Bikejacking on Kingsland Road

it's time for "count the factually incorrect stereotype"! highest number wins. i can find four.

Yes of course it was stereotypical. just as the assertion it was arguing against was stereotypical.

If you attended school every day, worked hard, did your homework, took your exams and got decent grades - in short, done what society gives you every chance to do - turned up to job interviews, smart, polite and enthusiastic, and then still failed to get a job, then maybe, just maybe you could blame your accent. But we're not talking about that situation are we. We're talking about people who either cannot find work because they haven't looked for it or can find work but at a level they consider beneath them. I don't suppose Ford ever refused employment to someone solely because he 'sounded a bit Essex'.

Scouse?

OK, apart from Scouse :-)

I want to live in BlueQuinn's utopia. Where is it, please?

I want to live in BlueQuinn's utopia. Where is it, please?

Royal Inn on the Park.

It's in hackney but whisper it.

You didn't answer that one either.

The answer to your first question is that over the years plenty of people have experienced discrimination when it comes to applying for jobs of having an accent - be it regional, class or national. People also face discrimination on account of their name and their address. And in Northern Ireland you are not allowed to ask someone where they went to school on an application from because of discrimination on the grounds of religion. All of this is well-documented and is supported by plenty of anecdotal information.

However, maybe you are more interested in knowing whether anyone has been unable to secure any type of employement at all on the basis of their accent alone. I doubt it, but I'm sure that's really the point in the context of this discussion.

Yes of course it was stereotypical. just as the assertion it was arguing against was stereotypical.

If you attended school every day, worked hard, did your homework, took your exams and got decent grades - in short, done what society gives you every chance to do - turned up to job interviews, smart, polite and enthusiastic, and then still failed to get a job, then maybe, just maybe you could blame your accent. But we're not talking about that situation are we. We're talking about people who either cannot find work because they haven't looked for it or can find work but at a level they consider beneath them. I don't suppose Ford ever refused employment to someone solely because he 'sounded a bit Essex'.

Where did you go to school?

these kids are given every opportunity to succeed in our society. no generation has ever had it as good as they do.

I think this may be the wrongest thing ever post in the history of internet forums.

I want to live in BlueQuinn's utopia. Where is it, please?

Royal Inn on the Park.

It's in hackney but whisper it.

You leave me no option but to dys your utopia.

You really think one of these kids is going to go to Oxford and qualify as a barrister?

I don't see why not. The opportunities are there. Oxford and Cambridge are more than willing to take on state school kids who perform well and they some drive to succeed. One of my best friends from school lives on a council estate in Kentish Town, his father's a minicab driver and his mother's a housewife. He got in to Cambridge to do Economics. He's half Malaysian, half Filipino, too, so that's race out of the equation. He got it through pure hard work.

pray tell me which accent or accents are a total bar to any kind of employment?

A little while ago I had the stunning good fortune to find myself in Barking Job Centre. It's a magical place, filled with the poor, the uneducated, the fuckups - the types of people who apparently consider paid employment beneath them.

I listened to this kid, couldn't have been more than 16 or 17, standing at the job computers, calling job after job on his phone, and getting knocked back for every single one of them.

Why? Because no matter what job he called, none of them want to employ someone who has a rudeboy accent.

And you can't say that this kid has a choice about how to talk, when you grow up on estates EVERYONE under 20 talks like that. EVERYONE. Those who don't mark themselves as victims and nothing more. This kid had no idea that this was why he was getting knocked back, and unless these kids have something to go for they never will.

I went to school until I was 16, did my exams, was a smart kid. I paid attention and even though I was in a shitty comprehensive in east london, I did OK until I was about 14, when I started getting beaten up, my bike taken, what have you. It didn't stop until I started running with a crew of kids who'd nick cars and fuck anyone up who talked shit about us. And I wasn't a bad kid, but the baseline of any human being is safety - unless you're safe you cannot progress onward to anything else.

Left school with some shitty exam results and went straight to work in a warehouse in Barking. I did that job for £8,000 PA for a year and a half and were it not for the fact that I met a girl who helped me get a job in media, I'd still be there, working with sociopaths, wife beaters and scum.

I went back to Dagenham the other day and saw a mate of mine. His best friend, a guy we all used to buy acid from back when we were grunge kids, is currently in prison for 15 years for stabbing another mate of ours through the heart with a screwdriver. Over nothing, btw, some pub argument. That guy was smarter than I was, funnier too, more resourceful. He just didn't get the break I got.

