New facebook group.

[msj47]

Hi everyone, me and a friend have decided to make a new airsoft buying, selling and advice group on facebook. All members all welcome so could you please join. We are a new group so we are small at the moment so please invite your friends!

Thanks.

 

EDIT: Here is the link https://www.facebook.com/groups/1428735850682889/

[evilfree]

Would help you if told us the group/page name

[Monty]

Hi everyone, me and a friend have decided to make a new airsoft buying, selling and advice group on facebook. All members all welcome so could you please join. We are a new group so we are small at the moment so please invite your friends!

Thanks.

Link please

[Zak Da Mack]

Where's Da link?

[msj47]

Haha sorry, here you go https://www.facebook.com/groups/1428735850682889/ (ill edit it into the main post aswell)

[Zak Da Mack]

Invite sent

[msj47]

Added you, thanks mate

[Lozart]

Requested....

[msj47]

I think I got your request thanks any posts would be welcome aha just to get people engaged in the group

[Ian_Gere]

Is there anything about this group which is likely to be better than this here forum?

[Baz JJ]

The more forums and Facebook groups people start, the more dispersed peoples attention and posts become.

 

Unfortunately, its so easy to start a Facebook group these days, anybody can do it.

 

The difficulty is keeping it busy enough to make it worthwhile.

 

People only have so much time to read all these pages.

[msj47]

Fair points, at the moment its much different to any groups or forums except personally I find groups easier to use. The reason we created in this group was to fill a gap from a group that had 4000 members which was closing down. However they changed their minds and kept it up so we kept the group just to see it went anywhere. We might also be looking to expand into areas like upgrades etc.

[Lozart]

The more forums and Facebook groups people start, the more dispersed peoples attention and posts become.

 

Unfortunately, its so easy to start a Facebook group these days, anybody can do it.

 

The difficulty is keeping it busy enough to make it worthwhile.

 

People only have so much time to read all these pages.

 

Equally, the more open and diverse the community becomes the better known the hobby is. This is a "good thing". Maybe we shouldn't see this new group as competition but in a more with a sense of camaraderie.

[Monty]

Some of the users in the group look like they're underage, but if they're complying with the rules then it should be fine.

[Baz JJ]

I don't see another group as competition.

 

I only worry about competition in business and where money is involved.

 

Airsoft is just one of a few hobbies for me.

 

My point is that I only have so much time to spare trawling and human nature being what is, most people might start off as members of lots of groups and forums, but in the end they only regularly visit and more importantly, contribute, to a few.

 

Thus means that groups just individually get quieter and lose their expertise.

 

Equally, the more open and diverse the community becomes the better known the hobby is. This is a "good thing". Maybe we shouldn't see this new group as competition but in a more with a sense of camaraderie.

[msj47]

Some of the users in the group look like they're underage, but if they're complying with the rules then it should be fine.

Monty, yep some of the users are under 18 however it would not be them that would be permitted to buy and sell, they would only be allowed to give and ask for advice

[msj47]

This is the only forum I haven't had a bunch of dicks giving random hate lol

[Sam_G]

best of luck to you mate.

 

BUT this will end up full of the same advert that the other airsoft relating selling pages on FB.....and there are LOADS!!!

[Ian_Gere]

This is the only forum I haven't had a bunch of dicks giving random hate lol

Well we have disagreements but we don't generallly need moderation to prevent dickheadery, so i should hope so....

 

Although i'm now wondering if you are using "hate" to mean disagreement, as is the new stylee? I wonder what we ought to say when we actually do hate somebody these days? Ah... I remember, hate is a very strong emotion, after shame, then guilt, the strongest probably, which comes about as a result of behaviour so inimical to our peace that we cannot imagine forgiving... not much of that around these days, for all the Tory press bleating.

 

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't like things to go back to how they were in the late 80's early 90's just to see a little passion in people's eyes. Then I remember that if the Tories have their way, that is what will happen. I can't possibly want that then, even if I thought it might be a good thing. You know why? Because the 1st time around taught me to hate...

[msj47]

I can tell, on the other forums I just got insults without anything to back themselves up.

 

Very deep haha, it may not have been exactly hate, but I think you knew what I mean't.

 

Not a time I would know anything about.

[Lozart]

Well we have disagreements but we don't generallly need moderation to prevent dickheadery, so i should hope so....

 

Although i'm now wondering if you are using "hate" to mean disagreement, as is the new stylee? I wonder what we ought to say when we actually do hate somebody these days? Ah... I remember, hate is a very strong emotion, after shame, then guilt, the strongest probably, which comes about as a result of behaviour so inimical to our peace that we cannot imagine forgiving... not much of that around these days, for all the Tory press bleating.

 

Sometimes I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't like things to go back to how they were in the late 80's early 90's just to see a little passion in people's eyes. Then I remember that if the Tories have their way, that is what will happen. I can't possibly want that then, even if I thought it might be a good thing. You know why? Because the 1st time around taught me to hate...

Maybe it's my age (43) or maybe it's where I grew up (Surrey) but I remember the 80's and 90's under Thatcher in a far better light. Money your pockets, Sigue Sigue Sputnick in the charts and finally - tight jeans instead of corduroy flares. Of course, being a teenager and utterly uninterested in politics beyond seeing angry miners getting twatted with riot batons and wondering when the IRA would try and blow up the local shopping centre again (I grew up bang smack in the middle of Sandhurst and Aldershot) or if some nutter would escape from Broadmoor (just up the road) again might have something to do with it. Booze at less than £2 a pint probably helped.

