If The UK Goes Down, We All Go Down

[Ender]

Ender - I take responsibility for what I am responsible for. It is a whole lot of whingers (like you) who are responsible for their own actions/decisions not taking responsibility simply because they are claiming not to be of responsible age.
I believe in 'Starship Troopers' there would be some relevant lecture on this concept.

No in fact, you are denying responsibility for it. Flat out. You've said more than once that it is Generation X and Y, who were still in primary school or not even born yet when these decisions were first made.

It has not been shown to be a lie - it is you who is moving the goalposts.
I have never claimed Gen X in charge of the institutions - I said many of the "financial wizards" responsible are of gen X (others of other generations - BB, GG, etc).

And now that has been shown to be a lie, so you have changed your tune, saying it doesn't count. Seeing as how I have not stipulated a burden of evidence for my position (you however did) I cannot move the goal posts. So hey, another lie. Honestly, integrity... so many valuable lessons the Greatest Generation forgot to pass onto their children.

Learn to read, and quote people accurately.

Said the fool who can't even use proper BB code? You don't use the quote function properly, and chide me for it? Are you trying to play up the ignorant, arrogant, no accountability stereotype of your generation here?

There was no one generation that fucked up - that is like a concept of religious. Every generation has screwed things up; To blame older (& younger) generations is natural, as each new generation does; but it is arrogant for you and others to solely blame one generation (which is an arbitrary concept, as complex inter-relations exist); it is also childish.
Maybe that is why you don't want to share in responsibility - as a child, not a grownup.

I don't share in the responsibility because I couldn't even walk when you fuckers started us down this path. Do you even know what the word "responsible" means? And yes, you do bear collective responsibility. You elected these people into power. You followed their policies. You are responsible for the actions of the government and leaders that you selected. That's how democracy works. And despite you claims of "its complex, therefore we are not to blame" you sure rushed to blame Generation X and Y.

[Big Orange]

Although Baby Boomers were the generation that businessmen and politicians who made the incredibly short-sighted, flawed economic decisions that led to today's mess, I do feel for the Baby Boomers who have had their savings and pensions completely fucked up beyond repair and the late middle aged workers who have 'retired' prematurely.

[Edi]

Edi - you say BBs have been in power for 40 years - that means when the oldest ones were in their 20s - so saying that for some strange reason those in 20s, 20 or 30 or 40 years later are not responsible in any way, but those in their 20s 40 or 30 years ago were. That's great.

Look, you mathematically challenged piece of shit, see if you can make sense of these numbers:

2009 - 40 = 1969

1969 - 20 = 1949

The baby boomer generation is generally the ones born after the war, i.e. 1944 - 1965 and if you take an estimate of ROUGHLY 40 years, give or take a few, you see the baby boomers starting to enter politics and then setting the stage for current events, which is precisely what I already said. It's not as if in 1969, wham, all decision makers are sintantly baby boomers, or that all the bad decisions were made en masse. They were made in a continuum where baby boomers were getting more and more representation in the decisive processes and made the fucking mistakes that got us where we are now.

Was that clear enough or do you need it in crayon, asshole?

[ArmorPierce]

No, I think he's pointing out that the Baby Boomers have fucked up a rather large amount of shit over their years, worshiping at the alter of unsustainable growth and now Gen X/Y have to pay the price.

I should have put some appropriate smilies. I know he was trying to blame the BBs, but I am saying it is Gen X that was the big offenders - they had the spoilt upbringing [could perhaps blame the BBs for spoiling them. ].
Perhaps though we should really be blaming specific individuals or groups, not whole blanket generations.

A lot of Generation x is barely out of their 20s. They're share of power and influence in the current state is minimal as the older ones are just now gaining more power. They are definitely not the ones to blame.

[B5B7]

Learn to read, and quote people accurately.

Said the fool who can't even use proper BB code? You don't use the quote function properly, and chide me for it? Are you trying to play up the ignorant, arrogant, no accountability stereotype of your generation here?

