BBC Blog Network

User Profile

UltraTron

Listed below are comments made by UltraTron between Wednesday, 24th June 2009 and Tuesday, 13th October 2009.

«Newer
Older»

My return to Leigh 6:01pm on 13 Oct 2009 Noooooo: "you could do a lot worse than look at the lyrics to Lily Allens 'The fear'". You couldn't do any worse. Well, you could ask Jim Davidson for his opinion if you could be bothered to go and find him in Dubai, but that would be the only thing worse than using Lilly Allen lyrics as a proxy measure of society's mental health.

Interesting comment though as usual Jericoa, about the importance of knowing who we are. Who do you think we are? I've got no idea, but it does seem like people want some kind of identity that they feel is being denied to them at the moment. Not many people feel like participants in a modern democracy any more.

We saw the biggest protest in UK history against the war in Iraq and the government went anyway, on a lie. Biggest financial collapse in living memory, and the debts were very quickly socialised without any real sense of justice having been done to the bankers. And probably the most damaging political scandal in my lifetime (I'm a child of the 80s). All this under a Labour government. I think people feel like thay've been taken for fools for a decade, and many of them don't see parliamentary democracy as being able to give them any satisfaction.

The only votes Labour will get where I grew up in the North East will be through political inertia. Most of the people I went to school with either don't vote, or did vote Labour because of some family connection with heavy industry like me. Not many would ever vote Tory, and with lib dems promising massive cuts in the public sector they might see their support stagnate.

A lot of the traditional Labour vote in Newcastle will be lost by virtue of the simple fact that a lot more of the traditional voters, like my grandad, will have died over the course of the last parliament. I think the next election could see a record low turnout in parts of the North East, unless you see a lot of those odd BNP and UKIP mentals campaigning. Or the EDL put up a candidate.

See any EDL nutters while you were up in Leigh Mr Mason? Really interesting piece on them last night. They've got a link to the Daily Mail on their site today, under the heading "It is official, you will now be arrested for debating or questioning Islam!" They're made for each other really.
No Depression = no 30s-style revolution in ideas. Discuss. 2:54pm on 21 Sep 2009 Whaaa Jericoa, I agree with a lot of what you say a lot of the time, but I can almost feel the stress oozing out of the screen. Things look bad, but possibly not that bad. You should just turn off the news for a week, it'll do wonders.

Also, I can't agree with this "The cat is out of the bag that we can no longer afford to send 40% of kids to university to do media studies or psychology or zoology or medieval history in their 10's of thousands (somebody remind me why we do that again cos it beats me). Interest rates on student loans must go up or the intake go down or tuition fees increased probably all of those actually".

First, it strikes me that if we can afford a war in Afghanistan then we should be able to afford to send people who have worked hard to gain the requisite qualifications to University. Not that the tax payer is exactly footing the bill anyway. I'd treat the nonsense trotted out by the CBI with a pinch of salt.

Second, what exactly is wrong with media studies, psychology, or zoology? The media industry contributes a massive slice to the UK economy, is relatively low carbon owing to its relatively whole-hearted embrace of flexible working, and doesn't require government handouts.

It seems like it was a collective failure of psychology that got is into a situation where almost 1 in 4 people will need to be treated for a psychiatric disorder in their lifetime, and judging by the lack of adequate supervision of psychiatric patients in many NHS trusts perhaps more psychology students should be encouraged.

The study of zoology, which encompasses subjects as diverse as aquatic ecology (fisheries), the study of social insects (bees, where have all the bees gone?), and evolutionary biology (at the heart of our own psychology), is one of the most fascinating areas of research bar none.

Presumably we should all go and study the great white hope engineering instead, so that we can get a job making cars that nobody needs, expensive yet redundant vanity defense projects, or wiping out ecosytems and displacing millions by building giant hydro-power plants. (Only joking, obviously green engineering solutions like tidal and solar power could be a key to sustainability, but a balanced economy and happy society will need to be strong in a range of disciplines is my point.)

