Our fans are so thick | Page 8 | Vital Football

Our fans are so thick

Skip_4 - 26/2/2017 17:15

I'm only for high numbers going off to uni if the graduate opportunities can sustain it. Otherwise it's years of your life gone and massive debt taken on for not a lot in return. I'm not against a highly educated society but it doesn't necessarily all have to be in the academic sense.

I started out as Labour but Blair/Brown managed to turn me to the other side I guess. My political ideas evolved as I got older for better or worse! I cant comment on the Thatcher years, you can imagine what my mining family think of them but I was busy playing with ninja turtles and ghostbusters in the 80s to be fair.

My family and community went to shit when our pit closed in the early 90s but that was a quarter of a century ago...it doesn't affect my politics now.

ps - if you don't teach history then you probably should, and no that is not a dig.
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U 2 should get a room. Tbf Pope is giving you 1 version of history- there are many. As it happens I agree with Pope so fook the other versions.
 
Apollyon - 26/2/2017 22:32

ForestersRed - 26/2/2017 22:27

Apollyon - 26/2/2017 21:23


Popey, your Lawrencian view of these pit men is pretty narrow.

Feco, my old man (RIP) told me timbering was 2' 6" down Babbo.
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Good Owd Babbo! I remember it well Apollyon.Worked there from 1954 to 1976 as a face worker and later as a Deputy. Bloody hard work but great cameraderie.Might have known your dad if he was there during that time.Not quite sure what was meant by the "timbering was 2'6" down Babbo"
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2'6" down at the face FR


With you being there that long you would probably know my family and our friends
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Possibly but at my age memory is not my strongest asset.Give us a clue ?
 
All this mining talk reminds me of my grandad who we lost last year thanks to the pit dust catching up with him...

Anyone fancy a pint of Mansfield, some woodbines and a game of dominoes?

And no Radford, I'm not trying to get Pope drunk :17:
 
Pope John XXIII - 26/2/2017 22:35

Apollyon - 26/2/2017 22:13

Its a very big tar brush Feco (not having a go Pope)

I used to enjoy going for a drink with the old boys at the welfare on Saturday dinners. Graham Allen (Labour MP , Nottingham North) even used to pop along. They were intelligent, articulate, proud men. They liked a drink and had an opinion. Dont get me wrong, there was the odd toe rag, you get them in every walk of life (even teaching) but on the whole they were much more than thick grafters. There were challenges, obstacles and they had to think on their feet to ensure not only theirs, but everyones (even the toe rags) safety
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I honestly don't believe there is such a thing as 'thick'.

But I've worked with plenty of kids that I think could have been brilliant in a mining career but would never have coped dealing with arsehole customers in a shop or selling insurance, etc.

Not saying one is easy. It's about type of personality and the kind of environment you can cope with.

I could deal with angry people all day long and spend all day playing the psychologically game with people and enjoy it. Would I have the balls to go down into the dark every day? I could make myself, but I would hate every minute.

That's what I'm getting at.
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Understand that entirely.

On the point of personality, in the early 1990's I went to the gold mines in Ghana to install a new conveyor system. I was the 'expert' to lead a team of locals, I was 25 at the time but with nearly 10 years experience.

The Ghanians were all my age, but significantly less experienced. After about 2 hours I had figured out why, they were all graduates from Ghanian Universities, basically working for the government for 2 years in payback for thier education. It was quite clear, I was the least educated of the lot.
I believe they didn't have any say in where they were posted, and it was interesting to see some where natural underground whilst others where like fish out of water. Without exception they were all able to adapt to the environment, but for some it was a challenge.

On another point, the local football team Goldfields from Obuasi play in a stadium named after a guy from Mansfield, Len Clay.
He was a mine manager and unfortunately was killed in a road traffic accident heading back to site from Accra. Being well liked and respected, the new stadium was named in his honor.

I am one of the lucky ones, mining gave me many amazing life experiences, being crap at school wasn't so bad after all!!
 
It's the morning after over here and it's taken me an hour of very enjoyable reading to get up to date. A few points emerge.
1. I now know that I'm too old to be a "baby boomer", so am not to blame for any of this.
2. Also believe that itto knows how to start a talkfest. It's a complement itto.
3. In my youth have played quite a bit of football in Skips neck of the woods.
4. My maternal grandfather was a miner when younger.
5. As a schoolboy going to and from school on the bus always tried to avoid sitting next to a miner coming off shift. For one reason only and that was to avoid getting coaldust all over the one pair of school shorts I owned, otherwise a good bollocking off my mother. No showers at that pit.
6. I really do envy Fecos ability to get off his backside and make things work.
7. I was 35 when leaving UK for Oz and as such qualified for a bit of a pension only to find that it wasn't indexed, it.s now worth next to nothing and to me is typical of some of the small minded Govts you lot have to put up with.
8. The UK economy seems to be quite a bit worse than I thought. Hope I'm wrong.

