Grim Britannia

[WashYourHands]

on the way to Exeter

 

[WashYourHands]

 

[Mr. Tea]

I suppose in an oblique way I ought to feel flattered.

 

[version]

Just stumbled across a forum dedicated to Jeremy Bamber.

 

[luka]

Just stumbled across a forum dedicated to Jeremy Bamber.

"stumbled on"

 

[version]

I did! I'd never heard of him before, looked him up then quickly closed the tab.

 

[IdleRich]

Hammers doing lines off a bald bloke at a game

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music that you love, upload original content and share it all with friends, family and the world on YouTube.

m.youtube.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

Surfeit of grimness in this delightful little story.

Wife and care worker found guilty of enslaving disabled husband in Chichester

Sarah Somerset-How and George Webb charged under modern slavery laws for treating her partner ‘like property’

www.theguardian.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

I feel like there's a an implicit challenge here: can one of us find a story so grim that @luka doesn't find it hilarious?

 

[luka]

i just thought that's the response you wanted

 

[WashYourHands]

Local horrors, apologies for the grauniad but local news sites have too many pops ups, chat functions and other toss to close

Chances were missed to save man who starved in Nottingham, report finds

DWP, GP surgery and social landlord failed to spot risks for Errol Graham, who had benefits cut despite being severely mentally ill

www.theguardian.com

Benefits sanctioned, acute mental health crises, little £ for food, heating cut off and then Nottingham City Homes eventually sent the bailiffs in. Bloke had been dead for 6 years

 

[Mr. Tea]

i just thought that's the response you wanted

It was nothing if not expected.

 

[IdleRich]

Here's my tweet of the day

Stephen Lawrence’s mother is so annoying, why has she been elevated to the House of Lords when Lee Rigbys mother has been all but ignored?
Lawrence’s mother has rabbited on about Stephens death continually but Mrs Rigby has kept a dignified silence and of course Lee was white.

Fair point, that woman is such a snowflake, for fuck's sake get over it already. Black kids get killed all the time so it's hardly a big deal. She needs to learn her place.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Stephen Lawrence’s mother is so annoying, why has she been elevated to the House of Lords when Lee Rigbys mother has been all but ignored?
Lawrence’s mother has rabbited on about Stephens death continually but Mrs Rigby has kept a dignified silence and of course Lee was white.

Excellent tweet, Rich. Someone needed to say it.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Fucksake. The law in this country is a joke.

Farmer who damaged River Lugg released from prison after three months

John Price's actions were described by the judge as "ecological vandalism on an industrial scale".

www.bbc.com

 

[Mr. Tea]

Your daily dose of grim!

Food bank volunteers to wear body cameras after being spat at

Gillingham Street Angels say users of the food bank should "not bite the hand that feeds".

www.bbc.com

 

[Slothrop]

Funny that this thread started off talking about the historic grimness of the 70s - I'm feeling like grim is increasingly the defining state of 2020s Britain. Maybe it's an actual post-Covid, post cost-of-living crisis, post-Brexit, post-Tory effect, maybe it's just that I've moved from Cambridge to Sheffield so I'm less insulated from it, but it feels like everything's basically falling apart and no-one has any concrete idea for how to do anything about it - or at least, anyone with any concrete idea for how to do anything about it is getting told to fuck off, stop being unrealistic and accept the endless grim reality.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Funny that this thread started off talking about the historic grimness of the 70s - I'm feeling like grim is increasingly the defining state of 2020s Britain. Maybe it's an actual post-Covid, post cost-of-living crisis, post-Brexit, post-Tory effect, maybe it's just that I've moved from Cambridge to Sheffield so I'm less insulated from it, but it feels like everything's basically falling apart and no-one has any concrete idea for how to do anything about it - or at least, anyone with any concrete idea for how to do anything about it is getting told to fuck off, stop being unrealistic and accept the endless grim reality.

It occurred to me the other day that, as a rule, in Europe I think you can divide the countries into those where nothing really works properly, but at least booze and fags are cheap; and those where booze and fags are expensive, but at least things work properly. The exception being the UK, where everything costs an arm and a leg and, increasingly, the whole country seems to be falling apart at the seams.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Here's some further grimness from your old endz:

Northstowe: The broken-promise new town built 'with no heart'

Northstowe will be the UK's biggest new town since the development of Milton Keynes in the 1960s.

www.bbc.co.uk

Basically an entire new "town" (read: gigantic dormitory) with no GP surgery, cafe, pub, or even a single shop.

 

[Slothrop]

Randomly, a friend of ours is actually the mayor of Northstowe - him and his partner were one of the first households to move in and he's always been involved in organizing stuff and trying to make things happen. AIUI one of the issues there is that the land for commercial properties has already been passed on to the local council so they can re-sell it to another developer, but they've spotted that prices for building land in this country tend to go up rather than down so they're sitting on it in the hopes that they'll get more for it later. At least, that was the complaint about a year ago.

It's a shame, because the locals do seem to be genuinely trying to make stuff happen and organizing as much stuff as you realistically can with no actual infrastructure, but they've been horribly fucked over by developers and the local council.