Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => The Coffee Corner => Topic started by: Rob C on September 05, 2017, 10:10:50 am
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I'm given to the belief that you could largely blame the shops, or, rather, those who run 'em.
In the goode olde days, when men worked and women stayed at home bringing up the family, keeping the home fire burning (presumably only in winter) and the food natural, there was fairly full employment, fewer prisons existed and there was always room within them for those in need of a socially-sponsored vacation.
And hire-purchase didn't exist.
Then things began to change. Buying stuff you couldn't really afford became the norm: everybody got into debt to some degree; women then had to find work in order to rescue the family and keep the bailiffs away; men began to find themselves in competition with women in the workplace and that tended to keep wages down - especially for the women. Other men became afraid of the women who turned out to be more intelligent than they were, and unnatural workplace sexual competiton became a sour note undermining society. Perhaps it was a subliminal, unconsciously applied way of making the working life feel too uncomfortable for some of those women to remain...
The more women who worked, the greater the stock of working people grew. In a sense, more money was being circulated, and so came the opportunity to sell more and raise prices down the chain to meet the new incomes available for the milking.
As nobody stayed at home anymore, so other people found jobs looking after the kids who would otherwise be abandoned with a glass of milk, a sandwich and a tv set. Pretty much as with cats, litter trays optional. That paying for these minders took away so much of what the newly working spouse earned didn't seem to be noticed...
Just like guns, then: the more you have the more intractable the situation becomes. Norman Rockwell wasn't popular by accident: he touched upon the happy lifestyle that almost everybody wanted to have. And they still do, only their own greed and that of those who pander to their appetites has denied it to them. You get what you sow.
Imagine: had that attempted and typically Turkish delight - aka coup d'état - happened earlier, we'd probably, as Brits, still have the entire European continent and its services ours for the enjoyment of, imminent travelling bogeymen driven far from popular myth and fear. Even more ironically, after we leave, the rest of them seem interested in reducing the power of the central structure somewhat, returning more say to the individual nations... you couldn't make up such irony; you wouldn't. Perfect British timing.
As I mentioned, reaping and sowing follow an impartial, immutable natural rhythm.
The record crowds of tourists filling the port make me happy to live over a klick from the sea. The sewerage system is holding up locally, but appears a little over-enthusiastic closer to the beach! Happy days! Aren't blue flags reassuringly deceitful? But it's September; soon the crowds will be no more and peace and quiet the norm. I think I enjoy that.
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Ahh the Good Old Days.
My Great Grandmother was in service as a housekeeper at 9 years of age. Look at what my poor nieces have missed out on. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
PS. My Great Grandmother's Great Granddaughters ( that I know of ): One in management at the Open University who writes in her spare time ( one of her short stories made it onto Radio 4 a couple of years ago ), one running her own advertising firm, one clinical psychologist & another one high up in management in the british arm of a multinational. Obviously they'd all be better off at home in burkhas.
The Great Grandsons have done OK as well, except for the semi alcoholic ner-do-well with shitty teeth, but we won't go there ::)
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I can recommend the book : The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible! (1974)by Otto Bettmann
Nostalgia is comforting mental illness that allows us to remember the good and forget the bad.
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Nostalgia is comforting mental illness that allows us to remember the good and forget the bad.
But that doesn't explain why we don't see the world "improve" as we grow older, despite technological and economical advances. There seems to be something seriously wrong with our metrics.
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I guess a good start would be to define "improve" and determine how to objectively measure it.
Not exactly an easy thing to do.
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On the contrary; I think Oscar has hit it right on the head. It's what I think I have been writing about here.
Quite obviously those who judge everything by monetary return won't see this; they had better not, or they might discover what they have thrown away without knowing.
As for women reaching great heights in business and commerce, that's a good thing, but then you have to accept that those same women have to choose between motherhood - with all its demands, rewards and connotations - and a great career, wherein the difficulty resides. (I know a couple of women in the big money stream; one, already churning it in, doesn't get home until after nine - if she's lucky; the other has to face all sorts of stress and will have a few years of that before it all gets very comfortable (I hope). As they are family, I have discussed the babies aspect with them, and it makes them very uncomfortable because they know there's no easy route to doing both well: work and motherhood. Nobody, however well educated, can have everything.) I can tell you this: there was nothing like ringing home from the studio, after midnight sometimes, and coming home to a wonderfully cooked steak, some broccoli and potaoes, the company of a sweet wife and then bed, forgetting all about the goddam print delivery first thing next morning, which was why I was still working after midnight in the first place. It simply proves how invaluable the right wife is, and how many of them really are the power behind the throne. I couldn't have functioned without mine. And if you're still not convinced the olde days were better, consider this: if I were to attempt those same meals today, any time after about three in the afternoon, I'd be up all night fighting for my breath against death from acid reflux asphyxiation. ;-)
That same wife had the time to go play tennis, swim with friends or just chat with friends about whatever women chat about with other women, which as far as I could tell sure as hell wasn't photography! Goode oldies? Sure, that's why they are called that - unless you thought they couldn't have existed. In which case, you'd be mistaken. Managing leisure is just as difficult as managing work: some can screw up both.