I could probably go further but the knowledge that none of us seem to have the answers is starting to get me down a bit. At least over here we have a building boom going at last, it's taken much too long but it's helping.
I'm waiting to find out how Trump is going to get their manufacturing sector going and then we can do the same over here. Maybe you lot as well. I can hardly wait!

And Pope, your job must be rewarding in part when you see some of your efforts with todays youth come to a decent conclusion especially having to deal with a proportion who will never ever want to get off their backsides. We have the very same problem here and we don't know how to fix it either, not for lack of trying.

And to think that we all support Nottm Forest, who'd have thought it.

 
Pope John XXIII - 26/2/2017 22:09

Woanz - 26/2/2017 21:54

Pope John XXIII - 26/2/2017 17:00

Skip_4 - 26/2/2017 15:47

Couldn't agree more Feco, we need to address the skills shortage in this country with proper apprenticeships and a more balanced education system in terms of the academic/vocational focus.

It was Labour who decided to put arbitrary targets on the number going to university, 50% I think it was initially. It helped with the unemployment figures of course but didn't automatically make everyone smarter, and there are nowhere near enough jobs to support this. I know the sector very well but even if you didn't, we clearly have far too many kids going to University, does it help anyone in the long run?
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You keep bashing the Labour Party of Blair and putting the blame on them. Sorry, I know you are a Tory but this goes back to Thatcher- and before that, the Trade Unions. Before I start I should point out my own biases- politically I am ex-Labour; homeless party-wise in the Corbyn era.

Labour did indeed put a 50% target on university. This was by no means a bad thing. Why on earth would anyone think a population haven't a high level of education could be a bad thing?

Finland have an 80% university attendance rate
with women and nearly that with men. Their education system is frequently at the top of rankings (I've spend time in one of their schools) and their literacy is streets ahead of ours. Having parents that are university educated is not a bad thing. Having whole community's that are highly educated is a wonderful thing.

Do you think the Finns would elect Donald Trump? No chance. But the Americans, where some states have education systems that fail to match up to the developing world are a nation that shows what happens when ignorance wins.

The reality is, Thatcher destroyed whole communities for ideological reasons. Seduced by Neo-liberalism, she attacked the respectable working class mercilessly, devastating communities without any thought to how to replace the industries she eliminated.

She did this because she absolutely believed in market economics. She believed that the market would always sort itself out if just left alone. There was no evidence for this and plenty against, with this laissez-faire approach having been abandoned 100 years before.

So she closed the mines, she sold off industry, she destroyed the industry of most northern cities and assumed the market would adjust. And it didn't. The financial services she created in the south thrived. But with no govt interference the north lived on scraps.

This in turn was an ideological crusade born from the utter pisstaking of the unions in the 1960's and 70's. Pompous windbags managed to take control and make a career out of causing trouble. They made industry uncompetitive, reluctant to modernise and hopelessly unprofitable while believeing they could interfere in politics. Their final defeat in 1984 was inevitable- they had become a malevolent force and gave Thatcher the excuse she needed to behead the working class.

So what has happened? The traditional working class barely exists. In the 50's and 60's, if you were born working class that is largely where you stayed. But they were respectable, responsible and the best could have positions of real power and respect in the community.

Since then, the top half have ascended to the middle class. Some have become very wealthy. There are many in that category on here, including myself (not the wealth bit)

But some have sunk. I have encountered many children and families who are 3rd generation unemployed, who know no one who works and not one of them in the family is capable of working due to addiction or mental Illness. Whole communities where the only work is minimum wage shop jobs, the only local shops are pound shops, betting shops, off licences and tanning salons. Families where mental illness is endemic and addiction to something is expected.

There are no jobs for them. I've taught the children of this group. Many wouldn't be capable of a retail job; they would not be mentally able to cope with the unpredictability. You are talking about kids who freak out and truant because they can't cope with the idea of a cover lesson or even their normal lesson taking place in a different room.

These families have always existed. But they could work in repetitive, predictable work in the mines, on assembly lines, on factory floors. They did the same thing all the time and gained respectability and responsibility without having the pressure of having to think quickly on their feet. That is why retail jobs were well paid, because it was thinking work.

