The Political Thread

[Hawkmumbler]

Do I have to read The Thesaurus before I read The Dictionary or would that be going against Tolkien's authorial intent?

FTFY. 

Sod it, I'll wait for the film adaptation then.

[Jim_Campbell]

So either way, my food gets eaten.

More or less my reasoning. When it started to look like we were going to crash out with no deal the first time, I actually cleared some extra space in the garage and bought a BIG freezer, which we filled with all sorts of frozen veg. Plus, I invested in one of those vacuum packer things for food and bought a load of fresh meat and froze it myself (vacuum packing basically adds a year onto however long you'd usually expect to be able to leave stuff in the freezer). Lots of tinned tomatos, baked beans, chick peas, mixed beans lots of pasta, lots of rice. Long-lasting tubes of stuff like garlic paste, chilli paste.

All stuff we were going to use anyway (apart from the frozen veg) but I basically made sure we could make seven main meals a week for about three months.

[TordelBack]

Do I have to read The Thesaurus before I read The Dictionary or would that be going against Tolkiens authorial intent?

Late entry for Post of the Year.

[The Legendary Shark]

In your exmaple Sharky, whats to stop the other 50 people joining the 24 who voted against the injustice to stop it and introduce a system that does not rely on compulsion? 

The 10 rulers. From the vote, they somehow assume the right to extract the tax from everyone, whether they voted or not.

It's that "somehow" that vexes me. How, exactly, does dipping theft into government turn it into taxation? How does dipping murder (which, as eagle-eyed thesaurusophiles may already have spotted, means the same thing as 'homicide')  into government turn it into execution? How can you feed a wrong in and get a right out?

It gets, what? Written down? "We, ye Ftate, do giveth ourfelvef ye right to kick butt and chop neckf. Alfo, pay up - or elfe..." Something gets written down and then signed by somebody in a gold hat, or blessed by somebody wearing curly slippers and a robe, or splattered with hot wax and pressed with a Special Seal, or whatever, and suddenly the Primary Crime and All Time Number One Sin is just fine.

I love this question, Leigh, because it cuts to the heart of it. Any power the state or the agents of the state assume is just that; assumed. They can only get their rights from us but are claiming rights we don't have. Are we comfortable with that?

Tordels labelling the state the murderer is a good point - it hadn't occurred to me to look at that specific aspect. Leaving aside the idea that the government is an abstract, inanimate thing which cannot be charged with murder, but is made of human beings who can so be charged, are we comfortable having a bunch of thieves and murderers (with myriad other concomitant "charms") in a position to potentially declare your very life illegal at the stroke of a pen? Or if not your life, the life of somebody you've never heard of in a town you've never heard of in a country you're vaguely aware of over something like oil or terrorism?

Oh my God - it's just struck me. The way to defeat government power has been right in front of me all along.

Just take their pens away.

[Funt Solo]

Just take their pens away.

They chain pens to desks for a reason, you know. They're aware of your plans, and have been for some time.

[Dandontdare]

Do I have to read The Thesaurus before I read The Dictionary or would that be going against Tolkiens authorial intent?

I once read the whole dictionary out loud. It gave me thesaurus throat I've ever had.

And we will meet for that pint sometime soon HM!

[The Legendary Shark]

Just take their pens away.

They chain pens to desks for a reason, you know. They're aware of your plans, and have been for some time.

Curses! Pre-foiled again!

Muttley! Fetch the flouride-free toothpase - this is fully a three brush problem...

[shaolin_monkey]

So either way, my food gets eaten.

More or less my reasoning. When it started to look like we were going to crash out with no deal the first time, I actually cleared some extra space in the garage and bought a BIG freezer, which we filled with all sorts of frozen veg. Plus, I invested in one of those vacuum packer things for food and bought a load of fresh meat and froze it myself (vacuum packing basically adds a year onto however long you'd usually expect to be able to leave stuff in the freezer). Lots of tinned tomatos, baked beans, chick peas, mixed beans lots of pasta, lots of rice. Long-lasting tubes of stuff like garlic paste, chilli paste.

All stuff we were going to use anyway (apart from the frozen veg) but I basically made sure we could make seven main meals a week for about three months.

