I was returning from an epic (ok, 14 miles isn't really that epic) cycle ride today when I passed a number of street urchins who.....what? ok then, future leaders of this country, one of whom made a fist and reached out towards me and, looking at my fine steed uttered the word "Sick".

We started out with: "Cor Blimey Mister that's a lovely looking bike." then moved through Cool, Smart, Neat, Bad, Cool again and now Sick.

If I hadn't heard the word used in the background on the Idiotbox the other night, while I was composing a strongly worded letter to The Times, I'd never have known what the hell he was on about and would probably have held the feckless youth to account with a swift cuff about the ear.

On a slightly more serious note, it's amazing how the English language has evolved just in my lifetime with outside influences such as TV and music as well as people in this country who have just nudged the language to where it is now.

Young upstarts, a damn good thrashing is what they need.

http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/reviews/hybrids/bianchi-camaleonte-3

Lol.
I was talking about this the other day to my wife..I have a couple of teenage'd son's.
15 /19/21
They all come out with some weird slang names.. the word they use 'sick' I always thought meant 'vomit'. Ah well..too them I'm just old /demented and know nothing.

One thing I always learnt them was 'never hang around street corners/streets/bus stops.
It don't look right..its not nice for the elderly..as they feel intimidated.
This they understand and have complied with.so a few slang words I hear from them that appear as stupid I can live with.

The council shouid make more use of wasteland and give these young'ens something to do
Bike tracks/go carting tracks or some things..itl keep em off the streets then.
But I guess that wouid involve money they'd never want to spend on something useful for em..

last time i went to the cinema the kids were making far too much noise on the back row so i suggested to management that they took this back row out

s and b said:

last time i went to the cinema the kids were making far too much noise on the back row so i suggested to management that they took this back row out

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Take the back row of seats out, or "take them out" as in shoot them?!!

If only these kids knew how tough life was back then

s and b said:

last time i went to the cinema the kids were making far too much noise on the back row so i suggested to management that they took this back row out

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A good idea....but, sadly there'll always be a back row unless they take all the seats out.

I agree with alot of what youve said... in no oldy myself (26yrs young) and grew up out in the sticks, partially in the RAF and now live in the middle of a large town ( great yarmouth) on an estate that was once a rough place to live... I remember having my penknife out in the sticks... sharpening up twigs and making bow and arrows in the woods carving up trees and then taking great delight at shooting friends and my brothers with said home made arrows... we also had a huge rear garden with a railway at the bottom that as we were yound and foolish seemed a great playground, which to us at the time was harmless fun, we used to stick down corrugated sheets and call them slow worm traps, race snails and have mud fights.. aswell as riding my friends peewee 50 'motorcross bike' around the garden... make 'bases' in the woods and have 'war' with our 'enemies' looking back at my youth was pretty active... I remeber girls being the 'enemy' lol

Looking at the youth of today it seems that ipads xbox and playstations aswell as smart phones and hair,makeup,expensive clothes seem to be the demand of kids of today, I remeber at the age of 8 a phone was something that sat on the side and mum and dad answered it when it rang... an internet connection took forever and was nothing like it is today, a games console was an atari or a NES that sat under the tv in the living room and was usually coayed in a thin layer of dust due to lack of use.. hell at the age of 13 I was more interested In fighting girls and riding my BMX then I was in clothes.

Growing up now with a ypung sister15years old now and with 3 over protective brothers... shes got her head screwed on right though and is pursuing a career in midwifery, but again.. she cant go anywhere without her expensive clothes... makeup and laptop, let alone her mobile phone...


Wow sorry for the essay.. lol as said im no oldy as yet.. but the youngster of today seems a whole lifetime away from what I grew up with... kids having....kids... leading to a life on benefits.. I didnt have a luxury upbringing... but I had an imagination that didnt involve 'googling it'


Im goung to shut up now but you get my drift

GeorgeDamper said:

If only these kids knew how tough life was back then

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo

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Every generation will normally have it easier. Technology advances

Lecook said:

Wow sorry for the essay.. lol as said im no oldy as yet..

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The older you get, the longer the essays.

The Beard said:

The older you get, the longer the essays.

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Although my grammar is pants re-read the sentance put a comma after the 'lol' will make sense.I am currently redoing my english gcse at college and realising how badly ive relied on autocorrect for the last few years

BenBaker said:

Every generation will normally have it easier. Technology advances

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You generally accept your lot, it's only later, when you get older that you think the current generation has it easy.

My Mum was born in the East End in 1934 and at the age of 5 was evacuated to Wiltshire, which was a pretty good thing as by 1941 her street, and most of those around had been destroyed by bombing. She was upset just like most other kids of her age but fortunately the firm her Dad worked for relocated to Wiltshire and her parents and she were reunited a year or so later. After a short time she realised that she liked the countryside. She went to teacher training college and in 1955 met my Dad.

My Dad was born in 1928 in Salford and at the age of 11 was evacuated to Blackpool. I don't think he was all that bothered as he didn't really like Salford, but many of his contemporaries used to have fun blowing up the "balloons" they found at the foot of the sea wall behind the barbed wire. I don't think they were very good balloons, it was wartime when all said and done and there were a lot of soldiers based round there. In 1943 he returned to Salford and the next year was offered what I think we now call an internship at a local architects practice. It involved a lot of college time so the income was tiny. His Mum said they couldn't afford it as his Dad had been injured at work. Instead he became an apprentice painter and decorator. In fact he held such a grudge that after 2 years National Service in the RAF signed on for another 7. Because of this he saw Egypt, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Malaya, Singapore and Japan. He was also right in at the start of the Korean War, and I do mean the start. In fact it started a day later. There's a story there as well, but another time. When he came back to the UK and while waiting to be demobbed and met my Mum.

