Poor, poor strikers go shopping

[doodab]

Name me one great inventor who believed that society owed him a living.

That isn't what I am saying and you know it isn't.

[BlasterBates]

You need to be relatively well off to have the time and energy to develop an idea and a plan in the first place. Somebody working 60hrs a week who spends another 10hrs travelling and cannot afford or is unable to take significant time off or pay for childcare etc is going to find it considerably harder.

No you don't check out Steve Jobbs life history, his parents had nothing.

You can get funding. But you need to be good.

The state will pay for your education up to PhD level if you have nothing so that wouldn't be an excuse, i.e. that you get some education to give yourself credibility.

Many entrepreneurs who made it really big started with relatively little.

There are plenty of startups that make no money because they have a good idea, you just need to get the funding. Contrary to poopular belief investors will fund a company for several years before they break-even. You just need to convince an investor.

If you check the Nasdaq listings you will find hundreds of small companies making no money, but hoping to make it big.

George Stephenson developed the Steam Locomotive to become privileged not because he was privileged. In the same way climate scientists propogate their myths to retain their privileges.

[Mich the Tester]

Well thats just b0ll0x - it may have been achieved by people who were living above the poverty line who had a warm house to go to but I will guaranee you that any achievements were on the back of hardwork and long hours and not regimented tea breaks.

Oh now come on, you're taking it a bit far there; regimented tea breaks have done great things for humanity, including England's victories in the 1981 and 2005 Ashes series and victory in the Battle of Britain, won thanks to an endless supply of cuppas from the colonies. I'll go along with you a long way, but getting rid of tea breaks? No way!

[DodgyAgent]

You need to be relatively well off to have the time and energy to develop an idea and a plan in the first place. Somebody working 60hrs a week who spends another 10hrs travelling and cannot afford or is unable to take significant time off or pay for childcare etc is going to find it considerably harder.

Absolute crap. A phone and a PC is all you need, or a voice and a good pair of shoes. Bill Bottriel started S3 - Tooting comp boy with not a penny to his name is now worth £100 million. You will find many of the richest entrepreneurs came from very poor backgrounds.

[original PM]

I'm not saying they didn't work very hard, I'm saying that a life of relative privilege gave them the freedom to work hard at what they wanted to work hard at.

But if you look all across the globe there are lots of people working damn hard sometimes just to survive (anyone see Frozen Planet last night?) and the fact is if they do not work hard and innovate they will die.

It seems in England some people think dragging their pasty flabby carcasses out of bed each morning and sitting behind a desk drinking tea and doing as little as possible constitues hardship.

[Mich the Tester]

It seems in England some people think dragging their pasty flabby carcasses out of bed each morning and sitting behind a desk drinking tea and doing as little as possible constitues hardship.

I was going to say that my plan B involves dragging pasty flabby lardarses out of bed to show them what hardship means and help them lose weight, but it sounds a bit mucky doesn't it?

[doodab]

No you don't check out Steve Jobbs life history, his parents had nothing.

Check out Steve Jobs life history and you might find out how to spell his name. Both of his parents went to university and his father had a decent job in high tech manufacturing and enough space for a workshop at home. That's hardly a background of poverty.

The state will pay for your education up to PhD level if you have nothing so that wouldn't be an excuse.

And what is that, if not society ameliorating the struggle to survive in order to give people the opportunity to achieve something that they otherwise wouldn't? This is exactly what I am advocating FFS.

[DodgyAgent]

That isn't what I am saying and you know it isn't.

We can both play that game of twisting words rather than concentrating on the central point. I will repeat that public sector workers with exception of a few are living within a culture of entitlement. They provide no economic or social value to society they take no responsibility for the services they provide they take more time off work than any other sector and they have the best pensions. They create no wealth and instead suck the blood out of the economy and what is worse is that they expect the rest of us to maintain their living standards whilst we (in the private sector) have to work harder to pay for these "entitled" layabouts.

[Mich the Tester]

We can both play that game of twisting words rather than concentrating on the central point. I will repeat that public sector workers with exception of a few are living within a culture of entitlement. They provide no economic or social value to society they take no responsibility for the services they provide they take more time off work than any other sector and they have the best pensions. They create no wealth and instead suck the blood out of the economy and what is worse is that they expect the rest of us to maintain their living standards whilst we (in the private sector) have to work harder to pay for these "entitled" layabouts.

I have to agree with DA here, but perhaps for a slightly different reason. I agree that it's a culture of entitlement, not because they or their employers are a monopoly, but because they are entitled to refuse to work, and then come back to their job the next day instead of being replaced by someone who deos want to work. That's a sense of entitlement and I hope George Osborne has the balls to tackle it head on.

[BlasterBates]

Check out Steve Jobs life history and you might find out how to spell his name. Both of his parents went to university and his father had a decent job in high tech manufacturing and enough space for a workshop at home. That's hardly a background of poverty.

You seem to imply that his father funded his company, which is complete nonsense:

Check out his link:
Steve Jobs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although he dropped out after only one semester,[20] he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple.

Is that a life of privilege....hardly!

...and what was the role of his Father:

When his son was five or six, Paul Jobs sectioned a piece of his workbench and gave it to Jobs, saying "'Steve, this is your workbench now.' And he gave me some of his smaller tools and showed me how to use a hammer and saw and how to build things