But bringing in the lifestyles of two centuries ago in attemps to make some comparisons with today is just a false analogy: apart from a few zillionaires, everybody eat crap, both from the kitchen and at work.
I think we really did reach an apotheosis during the fifties and sixties. Come to think of it, the personal one also falls quite often betwen one's forties and mid-sixties. On the youthful limit, you're all the person you'll probably ever be, and on the other, you will soon hit that friggin' slow but ever more slippery path to the end.
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I suspect every society reaches an overall peak—which is hardly seen and experienced by everyone within it as a peak at all—after which complacency, grievance (whether justified or not) and backlash conspire to corrode societal institutions and structures. Then the society withers away slowly or collapses abruptly or something in between. At the same time new societies form, with varying structures and intentions, and some of them turn out to be vibrant enough that they eventually reach their own peaks. Lather, rinse, repeat. Considering that it took homo sapiens ~150,000 years to develop the first technological (agriculture!) large-scale societies, this will likely be the playbook for some time to come.
-Dave-
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On the contrary; I think Oscar has hit it right on the head. It's what I think I have been writing about here.
Quite obviously those who judge everything by monetary return won't see this; they had better not, or they might discover what they have thrown away without knowing.
As for women reaching great heights in business and commerce, that's a good thing, but then you have to accept that those same women have to choose between motherhood - with all its demands, rewards and connotations - and a great career, wherein the difficulty resides. (I know a couple of women in the big money stream; one, already churning it in, doesn't get home until after nine - if she's lucky; the other has to face all sorts of stress and will have a few years of that before it all gets very comfortable (I hope). As they are family, I have discussed the babies aspect with them, and it makes them very uncomfortable because they know there's no easy route to doing both well: work and motherhood. Nobody, however well educated, can have everything.) I can tell you this: there was nothing like ringing home from the studio, after midnight sometimes, and coming home to a wonderfully cooked steak, some broccoli and potaoes, the company of a sweet wife and then bed, forgetting all about the goddam print delivery first thing next morning, which was why I was still working after midnight in the first place. It simply proves how invaluable the right wife is, and how many of them really are the power behind the throne. I couldn't have functioned without mine. And if you're still not convinced the olde days were better, consider this: if I were to attempt those same meals today, any time after about three in the afternoon, I'd be up all night fighting for my breath against death from acid reflux asphyxiation. ;-)
That same wife had the time to go play tennis, swim with friends or just chat with friends about whatever women chat about with other women, which as far as I could tell sure as hell wasn't photography! Goode oldies? Sure, that's why they are called that - unless you thought they couldn't have existed. In which case, you'd be mistaken. Managing leisure is just as difficult as managing work: some can screw up both.
But bringing in the lifestyles of two centuries ago in attemps to make some comparisons with today is just a false analogy: apart from a few zillionaires, everybody eat crap, both from the kitchen and at work.
I think we really did reach an apotheosis during the fifties and sixties. Come to think of it, the personal one also falls quite often betwen one's forties and mid-sixties. On the youthful limit, you're all the person you'll probably ever be, and on the other, you will soon hit that friggin' slow but ever more slippery path to the end.
Maybe the UK things were different. Here in the USA we still didn't allow black Americans to eat at the same G__D___ lunch table, and a woman was more likely to get a smack on the ass at work than meaningful consideration. (This is why, incidentally, some of us get so bent when we feel like a segment of the population actually seems to believe things were better then. They may have been - for a select part of the populace, but that's grossly ignorant of some parts of that society.)
By the way - is "hire-purchase" the same as "financing?"
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The world doesn't get better or worse. We do.
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...hings were better then. They may have been - for a select part of the populace...
Small select part, like... 80-90%?
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By the way - is "hire-purchase" the same as "financing?"
Broadly, yes, but in the UK at least it comes in several forms, all phenomenally tightly regulated.
Jeremy
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Nostalgia is comforting mental illness that allows us to remember the good and forget the bad.
Ah, nostalgia ain't what it used to be
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Maybe the UK things were different. Here in the USA we still didn't allow black Americans to eat at the same G__D___ lunch table, and a woman was more likely to get a smack on the ass at work than meaningful consideration. (This is why, incidentally, some of us get so bent when we feel like a segment of the population actually seems to believe things were better then. They may have been - for a select part of the populace, but that's grossly ignorant of some parts of that society.)
By the way - is "hire-purchase" the same as "financing?"
I am sure it was a very different thing for many within the UK.
For starters, we didn't have any blacks that you'd notice until the Caribbean peoples came in, and with them a unique form of music, gangsterism and drugs. The only blacks most Brits saw were GIs who came with gum, cigarettes and access to nylons, great music; quickly and unexpectedly as they came they mostly departed. Straight after the war we had an influx of people from India and Pakistan - same reasons, basically: empire and its decline, with most attendant responsibilities honoured, but within a small land mass incapable of easy assimilation of the volume that wanted into it. That wasn't very noticeable up in Scotland, but southern England - the London area and just north of it, became a very alien place to many of the people who'd spent the war years there. The famous/infamous Rivers of Blood speech wasn't made in a vacuum, where it would have held no relevance.
