Just watched ITV Secrets from the Workhouse. You make up your own mind about the worth of the show. What struck me so forcibly was the Victorian attitude to the sick lame and the poor. Demonised and publicly judged to be malingers, the shiftless workshy who had to be punished and humiliated back into a proper wish for work.These same Victorians that I had always assumed had such proud high moral standards and lived within such very straight-laced ethics. These Victorians from the security of their mansions, surrounded by a bevy of servants with access to all the riches from across the world felt able to judge those that failed to succeed.
Despite a brief interlude where the Welfare State put such judgemental views firmly behind us and set out to help all those that fell, back onto their feet to gave them support for another chance to make a go of it. We are back at square one.
On our behalf, our government sets out to demonise all those out of work or taking benefits of one kind or another, casting them as lazy, work-shy fraudulent abuses of the system. We have turned a full circle and are back with the Victorians attitudes condemning all those that have not yet leapt onto the gravy train was worthless. Sanctimonious hypocrisy.
If the government cannot learn and understand that we are all dragged down by the poor and deprived within our society. That all our lives are degraded by the consequences of having a sector of our society without hope, despair, loss of self-esteem. We shall have to teach them. We shall have to speak loud and clear to them and tell them that giving the rich even more access to even more riches can only be done by taking more from one sector, the least well off. This is not sustainable. You cannot blame the sick, lame or poor for failing. You have to help them, you have show compassion, not condemnation.
Saturday 29 June 2013
Thursday 27 June 2013
Entitlement
We all live with the presumption we are entitled to certain basics in life, be it shelter, food, education, employment, care, security, privacy or dignity. Should you live in a deprived part of our globe none of these can be taken for granted. That you are alive at this moment and might reasonably assume you will be alive for the next hour or perhaps the rest of the day is as far as you can presume anything. We however take our entitlements to the life we have for granted and are so casual to the point of indifference in seeking out and protecting what we have. After all it is our birthright.
We are entitled to nothing. Everything we do get comes only from the goodwill of society and that it is prepared to fund. It may well be in societies long term best interests to arrange everyone to have dry warm shelter, to have access to good nutritious food, to ensure children are educated. Without these basic steps the scale of consequential problems soar and scupper any societies attempts to hold the line. Does not turn it into a right, just a self-interest to do what is seen to be possible.
What is possible is all in the eye of the beholder, not the supplicants, not the egalitarian evangelist, not the pressure groups, just the one beholder who has the gift of deciding for that moment. Okay not entirely free choice as they too have to bow to media reactions, funding limitations, public opinion, world expectations and their own sense of destiny. How our basic needs are catered for come down to whim and fancy. A far cry from any right and not even an entitlement.
Of course our one core entitlement is our privacy, that is sacrosanct. To have your privacy invaded is equal to being raped. Yet the State takes on itself to enter you anally, take you without notice and lock you up without any contact with the outside world, read all electronic communications, now and in the past, irrespective of subject or address, store your gene record to be read for whatever purpose its see fit and all in the name of some ill-defined Security of the State. Not just the State of course but any number of other bodies, even private commercial firms, are too granted the right to enter your property, with or without your consent, to take information or property it deems necessary. Your right to privacy is pretty shallow based. Just dont show your head above the parapet! Remember these things do happen to just ordinary people, just like you and me, not those evil twisted people, just ordinary guys caught up in some maelstrom they little know about or understand.
Never mind an englishmans home is his castle, so pull up the drawbridge. Not quite. For example, the software you buy does not give you ownership, in many cases it just a licence to use with even restrictions on how you sell it on. Of course your music, video, DVD have restrictions on where or how you use it or make copies of it. Without touching on leases and ground rent, your house, the house that you own, may well have a charge on it. That charge might permit some other body to seize it and evict you from your own home. Extreme maybe but do not blithely assume just because you have bought something it is yours for ever and a day. It all depends on the sinuous threads of attachment other bodies have wrapped around your purchases.
We have no rights, we have no entitlements just many expectations, reasonable and wide spread expectations. The fundamental expectation that the you will be treated fairly and not significantly disadvantageously from any other person in your social milieu. Time for you to look around. In this rapidly increasing unequal society where those with take even more whilst those without, the least able to give anything, have to give up so they can have their more. Fairness and equity have gone out of the window. Your protectors of your rights, the MP's, have abandoned principle and sold out to personal betterment, financial clout or the mindless middle ground of dont rock the boat as we too might still climb aboard. Greed and self-interest abound. You are a drift at the mercy of whim and fancy without an entitlement to your name. Be afraid, be very afraid.
