Reheated (60)
For newcomers, more items from the archives:
Our betters sail north at taxpayer expense. Gas is released courageously.
Such was the level of inspiration, some of the assembled artists began to work their creative magic immediately: “Tracy Rowledge constructed three series of ‘automated’ physical drawings, mapping the movement of the boat during the expedition.” For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath. This feat was “REALLY exciting,” we learn, as it “explored movement, time, place and permanence.” The radical innovation also freed the artist to leave the dangling pen and do something more interesting. According to her two brief blog entries, the sum total of her commentary, Ms Rowledge spent much of this liberated time struggling with Greenlandic place names and making sure her fellow passengers knew how “overwhelmed” she was.
I Don’t Deserve This Shabby Treatment.
On the routine vainglory of the academic left.
Professor Surber’s self-regard continues to tumesce. He has fathomed all of history and it validates him. Liberal-arts professors tend to be leftwing, we’re told, “because we liberal-arts professors… have carefully studied the actual dynamics of history and culture; and we have trained ourselves to think in complex, nuanced, and productive ways.” In short, if you haven’t reached a similarly leftwing conclusion, then you haven’t achieved sufficient complexity and nuance in your thinking, you peasant. Luckily, we can count on Professor Surber and his peers to guide us to the light, such is their benign magnificence. They may be cruelly underappreciated, but by God they’re better than us and they will save us from ourselves.
You’ll Notice They All Wear Shoes.
The unhappy sights at San Francisco’s 2012 radical nude-in:
The standard blather about “civil rights” and “body image” isn’t very convincing. One doesn’t have to have “unrealistic issues of body shame” to find the exhibitionism tiresome or inappropriate. And the denials of any sexual aspect are also unconvincing, especially given that so many of the participants are enthusiasts of fetish clubs and websites catering to people who like public sex and scandalising others, and for whom the whole point is to have an audience, whether titillated or repelled. It’s rather like how the people at last year’s ‘protest’ claimed they just wanted to be left alone - while squealing for attention on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection.
Setting aside the issues of exposing oneself to children, the impact on local businesses, etc., what’s objectionable is that random people are being made participants in the exhibitionists’ psychodrama, whether they wish to be or not. For many, if not most, of the ‘activists’, this isn’t even about an enjoyment of being naked per se. It’s about confronting other people with unsolicited nakedness. Being nude in private or among consenting nudists in dedicated bars, clubs, spas, on nature trails, at specialist beaches, etc – of which San Francisco has plenty – doesn’t give the ‘activists’ enough of a thrill because the people there are willing. Hence the demand to display their genitals in front of random passers-by. An audience is required in order to feel transgressive and it’s pretty obvious that’s what matters. They want to be naked near you.
There’s more, should you crave it, in the greatest hits.
Also, open thread.
For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair,
LOL.
which made the icebergs stand up in all their beauty and fragility
Ask the captain of the Titanic about that.
LOL.
You’ll notice I included a photo, in case the complexities and nuance were insufficiently clear to you unartistic types.
The unhappy sights at San Francisco’s 2012 radical nude-in
I… followed… the… links… to… the… photos.
Need… eye-bleach…. now…
I… followed… the… links… to… the… photos.
No refunds. Credit note only.
From Orwell & Goode, anything you need you will rent and it will be delivered by drone
The World Economic Forum promises this and more dystopia for 2030.
From the same source keyboards are rayciss.
I am guessing if your language doesn’t have an alphabet, you don’t need a keyboard. Maybe.
LOL.
It does, I think, convey something of the disdain with which they regard the people whose earnings they consume. Sort of, ‘This is good enough. This will fool them.’
An audience is required in order to feel transgressive… They want to be naked near you.
That.
A comment from the “They all wear shoes” link…
How prophetic. I wonder if he knew…
That.
Again, they want their victims to be discomfited. It’s a dominance game, played by broken people. Hence the so-called ‘protestors’ seeking out public spaces where people are likely to object, including parents with small children in tow. It’s essentially a kind of challenge – a gratuitous imposition on others, a form of aggression – and should be regarded as such. It’s one of those instances where one’s most likely initial response – say, “Why do these degenerates want to wave their genitals at my children?” – is entirely apt.
Not entirely unrelated.
And because their primary goal is to sow confusion, discomfort, and fear in ordinary people, it’s incumbent on those of us in the unwilling audience to give them nothing but mockery. Perhaps a soupçon of condescension as a garnish, but definitely nothing like shock and outrage.
These are basically just four-year-olds* intent on pushing boundaries to the breaking point, so there’s no reason not to treat them as such. “Yes, sweetie, we all see your willy. Now run along and put on some clothes while the grownups are talking.”
