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timetoponder

Listed below are comments made by timetoponder between Friday, 24th April 2009 and Friday, 4th September 2009.

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How early should something be done? 3:47pm on 04 Sep 2009 We are seeing a worrying growth in dysfunctional families and unless the cycle is somehow broken this will grow exponentially and we will have anarchy.
Of course all parents are responsible for their children until they are 18 and should be held responsible for their children's actions who ever they are and should appear in court and face the charges placed against their charges but some families need a much greater imput and if children are being born into an environment which is deterimental to their well being they should be removed without question.
No-one asks to come in to this world, we get no choice as to whom and where we are born BUT no-one has to have children, so the rights of that child should always come before the parents.
Being a parents comes with huge responsibilities, we all live in a society and its our responsibility to behave in a civilised way.
If you cannot accept those responsibilities don't have children.

We have a problem here and now and need to break the cycle of violence in some parts of the UK. Gangs and groups need to be broken up, they need to be given life skills, open their eyes to wider horizons, so I would propose conscription for all young people and this does not have to be military, it can be humanitarian help abroad or social but all should have to go away from their own environment.
Before anyone writes and says I assume your children are to old for conscription, my son-in law did conscription in Germany and it did him no harm. I would also advocate conscription for for all those who have retired. Such a terrible waste of a life time of experience and knowledge, dumped on the scrap heap. Seen by many as a drain on society, what a sad nation we are. This too could take the form of social conscription within their community or an opportunity to go abroad on humanitarian issues. With people living longer more active lives and 60 being the new 40 the Country should value the elder generation.
Often young people are in conflict with their immediate upper generation i.e parents but bond with grandparents, so maybe working together for the common good of all would be beneficial to all of us???
Its no good politicians, social workers, the police etc condemming such behaviour, having inquiries after inquiries. We all know there is a huge and growing problem, they need to think out of the box. Recycling old ideas are just not working.
Everyone has a skill or a talent and these need to be harnessed in a positive way, otherwise it will be used destructively.
Idle hands make mischief and that is what so many young people do on a daily basis. Young men in particular have an excess of testosterone and boundless energy and will through frustration become very negative and isolated.
It is quite shocking in a modern supposedly civilised society, incidents such as Doncaster are still in our newspapers and on our screens.
The media also has huge responsibilities and much of the negativity we see on our streets has been learnt or influenced by what is shown on TV and in the papers. People who are educated know the difference between drama and real life, right from wrong etc but people who have missed out on life's chances seem to be disproportinately influenced by what is transmitted into their homes on a nightly basis.
Two labour markets 8:44pm on 15 Jul 2009 I have no problem with everyone doing their bit. My son-in law is German and it never did him any harm. He worked in an old persons home whilst studying for his degree. Some people could opt for community service in the Uk whilst others could do their work overseas. When people retire they too could do something.
No-one is ever too old to make a contribution and whilst it would help open the eyes of young people that they too can contribute to the World around them, it would also stop people talking about the older generation as some alien being, as we have seen in the media over the past few days!! Its funny but from commentators speak over the past few days you wouldn't think they ever thought they will get old too!! Its as if its something that will happen to other people!!

In Norway they build retirement homes on complexes that include preschool groups, a cafe & hairdressers etc, which are used by the local community. The knowledge the older generation have is passed on, as they help in the preschool imparting skills they have leant during their lifetime, which benefits the younger generation but also values the older generation too.
there is so much we can learn from our European neighbours, no idea why we are so intent on being so blinkered as if we have all the answers.
Two labour markets 7:49pm on 15 Jul 2009 Why do the media delight in always giving half a story? Or maybe its journalists are just to young to be able to compare with previous recessions. In the last recession and I am old enough to remember, things were very scary indeed, we had double digit inflation, rising month on month, in fact something things were going up on a weekly basis. We had 14% interest rates on our mortgages and there were 4.5 million people unemployed at its height. They were seriously scary times, we had four young children and everyone in my husbands office was permanently on 1 months notice!!!
Why do we not get comparisons with other EU Countries or other Worldwide economies. We are in a global market after all, so this should all be seen in perspective.

