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Food Banks


Gnasher
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I don't have a "version" of freedom.

 

I would like to live in a world where people are free to follow their dreams and desires.

 

You can call it wishy washy if you want. I'm already apparently a nutter for seeing technology as a liberating force.

 

I mean, it's not like washing machines, tumble dryers, food mixers, computers, cars, dishwashers etc have liberated people, is it. Wait, what.

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I don't have a "version" of freedom.

 

I would like to live in a world where people are free to follow their dreams and desires.

 

You can call it wishy washy if you want. I'm already apparently a nutter for seeing technology as a liberating force.

 

I mean, it's not like washing machines, tumble dryers, food mixers, computers, cars, dishwashers etc have liberated people, is it. Wait, what.

 

No, its not. They've enslaved us, if anything. We work longer and longer hours, and put ourselves in more debt to be able to afford to buy all this shit that we coped perfectly well without before, striving to get our hands on the latest toy that goes "beep".

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Oh come on. Women used to spend their entire week doing chores. Ask a woman in her 80s how she coped "perfectly well" using a washboard and wringer to do the laundry.

A washboard and a wringer? Luxury.

 

My old nan used to get up at 5 in the morning every day and go down to the local stream 6 days a week, 52 weeks of the year. She would find two large pebbles and use them to rub up the washing. Then she had to get it home and dried. And if it wasn't dried by bedtime Grandad would thrash her with his leather belt while she blew on the washing until it was dry.

 

And you tell that to the kids of today.

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I don't have a "version" of freedom.

 

I would like to live in a world where people are free to follow their dreams and desires.

 

You can call it wishy washy if you want. I'm already apparently a nutter for seeing technology as a liberating force.

 

I mean, it's not like washing machines, tumble dryers, food mixers, computers, cars, dishwashers etc have liberated people, is it. Wait, what.

 

Technology is not a liberating force, it's a tool. You can use a hammer to create or destroy, technology is no different. It is something that can lead to time and resource efficiency, what you do with that time and resource efficiency is another matter.

 

You're not a nutter. Nobody has said that. They've just pointed out that your views on how we got to being liberated were not backed up by the realities in the world today and were poorly thought out and lacking in coherence. It was pointed out that calling "redistribution" the silver bullet that was going to solve the problems of capital reaping all the rewards from technology made no sense given that silver bullet exists today and is not getting fired (hence the continued trend).

 

No about of daft comments about dishwashers, or negs, will change that.

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No, its not. They've enslaved us, if anything. We work longer and longer hours, and put ourselves in more debt to be able to afford to buy all this shit that we coped perfectly well without before, striving to get our hands on the latest toy that goes "beep".

 

Not a great believer in people eh GD?

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Its not going to change. We are not all of a sudden going to see politicians reign in bankers or business. We are not going to get a party that does for workers what labour did after the Second World War. Shit ain't going to change for the better. We have a world recession yet through it created more billionaires and made the wealthiest insanely richer. The money isn't going to stop flowing in that direction. People certainly won't unite they will defend their own status and point the finger of blame at others doors. When workers strike because they want safer conditions or better pay they are not supported by other workers they are condemned for beings nuisance. We keep ourselves down. Keep the status quo.. Rollover lay down.

 

I've signed so many petitions just to get politicians to debate certain subjects, even then they don't turn up. When they were forced to debate the welfare reforms less than 10 politicians bothered to show. We have a house with over 800 lords who get 350 quid a day just to clock in, they don't even have to attend and listen to the days business. A lot of them inherited titles or are former politicians people with vested interests and fingers in all kinds of pies. Labour where slated by the media for unions having to much influence yet very little was said about the size of Tory hedgefund donations and the following 10 percent tax cut for hedgefunds that followed.

 

Politicians now leave me cold. There used to be giants now all we have is this middle management who dutifully play out the agenda for whoever owns the most shares in their careers. We have no real adversity the majority get by and though poverty is a horrible thing there are worse countries to face it in and that's not to diminish the injustice of it or the misery some are going through but it makes me worry just how bad do things have to become before people stand up for each other. Were supposed to progress, technology should free us but it won't because people's main goal is money not freedom. Billionaires won't say well I've got more than enough I think I'll raise my employees wages and knock 10 hours of their week so they can enjoy a bit more of life and afford to do it. They can never have enough cash and to fuck with the consequences. I mean look at the Canadian tar sands before and after pictures they don't give two shits. If your farts smelt like oil they would tap it and you will know you've been fracked.

