Yet more misinformed crap.

On or around Fri, 23 Jun 2006 17:02:18 +1200, EMB enlightened us thusly:

it sounds more tempting by the minute.

Reply to
Austin Shackles
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While I'd agree that this country needs some sorting out, I don't believe that there's any country that's perfect, and we're better than most. The biggest problem we have in this country is with our perception of what's going on elsewhere in the country. If you believe the papers and TV, the place is going to hell in a handbasket but that doesn't really appear to be the case.

I've known a fair few foreigners from Europe, and many of them have seen the advantages of this country more than the locals do. Germans for example are amazed at the freedom we have to do things without signing forms in triplicate, the French are amazed that the law is upheld rather than relying on who you know to get what's legally due to you (much more of a problem there than here). The french economy is also toast, as a highly-qualified but long-term unemployed french computer geek I know constantly testifies.

If you live in the middle of a bad area, then chances are moving to a different part of the country would be easier than moving to a completely different country. Moving out of the cities into the countryside is a great tonic, I've often heard it said that you have to be rich to move to the country, but that's total defeatist unrealistic twaddle. Many people want to live in cities infested with chavs and other pond life, take advantage of that and get the f*ck out. Living in the country is like returning home from a foreign land. Renting and buying gets more in the country than it does in the cities, having done both, cities represent poor value for money.

If commuting costs are a problem that stops you moving out of the cities, instead of trying to change countries, consider trying to change career, it's probably much easier. If you can sort your working life out so that location is relatively irrelevant, then you've got the pick of the country to choose from. A small semi in Basingstoke with space for one car costs about the same as a decent-sized cottage with some land and outbuildings in some parts of the country.

I know that being negative about this country is in fashion at the moment, the press certainly are going for it as much as they can, but giving in to the negativity just makes you believe it. If your area is shit, it doesn't mean the whole place is, and doesn't mean that you won't end up in a shit area in another country if you jump.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

One of the chaps at the MVT meets reckons he's been in a half-track while doing 70MPH across pretty rough country, which could be rather interesting ;-) Given the weight and size of the wheels on a large half-track, it wouldn't have much trouble crossing many things, but I wouldn't like tackling a large rise followed by a steep drop! A Dukes of Hazzard air horn might be a good addition, if not exactly original equipment.. Certainly a mental image to savour, in slow motion.

It's amazing how cheap some serious ex-military hardware is though, at least to buy, parking space and transportation is another matter..

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

I didn't believe what the papers said until I was unfortunate enough to end up on an "Estate". Unfortunately, what the papers say has more than a grain of truth - "our" estate is to a large extent lawless due to gangs of youths doing pretty much as they please and everyone (except us!) being to affraid to report anything, due to the yobs knowing that they will have plenty of time to fabricate alibis and intimidate wintnesses, with the aid of a free solicitor well versed in what they should say. And "our" estate is not bad by the standards of Leeds etc. Problems get sorted out, but not by the law.

Not having an anti-Police rant, but when seeing three Policemen standing around at a Ministry road-side check point achieving nothing except annoying motorists (why do they assume you have all the time in the world to amuse them?) and calls for help when your house is under theat beacuse you "did the right thing" being ignored makes my blood boil. Now if the Ministry check was on the *estate* I could see some point, but doing it nice quiet lay-bys out in the country? Well, anything for an easy life I suppose....... as ever, go for the easy targets to make the figures look good. If those Minstry blokes did something useful like sit outside the four booze outlets on the estate watching the huge quatities of alcohol being dispensed to under-age drinkers then they really could say they were contributing to the common good rather than fund-raising.

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

Yeah, there certainly are problem areas, when moving out of Reading, I was loading up the landy and left it unlocked when I went inside to get the next box. Came out to find two pond life looking in the back, the road I was on at the time was OK but it had a sink-hole estate at one end and town centre at the other. On a trip to London (dreadful place) recently to pick up an ebay purchase, ended up on another run-down estate, loading a large monitor into the back of the landy while a pair of drug dealers plied their trade 15 feet away. Sometimes I think that the police have just given up on such places and just leave the residents to rot.

The recent-ish riots in France have shown that it's no better there, and in Germany, black football fans attending the World Cup matches have been advised to stick to certain areas because some towns are so bad they'll get lynched if they stray off the path, apparently the police can't, or won't, protect them. There are plenty of sink-hole estates in France, one particularly notorious one was the centre of a child sex ring that was well publicised less than a year ago. In Australie, riots broke out on a popular tourist beach due to rival gangs of white australians and various non-white groups who have been banding together on race lines and attacking each other for years. The police in these countries also seem to have given up on the areas in question.

Jumping to a different country to try to escape would seem to be far harder than jumping out of the cities though, which is what I was on about in the first place.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

EMB uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Ok Ok so I hand reared lambs as a kid and couldn't bring myself to add mint sauce. Living in the town is much more dull by comparison but it does play lass havoc with my Hay fever :-)

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

i use mine for work too!!

