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Off-topic but you've got be 17 in the UK. And they talk about raising it to 18 every so often (maybe they've done it already and I wasn't paying attention). And once you've passed your test be ready to pay way more than £500 for the most basic insurnace on the slowest, nastiest car.

I WISH my son's insurance was on $800 ( roughly 500 lbs). He has very basic coverage - liability only - and it is over $1200 USD annually. Never had a wreck or ticket. And he drives a 13 year old Yukon, nothing expensive. :D
 
This does not surprise me. I was at the Leeds Festival at the weekend, and the amount of drunk people I saw was ridiculous (although, to be expected).
 
I WISH my son's insurance was on $800 ( roughly 500 lbs). He has very basic coverage - liability only - and it is over $1200 USD annually. Never had a wreck or ticket. And he drives a 13 year old Yukon, nothing expensive. :D

That was the absolute minimum I can imagine anyone getting insurance for at that sort of age. Most would be more like £1000. For me, a driver with 12 years experience and another, much faster car, insured to insure a 12-year old £370 VW Golf third-party only with my learner driver girlfriend on the insurance was over £560. If we wanted comprehensive insurance it would have been over £800, or had wanted her to learn in a nicer car it'd have been well over £1000.
 
In light of recent posts in this section, is the UK broken?

Did it ever work? Oh yes, back when it was head of an empire :rolleyes:

Suggest watching Yes Prime Minister for more background. A fictional series that's strangely accurate, over 30 years old and still relevant. Only last week old Gordie was planning to cut spending on Trident which is exactly the story line from the first series all those years ago.
 
From the same research,

Highest rate of bullying: Turkey

and

Enjoy school most: Turkey

:confused:
 
Time to bump the drinking age up?

Hmmm, dunno about that. I'm not sure what an appropriate solution would be but I don't think raising the drinking age would help all that much. This is such a drink-happy place, shockingly so. It's not so easy to drown out those habits, as it were.
 
You work for the Daily Mail? ;)

Don't you mean Daily Fail? :p

Time to bump the drinking age up?

As someone else said, the age is already 18 so these people are already underage. IMO alcohol should be illegal, but that probably wouldn't work either TBH, but if it was treated like weed and other illegal drugs it might discourage some people.
 
As someone else said, the age is already 18 so these people are already underage. IMO alcohol should be illegal, but that probably wouldn't work either TBH, but if it was treated like weed and other illegal drugs it might discourage some people.
Yeah, because prohibition works. :rolleyes:
 
Did it ever work? Oh yes, back when it was head of an empire :rolleyes:

Suggest watching Yes Prime Minister for more background. A fictional series that's strangely accurate, over 30 years old and still relevant. Only last week old Gordie was planning to cut spending on Trident which is exactly the story line from the first series all those years ago.

Ah yes. Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister are fantastic shows and still just as funny 30 years on. And like you said just as on the ball now as they ever were, maybe more so now :rolleyes:
 
Yeah, because prohibition works. :rolleyes:

Which is why I said "that probably wouldn't work either, TBH".

The problem is that it's been accepted as normal for so long that it's impossible to get rid of it unfortunately.
 
I reckon the 20 somethings have a lot to answer for a lot too. Binge drinking among them is going to be high as well i reckon. Its become a part of UK culture and little or nothing has been done by the government/authorities to stop it. A lot of teens will pick up the habit and the alcohol from an older sibling or friend.
 
I think it's deep seated thing in UK culture - we've always been a bunch of drunks. My Grandmother 'signed the pledge' as a reaction the damage done to family life by 'strong drink' in the Welsh valleys. Before that the Victorians were obsessed by damage drink was doing to society and even before that Hogarth favourite subjects was the gin soaked working class and the port soaked upper class.

I think the only solution is some sort of additive that makes 'young people' suffer the same sort of hangover I do these days!
 
w00t! we're no. 1! :(


"But the report also says young people in the UK are materially well-off and enjoy a "high quality of school life".

So this means the richer you are in the UK. The more booze you drink ?

Yep. Head to Newquay in the post-GCSE summer months and you'll find its beaches and streets strewn with drunken 16 year-old Hooray Henry's. (And you're not even allowed to beat them up, apparently that's "against the law" or some such nonsense.)


In light of recent posts in this section, is the UK broken?

You're (Just call me) Dave Cameron and I claim my £5! ;)
 
It's a culture thing, and making alcohol less accesible or more expensive (as they are trying to do here in Scotland) will not change matters. We need to make alcohol more accesible and brought into family situations with moderate drinking to remove the stigma from it being 'special' and change our attitudes. How many stories that you hear start 'I was so drunk and...' Our kids are brought up believing that the only way you can have a good time is to have a drink, and you can't stop after a few drinks, you need to go to excess.

It doesn't happen in Europe, you can pick up wine anywhere, in Spain the legal age is 16.

I occaisionally work shifts and have to do my shopping late at night/early doors but the new laws just brought in here mean that I can't buy a bottle of wine until after 10am. Because I want to buy a bottle of wine with my £100 weekly food shop doesn't mean I want to drink it at 9.30am.:confused: Point being if the government define a time when it is acceptable to buy/consume drink then come that time the people will just shirk their personal responsibilities and go with it. If all barriers are removed the people can decide that for themselves.
 
It's a culture thing, and making alcohol less accesible or more expensive (as they are trying to do here in Scotland) will not change matters. We need to make alcohol more accesible and brought into family situations with moderate drinking to remove the stigma from it being 'special' and change our attitudes. How many stories that you hear start 'I was so drunk and...' Our kids are brought up believing that the only way you can have a good time is to have a drink, and you can't stop after a few drinks, you need to go to excess.

Very true. I was brought up in Scotland and from the age of about 16 could have friends round on weekends and have a beer or three in the house. My parents would even supply it a lot of the time. They would rather I was doing it where they new I was safe and not drinking too much...
 
Last time I went to see a movie (that wasn't at a daytime discount sort of thing) it was about £25-30 for two of us.

That seems excessive. It's only £5-6 at our Cineworld and the most I ever paid for a ticket was £7.

Living on the edge of Oldham I see this kind of thing way too much. There's a girl just up the street who is probably headed into a world of liver problems, gets into trouble, causes fights, unprotected sex blah blah. But she doesn't care. Doesn't seem like many of them do.
 
There is no discipline anymore and the parents are as much to blame as anyone. Come half term and you know several bus shelters are going to be smashed up. When i was that age i would never dream of doing anything like that and if i did my dad would have killed me. Nowadays when im on way home from the local on a weekend night you can see kids as young as 12-13 hanging about on the streets gone midnight in certain areas of manchester
 
That seems excessive. It's only £5-6 at our Cineworld and the most I ever paid for a ticket was £7.

Living on the edge of Oldham...
Everything is cheaper up North. Standard Cineworld prices are £8 here in East London. Even more for central (Zone-1) London.
 
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