* It’s my hypothesis that every four-year-old is a psychotic tyrant, so it’s not a good age to be stuck at.
Tolerant left…
“[L]earn your f*cking place.”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/10/nyc-jews-for-trump-caravan-attacked-with-rocks-and-pepper-spray-flags-ripped-up/
“[L]earn your f*cking place.”
Sometimes they say the quiet part out loud.
An old acquaintance looking to harass women again.
But we’re the weird ones because we “sexualize nudity”. Okay.
Some more healthy family dynamics on display.
I pray to God that Dad lied to his daughters just to get them to shut the hell up and let him die in peace…
Some more healthy family dynamics on display.
It takes a while to process the priorities on display.
Hence the so-called ‘protestors’ seeking out public spaces where people are likely to object, including parents with small children in tow. It’s essentially a kind of challenge . . .
Ah, yes, Them . . .
For one of the formal responses to the ‘protestors’, them being told so by an annual San Francisco event, there was the First Church Of The Last Laugh, and pointed comments of Of course, no costume is an absent costume, so just a sock isn’t going to do it . . .
. . . and then, in turn, the quite official San Francisco City response to the ‘protestors’ was indeed Ah, No, just No.
Such complete with publication on city letterhead and all that, or however such is posted . . .
Words to the effect of We do have events that one can attend, and visiting tourists may indeed attend if they so wish, and the rest of us are going to continue to run random daily errands Without Being Bothered, Thank You!
—Yes, the idiots complained, and the locals just continued to point out their and that City And County Official Proclamation of We do have assorted events, you can go there . . . . .
For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath.
Exploratorium Drawing Board, granting, when opening hours circumstantially permit.
No ship needed.
For readers of a technical inclination, these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath.
She’ll be hearing from Leon Foucault’s lawyers.
Those who have less and want more will tend to support social changes that promise to accomplish that… Who, after all, would want to preserve a situation in which others who are equivalently educated and experienced – doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, colleagues in other areas, and, yes, chief executives – receive vastly more compensation, sometimes by a factor of 10 or 100?.
If you have less and want more, then you were an idiot to go into the humanities. I thought the whole idea of pursuing the humanities was the pursuit of art and beauty, not filthy lucre. If you’re only now realizing that the compensation is poor, then it is apparent why you didn’t study a STEM subject.
“Equivalent education,” besides being untrue, is irrelevant. Intensive study of astrology, dowsing, phrenology, or homeopathy does not entitle one to enhanced compensation.
“Equivalent education,” besides being untrue, is irrelevant.
At the time, I was tickled by just how rapidly, and shamelessly, the pretensions of altruism and egalitarian piety gave way to envy, vanity and other less lovely motives. The veneer of piety was awfully thin.
Some more healthy family dynamics on display.
Reminds me of my own dear mother who voted Republican until the day she died and has been voting Democrat ever since. I know…that joke is so old even my predictive spellcheck, the one that can’t tell whether I want to type “we’re” or “were” helped me with it. But still about as likely to be true.
Want more screaming-white-chick-car videos? This is how you get more screaming-white-chick-car videos.
An old acquaintance looking to harass women again.
I seem to remember reading that an ex-wife of the actor Sir Roger Moore launched so many frivolous lawsuits that she was eventually declared a vexatious litigant. I wonder if similar legislation exists in Yaniv’s jurisdiction?
I wonder if similar legislation exists in Yaniv’s jurisdiction?
Unfortunately, Yaniv is exploiting the Human Rights Commissions’ infrastructure and not the civil or criminal courts. Every province in Canada has a Human Rights Commission as does the Federal Government. These are semi-judicial bodies that generally report to the legislatures in their jurisdictions. Anyone can file a complaint about just about anything.
The complaints against the home salons that refused to wax “her” balls were filed with the British Columbia Human Rights Commssion. Her current “complaint” has been filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission. So they’re different commissions staffed with different people. There is very little accountability in the Human Rights process and it’s not unusual for trivial or baseless complaints to make it deep into the process.
Here’s a link outlining the complaint process for the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/eng/content/about-process
Disgruntled employees will often file a Human Rights complaint rather than take their employer to court because employment law is well defined and most complaints are baseless. There’s a higher chance of success if you claim discrimination because the process and oversight is a lot more touchy-feely and political.
If you have less and want more, then you were an idiot to go into the humanities. I thought the whole idea of pursuing the humanities was the pursuit of art and beauty, not filthy lucre.
With academic tenure one got a modest salary but lifetime job security. Those with a passion for, say, Renaissance French poetry, considered that a very good bargain.
