[Andy McDandy]

Well, that's the problem with them. There's no way of knowing how other things would have panned out so it's all conjecture anyway. And it's horribly messy - Sandbrook refers to events such as D-Day as if they happened, only we lost, yet fails to point out that those events only took place because others did. In the end, he has to hit certain notes and he doesn't have much imagination. So we have events such as the 2007-08 banking crisis even though the specific chain of events that led up to them didn't happen. Ultimately it's a load of wank.

[bluebellnutter]

Generally "alternative history" works better in worlds where the war never even started in any serious way. The Man In The High Castle, for example, features Germany developing the Heisenberg Device before the war started, thus basically making their victory inevitable. Sandbrook doesn't even bother with that level of planning.

[youngian]

How did so many of today's students turn into snowflakes, asks DOMINIC SANDBROOK: Once they protested about great injustices like apartheid. But now many think THEY are the victims, taking offence over the most laughably trivial issues

As if Sanbrook took his hat off to anti-apartheid protestors. But students today are pussies with their made up diseases. They let any riff-raff in

The first concerns a former law student at Jesus College, Catherine Dance, who is suing the university for loss of earnings.
She claims that because the college refused to give her special treatment for her chronic anxiety — for example, she wanted to sit her exams in a private room with a laptop — she had to take a break from her degree, and therefore graduated a year late and missed out on a year’s wages.

The second concerns one Sophie Spector, a former student of politics, philosophy and economics at my old college, Balliol.
Miss Spector thought the college should give her special treatment, including extended deadlines, because she suffered from anxiety and depression, and was, in her own words, ‘a really slow reader’.
But the college refused, she fell behind and eventually she left.

The details are different, but the story is basically the same. Indeed, if you talk to anybody who works in British universities, it is a very familiar tale.

Of course, many students are relatively sane and sensible people. Thanks to the economic pressures of the modern world, the majority are also probably some of the hardest-working in history.
Indeed, last week’s A-level results mean that at least 416,000 new students will be enrolling for university courses.

All the same, there is simply no denying that there now exists a pernicious culture of narcissism and self-obsession at our universities.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4qsyTmId7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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[lord_kobel]

What a cunt.

[The Red Arrow]

It's as if there's a co-ordinated effort to demonise higher education going on, isn't it? Lining up university students as the the new immigrants.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

It's been incipient for years.

"Too clever by half..."

[Boiler]

It's been incipient for years.

"Too clever by half..."

But why? My father used to boast about how I was going to University and was oh so proud, but was so let down when I flunked my A-levels - and for a while, he didn't let me forget it, either.

However, when I got a job with the BBC, of all places... dog with two tails time!

I just.... don't.... get it, Malc. Why are people demonising intelligence and further education? Since when was being thick something to be proud of?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

To thick people it always has, university of life and all that. It's a current that runs through all tabloid journalism and much popular culture.

[WTF?]

It's as if there's a co-ordinated effort to demonise higher education going on, isn't it? Lining up university students as the the new immigrants.

Yes. I think they're trying to talk down any input the young might make to politcal discourse. Children should be seen and not heard, sort of thing. Don't think it'll work though. The more vocal the right wing get about it the more likely the young are to get out and vote, and we all know which way they tend to lean. Another blunder by our natural born leaders?

[Safe_Timber_Man]

SNOWFLAKE!


DOMINIC SANDBROOK: The work-shy teacher who is a taste of what's to come when the snowflake generation runs Britain
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... ation.html


I can't believe 'snowflake' has actually made it into main stream media as a serious term. I can just imagine them smugly thinking they're so on trend whenever they type it.


They've got another 'snowflake' style attack on young people running as well. Seems young people are really starting to rattle them:



Revolt of Cambridge cry-babies: Freshers' fury over threat to their 'mental health' after professor dares to tell them to stop drinking and start studying
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nking.html

Today’s student generation have been branded ‘snowflakes’ because of their demands to be protected on campus.

[Messianic Trees]

The era of hysteria! Historian DOMINIC SANDBROOK says Britain has become a nation of overgrown toddlers with a bigoted mob mentality, intolerance and a raging sense of grievance at every slight

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... dlers.html

For me ... what defined Britain in 2017 more than anything else was a growing sense of hysteria.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines hysteria as ‘exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement’. And I think those words perfectly capture the increasingly self-righteous, strident and intolerant tone of our public life.

You see it in the hard-Left demagogues who sought to exploit the tragedy of Grenfell Tower for political gain — among them, unforgivably, the leaders of the Labour Party.

You see it in the self-styled intellectuals who cannot forgive their working-class compatriots for daring to vote Leave in the Brexit referendum.

You see it in the student radicals who want to demolish statues of men who made names for themselves hundreds of years ago.

You see it in the ‘transgender’ activists who think you are a fascist if you believe men and women are biologically different.

You see it in the scores of keyboard warriors who believe brushing a woman’s knee with your hand is tantamount to rape; you see it in the self-appointed censors who think cracking an ironic joke about Harvey Weinstein should mean banishment from polite society.

To find examples, in fact, you need only open a newspaper from any day in the past year.

For all the confected hysteria about social inequality, the plain fact is that most people in Britain have never had it so good.

Yes, of course, our society has its problems. But we live longer, safer, more comfortable lives than any generation before us.

If you showed someone from 1947, 1907, 1847 or 1807 what ordinary life is like today, their eyes would almost pop out with disbelief and envy.

The deadliest threat to our prosperity, happiness and national unity is not Brexit, Trump, Vladimir Putin or terrorism. It is the corrosive culture of hysterical outrage, nurtured by the hard Left, amplified by social media and increasingly entrenched at our universities.

The symptoms are easy to spot. There is the obsessive sense of victimhood, with young people encouraged to see themselves as martyrs at the hands of their unfeeling elders.

There is the increasingly strident rejection of our national history, with activists targeting much-loved statues of our patriotic heroes — even Nelson, for goodness’ sake — as well as decrying anyone who dares to see some good in our colonial past, as happened with the vilification of Oxford professor Nigel Biggar in recent days.

Perhaps above all, there is the growing contempt for free speech and dissenting opinion, with Left-wing activists casting themselves as grand inquisitors, policing the national Press, social media and even everyday conversations for deviations from the party line.

So where does the future of our country really lie? With the keyboard warriors and the strident activists, the self-appointed censors and the hard-Left demagogues? Or with the quiet, decent, tolerant majority?

In the next 12 months, we may well find out.

[MisterMuncher]

Apart from the remuneration and built-in reach, in what way does a newspaper columnist escape the definition "keyboard warrior"?

[Bones McCoy]

Suspicious minds might think there was a concerted attack on higher education in progress.

I am wondering what's the endgame that the thinktanks have planned.
a) A massive defunding of the "wrong sort" of Universities (Ones that cabinet ministers didn't attend).
b) An attack on the living standards of the staff who still enjoy full-time contracts.
c) Some bit of Brexiter pleasing that will slash the intake of overseas students and impoverish much of the sector.

[Big Arnold]

overgrown toddlers with a bigoted mob mentality, intolerance and a raging sense of grievance at every slight

Brexiters, as they are usually called.

[mr angry manchester]

I've never liked Sandbrook. He did a couple of history series a while ago on BBC 1 I think, and both were full of generalisation and sweeping statements which he made no attempt to back up or present a balanced view. He came across as a smug, presumptuous git to me.