For people unemployed the present situation is dire and the problem needs to be addressed with urgency and action not words being bleated out day after day by politicians point scoring.
I am not interested in any of their rhetoric, in times of crisis we need everyone to be pulling in the same direction not self centered, self interest tittle tattle. We can all do the talking that is the easy bit!!

There is so much that needs doing in this Country, so much dereliction, so why not employ people to improve their own neighbourhoods, maybe we could get pride back into our environment, maybe communities would cooperate and work together. Maybe they would care for it and look after it better if they had worked on it?
Why not bring in conscription for all young people, not military but to work in the community like they do in Germany?

It just needs someone with vision and sadly there is no-one in Parliament of that statue.
118800 and a web revolution 8:45pm on 14 Jul 2009 I just love people power and don't know why we don't do it more often. Big business thinks it can walk over all of us but if only we were wise and not all so self centered, and worked together for the collective good, we could have far more control of our lives. The Internet gives us that power.
I am sick and tired of people phoning me on the home phone, offering me this or that. Its a total insult because if I want double glazing I am perfectly capable of finding out all the relevant information.
The telesales industry have beautifully scored an own goal with this one because no-one wants it. I hope its not the last time we use people power to tell big business to go and run.
Once upon a time 'the customer was always right' In Japan customer service is top of their priorities so maybe time for a rethink by all those who need our patronage?
At the end of the day we do have the choice to spend our money where WE choose and they should all remember that.
'Riots on the streets' 2:58pm on 29 Jun 2009 Be so Oh! so very careful what you wish for! Memories are Oh so short or maybe some people are just far too young to remember the Thatcher years and what she DIDN't do for ordinary men and women. It was the birth of NIMBY's, Yuppies, DINky's, that awful idea of trickle down, which was a total scam and which only the top tier benefitted from. It was the birth of obscene salaries for those who contributed nothing to the greater good, silly celebrities, again receiving ridiculous amounts of money for doing nothing. The gap between rich and poor just got wider. They didn't have cuts in spending, they just didn't invest in schools, hospitals, roads & rail and this time it could be much, much worse because of the chaos created in the City, by those who undoubtably are Tory voters.
I am not a Labour voter but I certainly will not be voting for Cameron, they carry too much baggage from the past Tory Government and if you honestly believe that a shadow cabinet, where the vast majority are Eton educated, either knows or cares about most of us, then I think you will be sadly mistaken. Deep down they are the same animal, the outer coat might look softer and fluffier but inside they are the same beast!!
You will be living in cloud cuckoo land if you believe the rhetoric because we all got sucked in by Mrs T when she wanted to become PM with all that rubbish with her shopping basket!!! She changed this Country for ever and most certainly not for the better. She created a society that only thinks about 'what's in it for me', vast swathes were disinfranchised. Its not the idle rich who need looking after, its the idle young, unemployed who will either become radicalised or criminalised. We were told to be entreprenureal, which meant those who were brash enough to cheat the system either legally or otherwise made a fortune. In the recession, on the Tory watch we had double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, some 4 million unemployed and Tebbit told us to 'get on yer bike'.

