The Ultimate Rant

[Brixton-Slag]

Good day,

I have been inspired by the toe-lobbing coloumn. All this talk of how 2500quid is nothing anymore, house prices in London, and how you need a 2:1 for a call centre job (whether thats true or not) makes me think.

Fuck life. Quite frankly. I went to uni, got a 2:2, and will probably end up in some shitty 9-5 office job, straghtening paperclips and wondering where it all went wrong. I mean, this is LIFE. LIFE. Think about that. Shouldn't we all be out, having voyages of personal discovery and trying to do something worthwhile? But no, it seems we're destined to piss it all against the wall and have a mortgage, sub-standard sex life, and generally wait out for the inevitable mid-life crisis, bored retirement then death.

So I'm out travelling the world right now, putting it all off. But I'm in Oz stuck in another shitty office job, just becasue I have to save money. Isn't there some other way of living, that would make us HAPPY???????? When was the last time any of you can say that you were actually content for a sustained period of time, without thinking that something better could have come of your lives? OK, maybe some of you are happy to just stay in the rat race and all, but I'm not one of those people.

Anyway.... err.... sorry.

[TotalNightmare]

thats right... get it all off your chest...

at least im not going to berate you for starting a thread about it though....

love ya!

[gazzyk1ns]

When was the last time any of you can say that you were actually content for a sustained period of time, without thinking that something better could have come of your lives?

Just over three years ago.

It's crap, isn't it? Start to deal with it though. Go about correcting the problem. There's nothing more you can do.

[Doctor Stamen]

I know where you're coming from.  The problem is there are so many graduates, not enough jobs and loads of people who (and fair play to them) didn't bother with higher education and got a head start on everyone else.  Worked my arse off at uni to get a 2:1 and feel like i'm going nowhere.  I'm honestly thinking of emigrating to New Zealand in a year or two and working in a bar or something.  Property is dirt cheap and it's got to be better than working in an office in England for 40 years when the only way you can progress is if you suck corporate cock all the time.

Fuck that.  I had an argument with someone at work the other day who suggested that you should treat directors and managing directors with more respect than people lower down the ladder.  What utter bollocks.  I treat everyone with equal respect, no matter what their job is, i'm not going to bend over backwards for some rude, demanding "do you know who i am?" cunt who just happens to be on £120k a year.

[Bogey]

Particularly if the manager-type in question's rise to power involved a good dose of arse-sucking - hmm, you spend your career humiliating yourself and then demand respect for it. Oh, deary me, isn't life stupid and awful and unfair and rubbish and boring and scary.

[Gazeuse]

Well, I'm just starting to have a great time aged 42. Hang in there...Play your cards right and you can put right many wrongs. I've been shat on from a great hight by various parties, but now things are coming together.

*Clasps chest and keels over*

[Schlippy]

So much negativity.

You don't have to do any of that rat-race, call centre shit, you know. I guess graduation presents a lot of people with this kind of discovery - you mooch through one set of exams after another until you're 21, then find that the whole hoop-jumping thing doesn't mean anything out in big ol' real world.

What do you want to do? No mention of that in your post - defining yourself in terms of what you're not or what you don't want to do is bad for the head.

[Pinball]

I'm pretty happy actually, despite my ranting ;-)

I've been through several phases. Several years ago I left the public sector and now am happily suckling on the well-paid Satanic tit of private industry. I nearly emigrated to Oz, and went so far as getting a permanent visa, but never made the move - one of those decisions that haunts you throughout life! I'm currently planning to work for myself, and will hopefully do so within a few years.

So it's not so bad - we're not beggars in the gutters of Mumbai, for example.

But university? What a con. IMO you should become a plumber or builder, renovate your own properties and thereby become a millionaire within 10 years, and if you feel intellectually stunted do an OU degree in your well-paid part-time. I was at uni for YEARS, man, living like a peasant in crappy digs. I ate cold baked beans and sausage rolls FFS! And HMG's current drive to intellectualise 50% of young people will of course devalue degrees to nothingness. So bottomline - don't do 'em, except as a hobby like ;-)

[Jet Set Willy]

Tell me about it.

I'm not too unhappy though at the moment. If my parents were bastards I would either be fucked or have a proper job by now though. (Probably fucked).

University is stupid. But if I had taken maybe 2 years out then I would have been mature eneough to do well, or do something which would help me get a job. I felt rather obliged to go to uni after my A-levels. That was a bad thing.

And I'm not even one of those morons!

[gazzyk1ns]

I think a lot of people's problems with life (especially a lot of people on here...) stem from the fact that they think intelligence should equal money and respect.

Maybe it should equal respect in some (a lot?) of situations but to be honest I don't see why it should ever equal money. Companies (rightly) pay you for how much you give to them, intelligence is great but to state a couple of extreme, obvious examples... if you spend all day in your office doing The Times crossword and tutting at your workmates for not knowing the answers, or reading Catch 22 and tutting at workmates for not "getting" it then that company has the right to angrily kick you out.