You can libertarian it up you want but there for the grace of god go I. And, if you had any imagination, you as well.

He's half Malaysian, half Filipino, too, so that's race out of the equation.

I used to go out with a girl who was half Brazilian, half Saudi, and she got into Oxford. She got talking to one of the people who works there and it turns out that they have an equal opportunities policy which actually favours people who are non-white, particularly if they're mixed race because it ticks two boxes.

I'm not saying this guy didn't get where he got through hard work - in fact I doubt it'd be possible to be accepted to Cambridge without being able to do the job - but you can't just say race is out of the equation like that means anything.

I don't see why not. The opportunities are there. Oxford and Cambridge are more than willing to take on state school kids who perform well and they some drive to succeed. One of my best friends from school lives on a council estate in Kentish Town, his father's a minicab driver and his mother's a housewife. He got in to Cambridge to do Economics. He's half Malaysian, half Filipino, too, so that's race out of the equation. He got it through pure hard work.

I was very obviously steered away (blocked?) from trying an Oxbridge interview by senior teachers at my school. 30 from my year succeeded on that path (all that tried, and were encouraged), and off those, only one was - like me - working class. But he was a bit less gobby in the face of hypocritical authority.

TBH, I don't really care, but I do believe that working class Oxbridge undergrads are a token gesture.

...crime ridden shit hole.
anyone who thinks differently has been watching too many of those kirsty fucknut property programs and ignoring the yellow call for witness signs, the sound of police helicopters and the almost daily threads about theft in the area on this forum.

the main reason it's shit is it's full of desperate hipster wannabee's riding freewheel nobraks

Hahahahahah this made my day. Mr Smyth does it again.
I wasn't in the mood for this thread yesterday. Like Jamas said it is a bit depressing.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/22/73-gentrification/

I like these terse contirbutions to threads. Keep it up. I try not to do these but it's necessary here ;). I think your outlook that responsibility, whatever the many valid oppositions^ to some of your posting, is really worth everyone thinking about. But how to make people be responsible?

BlueQuinn [st]yesterday[/st] every day

Up the B488, onto the A764 for little while til you get to the roundabout, then second exit on the B335 for four miles, Utopia's just through the gate on the left after a farm called 'Maggies'.

Please leave your valuables in your panniers and park in the top field. Rest assured the TebbitYouth will be manning the bike security.

Phew got today's posts done in one go. Now back to sleep.

i dunno if this thread is genuinely "calming down" Peter. i mean, people are advocating actually killing muggers. killing muggers. that's fucking sick.

on the consequences issue, it's a good point. people do indeed need to know the consequences of their actions. but i don't think it should necessarily be based on some wanker of a 1970s cop dragging people down back alleys to give them a kicking. justice (i.e. the 'consequences' bit) should always be restorative in nature, and preferably handed out by the communities affected. i know that sounds like pie in the sky, but the cops "getting tough" on kids, many of whom could be turned around, will only ever alienate them more, and perpetuate the cycle of violence, alienation, fear and repression. that's hard empirical fact, friends.

someone mentioned the old "class war" phrase and sadly, it is a class war. bikejacking is just one small symptom of a much bigger class war taking place everywhere. whether or not you go into the whole economic class war, there's no denying the massive cultural and social differences between kids at risk of joining gangs and the type of people (including myself, even though i was brought up in a council house) who post on here and are interested in nice bikes. most of us almost certainly had decent parents who knew how to bring up kids properly, teachers who (at least vaguely :D ) believed in us, friends/siblings who weren't in gangs, and half-decent employment prospects. we've got to remember that yes there is a small minority of scumbags who are genuinely just unhinged and uncontrollable, but a lot of kids just drift into that way of life because they see no other direction. and once you're in, it's very very difficult to get out because of massive peer pressure and a lack of money and mobility to settle elsewhere in the country to get away from it all. that's why i think organisations like the Princes Trust, Crisis, UK Youth, SE1 United, etc - who take young people out of their ordinary surroundings, train them up with life and work skills and actually believe in their potential - are absolutely fundamental to changing the way these kids perceive themselves and how they interact with other humans. killing them because they nicked your precious bike, is not.

A guy who works for ups who collects and delivers our trainers for mail order had the whole of his forearm slashed to the tendons a few months back. This only happened because he blocked his face, otherwise, they would have slashed his face, potentially blinding him. He couldn't work properly for a few months. That's sick and they deserve death. This was in kentish town by the way, another scum area.

