Brexit Arms - Out with the old and in with the new

[time4chocolate]

It’s time again for another Brexit Arms thread to see us into Christmas and beyond.

Well what a week it’s been!!

Boris has now completed his first week and he’s been busy. New conservatives have been sworn in, the Queens Speech yesterday shows promise (aware that the proof of the (Xmas) pudding is in the eating) and Boris’ Deal is going to be voted on today with the results being around 3pm I believe.

Meanwhile, on the other side all four wheels have definitely fallen off the red bus and were very nearly joined by a garden gate and a car door. Oh dear!!

Anyway, I have added a few more Christmas decs to the pub and popped the fairy back on the tree (it took a nasty tumble)

We are now good to go.
Cheers all 🍷🍷

Ps. If anyone wants to volunteer for outside catering that would be👍🏻

I used to think like you scary but the older I get the more I see it's a combination of both. You get nowhere without determination and work, but you can also end up in a situation where determination and hard work aren't enough.
Not all schools are good either. If you end up in a school with a discipline problem, the whole year group can be dragged down- no matter how good the state curriculum - and it can adversely affect pupils' mental health and chances of success.

Or more seriously, what if your home life is chaotic or abusive and you don't even get a second's peace? Countless examples of how life can drag you down before you even start.

Not entirely sure I believe in luck; it's the drive and determination that will get you there.

I'm with Scary on this. Personal experience.

Luck helps, certainly, but you can also make your own luck through sheer hard work.

Up to a point.

I overcame a deprived childhood of neglect and abuse, and subsequent lack of education to make a decent living and achieve a reasonable standard of living. So, no, not "up to a point".

Everything I've got or achieved I had to scrap for.

I have great respect for that singing but could it have gone differently despite your hard work? I'm not saying that to diminish your achievement in any way.
I think about my own life and some things were fortunate - doesn't mean I didn't have to work hard.

but could it have gone differently despite your hard work?

No, I have a lifelong thirst for learning - I'm mostly self-taught anyway - and I refuse to be defined by my circumstances. I might have ended up on a very different career path if I'd had the benefit of any sort of opportunity but the degree of drive and determination would not have been any different.

That said, once I reached a sufficiently senior position, I made a point of offering a helping hand to others who showed promise but had been held back by their circumstances. There was a condition attached - that once they achieved a measure of success, they had to reach out to someone else and do the same.

People can passively accept the hand life has dealt them or they can make the best of what they've got. That's a choice. It's always a choice.

I made a point of offering a helping hand to others who showed promise but had been held back by their circumstances

I would say they were lucky to have come across you then singing

My point is there are many decent people out there who will give a helping hand but not everyone is. I think this is where the concept of social justice comes in; making sure public services are funded properly so that everyone gets a decent start as much as possible. A proper safety net if you will.

Thank you, Songs. Sorry for derailing the discussion though.

I am a keen believer in equality of opportunity but it's up to each individual what they do with that opportunity.

I'm rather hoping that the newfound determination of the government to level up the North (which I'm interpreting as anything outside London, the Home Counties, Oxford and Cambridge) will extend to the educational system. Academic rigour is returning, thank goodness, but it's still patchy.

People loved the Labour Manifesto.... so much that they voted against it in sufficient numbers to hand the Tories a landslide.

I would say: the blue collar (C2,C2) employed actively voted against Labour's Manifesto promises because they are the people who resent the workshy and the feckless far more actively than the middle classes. They are the people who see and resent the people who can't be bothered to work, because the hours aren't easy.

DS works as a chef... he was incandescent with rage when a (non-EU economic migrant) kitchen porter, earning £9 per hour, quit in favour of an existence on income support and housing benefit. DS was earning £5.90 ph (NMW for his age) and working 70-80 hours per week, paying tax and NI, no free prescriptions. I concede that the hospitality sector is exploitative, but only when you are prepared to pay 30% more for any meal/coffee you don't shop for, cook, serve and clean up after can you say that you are supportive of the low paid.

The business also needs to make a profit, to pay for ingredients, building maintenance and new tableware and bedlinen, or it goes under..... which is why so many pubs and restaurants fail, especially in rural areas where there isn't a bus service so the very necessary drink drive laws bite harder than in towns and cities. Fine if you are the oligarch who arrives by helicopter for the weekend to shoot or fish, and they do, but anyone in a service function who would like to eat out somewhere nice for a special occasion, or a first date, cooks at home.

Rural public transport... DS would not have had the work he did without his own car. To start breakfast service at 6.45 am, he could not have got to work (no bus at all) unless he walked the nine miles there.

The promotions that will be made when the 1% leave will be selected from a globally qualified population, not from the massed ranks of union boilermakers and public services.

I* would say: the blue collar (C2,C2) employed actively voted against Labour's Manifesto promises because they are the people who resent the workshy and the feckless far more actively than the middle classes. They are the people who see and resent the people who can't be bothered to work, because the hours aren't easy.*

The FT agrees with you, Xing. Its analysis of the result of the GE shows that the higher the share of workers in low-skilled jobs in a constituency, the better the Tories performed. If memory serves, that was the point Dusty made a good two weeks before the election and she was pooh-poohed by the flashers.

The same people voted Leave because freedom of movement simply meant greater competition for jobs and services in their home areas. Nothing to do with xenophobia.

