Natural History

Posted in Politics | 21 Comments

21 Responses

1. on March 26, 2013 at 9:13 pm chervilmeadow

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   • on March 27, 2013 at 9:47 am massugu

     That’s the symbol of the LGBT alliance here in the US. In the struggle between 21st century Progressive values as represented by the majority of our citizenry and the early 19th Century values of the OWG (Old White Guys), Gay Marriage has been a major issue.

     Others are birth control, abortion rights, voter’s rights, our social welfare system, teaching Creationism in our public schools, climate change denial, separation of Church and State, gun control, anti-Islamic policies, GMOs, etc., etc, ad nauseam. Its much the same struggle you folks are facing w/ your Tory’s right now.

     
     
     • on March 27, 2013 at 11:25 am bearcoatpei

       Our illustrious “we’re all in this together” lying greaseball of a populist u turning gobshite prime minister who thinks if he tells the same lies for long enough, we’ll believe him is all for gay marriage. Truth is, it doesn’t matter if he’s not got a progressive bone in his body as it’s just a smoke screen zombie policy. While he’s loudly banging his pro gay marriage drum, he is stealthily screwing us up the arse with other legislation that’s kept behind the scenes and out of the media eye that we can’t see or hear for the clamour he’s making. And don’t even get me started of Iain Duncan Smith who does nothing but set the proles at each other’s throats be lying through his teeth, now repeat after me – “everybody on benefits is a scrounger getting more money that honest people working all week and there are plenty jobs if they got out of bed rather than having 5 kids, taking drugs, drinking cider and smoking 2 packets of cigs a day while they watch TV on their huge flat screen TV in their 5 bedroom council house if only they’d get off their sofa and look for them”. And then we come to George Osborne, who’s closest thing to any qualification for being in charge of the UK economy is counting the towels as he folded them when he worked in Selfridges and lasted a week. As for their austerity measures, I can’t work out if it’s cynical and cunning or just simple minded. One thing’s for sure, it’s not hurting them so they’re quite happy to play with other people’s lives by slashing to the bone the poorest people then slashing again while giving the richest a cut in tax. You don’t see them taking a massive pay cut and you certainly don’t see them chasing the big money tax evaders. I suppose they’re not biting the hand that feeds both now and in the future when they give up politics.

       I believe strongly in equality for all and as a woman I’d like to believe that it’s getting better for everybody. But alas no. We’ve been slowly sliding backwards in time towards the dark ages for quite a while now. All the feminism, racial intergration, gay pride and gender acceptance hits a glass ceiling that the OWGs are holding a decadent squanderparty with the money we’ve handed over to them while we brace them up by the top of our skulls and start squabbling amongst ourselves as they walk on our heads. We’re all in this together they say. Yup, but their policies mean it’s like being in a blueberry in a jug of other blueberries – not everybody is on the top layer and being on the bottom means you’re the one getting squeezed the hardest. We’re a couple of years off being back in the Victorian era in England I swear. As soon as the Con-Dem-Nation can think of a politically correct name to call a workhouse and actually find some menial and meaningless task for what they consider the great unwashed tide of benefit scroungers, they’ll be reinstating them and putting the poor in neat little cells. They’ve already made it almost impossible for people on even a moderate wage to live in central London and are uprooting benefit claimants from their friends, families, children’s schools and shuttling them up north where it’s cheaper to live.

       *self combusts… sets fire to soapbox… gets 3 years in jail for arson*

       Oh well, what can I do but pick up my singed body and carrying on kicking against the pricks. Lets see what

       
       
       • on March 27, 2013 at 6:37 pm massugu

         1) Its an old B.E. concept–one whole-heartedly embraced by the US establishment BTW–called Divide and Conquer.

         2) Where the hell is Charles Dickens (or Walter Cronkite for that matter) when ya need him?

         But yes, I agree that the western capitalist oligarchies (I can’t bring myself to call them democracies) are sliding backward into a 16th and 17th Century mind-set. And just like then, its gonna come back to bite ’em in the ass big time.

