Everyday is an endless stream of Cigarettes and magazines.

Everyday is an endless stream of Cigarettes and magazines.

J.R. Hartley.

It has been yet again some time since i wrote on you dear blog, yet recently i have felt time for my ownself increasingly decreasing, i have felt somewhat empty the past week or so, inexplicably, i have not been talking with myself lately, which is normal for most people but has me so worried as i do not know what to do, think or say, i have just kinda let one aspect of my personality run wild, and frankly my dear, i have enjoyed that thoroughly. 

Well have i is the question, something happened to me, then it stopped happening then i seemed to have somewhat gone back to my old ways, i am glad to be back in them, because they are easy.... but is it true happiness? - we will see will we not dear reader!

Just a short one today really, just a little update on all things.... Birthday is quickly dawning, that means wheels for byron, and if you have spent more than 5 minutes in my company you know that i would love a Triumph Spitfire mk4 1972, with hardtop and an engine outta a TR6 which is a 2.5 straight six with fuel injection, so that might be getting closer, obviously without the engine, that would be pushing it... or rather not! 

Anyway, i would love to hear from some readers how things are going for them and what they have planned for over the summer :)

Best of luck old boy!

Korea; 1950; A Hundred years ago

Korea; 1950; a Hundred years ago

J.R. Hartley

Welcome dear reader, it has been over 8 weeks i think and i forgot about you, yes i know how ruddy awful but then again you forgot about me, so its all well and good now isnt it? i think we shan't kiss, but we will make up? Personally i blame revision for having kept us apart for so long ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSFZPCzzHIU)

So what has the past 8 weeks brought me? well the highs and lows, mostly lows but not terrifically low, so all is well! Exams for me are pretty much done and gone so i say fond farewells to those awful lot for this year, how great! (The only question left to ask is hows your lindy? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahoJReiCaPk )

Ahh speaking of the lindy, i have been immersed on the very early 20th century lately, i feel i'm stuck in about 1926, it's not even something that i have been doing on purpose, so that brings to me a question i have been toying with in my mind, why do people like the stuff they like... thats the blunt, short way of putting it, to elaborate i would state;

"Do individuals stick with popular culture because they were brought up gradually with the media and fashion around them, would they like other pop culture items from other points in our history if they were brought up with it?"

This actually is a really easy question to answer, and its almost Darwinian and Freudian in its answer; We are products of our environments and 99.9% percent of the time we adhere to that, but then i struggle when i come the exception of me and one or two others i have met, now this is not to say that i am the only person in this generation to know of things from the previous generation, i mean it in that me and the two other people i have met do not like the fashions and music of this generation at all... we all have a code when speaking to friends that if they play shit music and they ask us about it we always say " yes i could listen to this but its not something i would search for myself" or actually this is ok i guess... that is code for please turn it off...

yes back to my point, i just want to contrast the two generations now to examine why someone could not like the things of today is the question i next try to answer...

A wise man once said, Art is never Static, Art changes with time, with grace, with different conjures and interests. -  Because of this i ask myself the question (While watching back to the future) how the fucking hell did we get from Bobby Soxers in poodle skirts having had their best boy take them the malt shop to listen to the NEW Elvis record. Coming forwards to 2013 To pretty much odd sods with Korean Pop music, sexually explicit lyrics, odd haircuts that would make a hedhog think twice about an attack and all while wearing their faux 1960's clothes from Top Man or Primark... or even worse, the dreaded nylon tracksuit with branding ablaze.

Now those comparisons are not to say one music or fashion taste is better than the other, no it is to question how we got from this
 

To this...





These were not the best, nor the worst photos i found, nor do the describe the generation fully - how i personally see it- but i couldnt find photos on how exactly people dress today. but you get the gist right? how come the bring contrast?!

I am not going to go into some massive debate about it because you, dear reader, know where my loyalties lie.