[Ian_Gere]

That time in a nutshell: the Tories were in power.

 

They attempted to implement policies based on an economic theory called "monetarism".

 

Monetarism is the doctrine that nothing has worth except a cash value determined purely by what buyers will pay for it.

 

Alongside this goes the belief that a free market to determine this worth will fix all problems.

 

The "problem" which the Tories wanted fixed most was the tendency of British people to stick together, especially when times are tough, because this prevents a free market from valuing a person whose skills are very common as nil.

 

The reason they want a no/low/obsolete skilled worker's value to be effectively nothing is because the threat of unemployment is then so much worse, which has the tendency to hold wages down, increasing profitability.

 

The means they chose to apply a free market to "the problem" was to under-invest in the NHS and Local Govt services, hold benefit rate increases at less than inflation, and break the agreement which had meant that wage settlements for Nurses, Fire Brigade, and Police were tied together so they could pay the police more individually, even though they would invest less, in comparison to inflation and population than previously. The theory being that if you make things tough enough, dog-eat-dog will take over.

 

The reason for paying police more is that the free market says their skillset is more important than saving people or looking after them, which is obvious because cutting services and freezing benefits which the poorest rely upon will increase crime.

 

Crime did increase, but way more than the Tories had planned for. Something which came completely out of the blue for them however was that the tendency of Brits to stick together when times are hard did not go away, it simply changed.

 

We all know that certain crimes are considered ok by the majority of us: if you get caught then it's tough titty, but if you get away with it, more power to your elbow... like padding insurance claims, helping yourself to stationary from work, etc. - things which, if not victimless, don't actually fuck anybody up. What happened in the late 80's to early 90's is that the acceptability of crime increased massively and so did complicity - people who would have previously considered themselves entirely law abiding citizens began to allow things they could have reported to the police to slide - sort of like charity.

 

It wasn't long before charity became cooperation and then cooperation took a percentage, for some people, so things like buying stolen goods became much more widely acceptable, ripping off satellite tv, small scale drug dealing, etc.

 

Now they're back in power, having seen what happened last time, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, they do to keep a lid on the surge of crime this time.

[Ian_Gere]

Maybe it's my age (43) or maybe it's where I grew up (Surrey) but I remember the 80's and 90's under Thatcher in a far better light. Money your pockets, Sigue Sigue Sputnick in the charts and finally - tight jeans instead of corduroy flares. Of course, being a teenager and utterly uninterested in politics beyond seeing angry miners getting twatted with riot batons and wondering when the IRA would try and blow up the local shopping centre again (I grew up bang smack in the middle of Sandhurst and Aldershot) or if some nutter would escape from Broadmoor (just up the road) again might have something to do with it. Booze at less than £2 a pint probably helped.

It was very different up north and even down south in the west. But yeah, cheap booze, and don't forget the massive surge in the availability of other drugs...

 

The PIRA threat is interesting to remember - determined people who did blow up the government of the day, had assassinated a member of the royal family and plenty of high ranking security personnel - there is absolutely no doubt that they had the means and the will to commit acts of terrorism in mainland UK - yet somehow that threat did not require anywhere near as many armed police as we have lurking around these days to deter a far less successful enemy.

[Lozart]

It was very different up north and even down south in the west. But yeah, cheap booze, and don't forget the massive surge in the availability of other drugs...

 

The PIRA threat is interesting to remember - determined people who did blow up the government of the day, had assassinated a member of the royal family and plenty of high ranking security personnel - there is absolutely no doubt that they had the means and the will to commit acts of terrorism in mainland UK - yet somehow that threat did not require anywhere near as many armed police as we have lurking around these days to deter a far less successful enemy.

 

We didn't need armed police because we still had a big enough army to do the same job. Plus we weren't stationed all over the place trying to sort out the US's problems!

 

Plus I think the media then were more "on our side" rather than just trying to stir up outrage as they do now. The vast majority of the Provos efforts to blow shit up were aimed at military personnel on the ground in NI and of course the Garda. Plus some very public campaigns on the mainland. It seemed somehow less insidious than the current threats of Islamic terrorism, more targeted at the establishment than at the populace in general.

[Ian_Gere]

You never used to see whole platoons of armed soldiers at airports, just hanging around waiting to shoot anybody that looked suspicious though. I'm 45 btw, so we are contemporaries. I grew up in Blackpool, so I was aware of the degree of security applied to party conferences. Nothing like what we have these days!

 

What I'm saying is that I find our current 'threat level' analysis and/or the response to it to be excessive. Especially since armed police/security services hanging about projected targets will never actually prevent a committed terrorist from blowing the place up, or an armed group shooting the place up.

 

TBH I'd feel safer without them too. I'd much rather know that the SAS had squadrons dotted about the country ready to gear up and go at short notice - trained soldiers who are brave enough to front up to any potential threat without a twitchy trigger finger, but who will quickly and accurately shoot dead anyone identified by calm, patient, military, intelligence as a genuine threat. Not coppers getting their sweeny on...