But those jobs are almost universally gone now.

So for me, the idea of a higher % of people having gone to university makes sense because that is the way the world is moving- to skilled, thinking work. It's an obvious answer to a massive problem. Probably not the right answer per se, but a much better attempt than Cameron ever tried
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Again working down mine is not predictable or easy it was bloody dangerous & is disrespectful to all who did it to imply otherwise.
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This is not a thread to attack posters.

Working on an assembly line isn't easy or safe either.

But it is work that gives you a task that you can learn well over time with the help of a close band of people. I hope you, with your extensive mining experience can at least agree with that
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"This is not a thread to attack posters. "

"with your extensive mining experience "

Dearie me George! You really are a pompous arsehole hypocrite that this site was better without. :18:

 
Woanz - 27/2/2017 10:22

Pope John XXIII - 26/2/2017 22:09

Woanz - 26/2/2017 21:54

Pope John XXIII - 26/2/2017 17:00

Skip_4 - 26/2/2017 15:47

Couldn't agree more Feco, we need to address the skills shortage in this country with proper apprenticeships and a more balanced education system in terms of the academic/vocational focus.

It was Labour who decided to put arbitrary targets on the number going to university, 50% I think it was initially. It helped with the unemployment figures of course but didn't automatically make everyone smarter, and there are nowhere near enough jobs to support this. I know the sector very well but even if you didn't, we clearly have far too many kids going to University, does it help anyone in the long run?
Click to expand...

You keep bashing the Labour Party of Blair and putting the blame on them. Sorry, I know you are a Tory but this goes back to Thatcher- and before that, the Trade Unions. Before I start I should point out my own biases- politically I am ex-Labour; homeless party-wise in the Corbyn era.

Labour did indeed put a 50% target on university. This was by no means a bad thing. Why on earth would anyone think a population haven't a high level of education could be a bad thing?

Finland have an 80% university attendance rate
with women and nearly that with men. Their education system is frequently at the top of rankings (I've spend time in one of their schools) and their literacy is streets ahead of ours. Having parents that are university educated is not a bad thing. Having whole community's that are highly educated is a wonderful thing.

Do you think the Finns would elect Donald Trump? No chance. But the Americans, where some states have education systems that fail to match up to the developing world are a nation that shows what happens when ignorance wins.

The reality is, Thatcher destroyed whole communities for ideological reasons. Seduced by Neo-liberalism, she attacked the respectable working class mercilessly, devastating communities without any thought to how to replace the industries she eliminated.

She did this because she absolutely believed in market economics. She believed that the market would always sort itself out if just left alone. There was no evidence for this and plenty against, with this laissez-faire approach having been abandoned 100 years before.

So she closed the mines, she sold off industry, she destroyed the industry of most northern cities and assumed the market would adjust. And it didn't. The financial services she created in the south thrived. But with no govt interference the north lived on scraps.

This in turn was an ideological crusade born from the utter pisstaking of the unions in the 1960's and 70's. Pompous windbags managed to take control and make a career out of causing trouble. They made industry uncompetitive, reluctant to modernise and hopelessly unprofitable while believeing they could interfere in politics. Their final defeat in 1984 was inevitable- they had become a malevolent force and gave Thatcher the excuse she needed to behead the working class.

So what has happened? The traditional working class barely exists. In the 50's and 60's, if you were born working class that is largely where you stayed. But they were respectable, responsible and the best could have positions of real power and respect in the community.

Since then, the top half have ascended to the middle class. Some have become very wealthy. There are many in that category on here, including myself (not the wealth bit)

But some have sunk. I have encountered many children and families who are 3rd generation unemployed, who know no one who works and not one of them in the family is capable of working due to addiction or mental Illness. Whole communities where the only work is minimum wage shop jobs, the only local shops are pound shops, betting shops, off licences and tanning salons. Families where mental illness is endemic and addiction to something is expected.

There are no jobs for them. I've taught the children of this group. Many wouldn't be capable of a retail job; they would not be mentally able to cope with the unpredictability. You are talking about kids who freak out and truant because they can't cope with the idea of a cover lesson or even their normal lesson taking place in a different room.

These families have always existed. But they could work in repetitive, predictable work in the mines, on assembly lines, on factory floors. They did the same thing all the time and gained respectability and responsibility without having the pressure of having to think quickly on their feet. That is why retail jobs were well paid, because it was thinking work.

But those jobs are almost universally gone now.

So for me, the idea of a higher % of people having gone to university makes sense because that is the way the world is moving- to skilled, thinking work. It's an obvious answer to a massive problem. Probably not the right answer per se, but a much better attempt than Cameron ever tried
Click to expand...


