One percent

this caught my eye
The book itself is a mix of science, psychology, and quaint advice, like "stand up straight", and "tell the truth".
FFS, isn't that the type of advice that has been passed down through generations?
Only the fucking BBC could see telling the truth as 'quaint' Only the duplicitous could say that with a straight face.  

It depends how you define it. From the link:
Overall, 50.5% of all households received more in benefits (including in kind benefits such as education) than they paid in taxes (direct and indirect). This is equivalent to 13.7 million households and continues the downward trend seen since the financial year ending 2011.
i don’t view education as a benefit for a couple of reasons. 
First, you have no choice and your children have to be educated or you will be breaking the law
second, a civilised society is reliant on the next generation being educated , so it is for the greater good. 

this caught my eye
The book itself is a mix of science, psychology, and quaint advice, like "stand up straight", and "tell the truth".
FFS, isn't that the type of advice that has been passed down through generations?
Only the fucking BBC could see telling the truth as 'quaint' Only the duplicitous could say that with a straight face.  

this caught my eye
The book itself is a mix of science, psychology, and quaint advice, like "stand up straight", and "tell the truth".
FFS, isn't that the type of advice that has been passed down through generations?
Only the fucking BBC could see telling the truth as 'quaint' Only the duplicitous could say that with a straight face.  

No birds shat on me yet - I've had a rather lovely start to the day.
  time now again.
Sorry to be annoying. 
 

Yes and it seems that we export our productive and import Bennie seekers 

It shouldn't be the university's job to make sure graduates earn whatever money or get whatever job. How can they control that? The only way that happens is if the university has some sort of training scheme agreement with companies - and then why doesn't the company do it themselves. 
University has now just become an extension of fucking school. League tables need to be banned and student intake needs to be dropped by 90%.
It would be great if universities did go back to being a place where the lecturer could be an eccentric who smoked a pipe, worked in an office looking like gandalfs library, played with electronics in the lab until 2am, and went down the pub at lunchtime. Maybe that is an extreme romanticised view, but we all know that universities used to be a place where oddballs like that would exist.These days lecturers are basically secondary school teachers.
I remember reading an application note by Jim Williams - an analog circuit designer about how he used to work on circuits. In it there's a quote about his time at university:
from http://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/application-notes/an45f.pdf
Any element of that subculture definitely doesn't exist these days. And there's just too many students to even allow it to develop 
Engineering degrees these days are littered with bullshit management modules and really there is no creativity or self-learning until maybe the final year project, after 2 and a half years of being spoonfed basic stuff you should just learn yourself in a textbook. Even the final year project isn't that creative anymore really for most of them. 90% of the students shouldn't be on the course and are just panicking over whether their grade will get them onto some graduate scheme. University is marketed on all the 'extra-curricular' activities like rag and student elections and being shitfaced and vomiting before 7pm.
The standard and quality of all courses, the standard of future academic researchers, literally everything possible would go up dramatically if you had 20 students instead of 200. Lecturers could easily incorporate their research into the teaching with this number. As it is its just pointless.

Oh, yes, interviews are definitely a 2-way process ! I got an interviewer sacked once. But then I don't tend to 'do' interviews as I'm not good at working for people .

IMO the best case scenario is an eventual balkanisation of the UK following some form of civil war. We can't go on importing millions of unproductive people in the way we are. 
The worst case is total collapse with native Britons having only two choices, stay and be killed or leave. Something like South Africa or Rhodesia. 

Some civil service stuffed shirt was whining today about how the government campaigns against illegal immigration were 'reminiscent of the nazis'. 
'Nazi' has just become like 'racist', ie, a catch all term for anything they don't like or anything which is even moderately opposed to total open borders globalism. 
It's an insult to those, including members of my own family, that gave their lives to defeat national socialism. 

On the windrush ting and the like, the people pro-windrush were calling the Conservatives pursuit of illegal immigrants akin to Nazi.
Err, they are fucking illegal. The should not be fucking here.
Every other country kicks the fuckers out In a lot of other countries illegals end up dead FFS.
Besides, Labour where pursuing similar agressive pursuit in 2009ish - as the total fuckup of open borders landed home.
And surely this is more about the sheer competence of the home office/public sector in general.

I'm not clicking on the link as I'm sure the So-Called BBC thinks the resultant web-traffic means it is a successful and relevant article that they need to produce more of...

The world has gone mad. A collective madness has infected every aspect of life in the U.K.  

Yes, you are on it. 

The world has gone mad. A collective madness has infected every aspect of life in the U.K.  

So what's the average mortgage rate these days?

Yes, you are on it. 

The rot set in earlier in most places I think. I recall in the seventies most places seemed very dirty, littered and with vandalised, run down areas. Lots of dogsh*t  as well. Mainly due to the breakdown of public services caused by rampant unionism/socialism. The best period for civic pride was the interwar period and the late 40s to late 60s. If you look at pictures from that time things looked much smarter and well cared for. 
I think what is happening now is that globalisation is turning everywhere into Karachi. I recently visited an outer London suburb, one of those places with semi detached villas, parades of shops etc. Not a poor area at all. The  high street is the usual collection of charity shops, nail bars, tattoo parlours, smelly takeaways etc. Nearly everyone is non white or eastern European. General look of neglect and chaos. It's what happens when you mix disparate, transient populations from all over the world with no common culture and no stake or pride in their society. 

teacher would be my stab

 
Spot on.  It's my argument.  The country is frankly shit.  Litter and potholes everywhere.  Parks a mess. etc, etc.
Instead of paying people to breed, we could be paying them to make our environment nicer.  Everyone wins then.  
I don't see a counterargument to it.

Yes, you are on it. 

could be a dead cat bounce

It's funny isn't it... I see late 80s videos of my hometown. It was beatiful. Spotless, well tended, it looked like people were actually taking pride in it. Now it's like downtown Karachi. Litter everywhere, no greenery, poundshops, charity shops. Whatever.
Yet were supposed to be richer and better educated than ever. 
I don't get it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-5629771/Interest-rate-student-loans-youngest-graduates-going-6-3-September.html
The interest rate charged on student loans is rising again to an eye-watering 6.3 per cent for some graduates in England and Wales from September.
The interest on the most recent tranche of loans goes up from 6.1 per cent and is calculated by adding 3 per cent to the March retail prices index rate of inflation, which official data today revealed to be 3.3 per cent. 
This will affect millions of current and former students, and follows the steep interest rate hike from 4.6 per cent to 6.1 per cent that came in last September.


It’s bad enough that students are being charged for their education but to add usurious interest rates is criminal 

A degree should never be about getting a job.  There are some higher level vocational qualifications but these should be in specialist vocational seats of learning, not universities 
for a number of reasons 
Yep