Going nuts at CH

Anything that doesn't fit anywhere else, but that's still CH related.

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rockfreak
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Going nuts at CH

Post by rockfreak »

I note with interest that a group of senior pupils have instigated a symposium on mental health at school. They are including some state schools in their project but there are some prestigious boarding schools as well. What do we deduce from this? Is this the final admission (as some have long concluded) that spending too long banged up in a closed institution with the same bunch of people for threequarters of the year is designed to send you stark staring?

It will be interesting to see who feels the most bonkers. The boarders or the state school pupils. Of course one has to admit here that all young people must feel under the cosh these days, what with the limited job opportunities and the bunch of deranged right-wing anarchists running the country. In my day we never had these problems. But who will win the contest for most psychologically damaged? Yahs or oiks?
Avon
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by Avon »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:07 pm But who will win the contest for most psychologically damaged? Yahs or oiks?
I guess it depends on how you class yourself, seeing as you are Exhibit A?
rockfreak
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by rockfreak »

I note on investigating further that this symposium took place some months ago and was declared a great success. But it doesn't say in what way. How were the different categories of pupil affected? What were the main psychological problems? Allowing for the proportionate representation, did boarding school or day school drive you more nuts? And what remedies were offered? I suppose CH doesn't fall properly into the category of yahs or oiks. Given our hybrid nature perhaps we are yoiks.
time please
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by time please »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:07 pm I note with interest that a group of senior pupils have instigated a symposium on mental health at school. They are including some state schools in their project but there are some prestigious boarding schools as well. What do we deduce from this? Is this the final admission (as some have long concluded) that spending too long banged up in a closed institution with the same bunch of people for threequarters of the year is designed to send you stark staring?

It will be interesting to see who feels the most bonkers. The boarders or the state school pupils. Of course one has to admit here that all young people must feel under the cosh these days, what with the limited job opportunities and the bunch of deranged right-wing anarchists running the country. In my day we never had these problems. But who will win the contest for most psychologically damaged? Yahs or oiks?
You seem to forget the seventies when the British car industry was wrecked by left-wing anarchists and at the same time the lights at home kept going out for a few hours everday.
Pe.A
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by Pe.A »

rockfreak wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:07 pm I note with interest that a group of senior pupils have instigated a symposium on mental health at school. They are including some state schools in their project but there are some prestigious boarding schools as well. What do we deduce from this? Is this the final admission (as some have long concluded) that spending too long banged up in a closed institution with the same bunch of people for threequarters of the year is designed to send you stark staring?

It will be interesting to see who feels the most bonkers. The boarders or the state school pupils. Of course one has to admit here that all young people must feel under the cosh these days, what with the limited job opportunities and the bunch of deranged right-wing anarchists running the country. In my day we never had these problems. But who will win the contest for most psychologically damaged? Yahs or oiks?
I blame Prince Harry ; p
rockfreak
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by rockfreak »

In respect of the 1970s, I'm not carrying a flag for the often politically driven trade union wreckers in many (but not all) of our unions back then. Indeed I've just rewatched on television that disturbing film The Angry Silence in which Richard Attenborough plays the brave standout against the wildcat strike that is being called. Having worked in print and journalism over the years I saw the wreckers at close hand. But would young people know what a wildcat strike is today? They don't happen. It's a changed world. Actually it was Harold Wilson and Barbara Castle who in 1969 proposed a document called In Place Of Strife. It was a brave move because it proposed some union reforms that subsequently turned up in Margaret Thatcher's union reforms. Brave because Labour was then much more the creature of the big unions than now. It was sabotaged by others in Wilson's cabinet, notably Jim Callaghan who duly saw industrial strife come back to bite him in 1979.

The 1970s problems were not entirely the fault of the unions, indeed I got one of my letters published in The Guardian where I took a fine toothcomb over the 1970s upheavals. Things ranged from Nixon dismantling the Bretton Woods currency arrangements and causing volatility on the world markets, to our kneejerk support for Israel causing the Gulf states to squeeze the oil taps on us, to Heath and Barber's unsustainable private credit splurge (a minor prelude to Thatcher and Lawson in the late 80s). The militant unions were part of it, yes, but only part. Today our problems are very different. The wreckers and anarchists are on the right and are determined to consign our country to third world status on January 1. I don't understand why some people are trying to resurrect the problems of fifty years ago.
time please
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by time please »

An interesting post, thank you.