What on Earth are you blithering about here (re: not using proper BB code)? Provide evidence.
Ah, I just noticed something: when I referred to quoting people accurately I was referencing what the actual words were, not criticizing you in regard to technical quote code function. So, a bit of a misunderstanding there.
I genuinely don't know what BB code use error you think I have made.

You are really going overboard on this inter-generational hatred.
The rest of your post is stuff I disagree with.
One point - if I seem to be blaming Gen X & Y, then I have expressed myself poorly, and again I think we are having some problems in communication. I am saying that it is foolish to blame any generation, as the generational issue is a diversion from the real factors of fault. Also, a particular statement I made was of a "if...then" form in regard to Gen X & Y as compared with BBs, so it was a hypothetical sentence.
Ender - I don't want to be in a war with you, and perhaps both of us should express our ideas more clearly.

Here's some new stuff I want to mention:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (born 1957[1]) is the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph.[2] A long-time opponent of the EU's constitution and monetary union, he was the Telegraph's Europe correspondent in Brussels from 1999 to 2004.

This is the guy who wrote the article - look at his birthdate - he's a baby boomer himself! Does he include himself, or exclude himself from blame (& idiocy)?

What blame do baby boomers who live in Africa or Asia (ie non-Americans in general) have for US economic collapse? [note to Ender: no doubt you will consider this query another "shifting the goalposts", but it directly relates to original claim that implied "all BBs were idiots", and also that you are not simply blaming just American BBs. In the specific example of USA, any voting age American is more responsible than anyone of any age in another nation (including me)].

Here is a scenario:
A selection panel for an important postion has a 70 year old, a 50 year old, and a 30 year old on it. Two candidates, A & B, both 50 years old, for an important position are interviewed. The 70 yo & the 30 yo, by a majority decision select A for the job. He turns out to be a bad choice, and analysis shows that B would have been a better choice.
Who is responsible in this situation for the errors made whilst A was in charge?

This will be my last post for a while as it is getting late here where I am [12:50 AM].
Edi - thanks for your worthless contribution, and inability to read my precise words -

20 or 30 or 40 years later

Before you criticize someone for innumeracy, how about attaining some literacy? You are adding a re-interpretation of your original statement to try to cover your ass.

[TheMuffinKing]

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I get the sneaking impression Admiral Valdemar is addicted to the increasing and deepening economic carnage, although to be fair Britain's economy completely bottoming out will inevitably void out all the shit that directly caused it in the first place and we can get people in who can set things back to basic again to grow a real economy, although there is a danger that this economic depression could make a British Castro or Mussolini (who'll not introduce a new democracy, while making ethnic minorities and foreign labourers into easy scapegoats for the sunk economy).

Perhaps he wishes to finally use his spiked (American) football gear, purple mohawk, and motorcycle leathers the way nature intended; in the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max! Your gas or your life!

[Admiral Valdemar]

Perhaps he wishes to finally use his spiked (American) football gear, purple mohawk, and motorcycle leathers the way nature intended; in the post apocalyptic world of Mad Max! Your gas or your life!

Don't be stupid.

I'm the Gyro Captain.

[Darth Wong]

How does the Baby Boomer generation get off the hook if one proves that their offspring is spoiled? WHO WOULD HAVE SPOILED THEM? Oh yeah, the Baby Boomers, who proved to be inept parents.

[Admiral Valdemar]

How does the Baby Boomer generation get off the hook if one proves that their offspring is spoiled? WHO WOULD HAVE SPOILED THEM? Oh yeah, the Baby Boomers, who proved to be inept parents.

Precisely. I didn't get the logic B5B7 was trying to get across. The Baby Boomers were given everything their parents could, because they had just endured a depression and a war that wiped out the best part of 100 million people. The era of growth was theirs to enjoy, but responsibility was cast aside as the BBs got into power and started taking gradual expansion to the extremes, leading to other silly policies like the '70s gold standard fiasco and electing people whose platform was to outspend everyone else, because dammit, that's what capitalism is about.

