Yes, exactly this. A second chance is a safety net, available mostly to those with the circumstances or resources to deploy it. One helpful circumstance being youth (plenty of time), while an obvious resource is personal or, more likely for the younger, parental wealth.
Attitudes to risk taking are similar, e.g. your fear of high wire walking depends hugely on whether you have a safety line or not. Wealthy kids might pride them themselves on taking chances where the reality is that in their whole existence they have never been exposed to the possibility of paying the price for failure.
There is an incorrect anecdote about Willie Sutton who was allegedly asked why he robbed banks. "That's where the money is" he is supposed to have replied.
Be where your prospective SOs are likely to be and do what they're doing. To begin with get used to making friendships with these people; it may develop it may not, but you will be more comfortable with other people and improve your social skills.
For a British kid from an impoverished background this was (early 70s) my Internet, vast range of content, intelligently selected and with capsule reviews/extracts of everything which was included.
When, 20 years later, I first saw the Web this was what I hoped it would become, I was disappointed.
I felt like the early web lived up to this, though in retrospect it may have already been in quality decline compared to the earlier (Internet&BBS) protocols.
We have taken the wrong path. The Internet we got was not the Internet we wanted. Today we have the Internet through a fog of advertising. It’s been turned into some hellish mix of Tee-Vee advertising and junk-mail pamphlets and of course the DM bots which are just the Internet’s version of robocallers selling insurance, replacement windows, and “government free money, apply now!”.
Raising prices is difficult, charging when people are used to free is near impossible. Most of your free users were never going to pay anyway so there is no point in having them use your product at all.
Trial periods still seem good to me (as a customer, not provider), the best I have come across offers a 30 day trial BUT those days need not be consecutive, use it one day a week and the trial lasts 30 weeks.
I've read the first 2 Slow Horses books. A wonderful antidote to the hyper efficient slick characters featured in e.g. Bond films. Even screw-up spies have their moments.
UK tourist towns were highly seasonal. No one wants to go to Blackpool in December. Providing accommodation for asylum seekers or whoever was year-round money with cost savings as those people's complaints could easily be ignored.
Brit Boomer. I grew up in a single parent family near the bottom of the heap in England. What kept us going and saved me from early death or a life of crime or drug dependency was the welfare state. The NHS, free school meals and host of other measures meant that there was a safety net in place, even so much was done by charities like the NSPCC. Later there were grants, with tuition fees paid, to go to higher education. For me, seeing how the other 50% or so lived was truly eye opening.
Post Thatcher, the safety nets have been allowed to fall into disrepair if not discarded entirely. Modern Britain is not a place to grow up poor in.
Doubtlessly there are worse places now and then. But the parent writer found that the situation here became worse than it was, and that's sad and reason for a critical view.
There is a difference between academic learning and vocational training. The UK used to have higher education institutions called Polytechnics, I went to one. These taught degree courses qualifying you for working life. Architects, chemists, computer scientists...
I did a 4 year degree, the third year was spent working for an employer. At the end of the final year much of what I'd been taught formally was outdated or irrelevant to the workplace. Many of the useful skills came from practical projects and that third year.
Polys got phased out and renamed Universities, a valuable distinction was lost and no one was fooled.
Attitudes to risk taking are similar, e.g. your fear of high wire walking depends hugely on whether you have a safety line or not. Wealthy kids might pride them themselves on taking chances where the reality is that in their whole existence they have never been exposed to the possibility of paying the price for failure.