"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at easesewith themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria
Not so sure of that. Modi's India is sliding towards dictatorship with suppression of minorities and opposition politicians. Nigeria is a fascinating and culturally vibrant place, but mired in corruption and violence. All countries have their problems.
Indian growth rate 5.5%, Nigerian growth rate 3.5% 2023. Global growth rate 2.9% so far this year.
Neither are perfect but they have competitive elections and are much more free for most than the likes of Putin's Russia. Xi's China or North Korea
Yes, but that is not the question at issue. What makes you think these countries are "self confident and at ease with themselves"?
For starters they don't have the secular, Woke self hatred of much of today's West
And who will protect most other species from giant volcanic eruptions? "The Permian–Triassic (P–T, P–Tr)[3][4] extinction event,[5] also known as the End-Permian extinction event[6] and colloquially as the Great Dying,[7] forms the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, and with them the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras respectively, approximately 251.9 million years ago.[8] As the largest of the "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic,[9] it is the Earth's most severe known extinction event,[10][11] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[12][13][14] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[15] It is the largest known mass extinction of insects.[16] There is evidence for one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
What makes you think that?
The (non-human) Animal Kingdom is a place of total cruelty and ruthlessness.
Non-human animals gleefully devour, exterminate, torture, rape, and exploit one another.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
To be honest there are arguments its better to be a lion basking in the sun all day than a human being working in an office.
If you look closely at a lion basking in the sun, they're spending most of their waking hours keeping the flies off. Whereas if you look closely at a human in an office - warm, dry, with free caffeinated drinks - he is actually spending most of his time arguing with strangers on the internet. With thanks to @MikeSmithson, I would rather be the human.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
I think that we have far exceeded other species in the extinction of other species.
The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and has a similar life expectancy ahead. I don't believe there will be any humans left by then, or perhaps even in a millionth of that time. The world will be populated by species as yet unknown, but the equals in splendour of anything the world has ever seen. I am an optimist.
It all went wrong when we stopped being hunter gatherers.
That 10 000 years is the blink of an eye in geological time, and the earth has recovered well from previous mass extinction events, so will survive the anthropogenic extinctions too. It may well take a few million years to evolve new species, but it will.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
That’s a highly anthropocentric view. The earth has been fucked over quite a few time, if that’s how you’re describing mass extinctions.
In the purely human timeframe, then I’ll agree we’ve done more damage than anything else has, while we’ve been around. That’s hardly an argument in favour of self extinction, though.
@HumzaYousaf is the kid who just saw the skater in front of him disappear through the ice, but yells 'watch me, everybody!' while wobbling straight for the hole.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Does it get less painful as you get older? If so, why is that?
The cynic is me suggests it's because we care less and bonds weaken as we age. Though I'm sure there are plenty of people devastated by divorce.
In my experience, it doesn't obviously or always get easier. Weirdly. Heartbreak is always hideous. The heart retains its ability to hurt - or to love - right to the end. The last muscle to go
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at easesewith themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria
Not so sure of that. Modi's India is sliding towards dictatorship with suppression of minorities and opposition politicians. Nigeria is a fascinating and culturally vibrant place, but mired in corruption and violence. All countries have their problems.
Indian growth rate 5.5%, Nigerian growth rate 3.5% 2023. Global growth rate 2.9% so far this year.
Neither are perfect but they have competitive elections and are much more free for most than the likes of Putin's Russia. Xi's China or North Korea
Yes, but that is not the question at issue. What makes you think these countries are "self confident and at ease with themselves"?
For starters they don't have the secular, Woke self hatred of much of today's West
Once again, that is not the question asked. I disagree of your diagnosis on Western civilization, but do you not think that Nigeria and India have their own problems and internal conflicts at least as great as our own?
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at easesewith themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria
Not so sure of that. Modi's India is sliding towards dictatorship with suppression of minorities and opposition politicians. Nigeria is a fascinating and culturally vibrant place, but mired in corruption and violence. All countries have their problems.
Indian growth rate 5.5%, Nigerian growth rate 3.5% 2023. Global growth rate 2.9% so far this year.