So long as the nation is able to buy more shit, who cares about the environmental impact or the widening gulf between the haves and have notes? And if you can afford to have two homes, depriving a public sector worker from having their own home, then all the better.

Quite how myself and those I grew up with share equal blame when I've only just gotten into a proper job and had the vote for a few years, I don't know. I clearly have more influence than I expected.

[Kanastrous]

It's funny; my parents were kids during the Great Depression and the lesson they took from it was - while not depriving me - raising me with what they expected was the mindset to survive one, myself.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Smart people, then. Most today have grown up assuming our lifestyles today are near the apex of civilisation and can only improve. Living as paupers like in the '30s was impossible, because we're so advanced now. People out there don't see climate change as a threat, so they sure as hell don't see the American way of life as negotiable either, despite the era I've so far lived in being a total anomaly in our 10,000 year history.

[Kanastrous]

Maybe this is nitpicky, but doesn't being near the apex, mean that a decline is ahead? Or, at best, a plateau.

*edit* apex-to-date, I guess. Never mind.

[Guardsman Bass]

Here's some new stuff I want to mention:

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (born 1957[1]) is the international business editor of the Daily Telegraph.[2] A long-time opponent of the EU's constitution and monetary union, he was the Telegraph's Europe correspondent in Brussels from 1999 to 2004.

This is the guy who wrote the article - look at his birthdate - he's a baby boomer himself! Does he include himself, or exclude himself from blame (& idiocy)?

Does it make any difference to the main point, which was that as a group, Baby Boomers have been responsible for both making the choices and choosing the politicians that led us into this mess? You can have reasonable, responsible individuals in any group, and stupid ones as well - but we're talking about the group as a whole.

[Ender]

Learn to read, and quote people accurately.

Said the fool who can't even use proper BB code? You don't use the quote function properly, and chide me for it? Are you trying to play up the ignorant, arrogant, no accountability stereotype of your generation here?

What on Earth are you blithering about here (re: not using proper BB code)? Provide evidence.
Ah, I just noticed something: when I referred to quoting people accurately I was referencing what the actual words were, not criticizing you in regard to technical quote code function. So, a bit of a misunderstanding there.
I genuinely don't know what BB code use error you think I have made.

Go look at any of your fucking posts.

You are really going overboard on this inter-generational hatred.

Says the one who started raging against it by blaming literal children for his generations follies?

The rest of your post is stuff I disagree with.
One point - if I seem to be blaming Gen X & Y, then I have expressed myself poorly, and again I think we are having some problems in communication. I am saying that it is foolish to blame any generation, as the generational issue is a diversion from the real factors of fault. Also, a particular statement I made was of a "if...then" form in regard to Gen X & Y as compared with BBs, so it was a hypothetical sentence.

Fuck you, you were completely clear - you claimed that this was Generation X and Ys fault, that they were the "financial wizards" behind this. It was then shown that the people in charge for this were largely baby boomers and you've tried moving the goal posts. I call you out on that, and jackfuck you are, you try and blame me for your stupidity as well.

Ender - I don't want to be in a war with you, and perhaps both of us should express our ideas more clearly.

Fuck you you lying sack of shit, you were completely clear. You refuse to accept that your generation had any hand in this and flat out said it was Generation X and Ys fault. That statement was beyond idiocy as most of Y is still in school right now. Fuck, a good chunk of X is still in college. But somehow, we, not the men and women in their 50s and 60s, are responsible for what has been going on across the world for the past 30 years.

You want me to be more clear? Here you go:

Fuck you. You are acting as the perfect representative for your generation right now - a spineless fuck out to blame anyone else and take no responsibility for anything. Your generation is being called to account for not preparing for the future. And your response, as always, is to blame someone else for your actions. In this thread you have blamed the youth of today for what you did before they were born. You have blamed me for your fallacies and failure to display rudimentary reading comprehension. And now, called to task on that, you STILL refuse to admit any wrong doing and accept responsibility for your actions in this thread, claiming "oh it was just a big misunderstanding". So fuck you, you piece of subhuman filth. You are too fucking old to pull this childish bulshit, so man the fuck up, admit that your generation was the primary force that brought this about, admit that you are either being a deceptive fuck in this thread or a troll, and take some god damn responsibility.