Again working down mine is not predictable or easy it was bloody dangerous & is disrespectful to all who did it to imply otherwise.
Click to expand...

This is not a thread to attack posters.

Working on an assembly line isn't easy or safe either.

But it is work that gives you a task that you can learn well over time with the help of a close band of people. I hope you, with your extensive mining experience can at least agree with that
Click to expand...

"This is not a thread to attack posters. "

"with your extensive mining experience "

Dearie me George! You really are a pompous arsehole hypocrite that this site was better without. :18:
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Take it easy woanz, this site is all about different views, if you're going to get critical why not give a decent sort of review instead of just coming out with a shortsighted sort of complaint. You're not a mug and you could do better than this. For God's sake just for once get off your high horse and get down to basics. Why not explain your view instead of just making a complaint,
 
Brilliant thread lads..

Don't really agree with many of the views expressed on here -probably because I am one of the baby boomers who has done ok - but I have enjoyed reading the entries.

Both my father and my father in law were miners all their lives but I still think Thatcher was a saviour for the country. You had to live it to realise what a mess we were in when she took over. God knows where we would have ended up without her strong leadership
 
bedfordred - 27/2/2017 14:05

Brilliant thread lads..

Don't really agree with many of the views expressed on here -probably because I am one of the baby boomers who has done ok - but I have enjoyed reading the entries.

Both my father and my father in law were miners all their lives but I still think Thatcher was a saviour for the country. You had to live it to realise what a mess we were in when she took over. God knows where we would have ended up without her strong leadership
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possibly a few more council houses and bit less reliance on Russian gas... I could go on and on.

On the plus side tho was the single european market she almost single handedly bludgeoned the rest of europe into, that we have recently voted to leave.
 
bedfordred - 27/2/2017 14:05

God knows where we would have ended up without her strong leadership
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Probably manufacturing a lot more and actually owning our own utilities, railways and telecommunications. Other than that she did alright. C+
 
radfordinlondon - 27/2/2017 15:01

bedfordred - 27/2/2017 14:05

Brilliant thread lads..

Don't really agree with many of the views expressed on here -probably because I am one of the baby boomers who has done ok - but I have enjoyed reading the entries.

Both my father and my father in law were miners all their lives but I still think Thatcher was a saviour for the country. You had to live it to realise what a mess we were in when she took over. God knows where we would have ended up without her strong leadership
Click to expand...

possibly a few more council houses and bit less reliance on Russian gas... I could go on and on.

On the plus side tho was the single european market she almost single handedly bludgeoned the rest of europe into, that we have recently voted to leave.
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This
 
ForestersRed - 27/2/2017 15:53

Lienking - 27/2/2017 11:16

I was a minor when I was a young boy!
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I also was a minor when I became a miner but if I had left to do my National Service in the army I would have become a major.
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Bloody hell serri you must be knocking on for 78 now? I did inbox you as well you old fart
 
Apollyon - 27/2/2017 19:43

ForestersRed - 27/2/2017 15:53

Lienking - 27/2/2017 11:16

I was a minor when I was a young boy!
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I also was a minor when I became a miner but if I had left to do my National Service in the army I would have become a major.
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Bloody hell serri you must be knocking on for 78 now? I did inbox you as well you old fart
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Hint: Born in 1937 . Seen your pm but not had time to respond serry.That brings back memories when everybody was addressed as serry.Wonder where that originated.
 
This thread has taken a surprising turn for me, I've learned more in the last 3 days than I thought possible. In spite of living here in Oz for the last 50 years I still thought that I'd maintained enough connections back in the old country to stay in touch. I made a mistake there and it's not just politics either although I'm much better informed now than I was. And what a great variety of posters you've turned out to be, many and varied and by and large able to agree to an extent.

Although I'm a naturalized Aussie it's impossible to ignore my roots and in any case I'd never do that. It did remind me that as a very small kid I was at school in Gedling next to the slag heap at the colliery, I'd forgotten all about that until you blokes started talking about pits and mining. Then the memories starting coming back, actually flooding back. And I've loved it.

Mining over here has changed and it's mainly open cut, fly in fly out style and very well paid, nothing like the old days. One of my grandsons is toying with the idea of having a go at this on the basis if he sticks it for 2 years he has the deposit for a house and more besides.. Got to move with the times or you're sunk,so he gets encouragement from me.

Don't need telling that this is nothing to do with Forest but the way things are at the moment this has been much more satisfying.

:14:
 
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