Apologies if I am a day out here, but did anyone see the front of The Independent today/yesterday/the day before?! I honestly couldn't be bothered to read it, but the whole front page was just a photo of a

4x4 (mitsi I think?) with the headline (if I recall correctly) "Enemy of the People".

Just found the article on their website...

formatting link
Matt

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

It's another London-centric special, 4x4 users more likely to use mobile phones while driving and not wear seatbelts. Presumably this will be extrapolated in a future article to show that they are more likely to abduct children and become serial killers.

There's a few contradictory things, e.g. 4x4 users have been found to be less likely to be injured in a crash than non-4x4 users, which we're often told isn't true, or is true, or isn't true. We're also told that less than 5% of 4x4s go off-road, while the ramblers witter on about the increase in 4x4 sales proving that the whole countryside, every single inch of it, will be turned to muddy quagmires by yuppies in armani suits in 4x4s full of kidnapped children, towing the rotting corpses of those the drivers have murdered in cold blood.

And so on.

I may have exaggerated a little, just getting into the spirit of the article.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

BTW i use mine for work too!!

You weren't atually expecting to fine news articles in the Independent were you?

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

LOL - I wouldn't know actually, I'm a firm Telegraph man! I was rather shocked at the front page tho, I thought that sort of thing was the preserve of the gutter press. I guess the Independent is trying to get in on the act, probably in an attempt to boost sales. Having read the article on the website now, it is truly worthy of The Sun!

Matt

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

Matthew Maddock uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Utter bollocks init. I couldn't here the friggin phone in 2 out of 3 of my

4x4's (Thats 66% according to a survey by me)

One minute the Ramblers moan because we are "off road" as they put it.. then they moan because only 5% of 4x4's see more mud than a school playing field.... well they would if the gearbox didn't pack up eh Simon! ;-)

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

One of the interesting passtimes on my estate is watching the police turn out mob handed every so often with riot shields, dogs and helicopters. Funny thing is they seem to have no inhibitions about tearing around the green in there transits while condemning the kids on the quad bikes who do likewise.

One of the reasons I own a landie (and there are quite a few proper landies round here) is that it is less likely to be broken into (not that it hasn't been mind you)

Reply to
Larry

56% of statistics are made up on the spot! Seriously though, and taking a very emotive example - Herceptin. Pretty much a cure for breast cancer isn't? Having it will save your life won't it? (BTW men can get breast cancer too). We've seen it all in the news, right?

The real figures are, from the BBC web site in a discussion of the abuse of statistics, that, in some types of breast cancer, Herceptin can improve the non-recurrence rate from 17% to just over 9% - a very small improvement really. Funny that the news articles fail to mention it!

Richard

*Belive me, I'd be the first in the queue for clutching at straws if I had cancer though......
Reply to
beamendsltd

I used to use a small hotel/B&B near Swansea for work a while back. The landlord had dispaired of having his car broken into/stolen, so he drilled all the locks out. It was never touched again!

Richard

Reply to
beamendsltd

Yes - I saw that too and was pretty amazed given that it is touted as a wonder cure.

Is that the same article that went on about how the water companies have manipulated the figures for rainfall to show that this is the driest year for the past 10 million years?! :) - whereas if you include the month before into the figures they used, there are several years in the 90's that were actually drier!

Matt

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

The trick is that it is only really effective in women with a gene defect in BRCA2, if you haven't got a cancer related to that, it doesn't help

Steve

Reply to
steve

Last bit should have read:

"and assert my right to drive it at the slowest legal speed limit," ^^^^^^^

;-)

Reply to
Mother

This country is an absolute shithole no matter where you live. Personally I'm sick of having to pay an absolute fortune in taxes, to fund the pondlife chavs who sit around all day in a house paid for by my taxes, drinking whitelightning paid for out of dole money funded by my taxes, watching Jeremy Kyle on a TV stolen from some poor unfortunate who worked many an hour to buy it. Sick of the PC brigade defending the rights of thieving scum, while condemning home owners who defend their own property. This country is so biased against the honest, hard working people, that it make it almost worth just chucking the job in and joining the massed ranks of the happily unemployed. This country has also made itself a target for every extremist terrorist going, because of some prick in no10 sticking his head so far up Bush's arse that all you can see are feet. And no, I don't live in a city, or town, I live in a nice sleepy little village, where we are pretty much untroubled by all this, but just because its OK here doesn't make the country any a better place.

Reply to
SimonJ

You forgot to name a country where none of your moaning applies.

I'm sure that was an oversight and you will be along in a minute to correct this, with some kind of useful indication that you're not just talking out of your hat too.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Why... anywhere but the UK of course Ian! ;-)

Matt (56 hours left in this "absolute shit-hole" and counting the minutes!)

Reply to
Matthew Maddock

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