Sockie increase?

[escapeUK]

If you have, let me expand the film's premise; the decline started through natural selection, but added viral infection to its arsenal, and it's evident on this very forum.

You read it here first.

The film and indeed modern western life has nothing to do with either of those. The problem is socialism or Marxism if you will. Those who work and contribute feel they cannot have many children, if any, and will put this off till later in life sometimes risking fertility issues. Those who are kept by the work of others feel under no such constraints so will have many. I would call this unnatural selection.

Coupled with the invasion of the 3rd world and their high birth rates it will be the end of the west.

[BS1397]

Sockie / Sock Puppet : A forum identity set up by an existing forum user. The term "sock puppet" comes from the tendency of people using such identities to conduct conversations between their own second identity and their original one, like a ventriloquist does with a dummy. Often the sockie will be used to give the illusion of third-party agreement with their own original identity's views, but sometimes they'll be used to attack the original identity in the name of gaining sympathy/support for that identity, or simply to annoy without affecting the original identity's reputation.*

Troll: A person that posts content for the sole purpose of getting any form of reaction (positive or negative), whilst not holding any actual views about the content they post themselves.

AndyW: I had to ask about this one myself. Apparently he's a troll from way back that's become so embedded in a small number of older FMs consciousnesses that they still pay tribute to him in every single poll they post. When I asked who he was, and somebody told me, I checked out some of his old posts using the search function. All I can say is that I really hope they deleted his wittiest contributions, because from the kids' stuff I saw I can't see any reason why he's gained such a foothold in the CUK consciousness.

Edit: Latter discussion indicates this is not what the term "Bob" actually means. It is in fact a racist term for offshore workers, so don't use this definition!
Bob: I had a bit of difficulty with this one myself, since it's a term that seems to be used inconsistently. I believe it means "a ClientCo employee", often used non-derogatorily. However, it did confuse me a bit when someone (I think it was aussielong) said that I should "never have to meet" any bobs whilst on contracts, which suggests he may have a differing definition of that term to the way I use it, since I can't imagine a contract where I'd never meet employees of the client.

Banned / Seriously Banned : For the most part = "not actually banned". Someone explained to me recently that, when you get to 5000 posts, you get to choose your own description in place of the "Fingers like lightning", "Should post faster", etc, labels that are automatically assigned before that. Mysteriously, even though he's managed 9 posts a day, every day, since joining in 2005, and clocked up 23,000 posts in his busy and full life, MarillionFan still hasn't found the time to change his label to "Paranoid Walt".

IR35: The second-worst piece of legislation ever devised by Tony Blair. Aims, and mostly fails, to try and prove that legitimate contractors are "disguised employees" of their clients. Whilst an understandable aspiration in the case of people who stick with one client for years at a time doing whatever work they're assigned, just the way an employee would, it's less understandable for those of us that contract for different people all the time, sometimes for more than one client simultaneously.

...any more with any more CUK lingo?

[* NB: Sock Puppets, real or imagined, are also useful for identifying the most paranoid members of a board, who invariably imagine that everyone and anyone they've never seen before must be a Sock Puppet. Even people who use their own readily-confirmable RL name, who have a CUK account that was created over five years ago, and a blog with two years' history that is verifiable via Wayback that contains a public e-mail address. People who make these claims are generally major Walts themselves, often making spurious claims about owning the forum they are merely a member of, and apocryphal claims of working in the US to explain why in their busy and successful lives they find time to be up at 3am posting nonsense. That's the thing about pathological liars: they find it hard to believe anyone else, even on the most mundane and easily-verifiable of subjects. ]

Gentile, On behalf of all Newbies, Noobs, Sockies, Puppets...etc. I am very grateful for your kind effort and time spent (with others) to help explain all.
I guess as an old fuddy duddy , I am more of a "Last of the summer wine" than the "Young Ones". I will go away now and study these for the exam.

