DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived post-Murdoch era

(cf. nrq, who is old money).

For some reason I read this as "nv is old money", and I thought, WHAT?

NV is in debrett's (under "LOL")

That was the only "trick" I heard about: Take Latin, it will help you at University.

what my public school DIDN'T do, of course, was instil any sort of work ethic into me (maybe it didn't show that i needed this? i coasted through getting top grades at every turn with minimal effort) =====>>>>>> universities, plural = disaster. as i was just discussing on twitter w/another journalist for whom a-levels were basically our academic pinnacle, i'm not even 100% sure what degree grade i got - i assume i actually did get one but honestly i glanced at the results for like a second and the certificate is long lost. so all in all, all those advantages weren't, ultimately, the greatest help (but then ultimately ultimately, after university, they might have been?)

there literally was no other option. it was like, of course you'll be thinking about university, in the same way that of course you'll be thinking of turning up to school tomorrow

iirc there was quite a bit of fuss when i told my school i wasn't going to apply to university? but then they were like "lol w/e you'll do it in the end, gosh having a gnvq as well will look good on your ucas form".

Well, I was possibly in the last contingent of people who moved into "computing" without going to Univ, after that it was 'no degree? Forget it" and even now (especially now, I guess), people just assume I went.

xpost funnily enough I also told my school I wasn't applying for university. Ended up being 'accepted' at Huddersfield. Without applying. (Didn't go, had the job by then)

actually it's been quite instructive this morning to see how many smart, intelligent people i know completely fucked up either a-levels or university, and sort of made me question my assumption that everyone i know obviously went through both smoothly

I think I was pretty much every cliche of a middle-class child but I grew up in Catford so it never really felt like it at the time. Even less so when I went university and virtually everyone was posher than me.

i inherited my a-level results

I did a pretty good Irish Leaving Certificate but definitely picked my subjects and managed my workload to do as little as possible and get by. EG did ordinary level Maths as it was too much work, picked Geography not History despite preferring the latter, Geography is notoriously easy on the Irish Leaving Cert, about 4 weeks work near the end and you'll get an A. I was fluent in Irish and liked English so those were both no work As, got Cs in the two subjects which had huge levels of donkey work required, Latin and Business. And a B1 in French, was disappointed not to get an A.

I didn't get my first choice which was Communications in DCU, but got Journalism which is largely the same and in hindsight a better course. It was a bit of a waste of time though to be honest. Half the course was just a conglomeration of subjects that already were being taught for economics or business degrees, to make up the numbers.

The journalism stuff was theoretically fine and I 100 per cent could have put more into it, I stopped going to lectures regularly after first year, but largely it was just facile rubbish. You could have picked up some tiny camera skills from the course but it wasn't focussed enough on technical tools in my opinion. And it had a truly archaic view of the internet, even for 2001.

Nobody has ever asked me if I have a degree, though I guess it's on my CV. Like Lex I'm not 100 per cent certain of the grade, I think what I put down is correct. When I joined BBC the trainee scheme that got me in actually said it didn't want you to have a degree, thankfully I didn't read that small print.

I guess university fills a gap between the ages of 18-22 or whatever, but it's so exaggerated as a thing. You only really learn when you're in an office and you have to do shit.

Also it's funny how other things you do take on greater significance. I never thought when I spent every day doing a techno blog that it'd really stand to me career-wise but it's one of the most useful and important things on my CV I reckon. Wouldn't be where I am (not a hugely exalted position but at least moving up a ladder and starting a good job next week) without having done that.

Thread turns like this make me wonder if UK ILx is the poshest online clique I've ever known.

― Stevie T, Thursday, August 18, 2011 11:16 AM

'twas ever thus

Despite the fact that I've just eaten a bowl of smashed-up meringue, whipped double cream, and raspberries, I'm probably the least-posh British ILX graduate. Mum never knew her dad, grew up in 2-up, 2-down council house in Sheffield that about 10 family members lived in, no inside toilet, etc etc. Dad's dad was a steel tool-maker, died young. I was the first member of my family on either side, including older cousins etc, to go to university and get a degree. I went to a shit uni and got a shit degree because I literally didn't know any better or have any better guidance. It took me until I was about 28/29 to get a graduate level job. I'm now at a point where I'd say I've done alright for myself, yes that's less about my degree than other stuff I've done since, but the degree helped. I wish I'd known more about university before I went, taken advantage of more. Same with A Levels, actually. I went to the local community college and i was "principal student" in 6th form, whatever that means. I earn considerably more than either of my much older brothers, which I feel... Not guilty about, but sad about, sometimes. We'd never have been ale to buy a use without a deposit from my father-in-law, who, if anything, comes from a poorer background than my mum, but who's worked insanely hard and now runs a company and does business deals in the middle east and stuff. We've just started, this year, to be able to go on holiday a couple of times a year, a week or a weekend away in Europe. I didn't go abroad at all until I was deep into my 20s.

Able to by a house, not ale to buy a use.

Think I can out-prole you there, Nick

How many ORNAMENTS we there in your parents' house?!

Who's the poshest person on ILE? And why?

Were not we! Damn iPad.

I did three A-levels and an extra General Studies A-level which was compulsory at my Sxith-Form College which just happened to have one of the best average UCAS levels in the country. Cheating I reckon.

Mum never knew her dad, grew up in 2-up, 2-down council house in Sheffield that about 10 family members lived in, no inside toilet, etc etc

Best thing my family ever did was move into a council house!

we were so poor we couldn't afford feet

Not all of us were born into old money, like Noodle Vague

lex did you start at oxford?

Some of us had to go to hospital.

xpost TIMING!

Oh, I think you'll find he started long before that.

xpost TIMING!

yes

xp (timing?)

