Stupid entitled selfish
goperryrevs
Shipmate
in Hell
So, there’s a big hotel near our house, an old manor with big grounds. During lockdown they decided to open up the grounds for people to walk around. Despite living near it most people I know had never actually been in the gardens, and they’re well nice. It’s been great to be able to explore them.
But in the last couple of weeks, people have started having campfires, barbecues, picnics and leaving litter everywhere. The hotel put up signs asking that people just use the gardens for walking round (which most people do), but of course, the entitled pricks have carried on. The hotel can’t manage it, as their staff are all on furlough, so they’ve had to just shut the grounds again.
Why do these twats have to spoil it for everyone? Most people have enough respect not to take the piss.
It’s the same attitude that has made most people so irate about the behaviour of Mr Cummings. If the Prime Minister of our country endorses “The rules don’t apply to me” attitudes, then that’s it, isn’t it? We can’t have nice things anymore because stupid entitled selfish arseholes spoil it for everyone.
But in the last couple of weeks, people have started having campfires, barbecues, picnics and leaving litter everywhere. The hotel put up signs asking that people just use the gardens for walking round (which most people do), but of course, the entitled pricks have carried on. The hotel can’t manage it, as their staff are all on furlough, so they’ve had to just shut the grounds again.
Why do these twats have to spoil it for everyone? Most people have enough respect not to take the piss.
It’s the same attitude that has made most people so irate about the behaviour of Mr Cummings. If the Prime Minister of our country endorses “The rules don’t apply to me” attitudes, then that’s it, isn’t it? We can’t have nice things anymore because stupid entitled selfish arseholes spoil it for everyone.
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But we all are, in our own way. We ignore the consequences of our actions, it’s just that they differ from person to person.
I continue to fly, a lot. I know flying is bad for the environment. But I still do it with lots of justification.
So I think that’s the problem - justification. Every stupid entitled selfish arsehole has their own excuses. You and me included.
And I know that on the scale of things, my particular rant is a first world problem one. But it’s the attitude that stinks, and that attitude spoils things for all people everywhere.
It also feels like this kind of outworking of it is specifically British. Driving on Belgian roads is weird because there isn’t litter strewn by the side of the roads. Do they have dog shit in bags hung in trees anywhere people can walk? Why do so many of us decide that we’d rather trash beautiful things for a quick short term gain / bit of fun?
Picnics and Littering, I can see why 'my picnic' is different, it's not a picnic at all, and anyway...
littering again "I didn't litter, I mean sure there was the one crisp packet that blew away, but that doesn't explain the 100's of other items (from 100's of other people)"
But actual campfires...
OOC what's the area like, flats/houses/rural?
Fly-tipping is another example prevalent around here. We still have our regular bin collections, but not the special item uplifts and the tip is only now (partially*) re-opening. Still people feel that they need to get rid of stuff that won't fit in their bin and pile it up somewhere. I've done some clear-out (who hasn't with all this sitting around at home?) and have a box of things that won't go in the bins in a cupboard (plus another box ready for when charity shops will be accepting stuff). It's not even as though if you get rid of a large item you'll be getting a replacement at the moment.
* I don't things are helped by the decision of the local council regarding what they'll accept at the re-opened tips. I can understand accepting garden waste, because people with gardens are likely to generate a lot of grass cuttings which doesn't go in any of the bins. But, otherwise they're only accepting regular household waste and cardboard which goes in the regular bins. Instead of taking stuff that goes in bins anyway it would make more sense to accept stuff from DIY projects (eg: wood if you're taking apart furniture, rubble or soil if you're doing something more substantial).
We trip over people picnicking in odd corners everywhere too; the easily accessible corners in the middle of footpaths through crops, completely blocking the path, not the local nature reserves.
It is definitely a British thing. Many of us act as if there is an unlimited army of "them" to clear-up after us. IME it applies particularly when people are outside their own home or area. They will always pick-up litter, etc.
It also seems to apply to the way we Brits behave when on holiday or at leisure, with a particular blind-spot being our pets. Its held to be a God-given right for dogs to be allowed to run loose because you're walking across a field or on a beach. Your cat that roams free at night is the only one on the planet that won't kill birds, hedgehogs, etc.
The only possible conclusion is that the British are a dirty nation who don't give a flying f**k about the environment; a nation of pet owners who understand nothing of animal behaviour. We'll behave just as we please and woe betide anyone who tries to stop us.
But I know someone picnics there every evening as every day I pick up their litter. There are two bins, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom.
I met a group of three lads coming up from there the other week. I put my best schoolteacher voice on and said “I hope it’s not your rubbish I’m picking up every day”. They looked sheepish and one said “no miss, we always use the bin”. There’s been no litter down there since.
🤔
So you never see bottles of any kind lying around the verges or gutters.
Poland is pretty clean - it seems to be (another) expression of nationalism, with a good outcome. They had a campaign to reduce dog shit laying around a while back, where the adverts used little Poland flags marking where the turds lay - apparently it was effective.
I had a Portuguese student who marvelled that beauty spots here (I'm thinking of a rocky outcrop on Kinder Scout) were not covered in graffiti. (And that's not an English word, however much we (with apologies to Alexei Sayle) might like to pull it to our hearts alongside the good old anglo-saxon 'Cortina'
We're not as bad as we were. When I was old enough to notice (late 70s) young trees were snapped off everywhere, dog shit as far as the eye could see, smashed up bus stops and public amenities closed and sometimes, burned. The caff in our local park has lasted 3 years without even collecting a 'tag'. I think the young are all at home watching porn on the internet.
Edge of urban / rural. Technically a village, but in practice pretty much a suburb of a big town.
This is not new. One woman I challenged as she threw her litter out of a car window far from any built up area many years ago said that it would give someone a job to do.
