I think i was probably too young to know or care about it. I was given a £20 Greggs (A huge UK chain of bakers) gift voucher as a leaving present by part of my family. The more i think about it the more i realize that it is a really awesome gift.
If it helps. I typically spend £2.50-3 on lunch in greggs. So a good few days worth of stuff there. To many, might not seem like much, but already I'm realising the small food shop mum did for me before leaving me to fend for myself out here is really really helpful. Just a week of lunches? Well thats still a nice edge taken off. Seems as you get older, the more practical and mundane gifts are better appreciated. I got a toolbox from my aunt for my birthday. Just a red metal box really, unfolds with some storage units etc, nothing overly special. Yet to me, incredibly practical gift and therefore quite meaningful.
Since im a veggi the cheese and onion pasties are the prime option as well as pizza which are both fairly cheap. I always carry bottled water with me (from a tap) so i imagine that greggs voucher could actually go quite a long way. But im hoping there will be a fair amount of free food over freshers week But £20 is like... 18 dinners composed of c+o pasties xD
I may not be a veggie but I can't argue either choice. sausage roll and iced ring donut, that's where its at for me
ahh, twenty first of september 2015. It's now 14 years that marks the day I started noticing civil liberties dissappear rapidly. Something I find as equally tragic to the event in America, it's sad that it gave the governments excuses to become more authoritarian in the name of "security". Worse things have happened since, but I suppose the reason this is a big thing is because life honestly changed after that. I suppose for me this day stopped being about those who died in the attack and more of a reminder of a police state that is welcomed by the wider public now, and the catalyst that caused the shift of public perception of authority from something to be cautious of to a security blanket. If 9/11 never happened I believe my government wouldn't currently be trying to outlaw encryption as part of the completely insidious snooper's charter. I would say Al Qaeda won.
The really stupid bit is that I can't think of anyone who openly supports the police state mentality. Everyone hates being spied on, and is thankful for (or enraged over the content of) the NSA leaks. No major political party openly condones the surveillance culture, and only brings it up to blame on the others. But despite this, nothing seems to change*. I don't think the collective public welcomed the change, they just grumbled a bit and maybe tried to picket at one point. Everyone hates it, nobody does anything about it. For all we know, nobody can do anything about it. And I'm not sure I'd say Al-Qaeda won. 9/11 was the catalyst for the watch programs, but we've been heading this way for a long time. For evil or for good, there are just too many advantages to knowing everything. And with sufficient technology, it was bound to happen: A. before our eyes in the name of security, or B. behind our backs by the means of discretion. I'm no conspiracy theorist. I still believe most of us in the First World live in free countries. But clearly there's a limit as to how much say we get. *Or perceptions don't; the NSA officially declared its global watch on all people everywhere to be over at some point in the last year. That, of course, if you believe them. That, if another government('s) agency doesn't take its place. And, of course, all of the above if you ignore that corporations basically do the same thing, but in the name of profitability. And even if nobody's watching, are you really going to be able to believe you're alone anymore?
Sadly in the uk the only political party that promised more surveilance got into power. Most of the parties had policies about attempting to fix the technology side of surveilance.
