Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[alastairq]

I absolutely agree. 

Cadbury's chocolate  is absolutely........''mingin''...[to quote my DD}

I cannot [even remotely] understand why anyone would want to tarnish their primary foodstuff with obnoxious additives like fudge or chocolate, or anything?

Other than toast, or twiglets!

Marmite is the be-all-&-end-all of mainline food.

It has the finest most delicious taste ever!

Especially when compared to salted caramel, [in coffee.....what-T-F is that all about??}

 Personally, I would know I'd really hit rock-bottom if I had not got a half used jar of Marmite in the cupboard!

 

Marmite rates even higher than tablet...and that's going some!

 

As for the stuff purporting to be 'food-of-the-gods', especially under the label of ''artisanal'....well, I think the biggest problem this country has to get over is  the rush to be sophisticated , inclusive  and global!  

I mean, what's that rubbish johnny foreigner makes out of scrambled hazelnuts, FFS?

Or the leftovers from the  French dairy industry?

Artisanal?

 

Never a more appropriate description of what's wrong with the population of this country!

So up themselves!

 

Arti-s-anal!

 

What's wrong with ''home-made,'' eh?

 

Plus, we have a whole middle class too frightened of getting their hands dirty for once!

[Nearholmer]

38 minutes ago, alastairq said:

well, I think the biggest problem this country has to get over is  the rush to be sophisticated , inclusive  and global!  

Ah, yes indeed, let us all rush hindward to become a bunch of oafish, inward-looking, exclusive, and parochial people once again.

 

(There are many things I happily forego, now that I don’t commute daily to London, like commuting, and working full-time, but something I seriously, seriously miss is the vibe of sophistication, inclusivity, internationality, and, above all, youthfulness! It sometimes comes with lashings of pretentious BS, although TBH that’s something people tend to keep for social-climbing in their domestic milieu (!), but I’d rather suffer that than a load of people who want to raise late-life grumpiness to a political stance)

 

PS: Actually, did I just betray late-life grumpiness there? Hmmm …….

 

 

Edited September 16, 2021 by Nearholmer

[alastairq]

25 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

oafish, inward-looking, exclusive, and parochial people once again.

Nowt wrong with any of that at all.

 

Maybe if we all had a bit of the above, the recent pandemic might not have caused so many problems?

27 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

the vibe of sophistication, inclusivity, internationality, and, above all, youthfulness!

 Or, the superficiality of it all?

 

Or, even, the pretentiousness?

[Nearholmer]

4 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Nowt wrong with any of that at all.

Only that it always comes with a large dollop of prejudice, a side-helping of ignorance, a sprinkling of condescending snobbery from the “upper-strata”, and a very thick gravy of self-limiting inverted snobbery from the rest.

 

Superficiality, pretentiousness, and excessive self-regard are far easier to cut through than the wooden-headed attitude of a lot of determined ‘local people’.

 

Didn’t C18th novelists do this debate to death? And, wasn’t it Doctor Johnson who said “A man who is tired of villages and small towns, he is tired of the stultifying atmosphere that their inhabitants create.”?

 

Living in villages didn’t stop The Black Death getting to people; it just took a bit longer than the current scourge. There’s always some annoying cosmopolitan-minded so-and-so wandering about spreading disease.

 

 

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

the biggest problem this country has to get over is  the rush to be sophisticated , inclusive  and global!  

 

 

It really isn't, you know

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Only that it always comes with a large dollop of prejudice, a side-helping of ignorance, a sprinkling of condescending snobbery from the “upper-strata”, and a very thick gravy of self-limiting inverted snobbery from the rest.

 

 Now, that IS an oafish viewpoint. 

Generalisation worthy of Trumpism, methinks?

 

Ignorance is subjective.

 

How can so-called 'inverted snobbery' be self-limiting?

 

Then there's Doctor Johnson?

To  my mind, a suspect character if ever there was one?   [If not more than a trifle hypocritical?}

 

I have always found that it isn't always 'ignorance' that colours a viewpoint, but 'experience'...

 

 

 

 

[alastairq]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

It really isn't, you know

 Absolutely correct, my mistake.

it is the superficiality of current society that first of all needs to be overcome, closely followed by the above.

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

It really isn't, you know

Are you saying that isn’t the problem, or that the country isn’t sophisticated, etc…?

[Nearholmer]

29 minutes ago, alastairq said:

How can so-called 'inverted snobbery' be self-limiting?

Excessive pride in being ‘ordinary’, being one of the pack, too often translates into disdain for and mocking of anyone who has a bit of gumption, and looks likely to move out of the pack - words like swot and clever-clogs, and ‘getting above himself’ come into play. The smarter or more energetic will then limit themselves in order to stay part of the pack.

[Hroth]

3 hours ago, alastairq said:

Marmite is the be-all-&-end-all of mainline food.

It has the finest most delicious taste ever!

 

I believe that Marmite ties in with the same taste receptors that govern a liking for Brussels sprouts. You either find them acceptable or you don't.  As for twiglets...

 

3 hours ago, alastairq said:

Marmite rates even higher than tablet...and that's going some!