Neither are perfect but they have competitive elections and are much more free for most than the likes of Putin's Russia. Xi's China or North Korea
Yes, but that is not the question at issue. What makes you think these countries are "self confident and at ease with themselves"?
For starters they don't have the secular, Woke self hatred of much of today's West
The evidence is now overwhelming that recent panics around climate, race, and sex — the mass desire to conform to a strict moral (Woke) code — stem from a) the acute need of liberal secular people for purpose, b) rising loneliness, and c) mass anxiety created by social media.
To think, it could have been Derek Mackay being elected as SNP leader today had we bowed to the Sturgeon regime's attempt to stymie our exclusive on him pestering a schoolboy
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Thanks @Leon . He is truly suffering. Personally, I managed to escape that fate at his age, which means I’m woefully underprepared as a parent. I appreciate the advice.
You're very welcome. It is important to take the emotional suffering seriously? Young men can be really damaged by a bad break up. None of the belittling "man flu" nonsense. It HURTS. But you are obviously a caring father and I am sure you know all this!
After an allowed period of moping, like nursing a wound, he should be encouraged to get out there and simply DO stuff. Outdoors in the sun. It is spring. He is fortunate in his seasonal timing. Best wishes to you both
@HumzaYousaf is the kid who just saw the skater in front of him disappear through the ice, but yells 'watch me, everybody!' while wobbling straight for the hole.
He also prioritises a weird and not-particularly-widely held agenda over the things he is supposed to be doing i.e. advancing the cause of Scottish independence, and b) making Scotland wealthy, healthy and wise. Is this really what people who voted for the SNP wanted? Is it what ANYONE wanted?
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Does it get less painful as you get older? If so, why is that?
The cynic is me suggests it's because we care less and bonds weaken as we age. Though I'm sure there are plenty of people devastated by divorce.
In my experience, it doesn't obviously or always get easier. Weirdly. Heartbreak is always hideous. The heart retains its ability to hurt - or to love - right to the end. The last muscle to go
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
Oh my. Sorry about your father. I lost mine in January. Grief is horrible and sour, but less acute than a broken heart.
It’s of no comfort to my son, but it is true that men and women have been wrestling with this for thousands of years, and for all the great art and science we are no nearer a solution.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
What makes you think that?
The (non-human) Animal Kingdom is a place of total cruelty and ruthlessness.
Non-human animals gleefully devour, exterminate, torture, rape, and exploit one another.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
I think that we have far exceeded other species in the extinction of other species.
The earth is 4.5 billion years old, and has a similar life expectancy ahead. I don't believe there will be any humans left by then, or perhaps even in a millionth of that time. The world will be populated by species as yet unknown, but the equals in splendour of anything the world has ever seen. I am an optimist.
It all went wrong when we stopped being hunter gatherers.
That 10 000 years is the blink of an eye in geological time, and the earth has recovered well from previous mass extinction events, so will survive the anthropogenic extinctions too. It may well take a few million years to evolve new species, but it will.
Further, the mass extinctions are necessary to prevent evolutionary cul-de-sacs.
The dinosaurs had to die so humans could eventually emerge.
The same will happen to us. A 1000 years after we have gone, most traces of humankind will have vanished.
The Earth will be fine and able to sustain life for another 7.5 billion years. It has more of its life ahead of it, than in the past.
Opposition parties have accused newly elected SNP leader Humza Yousaf of focusing on the party’s “default obsession with independence” after he pledged to immediately make a request for a fresh section 30 order.
Speaking to ITV News after he was announced as the winner of the leadership race, Yousaf said he would be asking the UK Government to grant a section 30 order “right away”.
And....what do you think young humans do? As they grow up? Do they source ideas and words from a divine, extra-terrestrial source unavailable to computers, thereby evolving their minds?
Some of them do, yes.
They intuit previously unimagined things, not simply synthesize previously known data.
No, they do not
Newton, Einstein and Clerk Maxwell (among others) think you're wrong
Where did they get this incredible insight, if not from drawing on the wisdom of previous humans?
