The Recession - Off Topic
The Recession - Off Topic
by slapstickfan » 24 Apr 2010, 14:18
Been off the board for a bit. Finally lost my job at the printing works and spent months trying to get a job keep my property...had to give up my broadband too. This recession had been one sent from hell for me. Well got a contract at another print works in March so things are looking up again and all the signs are that the downturn is coming to an end. Was wondering how the recession has affected others on here?
- slapstickfan
- Posts: 204 [ View ]
- Joined: 10 Apr 2007, 13:44
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by Phantom » 24 Apr 2010, 15:46
Shit, man. That really does sound hellish. All praise to you for staying strong and weathering the storm. I feel terrible for you.
And on a more positive note - welcome back to the forums.
Phantom
And on a more positive note - welcome back to the forums.
Phantom
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by T-34 » 24 Apr 2010, 17:35
Glad to see things are looking up for you
With the state of the job market I decided it was a good time to start university. I'm studying civil and coastal engineering, but they don't expect the job market for graduates in that field to pick up until 2012 - the construction industry was hit pretty hard. Good news is I'll be graduating in 2013 and with the coastal aspect I'm hoping something will come up; unless we get another recession
With the state of the job market I decided it was a good time to start university. I'm studying civil and coastal engineering, but they don't expect the job market for graduates in that field to pick up until 2012 - the construction industry was hit pretty hard. Good news is I'll be graduating in 2013 and with the coastal aspect I'm hoping something will come up; unless we get another recession
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by messylaura » 24 Apr 2010, 17:49
i'm a panel beater, been at a london cab repair shop for the last 10 or so years, not been affected by the resession one bit
right at the very beginning of the 'resession', you know, when everyone started using the buzz words, to me they seemed like it was all created and caused by the goverment and media before anything had actully happened,
if you tell enough people something they will eventully start reacting to it and you get a snowball effect where it becomes reality
i saw alot of people react to being told there was a resession before the physical effects ever happened, most likely cause by the reaction
right at the very beginning of the 'resession', you know, when everyone started using the buzz words, to me they seemed like it was all created and caused by the goverment and media before anything had actully happened,
if you tell enough people something they will eventully start reacting to it and you get a snowball effect where it becomes reality
i saw alot of people react to being told there was a resession before the physical effects ever happened, most likely cause by the reaction
wam search words: Мокрая, ливень, alluvione
-
messylaura - Posts: 548 [ View ]
- Joined: 11 Sep 2006, 19:43
- Location: N.London (male)
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by Phantom » 25 Apr 2010, 00:44
Funny that, Laura. Last year I found myself wondering if swine flu was actually real, or just something to distract everyone from something else. Seems to have vansihed as suddenly as it sprung up. Back then, the media would have had us believe swine flu was a global epidemic that was going to kill a third of the planet's population.
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by mr angry » 25 Apr 2010, 08:33
see where youre coming from on this. Anyone remember the "millennium bug" which was the big scare story of 1999. As soon as it became 2000 all the computers would crash, Loads of money made by IT people and when New years day 200o finally arrived, guess what, absolutely nothing whatsoever happened.
Another one, the biggest ever in my opinion, is climate change. The climate has been changing for hundreds of years, it warmed up during the time of the Roman occupation of Britain and through the Middle Ages, then went cold in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, the River Thames used to freeze every year, then went on a warming cycle again. Climate change is the best con of all time, theres something in it for everyone, politicians use it as an excuse to increase taxes and impose opprressive legislation, buig business sees it as an opportunity to sell supposedly environmentally friendly products which we dont need, that stupid car scrappage scheme was an example, and its given the must protest about something brigade something to go on about now that nuclear weapons are no longer a live issue. Finally, it creates lots of well paid non jobs so it is kept going by the political establishment
rant over
Another one, the biggest ever in my opinion, is climate change. The climate has been changing for hundreds of years, it warmed up during the time of the Roman occupation of Britain and through the Middle Ages, then went cold in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, the River Thames used to freeze every year, then went on a warming cycle again. Climate change is the best con of all time, theres something in it for everyone, politicians use it as an excuse to increase taxes and impose opprressive legislation, buig business sees it as an opportunity to sell supposedly environmentally friendly products which we dont need, that stupid car scrappage scheme was an example, and its given the must protest about something brigade something to go on about now that nuclear weapons are no longer a live issue. Finally, it creates lots of well paid non jobs so it is kept going by the political establishment
rant over
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by Lizzie_Claymore » 25 Apr 2010, 09:16
I detect a distinct undercurrent of Daily Mail readership creeping into this forum! Yikes! I do, however, agree about the car scrappage scheme which is something the SMMT have been trying to get through parliament for years and finally managed it last year. A ludicrous waste of resources if ever there was one - we paid £300m of our tax money (in the first tranche alone - more later when it ran out, as the article I wrote at the start of it precisely predicted) to buy and crush cars that were only half way through their viable life (yeah - really environmentally friendly) and then encouraged people to buy new small cars that don't last as long and 80% of which are made abroad anyway. (We mostly make the larger cars here so we were effectively subsidising our competitors. How's that supposed to help, exactly?)