Now i can understand some reasons for change, like moving away from suits to tracksuits, thats because sometimes suits are just not practical but does this mean we should not wear suits just because its easy not to? i think not! whatever happened to wanting to really put some effort into your appearance, suits should be the social norm... for men anyway.

Now for women, yes you can wear trousers, i can understand why many have moved away from dresses and skirts, i can understand that, you can look good without them but please do not even consider buying strappy tops please...

Why can't we go back to a time where men wore suits, nice hats, brylcreemed their hair, drank during the day as alcohol was everywhere, most men smoked good cigarettes... Like these guys


Women had pale white make up, ruby red lips and hair like Peggy pee or Rita  (see below) - and yes you can have trousers but i much prefer skirts... just make sure you look respectable!




This post really has lost its venom but it cannot be helped, i promise dear reader to try and be more frequent in my updates.

the next one will be my views on the Woolwich killing.

All the best, feel free to comment.

Oh one last thing... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqsT4xnKZPg

Barnoness Margaret Hilda Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS 13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013

Barnoness Margaret Hilda Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS 

13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013

J.R. Hartley

Right... I am going to come down a peg from my usual writings and defend Mrs Thatcher, people who have no idea of her or were even born at that time are just repeating what they have heard from other people like a broken record, without finding out for themselves the data (Like i have done) I may not have been around at the time but i am able to comment as I've done my homework unlike the majority of  bobbysoxer's ranters on twitter. Now i would not say i was a Thatcherite or even that i was a big fan of hers but people need informing, she was a steadfast, sturdy politician who followed her instinct, she had more back bone than all the following cabinets and governments added together.

Let my take on the general criticisms now;

1) She killed the country, Killed off the Coal and steel industries, destroyed manufacturing up north.

2) Sold off council homes 

3) Privatized the entire country 

One) Right this is always my favourite point to tackle, i used to agree with people that she had killed off the industries of Britain and that it was an awfully bad thing, Well firstly, yes she did destroy the industry and forced workers to be on the dole or go into the service industry. Yes that may be so but it had to happen at some point if we look at the Newly industrializing countries at that time, (1980's and 1990's) China, India and Brazil, EVEN if we had kept our heavy industry, would we have been able to keep up with them? a place where labour is so cheap you can pay them in rice? where at that time all the clever money in the Transnational corporations was looking to these places as a way to maximize profits. 

The countries that are up and coming would have over taken us the hard way later on, it would have lead to massive job losses as Thatcher caused BUT we would have not had the chance to form a strong service sector so we really would have been screwed...

Two) Sold off council homes, essentially should the Government be there to look after those who are struggling? well yes in a sense but should it not also be the responsibility of society as a whole, in a way where the richest are not throwing in tonnes of money with  income tax at 98% (the highest since the war) but also where the middle classes and the poor are not struggling. It is a difficult issue to even consider combating but i will comment merely that should we put such a focus on house prices thereby putting the lowest of the low unable to buy their own home, she enabled those to do this and almost in a sense like the American Dream allowed anyone to aspire to be great.

3) Privatized the Entire Country, Now to try and explain this concept to someone of my generation is immensely difficult that there was at one point in time, that the government controlled companies, now i may not be able to name them all but i will try; Her Majesties Government owned at one point

- British Gas (Gas company)

- British Petroleum (Oil Company and Petrol retailer)

- British Rail ( The entire British Rail network, all the trains, stations, everything.) 

- All the Water companies

- All the Electricity companies

- British Telecom (Landline phone services) Before mobile phones were mega popular

- British Steel (Metal Workings and Foundries)

- National Coal Board (all the Coal mines in Britain)

- Pickfords Removals (Home moving company)

- British Leyland ( MASSIVE car manufacture)

Now i many have missed major ones off but my point is this, why should we own all of these services, Thatcher was the daughter of a Greengrocer, she knew about business she knew that business should be run by experts that make a big profit and still provide a good product i cannot stress how difficult and stuck British industry was in the 1970's. Take British Leyland, it made cars, one of the cars it made was the original Mini originally it cost in the 1960's MORE to make than it was being sold for, I.E. a company was selling something at a LOSS. they didn't even know they were making a loss it was a competitor who found out "Ford once took a Mini away and completely dismantled it, possibly to see if they could offer an alternative. It was their opinion though, that they could not sell it at BMC's price. Ford determined that the BMC must have been losing around £30 per car".