We tried to source a new fridge (ours is on its way out anyway) with a much larger freezer compartment, but we haven't been able to get one for love nor money - sold out everywhere! Makes me wonder why. 🤔

Perhaps because forewarned is forearmed.

https://inews.co.uk/news/brexit/brexit-latest-uk-brace-months-food-shortages-1-january-delivery-782518

[JayzusB.Christ]

Those sunny uplands aren't looking very sunny. Not that I can afford to laugh. We're fucked because of it too.

[sintec]

I'm really not all that comfortabe with the idea that charity as replacement for taxation as the means to provide public services.

By relying on charity to provide services like education or health care society hands huge amounts of power to those with the most income to donate.  Those with the biggest wallets get to decide what gets into text books, or who is eligible for free health care (and for what things).  You can see the effects of this in parts of America where evangelical organisation will donate "science" textbooks to schools which remove any information about evolution or sexual reproduction. Funding for womens health will be contingent on it promoting abstince as the only form of contraception and not providing any kinds of abortion services.

Should society really be reliant on the donations of the Gates Foundation to solve malaria?
Whilst I'm not buying into him as the "great satan" or member of the illuminati trying to inject us with nanobots (or whatever the current wingnut conspiracies on him are). There are genuine issues with how his philanthropy distorts health care services in the countries that he is helping. His goals don't always align with the services that the local populations would choose - but his huge injections of capital mean that large numbers of doctors and nurses are diverted to whatever schemes he is promoting.

Then there are the historical examples of things like the Eugenics Education Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galton_Institute#Activities_(1907%E2%80%931939) which was a charitable organisation. And then there are all those who use charity as a way to either convert/indoctrinate people to their political cause (see various criminal/terrorist/revolutionary organisations). Or those like Saville and Pablo Escobar who use charity to try and cover up or atone for their crimes.

I'd add a caveat to your taxation is theft. To me taxation without representation is when it becomes theft. Imo the problem is how poorly out government represents the people not the existence of government itself.

[Leigh S]

What Sintec said.

When you ask "what stops the 10 rulers doing what they want?"  The other 50 voters! They vote oout those rulers and replace them with rulers they prefer, inching albeit slowly towards progress, as opposed to 100 eople all pissing in the wind of their own "ideas" of what might be a good way to do things.

Rather than avoid the tyranny on a small minority, you'd just become beholden to the tyranny of a hundred minorities, all pulling in different directions and getting fuck all done.   If you say "they'll organise themselves", well they might, they might not, but without some form of compulsion to follow an agreed set of rules, when "all opinions are equal" and one persons fact is equivalent to another's fiction.... well, that's whats already wrong with the world, why create more of it?

[TordelBack]

Those sunny uplands aren't looking very sunny.

If there's one thing I know about "sunny uplands", it's that they are inevitably taken out the common use, then fenced-off and divided-up before being rented back to their traditional inhabitants for crippling sums, and exploited exclusively for the profit and pleasure of absentee toffs.

So I'd say those sunny uplands are indeed almost in sight.

[Funt Solo]

When Churchill said it*, he was talking about the sunlit uplands of not being murdered by the Nazis.

When Rees-Mogg says it, he is the wannabe Nazi that you need to beware.

Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

[Professor Bear]

Hey, remember that time in India when a quarter of a billion people went on strike to protest working conditions under a far right pro-capitalist government in the largest industrial action in the history of the world?  And which statistically worked out as one in thirty humans on the planet Earth being on strike?  No?  Well I'll just assume you were very busy and missed the wall-to-wall coverage.

[shaolin_monkey]

Hey, remember that time in India when a quarter of a billion people went on strike to protest working conditions under a far right pro-capitalist government in the largest industrial action in the history of the world?  And which statistically worked out as one in thirty humans on the planet Earth being on strike?  No?  Well I'll just assume you were very busy and missed the wall-to-wall coverage.

Came here to post exactly this, but from a different source!!

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/250-million-indian-workers-and-farmers-strike-breaking-world-record/


Naturally, no mention I can see on BBC, ITV, SKY, or even Ch4!