it's where getting a jerb flipping burgers, or moving up a rung of responsibility at the call center and generally being a good little wage-slave is defined as 'bettering yourself', the entire argument collapses like a mexican outhouse in monsoon season.

so now people with shit jobs weren't proplerly raised, is what you're saying?

Not true as such; I have been in positions where I have not wanted to go into work because I have hated it so much. Other people made my life a misery. I have been told I was going to be made redundant 1 year after buying my first house, but I had to work there for a few months while I had that axe hanging over my head knowing that someone thought my job was pointless/worthless. I got another job. I searched actively and used some of the time to do courses and things like that.

I don’t buy into the whole “some people can’t better themselves” statement either. People always have the ability to make themselves better, it is whether or not they choose to.

Get a job flipping burgers and don't like it; get another job
Get a job in a call centre (which both you and I have had) and don't like it; get another job

I have worked myself up in a call centre to being a phone monkey to working on Information Security in a risk and compliance team. Now I build things for websites; I have adapted and changed what I do and worked towards gaining transferable skills so I can get job I want to do. I am by no means a particularly clever person, but if I get annoyed with the work I am doing I know the only person who can really change it is me.

Once again I think it is the expectation of people in this country that they are owed something. You have to work in life to get what you want, not expect it to be given to you. Perhaps it is just the way I have been brought up...

Not downplaying your experiences, but none of those things count as struggling; they are first world problems. I'd barely class those things as worth a moan.

The fact that you don't "buy in" to the concept of being trapped shows just how privileged your upbringing has been. Good for you, there's no reason to witness any of the things I've seen that make your views seem naive.

You're a young man who owns his own home. You're middle class. That very fact alone absolutely precludes you from understanding or even comprehending the struggle of a life without privilege.

You used your spare time to "do courses and things like that". What if your job had been a Tesco cashier, and you were a 35 year old single mother with absolutely no education and three children living in a high rise in south London surrounded by gangs and crime? Your job didn't even cover the rent and bills, so you had to be on income support. Where do you presume you'd find the time, confidence or self awareness to better yourself? Where would you start if you had to help her realise she wasn't trapped, Don? Would you begin with a lecture about how you once almost lost your job and how the mortgage on your lovely house that continues to increase in value almost didn't get paid for a month or two?

I promise you your view is both incredibly naive and particularly incompassionate. There are people in this world who do not have the time or means to pull themselves out of the mire. They have neither the time, education, or self-belief that you have been gifted.

It's a peculiar phenomenon among middle class people. My girlfriend is exactly the same. She just doesn't understand how the rest of the world aren't able to just change their situation if they don't like it. Our new daughter is due on Sunday, and I feel strange in hoping she grows up to be the same as you or her mother. Completely oblivious to the kind of struggle one can endure that grinds your passion and self confidence into dust.

Inflation up to the nines, rising fuel + food costs, largest un-employment in decades, conservative party who piss all over the NHS, police, fire, city workers and armed forces whilst still getting our arses tax'd but its ok, we got the olypmics !.

We all know the olympics is a waste of time and the governing bodies of any major organisation (like FIFA, FIA) will always be looking to line their own pockets rather than ours during events like these, were the hosts and were the ones footing the bill so there will be some resentment there, the media will always blow the smallest thing out of proportion, like the lack of security or the london cab strike, but on the flip sde they were creating the hype for this and youve seen the crouds, I had mates off to watch a greek flame run around the 'Port and I never thought id get to see people excited about such a thing.

Were gonna moan about what needs moaning about, its the only way people raise and refute issues, you, youre moaning at moaning !, you should be happy we as a country notice small injustices and raise them for the world to see but nah, we should all walk single file and be happy because thats what a good little citizen does ?, but we'll also praise what needs praising, like erm, greek flames ! and erm, the olympics !, its on time and on schedule, surprising but never the less, woohoo !

"Howard would make the Lakers infinitely more athletic"

infinitely

Oh, anyone seen the racewalking thing? It's an olympic disgrace. The rules state that each participant has to have one foot on the ground at all times, but a simple slow motion recording of a race shows that every walker (no exceptions) breaks this rule on every step they take. Sometimes walkers are penalized for not walking properly and are disqualified from the race, but this appears to be a completely random process. I do not understand how such a display of fraud can be part of the Olympics.