Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

kabayiri

GDB2222 wrote: »

If you have the V5C certificate for your car, that has all the info you need on it.

Yep.

The dog recently ate my reminder, and she didn't even have the decency to leave the bit with the reference number on it intact

(I'm going to try her on a diet of SA60 tax returns next; get a few more greens into her diet )

Generali

michaels wrote: »

However much I had been nurtured I could never have become Olympic 100m champion or an artist. However much effort DW puts into it she can not understand spacial maths concepts.

Of course with the correct nurture we can all acheive our maximum potential but that doesn't mean that we all have the same potential in every skill.

Of course that doesn't represent success, just success in a particular field.

Overall if my father is well educated and well paid I will do well financially. AIUI there is little correlation between me being an elite athlete and my kids being elite athletes.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Just finished a really fascinating book which I thought I'd mention on here, knowing a few posters are interested in politics and economics.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is a unique historical novel/non-fiction hybrid about 50s/60s Soviet Russia and the thinking and personalities behind the great economic plan to overtake the capitalist enemy. I bet you never realised how interesting the central planning of tyre production could be. Highly recommended.

SingleSue

Doozergirl wrote: »

Because the overwhelming evidence is that the most influential factor on academic success is social class. Your exam results are determined by your postcode.

Better performing schools are more dependent on the social standing of their cohort than they are the quality of their teaching staff.

Sure, we all have different talents, and learn in different ways and some children will do better than others without having to work as hard, but everyone's liklihood of success is determined first by nuture.

As always though, there are some that buck the trend. As I posted yesterday, James and Josh were the first in the street to go to university. Now they have gone, many more of the younger ones are now realising this is something that is open to them too.

I was talking to a neighbour a few months ago and she was over the moon but also shocked when one of her children told her he would like to go to uni as he had seen mine do it, her words were "Imagine, one of my children going to uni, I never thought he would be able to do that, it's just not the sort of thing our children do"

Mind you, I had a middle class upbringing and it was only circumstances which led to us being on this street, for my childhood postcode it is now almost a given you will go to uni and you are seen as a failure if you don't, so maybe that has something to do with how my children have turned out.

Going back to a previous post, my mum is a council house child, my dad however came from a more comfortable, middle class setting (his parents owned property when it really was for the wealthier ones). His grandfather had a very nice house in central London with servants, so maybe there is something to it.

SingleSue

GDB2222 wrote: »

On the whole, and we are talking generalisations, people tend to marry others with similar academic attainment. So, father's academic attainment is a reasonable proxy for the mother's.

The point is that these things are incredibly hard to disentangle. There was a whole issue a while back of parents hot housing their kids. Taking them to museums and having loads of books in the house, because they had heard that children do well academically who come from homes with lots of books and where museum visits are common. This ignored the point that it wasn't the books or museums that were important, but the genes of the parents who liked books and museums.

I unfortunately didn't, he had one low grade CSE, I had to do all the letter writing etc as his writing and spelling was absolutely awful. It took a while for us to be on the same page on education for the boys but he eventually took to it when he wanted our boys to beat his new wife's boys in GCSEs and A Levels.

Mind you, we both loved reading so there was always books in the house. Both James and youngest also love reading (youngest is becoming a real collector of rare books, just like I used to be), Josh not so much as he really doesn't understand fiction.

We also used to visit museums, castles etc because we enjoyed them, youngest now loves coming with me to historic houses and churches, James was attracted to a university because of the architecture and even Josh can appreciate buildings of beauty/historic meaning....not so loving of museums though unless they are natural history.

It wasn't something we did because we were trying to force the boys into learning but because it was something we genuinely loved doing and had been doing before the children arrived...luckily they enjoyed it too!

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

But, your dad could've been "forced" into what he did by his parents - and always really wanted to be a runner..... so all you'd have needed was the interest to do it and dad'd have been there with his cheque book paying for the club, outfits, trips, special training, competitions further afield, etc etc. Unlike the poor kid round the corner who would've just run round the estate in tatty plimsolls.