…these ‘automated’ drawings involved suspending a felt-tip pen from the underside of a chair, resulting in random scribble on numerous sheets of paper positioned underneath. This feat was “REALLY exciting,” we learn, as it “explored movement, time, place and permanence.”
Good thing this creature never came across a seismograph – she’d be over the moon. Then again maybe not – probably too Patriarchal or some such idiocy.
From the same source keyboards are rayciss.
Oh.
‘K, fine, in that case, all the Unicode developers will just dump all the work that has been done.
Or
Unicode: Playing with multiple size full decks(1) ever since versions 6.0 and 7.0!!!
—In fact, thanks to Unicode, even the hipsters or whatever other term of the moment have their own symbols.
(1) Yes, there are 78 card decks, generally of two varieties . . .
“we have trained ourselves to reach predetermined conclusions in complex, nuanced, and productive ways.”
O/t, a doctor once described my cough as “productive”. But not nuanced, sadly.
“Equivalent education,” besides being untrue, is irrelevant.
Well, it seems to me that politics is to some extent an expression of personality, of psychology. In terms of leftism, where this seems most obvious, the psychology is often immature, unrealistic, and generally self-flattering, up to and including the most ludicrous kinds of narcissism. Professor Surber, whose views are hardly uncommon among his peers, is, I think, a pretty good data point.
Surber disdains markets because they jar with his estimation of how clever and valuable he is and where he thinks he should be in the social hierarchy. (Not that he would approve of social hierarchies, you understand, being as he is so nuanced and enlightened.) That doctors and engineers may earn more than he does and be regarded as more valuable offends our professor’s sense of superiority and entitlement. He deserves high status, you see, being so leftwing and egalitarian.
And when pressed on his assumptions, the professor is haughty, self-flattering and predictably dishonest, thereby revealing the complexity and nuance of which he boasts. As I said in the original thread, it’s almost as if Surber were trying to satirise his own position.
From “The Spectator”, James Kirkup on how the trans debate could cost a college porter his job:
“This is a story about a man called Kevin Price, who was until last week a councillor and who is, for now at least, employed as a porter at a Cambridge college.
The story illustrates two points. First, political conflict over trans rights and women’s rights is far from over, especially in the Labour Party. Second, people who say the wrong thing in this debate can put their livelihood at risk.
Mr Price last week resigned from Cambridge City Council. He had sat as a Labour councillor since 2010 and was once the council’s deputy leader.
He resigned rather than follow the Labour Group whip and vote for a motion that declared, among other things that:
‘Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary individuals are non-binary.’
Those are, of course, the holy words of trans orthodoxy, a catechism that cannot be questioned despite the countless questions it raises. (Here’s a starter for ten: if trans women are women, what does the word ‘women’ mean?)
Mr Price quit because, he said, he could not accept the unquestioning, uncritical adoption of those words. He noted that for some people, those words have highly troubling implications.
Resigning, he said:
“‘The inclusion of the first three sentences of this motion will send a chill down the spines of the many women who believe there is a conflict of rights and who want to be able to discuss those in a calm and evidenced-based way….[It is] foolish to pretend that there are not widely differing views in the current debate or that many people, especially women, are concerned about the impact on women’s sex-based rights from changes both in legislation and within society and who fear, not only that those rights are under threat, but that they are unable to raise legitimate questions and concerns without a hostile response.’
And that might have been the end of the story, seeing Mr Price ending his career as an interesting example of a politician putting principle before position or the party line, with a fairly measured contribution to a debate that too many politicians are still wary to enter.
If that was the end of it, Mr Price’s tale might prove only that Labour has some way to go before it reaches a settled, unified stance on this issue. There are good reasons that Keir Starmer has been trying to take a ‘listen to both sides’ position on the trans debate; one of those reasons is that his party is seriously split on the issue.
But that is not the end of Mr Price’s story. For Mr Price is now facing the sort of ‘hostile response’ he spoke about – calls for his employer to dismiss him from his job, because of his thoughts on sex and gender and ultimately, because of his reluctance to say the holy words.
According to Varsity, a student paper, the Union of Clare Students has condemned him and demanded the college authorities act against him. By discussing issues of policy and law at a council meeting, Mr Price had jeopardised the ‘safety’ of the college’s trans and non-binary students, the union suggested in a statement.
Varsity further quotes one Clare student as saying Price is ‘unfit both to hold public office and to be in a position of responsibility over students.’