I live abroad during the last 46 years ( my experience at CH was not brilliant ) two weeks after passing through the main gate for the last time. I was asked to leave which was basically similar to winning the lottery. Nowadays when I visit England it is as a tourist. So I do not have much knowledge of what is happening. But even a fool could see that that morons are running the place. What is going on in trying to reach a settlement with the EU is laughable, but with the last suggestion it is a criminal act. The handling of Covid was/is totally without leadership with directions being changed overnight.
Years ago you could believe the BBC but because of the fact that it has slipped somewhat to the left which means that I have to read The Mail on Line to try and figure what is going on. I hasten to add that I read the headline and then go to the comments as the articles seem to be written somewhere else than England. But one thing is certain the country is full of hate. So your comment about it being the right who are destroying the place is in my mind not correct. I think it is the whole country

Well I will keep listening to Radio 2 and wish all of you a pleasant day.
sejintenej
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by sejintenej »

time please wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 7:41 am
rockfreak wrote: Wed Sep 09, 2020 8:07 pm I note with interest that a group of senior pupils have instigated a symposium on mental health at school. They are including some state schools in their project but there are some prestigious boarding schools as well. What do we deduce from this? Is this the final admission (as some have long concluded) that spending too long banged up in a closed institution with the same bunch of people for threequarters of the year is designed to send you stark staring?
There are suggestions that sensitive people may be being affected by this year's lockdown. If Freaky's view and the lockdown thoughts have any validity then every member of our armed forces and every prisoner is being deliberately sent round the bend.

NO! IMHO I think that some people are more sensitive than others and specific circumstances can come into play. There is a suspicion that people who are absolutely brilliant may be just a little "different" (JR knows who I have in mind) though it may be that their brains are wired to one specific subject at the expense of others.
"Specific circumstances"; well Freaky reckons that I am a bit loopy because I oppose his views; 9 years of CH didn't cause me much damage but a 2 week course in communication run by Theosophists really did my brain in - it took months to recover
It will be interesting to see who feels the most bonkers. The boarders or the state school pupils. Of course one has to admit here that all young people must feel under the cosh these days, what with the limited job opportunities and the bunch of deranged right-wing anarchists running the country. In my day we never had these problems. But who will win the contest for most psychologically damaged? Yahs or oiks?
You seem to forget the seventies when the British car industry was wrecked by left-wing anarchists and at the same time the lights at home kept going out for a few hours everyday.
Another thing he fails to mention is those far left wing trades unionist commie welsh miners dropping concrete blocks from a bridge onto vehicles using a motorway. Those geezers were definitely brain damaged and who caused it? - union bosses
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
bakunin
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by bakunin »

What did the Theosophists do in their communication course that was so bad? I'm quite interested in these weird little cults, you hardly ever hear about theosophy these days. I suppose they were replaced by scientologists.
sejintenej
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by sejintenej »

bakunin wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 3:08 am What did the Theosophists do in their communication course that was so bad? I'm quite interested in these weird little cults, you hardly ever hear about theosophy these days. I suppose they were replaced by scientologists.
"Beats me!" There were about 20 people there sent by different companies (no one else from mine) and it was all about getting a message across so that it would be understood and not changed with retelling. A series of different exercises of which I remember only one but which had a clear lesson. That said there was nothing that seemed strange and each exercise demonstrated both faults (try to pass a message through 20 people and see the final result!) and allowed us to work out a cure or improvements on "normal" communications

That the lecturers were/are theosophists only came out in conversation outside the "classroom"; no indication that they were trying to recruit. Perhaps there were subliminal overnight messages - I simply don't know but after a few days I was starting to feel a little bit "funny" which they noticed and offered "help" both then and after I left.

Not sure what the help would have been - the only thing I remember that they suggested was that every evening I try to think through everything that I had done or had happened to me during the day. I was definitely a bit shaky and nervous for quite a while afterwards
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
Oliver
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by Oliver »

Interesting though these comments on the politics of the 70s are, the original observations are of equal interest in my opinion. Can anyone explain why this symposium took place? Was it because participants were simply interested in mental health problems and wanted to learn more and exchange opinions? If so, that’s admirable. Or was it because there was dissatisfaction with current management by the CH authorities of some mental health issues? If so we, should know this.