 

I need to change by user name to bobby waffle.

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I don't have a "version" of freedom.I would like to live in a world where people are free to follow their dreams and desires.You can call it wishy washy if you want. I'm already apparently a nutter for seeing technology as a liberating force.I mean, it's not like washing machines, tumble dryers, food mixers, computers, cars, dishwashers etc have liberated people, is it. Wait, what.

It's not wishy washy, it just doesn't bear scrutiny. Freedom is not defined by white goods.

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Gonna have to ask for a bit more there Jose.

 

Weeelll, it's the old corrupted conundrum really.  

 

Your liberal free thinking type might say that you should be able to trust in people to understand what they need and how much they can afford and what they want to spend money on and that all the choice and cool shit we have nowadays is brilliant.  There's loads of information and help out there for people to manage money, we're more connected than ever, so trust the people to look after themselves.

 

Your more pragmatic type might say that people, especially the poor and thick, are bombarded with advertising, fucked up lifestyle promotion and little opportunity in the way of structured careers or social mobility.  They are conditioned to feel that they have to compete on spending and flash in order to participate in society.  We need a better system to protect people from this consumerist bollocks.

 

Your free market ideologue says "The market is always right, wealth equals worth, who gives a shit, where's my dividend"

 

 

In essence Mrs 1 and Mr 2 should be on the same team and the answers are really very simple.

Unfortunately Bastard 3 has much simpler methods and plays the game rather better than the other two, managing to convince both of the other muchachos that they have intersecting values, when really they reduce freedom and opportunity for most under the guise of promoting it.

 

So, er, yeah, I was sort of making a vague point that you weren't a fairy boy liberal.

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Or its just human nature for most of us to want to run around daft and accumulate stuff. I remember a couple of winters ago when it snowed like mad; we got snowed in and schools were closed and we very quickly had to adjust to a much slower life where we walked to the shops, made bread when deliveries to the shops faltered and people seemed to have a lot more time for each other. I liked it

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Or its just human nature for most of us to want to run around daft and accumulate stuff. I remember a couple of winters ago when it snowed like mad; we got snowed in and schools were closed and we very quickly had to adjust to a much slower life where we walked to the shops, made bread when deliveries to the shops faltered and people seemed to have a lot more time for each other. I liked it

 

I would say partly nature, the show(wo)manship involved in having lots of money/power/stuff/legs/boobs to attract a better quality of mate, etc.

 

But then you also compare the Scando countries with their much more egalitarian societies, or the Mediterranean countries with their more family focused way of life, and it's pretty obvious that a great deal of it is culturally enforced.

 

What is really stupid and annoying is that 98.3% of people in all my three pointless categories would be better off if everyone embraced a sensible way of doing things.  Shame really.

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Weeelll, it's the old corrupted conundrum really.  

 

Your liberal free thinking type might say that you should be able to trust in people to understand what they need and how much they can afford and what they want to spend money on and that all the choice and cool shit we have nowadays is brilliant.  There's loads of information and help out there for people to manage money, we're more connected than ever, so trust the people to look after themselves.

 

Your more pragmatic type might say that people, especially the poor and thick, are bombarded with advertising, fucked up lifestyle promotion and little opportunity in the way of structured careers or social mobility.  They are conditioned to feel that they have to compete on spending and flash in order to participate in society.  We need a better system to protect people from this consumerist bollocks.

 

Your free market ideologue says "The market is always right, wealth equals worth, who gives a shit, where's my dividend"

 

 

In essence Mrs 1 and Mr 2 should be on the same team and the answers are really very simple.

Unfortunately Bastard 3 has much simpler methods and plays the game rather better than the other two, managing to convince both of the other muchachos that they have intersecting values, when really they reduce freedom and opportunity for most under the guise of promoting it.

 

So, er, yeah, I was sort of making a vague point that you weren't a fairy boy liberal.

 

I see, thanks for explaining. I'm probably a little from column 1, a lot from column 2 and column 3 is a cunt.

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Column 1 is also a cunt. A lying cunt.

Can I just clarify your point?

 

Are you suggesting that Mrs 1 is in fact maried to, or in a serious relationship with, Bastard 3? And as such she is in effect operating as an undercover agent for Bastard 3 with a view to benefiting directly from the corruption of Mrs 2 through the medium of a phoney friendship?

