THE NANNY STATE

[padraig (u.s.)]

Die Senseless sounds like a punk band Padraig (US) would dig

would've fit right in with the turn of the millennium crust milieu I cut my teeth on as a teen, State of Fear, Dystopia, etc

tho could also be an obscure Neue Deutsche Welle one-off featuring somebody from Einstürzende Neubauten

reissued for johnny-come-lately plebs by Vinyl-On-Demand or Bureau B, but Woebot owns an original pressing

 

[Leo]

drink white wine and a camembert in a no booze zone no problem. white lightning at the bus stop. eyesore. different story. we all know the rules.

there have been articles here about how, with bars closed, cops have been blatantly racist in how they enforce public drinking laws: moneyed white Brooklynians sipping white wine at a prospect park picnic, no problem. black guy sitting on a park bench drinking a beer, ticketed.

 

[luka]

that's how it works. fine for us. we're drinking camembert. its aspirational.

 

[Leo]

we're enjoying a fine vintage, he's got a drinking problem and is probably going to menace people shortly.

 

[luka]

eyesore

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

on-topic, I agree point of sales taxes aren't the best way to do it for any number of reasons, but I'm fine with some level of state incentivizing against sugar

firstly because it's so massively deleterious to public health - I have literally said that if I could go back in time and change one thing (after the obligatory "kill Hitler") I would find some way to prevent soda from ever being invented

but also as a counterbalance to the power of the sugar industry and lobby, which is largely responsible among other things for the American obsession with fat that fucked up public health discourse for decades

 

[Mr. Tea]

that's how it works. fine for us. we're drinking camembert. its aspirational.

Fine for us, a fine for them.

 

[IdleRich]

Police seized a bottle of wine yesterday from out of a bag of groceries being carried after the eight curfew. From a middle-class group of German

 

[WashYourHands]

There’s interventionism of a far more insidious nature.

case study - a bloated, inefficient, education sector that’s shot to shit the whole way through, excessive admin who clog the whole thing up, talent squandered, useless secondary sector, useless degrees, useless PhD’s. A Blair era legacy. ‘Education, education, education’. It’s more like a The Wire. Billions spent, end results don’t justify the means, cul de sacs everywhere and now, with Covid, a real test. Oh and also what Cummings wants In terms of reform at the other extreme.

The few schemes that work like Erasmus are brilliant, but = Brexit. An org like the AHRC repeatedly gives money to public school types who really don’t need the £ injection, it just looks good for their cv. Hence, people who really struggle with grad loans are self funding. A disgrace from head to toe, portraying the advantages of learning from one angle, but the end results are purest evil nanny state.

The sector needs a trim. Just not a Tory trim.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Yeah, one of the fuck-ups of the Blair government that deserves more attention is the massive over-expansion of the university sector and the concomitant devaluation of vocational training. A total own-goal, with graduates ending up doing min-wage jobs they could have done at 16 (if they can find work at all) and a dependence on EU migrants - many of whom have, unsurprisingly, decided to fuck off back home - to do all sorts of vital jobs that the native labour force can't supply.

My partner works in university funding and has known about the uni staff pensions crisis for years. A completely predictable consequence of there being more staff, more students, more graduates and, frankly, more universities than the economy can realistically support.

 

[version]

The great university con: how the British degree lost its value

Never before has Britain had so many qualified graduates. And never before have their qualifications amounted to so little.

www.newstatesman.com

 

[WashYourHands]

First they came for the degrees.....

 

[Mr. Tea]

The great university con: how the British degree lost its value

Never before has Britain had so many qualified graduates. And never before have their qualifications amounted to so little.

www.newstatesman.com

Wow, that's depressing.

 

[luka]

I don't know anyone that went to university and wasn't made demonstrably stupider by the experience. It's absolutely disastrous for the intellectual development of young people

 

[version]

I think I'd hate doing philosophy, English lit. or whatever at uni. If I went back into education, I'd probably do a welding course or something.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't know anyone that went to university and wasn't made demonstrably stupider by the experience. It's absolutely disastrous for the intellectual development of young people

Nah, that's just arts and humanities degrees. Science and maths graduates can split the atom of any conceptual issue with the cold, clear logic of ultra-powered mind-lasers.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Although, as a physics graduate, I'm obliged to insist that all chemists are massive durr-heads.

 

[Leo]

I don't know anyone that went to university and wasn't made demonstrably stupider by the experience. It's absolutely disastrous for the intellectual development of young people

I wouldn't have had the motivation to do all that studying on my own, doubt if many other people would have the time or discipline to do it either. college was/is far from perfect in the states, but it provided the structure I needed at ages 18-22 to force things through my thick skull that wouldn't have have entered otherwise.

 

[boxedjoy]

University was a waste of time for me. I studied journalism, which I should never have done anyway. You're led to believe you can advance based on sheer merit but ultimately if you're working class and you don't leave with a car and license and the ability to go intern for free, then you might as well not bother doing what I did. The classes were boring and useless, lots of "in conclusion Libya is a land of many contrasts" summaries, everyone getting the same mark for assignments plus/minus 3%.

I thought uni would be full of exciting, keen, adventurous sorts. Gigs and clubs and experimental music and culture. It was seas of boring heteronormative students. People who had never met a gay man like me, turning me into a novelty figure, using me to expand their cultural horizons and being disappointed by my averageness. Four years in crap high street clubs and doing the bare minimum of work necessary because it was all you needed for a 2:1 and I was working 20 hrs a week to put food on the table.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Mass higher education has brought us a plague of credentialed midwits.

(So this is what David Cameron has been up to in his shepherd's hut)