Is that clear enough?

What blame do baby boomers who live in Africa or Asia (ie non-Americans in general) have for US economic collapse? [note to Ender: no doubt you will consider this query another "shifting the goalposts", but it directly relates to original claim that implied "all BBs were idiots", and also that you are not simply blaming just American BBs. In the specific example of USA, any voting age American is more responsible than anyone of any age in another nation (including me)].

Fuck off idiot, in case you haven't noticed this isn't a US meltdown, this is a WORLD WIDE meltdown. And guess what? The baby boomers in those countries are responsible for taking the actions triggering the problems over there. Don't pretend like the selfish decadence of the boomers is an American phenomena. Somehow it managed to be a world wide thing.

[K. A. Pital]

Aren't the US baby boomers taking most of the blame, because, well, the US government has ham-fisted it's political and economic line down the throat of every government that it considered a 'friend' and 'ally', as well as directly contributing to the collapse of all possible rival large economies in the course of "economic competition"? Thus making the "global economy" in reality being a US-dominated economy, and US failure a global failure.

The baby boomers in other nations however do get the blame for not growing a spine and swallowing the bullshit policies of the US wholesale, and considering them "sound and stable" for the next decades or so.

[ray245]

Aren't the US baby boomers taking most of the blame, because, well, the US government has ham-fisted it's political and economic line down the throat of every government that it considered a 'friend' and 'ally', as well as directly contributing to the collapse of all possible rival large economies in the course of "economic competition"? Thus making the "global economy" in reality being a US-dominated economy, and US failure a global failure.

The baby boomers in other nations however do get the blame for not growing a spine and swallowing the bullshit policies of the US wholesale, and considering them "sound and stable" for the next decades or so.

One reason why US is a little scared of nations like Russia and China for having a growing economy, and does not listen to them all the time.

[Thanas]

Bah. If Britain now reaps the result of being nationalistic idiots and not joining the Eurozone.....their problem.

They have constantly refused to be part of the hardest currency on the planet....their problem.

[Edi]

Edi - thanks for your worthless contribution, and inability to read my precise words -

20 or 30 or 40 years later

Before you criticize someone for innumeracy, how about attaining some literacy? You are adding a re-interpretation of your original statement to try to cover your ass.

How about you go fuck yourself with a rusty barbed wire dildo? You specifically refuse to quote what I said so you could more easily distort what I said, which is what you have also been doing to everyone else in this thread who does not agree with you. You have demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of numbers and of basic logic in this thread and you're in no position to accuse anyone of illiteracy, you trolling shitlicker. If your argument is so poorly formulated that it requires a specific reading of your precise words when there are several ways of reading it due to lack of clarity, fuck you. It's not my problem that you're unable to communicate coherently. But then again, if you did, your lies would be just that much clearer for everyone to see.

And just to address it again, people who were in their 20s 40 years ago are responsible for the situation now, because they got into power during those 40 years and made the shit decisions that landed us where we are now. People in their 20s and thirties now are not responsible for making those decisions, even if they have learned bad habits of their own. Your argument earlier was that since people who were young then are responsible for problems now, people who are young now now are responsible for problems now, which is completely broken logic on every level. That's what I originally responded to and what you have tried to distort into something else.

Everyone reading this thread can see exactly what you posted earlier, so trying to lie about it is not going to help you any.

[The Guid]

Bah. If Britain now reaps the result of being nationalistic idiots and not joining the Eurozone.....their problem.

They have constantly refused to be part of the hardest currency on the planet....their problem.