Now, I didn’t go to Oxbridge and I’m not much for Marxist analysis of society as a class struggle. But I know enough about both to suggest that there’s something both distasteful and revealing about a bunch of Cambridge undergraduates threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to share their opinions and adopt their language.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about free speech on campus being under threat, and a lot of that talk has been overblown, based on nothing more than stupid self-important students doing what stupid, self-important students have always done and disinviting or banning people from speaking at events that no reasonable person would ever want to attend anyway.
But some of the concerns about universities and free inquiry are justified: just ask Professor Selina Todd, an Oxford historian who needed bodyguards because some people objected to her research on sex and gender in history.
And now it appears that the refusal to permit dissent or debate about sex and gender could cost a man his job at a university. I hope not, and not just for the sake of Kevin Price.
Yet if that is what does come to pass, Mr Price will be far from the first person to face such an egregious outcome, though he might just be the first man I’ve heard of to find himself in this position. Perhaps that might help persuade some people who have been too quiet on this topic for too long to find their voices at last”.
there’s something both distasteful and revealing about a bunch of Cambridge undergraduates threatening the livelihood of a man employed to serve them because he refuses to share their opinions and adopt their language.
Indeed. The Student Union claims, rather breathlessly, that demurral constitutes “brazen contempt for the rights and dignity of trans and non-binary people.” How isn’t quite made clear, unless one assumes that trans people have a unilateral right not to be disagreed with. And noting the obvious – that the categories “woman” and “trans woman” are not exactly the same thing and may sometimes exist in tension – isn’t in itself “transphobic” or an expression of malice. It’s merely a failure to pretend.
The Student Union also insists that “trans and non-binary students should not have to interact [with] or rely on [Mr Price] for support in any way.” Which makes me wonder exactly how precious the students imagine they are, such that they want a world in which they never have to interact with people who disagree with them.
And then there’s the standard boilerplate about how the Student Union’s priority is to ensure that the “trans and non-binary community” feels both “celebrated” and “empowered.” Endless celebration may be impractical, to say nothing of dishonest, but it’s very in right now. And I suppose dogmatic bullying and trying to get a porter fired for a difference of opinion is one way to feel powerful.
…the Student Union’s priority is to ensure that the “trans and non-binary community” feels both “celebrated” and “empowered.”
It’s strange how that seemingly joyous word ‘celebrate’ has come to represent so much of the muddled thinking that has brought us to where we are.
When we think of the early, imperfect experiments in religious tolerance in Europe, the burghers of the 16th/17th century Netherlands come to mind, all confident in the ‘knowledge’ that many of the people who lived peacefully beside them were also people who held beliefs that were wrong, perhaps wrong to the extent that holding them guaranteed eternal damnation. It might be OK to do business with them, even to be friendly with them, but you certainly wouldn’t let one of your children marry one of them. It was a revolutionary idea and, as it grew and was adopted elsewhere, it permitted the Western world to emerge from centuries of religious persecution and conflict without everybody having to sign up to the same set of beliefs. It is a precious legacy and one that we should not allow to wither away.
And yet it is withering away, not because it is being explicitly rejected by any more than a tiny minority (most people, including these Student Union types, still like to think of themselves as tolerant) but through a gradual process of semantic shift. If you were to ask me, for example, whether I am tolerant of homosexuality, the accurate answer would have to be ‘no’; I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with homosexuality so the issue of tolerance doesn’t arise. But this understanding of what tolerance means is being erased. Increasingly, to be considered ‘tolerant’ requires celebration, while true tolerance, the tolerance that allows those who disagree with each other to live together in peace despite their disagreements, is decried as intolerance.
So why has this semantic shift occurred? I sometimes wonder whether it isn’t at least partly due to the ever-narrowing field of things for the typical enlightened Westerner to be tolerant of. After all, if my definition of ‘wrong’ is basically ‘that which harms others’, then more and more things move into the field where tolerance simply doesn’t arise (such as homosexuality, in my example above). The only problem is that ‘tolerance’ is a bit of a shibboleth in Western culture; for an awful lot of people it is really terribly important to be seen and thought of as tolerant, particularly of things that were historically not tolerated. But how are you to get opportunities to be seen and thought of as tolerant if there are fewer and fewer things for you to be tolerant of? So you’re very happy to go along with a shift in the general understanding of what tolerance is if that’s enough to make those opportunities begin to arise again.
But that, while it may be personally gratifying, is also very dangerous. Because if we conflate tolerance and celebration – two things that are not only different but actually contradictory – there is a real risk that we will forget how to tolerate those things that we cannot bring ourselves to celebrate. And that is the whole f***ing point of tolerance. It is clear that many people, particularly among the ‘educated’ young, have already reached that point. But I remain confident that the battle isn’t lost yet.