I was the first in our family to emerge from the oceans and walk on land

post, yesterday

http://images.wikia.com/renandstimpy/images/9/9d/Muddy_Mudskipper.jpg

You can mock all you like but it was a big deal. I'm proud of it.

might stick a few of those s-levels on my CV for a laugh. no-one ever queries that shit

I want to get involved in this 'least-posh British ILX graduate' competition but I think we need an independent adjudicator. (First attack: my mum grew up living in a single room with her parents and five siblings.)

Never heard of these S-levels but I did take Scottish Advanced Highers in their first year, which by the sounds of it were, at that point, as fucked up as what you were doing. It has unit tests that are just supposed to test your very foundational knowledge, except they were ridiculously difficult and we all kept failing them disastrously. I guess the teacher's growing anger at how broken the whole format was finally saw him snap, cuz when I got my results (good pass on the actual exam) I had mysteriously been awarded the units.

Advanced Highers? Those crazy schemes that people keep dreaming up. In my late seventies/early eighties Scotland day you did your Highers (usually in your fifth year, over one year) and then if you fancied it (few in my year did) you stayed on for sixth year and studied for the SYS (Sixth Year Studies) certificate, which was broadly along the lines of A-levels (i.e. three subjects), but over just one year. I don’t think anyone ever took it seriously, especially not the English universities (including Oxbridge) for which they were presumably tailored.

I was the only person at my school who chose to do SYS Maths so they sent me to another school in a taxi every morning at public expense. Completely pointless and I can't remember anything I learned after my Higher.

In SYS Physics I learned how to tune a guitar with an oscilloscope (along with finding out all the equations I had learned previously weren't nearly complicated enough).

I was literally the first person in our house to drink tea out of a cup, holding the handle with my hand, lifting it up and proper drinking it like. The way we did things in our street before then, the men would literally slither along the ground, approaching the tea in a circling movement partly out of fear of the unknown and partly with tentative bravado, jutting and then falling back, before gradually encircling it. then the lead man of the the street, Ron Hardy was his name but we used to call him Ron (or Ronno in his later years), Ron would then leap out at the teacup smashing it with his webbed fist and the other men of the street would then open their mouths and as the tea would fly out of the cup and they would attempt to catch any of the flying tea in their mouths.

meanwhile the little women would woop and holler shouts of encouragement, "get that fucking tea down you lad" they would shout as they jostled for position in between the strings of the harpsichord that had been donated to the area by a local outreach group that had begun to cut away at the thick forest of bamboo that separated our street from the modern world of televisions, haircuts and engines just the other side of the A52

It was then that i decided there had to be a better way, I cut off the wings i had been attempting to grow that summer, weaved myself a suit out of unanswered questions (a fucking mint suit that was not like the shit you get in barnes and noble) and literally ran directly to university.

just want to chip in and say that, even for blue-bloods like me, there's always someone farther up the ladder

effing queen

Must be galling being a Marquess, knowing there are Dukes sneering at you :-)

so many memories, post. so many memories.

Asked why people should vote for him, Ken jokes: "It's a simple choice between good and evil – I don't think it's been so clear since the great struggle between Churchill and Hitler… The people that don't vote for me will be weighed in the balance, come Judgement Day. The Archangel Gabriel will say, ' You didn't vote for Ken Livingstone in 2012. Oh dear, burn forever. Your skin flayed for all eternity.'… I'll come round with a serious pitch nearer the time."

Translated by the Evening Standard into BORIS JOHNSON IS HITLER, SAYS KEN LIVINGSTONE

tbf it is a choice between a corpulent tory w/a silly voice and an anti-semite noted for his (now former) moustache

tbf Ken has a silly voice too

Time was you could point at picaninnies in the street without anyone complaining, now look at where we are.

for really tho ken is going to get his arse handed to him

FFS Ken, you twit.

Which hapless LibDem sap gets to be Stalin in all this again?

Lembit?

Time was you could point at picaninnies in the street without anyone complaining, now look at where we are.

Tacky of you to bring that up again.

From The Sunday Times:

Some of David Cameron's ministers and closest advisers will personally "adopt" workless families to help the longterm unemployed off benefits and into work.

A group of ministers, MPs and special advisers will set an example by volunteering to become "family champions" under a scheme devised by Emma Harrison, the social entrepreneur whose company manages £300m of government training contracts. Chris Grayling, the employment minister, Tim Loughton, the children and families minister, and Jane Ellison, Tory MP for Battersea, which was hit by looting during the recent riots, have each volunteered to mentor a workless family. Rohan Silva, one of Cameron's senior policy advisers, has also volunteered.

Harrison wants the middle classes to follow their example to help families in which two or three generations have never worked. The mentors will introduce the families to their contacts, help them to manage their housekeeping money and guide them through bureaucracy.

"This isn't a gimmick, this is me seriously looking them in the eye and saying: come on then. Let's all get together and tackle this thing," Harrison said.

Jesus:

Harrison has pledged to take on a number of families herself and Cameron, although he does not have time to take part in the scheme himself, has promised to have a cup of tea with the ones she gets into work.

Families where two or more generations are out of work ? or have never worked ? are problem and a huge drain on the economy.

"Families like that are negative millionaires," said Harrison. "There are lots of different agencies whose job it is to have a poke at some aspect or other of a family's life - child protection or social work or whatever - but no one who ever sits down and says: what is the future for this family? "I came across one family that had 22 different agencies involved in their welfare. When you take into account all the workers, their managers, the infrastructure, it must take £1m a year to support them. And what's worse is that even so, these families have really crap lives. Really, really bad."

fuck me.

such a gimmick. there are cunts who can't even string together a sentence on the dole and talking to some tory dick is going to transform them?