Monday May 28, 2012

Takeda_Shingen's past comments

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    Takeda_Shingen

    To echo archiebald: I used to have great faith in the "Great British Bloke" epitomized by Alf Garnett, but sadly his type are now an anachronism: a loveable one, but an anachronism nevertheless. It's going to take a lot more than tub-thumping over a pint of mild to put the UK to rights now. But never mind, eh Alf? Up the 'ammers !

    Posted in: Baby-faced dad, 13, raises 'broken Britain' fears

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    Takeda_Shingen

    archiebald: I can empathise with much of what you say, as probably our background circumstances are similar. I could perhaps also add that case of a father who was playing football in a park with his son, and was set upon by a gang of ferals aged 12-15 and stoned to death ! The "penalties" meted out in that case were certainly not going to discourage something similar happening again. Yes Japan has its nutters too, but can you imagine such a thing happening here?

    Despite all of Britain's social ills, my wife and I still chose to send our kids there for education after age 12, because - like it or loathe it - the UK is half of their heritage, and we wanted them to experience life there at first hand so that they could choose their own path. I'm now beginning to wonder whether that was a good decision, and that they'd have been better served by education in a third country. Labour were so determined to create a level educational playing field that excellence now survives only in a precious handful of schools, whereas in the rest, utter mediocrity is praised and rewarded. The old two-tier system of education may have had its faults, but at that time people still had pride in vocational skills and craftsmanship. Labour have been trying to create a fantasy world in which everyone has a white-collar office job, with the result that good honest trades are no longer perceived as "fashionable". Kids who in reality should never have gone to university are now reading useless subjects like "American Studies" at what used to be Wessex Polytechnic, when they should have been encouraged to nurture vocational skills and offered jobs that rewarded them. Humans are diverse in their skills and intelligence: that's a biological fact. But UK education has homogenized everyone, and the result is now a soulless society.

    Posted in: Baby-faced dad, 13, raises 'broken Britain' fears

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    Takeda_Shingen

    cleo: I'm not trying to glamorize the pits. I went down one in the 70s and that one time was enough to etch forever in my mind what kind of working environment the miners had. What I'm really getting at is the way that Britain's traditions and values have been vanishing, until now almost nothing remains. The Durham Gala was a fantastic event, which I always attended, and despite the fact that the miners had hard lives, they had a solid identity. UK "culture" and society now are like one of those western film sets with tumbleweed blowing down the main street.

    Posted in: Baby-faced dad, 13, raises 'broken Britain' fears

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    Takeda_Shingen

    Bento: I agree with you entirely about what Thatcher did to Britain. In fact that was the time I upped stakes and came to Japan. I had lived in Durham for 8 years, and loss of the rich culture associated with the mining communities, and its catastrophic effect on society there, saddened me greatly. As to Mr Woss, your attitude seems typical of the PC brainwashing that has been going on in the UK for the last decade and a half. I still reserve the right to bring someone down a peg or two if I think they deserve it, and as the person in question has been laughing all the way to the bank, I doubt very much whether his speech impediment has been much of a worry to him.

    Posted in: Baby-faced dad, 13, raises 'broken Britain' fears

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    Takeda_Shingen

    Irrespective of whether the boy is the true father or not, the whole sorry affair is symptomatic of the sickness that now ails the UK. As a Brit exile in Japan for half my life (I'm now in mid 50s), it's sad to see what's happened to my country. I still go back there regularly, but I've been appalled at some of the social deterioration that's occurred in the last 10-15 years, and I believe much of the blame is to be laid at the door of New Labour for the fool's paradise they've constructed over the last 12 years, and which is now unravelling big time. Now that the UK economy is in shreds, we can expect to see things getting a great deal worse, and I agree with a previous poster that civil unrest is a distinct possibility. Far from the dizzy standards of UK education widely trumpeted by the government, the population is now one of the most ignorant in Europe, fed trashy reality TV shows, American soaps, and even trashier domestic products such as "Hollyoaks". There is now a pervading trend for gross misbehaviour to be regarded as "cool", and for people who are academically diligent as being "geeks". People reap huge financial rewards from setting bad examples, as exemplified recently by those crass non-talents "Jonafan Woss" and Russell Brand. There are now no longer any reliable yardsticks of what constitutes acceptable behaviour, and the law has been weakened to such an extent that no reliable deterrents exist to prevent things such as the current wave of knife crime. The phrase "dumbing down" has been used, and I think that is what has happened in the UK. It now seems doubtful whether the country can recover, but I think that if there is any hope, then it will have to come from re-education, so that people acquire enough brain cells to see the path ahead, and to become capable of making judgments about what constitutes good taste and is morally and socially correct: not just chanting some "PC mantra" that has been foisted upon them by an incompetent and weak government.

    Posted in: Baby-faced dad, 13, raises 'broken Britain' fears

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