, increase employers wages or benefits, create jobs or growth in GDP or even generate income for their shareholders and stock market exposed pensions for the masses. The worst is that they do not even pay any corporation tax as their head offices are in tax exile! FFS. WTF is going on.

There used to be a time when MP's spoke for the people and MP's were the people, had real life experince in real jobs, paying real bills and dealing with real redundancies. These days, across the board in all the parties, they are mostly all under 25, University educated and go straight from University, that mum and dad paid for into a life of politics at best and at worst are sons of billionaires who will never understand the true concept of poverty..... Our local candidates were all under 25, the Labour guy was 21 FFS. What does a university educated 21 year old from a well to do, middle class family know about life?

I think the root of the problems over here really started when the government sold off the social housing stock and did not charge duty on second homes. That and unlimited deregulation for investment bankers in the '80's. Anyone notice how the yuppies first arrived as a spectacle, with their flash cars and brick size mobile phones but then that became acceptable and mainstream? Our Prime Minister at the time saying publicly in a speech that 'There is no such thing as society'. More recently our successive governments have decided that using housing stock to raise GDP, selling off all infrastructure to unregulated investers for short term financial gain and putting all our eggs in the financial industry whilst neglecting to sure up the infrastructure and othe GDP baseswhilst actively encouraging the competitive killing off of agriculture and industry in favour of imported European food so that we are now in a stage where th daily debt gets bigger, the rich get richer, our powerstations are at the end of their lifespan, our privately run, sold off rail network is rundown and at over capacity and all our gas for heating is imported from Russia, whilst there is not even a decent network of storage facilities available, so the price fluctuates with every load that comes in. Now we are just debt slaves and money cash cows to anyone who wants to milk us with all our banks up to their necks in bad debt and even the Russians and Chinese won't lend us any more money. We are another Greece waiting to happen, whilst the asterity measures are killing the average man on the street.

[Rsmacker]

When chatting up women, British blokes must have at least 12 pints of Stella Artois and seven shots first, girls maybe 14 pints. It usually involves a load of puke and they will probably have all manner of sex a few minutes later after meeting and after half an hour forget who the hell each other are and continue on their merry way....the average British guy has scored twenty chicks, although can probably only remember one of them. Anyway, even if we tryed that technique, sober in broad daylight, the girl would cry rape straight away, just by trying to talk to her about the weather.

US porn is (Mostly) all glamerous and ALL the girls look the same, have the same bleached blonde air, loads of makeup and conform to type. In the UK, the translation is some dodgy camerawork filming some low tech dogging behind a skip in the drisel. Its class arthouse cinema!

Yeah? And...? Works for me, wha-hey!!! (You forgot to add little Call Centre Bitches who have a sniff of the barmaid's apron then let themselves indulge in Gokkun activities, then have the temerity to call me a lying gay troll. I mean, me, a liar, I ask you!)

British porn is the best, saggy birds with cellulite, just the old slappers we bang in real life. If I want to bang someone full of plastic, I go to Toys R Us (well, I diid, till I got that injunction)

Rule Britannia!!! All Hail Ben Dover!!

[Mr Sandman]

So happy to be living in this little bubble down here although I don`t know where my next meal is coming from... KFC or McDonalds?

[Endrik]

A lot of the problems for the last two centuries originate from the aristocrats who during the industrial revolution still wanted to be the rulers. The enlightenment gave people more freedoms but some the aristocrats took the freedoms to create their own little kingdoms (corporations) to do whatever the fuck they wanted. These are the same people who later created fascism. Often the work conditions weren't better than they were before.
The industrial revolution was needed but it didn't always work out very well. England, where it all started, perhaps rushed too much. But then again Spain needed quick progress as it has always been a very poor country even when it "ruled the world", the advanced industry near Barcelona created a lot of jobs for the spaniards, Catalonia is still by far the richest area in Spain. French industrial revolution was much slower, step-by-step, which is the reason they still dominate in agriculture in Europe and Franc was one of the stablest money currencies until the World Wars but some of their industrialists were notorious for the atrocities made in the colonies just like the english, I mean Queen Victoria was the biggest drug dealer in the world.

In my country the agriculture is basically dead, during the 90's our prime minister from the conservative party did a good job destroying it, he said it wasn't prestigious. Stupid fuckface, all the richest countries in continental Europe have very strong agriculture. Now were so fucked it's not even funny. Local tomato costs three times more than a Spanish tomato.

[ginsambo]

British porn is the best, saggy birds with cellulite, just the old slappers we bang in real life.

Too right!

[ginsambo]

I think The USA, Holland and Germany and France have a lot to answer for the national decline in agriculture and horticulture...The EC is stupid, there used to be grain surpluses in the UK, silos full of grain you couldn't give away left to the rats, and it used to be the case that you were rewarded for producing decent quality beef. Now grain production is regulated in quotas so that it can be speculated on by banks as a traded commodity like anything else with short selling hedge funds and pension funds, with shipments hanging out at dock, like the incoming oil freighters do here, until the market price is right. Seemingly, there isn't enough to go around and you get more money putting the fields out for silage and leaving them fallow. Wholesale milk buyers have all gone under in the recession and you get nothing unless you negogiate with the supermarket monopolies, who will set the price and charge back any goods that are unsold. If you can't compete on an intensive scale, you go under, simple. In theory people care. Hell, liberal, fringe surburbanites will even complain and call up the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, that the local pigs in a muddy field with huts are being mistreated, because they are dirty and the field is muddy....and sure enough they'll send someone around to investigate. They all preach buy british and support animals rights and the fluffy puppy foundation against wholesale slaughter. But when it comes time to shop, they head straight down the supermarket in their car and buy the cheapest bacon available, which is usually factory farmed USA produce. So much for their moral highground bullshit.

