Do dentists in other countries have the same sense of prestige as British ones? I used to work with a guy whose wife was a dentist and he constantly talked about being a dentist as being on the same level as a doctor. Said that entry requirements for dentistry at university is the same as medical doctors.
I’m happy with having a “nanny state” if it means my sons can get dental treatment. The only NHS dentist in our area won’t take appointments (unless you go private) and say that if children are in pain to call 111. As a child I went for a check up every 6 months. That’s now not possible since Tory austerity.
Great timing. The (supposed) tax cuts will pay for the electricity bosses’ new porsches.
so crushingly dull that it destroys any natural curiosity that kids have
You are right. Children have a much earlier start to school in the UK compared to other countries. This cuts short the time of their “play-based” development. By Year 1 (about 5-6) children in UK primary schools are sat at desks and taught in quite bizarre ways. From Reception (ages 4-5) they are tested continuously to a point where UK children are the most tested children in the Western World. Other, more successful countries (educationally and economically) don’t do this. We have a weird, damaging obsession with testing children and placing them into hierarchies in this country. When testing becomes the purpose and goal of an education system it is, as you say “so crushingly dull”.
Our local big Sainsbury's supermarket has installed airport-style barriers everywhere and you now have to queue and scan your receipt to get out.
As a kid, I always wanted to live in some science fiction futuristic society. I never thought that I'd actually grow up to live somewhere where I had to scan to get out a supermarket only to be under threat of attack by ravaging killer dogs.
The Betamax revival.
Videophiles will be able to see the superior picture quality in the revival of the old tapes. Sales of Betamax cassettes will quickly outsell 4K discs. I'm looking forward to the self-styled Youtuber movie connoisseurs stroking their chins and enthusing about the "new" betamax releases of Scorsese's Gangs of New York in 333 x 486 resolution.
It's not surprising. Reading for pleasure was phased out of schools a long time ago and replaced by "Literacy" and Accelerated Reader where kids are tested on the books they read and have to finish them as fast as they can.
We have a neo-liberal school curriculum in the UK that only sees reading as a function of employment or cultural indoctrination (in the case of the statutory requirement to teach Shakespeare and that no non-UK writers are allowed to be studied at GCSE).
At some point cars became a symbol of individualism. The number of people (men, really) I've worked with who insist on "buying" a new car every year was astonishing. Cars got bigger and bigger and flashier and flashier. All on finance though. Seemed like a weird, maschocistic addiction to me. Almost like they'd been brainwashed into car consumption.
What we actually need is a completely free at point of use public transport system. Break the weird car addition and help deal with the climate crisis.
Not if the country went on "war footing" about the climate catastrophe and took measures to ensure that budgets were redirected into eco-investments (eg. stop spending £3 billion a year on the maintenance of 50 trident missiles). Radical investments in things like tidal power, completely free public transport etc. Where there's a will there's a way.
It's not astonishing, it's calculated. Listen to the media when doctors ask for a pay rise. They're told they're being greedy and that it's "not reasonable" to ask for £20 an hour.
Meanwhile the billionaires think that it IS reasonable to put up energy bills 200%+ and increase food prices beyond anything seen in previous generations.
It's not even "higher quality". This profiteering is forcing British families into severe hardship. We have something like 2 million children living in poverty. All while some foreign corporation is ringing the cash registers.
Time for UK to become Limitarian. Tax the excessively rich at 100% above £10 million. No one needs more money than that.