Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Regularity]

21 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

And yet, at the same time, Immensely Privileged!

Yes. You are. And here’s why.

 

Firstly, no one is trying to belittle your personal circumstances/misfortune. That’s not what this is about.

 

What it is about begins with the following:

You have posted this on an Internet forum which requires a computer and (obviously) access to the internet. Most people in this country take this more or less as a given, and are perhaps likely to complain only about interruptions to the service or the price they pay for it. That’s not usual.

Your life and career progression have not been hampered by limited access to education.

Neither has gender played a part in preventing you from this.

Nor the colour of your skin.

Nor your belief system (including atheism).

You don’t sit in your house expecting armed robbers to break in and shoot you, or at least hold you hostage, on a daily basis (I mean the fear is a daily thing, not being shot: that might only happen once!)

Similarly, you don’t expect armed police to break down your door based on very thin evidence.

You can walk down the road and generally speaking, you will not be mugged or molested.

You are unlikely to be stopped and searched by the police.

When you drive your car, you don’t expect to be pulled over every day to pay a “fine”, for which you will be given a receipt so that if you get pulled over again that day, you won’t be fined.

If you are pulled over, you won’t find a handgun pointing in your ear, nor will you be shot if you get out of the car.

If you are arrested, you will be treated with civility.

You get your vote without worrying that it will be intercepted and destroyed/altered.

You get to state that you will abandon all but one of your principles for the sake of that one principle, and there is no comeback on it.

 

Some of those apply to all of us, some to many, but for many people in the world, that is but a subset of the things that threaten their existence every minute of the day (the above is by no means exhaustive). 
 

These freedoms are wonderful things to have, but until they are universally available to everyone, the more them you are able to enjoy, the more “privileged” you are, no matter what your personal circumstances.

 

Here endeth the lesson.

Now stop feeling sorry for yourself an drop the whining.

[Nearholmer]

All true, but the disturbing thing about right now is that it feels as if every one of those privileges, and some others that you don’t list, might, in some almost undetectable, very thinnest end of the wedge, fashion, be being levered away from those who currently have them, rather than being extended to those that don’t.

The wind has changed, and a great many of us don’t like the direction from which is blowing.

 

Anyway, I sincerely wish James a better night’s sleep tonight. I’m not sure English Verse could withstand another bad one.

 

[alastairq]

Dunno if it's a privilege, but I've discovered I can [annoyingly for this website] avoid all the annoying pop-up adverts that block the whole screen on my PC...

 

I simply open the next page in another tab....which confuses the widget that waits till we click on a box, before opening an advert.

Hence, no pop ups! Tee hee.....that'll annoy the  owners no end.

 

I am disappointed that I am being encouraged to stop my whining, though...

[Nearholmer]

PS: don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that things which ought to be rights possessed by everybody are privileges to be granted by somebody. The very word privilege has its roots in inequity, in the idea that somebody holds power over somebody else, that you are fortunate to have what the bully allows you to have.

[monkeysarefun]

Perhaps avoid annoying sleepless nights by  simply adopting the If You can't Beat Them Then Join Them approach.

 

Works for the US Republican party when confronted by a wannabe authoritarian dictator, even storming the nation's seat of government in an attempt to prevent a democratic change of government is now described by them  as "Legitimate Political Discourse"  and those who attempt to investigate it are "enemies of democracy". 

 

I bet Ted Cruz doesn't lay awake at nights working out what rhymes with cat..

 

And for all the others, there are those Republican friends in the Opioid industry with a ready way to keep the population other wise occupied.

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[Regularity]

49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

PS: don’t allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that things which ought to be rights possessed by everybody are privileges to be granted by somebody.

I don’t. Most of my “privileges” weren’t available to my forebears.

The point, as you say, is to create a more equitable solution by bringing everyone up, not trampling them down. (Which is what happened with grammar schools, for example.)

I simply take the view that I am in a personal situation where I can do more to help, because I have so many things going for me due to things which should be normal, but are in fact rare privileges. I am but one, and I can but nudge, but if we all do that little bit to challenge prejudices (including our own) and open things up, then more can be done - as it was for my more recent forebears, by evolution and not revolution.

[Regularity]

7 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

I bet Ted Cruz doesn't pay awake at nights working out what rhymes with cat.

That’s based on the assumption that he knows how to spell it.

