BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/10/natural-england-cut-to-the-bone-and-unable-to-protect-wildlife-staff-claim-aoe

more austerity caused ‘in part’ by migrants, no doubt. a tragedy. too busy giving imams bungalows in ilford!

So anyway, why don't the richer african countries allow free entry to their fellows from poorer countries?

another galaxy-brained comparison, i see.

what relevance does race have, here? you seeing an economic arrangement through racial lens is just inane. as per usual.

the EU’s movement of labour was mutually beneficial to everyone, within the context of capital and labour markets. rich consumers in the developed nations and poor workers in the less-developed ones. that’s why it exists and will continue to exist, so long as there are things to be bought and sold and workers/consumers to go with them.

if you want to ask why britain should accept migrant labour from outside the EU, well it’s hardly relevant to the discussion of brexit. britain can make it’s own rules on that and always has done.

refugees and people fleeing war or persecution have a tradition going back to way before the world wars. britain established itself as a sanctuary and a liberal cause early in her identity, and has done so for groups like Poles from long before the EU was ever dreamed up. to qualify as a refugee nowadays is really very difficult and subject to a lot of hoops. people don’t stagger off a boat near dover and get themselves a free semi-detached in kettering. you are a tabloid-consuming idiot.

i have no problem with the world’s richest nations, those which straddle the global system of capital and keep half the global south in underdevelopment or debt burden, doing their bit to accept workers. i have no problem with a modern, rich, industrialised nation doing their bit to accept the desperate and dispossessed. the idea has been since the very earliest days of britain’s liberal diplomacy that these actions and benevolences will repay the nation many times over. 

you should look into a history of the ‘migrant question’ in the U.K.  i think you’d find it very interesting how it has been framed and politicised over various decades. oh wait, i forgot, you don’t read.

I only tell the dumb kids to join the military. I wouldn't suggest a kid good at school go waste their life joining the military.

Regardless of its reputation for recruiting idiots, the military is always looking for talent to train for complex jobs.

I guess at a nearby MEPS the Marines (at least) had a small reputation for jokingly trying to steal other military branches' finds. Crayons in a candy dish, I wonder?

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Making a bookish teen join the military in order to get an education is abusive.

I tend to agree. The military is a heck of a ladder to dangle in front of a young public in a poor economy. Not every bookish teen is going to get themselves a paid scholarship. People not psychologically equipped to join shouldn't be pushed into it as a means up the rungs of society. That goes for the dumb-dumbs and smarties alike.

We have tons of companies that service government projects. Just make it easier for people to get into colleges and trade schools.

I did the that suggestion recently, though saying we'd need to call it WAP in 2020.

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

We have tons of companies that service government projects. Just make it easier for people to get into colleges and trade schools.

The Job Corps offers vocational training free of charge for 16-24 year olds. Maybe it's worth making that program more robust.

When I was going to high school, there was a running start program that was barely mentioned. Students had to ask about a program very few even knew existed.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

Colleges and trades schools would need to be reformed and better regulated to guarantee compliance. And there's so much identity politics traps around all that.

It would be literally easier to just print more of our fake money to create a program that hired young people for new projects across the U.S. It has been done before.

But where is the benefit compared with bombing Israel's enemies.

dilbert your obsession with people's undergraduate degrees is very odd. they're not even considered full and relevant qualifications for average graduate jobs, let alone roles of senior leadership. post-graduate education, training, job experience, bonus skills and networking, etc, all matter far more for someone in a 'senior' or 'advanced' career role. people aren't fixed in place by their age 18-21 studies. you seem to think that it's the be-all-and-end-all of someone's abilities or skillset.

a person with a history undergraduate could go to the top law school in the country afterwards. they could spend 25 years working at a senior level in policy or think-tanks, etc. more normally, they will acquire further education or training beyond the undergraduate level.

can you name me your top 5 UK prime ministers, dilbert? seeing as your usual line of critique is to highlight someone's deficient education. i'm just curious as to who you think genuinely did a good job, made for a good leader, had a good intellectual grasp, etc. i wonder what they all studied at undergraduate (and if it was even provably relevant in any way). shouldn't be too hard for you, seeing as you have such fixed ideas on the subject.

e: and give me your genuine, personal top 5, too, don't go and google 'wot UK prime ministers got a science degree'.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-15 06:04:02)

uziq wrote:

dilbert your obsession with people's undergraduate degrees is very odd. they're not even considered full and relevant qualifications for average graduate jobs, let alone roles of senior leadership. post-graduate education, training, job experience, bonus skills and networking, etc, all matter far more for someone in a 'senior' or 'advanced' career role. people aren't fixed in place by their age 18-21 studies. you seem to think that it's the be-all-and-end-all of someone's abilities or skillset.

a person with a history undergraduate could go to the top law school in the country afterwards. they could spend 25 years working at a senior level in policy or think-tanks, etc. more normally, they will acquire further education or training beyond the undergraduate level.

can you name me your top 5 UK prime ministers, dilbert? seeing as your usual line of critique is to highlight someone's deficient education. i'm just curious as to who you think genuinely did a good job, made for a good leader, had a good intellectual grasp, etc. i wonder what they all studied at undergraduate (and if it was even provably relevant in any way). shouldn't be too hard for you, seeing as you have such fixed ideas on the subject.

e: and give me your genuine, personal top 5, too, don't go and google 'wot UK prime ministers got a science degree'.