It's quite often not that you think you had a really tough time, it's just that you think youngsters have it too easy.

Young people today eh?

Lecook said:

Although my grammar is pants re-read the sentance put a comma after the 'lol' will make sense.I am currently redoing my english gcse at college and realising how badly ive relied on autocorrect for the last few years

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The problem with qualifications in grammar is that there are local differences, colloquialisms, in other words. For some reason there are TV and radio newsreaders who punctuate in the wrong places and therefore lead you to misinterpret what they're saying. I'm not sure where they learnt there grammar but there are cleaners with virtually no formal education who speak better.

Going back a decade or so, I used to know a woman I used to know was proud of the fact that she was the first member of her family to go to University. At the time I knew her she was an English teacher at a comprehensive and had just secured the position of Head of English at another school. Yet during a discussion about education and my perception that written and spoken English has generally deteriorated since I was at school, which might filter in with other posts on this thread, she stated that it didn't matter if kids could write or speak to a high standard as long as they could be understood. This did to me seem to be at odds with her pride, coming from a council estate, in her academic achievements.

At times I've been involved with reading mentoring in the same area as the aforementioned lady works. This is with primary age kids, some of who don't have any books in the house. In some cases the school won't even lend them books to take home as the parents, being unable to read, throw them in the bin.

If you can speak and write well, you can always do them badly on purpose if you think it's warranted. Remember, knowledge is power.

The Beard said:

The problem with qualifications in grammar is that there are local differences, colloquialisms, in other words. For some reason there are TV and radio newsreaders who punctuate in the wrong places and therefore lead you to misinterpret what they're saying. I'm not sure where they learnt there grammar but there are cleaners with virtually no formal education who speak better.

Going back a decade or so, I used to know a woman I used to know was proud of the fact that she was the first member of her family to go to University. At the time I knew her she was an English teacher at a comprehensive and had just secured the position of Head of English at another school. Yet during a discussion about education and my perception that written and spoken English has generally deteriorated since I was at school, which might filter in with other posts on this thread, she stated that it didn't matter if kids could write or speak to a high standard as long as they could be understood. This did to me seem to be at odds with her pride, coming from a council estate, in her academic achievements.

At times I've been involved with reading mentoring in the same area as the aforementioned lady works. This is with primary age kids, some of who don't have any books in the house. In some cases the school won't even lend them books to take home as the parents, being unable to read, throw them in the bin.

If you can speak and write well, you can always do them badly on purpose if you think it's warranted. Remember, knowledge is power.

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We have a TV weather presenter (you will know her Beard) called Eno. ( Not the one from Roxy music either!)
Eno punctuates and breathes in all the wrong places, rendering her weather forecasts unintelligible.
As regards the Head of English who thinks it doesn't matter if kids can write or speak properly. I thought, or rather hoped that left-wing NUT teacher nonsense like that had been discredited by now? Isn't that why they brought in literacy hour?

pooroldcodger said:

We have a TV weather presenter (you will know her Beard) called Eno. ( Not the one from Roxy music either!)
Eno punctuates and breathes in all the wrong places, rendering her weather forecasts unintelligible.
As regards the Head of English who thinks it doesn't matter if kids can write or speak properly. I thought, or rather hoped that left-wing NUT teacher nonsense like that had been discredited by now? Isn't that why they brought in literacy hour?

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Literacy hour? Bring back Listen with Mother might be more appropriate.

Yes, I know who Eno is, and you're right, she does phrase her sentences in a peculiar manner that means that by the time you've worked out what she meant you've forgotten what the forecast was. If you know what I mean.

I think the thing that annoys me most about the "Left" of British politics is that they want to advance themselves but those they've been appointed to look after can pretty much go to hell. Although she isn't, or at least wasn't, in politics she did consider herself on the side of the poor and the disadvantaged and yet wasn't bothered if they succeeded or not. I always used to like people like Dennis Skinner but others who have arrived on the scene more recently like to flaunt their left wing desires while being quite happy to feather their own nests.

The controversy over Milliband Senior came to mind recently. He may well have been a very nice man and a good father, but academics who inhabit the left of the political spectrum expect that in their socialist utopia they will still occupy a privileged position in the ivory towers of academia while the rest of the Proles live in tower blocks and dedicate their lives to keeping the elite in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Although looking around other socialist states should give them an idea of what might befall them.

The leaders of these countries, U.S.S.R., China and North Korea, have all had purges of the intelligentsia from time to time. They don't fear the masses as they aren't educated enough to forment rebellion, but Stalin, Mao and Kim have all got rid of all sorts of advisors and intellectuals from time to time.

Anyway, Smarta**e here has just noticed that in his previous rant he (slipping almost imperceptibly into the third person) has spelt a word "there" instead of "their" and in the earlier post wrote: ".....I used to know a woman I used to know was proud of the fact....." I should have said: ".....I used to know a woman who I knew was proud of the fact....." or even: ".....I used to know a woman who was proud of the fact....."

Grammar can be complicated and, sometimes, the longer you bang on about something the more likely you are to make a mistake.

u avin a laff m8?

ChrisUK said:

u avin a laff m8?

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At least you included a kweschon mark