[monkeysarefun]

21 minutes ago, Regularity said:

That’s based on the assumption that he knows how to spell it.

True, he did recently read some account of COVID rules in Western Australia (WA) and put out a tweet condemning the democrats in Washington State (WA) for them.

 

But I've come up with another solution, move to Missouri, murder the annoying ones and those people making your life miserable and just say it was self defence.

https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2022/02/08/prosecutors-oppose-missouri-bill-dubbed-make-murder-legal-act-by-critics/#:~:text=SB 666%2C proposed by Eric,self-defense%2C KCTV reported.&text=Copyright 2022 KCTV via Gray Media Group%2C Inc.

 

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by monkeysarefun

[AY Mod]

2 hours ago, alastairq said:

Tee hee.....that'll annoy the  owners no end.

 

Don't worry, once the facility to pay for ad-free access is available I have a basket of delights for those who think the whole of the Internet should be free. 

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Regularity said:

Yes. You are. And here’s why.

 

Firstly, no one is trying to belittle your personal circumstances/misfortune. That’s not what this is about.

 

What it is about begins with the following:

You have posted this on an Internet forum which requires a computer and (obviously) access to the internet. Most people in this country take this more or less as a given, and are perhaps likely to complain only about interruptions to the service or the price they pay for it. That’s not usual.

Your life and career progression have not been hampered by limited access to education.

Neither has gender played a part in preventing you from this.

Nor the colour of your skin.

Nor your belief system (including atheism).

You don’t sit in your house expecting armed robbers to break in and shoot you, or at least hold you hostage, on a daily basis (I mean the fear is a daily thing, not being shot: that might only happen once!)

Similarly, you don’t expect armed police to break down your door based on very thin evidence.

You can walk down the road and generally speaking, you will not be mugged or molested.

You are unlikely to be stopped and searched by the police.

When you drive your car, you don’t expect to be pulled over every day to pay a “fine”, for which you will be given a receipt so that if you get pulled over again that day, you won’t be fined.

If you are pulled over, you won’t find a handgun pointing in your ear, nor will you be shot if you get out of the car.

If you are arrested, you will be treated with civility.

You get your vote without worrying that it will be intercepted and destroyed/altered.

You get to state that you will abandon all but one of your principles for the sake of that one principle, and there is no comeback on it.

 

Some of those apply to all of us, some to many, but for many people in the world, that is but a subset of the things that threaten their existence every minute of the day (the above is by no means exhaustive). 
 

These freedoms are wonderful things to have, but until they are universally available to everyone, the more them you are able to enjoy, the more “privileged” you are, no matter what your personal circumstances.

 

Here endeth the lesson.

Now stop feeling sorry for yourself an drop the whining.

 

Have the Boris Johnson Prize for Reading the Room!

[Compound2632]

1 hour ago, AY Mod said:

Don't worry, once the facility to pay for ad-free access is available I have a basket of delights for those who think the whole of the Internet should be free. 

 

Hum. This interjection (but not by any means its content) has a disturbingly Big Brother air to it - no post goes unnoticed, no matter how obscure a corner we try to lurk in. I bought a new laptop today; I'm beginning to regret that I didn't get the one with the slider shutter for the camera...

 

Where's the duct tape?

[monkeysarefun]

50 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Hum. This interjection (but not by any means its content) has a disturbingly Big Brother air to it - no post goes unnoticed, no matter how obscure a corner we try to lurk in. I bought a new laptop today; I'm beginning to regret that I didn't get the one with the slider shutter for the camera...

 

Where's the duct tape?

Nice pants you're wearing!

[Edwardian]

7 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Hum. This interjection (but not by any means its content) has a disturbingly Big Brother air to it - no post goes unnoticed, no matter how obscure a corner we try to lurk in. 

 

While I am quite happy to waste any amount of GCHQ's time - serves them right for being nosy - I now feel rather guilty that Andy has to use so much of his valuable time reading my random crap!  Still, it's either posting here or screaming at the four walls, and at least this way I don't actually need to leave the house and talk to people. RMWeb is not really a model railway forum. It's therapy. We are Immensely Privileged to have it.

 

I'm off to have an Immensely Privileged day trying to find a smaller house to rent for the same price as this house so I can avoid the Immense Privilege of paying a three times inflation increase in rent to stay in my home.  Not sure how much more of this Immense Privilege I can stand, but I'll do my Immensely Privileged best.

