harry palmer's Bookmarks tagged culture →  View Popular

It's ironic.

Everything you say about pulling yourself up. It can be done, etc. - well, i'm one of those people, who did that. Honest to God. We do happen, you're absolutely right. Rarely, not inevitably, it takes intelligence, analysis and good luck. And one other thing.

I've given a lot of thought into how I did it. And the ironic thing is, and this is going to be very unfamiliar to you - hbut I'm not from America, I'm from a social democracy. I left home while still in high-school, was effectively homeless for years, DID live on the streets for various reasons, had government handouts, welfare, heavily subsidized education and health benefits unimaginable unless you've lived in such a country, struggled through university admittedly beset with a lot of problems, and half a lifetime later, after starting at absolute zero (literally, zero) today i work in a pretty swish job at an ivy league university in your country and get a fair amount of respect for the job i'm fortunate to have and enjoy.

Here's the truth. No frigging way would i have pulled it off without a social welfare system to help me out. If the shit that happened to me where i am from actually happened here, if i -started- here, i'd be working in a factory. nobody helps out kids like that here, other than occasional church groups, but no where close to the financial and academic extent that i had given to me.

Living in Dubai is not wonderful and glamorous, as many would have you believe.  Forget about what you’ve read, seen, and heard; those shiny buildings and manmade islands are all just smoke and mirrors.  There are so many things wrong with this place that I have decided to compile a list, a must read if you are considering a potential move to Dubai.

Is it fair to accuse the US of destroying our national sovereignty? The issue is so little discussed that even to make the claim has parallels with the ravings of the europhobes that Brussels plans to make Britons eat square sausages. Yet consider the following seven facts, none of which depends directly on the way the US dragged Britain into Iraq, nor on the current MI6-CIA intelligence blame game about the war.