“I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it." - Mrs Thatcher

Anyway to return to my point. Industry had no idea what it was doing it was similar to the banks in 2000's they made one silly decision after another but it was ok because the Government would always bail us out. Thatcher changed this, she sold them off to the people of the UK allowing many people to buy Shares, Shares, commoners buying shares that was something people never had been able to do before.

Another huge problem in 1970's (it was the Winter of discontent that propelled her into power in my opinion) Britain was Strikes, in the late 70's on average 30 MILLION days a year were being lost to strike action, something had to be done to keep Britain moving. Thatcher sorted it out and during the 1980's and 1990's days spend in strike tumbled down. The miners’ strike bumped up the figures for the 1980s, although, with an annual average of 7.2m days lost, the trend was improving. But the real breakthrough came in the 1990s, when fewer than 0.7m days were lost on average. is that progress or is it not?

If you're sick of Austerity measures Thatcher was about the complete opposite it was about the boom, making, spending, creating, circulating, MONEY having everything you wanted and keeping up with the Jones' who could not want that?!

Now to summarise the political aspect of this Blog post, You speak of Baroness Thatcher as this great big Dictator, no-one had a gun to your head in the 70's and 80's and made you vote Tory.s Mrs Thatcher won 3 General Elections and never lost a single one. The Labour Government before her really piddled this country up before she went in and sorted things out, there will always be contrasting Views on how this looks but in my opinion her decisions may have been wrong at the time but they sure did end up being right today, if we had carried on as an industrial country we would have been fucked over the Indians and Chinese in the previous two decades. Thatcher did us a favour.

Not to mention how she furthered the feminist cause... Not in what she said but in what she did, becoming the First Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Never backing down to a condescending man, she lived in politics from 1959 right up to 1990... that is a long time to last especially in that era.

She was also classless. In the sense that she was a grocers daughter from up north and aspired to be a Conservative prime minister, i believe that no such prime minister in recent history has ever been that ' of the people'

In summary all together. She was a woman at the end of the day and i think it very rare that someone should have masses of people celebrate when they die, Thatcher in my eyes did nothing wrong, politicians screw up they always have and always well but at least in the long run Lady Thatchers Screw ups worked out really well for Britain.

"we are not simply carried along by the currents of history—we can shape them with moral conviction, unyielding courage and iron will." 

 

Barnoness Margaret Hilda Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS 

13 October 1925 – 8 April 2013

Rest In Peace.

Jesus Christ Superstar

Jesus Christ Superstar

J.R. Hartley

Ah the holidays, is there a more relaxing yet pointless time for students right across the country, from Southampton to Shetland?

that was my opening thought for this blog post but i would like to take the time to thank you, my loyal readers for getting this blog up to a 1000 reads, when i wrote the first post i thought that well frankly i would get about 5 readers for the first post and then no-one would be bothered again, to the contrary is what i have experienced, well i would like not to thank you because i did not write this to be read, but i would like to say that i hope by reading some of these well constructed rants that your horizons have been widened, or that you just enjoyed reading them!

On with the show! yes what a wonderful idea Christ had 2000-odd years ago, to die around this time and to not put up a fight so that present day children can enjoy the fruits of his labour, endless amounts of chocolate and 2 weeks of perfectly timed revision just before that big push before the final round of Year 11 (GCSE) or Year 12 (As-level) exams, like a well skilled army building its supplies, training its men and just bracing its self for the approaching enemy.

So not to go down the road of imposing upon another religion but i really do not see why we get 2 whole weeks off at easter, this term has been immensly short and rather challenging for myself as i have been trying to get my act together after some rather poor exam results as i am sure i told you all about at some other time.... anyway back to it, revision will be the center point of my easter holiday.

