"Currants Bw..."

[HCZ_Reborn]

Like most things in life, there needs to be a bit of balance.
Oldiewonks often complain about health and safety and how they never got hurt when they were kids. Well there's a fair bit of survivor's bias there. They might not have been hurt, that doesn't mean that things were safe and some of these measures aren't a good idea and keep people safer.
Or "a good thrashing never did me any harm". Well...didn't it? Is physically beating a child really a good method of discipline?

I think some of these changes have been good, being more mindful of kids' mental state. Being kinder, basically.
But of course these things can go too far, kids need to develop a bit of resilience too and some of these things could stop them doing that.
But I'm also mindful that I'm an old bastard and some of my feeling about these things may just be me getting old and grumpy.

Health and Safety laws are generally for the purpose of legal indemnity, it’s a form of comprehensive insurance taken out by all companies. And generally most new employees will have to take health and safety computer based training so if they do have an accident they won’t have any cause to sue the company. You don’t see these where there’s blame there’s a claim legal adverts so much anymore

It’s not really germane to what I’m saying


Neither is smacking which again I didn’t mention.


I’m of the opinion if anything that it’s a good thing that children have access to mental health services, because believe you me that wasn’t the case ten years ago. What I’m saying is that there is a difference between being able to offer therapy to children who are genuinely struggling with mental health or trauma and to presume that every adverse incident that may befall a child is akin to trauma. No child is alike, but I’m minded towards giving them the confidence to know that good things can come from adversity, it’s teachable and the adage what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger does have some relevant meaning.
I’m not advocating telling kids to man up, or diminishing what they are going through. But the type of therapy I deal with is the philosophy that emotional distress is far more about how we process an external event than the event itself. Now there are events that are objective traumatising, but fortunately for many kids in this day and age they aren’t the norm.

[HCZ_Reborn]

I exclusively counsel the over 18s, because counselling anyone younger than that is a completely different ball game and i can’t imagine given I’ve neither worked with kids previously nor do I have children means it’s not something I’d especially want to do.
The nearest was a 19 year old girl. Nice kid….but perhaps because she was on the spectrum perhaps not as emotionally mature as you’d expect for her age. But either way, very polite, thoughtful etc. But she came to me because of how she was suffering from depression. And a bit of exploration and the thing is she’d lost a lot of people close to her in a short period of time and this had caused her to worry that this would continue to happen.
Basically the important thing to get across was that it was normal for her to feel that way given she was going through grief.
We had 12 sessions together, and I like to think our time together (where I’d mainly just listen to her without trying to medicalise her) was influential in her being a lot more confident and happy by the time we finished.

[Letters]

I don't think we're talking about hugely different things.
We're both talking about whether kids are coddled too much and thus don't develop resilience.
I'm talking about it in a more general sense.

[IBK]

Health and Safety laws are generally for the purpose of legal indemnity, it’s a form of comprehensive insurance taken out by all companies. And generally most new employees will have to take health and safety computer based training so if they do have an accident they won’t have any cause to sue the company. You don’t see these where there’s blame there’s a claim legal adverts so much anymore

It’s not really germane to what I’m saying


Neither is smacking which again I didn’t mention.


I’m of the opinion if anything that it’s a good thing that children have access to mental health services, because believe you me that wasn’t the case ten years ago. What I’m saying is that there is a difference between being able to offer therapy to children who are genuinely struggling with mental health or trauma and to presume that every adverse incident that may befall a child is akin to trauma. No child is alike, but I’m minded towards giving them the confidence to know that good things can come from adversity, it’s teachable and the adage what doesn’t kill you can only make you stronger does have some relevant meaning.
I’m not advocating telling kids to man up, or diminishing what they are going through. But the type of therapy I deal with is the philosophy that emotional distress is far more about how we process an external event than the event itself. Now there are events that are objective traumatising, but fortunately for many kids in this day and age they aren’t the norm.

Very good point regarding H&S laws. More generally, our tendency to try to legislate for every possible eventuality shifts the onus from seeing events in context, and applying common sense to situations that are (a) generally as individual as human beings themselves are; (b) infinitely variable and (c) should include an element of discretion, to an unwieldy and ultimately unjust system that tends to favour those at the top of the pile. It's been proven time and time again that while we think we can eliminate risk, the more complex our systems are to protect against this, the more likely these will fail.

[HCZ_Reborn]

I don't think we're talking about hugely different things.
We're both talking about whether kids are coddled too much and thus don't develop resilience.
I'm talking about it in a more general sense.

To be clear I’m not looking at this through a perspective of bloody woke snowflakes. I’m actually concerned that this over protective instincts both parents and the education system have is actually doing considerable harm to our young people. They are less equipped to deal with setbacks, have a massively overinflated sense of danger and we see the result in the spiking of anxiety levels amongst teenagers and young adults.

The problem is at a more advanced stage in the United States but I fear we are not too far behind

I want to be careful not to try and make this out to be a singular explanation. Young people are also getting the shaft because of the way the economic situation in this country has consolidated wealth in land/property ownership. The problem isn’t that there isn’t enough houses, the problem is that they’ve become prohibitively expensive because they are still looked at as a financial asset more than somewhere that is a roof over your head.

In terms of disposable income that allows us to purchase luxuries from takeaways to foreign holidays there’s no doubt that this generation is more privileged than any before hand, but this is severely undermined by the lack of security of affordable bricks and mortar.

[Letters]

(From PopBitch)

“What’s the difference between a casual party and a pirate orgy?
At a casual party you come as you are…”

[HCZ_Reborn]

So much for the claim that the UK wants to reverse Brexit


Adopting the Euro is not much of a caveat because it would be a necessary prerequisite of our rejoining.

[Letters]

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/maj...ll-2023-11-29/
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/have-voters-co...oining-the-eu/



Different polls at different times seem to indicate different things.

[HCZ_Reborn]

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/maj...ll-2023-11-29/
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/have-voters-co...oining-the-eu/



Different polls at different times seem to indicate different things.

Yes especially when you’re putting totally different propositions to people. Im not entirely convinced by rejoining the single market (I think the Russia-Ukraine conflict risks precipitating a collapse of the entire EU within the next decade so we ideally want to be as far away from that as possible) but especially anyone who owns a business that involves trade with the continent, the chance to harmonise imports and exports would be welcome.


Although I wonder if a majority would still support it if the poll was explicit that rejoining the single market required us to accept freedom of movement

Very different from rejoining the organisation especially as a default we would be required to join the single currency. Do I give a fuck about the pound? No not at all.


But if you look especially at what the ECB has done to Greece, it’s similar to how the Mafia behaves. Lends people money that it knows they will never be able to pay back and then uses this to muscle in on the business. The central bank essentially owns loads of Greek Antiquity (They are the assets against which the organisation underwrote Greek debts)

No one in their right mind wants to be part of that (which doesn’t say much good for the state of mind of 44% of people sampled in this poll)

[Letters]

Just got back from watching MJ the musical absolutely brilliant.

Right. Booked tickets for my birthday purely on the strength of this review.
If it's no good then I'm blaming you for spoiling my birthday