The pet hate thread

<long rant deleted>
please don't get me started on the cess pool that is the media. i loathe them with a passion and would happily not own a tv if i didn;t have a kid. a dvd player and a projector would do me fine. - i can just not buy newspapers. i really envy technobear in this respect.

oh yes death to all wasps - one of the little f*ckers got me in the right middle finger knuckle this morning as i was putting out the bin. i now have a finger like a bratwurst. faaaak.

cheers


julian

 

Another one I just remembered whilst posting my thread about motherboards and CPUs:

- The "Intel Inside" jingle and animated logo that appears in every single TV advertisment where the word "Intel" is used :bub:

Michael.

 

Some more...

People who dont look where they are going when they are walking towards you. Heres a hint: Look in the direction you are walking and then people wont walk into you, you daft bastard!
People who are walking in front of you, and walk so slow that you practically trip over your own feet. Like this silly tart in front of me this morning walking into work. And then, after walking that slow, she fumbles about for her key card... why cant she have the damn thing ready, she knows she will need it....
In fact anybody who doesnt have things ready when they are in a queue and they know they need it. You've stood there for ages so you should know!
And the last one is dedicated to that shitty song "baby cakes". How is it possible to make such an annoying song go to number 1

 

Students -
Complaining Gits, No one is forcing them to be a student. I don't see why I should have to pay (through taxes) for your higher education. I think student fees should 4X what they are now. We are way too soft on students.

The way the government tries to con us into thinking that Asylum seeker Applications have gone down - they may well have but thats because it is so easy to sneak in to this country, that they don't need to apply.

They way people blame America for all the world problems.

The way I get feel the need to update my HIF/AV when there is F****** wrong with it.

Reality Programs on TV - Arseholes on TV more like.

 

I've got another one:-

Being put in a job you dont want to do without having any choice, and then instead of doing the job I applied for, I end up sitting in frigging meetings every day where I dont know what anybody is on about, and doing shitty admin tasks.

 

Pb, just say something about some low hanging fruit at 30,000 feet, and you will be in the club.

Seems like we all hate roughly the same things.

DomFG, I saw a man with a white stick once in Preston in a shopping centre caroom into a person, he just walked about 10 miles an hour, fast, and didn't care who he bashed , wasn't you was it??

These middle class women in M+S are the worst, I remember when I was a kid, there were 2, and they wouldn't budge an inch, just walked in a straight line at me, and expected me to go around, so I just banged into them, people should move 50/50 out of the way. All for fairness.

Rudeness...car drivers who just pull out, people having no time any more, no manners.

That intel jingle is really starting to bug me, too and its so damn loud

 

Damn right, and they dont move an inch and then complain and give abuse when you bang into them having actually made some effort to get out of the way, but clearly thats not enough. One day I'll give abuse back in the form of a smack in the mouth!

 

LCD, lets not turn this thread into a debate about asylum seekers, immigration or any other issue that will rapidly get tempers flaring and will be of absolutely zero use to anyone. I've been seriously biting my tongue to not respond to some comments here that I find absolutely repulsive.

Anyone else, please don't comment on what LCD said in his last post re immigration and asylum seekers.

Actually, LCD, it might be an idea if you edited them out

Michael.

 

Must say the general political leaning on here seems to be really quite surprisingly right-wing.

 

I too find it surprising and disappointing . However, judging from e-mails and PM's I get, the lefties (like me) tend to be less vocal on political issues on the forum which is probably a good thing as political arguments on forums will go nowhere and no-one will convince anyone else of their point of view and it just creates a load of bad feeling.

Michael.

 

Not really, I believe we've been through this before. Interestingly, ZG seems to be the most right-wing hi-fi forum. I have no idea why.

 

Right, sorry to be a dumbass, but what does being a "lefty" or a "righty" entail?

 

Paul, by "leftie" I meant that I lean toward the left wing of the policitcal spectrum. Is that what you meant, or are you asking what left-wing and right-wing mean?

Michael.

 

I was asking what left and right wing meant, I've heard the terms lots, but I honestly have no idea what they mean.

 

A new pet-hate for me: backstabbing, two-faced, nest-feathering, pen-pushing bitches from local government

 

Ah...OK. This could get extremely controversial, so I'll try to avoid that. To explain it in a way you could most easily relate to:

Labour = left-wing
Conservative = right-wing

...that was how it was up until about 1997 anyway. Now it's more like:

Labour = right-wing
Conservative = ultra right-wing

The Lib Dems, which were traditionally something of a middle ground are now probably the only major left-wing party left in the UK. They're certainly more left than New Labour.

