Dresden and the Neo-Nazi march

I've yet to see any chavs in Dresden, though I did get arrested there once (GDR) for having a beard, when I shouldn't have had one, innit.

Fritz Von Cut it off with a dry knife, blood all over the place so there was

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:
...Many car owners must wish they had the nerve to "get out there" and cycle themselves. But they are terrified by their own emotional response to cyclists. "If I hate them so much, then so must everybody else!" "So I dare not cycle for fear of being carved up myself!"

Take the case of "chavs". The owners of expensive cars have invested heavily in the image such ownership signals loud and clear. To have a teenage idiot (with his cap on backwards) pass them at will in a tarted-up peoples' car is an affront to everything the posh-car-owner holds dear. How dare they usurp the power-image of luxury-car-ownership so easily?

Nime,

I can't tell whether you're a paranoid, delusional cyclist or chav.

I drive because it's generally more convenient to do so. I don't cycle because I'm lazy not because I lack nerve (although I walk quite a bit). I certainly don't 'hate them so much' and I don't know any motorist who does.

Nor do I care when some idiot with his cap reversed overtakes me, although examples of bad or dangerous driving do annoy me.

quote:

Just another day in the fantasy social landscape of our very strange world. Where we wish whole segments of the population should be exterminated. Wiped from the face of the earth. Simply for behaviour at odds with our own.

I did think that my world bordered on 'strange' but after reading about your world...

Regards
Steve M

Thanks Steve. You've just proved my point to perfection.

You don't cycle. Yet a couple of rambling posts from me and you publicly volunteer to describe me by five derogatory terms:

"Paranoid, delusional, chav, strange and cyclist."

My case rests.

Regards
Nime

quote:

Originally posted by Nime:
You don't cycle. Yet a couple of rambling posts from me and you publicly volunteer to describe me by five derogatory terms:

"Paranoid, delusional, chav, strange and cyclist."

In fairness Nime,

I said "paranoid, delusional cyclist or chav". That doesn't imply that you're all of them.

Also, I only described your world as strange, not you (although if the 'cap on backwards' fits ...).

When it comes to how motorists feel about cyclists, 'hatred' doesn't enter the equation. However I will accept that many motorists lack awareness when it comes to cyclists and motor cyclists.

Regards
Steve M

Nime

If Steve won't say it, I will.

You come across as strange, wierd and frankly mixed up.

Regards

Mick

You really do have a problem with those who don't share your particular worldview, don't you Mick?

No not at all, they are either wrong or mad.

Regards

Mick

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:

You come across as strange, wierd and frankly mixed up.

Then you're taking me much too seriously Mick. Though I am flattered that you should feel able to share your valuable opinion at such short notice. What do I owe you?
Fortunately I have the good manners not to direct such criticism at others. Though I
I am prepared to make an exception.

I see online fora and newsgroups as a way to practice my English in the absence of stimulating conversation. Alas my sense of humour is not easily communicated in text. It was ever thus. Better a clown than a bore. Though a boring clown is abhorrent. As I'm sure you know.

Should I start a new goodbye thread now or later?

[Clown exits slowly, stage left]?

Regards
Nime

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:
Nime

If Steve won't say it, I will.

You come across as strange, wierd and frankly mixed up.

Regards

Mick

Mick

Your contributions to the forum seldom reflect the gentlemanly status you impliedly self-apply with your claims to fine gun ownership and membership of the pheasant shooting world.

Deane

I know a welder who shoots pheasants.

Though not socially of course.

He uses a rifle!

Nime

Deane

If you want to hear / see honesty before manners, join a pheasant shoot. If someone is a fool, they get told quick for their own good.

Regards

Mick

I think it safe to say the vast majority of forum members are too young to have actually experinced world war II. I did'nt experince it either. I was born in 1944 and experienced the aftermath. I was brought up in Plymouth a town whose city center was virtually wiped out by the Germans. I had relatives who lived in Coventry and vividly described what the fire bombing of their city was like. I also had relatives from the east end of London with similar memories to pass on to an impressionable young lad living through the "fun" of postwar rationing and reconstruction.

It was clear from my relatives recounting that during that war ordinary people in Britain suffered and died and struggled on. They were I am sure aware that the same things were happening to ordinary people in Germany. My mother was emotionally damaged by the experience and became a nervous recluse. I say this not to gain sympathy but to illustrate the well know fact that war is hell and that for ordinary people no aspect of it is "right" or "wrong",

You could get out a pair of scales and start weighing one atrocity against another if you care to, but that is futile. It is also futile and arrogant to say "sorry" as though you know the minds of the people that lived through it and who mostly are dead now, as if to say we can look on this with our superior and more civilised view and rate "this" as just a daily act of violence in war and "that" as a war crime.

