Owner: Not What it Used to Be URL:http://notwhatitused2be.com Join Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:32:26 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: We're headed to hell in a clapped-out handcart. Musings on the crapness of modern life, from a self-confessed miserable old bark Site statistics:Click here
No. 5 Whatever Happened to Ambition? 2008-06-26 16:24:53 What the hell ever happened to ambition?
That’s a question that always fails to keep me awake at night.
I’ll tell you where ambitions gone. It’s gone south, along with every other hope and dream we might once have nurtured. Just look at today’s young. There’s little ambition there, and why would there be?
Notice how [...] Read more:Ambition
No. 4 The Youth of Today Pt. 2 - The Kids Aren’t Alright 2008-06-23 14:39:02 In 1965 the Who sang the ‘The Kids are Alright
’. 43 years down the line and I beg to differ with Mr. Townshend. The kids aren’t alright. They seem very wrong indeed.
After berating the youth of today (or ‘yoots’, as I believe the collective term now to be) last week, it would seem that fair [...] Read more:Today
No. 3 Royal Ascot 2008-06-16 16:44:10 Yes, RoyalAscot
, the dowager of the flat racing calendar kicks off tomorrow, and one has to ask the question, why?
Why does this joke of a five day event command so much airtime on a publicly owned television channel?
I say joke, because that’s all it is to me or any outsider to the obscenely wealthy [...]
No. 2 The Youth of Today 2008-06-11 16:44:46 By design, the youth of today have always been a feckless bunch. A clamour of ill-garbed, sweaty ne’er-do-wells, who seem unable to communicate in anything approaching a semblance of the Queen’s English. That’s to be expected; it’s their job. A job funded by dads across the land and rewarded with a modest stipend referred to [...] Read more:Today
No. 1 Shopping Bags 2008-06-08 17:34:43 Yesterday I had the pleasure of searching through the spare cupboard, amongst the toolboxes and assorted knick-knacks that see fit to gather there as though awaiting the second coming of the toolshed messiah; looking for a Phillips screwdriver with which to perform one of the mundane tasks that crop up every so often and make [...] Read more:Shopping
No. 10 Gordon Brown - U-Turns and Lies 2008-07-17 17:35:45 And so this prolonged car crash that is GordonBrown
and his treacherous band of thieves ploughs relentlessly onward as he makes not just one, but two policy U-turns in the space of a few days.
First off - in what’s up there with the quickest of embarrassing public U-turns to have been perpetuated by useless [...] Read more:Gordon Brown
No. 9 Time is Not on My Side 2008-07-16 17:24:11 Time waits for no one, and it won’t wait for me.
- The Rolling Stones, ‘Time Waits For No One’
Indeed. Apparently we don’t buy Oranges anymore. Well not big ones, anyway. You know the ones the size of a small beach ball that you need an ice-pick or similarly fashioned tool to remove the rhinoceros-like [...]
No. 8 Gordon Brown - Our Unelectable Leader (Pt. 1) 2008-07-10 15:38:26 I may have promised mobile phones and hi-technology for the next post, but that’s been postponed for another time to make way for something considerably lower in tech. What will be the start of an ongoing profile of one James GordonBrown
, elected leader of the Labour Party and unelected leader of the United Kingdom.
Now [...] Read more:Gordon Brown
, Leader
No 7. The Art of Conversation 2008-07-08 16:15:31 …
Nothing to say?
…
Hmmm. The art of conversation is not what it used to be.
…
But let’s just hold up one second there, Pardner. Since when was conversation an art anyway? It’s simply a case of two or more people in the same place at the same time waiting for their turn to speak. Nothing really artistic [...] Read more:Conversation
No. 13 Thatcher, Churchill, and the State Funeral 2008-08-02 17:15:52 I think Jeffman lied when he said he’d be back on Monday, but then Jeffman, like a politician, has a long history of – how shall we say? – frugality with the truth. Just ask his good mother!
So what has spurred Jeffman into this unscheduled appearance?
Nothing really. Just a desire to get some random idiocy [...] Read more:Churchill
, Funeral
, State
, Thatcher
No. 12 The Village Idiot and Talent-Free TV 2008-07-26 08:05:10 There was a time when you knew where you stood with the common or garden village idiot. He (for they were invariably always male) would sit on his wall at the edge of the village watching the world go by in blissful ignorance, only stopping every once in a while to fall off.
But nowadays, it [...] Read more:Talent
, Village
No. 11 The Art of Conversation Pt. 2 - Death by Internet 2008-07-24 16:45:55 In what seems like a lifetime ago I promised mobile phones and technology for the second part of this article on how the art of conversation is not what it used to be… So, with no further ado it’s mobile phones and technology I deliver.
Once again fear stalks these halls; what seems sadly endemic in [...] Read more:Conversation
, Internet
No. 18 Jeffman’s Archives 2008-08-15 20:42:56 You can’t even rely on bleeding technology.
Jeffman has just noticed that the bloody archives aren’t working.
The monthly links redirect back to the homepage! He will engage his trustiest of spanners and cheekiest of socket sets, in a bid to remedy this faux pas.
For a committed Luddite such as his good self, this may take a [...] Read more:Archives
No. 17 Drunken Recovery Times 2008-08-14 16:44:36 Hot dingle. Jeffman fears he might be getting old. The pieces are slowly but surely slotting into place. Pull out the scorecard and tick the appropriate boxes.
Greying hair. Check. Expanding waistline. Check. Aching joints. Check. They’re all there. But there’s one thing Jeffman never expected. The thing that creeps up on you like the ex-scoutmaster [...] Read more:Recovery
, Times
No. 16 The Working Classes and their Like 2008-08-10 09:56:16 We here at Not What it Used to Be are fortunate enough to be graced by the presence of the incorrigible Lord Thackery Fotheringay-Fanshawe, who has so generously agreed to give up a portion of his valuable time to speak at us all on a subject he nurtures close to his own good heart.
By Jove! [...] Read more:Classes