However, on the Millennium Bug, I'm exasperated that because there was no major disaster, people think the risk wasn't there. In reality, there were many well-documented instances at the time that were *fixed* (hence nothing to see on the day) that would have been genuinely disastrous if all the efforts hadn't been put in. In other words, it was a great success, not a failure! There was a documentary about this on radio 4 only a few months ago where they were interviewing people who had been involved and they were revealing everything that was done at the time.
Similarly, although I agree that the media does like to 'talk up' a good story (particularly some of the appallingly biased print media we have in the UK - the 'red tops' in particular - media for the 'hard of thinking'!), the idea that the recession was created by governments and the media is ludicrously naive. The problem was created by banks lending people money they could never afford to pay back simply so that the bankers could get their performance-related pay. It was 'pass the parcel' time and then the music stopped. I had been warning people about this several years before it happened and most simply didn't want to know. Indeed, some said that I "should stop thinking that way and it wouldn't then happen", as if simply thinking or talking about it would actually create it. It was evident to anyone who was prepared to think ahead that it was going to happen. Burying one's head, Ostrich-like, in the sand doesn't make the threat go away! The real warning that things were going to go pear-shaped was when the Baltic Dry Index went into a 94% freefall over a 6 month period, some time before everything else went down, yet still people didn't believe it was going to happen. (The BDI is a good indicator of global raw material demand ahead of production.)
Nonetheless, I feel for those of us not on rich bankers' bonuses who are now under threat. We are expecting around 300 redundancies where I work too and people in the public sector, providing much-needed services for everyone (and many of those being on lower than average salaries) are the ones paying for the unfettered rampant capitalism that stems back to Margaret Thatcher's de-regulation of The City on 27th October 1986 and the idea that a country can exist on service sector alone without any manufacturing. "Let the markets decide", she said. Well, they have - and look where it's got us! The rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. I'm certainly not against private enterprise but there have to be limits on the banks. There is still a risk that they'll do it again at the moment as the regulation is still not properly in place. We also need a proper mixed economy - you can't create wealth if the entire nation just cuts each other's hair and takes in each other's washing!
The next thing to watch out for is inflation rising over the next few years as the effect of all the money 'created' by the Bank of England starts to be felt. If that happens, interest rates will rise sharply from their historic lows, which could in itself trigger lower growth - so we might see a return to stagflation. I hope not, however!
Oh yes, and on Climate Change, the trick is to go with the scientific *evidence*, not the opinion of those who stand to lose money if we switch fuel production. That's why Bush and Cheney & Co were so vocal about it over the last decade - they were oil men, remember! Vested interests? Oooh, no, no!
Remember also that, even irrespective of the issue of what's causing the change, the thing that those who deny Climate Change conveniently ignore is the fact that fossil fuel is running out, anyway. I remember, as a student some 25 years ago, doing power design projects on fuel supply and it was a hell of an eye-opener. *We* knew even then that there would be likely to be power cuts in the mid 2010-2020 decade if nothing was done yet still we had the 'dash for gas' in the late 1980s. This means that not only is our North Sea gas already running down (we are now a net importer, unlike then) but also we now use it to generate a lot of our electricity - a double whammy. That's another example where planning ahead (as the old CEGB used to do) has gone by the wayside to the utility companies (now many of them foreign-owned) whose only interest over the last 20 years has been how to make the fastest buck. If we don't do something about utilising alternative energy (and, indeed, it may already be too late to avoid this), we can expect power cuts within the next decade. It's not just the obvious power that will be affected either. You may not be aware that one of the reasons that the companies owning the trains in the UK (which lease them to the myriad train operating companies) have held back on ordering the latest batch of diesel multiple units is because they've said that the indications are that the diesel fuel will not be available at a sufficiently economic price over the life of the train (about 25 years) to make them viable, so that gives you an idea of what is to come and nearly everyone is trying to ignore it!
Even before the power cuts happen, the increasing demand for oil and gas (and electricity made from gas) will mean that the economics of production will change. The prices will rise significantly and will have a major effect on the economy, so failing to find alternatives is tantamount to being that Ostrich again, not only ecologically but also economically. Belief is one thing - scientific and mathematical evidence is another. *You* can *believe* the moon is made of green cheese if you want to. *I* trust evidence.