At bottom all humans are animals when it comes to survival. The saddest fact is that modern society seems more filled with daily violence and atrocity than the society I grew up in. Perhaps we should mull on that.

regards
GEOFF

I accidentally shot a peasant with a welders gun once !


Fritz Von In the wars again

N.B. I was suprised that in wartime London far more civilians got killed by loony drivers than the Blitz !

Geoff

Though you have a slight age-advantage over me, I lived for some years in Plymouth in my youth.

"Bomb site" is now a largely forgotten expression in the context of British built-up areas. But it was once in daily use and the favourite places of our boyhood adventures. As they were later, in Bath.

Bombsites had their own fauna and flora. Birch, Willow, Brambles, Giant Hogweed, Rosebay Willowherb and Slow-worms were commonly seen.

I can still remember the startling effects of trying to use hogweed as a pea-shooter! But only once! Brambles made superb bows to go with our cane arrows. Fortunately the rougher members of our loosely-formed gang had penknives to fashion such objects.

We sometimes found gas-masks, artillery shells and clips of .303 rifle bullets on our our daily wanderings. I'm sure we'd walk and run at least ten miles every day of the week. As did most kids before TV became the norm. We would try to 'fire' the bullets with stones after jamming the noses in old walls. Throwing shells around seemed (fortunately) ineffective or I wouldn't be here to bore Mick. Though they all were very valuable to us as stored "treasure" and often produced fierce arguments over ownership! I cycled for a while wearing a gasmask before the rubber smell finally became too repulsive. The fact that they steamed-up rather easily didn't help navigation.

Men with missing limbs and eye patches were often to be seen in the streets throughout Britain when I was young. The awful damage to minds was not so visible. Though there were vastly more pubs than now, and many streets were literally no-go areas for the police!

Vast ex-government stores were once very common too. They provided us with affordable boots for the school ATC squadron! Nothing like training the young ready for the next "big one". I was predictably hopeless under pressure. Every time the warrant officer bawled me out I'd burst into a fit of uncontrollable giggles. I never did learn to bull my knobbly toe-caps as he demanded so deafeningly with the spit flying into my grinning face!

I can't agree with your comment about modern violence. The Teddy Boys were vicious and ruthless in battle and shockingly destructive of private property. What is so obviously missing is that built-in (beaten-in) automatic respect for elders of our youth. But perhaps we don't deserve it any more now, than they did then. It is a two-way process.

Regards
Nime

quote:

Originally posted by Mick Parry:

If you want to hear and see honesty before manners, join a pheasant shoot. If someone is a fool, they get told quick for their own good.

Call me a pedant: But don't you mean: "are quickly informed"?

One hopes that fools are not a common occurrence on a shoot? I'm sure we would all hate to lose you to a stray shot!

Regards
Nime

Chaps

Believe it or not, I was also born in Plymouth in 1948.

Small world.

Regards

Mick

Nime

Your whole comment touched chords of memory. very descriptive and completely reminiscent of my own youth. I remember with a smile, getting weekly sweet rations and purchasing one "gobstopper" or "4 Aniseed Balls" for an old penny. Incidentally in the ATC I spent many an evening melting shoe polish onto the toes of the boots and soaping the creases in the trousers only to have stamping contests to crack the shiny black layer the next morning. They gave us "303's" with the firing pins removed to carry, bloody heavy. Ah the field expeditions on Dartmoor prentending to kill each other and drinking illegal scrumpy kindly provided by a farmer's son from the waterbottles .

Oh dear got carried away there. I agree the teddy boys were violent, however I don't think the death rate associated with that violence was a high as it is today.

regards
GEOFF

Hot, floppy Cornish pasties in white and greaseproof paper on the Ho instead of school dinners. Grey warships coming and going from Devonport Dockyard. Tidal swimming pools that were so cold your nipples stayed frozen for a week! And so did the girl's-next-door when you loaned her your new rubber diving mask!

Wandering round the fish-smelly Barbican when it was dry or Dingles department store when it was wet. There was a great toy shop on two floors in the vast new concrete shopping centre. They had Mamod steam engines and others with mock-brick, tin-chimneys that I see now in antique/flea markets over here! I saw my Mamod only the other day. I used a lighter torch from Mum's new gas cooker to boil the water instead of expensive meths. South Pacific at the huge cinema. Smeaton's Tower. Airfix construction kits! Revel, Hornby, Fleischman, Humbrol and BSA .177 air-rifles. 5-transistor radio kits in empty tobacco tins. The library-museum with prisoner-of-war model sailing ships made from bone in every finest detail.
Camping on Dartmoor near Sheep's Tor with the first asthmatic I ever met! I had a terrifying ride out there on a single-cylinder Norton motorcycle and clung on for dear life! My eyes are still watering!

Funny I don't remember any Micks?

Nime

quote:

I am not of the opinion that a British life is more valuable than any other nationality.