We are entitled to nothing. Everything we do get comes only from the goodwill of society and that it is prepared to fund. It may well be in societies long term best interests to arrange everyone to have dry warm shelter, to have access to good nutritious food, to ensure children are educated. Without these basic steps the scale of consequential problems soar and scupper any societies attempts to hold the line. Does not turn it into a right, just a self-interest to do what is seen to be possible.
What is possible is all in the eye of the beholder, not the supplicants, not the egalitarian evangelist, not the pressure groups, just the one beholder who has the gift of deciding for that moment. Okay not entirely free choice as they too have to bow to media reactions, funding limitations, public opinion, world expectations and their own sense of destiny. How our basic needs are catered for come down to whim and fancy. A far cry from any right and not even an entitlement.
Of course our one core entitlement is our privacy, that is sacrosanct. To have your privacy invaded is equal to being raped. Yet the State takes on itself to enter you anally, take you without notice and lock you up without any contact with the outside world, read all electronic communications, now and in the past, irrespective of subject or address, store your gene record to be read for whatever purpose its see fit and all in the name of some ill-defined Security of the State. Not just the State of course but any number of other bodies, even private commercial firms, are too granted the right to enter your property, with or without your consent, to take information or property it deems necessary. Your right to privacy is pretty shallow based. Just dont show your head above the parapet! Remember these things do happen to just ordinary people, just like you and me, not those evil twisted people, just ordinary guys caught up in some maelstrom they little know about or understand.
Never mind an englishmans home is his castle, so pull up the drawbridge. Not quite. For example, the software you buy does not give you ownership, in many cases it just a licence to use with even restrictions on how you sell it on. Of course your music, video, DVD have restrictions on where or how you use it or make copies of it. Without touching on leases and ground rent, your house, the house that you own, may well have a charge on it. That charge might permit some other body to seize it and evict you from your own home. Extreme maybe but do not blithely assume just because you have bought something it is yours for ever and a day. It all depends on the sinuous threads of attachment other bodies have wrapped around your purchases.
We have no rights, we have no entitlements just many expectations, reasonable and wide spread expectations. The fundamental expectation that the you will be treated fairly and not significantly disadvantageously from any other person in your social milieu. Time for you to look around. In this rapidly increasing unequal society where those with take even more whilst those without, the least able to give anything, have to give up so they can have their more. Fairness and equity have gone out of the window. Your protectors of your rights, the MP's, have abandoned principle and sold out to personal betterment, financial clout or the mindless middle ground of dont rock the boat as we too might still climb aboard. Greed and self-interest abound. You are a drift at the mercy of whim and fancy without an entitlement to your name. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Tuesday 11 June 2013
Take responsibility
If you are in a sharp suit, carrying a logo emblazoned handbag and are heavily bejewelled when you turn into a dark unlit street, with no passing traffic or other pedestrians, it should come as no surprise when you are mugged. Not that you wanted it, not that it makes it right because you put yourself in a position to be a target, nonetheless society still owes you a duty to track down the perpetrators but you did rather ask for it.
When you tumble from the club late of night out of your tiny skull with drink or drugs, unable to composure your standing or your mind, when you are dressed to display off your fine physique, broad shoulders, narrow waist accentuated lined eyes. That you are picked by a stranger, taken somewhere then raped should come as no surprise. It is not that your asked for it, it is not that it in anyway makes it right just because you exposed a vulnerability, nonetheless society still has a duty to treat the assault as a violation of you and to track down and punish the perpetrators but you did rather put yourself at risk.
When you as a non-parent adult put yourself into a position where you are with a child alone in a non-observed spot for a length of time it is within the realms of foresight that that child could go on to broadcast tales of abuse, whether fantasised, imagined, misconstrued, culture clashed or overreacted, it hardly matters, clearly, as a responsible adult your actions would be constrained, but we all know that children or even young not yet adults have vivid imaginations and can slant events beyond any reasonable interpretation. Nonetheless society has a duty to protect the young and prosecute any potential violator or predator of the young and vulnerable.