Ummm, that's exactly the point.
How many millions of humans saw apples fall to Earth?
Precisely 1 person realised the Earth also moved up to meet the apple.
That's a new idea, not synthesized from existing data.
It's a good thing Newton wasn't in Australia or the earth would have moved away from the apple.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at easesewith themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria
Not so sure of that. Modi's India is sliding towards dictatorship with suppression of minorities and opposition politicians. Nigeria is a fascinating and culturally vibrant place, but mired in corruption and violence. All countries have their problems.
Indian growth rate 5.5%, Nigerian growth rate 3.5% 2023. Global growth rate 2.9% so far this year.
Neither are perfect but they have competitive elections and are much more free for most than the likes of Putin's Russia. Xi's China or North Korea
Yes, but that is not the question at issue. What makes you think these countries are "self confident and at ease with themselves"?
For starters they don't have the secular, Woke self hatred of much of today's West
Once again, that is not the question asked. I disagree of your diagnosis on Western civilization, but do you not think that Nigeria and India have their own problems and internal conflicts at least as great as our own?
They have some but relatively speaking there is no doubt they are where the global energy and biggest growth for the 21st century will be, not here.
As I said the West will still be relatively prosperous and educated but globally its economic strength and political and cultural influence is in decline
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Does it get less painful as you get older? If so, why is that?
The cynic is me suggests it's because we care less and bonds weaken as we age. Though I'm sure there are plenty of people devastated by divorce.
In my experience, it doesn't obviously or always get easier. Weirdly. Heartbreak is always hideous. The heart retains its ability to hurt - or to love - right to the end. The last muscle to go
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
Oh my. Sorry about your father. I lost mine in January. Grief is horrible and sour, but less acute than a broken heart.
It’s of no comfort to my son, but it is true that men and women have been wrestling with this for thousands of years, and for all the great art and science we are no nearer a solution.
Yes, a broken heart is considerably worse. If it is bad. More acute, as you say
Grief for a dead parent is awful but often expected. A broken heart can come out of nowhere, and feel like a personal annihilation. "I am worthless, I am not to be loved". Plus there is the sudden loneliness, social dislocation, and the sudden lack of sex. OUCH
It is not trivial, at all
Get him walking up hills, or looking for weird cave paintings, or just trying a new town/cuisine/sport
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at ease with themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria in Africa.
The West will still be relatively a much more prosperous place to live than most of the world, have some top universities still and big financial centres. However it can no longer run the world, we are in a multipolar world in which the USA will not be sole economic or even cultural superpower but will have to share it with China and India in particular
Solid enough big picture punditry but I don't think nations can be 'self confident and at ease with themselves'.
They can, see the US under Reagan, religious, patriotic, family oriented, self confident, hard working and entrepreneurial believing it was utopia against the evil Communist empires. in the 1980s there is no doubt the US was the dominant superpower.
Now look at the US of Biden. Just 38% of Americans say they are very patriotic, just 39% very religious, just 30% say having children is very important to them, only 27% think community involvement very important, even only 43% see making money as very important. https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1640321461972877312?s=20
The above is the recipe for today's US and most of the West, ridden with Woke, self doubt, ashamed of its past, lacking ambition, declining faith and birth rates and increasing isolationism. No wonder it is no longer the dominant superpower, it doesn't even deserve to be!
Declining faith and birth rates sound like two big positives to me.
Not if one wants one's society to endure.
I don't. I want our species to become extinct. And leave the world a better place.
What evidence do you have that other species are more benevolent than we are?
Well the earth wasn't fucked up until we came along.
What makes you think that?
The (non-human) Animal Kingdom is a place of total cruelty and ruthlessness.
Non-human animals gleefully devour, exterminate, torture, rape, and exploit one another.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Does it get less painful as you get older? If so, why is that?
The cynic is me suggests it's because we care less and bonds weaken as we age. Though I'm sure there are plenty of people devastated by divorce.
In my experience, it doesn't obviously or always get easier. Weirdly. Heartbreak is always hideous. The heart retains its ability to hurt - or to love - right to the end. The last muscle to go
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
Indeed - the fact that it hurts proves that you're human.