Adults seem to be worse than children. Hopefully that means it will get better over time rather than worse. In the meantime, all we can do is to challenge, set an example, and live with our fellow human beings, loving them whether we like them or not. Oh, and venting off in hell.
Going from personal experience:
- Fascist state pre-1974 Revolution: no graffti (you wouldn't dare)
- Country in chaos 1975-83 or so - political posters and slogans on every available surface but no "nuisance" graffiti.
- Now: awful in some places - when the funicular trams (which stay in the streets 24/7) are repainted, they are graffitied almost instantly. A shame.
Though, litter is one thing if it's just a few snack wrappers or plastic bottles. Fly tipping (or if you prefer 'dumping') is a more significant problem - both in quantity and also that there may be additional hazards present (rats can gather, there may be hazardous materials or sharps) or simply not just a matter of putting it into a bin for collection as there may be items that need to be specially disposed of.
Unless like the Dragon household you had to replace the washing machine a few weeks ago.
Our council has restarted bulky waste collection but absolutely no white goods. We can take household waste in its widest sense which would include things like old furniture, but I believe the problem with building waste, which is getting into the realm of commercial disposal is the current lack of onward processing options for the tip operators.
I am looking forward to Friday as that will be our first garden waste collection of the year and I have a LOT of weeds to donate to the Council!
Locally they are quite hot on fly-tipping but that's partly because landlords, especially the less scrupulous student ones, aren't always keen on paying to have end of tenancy waste removed properly and legally. And it's not uncommon for end of year bins to be overflowing to start with, and the recycling ones to be uncollectible. At our previous house I did end up having some extra bags of rubbish from the neighbours more than one year running so it wasn't piled up in their front yard. (And they did ask first.)
I subscribe to Lord Baden-Powell's maxim: 'take nothing but memories, leave nothing but your thanks.'
Judging by some of the stuff dumped around here, there's been a lot of people getting new sofas and beds, or replacing wardrobes ... I fail to see why these needed to be replaced before there was a means of disposing of the old. And, where are people buying new large furniture items?
Pity he did not live by it. Still, he did leave plenty of bad memories amongst the people he'd trampled over.
Online. My daughter has outgrown her toddler bed so it's off to the internet we go.
Perhaps they were broken? If I manage to break my sofa, it is no longer useful. I'd rather have an empty space ('cause at least I could sit on the floor, or bring a dining chair in) rather than a broken sofa that I can't sit on.
Similarly, my neighbour just threw out a load of stuff, because we had a lot of rain and his basement flooded. Fortunately, our local garbage pickup service has just started handling bulk items again. But he's not going to keep a load of mouldy carpet and sofas hanging around in his basement, is he?
I thought you had kids, but then you ask this so I'm no longer sure.
Our sofa came from the charity shop about three years ago, so I reckon it must be a good ten years old. We did look at IKEA sofas but the only one with a back high enough to be comfortable for me is only available in some rather dismal shades of grey and brown.
Every time I leaned back in the lounge chair, the back would "go back" a millimeter or two farther, until finally it separated from the frame and collapsed.
The reclining chair eventually stopped reclining -- the mechanism went off its tracks and couldn't be put back on.
Bargain furniture is seldom a bargain.
Vimes' Law of Boot Inequality
.https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice
Kramer Adopts a Highway
A fairly recent insight in my life, is that rocking chairs aren’t for rocking - they are low tech recliners - and often a lot lighter too.
MMM
Yes, stop trying to improve people. I like having secure employment.
My favourite sofa, a Victorian nursery sofa, was left in a parsonage house my parents moved into in the 1950s and is well over 100 years old. The frame is original, some of the stuffing too. I recovered it myself (badly) in the 1980s and kept it for another 15 years. We meant to replace it when we moved here but couldn't find a modern one small enough, so it had a complete overhaul (including giving it a base so it is more comfortable for adults) and recover.
Both children have expressed a desire for it when they set up their own home.
Don't worry. It won't work.
There's a lot of truth in that, Karl. Luckily 'Brighthouse' is a casualty of the current contraction in the high street, and with more luck won't make it out of administration.
One of my current dilemmas is whether to shell out on new cushions for a 1970-ish wooden-frame suite, or just buy a second hand one on ebay. Used leather suites are amazingly cheap for what seems to me to be a luxury item, and with a small tear here or there, almost worthless. I love the way people are useless, sometimes.
I mostly pick old shite up myself. I'm getting on a bit, but hey, if you don't use it, you lose it.
(Hang on, was that another old draft, this time for 'Men's reproductive responsibilities'?
Call me silly, but I’ve never been able to work out when the graffiti artists [vandals] actually do their dirty work alongside the railway lines. At night when no trains are running? Are there never any ‘accidents?’ It’s always intrigued me.
A lot of our furniture is actually ex-vicarage, inherited from Mr Dragon's side of the family. Being pre-war, and quite substantial, we have had to reject houses in the past on the grounds we'd never fit it in! Modern new-builds are out for the same reason.
There was an incident last year when some graffiti artists got hit by a train in the UK:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47404529
There are accidents all the time. Taggers deliberately pick the most inaccessible but visible places to spray, so that other taggers will be reluctant to take those same risks to overpaint them. This leads to what is essentially a game of dare, and taggers getting run over, electrocuted or falling from heights are the price they pay for seeing their tags around town. It is (almost invariably) a young man's game.
Alas, Graffiti artists are much more artistic these days. The inventive depictions of 'Leeds Utd sheep shaggers' on the canal bank next to Man. Utd. are mostly over-painted by New-York style techni-colour high-art tags, as is the late-lamented 'soapy tit w*nk' a couple of bridges down. What has happened to UK youth?