Hancock's Half Hour

[Lons]

I find it funny that the same people who criticise the youth are usually the same people who blame parents for the faults of children. Not realising the irony that they themselves are the parents of the generation they criticise.

OK so where on google did you dig up that little "fact".

 

[woodhutt]

I spotted your (poorly disguised) dig :roll:

Actually, I had no one specific in mind at the time I wrote it but you seem to have taken it personally. This says rather more about you than me.
Believe me, if I wished to criticize you I would do so quite openly. I am too long in the tooth to bother with innuendo and my diplomacy skills diminish annually.

 

[Trevanion]

I dunno, I think there are tw*ts in every generation along with the decent people in every generation just as it's been for thousands of years, I don't think it's really a new thing at all, just human nature. Some who start out bad in life become excellent people with age, some who start out good in life become terrible people with age.

There's been a lot of complaints lately locally about teenagers vandalising, drinking and taking drugs in the local wildlife park and generally being a nuisance (or generally being teenagers, depending on how you look at things) and they get absolutely demonised and chastised for it. Sure, I'm certainly not suggesting what they do is acceptable in any way but they are simply a product of their own life up to this point, have a chat with them and you'll soon realise that most of them come from problem families with broken homes with little to no encouragement to do anything in life with no one to look up to. So, you've got the crappy home life which has failed them, then they go to school every day and most of the teachers there will discount and largely ignore them because they're one of those "problem" kids so they're pretty much left to their own devices whilst they're there and spent the whole time being told "If you don't do well in school and get into the top universities in the country you won't do well later in life" and if I were living a life like that every day hook me up to the bloody ether right now because any kind of escapism from that daily hell would be bliss.

Something I really want to look into once this crisis has cooled down quite a bit is perhaps seeing if there's any way to get these "problem" kids involved in woodwork/general practical skills somehow maybe through the school, college or youth club program, show them that you really don't need to have X amount of GCSEs or fancy £40k degrees to do well in life, whilst at the same time hopefully instilling a bit of an appreciation for the craft and the time and effort that goes into things that they may think of destroying for fun because they've literally got nothing else better to do. Give them something to aim for I guess? The woodwork certainly helped me immensely, before I got into it I was a pretty impatient short-fused individual who would always throw the first punch even at the slightest annoyance and now I'm like a Zen god.

I dunno, maybe it's a stupid idea and there's not a hope in hell of helping the kids out but someone's gotta try eh?

I guess you could say I grew up in the 'I, me mine' era if it continues past the late ninetys, but I like to think I have a little more empathy for crappy situations than most, or at least I try to sort out the situation in front of me instead of just moaning about it.

 

[Lons]

I dunno, I think there are tw*ts in every generation along with the decent people in every generation just as it's been for thousands of years, I don't think it's really a new thing at all, just human nature. Some who start out bad in life become excellent people with age, some who start out good in life become terrible people with age.

=D> =D>

 

[Blackswanwood]

I dunno, maybe it's a stupid idea and there's not a hope in hell of helping the kids out but someone's gotta try eh?

it.

It’s not a stupid idea - and you are right imho that every generation has it’s mix of good and bad.

 

[woodhutt]

Wow, so basically your saying anyone born after about 1970 ish is a selfish c___, who's opinion is not as worthy as someone else.
That some opinion, I'll grant you that

OK Bob. I'll put my hands up! I should have qualified my statement to acknowledge that not all those who fall within those parameters are selfish and whose opinions are valueless. I only have to look at my own kids and grand kids to know that. However, it must be admitted that over the past 40 - 50 years there has been a marked upswing in crime (OMG! I see some statistics about to be trotted out :roll: #-o ), particularly against the vulnerable and old. I know that I for one was brought up not to disrespect my elders. How many times have I seen an unruly kid in the street with its parents who are acting anti-socially and thought. "Poor little s*d. Starting life on the back foot". So yes, I do believe that many parents are to blame.
No, to drag my post back to its original intent it's scenes such as below that fire me up, taken from today's CNN website and headlined "England parties like there's no pandemic".

This is the kind of behaviour I was railing against.
Pete

 

[doctor Bob]

This is the kind of behaviour I was railing against.
Pete

Quite agree Pete, I'm pretty laid back about the whole thing but these scenes really upset me.
I was just against you tarring a couple of generations with the same brush.

A few posts have mentioned drugs ............. I'll be controversial, I loved them growing up, some of the best times ever but in the long term drugs and alcohol are no good. Caught up with me very quickly and cost me very dearly, both in relationships and career. Some people can handle them some can't. 22 years clean and sober I come from a very stable middle class family, but the attraction was strong and nothing would have stopped me.

 

[thetyreman]

I'm not christian but do agree with 'thou shalt not judge' which seems to be lost in the modern world we live in now.

 

[Jake]

My instinctive and necessarily subjective reaction is to suggest that less than 1% of anything is pretty rare. There wouldn't be much point in telling that to a bereaved parent, though.

Because it is so subjective, it is difficult. If you were told that you could attend a public event of your choice for free, but that there was going to be a terror attack at it which killed 1 in 100 of the attendees, would you go or not?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

... Trevanion wrote:
I dunno, I think there are tw*ts in every generation along with the decent people in every generation just as it's been for thousands of years ...