 

Or am I reading too much into your comments?

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Your liberal free thinking type might say that you should be able to trust in people to understand what they need and how much they can afford and what they want to spend money on and that all the choice and cool shit we have nowadays is brilliant.  There's loads of information and help out there for people to manage money, we're more connected than ever, so trust the people to look after themselves.

 

Your more pragmatic type might say that people, especially the poor and thick, are bombarded with advertising, fucked up lifestyle promotion and little opportunity in the way of structured careers or social mobility.  They are conditioned to feel that they have to compete on spending and flash in order to participate in society.  We need a better system to protect people from this consumerist bollocks.

John Stuart Mill is apt here:

 

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right... The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

 

This has underpinned liberal thought for a century and a half, and is the reason that Mr 2 is a big poopyhead.

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Only that Mill quote states that coercion of public opinion counts as interference with the sovereignty of the individual. So that would be social engineering. Like the Kochs buying up vast swathes of the media or oil and gas companies trying to burrow into schools.

 

Information asymmetry old boy, it's the scuppering of the idea that liberalism lies down a path the market leads us to.

 

Self-protection is a very broad term too. Very broad.

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You want a revolution, Bobby. Because none of that stuff changes via the ballot box.

 

I too will be voting Labour. Its the lesser evil. Won't make a jot of difference, Mel Stride, the massive Tory cunt, will get in my constituency again.

 

The face of a nonce, no doubt about it:

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Lord Tebbit scorns food bank demand
Former Conservative cabinet minister claims people spend money on junk food then rely on charities for the basics

 

Tebbit-said-ministers-sho-011.jpg
 
 

The former Conservative cabinet minister Lord Tebbit has suggested that people who visit food banks are at the same time spending their money on junk food.

 

Speaking in the House of Lords, Tebbit said there was a "near infinite demand" for valuable goods given away free and asked ministers to "initiate research into junk food sales in areas where people are [relying] for basic food on the food banks".

 

He made the comments moments after a Tory environment minister, Lord de Mauley, drew gasps from the chamber by saying food banks are not a scandal but a sign of Britain's charity and ministers should not seek to "interfere" in their use.

 

During the debate on food banks, several Labour, Liberal Democrat and crossbench independent peers condemned the rise in their usage.

 

Statistics from the Trussell Trust, which oversees more than 400 UK food banks , show 614,000 adults and children received help from its food banks in the first nine months of 2013-14, compared with 350,000 for all of 2012-13.

 

Asked whether he agreed that the need for food banks was a scandal, De Mauley, a hereditary peer and former banker who went to Eton, said: "Britain has a great tradition of charitable giving, and it would be a bad day on which we started to interfere with that."

 

Pressed on whether he really meant that, the minister said: "I think I have just answered that, my Lords. Britain has a great tradition of charitable giving, and it would be a great mistake to interfere with that." He did, however, decline to commission the research into junk food requested by Tebbit, saying that there has been a decrease in the number of households reporting that they felt unable to afford food compared with 2007.

 

Earlier, Tebbit called for David Cameron to be replaced as Tory leader by the next election. In a speech to the Bow Group, he said: "It's not about whether we go left or right but whether we will be a top-down, narrowly focused party run by an elite, or a bottom-up party run by like-minded, anti-statist minded people.

 

"I hope that change can be brought about and that before the general election we can feel like Conservatives again and feel like the prime minister is a son of Thatcher and not a son of Tony Blair."

 

Tebbit, who is famous for suggesting in 1981 that the unemployed should get on their bikes to find work, also warned the bedroom tax could lose the party the next election.

 

"I think we introduced that rather without thinking it through very well, and I think that's costing us," he said.

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Earlier, Tebbit called for David Cameron to be replaced as Tory leader by the next election. In a speech to the Bow Group, he said: "It's not about whether we go left or right but whether we will be a top-down, narrowly focused party run by an elite, or a bottom-up party run by like-minded, anti-statist minded people.

 

Tebbit, who is famous for suggesting in 1981 that the unemployed should get on their bikes to find work, also warned the bedroom tax could lose the party the next election.

 

"I think we introduced that rather without thinking it through very well, and I think that's costing us," he said.

 

Wow.

 

Fucking wow. He isn't wrong.

 

There is going to be a hanging at the next Tory party conference. But only after they have tied im to a four poster bed and sent Nigel Evans in to give him a stiff talking to.

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