166 replies to this topic

[Josco]

Godot, on 23 February 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

...... Another thing - middle class very definitely didn't mean better as James Cameron pointed out when he showed all the Irish having a great time down in third class on Titanic - until it sunk and they all died. There's a lot to be said for the working class. It needs to be revived.

I don't think it's the class divisions that needs reviving, it's having a good time whichever class you're in. People are generally far too miserable these days, alcohol has become the new demon (they've got rid of smoking almost); beer in my local has gone up to 3 guineas a pint. Holy shit! It was 2/6 (about 12p) when I first started going to a pub.....

[Godot]

Josco, on 23 February 2012 - 04:06 PM, said:

Godot, on 23 February 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

...... Another thing - middle class very definitely didn't mean better as James Cameron pointed out when he showed all the Irish having a great time down in third class on Titanic - until it sunk and they all died. There's a lot to be said for the working class. It needs to be revived.

I don't think it's the class divisions that needs reviving, it's having a good time whichever class you're in. People are generally far too miserable these days, alcohol has become the new demon (they've got rid of smoking almost); beer in my local has gone up to 3 guineas a pint. Holy shit! It was 2/6 (about 12p) when I first started going to a pub.....

Half a crown? You wuz robbed. A pint of Younger's Tartan was 1/6 when I first started, mind it was like dish water. You could drink that stuff all night and still pass a breath test.

[Toast]

Half-a-crown, now that's what I call a proper coin. I found one in a drawer the other day. Beautiful thing.

[Paul Bearer]

I was at Warwick castle at the weekend. They had various pre decimal coins in a plastic envelope, there was a florin, threepenny bit, tanner, penny, ha'penny, farthing, half a crown, a shilling all for £10.00. I seriously did think about buying one.

[Spade_Cooley]

Godot, on 23 February 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

OK Spade not complete bollocks but far too simplistic. I come from as working class a background as it's possible to get but I wouldn't have been surprised to find that my parents voted conservative - they never told me and I never asked. They had values, I suppose, that were more aligned to the BBC than ITV - and so do I. I couldn't warm to Magpie, but I couldn't relate much to people like Christopher Trace or Valerie Singleton either. But John Noaks, well he was very down to earth and working class. It's not just a class thing but a bit of a north-south thing too. The middle class is very strong down south but in the north in my town when I was a kid there weren't many middle class people so there were no Jonses to keep up with or to suggest what TV station to watch. The BBC just seemed better and didn't have any adverts. But when the other side did something decent such as Coronation Street, we watched it. The thing is, nearly all the best stuff was on BBC. ITV had Tommy Cooper, Benny Hill and World In Action and that was about it. Another thing - middle class very definitely didn't mean better as James Cameron pointed out when he showed all the Irish having a great time down in third class on Titanic - until it sunk and they all died. There's a lot to be said for the working class. It needs to be revived.

I think maybe my views are a little clouded perhaps because I grew up a) during Thatcherism and in an immigrant family, so maybe I'm too eager to over-simplify. Indeed, ITV was always bigger with immigrant audiences because it used to look like a foreign TV channel. every night being variety show night. Also, immigrants loved "Mind Your Language". I've watched that show on YouTube, I'm really glad that Barry Evans died alone and broke.

The traditional working class of this country doesn't exist anymore tbh, the right destroyed the unions and the left destroyed the churches. So outside of Islamic Fundamentalism (which is becoming increasingly middle class, you seen how much a return to Islamabad to train costs these days?) and the EDL, there's no real massed gatherings of the working man these days. Which is a shame, but I can't imagine there's anything we can do on a message board dedicated to zinging corpses that'll help revive the proleteriat.

Feel like deadpooling is working class anyway, there's a sense of a lack of respect or a refusal to bow to authority inherent in it.

[themaninblack]

I kind of lean on Spade's side in this debate. It reminds me of a magnificent debate I had at University with my best mate's girlfriend on this very subject of what's working class and what's middle class and I'm pretty sure that Blue Peter and The Muppets were mentioned as admissible evidence (We also once had a debate about whether to call vaginas flaps or slits - you can't beat a good education!).

Lots of WC people watch BP but it was made for the middle classes, undoubtedly.

The BBC have been better but ITV had their moments too (Shelley, The Sweeney, Minder, Widows, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Kenny Everett's Video Show, Brideshead Revisited, Rising Damp) and in CITV terms too (Knightmare, Dramarama, Worzel Gummidge, Dangermouse, Fat Tulip's Garden, Educating Marmalade, Tiswas).

TV was pretty good in those days. I actually don't like these dedicated children's channels because I think modern parents pander to children by having those channels on all the time and don't show them the real world enough. To me the 1980s which I grew up in really was much about IRA bombing campaigns, mass unemployment and the USSR than it was about Zammo and Rowland. Not to mention alternative comedy and wall-to-wall snooker...

[Spade_Cooley]

Prodigious DL fan Melvyn Bragg wades into the debate.

