Highfielder

from my few months working time in the valleys of South Wales you could be the plain-speaking Sheffielder tipping that coal into the bath and they'd still think you were a "posh English b*stard"!It doesn't matter where you're from the Surrey stockbroker belt or Grimethorpe if you're from this side of the border some of them will still call you a "posh English *******". Besides that most of them seemed ok...

You're not the sharpest tool in the box are you...how much cleaer do the previous posters have to make it. if I were you Jobee I'd leave this kind of the debate to the grown ups and stop embarrassing yourself

Incorrect if you had an ounce of suss back then it was the easiest thing in the world to not register and therefor not pay it...this was especially true if you were single and lived in rented accommodation. I personally never paid a penny and the majority of the people I hung around with didnt pay any. Only the very unluckiest/clueless were ever tracked down and had to eventually pay it. The Tories knew this and may well have seen the few less voters in some marginal constituencies as a very advantageous thing. I think the amount who vanished from the electoral roll nationally was OVER a million the figure in London alone was staggering. The census of 1991 was therefore probably the most innaccurate since their inception in 1801.

Think the Op is incorrect about 4X4s taking over...as I believe they peaked numbersoldwise 2 or 3 years ago owing to it flitering through that far from being something to aspire to the average person thought (unless you really did need one for your job/location) they were naff as hell.

Leeds is far from grim..to be honest theres hardly any part of a far larger city centre which hasnt been modernised/or is in the process of modernisation. and this isnt just the city centre necessarily now with the regeneration having already benefited vast swathes of those areas which abut the city centre proper. And with more and more money being pumping in there seems to be no end in sight at the moment. Much as i like Sheffield the powers that be/private companies involved of whatever political stripe just cant get it right and nothing ever looks finished. I know Leeds is a larger city and has far more money swirling around and therefore Sheffield would always struggle to keep up but its not just that but the fragmented/disorganised/shoddy attitude of the councilors and their planners which seem to be a defining issue.

The whole fact of him being in the public eye for anything like this is quite frankly ridiculous in this day and age. Back in the late 1960s when pop stars were done for drugs it was vaguely interesting as the very few people outside the music business had any contact with drugs.I think in 1967 there were about 2000 hard drug users in the whole of Britain with about 95% of them living in a tiny area of central London. Now though (and probably since about the late 1980s) the average kid on any estate in England knows far more about drugs and in many cases probably does far more drugs than any pop star. Just another symptom of how redundant anything connected with the modern music business is...

put it this way if you're NOT wealthy we're far better off up here than in the South East. Although I was born here I grew up just outside London and my mums family originate from there. And for the millions of people like them who arent well off their situation is appalling...you have literally no chance of affording a house in the area you grew up unless you want to live on the few sink estates that still exist and even then the waiting lists for a council place are unbelievable. This is part of the reason why I came back to Yorkshire...I like living here but didnt want to necessarily leave all the friends I grew up with. The situation has been getting worse and worse for years as more and more people from the rest of Britain attracted by the capital and usually with decent well paid jobs which entail a move to the London area move in and are added to the affluent people already there. IMHO to live in the south east AND NOT BE WELL OFF is about the worst situation you can find yourself in in modern Britain

If there was a prize for the most ill thought out and nonsensical line of argument in the history of the Forum I think the OP has just won it. True Christianity specifically forbids anyone thinking theyre perfect...whilst the OP is so clueless that he doesn't realise mentioning hypocrisy in such a context draws attention to the fact that he is quite clearly one himself:loopy:

As far as empires can ever be benign the British Empire (and it was most definitely of its time) was about as benign as they get. Probably to a large extent the reason why the vast majorityof its constituent countries signed up for the Commonwealth on its dissolution. What is utter drivel is this idea that we as a nation have any peculiar duty to feel shame and apologise for events from our past. To anyone who accepts such warped logic I would ask them to name those benevolent peoples of the world who were always so enlightened that their past record is unblemished to the extent that they can call for Britain to do anything. Of course negative things were done in the name of the British Empire but I'll think you'll find that says more about human nature as a whole than anything unique to the British. The one difference between Britain and the vast majority of the rest of the world's peoples is that we had the resources and organisation to conquer large swathes of the globe rather than just a few adjoining tribes...

The notion that the word "chav" isn't an attack on ordinary lower working class people but only a section of that group is a common defence by those who use it. From my experience at university however the word (and the largely interchangeable "townie") was used in a pejorative way about just about any young person who hadnt had the benefit of university education and was indeed working class. I believe such sites as "Chav Scum" are beneath contempt and say far more about the poor inadequates who set these things up then about the target of their venom. I'm surprised some member of the working class youth hasn't retaliated by creating a site called something like "Student Scum" in which posters can ridicule middle class youngsters by laughing their heads off over such things as liking indie music, going to festivals and taking "gap years" backpacking...

