Meh
I'm currently doing a masters degree at a well known UK university. Whilst I have no funding, I've been lucky in that my parents have been generous enough to cover my funding, and I managed to get a temporary full time job until last December that has allowed me to save up enough money to live on and pay rent with until I finish in June (after that there may be some issues).

However, it does appear that the credit crunch is biting hard on some of my more spoilt cohorts, both undergrad and post grad.

There is a guy in my college who is from a very rich family living in California. He was, until recently, being given a weekly living allowance of £1000 by his parents (this is on top of the funding that he has to cover his course, rent etc.).

I have just come back from our college bar where I listened to him whine and moan about how, due to the credit crunch, Daddy has curtailed his rampant spending and cut him down to *shock horror* £500 a week.

Thats £500 a week he doesn't have to spend on food or rent. This is £500 that he can spend on clothes, drugs, taking women out etc. Obviously his various drug, clothes and women habits will have to take a 50% reduction now, and to listen to him you'd think the world was coming to an end.

Secondly, I recently went on a date with a nice young lady to a moderately posh restaurant. We were sat there, chatting away, eating our breadsticks and deciding what to eat when an undergrad and her mother sat at the table next to us.

The girl was about 18 or 19, very very posh, but also faily slug like, with an incipient moustache, a round pot belly, and the braying, Daily Mailesque arrogence that comes from having everything exactly your own way for as long as you've been able to articulate your selfish whims.

The mother was rake thin, permatanned, with an iron blonde hairstyle that looked vaguely like an aircraft carrier advancing through choppy seas.

They sat there and, in incredibly loud voices, started picking apart the stingyness of the unseen husband and father. Over the course of the next hour or so they thoroughly excoriated him for:

1. Not buying his daughter a new Mercedes, when her current one "is, like, almost a year old".

2. Not buying his wife a new Land Rover

3. Insisting that his daughter actually pony up some of the cash to pay for her Easter holiday to the Maldives.

4. Suggesting that his daughter might want to go easy on her credit card spending which, coincidentally, he appears to be paying off. Apparently he's incredibly unreasonable in wanting her not to spend hundreds of pounds a month on clothes and shoes.

5. Suggesting to his wife that her regular trips to Tuscany may have to decrease, and that the shopping trips to London should probably be more infrequent than they currently are.

6. Refusing to redecorate the house, even though its now totally out of fashion.

7. Suggesting to his daughter that she should perhaps get a job, even a part time one, to help pay for the petrol costs of her antedeluvian Mercedes.

We sat and listen to that for just over an hour. We decided to skip dinner and ended up watching a crappy DVD back at mine and eating Chinese take away.

I feel quite sorry, in a way, for that poor man. He probably should've laid the law down a bit more firmly beforehand, but can you imagine the uphill struggle he now has to deal with those two?
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 1:19, 6 replies)

But I don't understand how..
Do they get men with money? When they're so obviously horrible?
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 9:49, closed)

One word:
Blowjobs.
(blueberrypossum wants to Jaffa your Cake, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 10:10, closed)

and also
anal (possibly)
( SpikeyPickle wishes he was mabazaritchie, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 10:38, closed)

because once...
.. they were all of teh sexy.

They've changed, the husband has changed, and so will you. /shrug
(haberman is singing in the changes, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 10:46, closed)

I can
see how the wife might, once, have been attractive. My guess is that she is essentially a trophy wife. The daughter was just a horrible person.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 15:11, closed)

I knew a guy who was in that position
I met him some 25 years back, when he and the Millstone (as he called her) had just got hitched. We lost touch, and met up again about 3 years ago.

Christ, the tales he had to tell! He was originally a solicitor. He then went into property, and made a fortune. Then he turned it into another one, on the back of buying into the tech boom of the early 90s (not the late 90s, when the lemmings came in).

Anyhoo, his wife had the kid, never back to work. Then she had another one. Fair enough. Then she announced that the kids were being privately schooled. Fair enough. Then she TOLD him to buy a property in Florida. Then she TOLD him she needed to live in London. In SW3.

By this time the kids were growing up. Both evil little bitches. He spent all his time at work.

Then the IT crash came. It didn't break him, but his shareholders decided they could do without his services. The Millstone and the Bitches went loopy when they found out that the houses were being cashed in so he had cash to restart the business, and that the £3K per month shopping allowance for EACH of them was stopping. The Millstone immediately started divorce proceedings. Problem was, the new business was secured against the properties. It went bang. It owed 3 mil to the bank. That's the houses gone. He paid off his credit cards. That took care of the current accounts. His lawyer took most of his savings.

He's an HGV driver now. He's the happy guy I remember.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 23 Jan 2009, 18:13, closed)