Wario

Hey! Guys! Guys! I found him!He of Legend. The Only Man in Britain Who Has Never Had Cause To Ring A Customer Helpline. Praise be! I often vacation near CapeTown, MI. Folks round there don't seem much stupider than your average cockney. Or Desi. Am I missing something? [seriously kingers old man, I'm beginning to worry about you. Have you ever actually lived in blighty? Because you don't seem to know a hell of a lot about it. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Perhaps I'm getting old ... ]

From my "Heritage Doley Experience" under Sailor Ted, Sunny Jim and That Bloody Woman, it'd have to be the rock'n'roll every time. Thing is, you can defeat the intention of the system, and survive a whole winter and more with your health intact, simply by staying under a pile of bedding all day, so you're not crucified by the gas and electric, and keeping quality food, or any food at all, to an absolute minimum (tea is a life-saver, we found. Tea and rollups (baccy puts you right off your grub, it's the secret (among many) of how we were all so goddamn thin and dropdead gorgeous back then )). No fridge, no washing machine, only turn the gas oven on in the hardest bit of winter. Fill the buggger with bricks and sit/slouch/huddle round it in army-surplus greatcoats playing poker and (paper!)D&D and supping homebrew etc. No 'phone, no heating, no lighting, no telly, no sodding baths needed (obviously, since the water was free back then, we could indulge in cold ones of a summer morn. Keep interview clothes and so on clean, by simply not wearing any clothes not required for survival inside the bedsit/squat/abandoned factory. Genius! Shoes don't wear out if you've got your feet up. Used to very pricey. Travel costs (invariably the bus, bike not a sensible proposition) are the real killer when working. That and the hypothermia, bronchitis and rheumatism waiting for it to show up. And free dentistry, always a lifesaving bonus. To Make Work Pay©The Quiet Bald Man I'd reckon you'd have to double the IngSoc MiniWage

Aye, that'll be shining bright.

To be fair the film-makers must have had to really scrape the barrel of doleys to find suitable subjects who were thicker, uglier, more ignorant and more unemployable than Hayley, just to make the progamme's premise tenable.

Condolences. Ending up by one of the Blair's portfolio elements. Could happen to anyone. Now I know your shitting me! "First Contact", can't be, no Klingon option there.How does it begin?

Including the shareholders and management. Why go to work under those conditions at all? Even if we did "become competitive" with Asia, it'd be five minutes before the directorial orders were whining "those ******* Asian slaves are too expensive! They want bloody rations and everything. We have to make them "competitive" with , er, ... Zimbabweans, or something." Asia can ****** off and die. Can't afford their garbage any more. On account of being all "competitive" and "outsourced" and all. I guess we'll muddle through without it somehow, not like it's the staff of life or owt.

Damn' right, my man! Better get meself off to a big city someplace, where I won't need a car to get to all my part-time jobs. Because I won't be able to afford one, or even run one. Oh, neither will the new guys either. Wonder how they'll get to the plant on time for that critical graveyard shift?

Seems to some kind of thoughtcrime round here. Not constantly striving to maximise one's taxable/marriageable value, that is. No bloody good to me. Just makes the landowners and the (inevitable?) ex fatter. I'd rather have my time, and a bit more headspace.

This is getting a bit annoying. Seems to be the default "solution" for the more socially isolated and unreflective on this forum. Have you any idea how many (formerly S/E in many cases) unemployed/underemployed tradesmen there are out there at the minute? Not counting the hordes of cowboys from the Accession Countries. How is popping a load of Hep2O together beyond the wit of the average householder? The country is heaving with on-the-beach sparkies and pipe-stranglers ( and brickies, and chippies, and ...) About as realistic as proposing that all those pumped out by our grotesquely bad "education system" be retrained as ploughmen. Typical clerk's cop-out. [ed: effing tags, again]

Serves you right for keeping all your dead hair for making up underwear.

o for the love of darwin not another one. I see Bowman got his barmy posts pulled. Why not go the whole hog and call it "animal spirits"? Or give credit to the animal totems of the otherworld? Does anybody on this site have the faintest ******ing idea what genes actually do ? [ed: tag-*****ery]

How do they get from ship to shore? Zodiacs? Choppers? Or will they never need revictualling or drydock ever again? Do you reckon they might end up eating each other?

They've always been uncannily reminiscent of the handloom weavers of Georgian times to me. Loads of political opinion, highly whiggish, nonconformist, veering under stress into outright jacobinism. (For example, Rabbie Burns was supposed to have gone into the linen trade. Luckily for us he was too much of a waster, and died a nonentity). We forget how crucially important textile technology, especially clothing, was before mechanisation, and how expensive. No expeditions to the Northwest Passage or Tahiti without it. No redcoats. These guys were the kings of labour in those days, and reckoned they could tussle for influence over society's form and direction with the hereditary landowners. Their activities were supposed to soak up all the wretches being cleared from the countryside by Enclosures and Clearances, both in England and the conquered territories of Ireland and Scotland. Then some Spocky meddlers invented a load of shit like steam engines, powerlooms, gas-lighting, and so on ...

It's not quantum rockets to figure out they're terrified, is it ? Hapless strivers seeking to accentuate the absolute lack of distance between themselves and the ghouls in The Abyss. They secretly know it's hell on earth. In their nightmares they find themselves in that world, and wake up screaming. And then they write to the Daily Mail. The rich are barely aware of the existence of any of them.

You could really bring that benefits bill right down. There's an old, tried and trusted bit of hibernian fiscal responsibility yet to be deployed. Export all the doleys to The Other Island.