I find it quite extraordinary that a nation whose favourite meal out is curry, that frequents Italian, Spanish and - if it can afford it - French restaurants at home in the UK - simultaneously finds itself capable of hatred through ballot, of the very same people. But there you go: the compartmentalizing of mind, deed and thought into mutually incompatible boxes.
Hire-purchase: that was where you put so much money down, and signed the next few years away with monthly payments at a fine rate of interest. My accountant always tried to get me to buy our cars that way, because it meant a better tax situation. However, I only did it twice, preferring to be able to put down a cheque and walk away, owning something outright. The two times I followed his advice I ran into the usual freelance problem of variable income. No, I didn't default, but neither did I enjoy the additional pressure brought about by debt at the very same time as work was getting shorter. It's really the personal experience that drives me to think that debt is never a good idea, not some theoretical consideration about it.
So in the States, the whites inherited the penalty for their previous sins, just as has Britain and much of Europe for the same reasons. Now, asking today's black people in America and Europe whether they'd welcome free repatriation isn't, I imagine, going to get a lot of takers. Which really illustrates just how complex and infinitely variable nationalism, roots and all of that stuff can be. Is it better a ghetto in LA than one in Africa? Of course, that's not to say that all black people live in dumps. I imagine we have as many whites in similar situations all over the globe. Would I feel any the more happy wandering alone through a rundown, white housing estate in some UK city than doing the same in America? I very much doubt it. The fear isn't colour; the fear is of the undeveloped, drugged mind of any instantaneously combustible personality that may decide it wants your shoes, and rather than asking, sticks a knife in your ribs.
And why is the black population within a white nation considered a problem? Because of visual differences, frequent physical superiority and its physical threat; widely mooted sexual prowess and the thought of one's own family getting into a marital combination with what many see as a different species of mankind. No, this isn't a pretty picture to paint or to view, but that doesn't mean it isn't there, that it is a flight of imagination. The music industry does little to help, either, with its videos of rappers making out with white/very pale-coloured female sex-slaves or "bitches". Whether this is to appeal to back buyers or to whites, I don't know. I have no way of knowing if back males really like white females any better than those of their own pigmentaion - in videos they are made to appear cheap, almost prostitute-like. Is it vengeance for lynchings past? Then there's crime: are the statistics stacked? Do blacks get stopped more often than whites, and if so, could it be because they have a higher likelihood of being caught carrying something illegal? More Middle Eastern-looking people get hassled at airports than the others; as they are the ones most likely to be jihadists, is it wrong on PC grounds to stop them more than other types?
Indeed, it could well be - it is - the case that the perfect Rockwell scenario applies not to everybody; it never has and never can if only becuase we humans are not machine-made. That's why we are all different and anything but equal. Some of us are geniuses and some total plonkers. I've know all sorts, and still have no real idea where, within that scheme if things, I really belong myself.
But the thing is, I feel little sense of responsibility for the fellow human who doesn't try. Trying and failing is not a disgrace; the disgrace is in not trying, and as consequence, blaming society for one's own shit. If anything, the nonsense disseminated by the PC/political crowd, that everybody is wonderful and equally worthy, is at the root of the problem because, when somebody tries and falls on their ass, they have already been conditioned to think themselves wonderful and so it has to be an unbeatable plot that's keeping them back and down. That can easily prevent them picking themselves up again, something also far easier to do in youth than later.
It used to be held that education was key. Well, for a long time it probably was, but what about the situation today where all graduates no longer find themselves holding the automatic key to a life of full employment - indeed, many remain unemployed long after they leave university. I believe that's partly due to the recent emphasis on further education which, ironically, seems to starve us of many tradespeople actually able to do what their job is meant to be. We need plumbers and electricians, carpenters and mechanics as much today as ever, but they are in short supply. Why? I believe because they are diverted into a fruitless pursuit of an education, and the classy jobs from that that they will never get.
When I stated working life I was one of hundreds of apprentices in a company group; I'm told that situation is almost extinct today, leading to shortages of skilled, native engineers, with the shortfall made good via the importation of foreign people who do have those missing skills. So are they welcomed? They end up hated, and turned into the devils that have brought us down.
So much for logic and common sense when nationality and politics can step in and make hay out of it all.
Rob
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Perhaps the "good old days" (what ever that means) was good if you were a white man.
Back then minorities knew their place and knew not to get uppity.
Women understood that their place was in the home breeding and gaining their self-actualization by providing her husband with a pleasant life.
That's awesome. As a white man, I would love to live in that fantasy land. But what about other perspectives?
What about from the viewpoint of the minority? The black man with aspirations and ability for becoming a doctor only to be told to be a good boy and take that job in the warehouse and be thankful. How good were the "good old days" for minorities? Perhaps not as good as it was for white men.