[Welchester]

11 hours ago, Regularity said:

The point, as you say, is to create a more equitable solution by bringing everyone up, not trampling them down. (Which is what happened with grammar schools, for example.)

 

Grammar schools didn't bring everyone up, only the fortunate 10% who passed the 11 plus. I did (so am privileged), but I can still remember the fear of failing and the prospect of having to go to the local secondary modern (fifty years ago Gloucestershire still didn't have comprehensive schools). That's not something I would like to put anyone through.

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Welchester said:

Grammar schools didn't bring everyone up, only the fortunate 10% who passed the 11 plus. I did (so am privileged), but I can still remember the fear of failing and the prospect of having to go to the local secondary modern (fifty years ago Gloucestershire still didn't have comprehensive schools). That's not something I would like to put anyone through.

 

I suspect @Regularity meant the opposite - the secondary moderns did the trampling down as you were well aware at the time. 

[Nearholmer]

14 minutes ago, Welchester said:

fifty years ago Gloucestershire still didn't have comprehensive schools). That's not something I would like to put anyone through.

Here is a map showing where children are still being “put through it” now, although I can’t conceive that the not-grammar schools in these areas are still as poor as many secondary moderns were in the 60s.

 

 

[Edwardian]

There are, of course, Comprehensives and Comprehensives.  There are those, perhaps a majority, that might more resemble Grange Hill, of blessed tea-time memory, yet others, often ex-Grammar Schools Brought Low, retained better academic standards, though all were cursed by the bonkers innovations of Hippy Educationalists of the 1970s, who, in my view, deserve to be shot or, if necessary, dug up and shot, for denying whole generations of State-educated children basic grammar and numeracy. 

 

I say this, of course, from a nevertheless Immensely Privileged standpoint that entirely invalidates anything I have just said.

[alastairq]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

m off to have an Immensely Privileged day trying to find a smaller house to rent for the same price as this house so I can avoid the Immense Privilege of paying a three times inflation increase in rent to stay in my home.  Not sure how much more of this Immense Privilege I can stand, but I'll do my Immensely Privileged best.

I, too, have that nagging fear.

My income is fixed, whether I like it or not.   But I rent a house which is slightly too large for my present needs [2 beds, for a singly]...but has a large [but useless] garden and a large, single entrance workshop. Also a large driveway, which is most useful for my other major pastime.

But I have been here for 7 1/2 years now, on the same rent. The rent is about the maximum I can afford, given all the other rising costs of living.

It is a rural home, in a small village, which suits me no end indeed, as I couldn't tolerate living amongst crowds of unwashed people.

But I dread my landlord trying to  raise my rent!

 I would have to move, and moving would mean having to live maybe in a small town.....Certainly, next to folk, which would make my toes curl up in horror.

Local Authority are worse than useless in respect of 'social' housing.....reserving most of it for the less welcome members of our so-called 'society.'

 

My one bargaining point is, how I 'look after' [IE, don't destroy] the property, even adding to it by way of a permanent carport, etc.

 

In other words , better the tenant [devil?] he knows, than some 6 month fly-by-night?

 

Luckily, most of the tenanted housing round these parts is owned by  agricultural estates, so tends to not be the 'quick source of income' noted in the towns & cities.  My own LL is in the agricultural business, and always said my rent would be his pension....Perhaps country farmers have a  different view on things like rents & tenants, etc, than the typical city landlord?

 

I'd willingly live in a 2nd hand mobile home parked in a wood miles from anywhere.......Certainly compared to living on any kind of 'urban' housing estate.

[Nearholmer]

It wasn’t all bad. Myself and my two brothers all emerged from a comprehensive that had been up-cycled from a secondary modern, able to count further than our toes, and read newspapers that had long words in them. One bro liked it so much he went back to become head of PE there, and later got an entire comprehensive of his own to be head of.

In our case, I think we hit a good time to be there in some ways, because a high percentage of the teachers were young, idealistic, and believed in the system and in us kids - they hadn’t yet grown old and cynical in the service of education, which seems to be an occupational hazard.

[AY Mod]

11 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Hum. This interjection (but not by any means its content) has a disturbingly Big Brother air to it - no post goes unnoticed, no matter how obscure a corner we try to lurk in. I bought a new laptop today; I'm beginning to regret that I didn't get the one with the slider shutter for the camera...