After decades of working in licensed trade, a couple of observations.
1/ There was far, far more vandalism 40 - 50 years ago than there is now. We had a maintenance man whose working week was virtually taken up repairing stuff that had been broken the night before. Indeed, half of mine sometimes was.
2/ The fights then were much cleaner and easier to deal with - they rarely involved knives, and never the threat of weapons, dirty syringes or anything like that. I remember only a couple of glassing in all those years (up to 2005). One of them was attempted on me - he was an 18st (not long) ex England under 21 No. 8. In my moment of need I laid him out. If two people started a fight we threw them out before others got involved and let them back in again the following week when they'd apologised. (I was top side of fifty when I last worked in that industry, and my time of coming out on top of fights with people 20 - 30 years younger than me were quickly coming to an end.
There are a lot of elderly people around who pretend they were always saints - they weren't. Useless, unpleasant ********* exist in all generations.
Rant over for the day.

 

[Andy Kev.]

My instinctive and necessarily subjective reaction is to suggest that less than 1% of anything is pretty rare. There wouldn't be much point in telling that to a bereaved parent, though.

Because it is so subjective, it is difficult. If you were told that you could attend a public event of your choice for free, but that there was going to be a terror attack at it which killed 1 in 100 of the attendees, would you go or not?

That's a very pertinent question although my answer might not be typical of the population at large.

I can imagine doing my own risk assessment and deciding to attend an event under potential terrorist threat but I admit that that is due to my Army experience and I'm quite happy about that kind of risk management. And it's the sort of risk that we all take. Consider e.g. travel on the London Underground and consider the factors involved in assessing the risk: London has a significant muslim population and opinion surveys show that a significant minority of UK muslims support jihadist attacks. Therefore there is a definite risk of being bombed when using the tube. It's the sort of risk I would usually accept because I like to think however rightly or wrongly that by my behaviour I can lessen the risk to me personally.

A viral threat is an entirely different matter. I have no control over it and short of getting a full blown respirator and noddy suit there are no counter measures which offer sufficiently high levels of security. I have no choice but to live with that lack of security in my day to day environment but would I do something trivial like taking a holiday in e.g. Italy? No. The risk, however small, is just not worth it for a trivial activity.

So it seems to add up to this: Were I to live and work in a place with a significant level of terrorist threat, I know from experience that I will accept that threat because of real life needs but were I to fancy a holiday in a region with a low level of viral threat, I would be unlikely to take the risk for the sake of doing nothing more than indulging myself (and I've lived in areas with relatively high levels of unpleasant tropical disease threat but accepted that because of professional necessity).

Does that answer your question?

 

[doctor Bob]

I can imagine doing my own risk assessment and deciding to attend an event under potential terrorist threat but I admit that that is due to my Army experience and I'm quite happy about that kind of risk management.

I don't see what army experience has to do with this, million's of people do this every day? I get that you may feel more able if something was to happen.

 

[Andy Kev.]

The reason I mentioned my Army experience was that I used to be involved in producing things like threat assessments. I agree with you that many people will follow the same or similar processes according to their own instincts and inclinations without putting a formal name on it. There are also many people who tend not to think and who have a herd mentality and are so potential prey to all kinds of nonsense and there are of course people with ideological and political axes to grind who will blind themselves to various factors. For instance, I am sure that in some circles the very fact that I chose to specifically mention survey results from UK muslims would be shouted down as being racist. To do that would be folly because it would mean ignoring some aspects of reality.

Add in to all that the wilful stupidity which often appears in the media and the establishment and it's a wonder that people can ever make rational decisions at all. When I was in the army I lost time of the number of occasions on which my jaw dropped at reporting in the media of matters of which I knew the facts. As the old saying has it, "Never believe what you read in the papers", to which I would add, "If it's on the BBC, you'd probably be best served by switching channels". Then again, I've become very sceptical over the years.

 

[Terry - Somerset]

I think most people make intuitive but ill uninformed decisions when it comes to objectively evaluating risk.

Deaths from terrorism in the UK are around 200 in the last 20 years. Deaths on the roads in the same period are approx 60000 (300 times more likely). Yet most individuals are concerned with bombs, kinives and guns, and happily get into a car or cross the road several times a day.

Coronary heart disease kills around 64000 a year in the UK (180 per day). Today a heart attack is a bigger risk than Covid-19. I know they are fundamentally different things - but we go to great lengths to avoid coronavirus, and many do almost nothing as individuals to combat heart disease.

And finally the the level of acceptable risk relates to the "reward" if the risk is taken. Is a day trip to the beach on a warm sunny day worth the risk of contracting or spreading CV-19. The urge for self-indulgence clearly dominates social responsibility and self-preservation!

 

[Rorschach]

Is a day trip to the beach on a warm sunny day worth the risk of contracting or spreading CV-19. The urge for self-indulgence clearly dominates social responsibility and self-preservation!

Thing is though, what is the risk? You are outdoors in scorching hot weather. How likely are you to contract C19 in that situation? What would be the infection mechanism?