The dropping of concrete blocks from a bridge over a motorway onto the traffic below, mentioned by sejintenej, came to an abrupt end after one unfortunate driver had a windscreen smashed, lost control and was killed.
rockfreak
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by rockfreak »

My comment about right-wing anarchists was echoed this week by Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer who ran a feature headlined: "The escalating delinquency of Boris Johnson and his gang of blue anarchists".

As to mental conditions: I suppose they may have existed when I was at CH but simply didn't have a name. Looking back I think I was suffering from a condition that would now be clinically called Paranoid Fryeritis. This involved getting a nervous tic as one looked nervously behind one expecting one's housemaster to creep up behind you looking for trivial infractions to beat you for.
sejintenej
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by sejintenej »

Oliver wrote: Wed Sep 16, 2020 4:02 pm Interesting though these comments on the politics of the 70s are, the original observations are of equal interest in my opinion. Can anyone explain why this symposium took place? Was it because participants were simply interested in mental health problems and wanted to learn more and exchange opinions? If so, that’s admirable. Or was it because there was dissatisfaction with current management by the CH authorities of some mental health issues? If so we, should know this.
What would be useful in this thread would be an attendee telling us something of why it was held, how the subject was decided upon, what was discussed and any conclusions.
The dropping of concrete blocks from a bridge over a motorway onto the traffic below, mentioned by sejintenej, came to an abrupt end after one unfortunate driver had a windscreen smashed, lost control and was killed.
One would have thought that people in a dangerous profession, miners and their families (if the latter were involved) would have had more sense than to even think of such idiocy. It is that sort of thing which seems contrary to the aims of the Trades Unions and inflame public distrust of the unions and the party which is behind them
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
rockfreak
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by rockfreak »

What a strange post from Time Please about the veracity of The Mail Online as opposed to the supposed left-wing bias of the BBC. The Daily Mail, along with the Express, Sun and Telegraph, have been picking away at the EU for as long as anyone can remember. I can remember even before we joined back in the 70s when the Express ran hysterical anti-EU propaganda every day of the week. Then in more recent years young Boris was literally making up anti-EU stories in the Telegraph. Even his colleagues in Brussels couldn't believe it. So has the whole country gone mad or is it that they have finally succumbed to the drip-drip of Europhobia in our our less scrupulous papers? Beware the Daily Mail. This rag has a long history going back to the notorious Zinoviev letter in the 1920s which falsely purported to show a link between the Labour party and Soviet Russia. I used to work in the media and was sometimes introduced to journos off these papers. If they were off the Mail, Express or Telegraph (which has always been mockingly known as the Torygraph by the people who work on it) they would always look a bit shamefaced and hasten to assure you that not everyone on the paper shared the reactionary opinions of the proprietor and editor. If they were off The Sun they never looked shamefaced because they wouldn't have known how to.

I don't particularly hold a candle for the BBC but less for any supposed bias and more for the narrow and facile coverage of events on the evening news bulletins. If like me you favour The Guardian, Indie and FT for press reportage you will constantly be disappointed at the sheer lack of serious, in-depth stories on the BBC news (although Newsnight does sometimes rectify this) And this criticism extends to ITV's bulletins as well. What is the BBC left-wing bias? Can anyone give me a couple of recent examples?
Pe.A
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Re: Going nuts at CH

Post by Pe.A »

time please wrote: Sun Sep 13, 2020 12:01 pm An interesting post, thank you.

I live abroad during the last 46 years ( my experience at CH was not brilliant ) two weeks after passing through the main gate for the last time. I was asked to leave which was basically similar to winning the lottery. Nowadays when I visit England it is as a tourist. So I do not have much knowledge of what is happening. But even a fool could see that that morons are running the place. What is going on in trying to reach a settlement with the EU is laughable, but with the last suggestion it is a criminal act. The handling of Covid was/is totally without leadership with directions being changed overnight.
Years ago you could believe the BBC but because of the fact that it has slipped somewhat to the left which means that I have to read The Mail on Line to try and figure what is going on. I hasten to add that I read the headline and then go to the comments as the articles seem to be written somewhere else than England. But one thing is certain the country is full of hate. So your comment about it being the right who are destroying the place is in my mind not correct. I think it is the whole country

Well I will keep listening to Radio 2 and wish all of you a pleasant day.
The Mail Online...? Hmmm...
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