Ashamed to be British?

[Karmann Ghiaman]

Here's a shiteworthy site:

 

http://www.oobject.com/category/siniste ... -vehicles/

 

Yes, TV licences are crap. As the man says, the BBC is supposed to be 'independent', yet it's funded by a compulsory government tax on the machine you need to watch any channel. It is also now constantly bombarding us with advertisements, the very thing the wretched licence is supposed to be preventing (for said BBC's own products)... Yet you don't need a licence to own, for example, a Rottweiler or a chainsaw.

 

Disgusted? Never mind! This must still be the only country in the world where you can legitimately buy something to wipe your shitty off boots on the national flag:

 

 

(And it's promoted in the Mail on Sunday).

[Mr_Bo11ox]

No idea what point youre making there KGM! However I like this:

 

 

Bet thats fun on a windy day!

[pogweasel]

SCRAMBLE THUNDERBIRD 2!

 

 

I used to love when the Telly Po-lice came a-knocking. I didnae have a telly for years, they used to come and be all 'accusational' demanding payment for my licence, I'd tell them to KNOB OFF.

[Richard]

I have it on good authority that TV detector vans can't possibly work and they must always have been dummies. The two examples pictured do have a bit of a science fiction look about them.

[Cavcraft]

It was mostly bollocks. The chances of some crap old van with two pound shop aerials glued to the roof discovering you had no licence were so slim they didn't exist.What they actually did was get the list of people who hadn't renewed their licence and then switched on their telly detector (not licence detector) right outside your house. In a shit Commer van with draughty windows looking all moody.

[Karmann Ghiaman]

No idea what point youre making there KGM! However I like this:

 

 

Bet thats fun on a windy day!

Exactly what I thought! Not really trying to make a point, but I do think TV licences, devised IN and FOR the 1920s, are a tad ridiculous in this day and age. Anybody enjoy paying theirs?

[pogweasel]

I assume 'er indoors pays it. I certainly don't. If they turn up & demand the telly they are welcome to it. Not that it's worth a bean anyway, as I bought it in 1999, and only 'coz the trouble & strife demanded I do so. At the time it looked vast in my pokey bedsit. Now it is the subject of ridicule for being so tiny in the corner of my 20' lounge. When it eventually breaks I expect I will have to lash about 9 million quid on some 94in plasma thing, but till then I resist.

[MrRegieRitmo]

When it eventually breaks I expect I will have to lash about 9 million quid on some 94in plasma thing, but till then I resist.

I was just thinking about that today, about the fact that if our main telly breaks (a 21" DVD / Video combi thing) our next telly will have to be something large & flat. My parents don't believe in them, they find them a bit obscene & completely OTT, even when everybody around us seems to be rushing out to buy their 42" this, their 37" that, their 50" this etc etc. I was thinking, how did we manage back in the 80s & 90s when the biggest you could buy was a 28 or 32" Toshiba or whatever.....why does everybody have this sudden urge to need a cinema screen in their front room? Our neighbours for example have got at a 42" something or other in their lounge & bought 37 or 40" for their little darling's playroom, we find it all so pretentious! And besides all that, then there's the price...how much was your 28" Toshiba back in 1998 or whatever, you'd be talking what, £300?, £400 for the top of the range? Something close to that! Now everybody around us has suddenly got a budget for a tv of anything up to a grand for the average flat screen jobby & those aiming for the cream of the crop seem happy to splash out anywhere between £1500 -3000!! Is it just me that finds that ludicrous?? It's a TV for feck sake, it's not meant to be your 3rd biggest purchase after your house & your car (or in us on here's case, the 2nd biggest purchase after your house - think how much delectable shite you could pick up for the price of your £2000-3000 telly! I think more so than the fact suddenly everybody thinks one of these wall mounted or room dominating screens are a must have & all seem to find the spare thousands to buy one, is the fact that the manufacturers of these expect everybody to want one, & to be able to afford to get one as if it's reasonable to expect every household to have one & I find it annoying that everybody is pandering to them & doing exactly that! It also leaves those people that don't feel the need for one, feeling like they're inferior because their house doesn't have a £1500 3 foot long high definition piece of plastic in their lounge!My sister has had her nose put out of joint because she is in the 'couldn't care less' bracket but her boyfriend has gone out to Asda & come back with a 37" monster screen on the understanding that it's on trial whilst he talks her round to keeping it. She just doesn't see the point & thinks it's totally unnecessary but I don't see it going back to the shop somehow! She'd have been happy with something like I've got as a benchmark. I've got a 26" Samsung LCD TV which ears on the side of tasteful as it's just right for my fairly small room & is just about big enough without becoming imposing. It's quite stylish & you still get the quality feel & modern large screen effect without losing the point of it on just being bloody big for the sake of it & drowning the room in black shiny plastic! Besides I won it in a competition so it only cost me about £20 in text messages, so I was hardly going to turn around & say 'no sorry I don't believe in them!' or 'that's nice but have you got one another couple of feet wider?'