I have one direct experience story. Two people, who would always race together. Person A always won; Person B always came 2nd. But Person B's dad got their cheque book out and paid for extra/additional training and some special training camps etc ....and Person B ended up at the Olympics.

Person A went off to do a job for life.... Person B got to swan around doing celebrity openings and TV presenting/being interviewed gigs. And now, 40 years on, they're still on the telly regularly.

Sport isn't funded. You don't get to be "the best" just by going to cheap clubnights and wearing the cheap gear. Once you're competing at county level even there are additional/higher costs, the lure of additional training, one-off bootcamps, more kit required, better kit. Then, get to the nationals, and now you're into long distance travel, maybe hotels, higher entry fees to take part.

And even for the Olympics you have to pay for your way/ticket.

That's why sport's mostly richer people winning at stuff. Poorer ones dropped out years ago.

My maternal nan was a talented opera singer. She was spotted and offered a spot in the West End but my great grandfather refused to give permission for her to take up the offer.

Her main career after that was making condoms.....

I was a dancer and was seen as the next brightest hope for East Anglia but it had become far too expensive for my parents and they had to pull me out of ballet school as they were risking bankruptcy to keep me there with all the fees, practice wear/shoes and clothes for my performances.

I ended up in the corporate world and then obviously, to nothing as I am now.

ukmaggie45

Pastures, there's an offer on Find My Past.

Special Offer
1 month World subscription for £5
Use the offer code 5WORLD16 to get a 1 month World subscription for just £5 (normally £12.95). Hurry, offer expires on Thursday 17 March.

I'm toying with doing it, as my Great Grandmother was from Eire and it would be nice to try and follow her up a bit. She married before she was 21, and her Guardian had to sign a paper to give permission for the marriage. It's just signed with a X. Her first child (a girl) died at age 2, have a photo if Grandama and her husband on a beach with the baby. They went on to have 2 further girls, the elder one was my Grandmother on my Father's side. I remember Grandama as she died when I was about 5. She always wanted to kiss me when I visited her (she was confined to bed and lived with my Grandmother) and I didn't like it - "Not on my lips Grandama"

bugslet

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

Just finished a really fascinating book which I thought I'd mention on here, knowing a few posters are interested in politics and economics.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford is a unique historical novel/non-fiction hybrid about 50s/60s Soviet Russia and the thinking and personalities behind the great economic plan to overtake the capitalist enemy. I bet you never realised how interesting the central planning of tyre production could be. Highly recommended.

Sadly that is exactly the kind of book I read. Doin't ruin the suspense by telling me if they are truck tyres......

PasturesNew

ukmaggie45 wrote: »

.... "Not on my lips Grandama"

Cheers, but I'm waiting for a 1-year half price UK deal.
I've no desire for other country records at this point, it's the UK stuff that's of most use to me.

Aww you have great memories there. You should try to write that up and "put it out there" somewhere for others to know/enjoy long into the future as they do their research and discover you

It's pure gold to have a photo of a child that died so young! Such a rare treat.

Even where photos existed, uncaring past generations have binned photos as "no idea who that is" when they've done house clearances....such a shame they've all, often, disappeared.

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

There was some "money that we can't work out" in my older sibling's early years. Mum was married and my older sibling used to go horse riding and do ballet. We were having the conversation of where the money came from. She stopped doing it all when mum married dad. She thought maybe some "rich aunt" was funding it - and we thought about that and I decided that, in fact, mum was probably milking her husband for every penny of "support" she could squeeze out of him, which was paying for it all. Maybe her dad didn't want to see her going without and was paying mum good money. All of that would've ended when she re-married and he'd changed jobs (ex-services).

So I'm probably closer to the truth.

My younger sibling and I never did expensive things like ballet, horses or musical instruments.

Oops, I did horses too! Cheapo riding lessons organised between the school and the riding school. I say cheapo but in actual fact, the costs would probably make me wince now if worked out on today's money.

I also did music lessons but I paid for those myself out of my part time job.

My siblings didn't have expensive hobbies, both of them were children who preferred to stick close to home and not be out doing various things. Things equalled out when we were older as my parents paid for them to do driving lessons (I had paid my own) and kitted out their first houses.