What about from the viewpoint of women? The women who may not have wanted a husband (maybe they wanted a girlfriend?); who may not have wanted children; who wanted self-actualization to come from her own accomplishments and not just from being Mrs. Jones. Being chuckled at while in school "No, Sally, you can't be a scientist, you need to find a good husband and settle down". It was not that long ago that women were not allowed to get their own credit without their husbands permission. And a single woman? Good luck getting credit at all. How good were the good old days for women? Perhaps not as good as it was for white men.
The good old days were always good... if you were on the top.
If you weren't, then perhaps the good old days weren't so good after all.
With all the problems we have on our current times, I would still much rather be living today than back in the fictional "good old days". I appreciate the struggles of my parents during the "good old days".
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Otto, do you know who Walter Williams is? You might want to look him up and read what he's written about growing up black in Harlem. It was a different world all right. A better world.
Where blacks suffered was in the deep south, and it was a political problem caused by people like Orval Faubus and his KKK Democrat clones. Then good ol' LBJ got legislation passed that allowed women to live off taxpayers so that no man was needed in the household. That sounded great. After all, we were "helping" single black women with children, and the more children they had the more taxpayer money they got. What do you suppose the result of that was? Blacks now suffer the results of the broken homes caused by that kind of legislation. And the stupidity continues and intensifies.
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I find it quite extraordinary that a nation whose favourite meal out is curry, that frequents Italian, Spanish and - if it can afford it - French restaurants at home in the UK - simultaneously finds itself capable of hatred through ballot, of the very same people.
Rob, assuming you are referring to the Brexit vote, that's a superficial and inaccurate view of the motivation that drove most of those who voted to leave. There's no hatred of foreigners - no more than in any other country, anyway.
Jeremy
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Otto, do you know who Walter Williams is? You might want to look him up and read what he's written about growing up black in Harlem. It was a different world all right. A better world.
Where blacks suffered was in the deep south, and it was a political problem caused by people like Orval Faubus and his KKK Democrat clones. Then good ol' LBJ got legislation passed that allowed women to live off taxpayers so that no man was needed in the household. That sounded great. After all, we were "helping" single black women with children, and the more children they had the more taxpayer money they got. What do you suppose the result of that was? Blacks now suffer the results of the broken homes caused by that kind of legislation. And the stupidity continues and intensifies.
Walter E. Williams, the GMU professor and author?
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Rob, assuming you are referring to the Brexit vote, that's a superficial and inaccurate view of the motivation that drove most of those who voted to leave. There's no hatred of foreigners - no more than in any other country, anyway.
Jeremy
Really? The first reaction was the murder of a poor old Pole in England; the chanting of "go home" at the school gates was also flavour of the month or of the three-minute-mind.
Try telling that to folks in south Glasgow, where the area just next to Shawlands has become a Roma bastion... come on, be real Jeremy; the upmarket (very) area of Pollokshields has gone heavily Asian and that has affected a lot of people - and schools - there. There is a huge amount of dislike, and sadly, though it (Brexit) isn't going to change a goddam thing because much of that came quite apart from the European Experiment, all resentment gets mixed up in the public mind with Europe. And let's say this: Scotland voted strongly to remain! How the bulk of the numbers-making rest of England saw the matter is quite clear from the result.
But hey, hatred is no stranger in Britain: just think football teams. Just think the class system. Just think the educated and the non.
;-)
Rob
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I'm thinking of a couple of interesting dilemmas:
What would you rather have?
1. Racial segregation but economic equality
2. Racial equality but economic injustice
(You can substitute "racial" with "gender" or whatever else is deemed philosophically relevant)
Or
Is an economic injustice acceptable for some minority if it results in equality for the vast majority?
(Minority as in random number of people, but also as in racial minority, or perhaps sexual preference minority, etc)
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Perhaps the "good old days" (what ever that means) was good if you were a white man.
Back then minorities knew their place and knew not to get uppity.
Women understood that their place was in the home breeding and gaining their self-actualization by providing her husband with a pleasant life.
That's awesome. As a white man, I would love to live in that fantasy land. But what about other perspectives?
What about from the viewpoint of the minority? The black man with aspirations and ability for becoming a doctor only to be told to be a good boy and take that job in the warehouse and be thankful. How good were the "good old days" for minorities? Perhaps not as good as it was for white men.
What about from the viewpoint of women? The women who may not have wanted a husband (maybe they wanted a girlfriend?); who may not have wanted children; who wanted self-actualization to come from her own accomplishments and not just from being Mrs. Jones. Being chuckled at while in school "No, Sally, you can't be a scientist, you need to find a good husband and settle down". It was not that long ago that women were not allowed to get their own credit without their husbands permission. And a single woman? Good luck getting credit at all. How good were the good old days for women? Perhaps not as good as it was for white men.
The good old days were always good... if you were on the top.
If you weren't, then perhaps the good old days weren't so good after all.