[Guest]

I've got one of these in my fairly ordinary sized bedroom:

 

It's a few years old now, a Toshiba 43" rear projection set. It was a Makro Mail special deal I bought using money saved up from a temporary warehouse operative job I had at the time (2002-ish?). Cost something like £700 which was a mega bargain at the time, but I'd shifted a lot of pallets and taped a lot of catalogues to scrape that together! I think I was the only one in the queue that morning who wasn't a pub landlord getting it to show the football on. Was delivered in a shitey old Transit by an enterprising market trader and his son.

 

I remember at the time people were somewhat amazed at how I'd bought such a massively imposing TV, especially since I barely watched it. The norm was for 28" CRT things and I'd bought this ludicrous wall of a set. Glad I got it though. I can't see me replacing it for some years to come, there's not much point in having all this high definition stuff if all you do is watch some old DVD once a week or so. Sky have written to us a few times in the past asking if my box has been disconnected, on account of me leaving it turned off for weeks. Mainstream TV broadcasting has barely anything for me nowadays, if I do fire up the Sky box, it nearly always finds its way to the ITV3 film rota (Duel/Total Recall/Tremors), unless Road Wars or Cops is on. After my fill of that, I marvel at the fact that since the last time I turned it on, there's at least 20 new channels with zero content of interest to me and switch it off.

 

I don't know what this story was building up to and have no way to wrap it up now, so the conclusion is this: if you have a big set just for watching Ant and Dec, you might as well be strapped to it (and your kids) and catapulted into the sun. See if your Argos warranty covers that!

[Karmann Ghiaman]

Of course the IRONY is that as the televisions get better, so the quality of what you can watch on it gets very much worse. In the 1960s you had a tiny black & white Rediffusion thing and a brilliant Play for Today by Dennis Potter that you still think about 40 years later. In 2008 you have a fantastic 42" plasma screen, surround sound and a complete home entertainments system with which one can watch a bunch of total wankers & complete slags (all of whom you despise) sitting around, picking their noses & talking complete bollocks in the Big Brother house.

 

Incidentally, Mr RR, you may be forced to get a Digital telly long before your current main TV does break down. We've got half-&-half Digital/Analogue at the moment and I just wish (a) that the ITV channels would get on with digitalising & ( that the digital bit worked in bad weather & didn't keep bleating 'Bad Signal'. Nor can we receive BBC3; which is annoying, as it seems to have most of the best programmes (though they do turn up on 2 a few weeks later).

[Cavcraft]

I live on a council estate therefore I have to have a big telly.

[Richard]

Nobody has to get rid of their analogue TV, you just have to spend £20 on a digibox. The propaganda tends not to mention that.

[maximalist]

Had this set for five or six years before I splashed out on a colour set in the year of 2000.

 

[MrRegieRitmo]

I live on a council estate therefore I have to have a big telly.

I'm not sure if you're just being ironic here, or deadpan serious, but either way I know how true it is! Why is that statement so true though?

[Cavcraft]

I live on a council estate therefore I have to have a big telly.

I'm not sure if you're just being ironic here, or deadpan serious, but either way I know how true it is! Why is that statement so true though?