Because if we conflate tolerance and celebration – two things that are not only different but actually contradictory – there is a real risk that we will forget how to tolerate those things that we cannot bring ourselves to celebrate. And that is the whole f***ing point of tolerance.
[ Slides four complimentary peanuts along bar. ]
Wow, four! I’m assuming that the salt has antiseptic properties…
The Guild of Evil peanuts (and other, um, “delicacies”) are at least arguably better than the World’s Worst Sandwich.
Back in 1975, the late Bob Hope had quipped: “I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d get out before they make it compulsory.”. The fine line between tolerance and celebration was already being blurred even back then.
APL: at least back then Bob Hope was able to make that joke. Nowadays he’d have the mob baying for his blood.
Because if we conflate tolerance and celebration – two things that are not only different but actually contradictory…
Thing is, one might almost feel sorry for young people who are immersed in modern leftism. I spent an hour or two this morning browsing several fairly mainstream leftist websites and was struck by just how much of the content is ludicrously hyperbolical. I mean, if you’re an insecure youngster and your social identity is based on the kind of operatic narcissism so often found among lefties – see Salon, Slate, half of leftist Twitter – this is unlikely to make you more tolerant of demurral. If you read, say, Salon or Slate unironically – though one wonders how – you might well believe that Amy Coney Barrett will make annual pregnancy compulsory, and that Trump is only days away from outlawing both voting and the existence of brown people.
It’s unhinging stuff.
I don’t think we’re yet at the stage where many people are saying “Here is something that I do not find positively good, therefore it shouldn’t be allowed”. There is still a residual attachment to the idea that some demonstrable harm has to be proven in order to justify suppression. Hence the hyperbole.
… so of course nobody is suggesting that a college porter should be fired because of what he thinks or says. He should be fired because he is endangering the safety of a number of students. That changes everything.
Hence the hyperbole.
The self-ratcheting tendency of leftist posturing has been noted here once or twice.
For instance.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about free speech on campus being under threat, and a lot of that talk has been overblown, based on nothing more than stupid self-important students doing what stupid, self-important students have always done and disinviting or banning people from speaking at events that no reasonable person would ever want to attend anyway.
Please clarify “recent years” because the threatening violence to force college admins to cancel speakers and even showing up to keep the audience away from speakers has intensified in the last 4 years but goes further back. And each time something new happens warnings that indulging it will only bring more gets the usual “this isn’t a big deal” treatment.
And here we are. Colleges run by the Red Guard.
So in regard to open thread…question for those in far away places, like Canada or even further…I will be voting tomorrow in our general election. I have before me a ballot with, between candidates for various offices from POTUS down to Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor, to several judges, to several state constitutional amendments and local tax issues, 28 items to make decisions about. Is this in line with what you crazy foreign peoples in God forsaken lands where the technology of mixing taps is still a TBD thing deal with as well?
On final thing that I do feel I ought to add is that all this is very much about the woke. The woke are not synonymous with the left. I am broadly on the left, not the Marxist left and certainly not the post-modern left, but the left nonetheless. I believe in a free market economy with sufficient levels of taxation to enable both the provision of public services and a certain amount of redistribution of resources from the richer to the poorer.
I am aware that for some of those here (and for many if not most of those on a site like Samizdata), this is enough to put me on the side of evil. But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
The key cultural issue today is about what the rules of the political game are. What side you’re on is almost secondary in the grand scheme of things.
But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
[ Quietly starts hiding breakables. Checks supply of tear gas. ]
Yep, white chick … this time in her bathtub instead of a car.
I am broadly on the left, not the Marxist left and certainly not the post-modern left, but the left nonetheless. I believe in a free market economy with sufficient levels of taxation to enable both the provision of public services and a certain amount of redistribution of resources from the richer to the poorer.
Well, there’s Leftists (il-liberal Marxist oriented) and liberals who are anti-Marxist but somehow feel that violating property rights is ok for “a good cause”.
My argument is that your government solution to the issues of poverty actually enable that poverty. e.g. LBJ’s “Great Society” destroyed the black family.
and a certain amount of redistribution of resources from the richer to the poorer.
Hey, I’m coming around to the idea of significantly higher taxes on inheritance. Not sure how it would actually work out but anything that drains the power from these woke-a-holics who’ve never held a real job but feel it is their “duty” to tell the rest of us how to live is FBM. The bloody Rockefellers should have been the first clue nearly 100 years ago. Meh…goes further back than that even. Andrew Carnegie tried to warn us.
More from The Spectator where Mark Piggott asks why the “free school meals” debate has become so toxic.