@Jonathan, if walking isn't his thing, and he can't be doing with company, worthwhile fiction - something to take him out of himself. We live in an age when we have the whole of human culture on tap. I recently watched the Seven Samurai - widely regarded as one of the most seminal films of all time. It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. But at no time watching it did I consider my own problems. I'm sure there are dozens of films which fall into this category.
Or an alternative approach - 100 press ups a day. Something which seems hard and kills you for the first few days but soon becomes easy and gives you massive shouders and makes you feel better about yourself AND when another lady comes along they might like your shoulders. It won't be a game changer, but when I've been low in my life in the past it's helped.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Does it get less painful as you get older? If so, why is that?
The cynic is me suggests it's because we care less and bonds weaken as we age. Though I'm sure there are plenty of people devastated by divorce.
In my experience, it doesn't obviously or always get easier. Weirdly. Heartbreak is always hideous. The heart retains its ability to hurt - or to love - right to the end. The last muscle to go
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
Indeed - the fact that it hurts proves that you're human.
@Jonathan, if walking isn't his thing, and he can't be doing with company, worthwhile fiction - something to take him out of himself. We live in an age when we have the whole of human culture on tap. I recently watched the Seven Samurai - widely regarded as one of the most seminal films of all time. It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. But at no time watching it did I consider my own problems. I'm sure there are dozens of films which fall into this category.
Or an alternative approach - 100 press ups a day. Something which seems hard and kills you for the first few days but soon becomes easy and gives you massive shouders and makes you feel better about yourself AND when another lady comes along they might like your shoulders. It won't be a game changer, but when I've been low in my life in the past it's helped.
Yes, absolutely. For young men, getting fitter really helps. Also you get the testosterone surge of exercise. Seconded
Opposition parties have accused newly elected SNP leader Humza Yousaf of focusing on the party’s “default obsession with independence” after he pledged to immediately make a request for a fresh section 30 order.
Speaking to ITV News after he was announced as the winner of the leadership race, Yousaf said he would be asking the UK Government to grant a section 30 order “right away”.
To be fair, that's kind of what the SNP is for. It's like criticising the Green party for it's default obsession with environmental issues, or the Natural Law Party for its default obsession with yogic flying.
"Richard Bilton investigates the problems Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy policy is causing 40 years later, including the return of slum landlords"
Thatcher's legacy. Slums to slums in a lifetime.
Too easy just to blame Thatcher. An entire generation is complicit.
House prices started going mental from the late 90s onwards.
Oh absolutely, the Boomers got lucky pretty much all the way through life: a comprehensive welfare state when they were young, a mass giveaway of council housing at knockdown prices when they were having their families, a massive escalation in asset values, and now the ridiculous and seemingly immovable triple lock. This, from a piece decrying the latter (which is well worth reading right through BTW):
It’s important, of course, to take care of the vulnerable. But the triple lock hasn’t just insulated pensioners from the economic realities of austerity and Covid. It has actually made them measurably richer. Far beyond simply entrenching intergenerational inequality, the triple lock is now more comparable to a direct transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. One in four pensioners is a millionaire, whilst the median pensioner, as John Oxley writes, ‘already has more disposable income than the median worker, and is likely to have greater wealth’.
...
The sheer weight of benefits directed to today’s pensioners is scarcely creditable. Older generations have more or less mortgaged the welfare state to the hilt. As Duncan Robinson notes in The Economist:
On average someone born in 1956 will pay about £940,000 in tax throughout their life. But they are forecast to receive state benefits amounting to about £1.2m, or £291,000 net. Someone born in 1996 will enjoy less than half of that figure: a fresh-faced 27-year-old today will receive barely more than someone born in 1931, about a decade before the term ‘welfare state’ was first popularised.
Practically everything is rigged in favour of the huge cohort of well-to-do elderly homeowners. And a prediction: Labour will leave things exactly as they are in this respect. Watch.
On your last point/prediction, absolutely.
The entire British system, highly centralised of course, is utterly in hock to “well-to-do, elderly homeowners”. Labour can’t address that without electoral annihilation.