I had hoped for a peaceful revolution and real radical change would come out of the crisis of the past two years but sadly people will follow like leemings and vote Labour out, thinking they will be better off under a Tory Government.
Sadly I see no Statesman in the whole of Parliament. No-one that really gives me confidence, no-one who has vision, without self interest. No-one who can see the wider picture beyond petty politics.
The World faces pushing the self destruct button with climate change and yet we all get totally upset about a Duck House What the MP's did on expenses is inexcusable but compared to what those in the City did its rather pathetic the media have been so obsessed but haven't really done anything positive to ensure we have real change and only persuading all of us just to swap one bad egg for another!
Count it, don't follow it 09:46am on 22 May 2009 Whilst MP's and bankers have been found out and rightly so, this whole idea of 'if I can get away with it, its OK' is systemic in our culture. From MP's to cowboy builders, people are trying to pull a fast one over everyone else.
David Cameron might be trying to gain the moral highground but I don't recall him ever making such an issue of MP's expenses until forced to. He never said it was wrong and should be changed and he claims his maximum allowance.
The only way to clean up is to start again and if David Cameron wants an election every single MP should stand down and we start again. ( not going to happen) they are all guilty even if they haven't claimed because no-one stood up and said this is wrong.
The Tories are up to their necks in this one historically, as Mrs Thatcher created a non violent revolution in this Country and made it OK to think first 'what's in it for me' The Thatcher years gave rise to NIMBY's DINKI's YUPPI's City Slickers etc etc. Nothing very moral or uplifting there!!

The media and the press are equally guilty of hype, they can make claims and don't have to substantiate them. There are fantastic people in the Health Service, in the Emergency Services, in our schools working day after day doing amazing work and yet the press highlight MRSA, which in the great scheme of things is a very small part of the whole NHS and if you have sat in a hospital you will see the staff constantly washing their hands, yet the media choose to ignore this and make them scapegoats. The press & media can only ever be negative. If the media gave as much space to people who really do an honest days work, often going beyond the call of duty instead of filling their pages with total rubbish about silly celebrities who doing nothing for no-one but themselves, maybe the right role models would emerge for future generations to follow.

My understanding is that MP's are servants of the people, so not leaders and maybe if this was at the top of their job specification we might encourage people keen to serve us and not themselves?? In Sweden the Government own flats, which their MP's stay in rent free, quite simple really!!!
So whilst we are angry at first with the Bankers and now the MP's we do need to look closely at the whole picture and our whole culture needs to be radically changed. We are on a slippery slope and it will take a generation to turn things round but if we don't it will only get worse and the consequences of that for ordinary law abiiding people will be dire. We have to stop the rot now from the top down. A revolution, preferably quiet is what we need nothing less.
Politics, business, the economy, life itself are so intertwinned you cannot talk about one without the others.
Raising the retirement age 10:23am on 07 May 2009 I have to comment on Thorntonheaton's comment yesterday about being 'white British'. Who said anything about British being white? People born in this country are British because they were born on British soil. I was talking about how the media constantly do this Country down at every possible moment and how we need to bring back pride of being British into this Country.
Most journalists don't actually have personal experience of what they comment on. They critise or comment on teachers, doctors, nurses, the police, politicians, local authorities, house prices etc., in fact pretty much everyone and anything apart from themselves. We live in a global economy but also a global communication age and what they write gets read or watched all over the World and the harm they are doing to this country is immense. They have far more power to influence than any Government, what ever their political bent.
They talk about immigrants and foreign workers in a very derogatory manner and create tensions in some communities but all those Brits who have gone to Spain, France etc are also immigrants in the eyes of the Spanish or the French but the press call them expats!!!! What is the difference. I guess they are OK because they are British!!!!
My own brother in law has gone to Spain to live and when I made this comment to his father he was horrified that I could possibly make the comparison with immigrants who come to this country!!!!!!!
My son went to work in Japan and my daughter Germany, Sweden & France so migrant workers I guess?
or should we say human beings just having the right to personal choice?

When I have completed application form for jobs and those ridiculous sections about what my nationality is, white british, white muslim, white what ever. or other!! I always complete the form saying I am a member of the human race, no religion!

The financial sector caused the huge problems we now face but the press and the media have exacerbated the problem and made matters much, much worse and will continue to do so unless they start talking in positive speak about this country and the people who live in it. The situation will not improve until we have confidence back.