Meanwhile some child somewhere is being abused and nobody does anything about it.

The problem with the British infrastructure is that it is the ORIGINAL one. Consequently it is well past its use by date. Other countries who developed at a slower pace learnt by our mistakes. On the subway, the time available to work after they have powered down and before powering up again each early morning shift is around two hours, What repairs can you get done in two hours? And the whole system depends on it.

Every country needs to have basic agricultural production plans and reserves in place on a local or national scale to feed itself like it needs a military. This global market is great in theory, until the price of fuel, strikes and riots, um, or in our case 'Inclement weather', put an end to imports and the urban populations starve. It is sickening, over here the police and VOSA come down like a tonne pf bricks if you are caught driving over your allowed Tacho period. the fines are massive and jail terms possible. Yet, when there was a recent logistics fiasco, possibly due to the strikes in France, I forget, the government were actively getting lorry drivers to drive over their required sleep hours for days on end to get the food distributed, saying that they will not prosecute them, if they will drive....OK when it suits them innit! Then when the crisis ended, they were being sent down if they were 1 minute over their hours...I remeber what the crisis was now....yeah it was called last 'Winter' and the national supply of road salt run out...so people panicked bought and others, who were less mobile, started to starve....Oh for fucks sake...apologies to the French.

Anyway after preaching pro Europe to us lot and whipping all the MP's in Parliament to vote against the EU referendum, because they were listening to their constitutants (us lot) who actually want a vote on how much power unelected MEP's in Europe have over us us, I like the way French Prime Minister Sarkozy told Cameron to fuck off and keep his nose out of European affairs recently with regard to the management of the debt crisis....class...

....Oh Little Britain.... this whole Europe things is nuts. We don't even have any national legislation anymore....and democracy is a joke when unelected Ministers of the European Parliament make all the rules...

If continues like this it will probably end in a third world war. But at least we have nuclear weapons. Have you noticed how countries with nuclear weapons never get a Nato sponsored regime change, because of ' Just Popularist uprisings against oppressive leaders'? Libya's mistake was not having nuclear weapons. They won't touch North Korea. Ironic how, even in this day and age, the threat of using your nuclear weapons arsenal have become the only tool in the box for nations to guarantee their sovereignty these days from the 'Free market investors'. Yeah I'd say you Eastern European countries are fucked. Unless you get nuclear weapons.

I'm all for proper free market investment and capitalism, but like I said before, it isn't an open market. It is corrupt and new players cannot get a slice of the cake against the price fixing monopolies. Yeah we live in Bolshevik times alright.

Fucking hell I'm a negetive bastard....

[Endrik]

My country is fucked because our own have made some sick social and financial experiments over here and have let some outsiders get a shot at it too. But no decent outside investors want to come here, for the Scandinavians the infrastructure is too low, for those looking to make a quick buck find the wages not low enough (like on South Asian or African level).

Since the 90's all the opportunists came out in the open, cowboy capitalism became rampant along with hard crime.
I should be thankful, as the opportunists mainly in Russia are the sole reason why the Soviet Union collapsed. The Soviet business model was about Kremlin making big bucks for themselves with heavy industry and weapons and not giving shit about anything else, which is why they had to import a lot grain from Canada, not enough food was being produced in the biggest country in the world. The cold war kept 'em in business, every corner on the earth still has Soviet weapons. But they got fucking old and the newer generation started to liberalize the market which created a chance for the opportunists who didn't see Kremlin serving their interests, a lot of organized crime rose too which looked forward to new ways. As it collapsed certain folks became some of the richest persons in the world within a week. Now you got industrial oligarchs working with the government, basically a fascist system, Putin is probably richer than Bill Gates. There's no place on earth where you can get so rich and so quickly as in Russia. From one extreme to another.

For a lot of continentals the Brits have always seemed anti-EU and prostitutes for the US, always whining about the EU while in reality most European countries don't care about the EU regulations at all. How can anyone worry about the rules made by EU ministers when the greeks are wiping their asses with those rules in front of the whole world?

But I don't think Cameron can be worse than Sarkozy. I'd get it when Chirac would say something like that, keeping the right wing Gaullist politician tradition to piss everyone off, specially the English speaking word. But Sarko tries to appeal to everyone outside, he is an extremely narcissistic person who has fucked his own country very deeply. Chirac could be annoying fuck, but he was a lot better president for his own people than Sarko.

[atomic charvel guy]

holy shit, that's all i got here. holy shit. who wants a piece?

[atomic charvel guy]

you know what i am going to do? i'm going to go on a sick bender, assemble an army, be it of nitwits or delusional people, either is fuckin' fine, just as long as they are corruptible, I will arm them, and it's off to Hadrian's Wall to start my charge, and let me tell you, i'm going to be pretty fucked up when it happens, should be a good
campaign.