Bit of both. I really do live on a council estate and I really do have a big telly. It's a kind of standing joke I suppose as everyone I know who lives on a council estate seems to have a massive telly. It must be a status symbol thing

Now I've got an old Vectra with poundshop stylee wheeltrims so I fit in very nicely. I just need to get my son to tuck his 'trackie' into his socks and buy my daughter some Elizabeth Duke bingo armour and I've cracked it.

[MrRegieRitmo]

It always amazes me how you can drive through a council estate & it will have more satellite dishes per household than the rest of the town put together! It's as if everybody there feels they have something to prove! But then it begs the question, if they can afford all these nice things then what are they doing there in the first place? Obviously I know everybody's circumstances are different, but generally speaking that's the case!

[seth]

This modern technology really bugs me too, simply because it is a step backwards in some rather frustrating ways.In the old days (and I'm talking '80s once the technology had been improved lots)you had you're telly, you switched it on and within a second or so there was a good image you could watch. If your area had a bad signal there were things you could do to improve it and once your aerial was set it would take a particularly nasty storm for there to be any change.No you get unexpalined jumpyness from time to time. And the bleedin' computerisation the signal has to go through no needs booting up etc. Our electrics tripped last night while watching Top Gear. I flicked the RCD or whatever back on and it took about 3 minutes for the bloody TV to start working again!

[Volksy]

One of my mates has a 52in LCD TV, which means every time i stay there and then come home to my piddly little telly i feel the need to go to the optician!

[Cavcraft]

It always amazes me how you can drive through a council estate & it will have more satellite dishes per household than the rest of the town put together! It's as if everybody there feels they have something to prove! But then it begs the question, if they can afford all these nice things then what are they doing there in the first place? Obviously I know everybody's circumstances are different, but generally speaking that's the case!

I used to think that to be honest until I moved to an estate. Seriously most people who live on them are bloody hard working decent people. I've lived in various areas (supposedly nice to supposedly rough) in my home city and the estates are always better to live on because there's no airs and graces.Yeah, at some point some people could have afforded a mortgage I suppose but don't forget family ties, a love of the area and now stupid house prices mean most people either want to or have to stay put.I think if you're lumped in to an estate you have to sort of fit in or get out and, as I said, most people are very hard working and decent.I also find we can laugh at ourselves (like water is called council pop round here!) and know where we live isn't Mayfair or Chelsea but we just get on with it.

[MrRegieRitmo]

Sure. I wasn't having a pop by the way, just intrigued by what goes on. I've never lived on an estate but got nothing against them myself. Think mum feels negatively towards them as she grew up on one & has no desire to go back to one, but not sure the reasons behind it. Just whatever floats your boat I suppose!

[M'coli]

We've also got to remember that people have had the option to buy their council house, so they have if it's been worth buying. I live in an ex-council house that was originally sold back in the 70s, and if I were to move to a non-council estate I'd have to find about 2 & 1/2 times the money to avoid having a smaller house with a smaller garden and much closer neighbours...it's not worth it!!!

[r.welfare]

I'm with M'Coli here. My place is actually the ex-police house on a former Local Authority estate, and it's huge for a 3 bed - thank you, Messers Parker Morris. Sold into private ownership for 8 grand back in 1978, according to the deeds. I paid somewhat more.Neighbours are also top notch, and the bonus is 'cos they've all bought their houses cheap (the Right To Buy legislation gave you up to 60% discount on Market Value depending on how long you'd rented it from the council IIRC), and they're all related to each other (it's that kind of village), they know a good welder/mechanic/plumber/brickie/chippie/whatever that will cost you next to nowt.Oh, and I've got a satellite dish on the side of my house, but I've never used it - does that count? And - the ultimate irony - I work for a cable company, but yet my house is not in a cable area.

