Party Vibe

While at first glance I think this SEEMS to make some good sense, I think globalloon makes a better point at the end of his message.

When I moved to the UK I did, and still do, have every intention to embrace and love the traditions of this country.

BUT the thing is, we’ve got a free society. A free democratic state.
You CAN’T have it both ways. You can’t have an unchanging, “That’s the Way It Is” attitude, and at the same time have a government which supposedly represents the needs and desires of the voter.

You either have a facist system that limits the individuals political power to hold to some ideal society.

Or if you LIKE Democracy and human rights, then you NEED to let people change and alter their government, even if that heavily upsets the apple cart.

As a most extreme example – A truly democratic government can’t guarantee you democracy as you know it forever.

If the state is the servant and will of the people, then the people have the right to fire the government and put a new structure in.

If the government can’t accept radical change as demanded by the people, it’s NOT a democracy. It’s something else.

Well I’ve lived in Oxford for two and a half years.
I get taxed just the same as everyone else.
I haven’t taken a single penny of benefits or recieved any kind of government aid whatsoever.

I think the UK needs to seriously look at it’s public spending. However what I’d love to see is for education, all education, to be free.

It’s appalling to me that good minds are going to waste because people are too scared to take on personal debt. And why should they?

If you want a system where only the wealthy and well-off can afford to have a proper education, go to America. The average Brit will be as ignorant as your stereotypical Mid-West American yokel [1] if this country doesn’t get serious about really providing a good quality of education for it’s citizens.

Education is the foundation of a strong democratic society.
And oddly the more educated someone is, the less likely they are to hold anti-social, racist, discriminatory points of view.

[1] I’m not saying people from the Mid-West of America are yokels or uneducated, I’m merely reminding everyone of an example of the typical stereotype. Sorry people from the Mid-West USA!

Yeah but you won’t be able to compete with that forever.
In the IT Industry most of the resumes I see are people qualified from the University of Bombay, Shanghai, etc etc.

I don’t personally care where anyone is from, I just want to work with people who know what they are doing.

But I think the long term end of all this is going to be everyone in Britain working in the service industry, and no one actually MAKING or ENGINEERING anything.

Which seems like a damn big waste of brain power.

Oh yeah, I don’t believe that having a Bachelor’s Degree or whatever is going to magically cure your deep seated prejudices, but I do see the more educated people tend to be less racist.

It’s not the magic bullet though. Just a trend.

Well they do NOW but are they going to be able to compete forever with China, India, and other emerging nations.

Again, i don’t actually care. But I think that British people might do.

Yeah but it’s annoying because it’s the same stuff all over.

In California you have people bitch about the hispanic guy or the black guy who took their job. Well maybe they were immigrants, or maybe their family has been living here since 1723.

It’s just setting up fake, phoney ass, “US Versus Them”, which is keeping society a barbaric and unpleasant experience.

You know what honestly pisses me off?

I’m from California, I’m an American, and I’ve chosen to like the UK because I prefer it in the UK.

I really like the UK. Love it.

Sometimes, not too often, people come up to me, strangers or drunk co-workers, and start blaming me for American foreign policy, start blaming me a guy I didn’t vote for, “the great white satan” George W Bush, and they happily tell me that America is ruining the world and is a war mongering super power.

And for awhile I just hung my head down and accepted it. But one day it clicked –

“Oh. And OF COURSE, YOUR GOVERNMENT immediately stepped back and said ‘No. This is wrong. We aren’t supporting this’. And you took the moral high ground and showed the world the way!”

The truth is the British public have decided to demonise and blame America for everything. Like some bogeyman.

No one wants to admit that their government, which they voted for, is responsible to any degree in any way shape or form.

If you voted for Tony Blair, you’re more guilty than I am, cause I didn’t vote for Bush.

Tell ya what. In six months or so, I’ll be able to vote in British elections.

How about we people of Britain find some politicians with some balls?

How about we elect someone who doesn’t have their foreign policy drafted in Washington DC?

How about we elect someone who puts the needs of Britain FIRST?

How about we elect someone to tell America to fuck off?

Why don’t we stop being the bitch in this “special relationship”?

If it’s so special, let’s see how it survives if we just say “NO! ENOUGH”
Just once.

Can we do that?

Then maybe we can start to redeem ourselves.

I got a great mate, Israel, and I’m more impressed at his mad soldering skills than his mad basketball skills.

But maybe that’s just me being freakzoid.

Science is cool dammit! People should wake up to that!
You can do so many awesome things with a little bit of applied science.

Well I used to have a headily optimistic “Science and technology can solve all the world’s problems man!” attitude.

I’m a bit more skeptical now.

But yeah, it’s just a huge irony that just as we get a massive glut of information, available at our finger tips, 24/7/365 about any topic in the sphere of human knowledge – people can’t be arsed.

You don’t need to go to to library and dig up some dusty old book that’s 15 years out of date. You can find out just about anything with a few clicks.

We should be going through a ginormous knowledge boom right now.

Knowledge is power!
Yup!

If a person is prepared to work hard to do well in life than I beleive that that person should be given a chance, no matter where they were born. If there isn’t any work nearby and you have a family to support, you would move to a place where there was an opportuntity to work and earn money.
It’s human nature.
I think that with cheaper travel, better communtications and higher levels of education throughout the world, we will see immigration increasing rapidly. Not just from poor countries to England, but English people moving away to poor countries where the weather is nice and the country is sparsly populated. I’ve me several people who want to go and live in African countries like Kenya or Mozambique for example. They’ve made their money and now are more interested in quality of life rather than employment opportunities.
The world is truly becoming a small place and I definatly think that it’s a good thing.
I hope that when people of all races, religeons and nationality can live together, there will be less violence and unhappiness in the world.
It’s going to happen and I want to help it to happen.

Interesting discussion. For as long as we want cheap prepacked/precooked foods in our wasteful supermarkets, we will need cheap labour to produce it for us. Would you want your kids to work in stinking slurry factories all their lives? Part of the problem is that in alot of cases the gangmaster and people traffick networks are ultimately run by white British gangs anyway. Ironically the nouveau riche daily mail readers constantly scaremongering about immigration are the ones who insist on cheap food, travel, foreign property etc. This country is much better off for the cultural diversity we have, and compared to other European countries have integrated immigrants really well. You should try Belgium or France where whole cultures are being ghetoised and criminalised.