You need to separate "earning money" and "getting on in life" in your head. Earning money will obviously lead to getting on in life but the two things are very different, to successfully earn money you need to be at least a bit of a ruthless bastard and to get on in life and make/sustain friendships you need to do the exact opposite. I think a lot of so-called "intelligent" people might be a lot happier if they learned that, people with prospects always seem to go one way or the other. I hope I don't.

[Brixton-Slag]

Good point about how intelligence doesn't mean you should make more money. My 2:2 is worth shit-all. I want to work in the music industry (god help me), and I learned quickly that if I'd spent those 3 years in Uni working for free for record companies, I'd be laughing right now. Fuck it all.

As for emigrating to NZ - lovely country, but after the excitment of London life I couldn't see it as anything more than a holiday or retirement destination. If you do emigrate and work in a bar for years, do you think you'll obtain the magical "job satisfaction" that everyone talks about?

Come to think of it, what the fuck is "Job satisfaction"??? Making loads of money? Making a difference? Hmm??

[Pinball]

I agree that money is not the be all and end all. In my case, it took years before money came up (significantly) on the radar. But in an era where most people can't afford a house (absolutely discraceful IMO and a good reason to emigrate I'd say), money is important.

And this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until a decade ago, people doing intellectually satisfying albeit badly paid jobs in e.g. academia or teaching, could still afford a decent house, holidays etc. Now, with high house prices (which approximately trebled in the last 10 years, and increased ten-fold compared with 20 years ago!!), high council tax etc. it's not possible for new teachers et al to have an adequate standard of living in many parts of the country. I do not believe renting, or living in one of those 'orrible 1,2,3,4 bed apartments that are sprouting like warts everywhere, is good enough. Not for me anyway. If I didn't already have a house I'd be off to Oz or the US, mate.

This is why money is important. It's not (solely) because we're all greedy bastards now, it's because it's bastard hard to survive with a reasonable standard of living.

I'd challenge any intellectual money-averse type to have a lavish bohemian lifestyle in London nowadays! Seen the cost of renting recently?? The niceties of life are sadly being priced out...

[hoverdonkey]

<smugbastard>I can honestly say that I'm really happy. I'm not doing exactly the job I want to be doing, but I worked out in January that with a four day week, if you include holidays, I only actually work 188 days of the year. That's six months off. I can hardly complain about that.

From that point on I decided to make sure I do stuff that I love with all that time off. Hence the site, playing loads of golf, going out and doing stuff with Ms Donkey instead of watching TV all the time. Literally making the most of every day. I know that sounds trite and horribly life-affirming etc etc, but bollocks.

I spose it's about perspective and compromise. You have to work, it's just finding a job that you can live with doing that allows you the flexibility to do other stuff. The compromise - yes that's it.

Of course, if I wanted to earn a shed load of money, I wouldn't be a journalist, because I would have foregone Uni in favour of being a plumber. But that would have bored the pants off me and I wouldn't trade my time at Uni for anything. All my friends now are friends from Uni, including the lady. I have one friend from before I was 18.

Anyway, yeah, we're gonna give it a right go in London for the next few years then sell up (we got lucky and bought a flat 3 years ago so have benefitted), move away to a cheap place in the country and run a sweet shop, so that I can spend all my time doing cryptic crosswords and playing golf.

Rambling now. STOP.</smugbastard>

[fanny splendid]

I think a lot of people's problems with life (especially a lot of people on here...) stem from the fact that they think intelligence should equal money and respect.

I think that the problem with a lot of people on here is that they equate posting on C&B, with being intelligent.

[MojoJojo]

I agree that money is not the be all and end all. In my case, it took years before money came up (significantly) on the radar. But in an era where most people can't afford a house (absolutely discraceful IMO and a good reason to emigrate I'd say), money is important.

And this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until a decade ago, people doing intellectually satisfying albeit badly paid jobs in e.g. academia or teaching, could still afford a decent house, holidays etc.

But owning a house has really only become a common thing to do since Thatcher, hasn't it? Before then everyone lived in council flats.

And the entire reason there is such a shortage of housing is not because the population has grown or lots of houses have fallen down; it's because more and more people want their own house as opposed to sharing. It's a transition in views on house owning from a privilege to a right which you seem to have fully completed, even though that would of been a very rare opinion as little  as 40 years ago.

This has a bearing on this thread too: what are peoples expectations from life? Why are they so much greater than what we should expect, seeing what most other people settle with?

[hoverdonkey]

The idea of owning your own home is a very British thing too. On the Continent far fewer people own their own home.

[Pinball]

Ownership's only part of the issue though I guess. It's all about cost, as renting is generally more expensive than the monthly cost of a mortgage for an equivalent property. If someone offered me a house to rent for £100 a week I'd jump at it!