And student loans are not awarded by the government and paid for by the tax payer, but by the student loans company. And due to a quirk in the way that the interest rate (which is pegged at the rate of inflation) is set for the loan, students are already paying back at above inflation. Once hyper inflation sets in then it's game over, as it's pretty much the only loan you can get that will track inflation.

"Interest rates on student loans must go up or the intake go down or tuition fees increased probably all of those actually". What a great way to reinforce the already entrenched social immobility in this country.
No Depression = no 30s-style revolution in ideas. Discuss. 12:06pm on 16 Sep 2009 Yeah I thought Rowan Williams was the only one who really offered a fresh perspective. Although I'm not sure how he got away with criticising bankers for peddling "unreality": slightly rich.

Blanchflower was totally useless. When asked what politicians could do, his answer was "if there was something easy, it would already have been done". What about if it's not hard then it's not worth doing? Him, and the old banker, seemed totally unable to break out of the mindset that the objective was to get back to the same old unsustainable grasping for growth, greed is good, GDP envy.

I never understood why seemingly rational people were always happy to accept cycles of booms and busts as inevitable, as if they were some kind of higher order phenomena imposed from above like the seasons. They are entirely the result of human behaviour. If a pilot plunges a plane into a mountainside, we don't just shrug and euphemistically call it a downturn.
No Depression = no 30s-style revolution in ideas. Discuss. 4:58pm on 15 Sep 2009 Bookhimdano, #20 from the last thread, but applicable to this discussion:

I've got no idea what the correct model is re human nature, but maybe E O Wilson can point us in the right direction. Cooperation has been absolutely central to our success as a species (in terms of geographical radiation and competition for resources). Working out how to design a social and economic system that encourages cooperation (like the John Lewis system on a whopper scale), in place of rampant competition and the greed that hyper-competition rewards, is a big challenge that needs to be addressed by Paul's panel of eggs and beards.

And to make it more difficult, it'll have to be cooperating to achieve some kind of sustainable state of equilibrium, not just cooperating to build more things we don't need or to appropriate more resources from whoever is easy game.

Perhaps some affirmative action is required to parachute some enlightened retirees into power, instead of the usual crew of careerist malignancies who're beholden to the status quo.
No Depression = no 30s-style revolution in ideas. Discuss. 1:30pm on 15 Sep 2009 Think Paul's right on the money about the effects of technology on shaping debate. The internet makes it possible for anyone with any fringe idea to find a community of similar internutters and sit about reinforcing each other's views. And the gradual erosion of mainstream media audiences makes it harder for the politicians to use the mainstream media to set the ideological agenda effectively. Whatever it was that Marx said about those that control the media control the something or other, well the something is out the bag now.

It's weird, for years now in this country the main political parties have moved closer and closer to each other on almost every issue, while at the same time the internet has increased the reach of and appetite for smaller groups with narrower agendas.

Maybe out of the seething mass of competing ideologies that abound on the net a kind of Darwinian process of selection will give rise to a new set of ideas for people to coalesce around.

There have always been internal tensions inside all of the big political parties, but they were always eclipsed by the differences between the main parties themselves. That's no longer the case, and the so-called third way is the result of the final collision and death of traditional left and right politics. Maybe this intellectual hiatus is a deep breath before a big bang, at least on one side of the old political divide, as all the uneasy alliances that held the labour party together are obliterated after the election. Paul's written a few times about the void at the centre of the labour party left by the desertion of the old core vote. Those old labour supporters don't have a political voice any more, but the opportunities to organise through technology could change that.

Hopefully the combined effects of the financial crisis, the expenses scandal, and increasing concerns over sustainability, will change the political landscape. And the difficulty that politicians will have in controlling how that landscape takes shape through traditional media will make the process slower, but might make it less likely to result in a lurch to an extremist agenda like fascism in the 30s.

