Urban v's the Commentariat

[DotCommunist]

the latter.

 

[rekil]

Crabapple did a load of shit "No to Nato" drawings very recently, now she reckons it'd be a good idea for them to bomb and bomb and bomb the fuck out of Syria til there's nothing left but freeeeeedom.

 

[butchersapron]

yes!!!!!!!!

Or was that one Penny?

 

[Balbi]

It's like you're trying to transmit essential heart op information over a narrowband connection and Crabapple's hacked onto it and is beaming her crayon scrawlings as if that's actually fucking doing something. There's a limited space for media representation of certain issues, and her 'contribution' is a self-promoting gesture with absolutely nothing behind it beyond future engagement and profit. Not sickening, bit worth a spit in the gutter and a shake of the head.

 

[DotCommunist]

Or was that one Penny?

that was penny cheering on the bombing of Libya

 

[el-ahrairah]

like butchers said, as individuals we all had good (or at least, convincing at the time) reasons to go. but the system these days is designed to start someone off in debt with qualifications that aren't worth anything in the job market unless you're doing something specific that requires a certain degree. i think in the days of the internet there is even less reason for a working class person to go to uni just for the sake of study. you can study anything you like via the internet in ways that i couldn't dream of back in 1997 when i went.

so a good response would be to fuck off the whole stupid game!.

 

[rekil]

That was Penny. This is that NATO thing.

 

[treelover]

Like the climax of V For Vendetta only with everyone in Frank rather than Guy masks

Did Frank ever express any political views?, saw him once, can't remember

 

[el-ahrairah]

this is a bit of a cause for discussion between me and the missus, actually. she's a keen believer in the value of education and on the usefulness of having a bit of paper to impress people with your brainz, i think that a formal education is massively over-rated and is mis-sold to the working classes. any fruit of this union will be the battleground on which our class values conflict

 

[kebabking]

As a method of throwing a clog into the workings of the education machine, probably hard enough to break the machine (the function of which is, of course, predicated on a certain number of people making an economic calculation that higher ed will accrue more benefits than debts to them), it'd work really well. If we look at how the academy has become managerialised - at how university no longer means learning how to think even in the limited sense that it originally did, but is merely a transaction between two parties - then refusing to enter the edifice, refusal to either implicitly or explicitly support it or the ideology(s) behind it, could only be beneficial to the class, either from the viewpoint that elements of the class were no longer being removed and potentially re-fashioned as members of the bourgeoisie, or the viewpoint of helping an edifice of domination to collapse under its' own weight.

or, in much simpler terms, that the majority of those who leave university this year will (with luck) get a job at 21 flogging Sky TV for £16k having racked up £40k's worth of debt, whereas before the explosion of degrees given - without a comensurate explosion in the number of degree level jobs available - that same person would have got a job at age 18 flogging Sky TV for £16k with no debt.

its a swiz, a confidence trick - a rip-off. truth is, unless either of mine were going to do a high end course at a decent uni, i'm not sure i'd advise them to go. this of course pre-supposes that by then the price of a ticket to open the jobs page isn't a minimum of a 2.2 in Basket-Weaving and American Studies from the University of Penge...

 

[el-ahrairah]

Did Frank ever express any political views?, saw him once, can't remember

Anarchy In Timperley?
I Said Hey You Mr Riot Policeman?
Football Is Really Fantasic?

he's one of us.

 

[frogwoman]

Interestingly enough I had a polish mate to stay over the weekend and he said that in the UK it's far easier to get a job without qualifications than in Poland where most jobs seem to require degrees.

 

[treelover]

tbh I can fully see where he's coming from. Higher education is just a racket. I've got a degree and it's been not been much help to me either. It's strange because for a lot of students having a degree will do nothing to help them in the labour market at all but they still persist in applying and going. A degree functions a lot like a big class dividing line. It's almost like people just paying a certain amount just to be in the middle classes or to call themselves "educated" or whatever.

I had a feeling this would be the case when I applied for uni but I but I convinced myself that education for educations sake is a principle worth defending, and it's worth going just so you can learn about politics and so on, which is valuable in itself. Looking back the sad thing about this is I implicitly assumed that going to uni was the only way to actually learn that stuff, and that the very idea that you can do something else more practical and enjoyable and still have opportunity to engage in politics hadn't occurred to me.

My parents definitely played a part in this because they came from very marginalised backgrounds and got into uni in the 1970's and managed to wangle stable public sector jobs and a decent standard of living out of it. To them going to uni was big thing economically but it was also a something they took a lot of pride in, social mobility and all that. I could never quite get them to understand that a university education in my lifetime is vastly different to how they experienced things back in the day.

