State school.
(Or you might hear “comprehensives”, but they’re just a subset of the state school system.)
ETA:
State school, or just school: what almost everyone goes to
Private school: fee-paying non-state schools
Public school: prestigious high fee-paying non-state secondary schools. “Public school” is the Ivy League of private schools, essentially.
Well no, not really. If they’ve turned their savings into a house, and they still have a house, and they could still move house if they wanted, they’ve lost nothing if the notional value of that house goes down.
(Just as most people don’t actually get any richer when the notional value of their house goes up - once you have a house you tend to always need a house; selling up to move into rented accomodation is something you do in distress, not a sign the housing market has played you a blinder. That means the only way anyone tends to realise that supposed value is - you guessed it - by getting into debt by borrowing against it.
Speculators and landlords of course - they benefit. But “won’t someone think of the parasites” is not a desperately compelling point of view.)
The value of housing is something to obsess over in countries where everybody is up to the eyeballs in debt secured on it. Where that is not the case, it’s far less important (and as it is essentially just the entry fee for independence, ideally it’s low, not high.) A fear of house prices ever actually going down, because of what that would mean to mortgage holders, is the reason the UK has a major housing crisis that it can’t do anything about (for example.)
To be honest, this nonsense tells me more that you have struggled to actually make any friends in China and are living in a bubble of your own making, than it says anything about China itself.
I suspect you’d have similar problems anywhere.
Most people in China are buying with savings, not debt. Something like 80% of homes there are owned outright with no debt hanging over them.
The problem you are describing is a problem of consumer indebtedness, not house prices per se.
I don’t know where he’s been, but the cities are perfectly walkable in my experience. They in general are far more walkable and have far better public transport than any significant city in North America (yes, any,) while probably not being as cosy as European cities.
Most of his complaints are basically “Asia” though. With the possible exception of Singapore - one of the dullest places on Earth - you’re not going to get far anywhere on this continent if you hate noise, scooters, traffic, humidity, and far too many people in too small a place.
Which is fine, it’s an acquired taste. I for one love it, Asian megacities are glorious to me - but if you hate it that’s OK too, but it’s hardly a China problem.
No, it was not. He tried to make it about that, true.
Show me where it says “and now let’s have a conversation about some wet who got scared because he went to China, that’s the only thing that’s relevant now?”
I don’t mind the story about his poor, sad daddy, everyone gets to share an anecdote. But to suggest his father being pathetic is on-topic but US citizens being massively hypocritical isn’t is weak sauce.
I’m sure the US’s ICE concentration camps are happy-fun-joy-camps, they probably even have Burger King for all I care, but that doesn’t change the fact that you lot lost the moral high ground long ago, and one story about a wet who got scared doesn’t change that.
I’m not sure why you think your dad is the fucking topic to be honest.
So like ICE, then?
Tbf, I’d move to China permanently in a heartbeat, based on more than a decade of working there. If China ever lets foreigners buy property, I’ll be first in line.
I wouldn’t touch the US with a hundred foot pole, on the other hand.
TBH webbed toes have never done it for me, but no kinkshaming from me
And presumably, not visit either.
Try buying a rail ticket, or asking directions, or talking to someone in a shop, or even just telling your Didi driver the last four digits of your phone number because he wants to be sure he’s picked up the right passenger, with the “they’d prefer you speak English” theory.
And sure, if you’re the kind of dumb yank who thinks nobody will ever need to visit China, you’re probably right - you can stay on your farm in Dumbfuckistan fiddling with your cousin and wondering why everyone you know is on crack for the rest of your life. The rest of the world knows where the future is and it ain’t Alabama.
My experience of working in China outside the poster-child cities like Shanghai for over a decade is that practically nobody speaks a word of English.
So, in a nutshell, you’re talking bollocks.
TL;DR: “I had a child and now that makes me THE MOST SPECIAL PERSON IN THE WORLD and why doesn’t anyone RECOGNISE how special I am for God’s sake PLEASE VALIDATE ME”
Either it wears off or the brat ends up a serial killer…
If only it was just heat…
200mm of rain fell in about an hour last night, as measured from the weather sensor on my balcony in Bucharest. Maybe more, I can’t tell because the ppwer went out when the water flooding down the block stairs tripped the breakers (I’m currently abroad, now waiting until morning there for a friend to go round and assess the damage…)
Honestly? Let the wave of neo-ludditism pass?
Is it necessary to respond to every Internet fad? Ignore it and eventually it will go away. Pretending otherwise is like thinking King Cnut can hold back the tide.
(Or, if that’s not good enough - just ban promotion entirely. I don’t give a rat’s arse if code was AI generated or artisanally hand-woven onto magnetic cores by Jeff Minter in a kaftan - the real problem is spam, so just stop all promotional posts and the problem goes away.)
Christ.
When will the forward-planning sub-committee of the AI tagging steering group be meeting? I presume they’re going to need to submit a motion to the ways-and-means council sub-sub-committee first and then maybe we can expect a notice on the procedure to follow for interim planning permission to write a post? Will interim planning permission allow the post to be made (subject to the countersignature of the automated post approval bot) or should it be saved in Drafts and then a separate submission (noting the interim permission and any objections received in the consultation period) be made to the full plenary session of the zoning committee?
Or do we just say “fuck this shit” and find another group?
I mean sure, Anthropic are pricks, but “they did exactly what the license I put on my code said they could” is probably not the way to highlight that.
I mean, apart from the places that aren’t…
These are completely unremarkable temperatures for quite a lot of Europe, and quite a lot of Europe isn’t particularly humid.
“North-West Europe” != “Europe” (however much they think it to be true…)
People that attend Untold, Neversea, and no doubt a whole host of other festivals around the world would look and think “first time?”
The point is very much that yes, for Paris, it is indeed the first time.
That’s kinda the point of climate change. Lots of places will be getting “first times” they’re not prepared for. “Herp derp but Death Valley is hot” is the Fox News formula for dismissing that.
Oh Christ. You’re that guy.
Yes, yes, everybody only uses Didi. Please, just use Didi. Nobody wants to share public transport with the “freewheeling extrovert” gobshite… Just use Didi.