 

[Jake]

I can imagine doing my own risk assessment and deciding to attend an event under potential terrorist threat but I admit that that is due to my Army experience and I'm quite happy about that kind of risk management.

I don't see what army experience has to do with this, million's of people do this every day? I get that you may feel more able if something was to happen.

Millions of people don't do this every day, they do rationally take much smaller risks. The thought experiment is that is it is known in advance that 1 in 100 attendees will die at the event, to test whether the classification of a 1% risk as small would in fact be subjectively acceptable. It isn't a potential attack, it is one which is going to happen and is going to kill 1 in 100 of the people present.

 

[Andy Kev.]

I think most people make intuitive but ill uninformed decisions when it comes to objectively evaluating risk.

Deaths from terrorism in the UK are around 200 in the last 20 years. Deaths on the roads in the same period are approx 60000 (300 times more likely). Yet most individuals are concerned with bombs, kinives and guns, and happily get into a car or cross the road several times a day.

Coronary heart disease kills around 64000 a year in the UK (180 per day). Today a heart attack is a bigger risk than Covid-19. I know they are fundamentally different things - but we go to great lengths to avoid coronavirus, and many do almost nothing as individuals to combat heart disease.

And finally the the level of acceptable risk relates to the "reward" if the risk is taken. Is a day trip to the beach on a warm sunny day worth the risk of contracting or spreading CV-19. The urge for self-indulgence clearly dominates social responsibility and self-preservation!

I suspect that none of us will have anything particularly controversial to say about this. I've certainly got no argument with any of that. I suggest that the psychology of it is interesting though. Traffic accident deaths are probably scene as a "legitimate" part of every day life as are deaths from heart attacks. Certainly it would be extremely rare for malice to be involved whereas with terrorist attacks there is 100% maliciousness at the core of it.

Terrorists naturally rely on the psychological effects of their actions. They know that they will never achieve anything directly by their actions (assuming no access to nuclear or chemical agents). They rely wholly on publicity and the effect that that has in shaping public perception. And with the press being ever ready to happily oblige, their actions will continue. Nonetheless they are morally beyond the pale and these people have to be dealt with.

 

[Chris152]

Is a day trip to the beach on a warm sunny day worth the risk of contracting or spreading CV-19. The urge for self-indulgence clearly dominates social responsibility and self-preservation!

Thing is though, what is the risk? You are outdoors in scorching hot weather. How likely are you to contract C19 in that situation? What would be the infection mechanism?

I guess on the beach it's people coughing/ sneezing in close proximity to others. Handrails constantly used on the way down to the beach and along the front; keypads and other bits of the machine you use to pay for parking; drinks bottles, ice creams etc bought from a counter (with cash?) - all that rubbish on the beach is coming form somewhere ( ); petrol stations to fuel up for the road trips; public toilets at the beaches; the chippy. Just guessing at examples and don't know the risk levels. All normal stuff, all could be mitigated to varying degrees, depending how seriously people take the threat.

We've now been to the beach a couple of times since full lockdown, shortly after dawn, no crowds, get in the sea without touching anything, get out, come home.

 

[doctor Bob]

I can imagine doing my own risk assessment and deciding to attend an event under potential terrorist threat but I admit that that is due to my Army experience and I'm quite happy about that kind of risk management.

I don't see what army experience has to do with this, million's of people do this every day? I get that you may feel more able if something was to happen.

Millions of people don't do this every day, they do rationally take much smaller risks. The thought experiment is that is it is known in advance that 1 in 100 attendees will die at the event, to test whether the classification of a 1% risk as small would in fact be subjectively acceptable. It isn't a potential attack, it is one which is going to happen and is going to kill 1 in 100 of the people present.

Yes sorry Jake I wasn't really reffering to your referenced attack, more just everyday life and threat and how being ex army makes a difference. I'm sure there are a lot of bright army people and also a lot of dumb army people, most of my ex army friends were squaddies and I wouldn't trust their judgement any more than the next man.

 

[Rorschach]

I guess on the beach it's people coughing/ sneezing in close proximity to others. Handrails constantly used on the way down to the beach and along the front; keypads and other bits of the machine you use to pay for parking; drinks bottles, ice creams etc bought from a counter (with cash?) - all that rubbish on the beach is coming form somewhere ( ); petrol stations to fuel up for the road trips; public toilets at the beaches; the chippy. Just guessing at examples and don't know the risk levels. All normal stuff, all could be mitigated to varying degrees, depending how seriously people take the threat.

We've now been to the beach a couple of times since full lockdown, shortly after dawn, no crowds, get in the sea without touching anything, get out, come home.

Well coughing and sneezing is unlikely to be a problem in a wide open space like a beach with a sea breeze and scorching sunshine. As they keep telling us it is near impossible to catch it outdoors if you maintain some social distance of around a meter.

All those other things you mention are day to day things that we all do at the moment and are easily mitigated with a bit of hand gel.

I can't see the problem myself.


As for those who mention the rubbish. I calculate the rubbish to be 66g per person, so not exactly a lot and we don't know if that includes what was put into the bins as the MSM are very good at telling porkies.