As a kid I just wanted to play rugby or be in a rock band, to invoke a bit of Laurie Penny I wanted to do music and PE for GCSE and my teachers just said straight up no, because I was half-decent academically. I'd have been much happier in a lot of ways if I had done that than going to uni.

This maybe be the experience of many urbanites, (though there are plenty of 'success' stories on here), but looking at the careers of some of my peers from the 92 cohort, many have done very 'well' indeed many now have managerial posts, or are in professions, etc. though, of course with the massive costs incurred by todays students it would be different now, but many will still 'achieve' their goals.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Would this be the time to relate, in detail, the use submariners have for jars of chopped liver?

Not really, except maybe to explain that trawlermen use plaice for the same purpose.

 

[el-ahrairah]

its a swiz, a confidence trick - a rip-off. truth is, unless either of mine were going to do a high end course at a decent uni, i'm not sure i'd advise them to go. this of course pre-supposes that by then the price of a ticket to open the jobs page isn't a minimum of a 2.2 in Basket-Weaving and American Studies from the University of Penge...

The University Of Penge is a respectable institution,I'll have you know.

All my graduates have a 100% employment record in the booming Fried Chicken Retail sector.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Can people explain what is wrong with memorialising the dead of Syria, or is it the person doing the drawings,

It's the person doing the drawings for the purpose she's doing them - not only to memorialise, but to sell.

 

[DaveCinzano]

Anarchy In Timperley?
I Said Hey You Mr Riot Policeman?
Football Is Really Fantasic?

he's one of us.

He was a bastard to Little Frank

 

[weepiper]

but looking at the careers of some of my peers from the 92 cohort, many have done very well

Many of mine have too. The middle class ones.

 

[el-ahrairah]

He was a bastard to Little Frank

Bakunin didn't like Jews much, but we let him off.

 

[equationgirl]

You seem to be assuming that "university" has to mean Oxbridge - what I went to was a well respected poly (a better reputation for modern languages than the university in the same city), although it's been called a university since the 1990s. BTW I'd also claim that the chance to leave the area I'd more or less grown up in was almost as helpful, albeit in a different way, as any of the course material.

This. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. Ever.

 

[Bakunin]

Not really, except maybe to explain that trawlermen use plaice for the same purpose.

There's a reason why the flounder is nicknamed the 'Fisherman's Friend.'

 

[DaveCinzano]

Bakunin didn't like Jews much, but we let him off.

 

[el-ahrairah]

Many of mine have too. The middle class ones.

it's funny, but i look at my small group of friends from the shit ex-poly i studied at. the only person doing alright is the one with the private education and wealthy parents. everyone else is poorly paid, unemployed, or in temp work. fair play to the guy, i don't begrudge him his wealth cos he works hard and he's a right clever lad, but class will out innit!

 

[treelover]

I should have used the NVQ I got at agricultural college the year before and got a job as a countryside ranger.

highly prized career these days, lots of phd's applying, etc.

 

[el-ahrairah]

*shakes fist* i see what you did there.

 

[weepiper]

it's funny, but i look at my small group of friends from the shit ex-poly i studied at. the only person doing alright is the one with the private education and wealthy parents. everyone else is poorly paid, unemployed, or in temp work. fair play to the guy, i don't begrudge him his wealth cos he works hard and he's a right clever lad, but class will out innit!

Me and my mate both got firsts. I still work in a shop on barely above minimum wage. She is in a senior position earning above £50k working for the Auditor General. My mum was an admin temp most of her working life. Her mum was a headmistress.

 

[treelover]

It's the person doing the drawings for the purpose she's doing them - not only to memorialise, but to sell.

not defending her, but didn't all the 'war artists' ultimately sell their work/be commissioned?

 

[butchersapron]

not defending her, but didn't all the 'war artists' ultimately sell their work/be commissioned?

What's a 'war artist'?

 

[xenon]

Many of mine have too. The middle class ones.

I think this is it. Opportunities seeing other possibilities and being able to move into those circles. Even role models, though I hate that phrase. Connections in the lower rungs of establishment...

Anyway last time the thing about the costs came up. I remember Butcher's calling me an idiot because I said I'd probably still go to university were I 18 again. Purely based on the 18 YO me wouldn't have been able to get a job anyway. Personal circustmance blah, blah... I have changed my mind. I can learn what I need to for potential work off the internet, ebooks etc. The other stuff university gives you, social stuff, meeting new people, sure that's good but it's not 40 grand's worth of good.

 

[Bakunin]

What's a 'war artist'?

It's not unusual for military units to have either a soldier or attached civilian who does sketches and/or paintings of major events in a unit's history. Nowadays they tend not to turn up in the front line, but they often used to do that and produce artwork based on what they saw during an action. Go inot any officer's mess or regimental museum and you'll find at least one painting commemorating some battle or other from wars gone by.