Not in the Lothian and Fife fields they weren't aren't. It was being shipped in from recently-exposed-to-freedom Poland, to Perth and other obscure non-union wharves. And shifted around and stockpiled by tools like the still-glorying-in-it Scab outfit Neil Williams Haulage. There's still endless trains of coalwaggons grinding off to Longannet and Cockenzie to keep our haggis-steamers toasty. Maybe they're just digging it up to tidy the place. I doubt anyone round here would deny they are utter rat-bastards, traitors worse than Ramsay MacDonald, and Snobby Studenty *****.

Penny starting to drop on the Downs "This may not be unusual in Brighton, but for Lewes it will probably mean armageddon." One line of inquiry is that the photographs may be a bizarre protest, as some include a caption about "fees set to rise later this year". " I'll stay on the bus, forget 'bout us. Put the blame on me ... " Ohh ma-a-aan. Tha link to tha exac' clip begins "rB". It can't be? ... erranta? ... erranta!? ... you in here man !? <stumbles off>

Not as easy as it was in the first half of the eighties. Absolute piece of piss. They'd more or less given up trying to lash the scum back to the imaginary "jobs". Well the Blue Lunatics were hardly going to start savaging their own backyard, were they? Even they realised they still had to be voted in. For now.Anyway there was nothing down there for them to smash up, close down, strip out and flog off.

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Prior to this, the game involved the LL of the sort of crummy city flats (which were all we could ever aspire to, although working (on an embarrassingly low screw)) getting round the spirit and intention of the tenant legislation by exploiting carefully inserted loopholes. The first of which was the "furnished/unfurnished" let wheeze. "Unfurnished" was simply a fabulous, endlessly-sought mythical beast. It had fairly decent conditions of tenancy, I believe. Only places I recall were older (married, kids etc.) folk finally getting a council let after aeons on the list having contrived to stay in the same town that long. Not available for the likes of us younger singletons who followed the work. Ever. Council Housing may as well have not existed, for us, until the day it was all flogged off. "Furnished" simply involved the LL getting a load of filthy old crep from salerooms, his chicken-shed, or the dump, by the looks and aroma of it. Magic! Six-month (sometimes three-) tenancies, inspections, renewal by going through the whole carry-on each time, month's deposit, out on your erse at the drop of a hat, no reason needed. No maintenance that I ever recall. Filthy, unheated due to recently imposed Clean Air regs. and shutting of all coal fireplaces with a bit of ply, cold rising-main only, rotting victorian sash&case windows which might as well have been holes in the cave wall. Alive with rodents due to shonky second-fix etc. You get the picture. Withnail & I, minus the luxurious decadence and superfluity of living-space. Pretty much the same arrangements as an HMO, strangers (initially ) two to a room. Rent for that half-room taking a third (rare) to a half your wage. TBH it was a massive relief, and a step up in the world, when we got into the squatting scene. At least we could redecorate, clean the joint up, and install proper plumbing and wiring (the lead had invariably magicked itself away), even secondary glazing (every other bu55er was some sort of tradesman). Almost like having a home

Oh what? I think we may have inadvertently stumbled on the solution! If every dole-scum bloodsucker could motivate themselves out of their pit before sparrow-fart tomorrow, find a commuter, and stab them to death, we'd have millions of high-quality job opportunities before you could say "knife". Sorted. Next!

You fat sod! I thought this was another of your wind-ups. But it ain't.

At least in France I'd have the option of hitching to the Cote d'Azur once we started getting into the back-end. Spend the winter dodging mafia gangs while sleeping on the beach or something. Or join the blokes skippering on the pebbles under river bridges. Not really an option up here, stuck on this poxy private island, at the latitude of, oooh, .. Skagway, Alaska, or Moscow. All this moralising guff about how we don't understand true poverty, most people live on a dollar a day and all the other sanctimonious one-eyed pish ... I'd like to see any of them try a couple of weeks in January up here, on their dollar-a-day. With their kids. In their own clothes, and on their traditional diet. I might even lend them a torch so the kids can get to school and back, seeing as how it's the law round these parts. Heating. And shelter. Or you'll have solved "the problem of the poor" all by yourself over the course of a winter, you little genius. Or was that your intention?

Now I realise you're a clever chap, _w_, and well ahead of the likes of me. But. Have you ever had a bit of a squint at excavation reports on assessments in advance of development in almost any english town or city you might care to name? Yar. See? The old black earth, 'tis. Everywhere you might care to go. Carlisle to Canterbury. There it is. I for one don't credit them sassanaich with actually running their plough-teams within the former civil precincts. But what it truly represents I shudder to fathom. The death of empires is never pretty.

Aye you're not wrong there. Tell me about it. Do you mind the wee wooden board on a string that you'd hang over the neebur's doorhandle when it was their turn to do the stair? Not a scooby, most of them now. We've even had jakies move into the lobby and start fires in the winter for warmth, because the wee torags jam the main door open so their mates don't wake them coming back from the pub. And this isn't Muirhouse, by the way. Up by the Links. Most folk we knew have either died, or fled to Stenhouse and the like. For peace! No doubt there'll be a massive Common Repair slapped on us by the Council at some future date, because they've (the BTLers) let the place go hang. Like the Penny Tenements all over again.

A giant that still needs to eat. They were already at their Malthusian limit agriculturally, which is why they decided to throw in the isolationist towel. And who's got all the nosh? And where is it? McCafferty, your tea's oot! Come ahead, McQuillan! Or maybe they could shove sufficient "backward" and "inefficient" African peasants aside and restock with "hard-working" Han peasants? Seem to be getting away with it on a small scale already. Or nick the back end of Russia? Are they really that mental?