The promotions that will be made when the 1% leave will be selected from a globally qualified population, not from the massed ranks of union boilermakers and public services.

I did try to explain, Xing, but don't forget, I am one of the sheeple brainwashed by the evil right wing media

but you can also end up in a situation where determination and hard work aren't enough. Thus, you change the situation by changing aspects of it, whether that be retraining, moving, changing job, studying, or volunteering to improve your offer.

whilst I totally agree that determination and drive are necessary components for an apparently successful life, I do wonder about how people who are trapped (financially, caring, less advantaged etc etc) are supposed to achieve this success? life is not that simple really. during my DM's sad decline, I had to turn away several freelance contracts... of course I could have taken them on but been unable to either fulfill them completely or look after my mum...

I think life can be that simple yolo if you make the choices and are hard enough to do so. One could argue that there is an opportunity cost for everything. My db makes the choices that suit him every time and screw what anyone else wants/needs.

My Dad started out in the RN at 16 in 1957. He was the child of a divorcee who had come home one day when Dad was one (in 1942) to find her home being packed onto a van and driven off. She was left with Dad, a bed, his cot, a table and a chair and social services and maintenance, were of course, non existent then. From that, she got him through grammar school to O levels. She scrubbed floors, collected insurance premiums, and did what she could to keep that household going.

He joined up as a junior rating, with 4 O levels. By sheer bloody determination and professional excellence, he was a Lt-Cdr by the time he was 39 in 1980. He was less advantaged and trapped financially in that my Gran wouldn't let him stay at school for A levels. He changed the situation by joining up.

Anyone else pick this up?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/12/29/us-carries-defensive-strikes-iraq-syria-against-kataibhizbollah/

but with all due respect scaryteacher your dad was 16 when he did that. So he wasnt trapped into being unable to move due to other responsibilities, and his mum was amazing to do all she did. What I am trying to say is that not everyone can do that, and if everyone did do it, what would happen to those that get left behind?

I think it's important to remember that we need, and should respect, those who take on the caring/familial/lower paid jobs, rather than say everyone can make a 'success' (in the generally accepted term - ie money, status). Society needs for people at every level and stage of life to be able to make the most of their opportunities, or to choose to do the jobs others dont necessarily want to do.

As a society, we should accept this and respect that some people need to care for their own elders/disabled etc - and bloody well support them to do so.

It was the 50s Yolo, so he was trapped in that he couldn't stay on and do A levels and had to work. He grew up in a household that was poor both financially and emotionally. It was his 60th the week before he died, and I told my Gran to tell Dad she loved him. She looked at me horrified and said she'd never told him that and wasn't going to start now. I tell my ds every day (or whenever I spoke to him when he was at sixth form/uni) that I love him.

The RN was his way out of a life that my Gran envisaged for him; never looking to achieve or better yourself becuase it was 'above you' to do so. She spent all my married life until she died telling me I had married 'above' myself, and that dh's family were 'higher' than ours. Bollocks to that. Dad refused to be trapped ny my Gran's vision of his life. She never forgave him and spent much of his career telling him he wasn't good enough to be a Naval officer - he was. His route to being an officer was/is one of the hardest, both professionally and socially.

Society needs for people at every level and stage of life to be able to make the most of their opportunities The point is, that many don't choose to avail themselves of those opportunities. I taught kids who said they would not work as they would get better money on benefits; their families didn't work, why should they?

I've wiped bottoms in residential homes; been bounced off the wall by a naked woman in the grip of Alzheimers on a psycho geriatric ward; I'm now part of the sandwich generation, and will eventually have caring responsibilities again within the next 6 years or so as Mum ages, so I'm not dissing any of that; but people do have choices, and they may choose not to look after their ageing relatives of the opportunity cost is at the expense of their families/career progression etc. I think women are conditioned to care, but should we always step up, and isn't that how we are trapped by not saying 'no'?

I’m back

Barman said “no happy hour till February” when I asked about offers 😞

Will read through properly later but songs thanks for your answer. I can see that argument but I tend to think of “social justice” as being the sort of “the Lake District isn’t diverse enough” these days.

yolo obviously I’m in the boat you were in and I think the threshold for state help is too low. However, there’s an opportunity cost that maybe applies to both of us in terms of what we chose to do, when actually carers could have done it, IYSWIM. Apologies if that’s me projecting or misremembering things. I can certainly take on more work and get care for mum.

It's a very tough issue scary and I am fortunate in having escaped the sandwich phase in Nov 18 when DM died after 10 years of caring for her (not necessarily physically but certainly mentally, multiple hospital admissions etc etc while my DDs were growing up). I don't envy you knowing that you have that ahead.

I suppose what I am trying to say is that compassion is what matters; and compassion in my view should extend to those who may appear to have been given basic opportunities (eg state education) but who dont know how to seize them - or what to do with them if they have them, or who feel they cannot because of what is going on around them.

I once described myself to someone as a 'bleeding heart Tory'!!

autumn bloody bollocks I missed happy hour????

yolo I think this place doesn’t do happy hour in December or January. December up till Xmas I understand but it was pretty quiet and I thought they might start again in January, but of course they do have to factor in dry January.

I remember going to a bar on 2nd Jan with a big sign saying “retox here”. That’s what I like to hear!

Anyway, music was v good.