MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, ... 44, 45, 46  Next
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

"Mick, how do you fancy a holiday in Turkey?"
"Well ..."
"You'll be staying at our villa and we'll pay all the airfares."
"Why...."
"See, what's happened is that Judith has invited herself for a week and a week alone with her will drive us both nuts. You used to go out with Judith so we thought ..."
"Yeah, all right."
Days pass
"Mick, Judith's decided to go off to New Zealand instead."
"Oh well. I can't say I'll miss her that much."
"Thing is Mick, a week alone with you is worse than a week alone with Judith so, if you don't mind we're going to scrub the whole thing."
"I don't mind."
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha ha

You bring tears to my eyes. :-)
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The Guardian and the BBC have uncovered another scandal that requires a prime time telly programme to lay bare

The Venice Biennale may be the “Olympics of Modern Art” but, as former minister for culture David Lammy says: “It feels like there’s something missing.” That something is diversity: only six African nations are taking part. In this inspiring film, a corrective to an art world dominated by white westerners, Brenda Emmanus meets the diverse, emerging artists preparing to launch the first ever Diaspora Pavilion at the Venetian Palazzo.

Only six? If the African Cup of Nations is anything to go by, all African artists of any talent will soon have to compulsorily attend the Biennale which will be held every three months.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Interesting statistic from yesterday's Newsnight. The number of three and four-year-olds attending nurseries hardly varies whether the places are free or paid for. Curiously my own experience sort of bears out why. There was a choice between a paid-for horrible old woman round the corner or a wonderful free state nursery a bus ride away. My parents usually elected for the former. Apparently their time was more important than my happiness.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

It is often forgotten that Britain is the most mature country in the world and one of our world duties is to explore new things. We pioneered both the unitary nation-sate and the federal nation-state so it is now our time to give the world the multivariate nation-state.

Post Brexit has given us our opportunity (we are not very bold any more, we need a serendipitous push). This DUP business has got everyone insisting that the UK has to be monolithic. Rubbish, let a hundred flowers bloom. Give Humberside its fishing free-port, give Cornwall its seasonal visas, give London its financial opt-outs, give Scotland whatever it is demanding this week. And anywhere else that can make a case. It's a good thing! Unless it's a bad thing, we'll never know until we try.

Now the Left hates all this--it's an offshore tax haven casino economy apparently. The right hates it because national integrity and sovereignty is being impugned. The Centre hates it because they always like the status quo, they're at the centre of it. And all their arguments are perfectly true. It really will be open to abuse, it really will need over-regulation, it really will be a free-for-all, it really will be everything you can think of.

That's why we're the pioneers. We have to make all the mistakes on everybody else's behalf. But only if we get to it!
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

And so to Oxfam. The only charge that has so far been confirmed is that their Man in Haiti paid for prostitutes. With his own money. No doubt to the considerable satisfaction of Haitian prostitutes. Cue: collapse of Oxfam worldwide even though everybody, including their chief rivals, are adamant that Oxfam are in fact one of, if not the most Simon-pure NGO’s in the whole wide world.

But from an AE standpoint this is still correct. You start with the toughest case and work your way down. The NGO/Third World/poverty industry requires abolition (o.n.o.) and this is probably the best way to go.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I think Oxfam have been charged with a lack of moral leadership. Some folks (heaven forbid) have been giving on a moral humanitarian basis so are appalled

Maybe when you run guilt ads......

"While you are going to parties we are going to funerals" (save the children) then when the public find out.... that it is your aid workers who are buying drugs and doing the rutting...they the public feel aggrieved?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/125186064612892726/

Oxfam have been updating their clever adverts and products re Global warming (biblical flooding) . "People dying thanks to climate change is a long way off. About 5,000 miles, give or take"
and Pacifism however....... unfortunately the older Mother Theresa image of "aid worker" is one that your clever bods at Oxfam had failed to deconstruct in time.

I wonder why not?

Hunpty Dumpty has fallen.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Let us apply MJH’s (soon to be AEL’s) three rules of poverty to Oxfam. Just to remind you the three rules are

1. The poor are not important
2. Believing the poor to be unimportant does not mean you don’t care about the poor.
3. Caring about the poor does not mean you will end up helping the poor
.
Send private message
Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
View user's profile
Reply with quote

It seems that the poor (those unfortunate enough to suffer a natural disaster, war etc) have a pretty good grasp of the NGOs ability to deliver aid, that is why they wisely opt to migrate.

The noble idea we should do more to help "those genuine refugees" (in the parlance) within Blighty as their circumstances are so bad in their country of origin .....appears to Wiley to suggest that our attempts to deliver aid overseas is not as effective as we once believed.......
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Rule One: The Poor are Not Important

This is the statement that most gets up the Left’s nose (and the centre and the caring right’s noses). But it is really quite self-evident. The poor are by definition marginal to society—or to put it another way every society defines poverty in such a way as to ensure they are marginal. Every society looks after the poor not out of altruism (that just makes it feel better) but because if you don’t they will eventually murder you in your bed.

The poor do not contribute much to society and it does not take much to keep them from murdering you in your bed. Yet politics is often all about 'the poor'. This is the first puzzle.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Everyone must watch The Spider's Web. It's on the Together Channel but details here http://spiderswebfilm.com. It is hugely apparent that Oxfam would do more good if it concentrated its power-for-good on the offshore banking sector.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Rule 1 (continued)

So why are the poor so fetishised? It is because they are often the best vehicle for the ‘outs’ to replace the ‘ins, a tradition going all the way back to Julius Caesar. The left (who are normally the outs) portray themselves as friends of the poor (quite sincerely, no doubt) and as ‘helping the poor’ is usually an acceptable motive (indeed a noble one) they can ride various waves to power. Of course ‘the poor’ have to be carefully defined--nobody is going to support a root and branch reform of society just so the really poor get an extra blanket at night.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Greater truth hath naught been spoken.
Send private message
Mick Harper
Site Admin

In: London
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Rule Two: Believing the poor to be unimportant does not mean you don’t care about the poor.

The Left universally believe the Right don’t care about the poor. Like all stereotypes this is true but misleading. The belief is made worse because whenever the Right does do something about the poor the Left claim it is some combination of (a) sticky plaster syndrome (b) noblesse oblige syndrome and c) smokescreen syndrome. It can be readily observed by AEists that Left and Right solutions are in practice very similar and are in fact actuated by ‘If we do nothing about the poor they will murder us in our beds syndrome' though as usual neither Left nor Right recognise this.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

You must be right! As I don't recognize this.
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, ... 44, 45, 46  Next

Jump to:  
Page 2 of 46

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group