Its relevant because it indicates what kind of people they are. Its indicative that an idle moron like Johnson can get a degree from Oxford, somewhat debases the supposed quality no?

I can't really think of any useful UK PMs, the whole system being stacked with Oxbridge twits for most of its history, Aneurin Bevan was one of the few people with a brain who got anything significant done.

I've heard that UK/US unis do give very high marks and the courses are quite easy to pass. Always struck me as odd that so few people have delays and high marks seem to be dished out everywhere. Not to disparage the quality of education, obviously many of the best unis one can attend are in these countries, just the grading seems very forgiving. Hardest part appears to be getting in.

Over here you can start with about 300-400 first years in an undergraduate and after 3 or 4 years 80% or so will have quit, left to do something else or is delayed. Not that this is some great example either, I'm sure many are just very discouraged by the loneliness and lacking faculty engagement or otherwise caught up in fraternities and late teens/early 20s drama. Anyhow, average age of graduates is much higher in northern Europe than US/UK/AUS and France. Always wondered why, whether it's culture, difficulty, something else - I don't know. The idea of 22 year olds everywhere in the workforce in graduate jobs seems odd to me as well. Too young.

(For reference I got my postgrad at 26, average is 25-26)

Last edited by Larssen (2020-11-16 00:00:19)

lol okay. i asked a simple question to justify your bizarre views on political leaders and all you have to say is ‘back in my day the course was the hardest ever and now it’s all too easy. i am best and all politicians suck’.

guess we can all safely ignore just about everything you have to say on the subject.

For my first job I was handed $500,000 worth of tooling and $5m worth of machines and told to get on with it.
(I only broke one, but it was sort of broken by the dumb girl before me so it doesn't count - protip - fix the fucking problem, not the paperwork)

:') have your parents never told you you're a very special young man, or something? did mumsy not pin your drawings on the fridge? there's something frankly a little bit tragic about a 50-year-old bachelor circling endlessly around the amazing achievement of his, er, first job.

grade inflation has taken off in a significant way since the tuition fees tripled. no surprises that people start having consumer-like expectations when you’re placing them in a lifetime of debt for a certificate. when i was doing undergraduate, and the situation that had obtained for 15-20 years before it afaik, the grade boundaries were pretty tightly defined, and only 5-15% in any year's cohort took top honours, with the rest getting 'upper second' honours (2:1) and 'lower second' (2:2). the real bad fuck-ups scraped by with a third (3:1), but honestly i don't think that group was very big; more likely they had dropped out before or considered resetting their education at another institution. the vast majority took 2:1s (i.e. grad scheme/grad school entry requirement, 'good honours') or a desmond tutu.

The university as a whole seemed to average a suicide every 2-3 years. A few years before me someone blew his brains out in the pistol range.

very strange form of bragging, this. 'my course was sooo hard people killed themselves'. yeah, that's not a good school. that's a school with a pastoral care crisis or very bad course structure, timetabling, and/or expectations. it could just mean your school or department had a toxic or bullying culture, quite removed from anything specifically academic. bristol university is a suicide hotspot, with multiple deaths each and every year, and their mental health services and student community care have rightfully come under fire for it. it is not something to brag about as a 'proof' of difficulty. not to mention that young people in that age bracket are at-risk for mental illness for any number of other reasons; young men in particular. the expectations and stresses placed upon 18 year olds today, paying £10k a year for something they might be unsure about or struggling with, is probably a fair bit higher than it was in the era of 'no university fees' and infinite dole/welfare money upon graduation.

a girl i knew well jumped in front of a train in the third-year of our undergraduate course; she was supposed to take up a place on the same joint-college master's course as myself. we had spoken about it a week before she committed suicide. there's a tree planted for her now in the quad of the english faculty. does that mean OMG our course was the hardest most intense thing ever? no, it means a person got themselves into a horrible situation and wasn't given proper help.

and, no, the french or belgian system where people are pummelled to death in hypokhagnes and 60% drop out before finishing their undergrad is not desirable or efficient, either.

Last edited by uziq (2020-11-16 02:38:43)