The USA, which faces similar demographics, has the saving grace of not being so centralised. If San Francisco nimbyises itself into stagnation, there is always Austin etc.
I am very dismal on British prospects.
But America is fucked in a way Britain does not even comprehend, in multiple ways. From drugs to guns to race
I am pessimistic about the West in general, but America is right down there with the UK
The whole West is in relative decline, the biggest growing economies and populations and nations self confident and at easesewith themselves are the likes of India and Nigeria
Not so sure of that. Modi's India is sliding towards dictatorship with suppression of minorities and opposition politicians. Nigeria is a fascinating and culturally vibrant place, but mired in corruption and violence. All countries have their problems.
Indian growth rate 5.5%, Nigerian growth rate 3.5% 2023. Global growth rate 2.9% so far this year.
Neither are perfect but they have competitive elections and are much more free for most than the likes of Putin's Russia. Xi's China or North Korea
Yes, but that is not the question at issue. What makes you think these countries are "self confident and at ease with themselves"?
For starters they don't have the secular, Woke self hatred of much of today's West
Once again, that is not the question asked. I disagree of your diagnosis on Western civilization, but do you not think that Nigeria and India have their own problems and internal conflicts at least as great as our own?
They have some but relatively speaking there is no doubt they are where the global energy and biggest growth for the 21st century will be, not here.
As I said the West will still be relatively prosperous and educated but globally its economic strength and political and cultural influence is in decline
Both countries’ problems are sectarian hatred, rampant corruption, and an enormous gap between rich and poor.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Thanks @Leon . He is truly suffering. Personally, I managed to escape that fate at his age, which means I’m woefully underprepared as a parent. I appreciate the advice.
You're very welcome. It is important to take the emotional suffering seriously? Young men can be really damaged by a bad break up. None of the belittling "man flu" nonsense. It HURTS. But you are obviously a caring father and I am sure you know all this!
After an allowed period of moping, like nursing a wound, he should be encouraged to get out there and simply DO stuff. Outdoors in the sun. It is spring. He is fortunate in his seasonal timing. Best wishes to you both
This conversation is giving me the rare feeling of wishing I had sons. I always thought I would want sons. But when you have children, I think the human reaction is to be thrilled with whatever you have. And I have never been in any way less than delighted to have duaghters. They're brilliant. But in the situation Jonathan is in now, I will be useless. There are some situations in which only the parent of the same sex is any good, and this is probably one of them.
OK fuck it, this is nearly midnight, and we are way past the lagershed, and my Dad just parked the Allegro, and I doubt @Jonathan will agree
But this is the best advice I EVER got about male heartbreak: Bang a hooker
When I was about 21 I was bemoaning my terrible state of forlorn alone-ness to my cynical and worldly best friend, after my second traumatic break up, when my mate kind of snapped, and said to me "Oh for fuck's sake, Leon, stop moaning, just bang a hooker"
He told me it would sort everything out, pretty much
So I did, I had sex with a woman for money, for the first time. She got paid, I got laid, no one got hurt, it was all done. And afterwards I felt: Whoah I am a man again! I will have real sex again, and I feel cool and OK, enough whining!
My heartbreak was basically over. My masculine self esteem was at least partly restored. I no longer saw a future of desperate solitary wanking for ever and ever
And that was that. A few weeks later I met someone else. I crucially had the pheromonal confidence of a man who had recently had sex, rather than the furtive obvious shame of a man who had recently got rejected, so she fancied me and we went to bed. And on I went
That is the best advice in the world. To be truthful. It would also get me cancelled on most forums, so I hope the mods are merciful
Opposition parties have accused newly elected SNP leader Humza Yousaf of focusing on the party’s “default obsession with independence” after he pledged to immediately make a request for a fresh section 30 order.
Speaking to ITV News after he was announced as the winner of the leadership race, Yousaf said he would be asking the UK Government to grant a section 30 order “right away”.
To be fair, that's kind of what the SNP is for. It's like criticising the Green party for it's default obsession with environmental issues, or the Natural Law Party for its default obsession with yogic flying.