When you design your store so that in every direction the eye meets a continuous cascade of inviting and mouthwateringly tempting candy and when you place the only cash desk in some deep remote spot, way out of the way of fast selling lines, manned by one overwhelmed cashier with a six deep queue impatiently waiting their turn, dont be too surprised if customers take to walking out with your candy and not paying for it. Clearly you do want payment for your candy, offering it so temptingly does not confer any rights to take without payment and of course society must seek out and reprimand those who do succumb but you do rather ask for it by making it so easy to take, yet so tortuous to make payment for.
If you do not have a head for heights, dont climb rocks, you will fall. If you cannot swim dont jump into the water at the deep end, you will drown. It really is that simple. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, we all have to constrain our hopes, desires and enjoyments so as to not put ourselves at undue risk. Just because society has a duty to sweep up and care for those those unfortunates who by mischance, lack of judgement, inexperience befall fates they did not expect does not confer any rights on anyone of us to be reckless. Just because society takes on itself a duty to apprehend and chastise those who set out to deceive, trick, entrap or overpower those who are weak, gullible or naive does not relieve each one of us of the need to exercise caution, a degree of circumspection, when dealing with strangers. Society is there as the backstop to pick up all those weird, wonderful and totally unexpected twists that life throws up, not as a day by day buffer shielding us from our own stupidity..
If your display of wealth is ostentatious, you take care. If your are sexually desirable, make sure you can stay alert to the risks of unwanted attention. If you let yourself be put into a compromised position do not rely on charging the other party of misconduct. If you rank making the sale way above protecting your stock dont claim the public are thieves. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions. It not for society to bail us out each and every time.
When you tumble from the club late of night out of your tiny skull with drink or drugs, unable to composure your standing or your mind, when you are dressed to display off your fine physique, broad shoulders, narrow waist accentuated lined eyes. That you are picked by a stranger, taken somewhere then raped should come as no surprise. It is not that your asked for it, it is not that it in anyway makes it right just because you exposed a vulnerability, nonetheless society still has a duty to treat the assault as a violation of you and to track down and punish the perpetrators but you did rather put yourself at risk.
When you as a non-parent adult put yourself into a position where you are with a child alone in a non-observed spot for a length of time it is within the realms of foresight that that child could go on to broadcast tales of abuse, whether fantasised, imagined, misconstrued, culture clashed or overreacted, it hardly matters, clearly, as a responsible adult your actions would be constrained, but we all know that children or even young not yet adults have vivid imaginations and can slant events beyond any reasonable interpretation. Nonetheless society has a duty to protect the young and prosecute any potential violator or predator of the young and vulnerable.
When you design your store so that in every direction the eye meets a continuous cascade of inviting and mouthwateringly tempting candy and when you place the only cash desk in some deep remote spot, way out of the way of fast selling lines, manned by one overwhelmed cashier with a six deep queue impatiently waiting their turn, dont be too surprised if customers take to walking out with your candy and not paying for it. Clearly you do want payment for your candy, offering it so temptingly does not confer any rights to take without payment and of course society must seek out and reprimand those who do succumb but you do rather ask for it by making it so easy to take, yet so tortuous to make payment for.
If you do not have a head for heights, dont climb rocks, you will fall. If you cannot swim dont jump into the water at the deep end, you will drown. It really is that simple. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions, we all have to constrain our hopes, desires and enjoyments so as to not put ourselves at undue risk. Just because society has a duty to sweep up and care for those those unfortunates who by mischance, lack of judgement, inexperience befall fates they did not expect does not confer any rights on anyone of us to be reckless. Just because society takes on itself a duty to apprehend and chastise those who set out to deceive, trick, entrap or overpower those who are weak, gullible or naive does not relieve each one of us of the need to exercise caution, a degree of circumspection, when dealing with strangers. Society is there as the backstop to pick up all those weird, wonderful and totally unexpected twists that life throws up, not as a day by day buffer shielding us from our own stupidity..
If your display of wealth is ostentatious, you take care. If your are sexually desirable, make sure you can stay alert to the risks of unwanted attention. If you let yourself be put into a compromised position do not rely on charging the other party of misconduct. If you rank making the sale way above protecting your stock dont claim the public are thieves. We all have to take responsibility for our own actions. It not for society to bail us out each and every time.
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