         The most positive thing I see happening right now are all the local co-ops and alternative currency/barter schemes cropping up all over. (Read: if the big boys won’t let us play in their sandbox–we’ll just build our own and screw them!)

         This new approach to economis is kind of like a corollary to the old question: ‘What if somebody declared a war and nobody came?’ In this case it’ll be What if I when I amass all the money in the world, nobody cares cause they’ve stopped using it? (The damned phallus-measuring, bigoted, posturing, myopic, OCD fools!)

         
         
         • on March 28, 2013 at 9:56 am bearcoatpei

           Democracy and the current oligarcs brand of rampant greedy capitalism mix about as well as sea water and an oil tanker spill.

           Lets just hope these grass root co-operatives and charities take more of a hold despite the government trying to either choke the life out of them or use them for their own financial ends in any way possible. The spoilt kids can just jolly well carry on playing in their sandbox all alone while they watch the other kids having a good time together playing team games on the grass. David Cameron’s “big society, small government” was a cynical ploy of his to take all the glory for other people’s altruism and community spirit. He got a spanking and unceremoniously sent back to his sand pit over it. That’s what you get when you take all the toys and won’t share, but expect the kids you mercilessly bully to let you join in a game of tag.

           
           
2. on March 27, 2013 at 1:56 pm hemmingforddogblog

   Up here in the Great White North, we have had marriage equality for a few years now. The people that were crazy before ME, are still crazy. They have moved on to try to get the abortion issue raised in the House of Commons. They will always be crazy…just another issue.

   Even our idiot PM is smart enough to leave this one alone.

   
   
   • on March 27, 2013 at 3:01 pm retrieverman

     He knows two thing: Don’t hit the social issues too hard and don’t touch the health care system. Though he’d love to do both.

     
     
   • on March 29, 2013 at 5:51 am Dave

     The Conservative Party of Canada is fracturing because of the abortion issue recently.

     I wonder if the Reform Party and the Progressive Conservatives will be two separate right-wing parties.I hope so, then they would be on equal footing with NDP and Liberals.

     The last thing I want is for the NDP/Liberals to have a merger just so they can get enough collective votes to defeat the Conservatives.

     I DO NOT WANT A TWO-PARTY SYSTEM LIKE UNITED KINGDOM OR UNITED STATES!

     Unfortunately, the douchebag NDP had to go for a power-grab and called a vote of confidence before former Prime Minister Paul Martin was able to draft a bill for proportional representation.

     And from the look of the current Liberals line-up, I don’t think the proportional representation voting system won’t be tabled anytime in the future.

     
     
3. on March 28, 2013 at 7:07 am chervilmeadow

   Those in charge at such a bad economic time, in Britain, will of course be blamed, but the main alternative is to vote for labour, the ones who got us here via too much borrowing – and who also took us into two stupid conflicts, remember – or else the united kingdom independence party (UKIP) a one trick pony, as arguably so are the Greens for which hopeless cause I’m nevertheless still tempted to vote for.

   
   
   • on March 28, 2013 at 8:12 am bearcoatpei

     That’s the rub as they’re all as useless as each other. Voting Labour or Conservative is like being a turkey and given a choice of neck or body cavity when you know you’re going to be stuffed whatever. And looking at the cabinet of each party, it’s an enthusiastic but inexperienced, naive kid on an internship their rich daddy got them that’s wielding the slaughter knife.

     Where I live it’s not even worth voting as if they put a red rosette on a random boulder, it would be voted in with a large majority. Not that I’d want the Tories in either. More and more people are realizing that we’re not voting for change, but for the same organ grinder who’s giving us a choice of monkeys wearing different coloured rosettes to lull us into the false security of thinking we have control over our own futures. No wonder the turn out is so pathetic at any election. Either that or they’ve deliberately been breeding a generation who are too ignorant to even spell politics.

     They always blame the last government to be in, but in truth our dire situation goes back much further than even Thatcher the milk snatcher and far wider as the rest of the West is in the same position. Democracy only works when everybody involved plays fair. And capitalism isn’t fair – it’s greedy and selfish.