He’s just confirmed what Scottish voters saw as the Sturgeon administrations two top priorities were - Independence and Gender Reform. Those are priorities #7 & #16 for Scottish voters.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
But this is the best advice I EVER got about male heartbreak: Bang a hooker
100% agree but it should be in the grimmest circumstances possible as a fortitude building exercise. Those cardboard cubicles in Sham Shui Po that reek of ginger and rancid pork fat are perfect.
@Leon , you’re a man of the world. I need some advice.
My 19 year old son has been dumped by his girlfriend of 2.5 years. Seven days in and he’s still a mess . What’s the best recipe for a young broken heart? ChatGPT is not much use.
Anyone else with any tips would be much appreciated.
I'm genuinely honoured to be asked
TBH at 19 there isn't much you can do. Weirdly, I too was broken hearted at 19 - dumped by my then GF - and it was harrowingly nasty. It REALLY hurts
Best things: proper sympathy, good friends, fresh air, and a new flirtation? Ideally you have sex with someone else ASAP - that is without doubt the best remedy possible - but of course that is not always feasible. But finding a new pleasure - kite surfing, butterfly collecting, mountaineering, reading the history of Cadiz, traveling through Mongolia, croquet - can be a big consolation
It shows you that there are different kinds of happiness, and sadness is not forever, and it distracts. And time heals as you are distracted
Thanks @Leon . He is truly suffering. Personally, I managed to escape that fate at his age, which means I’m woefully underprepared as a parent. I appreciate the advice.
Sorry to hear this Jonathan, its never easy as a parent to see one of your children really unhappy for whatever reason. But lots of sympathy and support from Mum and Dad, siblings and friends is the answer along with lots of options to include him in activities to help him get through these tough first weeks of a break up.
Comments
"The Permian–Triassic (P–T, P–Tr)[3][4] extinction event,[5] also known as the End-Permian extinction event[6] and colloquially as the Great Dying,[7] forms the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, and with them the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras respectively, approximately 251.9 million years ago.[8] As the largest of the "Big Five" mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic,[9] it is the Earth's most severe known extinction event,[10][11] with the extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species[12][13][14] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species.[15] It is the largest known mass extinction of insects.[16] There is evidence for one to three distinct pulses, or phases, of extinction."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event
If I were to ever do a PhD, that would be a central theme.
But not tonight, as I am going to bed.
The (non-human) Animal Kingdom is a place of total cruelty and ruthlessness.
Non-human animals gleefully devour, exterminate, torture, rape, and exploit one another.
Whereas if you look closely at a human in an office - warm, dry, with free caffeinated drinks - he is actually spending most of his time arguing with strangers on the internet.
With thanks to @MikeSmithson, I would rather be the human.
The earth has been fucked over quite a few time, if that’s how you’re describing mass extinctions.
In the purely human timeframe, then I’ll agree we’ve done more damage than anything else has, while we’ve been around. That’s hardly an argument in favour of self extinction, though.
https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1640414756916871175?s=20
Humza Yousaf has confirmed that he will challenge the Section 35 order from the UK government regarding the Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
In doing this, he prioritises ideology over the serious concerns for women’s rights and child safeguarding held by the majority of society.
https://twitter.com/JamesEsses/status/1640348789083889665?s=20
Example, me: my break up with "Julia", who dumped me when I was 19, was horrifically bruising. As it seems to be for @jonathan's son. And all sympathy to him, It's wounding and painful
And then in my late 50s I broke up with my young Corbynite wife, and we broke up simply because of the age gap - she wants kids, I've had mine - and it turns out breaking up with someone you love who still loves you is much much much more painful than being dumped aged 19 (and that is bad). Because it feels so wrong and it is so wrenching
The agony was excruciating. I howled with lonely pain. I was like a pathetic broken hearted teen, but worse
For contrast, I very recently lost my aged father. I am grieving and maudlin, at times. But it is nowhere near as bad as that heartbreak
Perhaps it is encouraging to learn that we can always suffer like lovestruck teens
https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/status/1640407629838319617?s=20
Chris Musson @ChrisMusson
·Feb 7, 2020
EXCL: The Scottish Government tried to throw up media lawyer-style hurdles as @ScottishSun moved to publish exclusive about Derek Mackay's online pestering of a schoolboy. Their demands included the name of the boy and our “justification for publication" https://thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5257550/derek-mackay-sacked-spot-snp-nicola-sturgeon-jackson-carlaw/
https://twitter.com/ChrisMusson/status/1640458679366610962?s=20
After an allowed period of moping, like nursing a wound, he should be encouraged to get out there and simply DO stuff. Outdoors in the sun. It is spring. He is fortunate in his seasonal timing. Best wishes to you both
Is this really what people who voted for the SNP wanted? Is it what ANYONE wanted?