I've no idea where the terms come from originally though (I ought to really).

To get into what actually constitutes being left/right wing is impossible to do really without upsetting people

Michael.

 

In 1789, the French National Assembly was created as a parliamentary body to move control of issues, such as taxation, from the king to the citizenry.

Inside the chamber where the National Assembly met, members of the Third Estate (the revolutionaries) sat on the left side and members of the First Estate (ther nobility) sat on the right. Thus, the left wing of the room was more liberal, seeking change to the status quo, and the right wing was more conservative. (In the following years, the Third Estate would decapitate the First Estate (in more ways than one), but that's another story.)

There is a secondary meaning, stemming from the ancient bias against left-handedness (in Latin, "left" is "sinister", so you begin to get the picture). The idea that left=revolutionary=bad/underhand, at least in the eyes of those who are right (in the political sense, if nothing else).

 

OK, cheers, but I am still none the wiser.

Why not just explain it. If people get offended by this type of stuff, they need to chill out, seriously. Why do people get offended by the slightest little thing these days anyway? I advise such people never to go out drinking with me

 

The problem is that it's difficult to give an unbiased view. My summary would be: left-wing means you care about other people, right-wing means you only care about yourself.

For a fuller and probably more balanced view this is the best link I found with a quick Google:

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Left-Right_politics

Michael.

 

Perhaps a little harsh, Mike (and, like yourself, I lean strongly left). Perhaps a better definition would be that the left believes in improving the lot of ordinary working people by direct intervention (using tax revenue for better social services, health care, public transport, in the extreme case, nationalisation of particular utilities and even industries). The right, on the other hand, stands for unbridled capitalism, free play of market forces, the right of the rich to get even richer, etc. The theory here is that, if this is allowed to happen, benefits will trickle down to the workers, thus improving their lot. Winston Churchill was a strong believer in the "trickle down" idea, but then Winston was really a 19th century man (and from an aristocratic family) who, in the words of one famous commentator, was prepared "to put up with the best of everything".

Unbridled laisser-faire capitalism brought disaster on Ireland in the 1840s when the potato crop failed two years in a row, because of blight, a fungal disease. A million Irish died and another million emigrated, mainly to the USA, where they took their anti-British bitterness, which in turn helped make the North the mess it is today. This was not a genocide, as some Republicans will try to tell you, but a simple application of extreme right-wing politics (these people could have given Maggie lessons). They were not cruel people, but they just said, "We can't give people money and food for nothing, otherwise it'll remove their will to better themselves and provide for themselves. They'll just become lazy and dependent." So Ireland remained a net exporter of food all during the potato famine. Population of Ireland before the blight struck, about 8 million, population today (both North and South), about 5 million.

Of course the reverse extreme case is Marxism, in which all means of production belong in the hands of the people (in theory anyway). The father of Marx's collaborator, Friedriech Engels, was a mill owner in northern England, and he was horrified at the conditions that ordinary workers had to endure - "dark satanic" wasn't too far wrong. Marx drew inspiration from Darwinism, then on the rise - as man had evolved from more primitive ancestors, so Communism would be the eventual, inevitable outcome of man's political and social evolution. Marx would have been astounded that his system would not take root in the advanced West, as he thought, but in backwards Russia. But that was because of a further element. Marx believed that capitalism would collapse inevitably under the weight of its own contradictions; Vladimir Ilych Ulanov added the element of giving capitalism a helping hand to go, by violent overthrow. And so we had Marxism-Leninism. And, as we have seen, it didn't do any better than capitalism.

There are inherent problems in both positions and both are caused by human nature. As Mike implies, few on the right care about anyone but themselves. But human nature is the same across the board and many on the left feel the same way - and nobody has ever truly been able to legislate people into doing what they really should do. The old joke in the eastern bloc was, "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us". The social democracies of continental Europe seem to be the best compromise, but even they have been creaking in the present conditions, under pressure from globalisation and jobs being done cheaply elsewhere. And if I had the answer, I wouldn't be sitting here rambling on to you, I'd be dusting my Nobel Prize medal on the mantelpiece and consulting for the 1000th time the S-Class Mercedes catalogue, trying to decide what colour the other one should be.