Before i get started I should frame this by saying I am pro EU, pro Eurozone, pro Euro in fact but to say that is to suggest that our problems don't go deeper. The fact is that we're boned in the UK because our industry is fucked, and we're based far too much on the banking "industry" as pointed out above. I think being in the Euro would help as our currency would be more stable, but that's only part of our problem.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Anyone who thinks joining the euro would avert this problem needs to look long and hard at the RoI, France, Spain and Germany now. A strong currency can't stop sub-prime mess like in Ireland, nor prevent industrial decline like in Germany.

[Big Orange]

The EU is a potential blessing and a curse in saving Britain, and while national supremacy and misplaced pride, if not outright paranoid xenophobia seriously clouds the debate about the EU (and not just in the UK), it always seems to be the venal politicians and businesses who take advantage of the EU to the detriment of ordinary British people - the influx of Eastern European laborers did not go down too well with anybody who didn't own a business, even if they helped to keep the phoney British service economy from crashing a little sooner, and cheaper EU pork is outselling British pork.

BTW Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were not really Baby Boomers, Reagan was solidly part of the so-called Greatest Generation, yet they were the biggest political figure heads that pushed through the moronic economic policies that we have reaped today. Didn't Margaret Thatcher privatise the council housing, helping to pave the road to the current housing catastrophe? The council housing was supposedly too expensive for the State to maintain and this short-sighted, corner cutting thinking was clearly behind the shutting down of most of our industrial base in the 70s and 80s, which while moribund and ruined by Marxist unions could've been mordernized instead to save many jobs and stop Britain from being the passive consumer that it is now.

[Ender]

Bah. If Britain now reaps the result of being nationalistic idiots and not joining the Eurozone.....their problem.

They have constantly refused to be part of the hardest currency on the planet....their problem.

Let's check those claims about the greatness of the Euro here. It is a currency a decade old. Less, if you go by the physical banknotes. Treating it as the greatest thing since sliced bread is very premature here.

[Rye]

Currency isn't the issue anyway, to be honest, the world only really needs one currency and the exchange rates show what's horribly wrong with multiple types of currency, but really that's just an extra level of annoyance except with extreme versions like Zimbabwe's. A large part of the problem is we became a mostly service industry nation, we don't produce that much stuff, and the stuff we do produce can often be produced more cheaply elsewhere because workers have UK-scaled pricetags attached. This may change (I don't know how likely, but I do know that there are rumours of restarting the coal industry) with higher fuel prices and other stuff, and we can still make specialised high tech stuff like the polymers required for wind turbines.

[Thanas]

Anyone who thinks joining the euro would avert this problem needs to look long and hard at the RoI, France, Spain and Germany now. A strong currency can't stop sub-prime mess like in Ireland, nor prevent industrial decline like in Germany.

Industrial decline in Germany? Eh?

Bah. If Britain now reaps the result of being nationalistic idiots and not joining the Eurozone.....their problem.

They have constantly refused to be part of the hardest currency on the planet....their problem.

Let's check those claims about the greatness of the Euro here. It is a currency a decade old. Less, if you go by the physical banknotes. Treating it as the greatest thing since sliced bread is very premature here.

C'mon Ender. Name one currency that is harder than the Euro.

And the refusal to use the European currency is pretty much one central issue according to the OP - had the British converted to the Euros, they wouldn't see their currency crash like it does nowadays.

[Big Orange]

This may change (I don't know how likely, but I do know that there are rumours of restarting the coal industry) with higher fuel prices and other stuff, and we can still make specialised high tech stuff like the polymers required for wind turbines.

Even the 'high-tech' stuff is taking a knockin when we've already got one of the worst brain drains in the developed world, with one in ten highly qualified people (obviously including scientists) leaving this country every year in the past decade or more, and it's obviously going to be exacerbated by the economic and property meltdown. Then we've got a somewhat defanged criminal justice system and overcrowded 'soft' prisons, that has caused a lot of social/cultural frustration over the years that will likely boil over once the country flies apart.