With all the problems we have on our current times, I would still much rather be living today than back in the fictional "good old days". I appreciate the struggles of my parents during the "good old days".
You're going back to the pre-50s; I think I specified the G.O.Ds as being of the 50s and 60s.
By then, the minorities that seem to occupy so much of your thinking had already discovered the power of the strike; of the socialist party politicians. Sure, being white in a white world would of course be an advantage bestowed by fate. Being from a rich, white family would be even better! What would you suggest doing about that, vis-à-vis the poor white people? Kill all the wealthy?
"I appreciate the struggles of my parents during the "good old days".
Admirable sentiment; would you, though, condemn the rich for doing the same for their own children? Do you not accept that wealth is ever relative? Can you come up with a valid reason why the rich should not try to make life better for their own kids? Wealth does not come without a whole set of problems unknown to the poor. Were it not so, there would be no need for top accountancy firms, no teams of international lawyers would need to exist either. Wealth feeds a huge volume of labour, both highly professional as well as menial.
Women can work if that's their thing (as distinct from financial necessity, which is another ballgame entirely, and seen by myself as a modern scourge) and whether gay or otherwise, they will never escape the child problems associated with the impossibility of comfortably wearing two sets of shoes at the same time, whether as natural parents or adopting ones. I can't remember women writers not existing; women photographers were also pretty successful during the 50s and 60s. Why do you insist in seeing the "housewife" as some kind of downtrodden drudge? That woman can be just as well - or better - educated as or than yourself; it's her choice, or at least, in the G.O.Ds it was!
But hell, I've been through all this stuff already, and if anyone refuses to read it or absorb it, there's little point in my doing it all again now. I'm not interested in creating another Trump-style thread, believe me!
So yeah, the G.O.Ds of my own vision/definition have been defined by two decades where I believe they came to pass; I think they were subsequently destroyed because of greed. It was never my stance that the times before the end of WW2 were wonderful for everybody; no time has ever been wonderful for everybody because as we all know, people are all different and some destined to failure. It just is. It wouldn't matter where in life they began; they'd still screw up and lose it all. And those with the opposite gift will come out of nowhere and do well. You'd be surprised just how much money resides in relatively illiterate hands. Great education may help some; others don't need any of that because they have a nose that reads the scent of the street and takes them to that crock of gold, with or without rainbows.
It seems to me, on rereading your post, that your real concern is not with the existence or otherwise of any G.O.Ds, but of some mythical equality that never was, never can be. We do not all come out of the same mould. We are as different in abilities, desires and emotional makeup as can be imagined. How in the name of anything you think holy can equality exist? And please, don't sell me equality of opportunity; it's exactly the same thing.
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I'm thinking of a couple of interesting dilemmas:
What would you rather have?
1. Racial segregation but economic equality
2. Racial equality but economic injustice
(You can substitute "racial" with "gender" or whatever else is deemed philosophically relevant)
Or
Is an economic injustice acceptable for some minority if it results in equality for the vast majority?
(Minority as in random number of people, but also as in racial minority, or perhaps sexual preference minority, etc)
I think that #2 is what we have.
But with a caveat: economy, good or bad, as in personal/family, comes from effort and not decree. It is entirely dependent on the quality of that applied effort. One can even sniff the rancid air of "quota"-induced equality of opportunity and expect to see differing results. My money would be on the people of the Far East. They work. Hard. They have not only a family ethic of work and application, but a national one too. Those kids apply themselves and take education very seriously indeed. It's visible in the number of Chinese kids getting Honours degrees...
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We humans have evolved to live in small bands of close-knit hunter/gatherers. It's what we're psychologically and emotionally tuned for. Larger scale and more diverse technological society is something we've, in a sense, imposed upon ourselves. Yet it seems clear enough that we've had, and continue to have, a hard time adapting to this still-new way of life. We're playing an inner game of catch-up to much changed outward circumstances. But we're an innovative species, and we shouldn't mistake short-term noise for long-term trend.
This will take millenia and many human generations to play out. The urge for it all to happen now, while we're around ('cuz it's all about us!), is as delusional as it is commonplace. And even then our distant descendents will have a whole new set of issues and problems to deal with, stuff we can't even begin to imagine.
-Dave-
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We humans have evolved to live in small bands of close-knit hunter/gatherers. It's what we're psychologically and emotionally tuned for. Larger scale and more diverse technological society is something we've, in a sense, imposed upon ourselves. Yet it seems clear enough that we've had, and continue to have, a hard time adapting to this still-new way of life. We're playing an inner game of catch-up to much changed outward circumstances. But we're an innovative species, and we shouldn't mistake short-term noise for long-term trend.
This will take millenia and many human generations to play out. The urge for it all to happen now, while we're around ('cuz it's all about us!), is as delusional as it is commonplace. And even then our distant descendents will have a whole new set of issues and problems to deal with, stuff we can't even begin to imagine.
-Dave-
Are you saying Rockwell might have wept in vain? I have no idea if he did weep about these matters, but he sure did illustrate them delightfully.