(For the benefit of our chums from overseas, in Britain children can eat school lunch for free if their household/parental income is below a certain level. Thanks to the closure of schools during the recent silliness some kids haven’t been getting free lunch because, er, the school was closed. A footballer, Marcus Rashford, has come up with the idea that the free lunches should still be served even if the schools are otherwise closed (including during the various and numerous holidays) thus ensuring that schools would essentially become year-round soup kitchens with an “educational facility” attached (my what’s names). Needless to say, the left have risen up as one to beat the Tories over the head with this. Mr. Rashford earns approximately £10 million per year from Manchester United F.C.).
Mark Piggott: “My childhood in 1980s West Yorkshire wasn’t a clichéd mash-up of a Hovis commercial and Kes. For most of my youth we had an indoor toilet, for instance, and though we lived in a cramped terraced house it wasn’t a back-to-back – which meant we could hang our washing in the back alley rather than out front. I did conform to stereotype in one sense, though: until the age of 14 I was on free school meals. I still remember how at my comprehensive school we had to line up separately on one side of the corridor. Unfairly, our dinner tickets had a special mark so that unlike the ‘other half’ we couldn’t flog them for the price of a chip butty. Presumably, the thinking was that we might not get a nutritious meal at home, which might have been the case for some kids, but not for me.
What’s astonishing almost 40 years later is not that campaigners such as the admirable Marcus Rashford still need to explain what it’s like to be poor – but that so many, mostly in the Conservative party, still seem unable to grasp that for whatever reasons, some young people still go hungry.
Blame feckless, absent fathers if you like, but anyone who believes a single mum bringing up kids on benefits has enough money to eat well is at best unimaginative and at worst uncaring. And though it was probably wrong for Labour’s Angela Rayner to shout ‘scum!’ at Conservative MP Chris Clarkson last week, there will now be a lot of people along the Red Wall who would consider the apparently vengeful vote against the provision of free meals to deprived children as exactly that: the actions of the nasty party.
As with so many issues at the moment, the debate over free meals has become over-heated and under-illuminated, with both sides entrenched within their ideological prisons. Yet again – as with Brexit, the pandemic, Trump-Biden and BLM – we are expected to pick a side and stick with it, wilfully ignoring anything that challenges our simplistic worldview. Except life is rarely so cut and dried. Some poor families do fritter their money away; some are genuine saints and angels. Some Tories do consider the poor scum; and some working-class people, in particular in the North, do still consider all Tories to be scum.
Hopefully, I have grown more sophisticated in my thinking over the decades. Partly this resulted from living in London, where I witnessed deprivation far greater than anything I experienced back home. Partly it has been a result of my own gear-change up through the social classes. Mostly, though, it has been as a result of mixing with people from every conceivable background and political affiliation and discovering that most – regardless of their proud political stripe – genuinely want to make the world a better place.
Which is why it’s so depressing that we appear to be more interested in dismissing the views and policies of our ‘enemies’ than wondering how to work alongside them. This reductive, holier-than-thou attitude is not only childish, it’s also counter-productive. The louder voices are raised, the deeper we bury our heads in the sand emerging only to take pot-shots at the other side, the longer children will experience the dreadful sensation of hunger. Surely, as caring, empathetic people, living in one of the richest, safest societies the world has ever known, we can at least come together to combat that?”
My reaction is to say that this was never about having “…enough money to eat well” in the first place.
The argument has become “toxic” because of the twin idiotic echo chambers of social media, Twitter and FB.
I’ve just looked at my FB feed (I cannot stand Twitter and am rapidly running out of patience with Facebook as a tool for keeping in touch with family, old school mates and overseas friends) and sure enough it’s one long litany of middle-class Lefties posturing and preening, where “poverty” is because of the “greedy rich”, the Tories are “evil- go on, Boris voters, refute that one!”, children are “…starving”, etc. etc.
It’s not even an “argument”- it’s just bunch of clowns, many of whom are well-educated, wealthy by any reasonable standards and otherwise capable of rational analysis, blethering away because everybody else is doing it. It’s like watching a group of 15th century wool merchants being ostentatiously pious and humble, chucking a couple of groats they can easily afford at the raggedy people in a vain attempt to impress the bishop as his sedan chair carries him over the festering mire of Shytegate.
It’s pathetic.
(Sorry for banging on at such length today. I think the strain of living through The Age Of Peak Stupid is beginning to tell).
this time in her bathtub instead of a car.
Again, it’s either delusional or it’s performative and pretentious. Neither option is reassuring.