Apart from the first few days i have indulged in many many films; here is what i have watched

Bridge on the River Kwai
Apollo 13
Uncle Buck
Grease
Easy A
The Great Escape
Chicken Run
(Lots of Top Gear Specials)
Butch Cassidy and the sundance Kid
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.
A Clockwork Orange
Pulp Fiction
Dragnet
Dirty Dancing
I intend to watch the back to the future boxset also

Looking at these films I am quick to establish a pattern, i like films made by and for the insane, with the occasional bit of escapism, i think that says a lot about my personality really, Insane with an ultimate desire to escape from the mundane to a wonderful place that would seeeeeeem to be America in the the past, focusing on the 1960's and 1950's... Yes i know i look at the past through rose tinted specs but ehhh everyone gotta have a dream to prevent them from jabbing themselves in the wrists with a razor blade or jumping in front of the 5:15 to Brighton.

Veni, vidi, vici

Veni. Vidi. Vici. (And a boring depressing rant.)

J.R. Hartley

Hello again reader, i welcome you to the weekend, one which yet again has seen me piled up with bloody geography work. Yes i am going to complain about it but then i would think it rather prudent to do the work as soon as possible, i recently -along with every other year 12 and 13 in the country- got my January exam results back and to be quite honest with you they were awful, An E and a U but never-mind it is a rather large kick up the arse and have encouraged me to work harder and potentially do well. Hence the title of this post, when i finish year 13 i want to be able to say Veni. Vidi. Vici. - Simply, I came, I saw, I conquered. I took on BRJ, the exam board and managed to come out with good grades and get into University. Well thats the hope anyway but i am a long way off from there yet!

Anywho, i feel i have nothing i can really publicly rant out, i'm sure you don't want to hear about what i really have on my mind. But i will tell you how i've been feeling lately, I think i can summarise my slightly somber mood with some Dean Martin lyrics; (Song here http://bit.ly/bgkIwb)

"You're nobody 'til somebody loves youYou're nobody 'til somebody caresYou may be king, you may possess the world and it's goldBut gold won't bring you happiness when you're growing oldThe world still is the same, you never change itAs sure as the stars shine aboveYou're nobody 'til somebody loves youSo find yourself somebody to love"

Shall i explain? Well yes because i do what i want not to please no damn sod reading this. You're nobody 'till somebody loves you, well that one is plain and simple of late everyone just seems to be well busy or self-invovled and im just feeling a bit on me own and stuff, it would be nice to just have one person to talk to i just feel so so alone. I Undoubtedly would assume that i have not spoken to someone i actually know for more than 10 minutes outside of school. and even if that has happened they never show a concern in me.

Speaking of that point whenever i do speak to the odd person (Bar one or two people) people are so self-involved the conversation ALWAYS has to be centered on them, and if it isnt the conversation dies and we are left awkwardly making small talk.

The line about gold not bringing you happiness when you're growing old well i don't think that is just about having gold or riches i think its just about having too much of anything apart from love and then that thing just starts to go with time, so it could be lost of random sex, drugs, drink, gold, money, women, music whatever you name it, but basically the pleasure goes with time and you're left alone with something that brought you pleasure at some point in your life but now is just a apart of routine.

SO FIND YOURSELF SOMEBODY TO LOVE!! simple to round off the rather depressing post off i would like to simply say to anyone and everyone out there find happiness, Find love, find it anywhere you can because hell to quote, Red from the shawkshank Redemption "get bust living, or get busy dying" and loving is an essential part of living, going back to dean martin, You're nobody till somebody loves you! Because you never know when you're passing on some amazing woman to chase some other tart and you end up with both of them passing on you and end up grumpy and spending your weekend moaning about every little thing you can think off that pisses you off and staring out the window wondering what depressing thing is in store for you next.

Nevermind, end rant, i miss Alcohol.