You responded with this to a post of mine once...truly one of the weirdest ideas I've ever heard anyone have...you know anyone who dares criticise anything is doing it because they're jealous! And as for him being a legend...yeah maybe for those who think there's any merit in a music business which is dying on its arse and which is pretty much universally agreed to be creatively and originality-wise at its lowest ebb probably since the advent of popular music... To be honest I doubt any of the indie music of the last 15 years will be remembered fondly if at all in a few years time...why should it be when it'd all been done better a thousand times before...

Last one must have been in 1996/97 as it was my first year as a student in 1997/98 and they didn't have one that year...I remember they said it was the first year that it hadn't happened. I believe that hypothermia was the main reason that it was stopped.

Two anachronisms for the price of one... why try to breathe life into two anachronisms ie the whole idea of Britain (when finally the majority are now choosing to define themselves as English etc and the concept of "Britain" is as good as dead) and the ridiculous spectacle of a monarchy when amongst the young most people don't give a toss...

You're either really embarrassed you put this on here now or more likely like most racists you just don't have a clue...loopy:

The idea that the vast increase in people going to university is in any way improving the chances of the "working class" is IMO laughable. For the bright working class person the best time to be education was that period from the mid-60s - early 90s (ie from when the university's expanded up until the end of the student grant). Although things weren't perfect if you were working class and suited for university there was a good chance that you could go and get yourself a useful degree without saddling yourself with a mountain of debt. How can any sane person think the current situation benefits anyone from the working class when everyone has to take a loan on and many degrees isnt worth the paper its printed on. Theres a distinct possibility the whole argument is a red herring anyway as the amount of identifiably working class youngsters going to university hasn't actually increased that much with the majority of the increase being made up of less bright middle class children who wouldn't have been up to going to university before. Finally it always makes me laugh when people who have had the benefit of a university education still call themselves working class - unless after your degree you went back to a job in manual labour (which notwithstanding the idea of he "joy of education" would make the whole point of your degree pretty pointless) there is no way you can still call yourself working class. You may have originated from a working class background but you're firmly a member of the (probably lower) middle classes now... That's why I think the whole idea of definable socio-economic "classes" in contemporary England is meaningless but that's another story...

And what is it with this annoying advertising campaign they always run at a certain time of the year along the lines of "Creme Eggs are now out again". Complete b*****s there's never a time when you can't get them...

Crumpets! - they have them all over England...as they do Bread and Dripping.

When I started drinking regularly back in the early 80s you could get a pint for (I think) less than 80p. And I distinctly remember the odd boozer in the town I was living in at the time still selling beer for less than £1 a pint in 1989. And this was in the London area where beers always been at its most expensive. To me the rise in price to what it is today in less than 20years beggars belief...I doubt anything else has gone up so much as a pint in a pub. I mean that level of price increase is akin to the massive hikes in price of most things that happened in the mid-70s in the darkest days of out of control inflation...

Was gutted initially but gradually that's been wearing off and now see a good side to the sorry fiasco..ie we get rid of McClaren...imagine if we'd qualified - we'd have had to put up with him even longer and there was absolutely no way we'd have done anything at the European Championships with him...at least we can now finally make a radical change and start planning for the World Cup qualifiers...

When I was a teenager and first working I remember we used to knock off at dinnertime on Christmas Eve and go to the pub until chucking out time at 3 (yes this was the mid 80s and pubs still shut at 2.45) then i'd do my Christmas shopping nicely ****** in the couple of hours before the shops shut. Far more organised these days

This condemnation of Barnsley or any place for wearing flat caps is slightly unfair. Any English working man born before about 1910 would have worn a flat cap...just look at any archive footage of a 1920s football match...about 99% are wearing them. I know all old blokes when i was a young kid in the 70s did and they had nothing to do with Barnsley

Guildford is a city...eg it has Guildford City FC, City of Guildford Swimming Club

the local nobility were not English though were they ...being invariably of Norman descent...the further back you go the more this is true and it is still pretty much the case that later enoblements aside the upper class are still largely the descendents of the couple of thousand Normans who arrived after 1066 and what with the Tudors being Welsh and the Stuarts Scottish the Royal Family has very little English in it

this Leeds is so and so years old stuff is misleading as that was just the year when it got its charter...to get such a thing it was obviously already quite a significant place...in Leeds's case it can trace its roots back till at least Roman times (Leodis) and then there's Ilkley up the road (Olicarna)