Of course there is much wrong with this country ( as in all Countries) but there is also a lot to be very thankful and grateful for. If we had balanced reporting we would know what goes on in other Countries, how they are coping with the global crisis, we might even learn a thing or two and we might also start appreciating what we all take so often for granted in this Country.

There are too many experts having too much to say without actually substantiating what they say. David Cameron has said an awful lot about what the Labour party have done wrong. I don't know whether he is right or wrong and I suspect he doesn't know if he is right but it sounds good and looks as if you are proactive. It is so easy to stand up and criticise and pretend you are actually contributing in a positive way What he hasn't said as far as I am aware is what he would have done faced with a financial meltdown. Would he have let the banks go down, would he have protected our savings, if so how, without borrowing money? and how would that have impacted on our standing in the World when every other economy appears to have shored up their own financial sector.
What would he have done to protect jobs in the UK. What would he have done to help pensioners who depend on interest from savings? So many questions remain unanswered?

Why did he not see all this coming and shout about it before or perhaps he and his friends were enjoying seeing their own personal wealth grow at an obscene rate? He and all the experts knew they couldn't say anything because investment in this country would have drained away overnight like a flood. This Country could not have slapped tighter rules on the financial sector unless the rest of the World acted at the same time, it would have caused financial suicide to London.

I have no objection to people making comments, if they can then come up with a credible solution. Its the easiest job in the World to pretend to have all the answers, its far harder to then substantiate your own take on the matter.
In a crisis people need to come togther not pull in opposite directions but we have a generation of people who have been told to think about 'what's in it for me', 'how can I get away with doing very little and getting a lot for it', 'how can i make a fast buck on the back of someone else'
Not their fault but until we change attitudes and people realise what they say and do has much wider implications beyond their own little world and that working together for the benefit of all does and can have enormous benefits we are not going to go anywhere very fast.
With so much negativity around the only way is down.
Remembering 1931 4:30pm on 06 May 2009 Hindsight is such a wonderful thing. Such a shame all these so called economic experts didn't see all this coming and shout as loudly as they are all shouting now. Every day we seem to get a new 'think tank' with a new take on the subject. How can they possibly predict what is going to happen in six months time when apparently none of them thought to warn us about where we were all heading. Guess they were all happily picking up nice fat bonus'. Of course most of the public knew it was a bubble which had to burst because house prices simply could not sustain that level of growth. Guess the 'experts' were also enjoy reaping the profits from their overinflated house prices to say anything which might upset their own rewards.
I also get the distinct feeling that many of the bloggers on both this site and Prestons seem to actually be getting some kind of twisted, warped pleasure from being about as gloomy as they can be.

Strangely I don't actually see all this doom and gloom replicated on the ground. What we see on TV and hear in the press does not represent what people are saying and doing in the Country.
I fully appreciate that some people have lost their jobs and for them it couldn't get any worse, as unemployment benefit is dire. People who depend on interest from their savings to bolster their pathetic pensions are suffering but the vast majority of the public are carrying on as normal.
People are probably holding off buying a new house to see where prices fall to because they could end up buying a bigger/better house when the market flattens out. We know we could buy something that was out of reach before as the decrease has been greater in some parts of the Country where in others the drop is much less. We will move when the time is right.
people are still going on holiday.