One snag about not resolving these things now is that we may run ourselves, as species, out of time. As much as I enjoyed the early Mad Max epics, I really don't think I'd last very long in that sort of ambience, age apart, of course; my sense of self-preservation is far too strong to let me survive.
Rob
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... Trying and failing is not a disgrace; the disgrace is in not trying, and as consequence, blaming society for one's own shit. If anything, the nonsense disseminated by the PC/political crowd, that everybody is wonderful and equally worthy, is at the root of the problem because, when somebody tries and falls on their ass, they have already been conditioned to think themselves wonderful and so it has to be an unbeatable plot that's keeping them back and down...
That ^
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Working my way through this at the moment:-
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B019CGXTP0/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
May have some relevance to this thread?
The last chapter looks interesting.
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Really? The first reaction was the murder of a poor old Pole in England; the chanting of "go home" at the school gates was also flavour of the month or of the three-minute-mind.
Yes, really. Nothing apart from some hysterical press ranting ever suggested that the man's murder was related to the vote, still less that his presence had had any effect on it. Xenophobia is not confined to the UK and racial hatred has been seen elsewhere not awfully long ago (something happened in Germany about the middle of the last century, I seem to recall).
Try telling that to folks in south Glasgow, where the area just next to Shawlands has become a Roma bastion... come on, be real Jeremy; the upmarket (very) area of Pollokshields has gone heavily Asian and that has affected a lot of people - and schools - there. There is a huge amount of dislike, and sadly, though it (Brexit) isn't going to change a goddam thing because much of that came quite apart from the European Experiment, all resentment gets mixed up in the public mind with Europe. And let's say this: Scotland voted strongly to remain! How the bulk of the numbers-making rest of England saw the matter is quite clear from the result.
I know nothing of the area of Glasgow you mention. How can you imagine that the presence of Asians had any effect at all on the vote? It's ludicrous.
Dismissing the votes of 17 million people as motivated by hatred of foreigners is phenomenally arrogant, as is pretending that people can't tell the difference between Europeans, even exotic eastern Europeans, and Asians, or that only voters' stupidity could have led to the result. There were many different reasons why Leave won, which I have encountered in tediously extensive discussions in the months leading up to the vote.
Jeremy
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I live in a UK postal area, Romford, strongly associated with leave the EU, but my local authority, Redbridge, is strongly associated with remain in the EU; note UK postal areas can span several local authorities. In fact my Member if Parliament, Mike Gapes, rebelled against his own party to vote to remain in the EU.
I do know a lot of people who live in the neighbouring local authority, Havering, covered by the Romford postal area, many of whom are long term friends, and most voted leave mainly because of immigration. Note one of these "leavers" refuses to accept that her distant ancestors were not white; and not on religious grounds either i.e. she is an atheist! A few, and I'd better be careful here, of the more "educated" type voted to leave because they also feel that EU interference is too much. We have agreed, for the moment, that I will not press my anti leave opinions as it has caused some very heated and even nasty discussions.
Rob's right immigation was the major/main key in a lot of areas.
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Yes, really. Nothing apart from some hysterical press ranting ever suggested that the man's murder was related to the vote, still less that his presence had had any effect on it. Xenophobia is not confined to the UK and racial hatred has been seen elsewhere not awfully long ago (something happened in Germany about the middle of the last century, I seem to recall).
I know nothing of the area of Glasgow you mention. How can you imagine that the presence of Asians had any effect at all on the vote? It's ludicrous.
Dismissing the votes of 17 million people as motivated by hatred of foreigners is phenomenally arrogant, as is pretending that people can't tell the difference between Europeans, even exotic eastern Europeans, and Asians, or that only voters' stupidity could have led to the result. There were many different reasons why Leave won, which I have encountered in tediously extensive discussions in the months leading up to the vote.
Jeremy
What may be ludicrous to you, Jeremy, is perfectly obvious to me.
17 million may not have voted exclusively on racial hatred, but xenophobia had been the tool used by those dickheads in UKIP, and by its fellow travellers in whichever party. Remember the posters, the buses? I get UK tv here perfectly clearly - if too loudly at times; my fibre optic-provided Internet is probably better that what's available in many regions of the UK. I also see newspapers and have family still in the thick of it there. Pretty much the entire campaign of the Leavers was based on foreigners and the damage they supposedly were doing us; that is, when they weren't just plain lying through their teeth about the millions of diverted pounds they were going to make available to the great British sacred cow: the NHS. Did they give a shit about the City? Did they stop to think about whether it and its peripheral beneficiaries might be affected? Of course not: to millions, the City, wealth creators, simply repesents the enemy! Did they ever say exactly which jobs those dreadful foreigners had stolen from us? They did their hate shit well: so well that Trump's just duplicating it on his patch.
Unless you have run your own dedicated surveys nationwide, have access to special newspapers the rest of us do not, I respectfully submit that I probably know as much about the zeitgeist and the popular pulse as do you.