It’s of no comfort to my son, but it is true that men and women have been wrestling with this for thousands of years, and for all the great art and science we are no nearer a solution.
The dinosaurs had to die so humans could eventually emerge.
The same will happen to us. A 1000 years after we have gone, most traces of humankind will have vanished.
The Earth will be fine and able to sustain life for another 7.5 billion years. It has more of its life ahead of it, than in the past.
Speaking to ITV News after he was announced as the winner of the leadership race, Yousaf said he would be asking the UK Government to grant a section 30 order “right away”.
https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,tories-accuse-new-snp-leader-humza-yousaf-of-focusing-on-default-indie-obsession
As I said the West will still be relatively prosperous and educated but globally its economic strength and political and cultural influence is in decline
Grief for a dead parent is awful but often expected. A broken heart can come out of nowhere, and feel like a personal annihilation. "I am worthless, I am not to be loved". Plus there is the sudden loneliness, social dislocation, and the sudden lack of sex. OUCH
It is not trivial, at all
Get him walking up hills, or looking for weird cave paintings, or just trying a new town/cuisine/sport
He is young and newness is on his side
@Jonathan, if walking isn't his thing, and he can't be doing with company, worthwhile fiction - something to take him out of himself. We live in an age when we have the whole of human culture on tap. I recently watched the Seven Samurai - widely regarded as one of the most seminal films of all time. It was a bit of a slog, to be honest. But at no time watching it did I consider my own problems. I'm sure there are dozens of films which fall into this category.
Or an alternative approach - 100 press ups a day. Something which seems hard and kills you for the first few days but soon becomes easy and gives you massive shouders and makes you feel better about yourself AND when another lady comes along they might like your shoulders. It won't be a game changer, but when I've been low in my life in the past it's helped.
It's like criticising the Green party for it's default obsession with environmental issues, or the Natural Law Party for its default obsession with yogic flying.
Maybe they’ll overcome them. Maybe they’ll succumb.
I always thought I would want sons.
But when you have children, I think the human reaction is to be thrilled with whatever you have. And I have never been in any way less than delighted to have duaghters. They're brilliant.
But in the situation Jonathan is in now, I will be useless. There are some situations in which only the parent of the same sex is any good, and this is probably one of them.
But this is the best advice I EVER got about male heartbreak: Bang a hooker
When I was about 21 I was bemoaning my terrible state of forlorn alone-ness to my cynical and worldly best friend, after my second traumatic break up, when my mate kind of snapped, and said to me "Oh for fuck's sake, Leon, stop moaning, just bang a hooker"
He told me it would sort everything out, pretty much
So I did, I had sex with a woman for money, for the first time. She got paid, I got laid, no one got hurt, it was all done. And afterwards I felt: Whoah I am a man again! I will have real sex again, and I feel cool and OK, enough whining!
My heartbreak was basically over. My masculine self esteem was at least partly restored. I no longer saw a future of desperate solitary wanking for ever and ever
And that was that. A few weeks later I met someone else. I crucially had the pheromonal confidence of a man who had recently had sex, rather than the furtive obvious shame of a man who had recently got rejected, so she fancied me and we went to bed. And on I went
That is the best advice in the world. To be truthful. It would also get me cancelled on most forums, so I hope the mods are merciful
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
--Boswell