"Don't talk up the possibility of violent reaction that works in both directions". What the heck are you talking about???? I'm doing nothing of the sort. The violent reactions are already around on both sides. I'm just fed up with them and the loss of young life. I just feel we are not doing enough to overcome the problems. I don't have the answers and was expressing my thoughts...not actions....just questions............
To be honest Beddy, the only thing any of us can do is to help elect a government that will not just blindly join in with American aggression, no matter what the political fallout is likely to be. Stop selling arms and exporting death around the world. Do our utmost to repair fractured relationships and accept that everyone has the same rights to life that we do. The days of Empire are gone and they ain't ever coming back, so a UK government need to act in a manner that supports and repairs our own society while extending hands of friendship and warmth to others. If the West continues to invade and blockade foreign states under the belief that we are the world's policeman, when the reality is we actually want to pinch their oil and subject them to our collective will, bad **** will continue to happen. The cycle will never end and people in 100 years, if there are any left, will be asking the same question.
Here’s a sobering thought, about inequality. I was reading yesterday that an Amazon worker, earning £9.50 per hour, has to work for 5 weeks to earn what Jeff Bezos makes in a second. So anyone taking Amazon Prime on trial, then cancelling after the second game on Boxing Day, has my full support.
Don’t, my other sister reads that one. I once offended her by saying that I feel sorry for people who read right wing newspapers, because they live their entire life not actually knowing what is going on in the world, owing to the lies they are fed on a daily basis. As a footnote, wasn’t Lord Rothermere, not the current Mail owner but his dad, a supporter of Mussolini and Hitler? Puts the Mail and Express on level footing, with regards to being fascist.
As the late lamented Jo Cox said in her maiden speech in the House of Commons, "What surprises me time and time again as I travel around the constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us". We should celebrate diversity, everyone in this country has an equal right to be heard, and to contribute to society. It makes me feel uncomfortable in the extreme when people start talking in terms of "they" and "them".
https://www.theguardian.com/society...-benefits-debts?dm_i=4I3E,Q0Z8,2352KB,33DDY,1 "1,048,000 universal credit claimants had a deduction of their benefit payment out of 1,759,000 claimants who received any universal credit payment that month." Thought I would bring up this as my housing association confirmed these figures as accurate. Many of these are to replay the loan they only needed to make due to application process for switching to UC in the first place. Such a BS system.
First Dog on the Moon says you don’t have to like Jeremy Corbyn in order to vote for him: https://www.theguardian.com/comment...Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1575346418
Unfortunately Corbyn comes over as a grouch and that predisposes people towards feeling dislike for the bloke. Pfeffel plays this hail fellow well met act and that is enough to fool most of his deluded supporters. I'm sure Corbyn thinks that smiling and glad handing is unnecessary and insincere. He may be right but we are dealing with something in the region of 17.4 millions idiots here.
If, as is most likely, Labour don’t get enough seats to form a government, the Blairites in the party will bear a huge part of the blame for not supporting their elected leader fully. Corbyn was on Good Morning Britain this morning, and despite very hostile questioning by Schofield and Willoughby, came over as a very affable, jolly bloke, just as he does when he meets ordinary people out campaigning. He only ever comes across as a bit angry and grouchy when he’s making a passionate speech or debating with Tories. Talking of Tories, did anyone know about this?
The most saddening TV programme for a long time was the C4 Dispatches - Growing Up Poor - Britain's Breadline Kids. The most telling comment was from one of the young girls who said "The fact that people still look down on people like me is very sad, cos everyone's equal ...... apparently". Over the next 4 years another million children will be growing up in poverty, according to The Resolution Foundation, an independent think tank. What a ****ed up country. (Thanks to St Badger for highlighting this earlier in the thread ..... You are a true star with a very big heart)
There's a GoFundMe page if anyone wants to help https://www.gofundme.com/f/for-families-of-vietnamese-killed-in-lorry-uk
And government could change that policy to stop that from happenng. But we all know that this particular government - the Tory party - is quite happy to "let my brother go to the devil in his own way." I've heard them say those very words time and again. Whilst it is a completely heartless statement, every time we place our vote against that Tory label, we place our greed first. We personally analyse that [I don't as it happens], "I place my hardship first", whilst completely forgettting that the Tory government has made your situation worse because they don't represent you, and by following the policies that they do. I hear on the radio each day about how you can give Xmas presents to children in poverty, I mean WTF??? How come we live in a society that hasn't progressed upward since the 1960s??? It is utterly ludicrous that there are families out there in such poverty that they need food kitchens and handouts for Xmas. It's one thing for drug addicts who have gone into a tragic downward spiral, but ordinary poor families??? This isn't the UK I signed up to when I first got the vote.