How are the readers of this post?
Any big news?
Pointless questions that no one will bother to answer?
Did anyone even read this far?
Did i mention how much i hate things?

Friendship

Friendship.

J.R. Hartley

Hello fair reader, the day i write this is sunday, almost ten days since my last post and i think that i should update my blog, i know also that this is not my best work but i will try to make future posts better and i have not written a title for this post yet due to me having no idea about what to write, not to worry i am sure it will come to me as each key press brings me closer to the end of this paragraph

I would like to take this opportunity to ask for your input on this blog, looking at the statisics i see i have many readers from america and Canada, so tell me! what brings you to a British blog? even tell me what your lives are about hell just talk to me, i love speaking to our cousins across the pond!

Even you friendly brits should give some feedback on the content on this blog i would very much appreciate it :D

Right i have decided that this post will be about the delicate nature of friendships.

Firstly i would think that friendship is a key part of what i would call the 'human spark' that little thing that separates us from the animals, not being an expert in zoology i wont go into detail about what science says but rather just this little thing called the human spark, i think social interaction is a big part of it.

Friendship is lovely, it just is, it can appear in many forms but overall it just benefits you both in immense ways. Now i am in getting in the position of life where i have very few people i would designate as friends purely because well, i don't like people, but in the past i would say i have had many close friends and from that i can write about the dynamics of friendship.

Friendship morphs our mindset and opinions like no other, sure there are family members but they're relatives and you can't choose those, you choose your friends because you have similar interests and opinions or even you just have to spend a lot of time together due to circumstances beyond your control IE you work with them or you have all your lessons with them, and then this time spent together evolves into friendship and all is well. You could argue partners shape us, i would have to disagree with this as no woman could ever stop me loving David Bowie, or change my political stance. Partners merely compliment our beliefs and values where as a friend helps declare and construct them.

I often like to think of friendship as a fine claret or Bordeaux, beautiful things that mature with age and get better with each passing year, but if not kept in the right conditions it can turn to horrid acidic vinegar, too foul to drink. Yes but friends are the ones who i should expect in times of need are the supportive ones, true friends really help, they say its a friend who will bail you out of jail, but a true friend will help you bury a body. and then make jokes about it on the drive home!

This article really is a mute point, everyone knows how important good friendships are but i will now talk about the odd friendships that i have experienced

Well i cannot go into major detail as i still have to speak with this person but nonetheless i shall carry on, there is a boy or a girl, lets call them Alex, now Alex has been a good friend of mine for years but of late as their friends stopped talking to them she or he has spent alot of time with me telling me all about his or her problems and just randomly talking for fucking hours on end without stopping or asking me for my opinion or anytime i do open my mouth i get told i am wrong, how oddly annoying, now normally i would tell this person where a good spot to dig a hole to die in is, but unfortuantely circumstacnes dictate that i spend many hours with them a week otherwise i would be alone and frankly i would prefer to be alone but they're on of those creepy people who follow you everywhere. Do you not just hate those people who you're nice to once and then they then think you're friends for life?

Second odd friendship, i once knew a boy who was absolutely lovely, he had family issues, his parents we're going through a messy divorce and all the kids in the family quite liked me, the elder brothers and sisters got on with me very well, so did his sisters of various ages, now fortunately i cut off all contact with them because what i am about to tell you puts goosebumps on my skin even today, so one weekend i am round his house, everyone has gone shopping and i'm just on my laptop, now his youngest sister, who was 17, i was 16 so do not be worrying about ages! came up to me and started well you know, dirty odds and ends, so here we are kissing on a bed then everyone comes home we stop and me and her brother carried on with our evening, so next week i go round his house and he is furious with me, he says i know what i did last week, right i think she must have told she mustnt have said everything but i can lie and get through this, next thing i know he whips out a photograph of me and her getting off, oh god i think evidence, we talk and it turns out he had been keeping a very large collection of photographs of me in a folder. i do not know why. i never want to know what for, but after that i cut off all contact and never spoke to any member of that family again.