[time]

themaninblack, on 24 February 2012 - 09:04 PM, said:

I kind of lean on Spade's side in this debate. It reminds me of a magnificent debate I had at University with my best mate's girlfriend on this very subject of what's working class and what's middle class and I'm pretty sure that Blue Peter and The Muppets were mentioned as admissible evidence (We also once had a debate about whether to call vaginas flaps or slits - you can't beat a good education!).

Lots of WC people watch BP but it was made for the middle classes, undoubtedly.

The BBC have been better but ITV had their moments too (Shelley, The Sweeney, Minder, Widows, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Kenny Everett's Video Show, Brideshead Revisited, Rising Damp) and in CITV terms too (Knightmare, Dramarama, Worzel Gummidge, Dangermouse, Fat Tulip's Garden, Educating Marmalade, Tiswas).

TV was pretty good in those days. I actually don't like these dedicated children's channels because I think modern parents pander to children by having those channels on all the time and don't show them the real world enough. To me the 1980s which I grew up in really was much about IRA bombing campaigns, mass unemployment and the USSR than it was about Zammo and Rowland. Not to mention alternative comedy and wall-to-wall snooker...

Of course TV was much better 20+ years ago - there were only 4 channels - at most - to choose from (and I'm not sure Channel 4 had children's programmes). Now, there are so many channels the quality is spread far too thin, including far more dedicated children's programming.

I'm also of the opinion that its far too much aiming for the lowest common denominator.

[Spade_Cooley]

I will stand up for a lot of lowest common denominator TV, but the truth is Britain does LCD really, really poorly. No British reality show has ever come close to the schadenfreude excellence of My Super Sweet 16, the catty bitchiness of Next, or the improv effortlessness of the first few series of Jersey Shor. All three shows are as dumb as a box of nails/Andy "The Hammer" Hamilton, but they have an effortless entertainment about them. What are the... not even great, acceptable British trash TV shows? Take Me Out is key as a guilty pleasure, Snog Marry Avoid has its moments but other than that... there's probably not been a key British reality show since George Galloway was pretending to be a cat.

[Toast]

I don't watch television any more. The beginning of the end came when someone gave me a digibox because he was getting Sky. I then found that there was too much crap to choose from, and it became too much of a chore to sort through it all. I could cope with 5 (well, 4½ channels), but I just can't be arsed with it now. If I find I've missed something decent, I can watch it on catch-up. But I don't bother much.

[Banshees Scream]

Quote

I will stand up for a lot of lowest common denominator TV, but the truth is Britain does LCD really, really poorly. No British reality show has ever come close to the schadenfreude excellence of My Super Sweet 16, the catty bitchiness of Next, or the improv effortlessness of the first few series of Jersey Shor. All three shows are as dumb as a box of nails/Andy "The Hammer" Hamilton, but they have an effortless entertainment about them. What are the... not even great, acceptable British trash TV shows? Take Me Out is key as a guilty pleasure, Snog Marry Avoid has its moments but other than that... there's probably not been a key British reality show since George Galloway was pretending to be a cat.

It's that you know about it. I guess I'm detached, I don't know.

I'm not in the NBA.

[the_engineer]

Toast, on 25 February 2012 - 01:30 AM, said:

I don't watch television any more. The beginning of the end came when someone gave me a digibox because he was getting Sky. I then found that there was too much crap to choose from, and it became too much of a chore to sort through it all. I could cope with 5 (well, 4½ channels), but I just can't be arsed with it now. If I find I've missed something decent, I can watch it on catch-up. But I don't bother much.

Haven't watched TV since 2008 and i don't miss it one bit I only use my TV for computer games or DVDs. To be fair I do watch the odd football match live on terrestrial TV or big news event other than that i have the internet.

In my case the internet really did kill off the television.

[Gunjaman5000]

If I may wade in to the discussion with my customary much too little, much too late, could I add that everything was better before (with a few noteworthy exceptions, chiefly the internet). I've never worked anywhere, lived anywhere, eaten/drank/shagged anywhere that is better now than it was before. Maybe it's something to do with inherent sentimentality or an aversion to change deep inside us all, I don't know.

Unless of course no one finishes that sentence when I'm around.

"It used to be really great here before that cunt turned up..."

[CarolAnn]

I'm giving up my middle class, always better in the past, no satellite television sanity for Lent.

[Godot]

I've given up pancakes.

[CaptainChorizo]

As an Agnostic I am not sure if I am giving anything up or not. Could go either way.

[CarolAnn]

Sanity. I figure it's best to just go with the flow.

[Lord Fellatio Nelson]

CarolAnn, on 17 February 2013 - 04:32 AM, said:

Sanity. I figure it's best to just go with the flow.

It is CA, its so much easier to drift than to try and power yourself forwards against that constant flow.
Fuck it, i say, whats the worst that can happen? We Live, we breathe, we stop breathing, we die.
Nowt complicated in that, right?