[ Added: ]
If the Supreme Court confirmation of a mainstream conservative reduces you to tearful hysteria, which you then film and share online with countless strangers, despite being in the bath at the time, then there’s probably something wrong with you. If, on the other hand, you merely feel an urge to feign these psychodramas in order to accrue in-group status – by pretending to be hysterical at the Supreme Court confirmation of a mainstream conservative – then… well, there’s also probably something wrong with you.
a Hovis commercial and Kes
Heh. We watched Kes a couple of months ago. No f’n idea WTF they were saying but a good film. Like watching a foreign language file without subtitles. Waking Ned Devine made so much more sense when we turned that on, though I mostly blame the acoustics in our house for that.
But to your more relevant point, re Some poor families do fritter their money away; some are genuine saints and angels. Some Tories do consider the poor scum; and some working-class people, in particular in the North, do still consider all Tories to be scum.…
I will repeat this until my last dying breath, the greatest problem we have economically is the ignorance, widely believed and often buried in academic gibberish, that for one person to get richer, another person must get poorer. This belief undermines effort, re-enforces defeatism, and probably does more to create class divisions than anything Marx ever dreamed of. Damn near every economic problem we face, and 90% of our social issues, could be resolved with a much broader understanding of this economic fact. Virtually every socio-economic issue being discussed is time wasted without this understanding.
Also, knowing nothing about European “Football” but is this guy any good? Or is this a parallel to ColKap? A guy whose time is passed and is using victimization to hold on?
Again, it’s either delusional or it’s performative and pretentious.
I would be prepared to bet a considerable amount of money that it’s performative and pretentious. I’d bet the bloody house on it.
I would be prepared to bet a considerable amount of money that it’s performative and pretentious.
And as noted above, that’s scarcely less neurotic. Feeling compelled to pretend these things, publicly and competitively, in an attempt to achieve the most gratuitous woke meltdown and thereby in-group status, doesn’t exactly suggest mental wellbeing.
Is this in line with what you crazy foreign peoples in God forsaken lands…
Nope. In Canada we have three types of election, federal, provincial, and municipal. Each is separate from the other. During federal and provincial elections we fill out one ballot, selecting one individual to represent us in federal or provincial parliament. There could be any number of people running for the job, but we only select one.
We don’t vote directly for the federal or provincial leader. So if you want John Smith to be the Prime Minister and John Smith belongs to the Conservative Party, then in order to make this happen you have to vote for Jane Doe, the Conservative Party candidate in your riding. But even if Jane Doe gets elected it does not mean that John Smith automatically becomes Prime Minister. Smith’s party-associated colleagues must win at least a plurality of ridings (which represent seats in parliament) in order to become the Prime Minister. While on the surface this would appear to simplify things, it prevents voters from having finer control over their governments. For example in the US, you could be a Democrat but you might really dislike the Presidential candidate. You could vote for a Democrat in the senate and the house and vote for a Republican for president.
In municipal elections we have several more selections to make. We vote for a mayor, we vote for a councillor to represent our ward, we vote for a school board trustee and in some regions we vote for a regional chair. All other positions: judges, dog catchers, police, sheriffs, fire services etc are appointments or employees.
I can agree with this, depending on the definitions of ‘certain amount,’ ‘richer,’ and ‘poorer.’ And of ‘public services.’ There are some things (police, firefighters, roads/bridges, etc.) which I have no issue with being publicly funded. But the left does far too much ginning up of imaginary rights (abortion*, healthcare, not-being-offended) and demanding they be paid for out of the community purse. They also do far too much ‘othering’ and scapegoating of ‘rich people.’ I also have no problem with said purse supporting those who are objectively permanently disabled through no fault of their own, or temporarily those who are in dire financial straits — again, through no fault of their own. This business of productive members of society being forced to foot the bill for irresponsible layabouts needs to stop.
* I am pro-choice, up to a point (a point which falls somewhere past the first trimester). What I am not is pro-subsidy. It’s an elective procedure. If you want one, pay for it yourself or hit up your friends and family (or rabid pro-abortion partisans).
…and demanding they be paid for out of the community purse.
Not only do they want it paid for out of the community purse, they want the community to run it through some sort of government bureaucracy or crown corporation. Sometimes that’s okay and works. But too many times it doesn’t.
For example, Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years. The project is still not complete and it’s way over budget. It is going to continue well into this decade. A developer would have finished the project long ago or gone out of business and somone else would have finished it off.
Toronto is also replacing its streetcars. The original supplier screwed up the contract and the city just completed a lawsuit against the company. Oh, but they turned around and re-awarded the contract to the same company. Ottawa, which suffers very cold and very snowy winters ordered LRT cars that weren’t designed to operate under these conditions. You can’t make this stuff up.