Being a male who finds better friendship with females there have been numerous times where i have been stuck in the friendzone, lets face its most men would at least like to have it off with at least 50% of their female friends. But this story is by far the saddest of them all, now this didnt happen to me thankfully but it happened to someone i know and i will always feel immensely sad for them in this story that follows

Now, there was a bloke i knew, lets call him Derrick ( i like that name you see) and he was friends with Sandra for a good 11 years or so, they knew every detail about each other, so to cut a long story short, he lavished her with gifts, told her constantly of her beauty  (when there was none AT all and that is by my low standards!!) he drove her everywhere, took her out to chickflics and always to London shopping and always was a gentleman and paid. Derrick loved his car, but at the same time he loved sandra, now she had had a onenight stand with another man called ermmm William, now she claimed to be in love with william and told Derrick of it constantly it drove him mad with anger until last valentines day, 2011, he sold his car and bought two tickets for a Mediterranean holiday he built up the surprise for ages, months in advance, then he told her he was giving her two tickets for this holiday, so sandra thanked him so so so much, all this lovey dovey bollocks, so sandra asked her mother to go but her mum didnt have a passport, being 20 odd sandra was old enough to go alone, but because Derrick had paid she took him only because william and her mother couldnt go, so when they got to their holiday, i think it was the cotsa del sol, she found "true love" and spent half the holiday in another mans room!!!!!

A moment of silence for our fallen comrade there gentlemen!

This is an open question to both ladies and gentlemen, have you had anything go awry like this? or any odd friendships?

Please comment!

Enjoy the week a head fair reader and allow me to leave you with a quote from Frasier;

"Daphne: Oh, come on now, Dr Crane. It's not like men 

have never used sex to get what they want. "

"Frasier: How can we possibly *use* sex to get what we 

want? Sex *is* what we want"

Technology, a secret heathen or a blissful heaven?

Technology, a secret heathen or a blissful heaven?

J.R. Hartley

Something hardly debated is whether or not sheer amount of tech around is a good thing for us as a country, now there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for yes but that simply just means that the topic is never talked about, its just the Status-Quo that tech is a good thing

My first point is the decline of proper industry, by this i mean primary industry. Men in flat caps going down the mines and pulling coal from the depths of the earth with there bare hands that sort of thing. With the arrival of the internet and tech importing goods became such an easier thing you could ring up a bloke in Russia and instantly two tonnes of coal would be on a ship to you, providing you had the cash. in days of old though you would have to go and see your local friendly coal mine and sort that out.

That raises another question, Local industry and all that lark, not too long ago lets say 40 years ago, if i wanted some clothes (this was before that awful synthetic stuff) i would have to go and see my local tailor, who would have been making clothes for me since i was a very small boy, he would make everything in your town by hand probably using material made in a mill very close to you, with wool from sheep not at all very far away from you. They were skilled people there fathers would have been tailors going back to time in memoriam. is it not a shame today that i can log on to where ever and have some cheap knocked together tripe from across the world for a tiny percentage of what a nice suit would have cost?

Now you are probably thinking well, its cheaper for me so that is a good thing, but consider this, if i can get a T-shirt for a few quid and it rips i would probably throw it away but if i bought a proper shirt with french cuffs and all that, i would for one be very cautious as not to stain it or rip it! and 2 i would have it repaired rather than being wasteful and chucking it away! we are a throw away society because of cheap imports

Now i have seen a very slight reversal of this in recent years with the coming of very expensive smart phones and laptops, people have them repaired if there is an issue, purely because it is so expensive to replace when a part is much cheaper, this used to be the case with everything years ago, you had to make do, you could not just replace a TV or a pair of shoes on a whim, you saved or rented then go it.