[JaybeeInCUK]

The film and indeed modern western life has nothing to do with either of those. The problem is socialism or Marxism if you will. Those who work and contribute feel they cannot have many children, if any, and will put this off till later in life sometimes risking fertility issues. Those who are kept by the work of others feel under no such constraints so will have many. I would call this unnatural selection.

Coupled with the invasion of the 3rd world and their high birth rates it will be the end of the west.

I should add that you're addressing a son of said 3rd world 'invasion', sunshine. And without attempting to justify our presence on this sceptred island - which isn't open for any more discussion from me than the following - I will simply say that the West is better off with the most ambitious, determined, industrious and brightest of the British Commonwealth (and we, their descendants), than without.

Now, your point about the disparity in birth rates between life's net contributors and net benefactors is poignant. Yet that too is subtly flawed; go to a caff in the poorer areas of any northern town midweek and mid-morning, and you will find it replete with 40-something time-rich, money-poor housewives, who will happily blather on about their six kids, 4-5 of whom are either on skag or down 10 cans of White Stripe Lager a night, but probe a little longer, and the same Marjorie will stop for long enough between puffs on her roll-ups to recount how one or two of them broke ranks to and went white-collar in York/Sheffield/Manchester etc, or worse, how young Colin headed down to the not-so-beautiful South in search of better opportunities.

Intelligent people are indeed a minority of decreasing size in relative % terms, but we will never die out completely. And besides, someone has to actually cobble together the hardware, so we can configure the software.

[mudskipper]

Is intellectualism what we're aiming for?

I thought it was having a laugh, self-mockery, irony, whinging and the occasional mass-debate.

One of us is in the wrong forum.

[JaybeeInCUK]

Is intellectualism what we're aiming for?

I thought it was having a laugh, self-mockery, irony, whinging and the occasional mass-debate.

None of which WAS mutually exclusive with being intellectual. Mostly gone to pot now.

[OwlHoot]

Coupled with the invasion of the 3rd world and their high birth rates it will be the end of the west.

They've been saying that since ancient times literally.

In the 30s BC Caesar Augustus ordered dozens of young men in the equestrian order (the Roman "aristocracy") to attend a meeting in his palace, where he lined them up and gave them a bollocking for not having enough children, walking up and down the line calling them "murderers of their own posterity" etc. Sure enough, by the 4th century AD all but one of the patrician families from the time of the Republic had died out, the exception being the Gens Cornelia.

[Old Greg]

They've been saying that since ancient times literally.

In the 30s BC Caesar Augustus ordered dozens of young men in the equestrian order (the Roman "aristocracy") to attend a meeting in his palace, where he lined them up and gave them a bollocking for not having enough children, walking up and down the line calling them "murderers of their own posterity" etc. Sure enough, by the 4th century AD all but one of the patrician families from the time of the Republic had died out, the exception being the Gens Cornelia.

One of the first things you have to learn about Ammianus Marcellinus is not to take too much notice of his analysis.

[cojak]

In the 30s BC Caesar Augustus ordered dozens of young men in the equestrian order (the Roman "aristocracy") to attend a meeting in his palace, where he lined them up and gave them a bollocking for not having enough children, walking up and down the line calling them "murderers of their own posterity" etc. Sure enough, by the 4th century AD all but one of the patrician families from the time of the Republic had died out, the exception being the Gens Cornelia.

And the 1st 17 of Shakepeare's sonnets urging a young man to procreate, the rest of them were either trying to get into his pants or berating a Dark Lady.

(Is that intellectual enough?)

[cojak]

And I'll bet those 2 hated the Olympic Opening Ceremony; what with all that leftie crap and women from ALL countries competing!!

[cojak]

Is intellectualism what we're aiming for?

I thought it was having a laugh, self-mockery, irony, whinging and the occasional mass-debate.

One of us is in the wrong forum.

And what are you doing out of the kitchen?

And take those heels off!