Binmenism

[ad hoc]

This article is worth a (longish) read (it's long like articles in the old days, before we got too lazy to read anything longer than a text)
https://www.theguardian.com/news/202...mwfNdDKyydfGUg

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Ha ha, ISWYDT ad hoc. Very good article.

[wingco]

Yes, excellent piece. The article he links to be Starmer in that grovelling piece about the Queen he wrote is truly toe-curling.

[ursus arctos]

Very good piece indeed.

The "Lomg Read" is one of the best things about that place.

I find it interesting that contemporary politics, while incessantly appealing to nationalistic nostalgia inherent in Binmenism, never seems to recognize the communitarian aspects the author notes.

[Hot Pepsi]

I was a bin man for a summer. We don't call them that here, of course.

[San Bernardhinault]

A very good article, I agree.

[Simon G]

My uncle was a binman for 36 years before cancer got him in 2015.

He bloody loved wheelie bins, and he rarely wore a coat in winter. In fact, the only Cheltenham game I remember him wearing a coat to was Cambridge away in February 2005 when it had been snowing.

My cousin has since semi-followed in his footsteps and works on the recycling round in Cheltenham. He loves the early finishes.

[WOM]

He loves the early finishes.

Perfectly normal....happens to everyone.

[Gangster Octopus]

My uncle was a binman

There's a song about that. (Sorry Simon, I just couldn't resist it. I'll delete if it's upsetting.)

[Felicity, I guess so]

I learnt to call them scaffies in Elgin and still do

[Lang Spoon]

Scaffies in Kdy as well too.

[Amor de Cosmos]

That article could have been written in 1962, rather than 2022. The references would have been different, but the comments would have been framed identically using exactly the same language. In Britain it has always better "then," than now. I don't know when it was any different. Pre WW1? The Nineteenth Century maybe?

[tee rex]

I was a bin man for a summer. We don't call them that here, of course.

Garbo. (More Aus than NZ).

[DPDPDPDP]

We called them scaffies in the Black Isle (just north of Inverness)

[ursus arctos]

s-l500.jpg

[ursus arctos]

Do Garbos work in the arvo?

Otr is it more of a morning thing?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

That article could have been written in 1962, rather than 2022. The references would have been different, but the comments would have been framed identically using exactly the same language. In Britain it has always better "then," than now. I don't know when it was any different. Pre WW1? The Nineteenth Century maybe?

I mean this is true of all human society to a degree, I think I've mentioned my theory that they would make a lot more headway with deciphering those Linear A inscriptions from crete, if they assume that it's some minoan, complaining that the young generation are the most effeminate, unmanly bunch of twelve year olds ever to form a spear wall. But english culture really has this in a bad way. I strongly suspect that it has a lot to do with just how much painful revolutionary change happened there, much against everyone's will. going back at least as far as the english reformation, or the inclosure acts. It's just one socially traumatic event after another, which wouldn't necessarily have been so bad, if not for the rather brutal nature of the ruling class sitting at the top of it all. It seems to have cleft english society into two strands, the iron headed pragmatists and the romantic reactionary conservatives. The first group just want to get on with things, and trying to make the best of whatever situation they find themselves in. The second group seek refuge from change and uncertainty in nostalgic and wildly historically inaccurate dreams of a better past. And both strands cut across all spheres of cultural activity, and people can find themselves moving between the two things. It seems to be more an underlying personality and age-related thing, than a political thing, because it is striking just how many reactionary conservative progressives you get in England.

This cultural division is present, but not as pronounced in scotland, and barely exists in Ireland. It's hard to construct a "Good old days" argument in a country where there was a serious academic discussion of whether independence had failed as recently as the late 80's, and the country was a miserable theocracy until about 1992. What is the situation in France on such matters? There's a very strong vibe of anger and unhappiness from the snippets of french political discourse that get discussed outside of france.

[tee rex]

Do Garbos work in the arvo?

Or is it more of a morning thing?

About 4 am, in noisy trucks to wake the dead.

[ad hoc]

That article could have been written in 1962, rather than 2022. The references would have been different, but the comments would have been framed identically using exactly the same language. In Britain it has always better "then," than now. I don't know when it was any different. Pre WW1? The Nineteenth Century maybe?

I presumed the point he was making with the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch (written around 1970?) was that this is not exactly a new thing

[Nefertiti2]

I presumed the point he was making with the 4 Yorkshiremen sketch (written around 1970?) was that this is not exactly a new thing

even the sketch was not a new thing then

first broadcast in 1967 I think for At LAst the 1948 show

[Nefertiti2]

Berba makes some good points. a society that has no interest in or route to a better future is likely to b preoccupied by sentimentality about the past.

[pebblethefish]

I learnt to call them scaffies in Elgin and still do

What do you call scaffolders then?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

That photo of the sketch prompts me to think, on a pedantic note, "hang on, it wasn't a Monty Python sketch, was it?"

[Snake Plissken]

That photo of the sketch prompts me to think, on a pedantic note, "hang on, it wasn't a Monty Python sketch, was it?"

No, although two of the Pythons wrote it.

"Andre Preview" had been done on TV about six years earlier in a different form as well. It was just Eric and Ern in the earlier version, but the structure and most of the gags were there.

[Stumpy Pepys]

That photo of the sketch prompts me to think, on a pedantic note, "hang on, it wasn't a Monty Python sketch, was it?"

The version I was most familiar with was the one from The Secret Policeman's Ball (which featured Rowan Atkinson, John Cleese, Michael Palin and Terry Jones).