Now i went off on a tangent there so i shall return to my point, A disadvantage of tech is a decline of the postman and the milkman, think about it, the milkman was brought about with the railways because milk could go from cow to bottle very quick, but because shops and people did not have fridges so the milk was delivered daily, in recyclable glass bottles! The postman these days is dying a death too, i can simply contact what ever outstandingly beautiful woman i so please with the press of a few buttons, i do not have to construct a letter, put a stamp on it and post it thereby giving the postman a job.

That brings me to another point, Concorde. Concorde flew for the first time in the late 1960's and that was at a time when you had to book to make a telephone call to america, no email, post was far too slow by ship, I could be in New York in three hours. suddenly businessmen could commute daily to London from New York, absolutely mad. Then came email, video conferencing and the Fax. and Concorde was axed in 2003. Now those of you with a brain will argue but AHHHHH Concorde and flying is a huge waste of fuel and terrible for the environment, and in my defense i would say but it was a British achievement, a wonder of the sky's and consider this, when Concorde was axed it was the only time we went back technologically, nothing replaced that supersonic beauty, once where i could fly to New York in under three hours it now takes 9, also a neat little fact not many of you readers would have considered, New York is 5 hours behind Britain, if i left Heathrow, London at 12 noon GMT i would arrive at JFK in New York at 10 EST (New York time) thereby effectively having gained two hours, how great is that? and best of all it was British!

My next pick at the tech we have to day is that i wholeheartedly believe that we as a society are losing our ability to communicate with each other effectively  i would not say i am part of this problem as i consider myself well read and quite social but i know many many people who are slightly recluse and i would blame tech for this, obviously i cannot know every intimate detail of their lives but i can tell when someone is ignorant or unable to communicate effectively and efficiently  now here i am not just talking about the kid who's is a bit of a geek always on the latest video game or the gossipy girl super glued to her mobile telephone, it effects most of us, and i would say that is a bigger issue than most of what goes on in government. 

Have you ever really thought about it, take yourself for instance, What do you do as soon as you wake up? do you check your phone? through the day do you read more Facebook posts than articles in a newspaper? can you remember the last time you had an in-depth conversation, and i do not mean the soppy one about feelings or just talking all night, i mean something important for example about the United Kingdoms down-rated credit rating, and that excludes a spitty comment on twitter, i mean a proper conversation! should we be enslaved to our mobile phones 24/7? now i have one, but i use it when i want to, for the odd bit of music here and there, to get in contact with someone when i'm out ( i would do what people did in the 60's and carry a note book with numbers in and use a phone box, if it were not 60 fucking pence to make a telephone call) i am sheerly convicted that some people have a psychological addiction to social networking sites and mobile phones, and people who profess 'I couldn't go a day without my mobile phone' are proof of this, i know they wouldn't die, but they would surely be bored and get anxious and uneasy without it, i am dead certain of it.

My next point is conversation, the lost art, how many times have you been stuck with someone and had nothing to say? but in some cases if you were Texting you could talk all night? I would not use the excuse of i am nervous around them, but that people do not know how to make conversation anymore!! think about it 40 years ago your only means of contacting that beautiful girl in the lower sixth was to pass her a note, too risky, possibly embarrassing  telephone call was out of the question, her dad might pick up and give you a right bollocking for it! you had to get up the nerve to talk to her, or write her a proper full length letter, i once knew a girl very well and we wrote many many letter to each other when we could have easily just Texted but you get to know so much more about a persons character and demeanor through the art of letter writing, i seriously know of no-one else who would write a letter to communicate well other than bills and whatever but socially NO. now i could spur off and rant on about that but i have had enough. 

Now most people would argue that tech is great it allows us to communicate freely and at any time we want, we can ring our aunts in South Africa our friends in America and chat up an Italian bird all at the same time, it leads to competition in business thereby lowering costs for us.

And hell i would say that i could not be my quaint 1950's self if it were not for tech because i could not access the music, records are too expensive to keep stocked on shelves and what have you, i would have to keep with the times! and who the bloody hell would like to see a modern me? i for one would not!

So on that i leave you with this quote from Albert Einstein

i fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. the world will have a generation of idiots. – Albert Einstein