 

All tablet is is over-boiled fudge, created by people who don't own a sugar thermometer.  And can't even cope with the drop test.

 

Cats, here's some pigeons...  

[petethemole]

25 minutes ago, Hroth said:

As for twiglets...

Twiglets can be greatly improved by dipping them in Marmite.

[CKPR]

"We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - Oscar Wilde

 

These days we can add "...whilst most are contemplating the sewers"

[CKPR]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Excessive pride in being ‘ordinary’, being one of the pack, too often translates into disdain for and mocking of anyone who has a bit of gumption, and looks likely to move out of the pack - words like swot and clever-clogs, and ‘getting above himself’ come into play. The smarter or more energetic will then limit themselves in order to stay part of the pack.

Which sums up populism in a nutshell.

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Excessive pride in being ‘ordinary’, being one of the pack, too often translates into disdain for and mocking of anyone who has a bit of gumption, and looks likely to move out of the pack - words like swot and clever-clogs, and ‘getting above himself’ come into play. The smarter or more energetic will then limit themselves in order to stay part of the pack.

 

Or as Terry Pratchett put it in "Unseen Academicals", its all crab bucket.

 

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, petethemole said:

Twiglets can be greatly improved by dipping them in Marmite.

 

Or boil them to a mush in a small quantity of water and use them as a spread in place of Marmite.

The effect is the same...

 

[Edwardian]

I am dismayed by people who seem to glory in being the proverbial frog in the well, or take pride in never changing opinions (Burke said something along the lines of an honest man is one who changes his opinions but maintains his principles).

 

Better I suggest, to recognise the limits of one's knowledge and push further into the hinterland of ignorance, conquering more knowledge! Every day (not least here!), my horizons expand as, by gaining knowledge and experience, I discover how much more there is I do not know or understand! 

 

But cherished, self-satisfied small-mindedness, I fail to comprehend.  It's the sort of attitude H G wells showed in the complacent and prejudiced Englishmen upon whom he proceeded to visit the scourge of the Martians, or as much more gently and kindly portrayed by J R R Tolkien with his Hobbits.

 

Part of this attitude is the refusal to recognise that there are some people better qualified to express a view on certain subjects, like, for example, a doctor giving medical opinion on vaccination, and preferring what someone down the pub (or these days someone on social media) says. Remember how the Dunning-Kruger effect was played on by the Egregious Gove when he suggested we'd all had enough of experts? 

 

Some days I despair.

 

Other days I just think about model railways.

[Regularity]

56 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Burke said something along the lines of an honest man is one who changes his opinions but maintains his principles

“The honest man must be a perpetual renegade” - Charles Péguy.

[rocor]

3 hours ago, CKPR said:

"We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars" - Oscar Wilde

 

These days we can add "...whilst most are contemplating the sewers"

 

As we should be. Much of the sewer system in the UK dates from the Victorian ere, and is wearing out and being overloaded. 

[CKPR]

1 hour ago, rocor said:

 

As we should be. Much of the sewer system in the UK dates from the Victorian ere, and is wearing out and being overloaded. 

I allude more to the sewers of the human psyche rather than those of Severn Trent Water.

[CKPR]

5 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Burke said something along the lines of an honest man is one who changes his opinions but maintains his principles

And hence via dialectical absurdism to the Marxist- Groucho standpoint  - "Gentlemen, these are my principles. And if you don't like them, well, I've got some others"

[Caley Jim]

53 minutes ago, CKPR said:

And hence via dialectical absurdism to the Marxist- Groucho standpoint  - "Gentlemen, these are my principles. And if you don't like them, well, I've got some others"

Or, as one of our lecturers is reported to have said, " I don't hold by other's opinions, I have some of my own!".

 

Jim

[alastairq]

On 16/09/2021 at 09:55, Nearholmer said:

Only that it always comes with a large dollop of prejudice, a side-helping of ignorance, a sprinkling of condescending snobbery from the “upper-strata”, and a very thick gravy of self-limiting inverted snobbery from the rest.

 Not always, by any means.

 

Quote

self-limiting

 

Knowing one's limits is a good thing really.

How one arrives at that knowledge is best based on experience, not perception.

[alastairq]

19 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Part of this attitude is the refusal to recognise that there are some people better qualified to express a view on certain subjects, like, for example, a doctor giving medical opinion on vaccination

 Professional elitism has to be challenged, in my view.

 

Including how that fall-back of 'qualification' is influenced by outside  sources, or ulterior motives?

There are many 'professionals' who are unwilling to add 'honesty' to their armoury of knowledge.

 

''Trust me, I'm a doctor?''  ??

 

{No, I am not an anti-vaxxer, or whatever the latest buzzword is?  I had a vax for many years}

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Regularity]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

Knowing one's limits is a good thing really.

Yes, because then they can be extended.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, alastairq said:

Not always, by any means.

True, always is never (well, hardly ever) a good word to choose, but you’d have to tour far and wide to find a place full of oafish, inward looking, parochial etc people that doesn’t also suffer from the disadvantages that I listed.

 

Can you think of one?