Your reference to the Nazi period does nothing to absolve our own, home-grown crazies; I'm surpised you raised the point. Well, at least by saying that it isn't confined to the UK, you do admit that it sure does exist in the UK, which is some sort of progress.
To what logical reasons would you, then, ascribe the Leaver victory? Hardly from a considered business perspective when we are about to ditch our best, bird-in-hand clients, lose the City's power in the world... but that it doesn't matter, because the world will flock to work with us through some imaginary notion that we are the best-loved little country in the world? The US thought that it was the biggest most loved one, but reality doesn't bear that out - especially in today's political climate. I remember the interview with the car worker in Sunderland who, when asked whether he felt we were putting his job with a Japanese company at risk by leaving the Union sniggered, and said hey, we have the best engineers, they can't do without us! Yep, that's the mindset that thinks it's all gonna be all right on the night... That it's our current tax relationship with Europe, as well as the pool of available hands desperately keen to be employed has nothing to do with it, just reveals how blind folks are when they follow leaders, especially those with but a single item on their agenda: OUT! It didn't seem to occur to that worker that Poland has equally skilled engineers with vastly lower wage expectations, and Spain already hosts Ford and VW amongst other multi-national companies; what would it take to expand that factory base? Just a signature on the dotted line. The enthusiasm sure exists here, as do the skills! And believe me, Europe is just as clever - if not more so - than the UK at bending inconvenient rules about slush funds. The moment the returns from post-Brexit, foreign-owned UK-based factories go south, so do the companies move. Hell, Scotland's nationalists face similar revenue problems: you can't skin a cat if that cat can still jump.
But hey, we shall never see eye to eye on this, so what's left to say? Nada.
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...Pretty much the entire campaign of the Leavers was based on foreigners and the damage they supposedly were doing us; that is, when they weren't just plain lying through their teeth about the millions of diverted pounds they were going to make available to the great British sacred cow: the NHS. Did they give a shit about the City? Did they stop to think about whether it and its peripheral beneficiaries might be affected? Of course not: to millions, the City, wealth creators, simply repesents the enemy! Did they ever say exactly which jobs those dreadful foreigners had stolen from us? They did their hate shit well: so well that Trump's just duplicating it on his patch...
As an American, I can speak to why America went for Trump. While there are always crazies, the main impetus I saw was the resentment of the elites who talked down to people, who always know what's best for them. For years, decades, the government has gained power. People saw more and more of their liberty, money, and freedom to live their lives taken away from them. The elites favored outsiders or outside sourcing of jobs and production either because they expect their vote or they expect to get cheap labor and cheaper made products. The average American was not checked if they agreed with this game plan. When the economy didn't change much after the 2008 recession, many people wanted a change. They rejected the usual politicians and their stale Pablum. They wanted something different.
The idea that change was bigoted and racial isn't correct unless you also believe that Sander's supporters were bigots and racists too. The fact is Sanders is a socialist, practically a Marxist. He campaigned like Trump did - as a populist whose policies favor the average guy. Anti-trade, anti-elite. Arguing the economic benefits of the EU over there or trade agreements over here misses the point that people are not economics' majors. If they were, socialists, Marxists, and Communists would never come to power.
Having people in charge of your life are rejected whether they are gnomes in Brussels or elite politicians in Washington. People on the outside reject that intuitively.
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I guess this is now the Trump III thread. Alan, does social justice mean anything! Go back to 1950 and work in your factory!
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I guess this is now the Trump III thread. Alan, does social justice mean anything! Go back to 1950 and work in your factory!
Well, I did just that in '56.
What I learned was that it had little to do with "social justice" or anything as exotic as that, whatever it means. Social justice was never part of any conversation I shared - what was part of said conversation was football, pop music (for the younger lot), the best dance halls where you'd find the prettiest girls (as if they ran in packs!), football, booze, football. Nobody spoke career.
Then came the infamous appentices' strike of '59 (possibly '60, but I'm hazy on that today) where the radical crowd from the shipyards spread the Marxist gospel wider, and our own huge and already quite highly skilled shop floor youth was dragged into it courtesy six or seven self-appointed leaders of our own lot of kids. Pickets "manned" the main gates and the few of us who said screw you, assholes, would get into work via other areas. It was like breaking and entering your own home.
How did it turn out? As if nothing had happened. The strikers refused to speak to us non-strikers thereafter - no big loss, I never liked football anyway, and I had the same girlfriend from schooldays so the dance halls advice didn't matter- and it was made clear to me by my own intelligence that a factory environment was never going to hack it for me. Hell, I was only there because I didn't want to be apart from my girlfriend and had no intention of getting killed fighting wars in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Kenya or any other place that wasn't posing a threat to the survival of the UK. It had been a stark choice: take the job or go to war courtesy the age period when one was vulnerable to conscription.