     
     
     • on March 28, 2013 at 11:48 am massugu

       Its the old Coke or Pepsi quandary.

       One of the major problems we face is that people in general are most comfortable w/ simplistic answers to difficult problems. That leads us to embrace “isms”–systems that purport to have all the answers to everything. But it doesn’t matter which “ism” you choose, its gonna have both good and bad aspects. And the answer isn’t revolution as that just trades one set of assholes for another–that’s the old “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic” syndrome.

       The best way to develop a decent political system is to emulate nature and let it evolve from whatever you’re starting point is–adopting new, possibly useful ideas from whomever, and tossing what doesn’t work.

       
       
     • on March 29, 2013 at 7:33 am megrim43

       You nailed it!

       Elizabeth

       
       
4. on March 28, 2013 at 7:34 am chervilmeadow

   I’m a bit ambivalent about the latest tory wheeze, to reduce social benefits for those in possession of what may be deemed a “spare” bedroom. I suppose this assumes that such rooms are generally being let out, often informally, at a profit or else, if not, then it is to force house owners on benefits to take in lodgers?

   
   
   • on March 28, 2013 at 9:30 am bearcoatpei

     They don’t care how many bedrooms you have as long as you stump up the money. They say it’s to free up houses for families, but they have no one bedroom social housing for single people/couples to move to. If they moved on to rent privately, they’d be hard pressed to find a one bedroom flat to rent and then it would likely be almost as expensive as renting a two bedroom terraced house, of which the housing benefit wouldn’t cover and they’d be paying as much as if they stopped in their council accommodation. And woe betide you have kids under 16 (or under 20 if they are different sexes) who have their own rooms as you’ll be paying for that 3rd bedroom. So it’s basically a no win situation that’s been designed to punish the poorest and most vulnerable in society. Surprise surprise. People on benefits will find the money even if it means going without food and heat as they have no realistic alternative.

     And don’t get me started about the half arsed idea of giving people the rent in their hands to pay to their landlords themselves. Well, that’s the drug addicts in instant arrears for starters. That’s a cynical way to bring in paying all benefits to everybody on a prepay card in the near future and being able to determine what they spend it on. Never mind that most people on benefits are responsible and have paid in more than they will claim – punish everebody for the actions of the few as you are just leeching scum if you claim benefits in the government’s eyes.

     
     
     • on March 29, 2013 at 7:38 am megrim43

       And once you can determine what they spend their benefit on, you can demonise benefit recipients even more – divide and rule, that`s the Tory way.

       Elizabeth

       
       
       • on March 30, 2013 at 7:56 am bearcoatpei

         That and it keeps the Daily Fail in print.

         
         
         • on March 30, 2013 at 8:38 am retrieverman

           I love the old Irish rebel song about “The Man from the Daily Mail.”

           
           
5. on March 28, 2013 at 4:17 pm Gizmo

   Shows how out of it I am…I learn things like this reading dog blogs…I’ve noticed the symbol all over Facebook this week (sometimes using dog bones instead of straight lines) and had no clue what it meant…Thank you!

   
   
   • on March 28, 2013 at 10:46 pm kittenz

     The one that gets me is the equal sign made of baby feet, meaning the poster is “pro-life” and they “want the rights of the unborn to be recognized, too”. I have seen that on the profiles of women whom I know personally, who themselves have had abortions. I suppose it’s OK for them to do that, now that THEIR “little problems” have been “erased”. Most of those same, “good Christian” women are adamantly against marriage equality.

     
     
     • on March 29, 2013 at 8:20 am bearcoatpei

       I would never judge a woman put in the position where she feels an abortion is her best choice of a no win situation. But I will judge a woman who has one then turns on women in the same situation as a hypocrite with no compassion or empathy. The bulk of the pro-lifers are fervently religious men and they have no right to an opinion on the subject, let alone harass women in the street. When men are personally involved with the woman in that position, then they may have a say in the matter. Otherwise, it’s none of their damn business.

       
       
       • on March 29, 2013 at 3:30 pm kittenz

         Agreed

         
         

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