i think it is highly dangerous, highly irresponsible for people to speculate on what might or might not happen. They just have no idea, they cannot substantiate their claims and yet they create fear, when the very last thing we need is fear.
people would do better to start backing Britain rather than trying to beat the hell out of it because the longer there is little or no confidence the longer this will last.
I would be much more inclined to support an opposition party if they were backing Britain rather than trying every opportunity to bash the Labour Party.
They are not interested in you or me, they are only interested in gaining power for themselves. Kid yourselves, we have seen it all before. Mrs T pretended she was going to look after all of us ( wasn't she the housewife holding the purse strings) and the first thing she did was to kill of the mines, kill off the steel industry. There was no investment in the railways, schools or hospitals.
It matters not who is in power, we live in a global economy and not masters of our own destiny but we could bring pride back in to being British. Other countries are proud of who they are, not us. the press and the media take every opportunity to run this country down and for what?
Is it time to abolish compulsory retirement? 10:32am on 30 Apr 2009 Why do we have to have a 'one fits all policy'? The joy of being a human being is that we are all different and for some continuing work would be not only beneficial to them personally but would also benefit the company/organisation they work for but also would be in the national interest We talk about life long leaning and yet seem ready to put on the scrap heap those with enormous skills and knowledge. This education costs the Country billions, so why discard it when we need skilled people more than ever before?
For others, for what ever reason retirement at 60/65 is appropriate and they should be allowed to finish. It is easy to forget that some people spend their lives doing heavy physical work in extremely difficult environments and for them it is just not possible to continue at that level or pace.
Why do we have to have work or no work, why can we not have flexibility so people can work part-time, so they are there to ensure continuity and pass on their skills to the next generation. They could become mentors.
In other cultures the elders are respected but sadly not so in this country and yet we are all heading in the same direction, we will all get old!!!
Those fortunate enough to live long enough to reach retirement will tell you it comes round Oh so quickly!!!!!
How can we have a law that says we have to retire at 60/65 when quite clearly politicians don't have to retire. Surely if its good enough for them its good enough for the rest of us??

There is huge age discrimination in this Country, so for those reading this who are not yet 60 be warned. Your turn will come round quicker than you think, so maybe you should start being more thoughtful about your own future and treat people as you would want to be treated yourself
Why tax the rich? 4:13pm on 24 Apr 2009 I and I guess the vast majority of people in this country, including all the so called experts have no real idea if this Governments actions on the economy will work but I do know I am sick and tired of opposition parties, politic pundits and so called expert 'think tanks' constantly critisising their actions, without actually telling us what they would do if they were in charge. Its such a childish way to behave.

David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable jump up and down saying rubbish at each every opportunity but as yet haven't put forward any credible tried and tested alternatives.

Would they have let everything free fall, and let the banks go to the wall, as well as the car industry, mortgages. they don't say. Maybe because it wouldn't get votes to see people living on the streets?
The Banks, the car industry, the housing industry all tell us the Government haven't done enough- so would the opposition have put more money in and if so why are they so critical now of the debt and if not what would they have done?

Other Countries are also struggling to grapple with an unprecendented situation and of course like the UK they have no idea either if what they are doing is right, particulraly as we live in a global economy other external factors may well knock best intentions off the rails.
We have Nick Robinson, Robert Peston, Jon Snow and all the other pundits etc, etc all have their 'four penneth' of negativity and only serve to create more distress for those who really affected. They all go home at night, comfortable in the knowledge they will get paid and paid well at the end of the month, so it matters not what they say.

In times of crisis we are supposed to pull togther but the politicians of all persuasions, the media are doing their utmost to destroy this country, for what purpose I know not.

What I do know is unless we do pull togther it won't be the above that suffers but their children and their grandchildren and our children & grandchildren. They cannot shy away from the enormous responsibility their daily barrage is having.

I am much too young to have lived through the war but I know people were all very aware that loose tongues were very dangerous and I think the same message should be sent out today. If these people have nothing positive to contribute they should keep their mouths shut.

These are dangerous times and we could see civil unrest, so unless we can get the whole Country working together for the benefit of all and not looking for banner headlines and politocal point scoring at every opportunity life could get a whole lot worse for those who live in the spotlight. I am a pacifist so not advocating violence but now we live in a world with 24 hrs media coveragewhat people say matters a great deal and with it comes an enormous responsibility.

I would be much more impressed by an opposition who offered a positive contribution and talked this Country up. The Tories still have to accept all this started in the 1980's so they too have tainted hands!!!

Please, please can the BBC start a campaign to Back Britian not Bat the hell out of it.!!!!!

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timetoponder