[Cavcraft]

Regie, didn't for a minute think you were having a pop mucker. I've probably gone backwards (in some people's eyes) as when I lived with the 'rents we had private houses not on estates.My current estate is going down the pan a little but nowt to worry about just yet and as local authorities can now chuck nuisance neighbours out if neccessary it's not as bad now if a neighbour is a pita.We had the chance to buy our place stupidly cheap but even then at the time we couldn't afford it. One thing that does worry me slightly is that I would like somewhere to leave for my children to live in or sell when they're older. I can just see my kids faces at the reading of my will:'...and to his daughter he leaves a rusty pile of shite Chevette with red tweed trim'

[pogweasel]

LOLz. I've got an ex-council gaff too. With a satellite dish (we had Sky gratis for a year, when we had to start paying I sacked it off & got freeview, cable ain't an option as they want a hefty sum to ruin my driveway as there is no 'plumbing' for it in the house).Bought the place because it was cheap for a quite large house, £20K less than we could have bought our rented place for which was half the size. So we get nice neighbours, a big garden and ample space to extend. As an added bonus, the inlaws own an adjacent plot, which is even bigger and gets my 'developer' brain in giddy cartwheels.... (it's handy too, get bored of the kids: chuck them over the fence. Irritate Nanny & Grandpa for a bit!)Galling though that the previous incumbent made a £100K profit on it in 4 years (without lifting a finger!)

[retrogeezer]

We sold our 3 bed end terrace on the airport flight path in Farnborough/Hampshire last July for £242,500 after buying it in 1993 for £74,000.

 

This has enabled us to buy a 4 bed detached house at the end of a cul-de-sac overlooking a golf course 'oop nawf' for less money (£215,000) which would have been £450,000-£500,000 back in Hampshire. So we have kept our £70k mortgage and not had to borrow the extra £250,000 plus that would have been needed to stay in the South. The mortgage interest payments would have been horrendous.

 

Old house:

 

 

 

New place:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for TV's, still using a Hitachi branded 32 inch widescreen that we bought in 2003 for £280 with a full surround sound dvd player set up included when Skyshop was selling off stock.

 

Also using freeview boxes but find it mildly irritating that the sound often goes out of sync - especially when it is something you have recorded.

[pogweasel]

 

 

1) Move shed & swings

2) Install a big gate

3) FILL GARDEN WITH RUSTING BILGE!

 

What could be better than your own decorative Austin Maxi in the garden?

(I am sure you neighbours would be very pleased at your attempts to create a world ferrous heritage centre, too)

 

[mk2_craig]

I nearly bought a 2 bed semi on the Leicester outskirts last year for £129k, the seller accepted my offer but soon started being a PRICK and claimed for months that he wasn't now sure whether he wanted to get rid of the property, in the end I had enough and ended up moving back to Jersey.I think I dodged a bullet though cos East Mids house prices have nosedived and it wouldn't have been much fun paying £700+ a month on a place that would rent out for maybe £500/month max, even if I did have its TRIPLE GARAGE full of all the shite that I'd intended to relocate there from Edinburgh :roll:That £129k might just about buy a scuzzy bedsit in St Helier, therefore I am living in a room above the garage at my parents' house.

[Cavcraft]

You see that's a lovely pad you have there but where are the kids on mini-motos, council estate wheel trim bedecked Mondeos with broken bumpers and shirtless tattoed men innocently going about their business of drinking cans of wife beater and swearing?

[r.welfare]

£70k mortgage

Dammit, that's tiny - I keep forgetting you're old! Must be 'cos you've got more hair than me. I'd say you got an excellent price for your old place.Think I'll need to go into drugdealing to upgrade the house, then, as we'll be staying in this area (frantically scours ads for ancient 7 series).

shirtless tattoed men

Hey, there's one of them 4 doors down - not tattoed, just constantly shirtless. Or working on his FTO dressed in white jeans...40 years old, still lives with his mum, chasing 17yr old girls on a daily basis, wonders why his cars (300ZX, Golf VR6, Hyundai Coupe and now the FTO) only last less than a year...might be because you scream past my house at 8000rpm in 1st on a cold engine, numbnuts.

[M'coli]

You see that's a lovely pad you have there but where are the kids on mini-motos, council estate wheel trim bedecked Mondeos with broken bumpers and shirtless tattoed men innocently going about their business of drinking cans of wife beater and swearing?

It's worse than that, retrogeezer's got Pringle-jersey wearers at the end of his garden!