Private companies screw-up all the time too, but problems tend to be surfaced and resolved much more quickly than when a government bureaucracy is in charge.
On final thing that I do feel I ought to add is that all this is very much about the woke. The woke are not synonymous with the left.
See, such as:
Narcissist.
But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
See, such as:
But I think that for most here it simply makes me someone with a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully. . . . . . .
For example, Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years. The project is still not complete
Ask me about California’s “High Speed Rail” aka as the Browndoggle (after former governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown)
In my little slice of Heaven, the bleeding hearts on the School Board determined that with the schools closed, they needed to continue paying the kitchen staff to make meals for the poor kids, and paying the school bus drivers to drive the food from the schools into the neighborhoods where the kids live.
Never mind that the nice ladies in the local churches could feed the kids in their area for five bucks a head, rather than spending thirty bucks a head to have crappy school lunches delivered in big yellow buses. Never mind that the neighborhood programs would be funded by charitable neighbors banding together to take care of each other, while the school programs are funded by every resident through coercion, whether they can afford the expense or not. (Also never mind how many of these ‘poor kids’ are teens who have better cell phones, shoes and weed than what I can afford for myself.)
But God help you if you advocate for low-profile, low-overhead charity rather than top-heavy central planning and entitlements. If you do that sort of thing, it’s because you’re a horrible excuse for a human being who hates children and wants to see them starve.
@Hal
Maybe I’m being dim but I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying there.
@George,
Not to worry, he doesn’t either.
“Toronto has been “revitalizing” it’s main train station for 10-years. It was supposed to be completed in six-years”
Not even a Train Station, but the bicycle rack for one.
Government run project to make a cage for bicycles… 3 years over and $1.9M vice planned $600K
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2020/02/15/dc-metro-has-spent-3-8-million-and-five-years-on-two-unfinished-bike-racks-that-were-to-be-ready-in-2015/
Farnsworth +1
@Hal
Maybe I’m being dim but . . . .
Welll, as the comment notes, . . . very much about the woke. The woke are . . .
See, such as:
Narcissist.
. . . and in turn . . .
. . . a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully.
. . . being, quite certainly, . . . a different view who can be disagreed with and engaged with respectfully. . . .
Not to worry, he doesn’t either.
Posted by: Farnsworth M Muldoon
Of course, poor FM doesn’t just have an ongoing hatred of reality, more particularly, there is that vehement hatred of being reminded of reality, particularly when having no way to refute either reality or the one providing the reminder . . .
Instead of seeking solutions to improve reality, he prefers to remain a little girl with a diary.
@George
Well, I’m sure that last comment from @Hal clears things up.
Sadly, Hal thinks we all hear the same voices he hears in his head.
Sadly, Hal thinks we all hear the same voices he hears in his head.
Better to just skip over Hal’s comments than waste time trying to decipher his meaning, since “what did you mean by that?” just results in more gibberish. Too bad.
“Not even a Train Station, but the bicycle rack for one.
Government run project to make a cage for bicycles… 3 years over and $1.9M vice planned $600K”
I’ll just leave this link here, I think.
Having seen this particular flavour of logorrhea before, I do wonder if lithium (or the lack thereof) isn’t involved.
I would have commented upon @Hal’s signal to noise ratio, but I believe that noise to signal is a better metric for his/her/its posts.
In most cases, his/her/its comments are similar to the old punch-drunk boxer that I saw in the late 1970s in New York City muttering things that perhaps made sense to him but not to anyone else listening.
@Hal has occasionally provided something interesting to read here. Reading his/her/its comments are not always fruitless; somewhat like the YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/DrainAddict, there is the occasional kernel of corn that you see when you are working, but you might have to wade through a bit of shit to get it. (If you’ve never watched his videos, you probably should not watch that channel within 1 hour of consuming food.)
At any rate, our host tolerates @Hal. (Our host tolerates me for that matter.) All hail Mr. Thompson and his better half for allowing all sorts of people to comment here.
All hail Mr. Thompson and his better half for allowing all sorts of people to comment here.
In thirteen years, and 14 million pageviews, I’ve blocked and banned barely a handful of people, maybe seven or so. Which isn’t bad going, all things considered. I like to think it’s the classy tone that does most of the work.
What?
Looking back to when I went to art college years ago, I can now see I was useless. I actually drew and painted and never, ever thought of being praised for hanging a pen from the underside of a chair.
But then Watford art college didn’t shake that much, though I am happy to believe Hertfordshire now lies on the edge of a tectonic plate so may be subject to tremors.