 

Where's the duct tape?

 

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

I now feel rather guilty that Andy has to use so much of his valuable time reading my random crap! 

 

Someone was just unlucky to get 'caught' making daft comments. Something else in the topic had been flagged up by another user to take a look at and I just happened to clock something that irks me; I know we've had a raft of performance issues recently but what I don't need is someone thinking they're being clever and 'sticking one up to the man'.

 

Trust me; I don't have time to read all the crap here  and generally I leave people alone as long as they're not having a right old row and creating work for me.

 

As you were.

[alastairq]

On the topic of privilege?

One thing that really weally annoys me these days , is the use of the term 'privileged'.....

Largely by those corporate bodies that 'sponsor' whole segments of our commercial television.

 

How a huge company making selling over-priced beds, or whatever, can claim to be 'privileged' to sponsor an ITV channel, I dont understand.

It's not as if ITV went around looking for an unsuspecting corporate entity upon which to bestow the honour of sponsorship of mass entertainment?

 

The boogahs have paid handsomely to allow ITV [or whoever] to actually broadcast stuff.....

 

How on earth can someone claim to be privileged for parting with huge sums of money for what is merely, advertising?

But, there it is....they claim to be privileged to sponsor so-&-so's programs....

 

As if they were the ''chosen ones?''

 

 

I passed the 11+......can I put that behind my name in correspondence?

Edited February 10, 2022 by alastairq

[Regularity]

13 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Have the Boris Johnson Prize for Reading the Room!

Unlike Boris, I was speaking truth to the room, not saying just what it (or you) wants to hear.

[Edwardian]

13 minutes ago, Regularity said:

Unlike Boris, I was speaking truth to the room, not saying just what it (or you) wants to hear.

 

The best appointments are often self-appointments. 

 

For instance, I have now awarded myself The Best All Round Good Egg, Most Promising Unpublished Novelist and Most Underappreciated Witty Bachelor of the Decade Awards 2022, and much good I am sure any of that will do me.

 

I'm sure, if I'd had the emotional stamina to read it, I'd find your post in line with your previous essays on the point; pretty much true and entirely by the by. 

 

Reading the room is often more about tact than truth, after all. 

[Regularity]

37 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Reading the room is often more about tact than truth, after all. 

Yeah, but railway modellers aren’t known for tact, are they? And you have been more than happy to be derogatory to me at times, and sometimes quite rude with it. (I grant that I may be, but I am pulling you up on your mismatch, not my own standards.)

 

If you read the post properly, you will see that it contains sympathy directly for you, and that is heartfelt and genuine sympathy.

 

As for things like the price of rental property, yes. That’s shocking and appalling and the direct consequence of government policy stemming from 1979, but that single issue - the “right to buy” - swung a lot of previously life-long Labour voters, despite the same government setting about dismantling the welfare state, selling off utilities at a ludicrously low price, wasting North Sea oil revenues on tax breaks for richer people, and shifting taxation away from progressive income tax to repressive commodity-related taxation, which again is a betterment for the wealthy not the majority who have to work for a living, such as the voters of Romford, etc.

 

This is what populist politicians do: they find the one principle which is so important that people will jettison all others in support of it. In some cases, they even create that new principle out of think air: “The one thing no one is talking about is immigration”, Cameron and Osborne, from 2005 onwards. No one talked about it because it wasn’t an issue, and we had as a nation, progressed some distance forwards on the topic. Still, that but then both on the backside, 11 years later, when “border control” led to Brexit.

 

Still, once in a while, the opposition will come up with a policy (closing public school) that is built on petty spite, envy and resentment as an alternative to addressing the real issue (by investing in education), and alienate people who would others support them, because it appears that they, too, have a “single principle” which overrides all others. 

 
As I said, you have my sympathy, but it’s hard not to wonder why you are complaining about an economic situation that was created by the same CV party that you have said you will now support.

[Welchester]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Here is a map showing where children are still being “put through it” now, although I can’t conceive that the not-grammar schools in these areas are still as poor as many secondary moderns were in the 60s.

 

 

 

By 'put through it', I meant the fear of failure, and the knowledge that many of your chances in life depended on a fairly arbitrary exam taken at an early age.

 

I'm sorry if I missed your point @Regularity.

Edited February 10, 2022 by Welchester
Added apology.