However, on the Millennium Bug, I'm exasperated that because there was no major disaster, people think the risk wasn't there. In reality, there were many well-documented instances at the time that were *fixed* (hence nothing to see on the day) that would have been genuinely disastrous if all the efforts hadn't been put in. In other words, it was a great success, not a failure! There was a documentary about this on radio 4 only a few months ago where they were interviewing people who had been involved and they were revealing everything that was done at the time.
Similarly, although I agree that the media does like to 'talk up' a good story (particularly some of the appallingly biased print media we have in the UK - the 'red tops' in particular - media for the 'hard of thinking'!), the idea that the recession was created by governments and the media is ludicrously naive. The problem was created by banks lending people money they could never afford to pay back simply so that the bankers could get their performance-related pay. It was 'pass the parcel' time and then the music stopped. I had been warning people about this several years before it happened and most simply didn't want to know. Indeed, some said that I "should stop thinking that way and it wouldn't then happen", as if simply thinking or talking about it would actually create it. It was evident to anyone who was prepared to think ahead that it was going to happen. Burying one's head, Ostrich-like, in the sand doesn't make the threat go away! The real warning that things were going to go pear-shaped was when the Baltic Dry Index went into a 94% freefall over a 6 month period, some time before everything else went down, yet still people didn't believe it was going to happen. (The BDI is a good indicator of global raw material demand ahead of production.)
Nonetheless, I feel for those of us not on rich bankers' bonuses who are now under threat. We are expecting around 300 redundancies where I work too and people in the public sector, providing much-needed services for everyone (and many of those being on lower than average salaries) are the ones paying for the unfettered rampant capitalism that stems back to Margaret Thatcher's de-regulation of The City on 27th October 1986 and the idea that a country can exist on service sector alone without any manufacturing. "Let the markets decide", she said. Well, they have - and look where it's got us! The rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. I'm certainly not against private enterprise but there have to be limits on the banks. There is still a risk that they'll do it again at the moment as the regulation is still not properly in place. We also need a proper mixed economy - you can't create wealth if the entire nation just cuts each other's hair and takes in each other's washing!
The next thing to watch out for is inflation rising over the next few years as the effect of all the money 'created' by the Bank of England starts to be felt. If that happens, interest rates will rise sharply from their historic lows, which could in itself trigger lower growth - so we might see a return to stagflation. I hope not, however!
Oh yes, and on Climate Change, the trick is to go with the scientific *evidence*, not the opinion of those who stand to lose money if we switch fuel production. That's why Bush and Cheney & Co were so vocal about it over the last decade - they were oil men, remember! Vested interests? Oooh, no, no!
Remember also that, even irrespective of the issue of what's causing the change, the thing that those who deny Climate Change conveniently ignore is the fact that fossil fuel is running out, anyway. I remember, as a student some 25 years ago, doing power design projects on fuel supply and it was a hell of an eye-opener. *We* knew even then that there would be likely to be power cuts in the mid 2010-2020 decade if nothing was done yet still we had the 'dash for gas' in the late 1980s. This means that not only is our North Sea gas already running down (we are now a net importer, unlike then) but also we now use it to generate a lot of our electricity - a double whammy. That's another example where planning ahead (as the old CEGB used to do) has gone by the wayside to the utility companies (now many of them foreign-owned) whose only interest over the last 20 years has been how to make the fastest buck. If we don't do something about utilising alternative energy (and, indeed, it may already be too late to avoid this), we can expect power cuts within the next decade. It's not just the obvious power that will be affected either. You may not be aware that one of the reasons that the companies owning the trains in the UK (which lease them to the myriad train operating companies) have held back on ordering the latest batch of diesel multiple units is because they've said that the indications are that the diesel fuel will not be available at a sufficiently economic price over the life of the train (about 25 years) to make them viable, so that gives you an idea of what is to come and nearly everyone is trying to ignore it!
Even before the power cuts happen, the increasing demand for oil and gas (and electricity made from gas) will mean that the economics of production will change. The prices will rise significantly and will have a major effect on the economy, so failing to find alternatives is tantamount to being that Ostrich again, not only ecologically but also economically. Belief is one thing - scientific and mathematical evidence is another. *You* can *believe* the moon is made of green cheese if you want to. *I* trust evidence.
Last edited by Lizzie_Claymore on 25 Apr 2010, 09:46, edited 7 times in total.
-
Lizzie_Claymore - Posts: 846 [ View ]
- Joined: 13 Jul 2006, 18:16
- Location: North-west England
- Fetlife: Lizzie_Claymore
- UMD: Lizzie_Claymore
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by Miss T » 25 Apr 2010, 09:21
Claymore_wam wrote:I detect a distinct undercurrent of Daily Mail readership creeping into this forum! Yikes! .......
.... I feel for those of us not on rich bankers' bonuses who are now under threat. We are expecting around 300 redundancies where I work too....