Where did you go to school?

Ipswich.

There was a recent report by Alan Milburn (no bleeding heart lefty, more of a 3rd way centrist) showing that the professions like law, medicine, architecture etc have become narrower in their recruitment in the last 30 years. The idea that we are more equal than we have ever been, or that some how kids from council estates have equality of opportunity to go to oxbridge as those from private schools living in Chelsea is completely wrong. I studied Law, and recently spoke to a friend who is now doing his bar course. Like me he went to a comprehensive, but he says he now feels totally alien to those in his class who have come from a background that is so totally different. The working class students at oxbridge are really the exception to the rule, and unfortunately the culture at the very top unis is geared towards a smooth transition from posh private school to oxbridge college.

I've taught at Cambridge, and I currently teach at a good university in London, in a very 'middle-class' subject. The intake is 60% privately educated kids - in fact it might be more now. Every single academic is aware of the problem. What you are up against is nothing so simple as 'accent', but a sort of middle-classness that, when lacking, is explained away as kids 'not really fitting in', or being 'inarticulate'. At interview, the very attributes you are looking for - articulacy, evidence of wide reading, a certain confidence in the way they speak about the subject - these are hardwired in to kids from privileged backgrounds, kids with books in the house, kids whose parents encourage them from an early age to participate in culture. The academics know this, and struggle really hard with the inbuilt prejudices we all have - what management consultants bang on about in terms of the attraction of sameness. The view that all of this stuff can be reduced to 'accent' is staggeringly simplistic.

I have no idea what the current situation is for prospective university students (do they still have fees? can you get grants again?), but back when I was a student, poor kids could win scholarships to even the very best public schools through the Assisted Places Scheme. Then they could get free university places thanks to student grants. Both of these were abolished by Tony Blair within months of gaining power. Labour did not want an educated working class, possibly because it would diminish their share of the vote. Then they went even further and made students pay fees for university as well. It's no wonder really that in the years since the balance has shifted towards university being for rich posh privately educated kids again. Nor that those professions reliant on graduates are reflecting that.

Plurabelle has it right. Its down to the attitude of those doing the upbringing. Poor working class parents could just as easily involve their children in reading, music, the arts, current affairs, wider society, sport, whatever it takes to build confidence, articulacy, intelligence, etc. I wonder if the owner of the rudeboy accent talked like that to his grandmother?

The intake is 60% privately educated kids - in fact it might be more now.

In 2008 56% of Cambridge's undergraduate intake were state educated, and 53% of Oxford's were. Still shocking given the proportion of children privately educated.

I have no idea what the current situation is for prospective university students (do they still have fees? can you get grants again?), but back when I was a student, poor kids could win scholarships to even the very best public schools through the Assisted Places Scheme. Then they could get free university places thanks to student grants. Both of these were abolished by Tony Blair within months of gaining power. Labour did not want an educated working class, possibly because it would diminish their share of the vote. Then they went even further and made students pay fees for university as well. It's no wonder really that in the years since the balance has shifted towards university being for rich posh privately educated kids again.

Ahhhh Labour......The Peoples Party™

These kids rob because they can't be fucked to do anything from themselves. Nicking a bike is easy money for them. They're animals. I don't think it has anything to do with not being able to get a fucking job. 12-15 yr old kids are not gonna looking for work and so what if they are bored? That's no fucking excuse. I was bored when I was that age, so I got a skateboard and played in shit bands. They're the spawn of scum and will always remain scum and they will continue to get worse with their actions.

In 2008 56% of Cambridge's undergraduate intake were state educated, and 53% of Oxford's were. Still shocking given the proportion of children privately educated.

Yup, the more than 60% was for my department, at a particular London college. The expense of living in central London, coupled with the peculiarities of the subject, make it even worse than Oxford/Cambridge.

I work there too. Other members of staff continually berate me for my use of expressive language, particularly those in the English department. Bunch of cunts.

BlueQuinn: on one hand you say these kids have everything (education, university) given to them on a plate like never before, and on the other you say things have actually gotharder because of the Labour party. You statements seem to conflict with each other.

^ It's the old "you've never had it so good/kids these days don't know they're born" - "have you seen the price of a cup of tea, you got change out of tuppance in my day" one-two, sleight of hand trick they always pull.