That is easy to say when your life is not threatened.

We are animals, when it all comes down to it, and animal instinct is to survive. Before we get to this stage we disguise this as politics (IMV).

I recently went to Berlin, and found the city very 'strange'. The people I went with in their wisdom found it strange no old buildings were about, apart from the obvious (I know, U can imagine what I said to this). I also found the Berlin wall and other monuments strangely moving. I also experienced a vast need to 'move on' by the city itself, re construction and also the welcome the Berliners gave us.

I just think there are many sides to this story. This was emphasised recently by the BBC series on the death camps and the way the Nazis negotiated with other countries 'authorities' at the time to aquire Jews. I found it amazing that we did not do more to prevent what was happening... Some would say we did not know, although that has been disputed.

Please forgive my ramblings...

andy c!

I played on many a bomb-site as a young lad in East London, prefabs, houses etc, etc, and my room was often like one too. Later also wore my first silly wartime uniform in ATC 6F SQN, very young airplane lover, but weapon hater to hobnail-boot, irrellevant, all of our situations, ages, experiences are relative, and in my opinion of no consequence whatsover, except to us, and our immediate compatriots/ family what have you, innit.

Fritz Von People do not learn, they survive through stupidity

quote:

Originally posted by andy c:

quote:

I am not of the opinion that a British life is more valuable than any other nationality.

That is easy to say when your life is not threatened.

We are animals, when it all comes down to it, and animal instinct is to survive. Before we get to this stage we disguise this as politics (IMV).

I recently went to Berlin, and found the city very 'strange'. The people I went with in their wisdom found it strange no old buildings were about, apart from the obvious (I know, U can imagine what I said to this). I also found the Berlin wall and other monuments strangely moving. I also experienced a vast need to 'move on' by the city itself, re construction and also the welcome the Berliners gave us.

I just think there are many sides to this story. This was emphasised recently by the BBC series on the death camps and the way the Nazis negotiated with other countries 'authorities' at the time to aquire Jews. I found it amazing that we did not do more to prevent what was happening... Some would say we did not know, although that has been disputed.

Please forgive my ramblings...

andy c!

If you can seriously describe Berlin so (I refer to the physical: as the psychological aspect you cannot possibly know obviously) then I'm glad you were only shown the tiny parts deemed fit for you and your party's requirements, and quickly left us to wallow in our pity.


Fritz Von Blindly walking the earth²

Nime

I must say that I find your views on society decidely depressing.

I also disagree with you, but perhaps age, location and time were critical in such formulations.

It would seem that you suggest that outside of your close family and friend network, striking up a real, human and intimate (*) relationship is impossible due to Man's thirst for one's own self-interest?

These people surely exist. But if you think it's an evolutionary trait and ALL - even the majority - people possess this deep seated, self-serving, quality of greed that foreshadows anything and everything else, I feel sorry for you.

I think that the vast majority of society is inherently good, and the only thing that is often needed to bring this out is human to human contact.

* which, from your posts, is an oxymoron.

Aric

Speaking personally, I found Nimes posts whilst 'cliched' as someone described them, actually IMHO quite accurate and a realistic view of modern day life, at least if viewed from the more 'negative' point of view.

Of course the opposite also applies, exemplified perhaps by the latest outpouring of altruism vis a vis the tsunamai disaster.

Somewhere in between these extremes perhaps, is a level where most of us 'reside' re modern life.

IMHO, all these points of view, or ways of 'seeing' society are true and relevant, but which one forms the 'dominant' re ones life 'view' is mainly prevalent upon ones inner view of self, and the world generally.

The optomist is viewing the same world as the pessimist, but 'sees' thinks and views/relates to it all differently.

After a life-changing assault in my life, (being held hostage by a gun toting nutcase) I can readily appreciate Nimes world view - one which I held for a considerable period of time afterwards.

At the end of the day, human beings are capable of almost anything - one tries to keep a positive, albeit not naive view of life, and move forward in a manner respectful and considerate of others, but not letting oneself be used/abused/walked over either, and in doing so, hopefully avail oneself of the better attributes of humans, and society generally.

Just my 2c worth

Best regards

John...

I certainly don't see myself as unduly pessimistic. My wife considers me an eternal optimist. Though I'll admit to being a life-long cynic. Particularly about the charade that is commerce and politics. I do find the absense of any workable alternatives depressing.

Perhaps we'll all be truly happy when we all work for Chinese multi-nationals ten years down the road? As long as they don't extend the retirement age before I can get out.

I greatly admire Fritz' ability to express much the same ideas without losing his sharp-edged humour. A nice balance of useful communication skills. A jester with a brain.

[I nearly said "A fool with a brain" but (being cynical) could almost guarantee I'd be misunderstood]

Regards
Nime

Optimism at it's finest, innit