Phew... you said it much better than I would have Claymore, thanks
Resistance is futile!
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by brick » 25 Apr 2010, 09:59
Phantom wrote:Funny that, Laura. Last year I found myself wondering if swine flu was actually real, or just something to distract everyone from something else. Seems to have vansihed as suddenly as it sprung up. Back then, the media would have had us believe swine flu was a global epidemic that was going to kill a third of the planet's population.
At my work, we had to spend £500 out of what is already a tight annual budget on face masks and other swine flu protection equipment for the service users, despite all of us knowing it was just a hyped media frenzy. I mean, more people die every week of regular flu than all of the swine flu "pandemic" deaths put together.
Proud member of the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by Lizzie_Claymore » 25 Apr 2010, 10:48
It's always easy with hindsight. Sadly (and at the risk of "statin' the bleedin' obvious"), you don't have that at the time!
-
Lizzie_Claymore - Posts: 846 [ View ]
- Joined: 13 Jul 2006, 18:16
- Location: North-west England
- Fetlife: Lizzie_Claymore
- UMD: Lizzie_Claymore
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by BillShipton » 25 Apr 2010, 13:09
As far as swine flu was concerned, the government really were "damned if they did and damned if they didn't" react. Imagine the media outcry if people had started dying in large numbers from it and all the countermeasures weren't in place? And weren't face masks discredited as a waste of time early on? I've still have my Tamiflu tablets, by the way.
I REALLY hope this forum doesn't become Daily Mail-like. It's my respite from those sorts of views (rather common here on the south coast). I recently had a look at another fetish forum (I won't mention which but it is unconnected with mess) and it read like the letters page of the Daily Telegraph! I normally like General Election time but this one is seriously pissing me off. Perhaps I'm getting older but it seems to be entirely personality-based and about playing silly media tricks like smear stories rather than issues. I can't even bring myself to do a messy parody of it (unlike Miss T).
As for the recession...don't get me started... No, seriously, don't get me started.
I REALLY hope this forum doesn't become Daily Mail-like. It's my respite from those sorts of views (rather common here on the south coast). I recently had a look at another fetish forum (I won't mention which but it is unconnected with mess) and it read like the letters page of the Daily Telegraph! I normally like General Election time but this one is seriously pissing me off. Perhaps I'm getting older but it seems to be entirely personality-based and about playing silly media tricks like smear stories rather than issues. I can't even bring myself to do a messy parody of it (unlike Miss T).
As for the recession...don't get me started... No, seriously, don't get me started.
-
BillShipton - Posts: 4371 [ View ]
- Joined: 23 Apr 2006, 20:21
- Location: Sunny St Leonards-on-Sea
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by muckypup » 25 Apr 2010, 14:58
I agree many things are blown up by the papers and governments for their own personal gain, but I don't think the recession is one of them. I have been lucky (so far) in that I haven't lost my job and I don't know too many people first hand who have, but I think its a bit offensive to say it hasn't happened when the first post details the nightmare slapstickfan has had!
Glad to hear things are picking up for you and hope it starts picking up for everyone else who's been affected.
Glad to hear things are picking up for you and hope it starts picking up for everyone else who's been affected.
-
muckypup - Posts: 1691 [ View ]
- Joined: 24 Apr 2006, 21:22
- Location: Cheshire, UK
- Fetlife: muckipup
- UMD: muckypup
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by mr angry » 25 Apr 2010, 15:20
I am not a Daily Mail reader, I am, a Mirror man. I am not "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells"! 
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by mr angry » 25 Apr 2010, 15:37
Seriously, the recession is real. Ive been trying for another job for 12 months, theres nothing out there and we arent getting a pay rise at work this year.
The Daily Mail is so barking mad its sometimes unintentionally funny!, election, Lib Dem for me, and I feel a Lib/Lab pact to keep Cameron out which would suit me. Claymore is right when he says that the recession was kick started in the 80s by the deranged lunatic who wrecked the country between 1979 and 1990.
The tories I dismiss out of hand although I wouldnt mind sploshing SamCam!
The Daily Mail is so barking mad its sometimes unintentionally funny!, election, Lib Dem for me, and I feel a Lib/Lab pact to keep Cameron out which would suit me. Claymore is right when he says that the recession was kick started in the 80s by the deranged lunatic who wrecked the country between 1979 and 1990.
The tories I dismiss out of hand although I wouldnt mind sploshing SamCam!
Re: The Recession - Off Topic
by orangey » 25 Apr 2010, 21:39
mr angry wrote:
The tories I dismiss out of hand although I wouldnt mind sploshing SamCam!
WamSamCam!
27 posts
• Page 1 of 2 • 1, 2
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: Google [Bot] and 14 guests