Totally agree with what posters 1 and 2 said. Hopefully the voice that technology can give the masses will make it a little bit harder for the oligarchs "to poison any narrative that diminishes their 'enclosures'".
New language, but for Labour an old dilemma 11:53am on 10 Sep 2009 Got to agree with #41, so much bile, and all so misdirected. With one face we screech about the culture of victimhood in this country while with the other face we lament that it's "simply not fair being punished for working".

People have been crying out for their pound of flesh since the severity of this crisis was drip-fed into the public consciousness. Sir Fred and his familiar Hornby sailed off into the sunset, so all our impotent rage was directed against the politicians, who did what they do best and moved their lips.

So now that we've all been manipulated into forgetting that the bankers caused the crisis, and that the politicians in power from both main parties conspired to let it happen, and we can all focus our attention on getting the real witch hunt underway. Benefit claimants, ah yes. Based on the anecdotal evidence of a few anonymous posters, why not demonise an entire section of the UK population that doesn't have lobbyists or slick PR or media empires to speak for it. Sweet justice.
A journey through China's economic crisis 5:54pm on 24 Jun 2009 #77 WAAHHHH. I can't work out whether you're being wilfully obtuse, tongue-in-cheek, confused, or just attention seeking. But, just this once I'll take the bait.

"Natural Selection used to do eugenics". Wrong. Natural selection is value neutral. Traits that increase fitness spread. Eugenics is not value neutral, and involves placing an explicit and subjective value on traits. It is not 'natural' selection, it is selective breeding by whim. Do you work for the kennel club?

"We made matter worse by liberating females early in the C20th" Oh how careless 'we' were. What could have possessed us? Not sure it was in your hands mate. Pankhurst might have had something to say about it.

"Result:- dysgenesis (last complete cohort analysis indicated 1/3 graduate females remain childless". Wow, how many in this particular cohort. I assume by complete you mean that all of them are now past the menopause. Dysgenesis? Surely the opposite, clearly media studies doesn't increase your fitness. Dysgenesis is a very subjective term, and as such is totally meaningless in the context you use it in.

"If one wants to destroy a culture today, use demographic warfare", progress can be a destructive process. What particularly enlightened period would you like us to return to?

"People need to be protected from their own short-term interests and those of others amongst them who are solely self-interested." By whom? I guess you know what's in the long-term interests of others? Do you have a high IQ JJ? Is that why you would like the rest of the IQ distribution curve to bow and scrape to you and be selectively bred out of existence, so we can all live in a happy world of hyper 'conscientous' JJ clones? Where would you keep the women? Physician, heal thyself. And get a train set or something.

As for "the Islamic/Stalinist world knows this and so is under constant Neocon pressure". North Korea does look lovely.
A journey through China's economic crisis 3:16pm on 24 Jun 2009 JJ - a dysgenic trend assumes that we started out with higher 'g' and 'conscientousness'. This being true, how do you account for the appearance of liberal democracies in the first place? Why did all those high-g conscientous turkeys vote for christmas?

I'm not sure breeding is the way mate, just look at the state the kennel club has got itself into. Maybe genetic enhancement and cognitive doping will deliver you your utopia. Kids in America are already increasingly turning to black-market ritalin to make them more 'conscientous' while they study for their finals.
A journey through China's economic crisis 3:00pm on 24 Jun 2009 MrTweedy, speak to the "local residents in Shizuishan complaining about pollution levels that make them vomit" if you think China has got the just the right balance of goodness all round. Not to mention the fact that this balance of goodness could only be achieved with the help of the rabid consumerism of the West buying every disposable washing machine that China could produce. China is an amazing and awe-inspiring place for many reasons, but economic growth pornography isn't one of them.
A journey through China's economic crisis 2:27pm on 24 Jun 2009 JJ, careful not to conflate IQ with cognitive ability. IQ is certainly important, but is only part of the picture when it comes to intelligence. Being a human calculator doesn't do you much good when it comes to intuiting what other people are thinking or feeling - pretty essential for a social species. I know you probably don't have a lot of patience for people with what you might term as 'feminized brains', but the big swinging dick alphas running the banks/governments seem to have done a pretty good job of selling us all down the river.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

UltraTron