What I did note, especially after the event, was that none of my fellow apprentices had any ambition to do anything else other than work in a factory. I never met the wannabe anything elses. That's something that people who didn't have a similar factory experience often fail to understand. Angst simply wasn't on the personal menu. I'd guarantee nobody would have had the slightest idea what friggin' angst meant. I also believe that the same sort of thing exists in the population on a far wider scale than the factory, and in many psychological areas of experience. It's my realisation that politicians use that "innocence" to their advantage by creating entire movements of discontent where before had been a reasonable state of spiritual peacefulness. The trick is a simple one: feed envy and discontent into a population and thereby create totally unrealistic wishes way beyond the ability of those affected folk ever to obtain. That's all it takes: ignite discontent through impossible aspiration. When a bogeyman is created, he becomes the perfect focus for your own shortcomings, at once absolving you from your own guilt. Bogeyman, in the form of employer, banker, insurance agent, supplier, competitor, foreigner, anyone at all outwith the confines of the personal skull can be foe; anything will do to protect the ego. How much nicer it might have been were ego unknown. (?) Or maybe not.
From the outside, and especially if not within a very similar situation, it's so easy to project one's personal ideas and ideals and imagine that the rest of humanity shares the same frustrations. It probably doesn't, just as it doesn't have to share our own enthusiasms.
Rob
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I guess this is now the Trump III thread. Alan, does social justice mean anything! Go back to 1950 and work in your factory!
In the 1950's when I was 14, I worked as a caddy. Got paid $4 for a single 18 round and $8 for a double 18. I usually got a $2 tip but some cheapskates gave me a dollar. The sports gave me $3 tip. My first real job was working for Bank for America at 16 for $60 a week. I remember I was pissed they were taking $1.80 for Social Security (that's 3%. Now it's 7.65% including 1.4% for Medicare, and the Employer matches the 7.65% fully. All that's beside Federal, State and City income taxes.) That's how government, mainly Democrats, and Socialism has taken more and more of people's money. All that money going for Social Justice. Welfare grew immensely in the 1960's. All that money for single mothers to take care of their families led to the breakup of the Black family and extended their poverty. Black children suffered discipline problems that led to jail and drugs as fathers disappeared so the mothers could continue to get more money with more babies. When white people spoke about stopping welfare or modifying it so it made sense, they were called racists. Even though welfare negatively effected white families as well. Social justice was the mantra. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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But hey, we shall never see eye to eye on this, so what's left to say? Nada.
Probably true; but I'll add only one more thing. You confuse fear of immigration (and its effects) with hatred of foreigners. It was your causal attribution of the latter as a cause for the leave vote which prompted me to respond. I am in no doubt that immigration played a huge role in the Leave victory. It doesn't affect me adversely: there's no risk of a Polish lawyer taking my job. But the presence of significant numbers of people prepared to do low-paid jobs for less than Britons wanted did affect the vote - and who is to say that the people who voted leave for that reason were wrong?
Project Fear failed because it over-egged the pudding, as events have shown and I believe will continue to show. The campaign was awful: frankly, I found that each time I listened to a broadcast by one group I found myself impelled to vote for the other.
Jeremy
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Probably true; but I'll add only one more thing. You confuse fear of immigration (and its effects) with hatred of foreigners. It was your causal attribution of the latter as a cause for the leave vote which prompted me to respond. I am in no doubt that immigration played a huge role in the Leave victory. It doesn't affect me adversely: there's no risk of a Polish lawyer taking my job. But the presence of significant numbers of people prepared to do low-paid jobs for less than Britons wanted did affect the vote - and who is to say that the people who voted leave for that reason were wrong?
Project Fear failed because it over-egged the pudding, as events have shown and I believe will continue to show. The campaign was awful: frankly, I found that each time I listened to a broadcast by one group I found myself impelled to vote for the other.
Jeremy
The problem with your argument is this: those low-paid, unskilled jobs have always existed. The trouble is that our own people now prefer to collect the dole than do the work for pretty much the same renumeration, highlighting that its also our relatively recent handout culture that feeds the discontent. Hence the filling of the home-grown vacuum from abroad. And thank God somebody fills it! Europeans, by and large, associate unemployment with a sense of shame. I never found that with our own, other than within the ranks of the self-employed, the obvious reason of mental make-up forcing them into a life of natural self-reliance and of shame when they can't hack it for one reason or another, and it may not even be their own fault.
As for your own job not feeling at risk, don't depend on that: there are many European, Asian and Far Eastern people with incredible skills and qualifications, and eaning them within our own universities. Do you work in London or one of the big cities, or perhaps in the countryside? Makes a difference where one meets competition.
Electoral issues are not solved by logic: results depend on vibe. Were that not so, the inevitable national bankruptcy that eventually follows each socialist government (and routinely leads to its dismissal) would, in a logical world, preclude any further socialist victories. It doesn't pan out like that, though, does it? The majority of voters remain chained to pop cultural models, and only a small, swinging number ring the changes. Whether for government or on issues, folks vote by gut and not brain. Your own "each time I listened to a broadcast by one group I found myself impelled to vote for the other..." suggests it was gut, not brain making the call - and you have legal training! What hope for the guy on the factory assembly line hoping to secure his job?