Thanks to Levi for his meticulously linked email telling me all about Ed Karten. I’ve often complained that spEak You’re bRanes is too negative, and doesn’t recognise Have Your Say’s intelligent, articulate and superhumanly perceptive liberals. It sickens me to think how blind and naive I was before Ed Karten forced me to see daylight.
Do children have it tougher than ever?
I am not sure if children have it tougher than ever. I do know children that grow up in circumstances that, without exageration, can be described as Dickensian. I also know some very talented children that, maybe because of their background, grow up with a self-destruct button. It is imperative that every effort is made to break a vicious circle and enables less privileged children to have easier access to opportunities in life. Not all will make it, but those that will, will be worth it.
Ed Karten, London
I’m worried for Ed since reading this. He seems to be suggesting some kind of system whereby social order is based on merit, a “merit”-ocracy, if you will. Ed could well end up with a bullet in the back of the head as the powers that be would never tolerate such a radical idea. After all, if the ruling political parties were interested in mobility on a social level, they’d talk about it all the time.
Will Davos make any difference?
Whether it does or not won’t make any difference to me. I am slowly but surely weaning myself off these people’s control/influence/power, whatever you want to call it. The game they’re playing is a stealth pyramid scheme and I don’t want any of it. There are other options. For every Microsoft there is a Linux.
Ed Karten, London
Such wasted genius! If only Ed had shared his vital insights a few months before the pyramid scheme collapsed instead of several months after!
People are not allowed to feel sad or depressed anymore, it’s considered a disease, or even worse, a weakness. Funnily enough though sometimes I enjoy walking around cold and grey London, listening to Joy Division on my mp3 player, wallowing in melancholy. Maybe it’s “banned” because it equates to too much “me” time, making you introspective and question your environment. As with all things taken in measure, being blue is vital for the soul. It’s the imposed artificial “happiness” that kills.
Ed Karten, London
Naive that I was, I used to think that they treated depression because people don’t like being depressed. That was before last Wednesday, when, as I was listening to The Cure, armed thugs in uniform burst through my door and forced me to skip to ‘Friday I’m in Love’. And now I read this. Slowly, it’s all coming together.
Watch your back Ed. You’re too precious to lose.
18 Responses to “Beacon of Enlightenment”
sometimes i really let my friends down on purpose, so that i can wallow in their disappointment and my subsequent isolation. i also get enjoyment from worrying.
i worry about this scheme to develop stealth pyramids, they could do a lot of damage if one was dropped on my bleak house or my old curiosity shop, where i raise children
I sometimes do that with my girlfriend, just cos I think she looks really cute when she’s sad.
Hmmm, sometimes Nelson “let’s his girlfriend down”
Sounds to me more like the sort of social life that Ed Karten ‘enjoys’
Choose your words carefully Nelson, I bet there’s an HYSer or two who feels hard done to be the frequenters of this establishment, and who might twist your words to paint an entirely different picture of you.
It would have been better if Nelson had also said he liked it when his girlfriend looked deflated.
In other news – Ed Karten is a laugh a minute
But surely the money saving tips topic is the thread of the year so far. Almost everything on it opens up a new window on the HYS psyche.
I let my girlfriend down every time i’ve finished using her, add a little talc and then pack her nicely back into her box.
Would also have been better if I’d avoided the obligatory grammatical error – first rule of the web.
Ah well.
Loving Ed’s take on Facebook though – might have to look the cheerful bugger up
My favourite part of this post is actually Alex’s touching naivety in believing that, because political parties talk about social mobility all the time, they really, really care about it.
The front benches suggest otherwise.
Which part of London is he living in that he can still see shoeless urchins with rickets being forced to climb up chimneys and clean them for one bowl of gruel a day as he strolls nonchalantly past whistling along to his Joy Division?
That’ll be Dr Evil’s son then – because when you’re Dad is an evil genius criminal mastermind you’re bound to find a couple of destruct buttons cluttering up the house somewhere…
<blockquote It is imperative that every effort is made to break a vicious circle and enables less privileged children to have easier access to opportunities in life.
There is. It’s called “reality tv” and “Big Brother” – I refer my learned colleagues to the Jade Goody discussion elsewhere on this site.
Ooo. I like the Darwinian and Nietschian overtones there…
So we’re looking at a reality tv type contest – like a cross between “X Factor”, “It’s a Knockout” and the no-man’s land at the Somme – where disadvantaged kids have to survive a series of demanding but hilarious physical tests through aminefield while dressed as a huge foam rubber carrot and being shot at by hidden machine gun nests.
The one left at the end gets 1 squillion quid and a short but incredibly irritating career as a “TV Sleb” before dying young of some media-friendly trendy disease (because do you really think Ms Goody would be getting all this media coverage if she had terminal syphilis or leprosy?)
Bugger. I fucked up the blockquotes…
Mind you, when I read the bit about Nelson “letting his girlfriend down” I had a mental image of some poor jism-spatered girl in a gimp mask and ball gag suspended from a meathook by a harness of leather straps and chains…
But then, it is Thursday.
Just how many children does he know? He sounds like some kind of paedo. BURN HIM!!1one
I’m sure that’s exactly what Alex believes
I’m still upset no one told me listening to Joy Division was banned by ZaNuLabour. Can anyone tell me where the nearest Depressing Album Amnesty is? I suppose they’ll give me fine for being upset about it too. You couldn’t make it up.
At least Ed’s take on the “actual recognised mental illness equals feeling a bit down sometimes and/or wallowing in vaguely pleasurable gloom” idiocy doesn’t involve his demanding that all the workshy scroungers with this fake made-up disease are immediately turned out into the streets.
Also he has totally stolen that post from The Happiness Patrol but left out the evil Bertie Bassett that made it worthwhile. Idiot.
Yewhat? Why would politicians talk about something if they didn’t think it was true or important? If they get caught lying, people won’t trust them, so it’s not in their interest.
Glad to have been informative. You’re welcome!
He’s even more of a tedious, misanthropic cunt than I am. God help me, I find myself quite warming to the fellow.
Thank you for your explanation Alex. You have single-handedly restored my faith in representative democracy.
To the ballot boxes, brothers!
Can I just say how much I love the name Gilbert Wham? If I have a son I think that’s what I’ll call him.
That made me do a big laugh.