I'm wondering whether to vote at the general election. I probably will, but i still haven't decided which box to tick yet. I just can't bring myself to find out who is gonna do what for me. As soon as their faces come up on my telly screen and they start talking bullshit i turn off.They all seem like tosspots to me. None of them have my vote yet. Almost daily now i get some crap through my door from labour or Conservative propaganda head office.
It usually has a picture of a middle aged man or woman dressed like my grandma or grandad on the front, and from what i can see scanning over the leaflet it's two thirds telling me how crap the other side are, and one third telling me how good they will be.
They ask stupid questions that your supposed to answer no to, like
Do you want your pension raided and given to illegal immigrants ?.
Do you want murderers and rapist released from prison early ?.
Do you want taxes to be doubled and given to the greedy fat cats in charge of our banks ?
if the answer to all these questions is NO !. then you need to vote for.......
Do you think their treating me like a child ?. Talking down to me ?. think i'm an idiot ?.
Answers on a postcard to......Labour, conservative, Liberal......Blah blah blah.
According to the weatherman we're gonna get some snow this week. Bloody hell, please no.
I'm getting addicted to Family guy and American Dad on BBC three. It's the only thing on this channel worth bothering with and they show them all the time.
When i was a kid i loved cartoons, then i reached my teens and the sight of animation turned me off. Now i'm back to the toons again.
If i hear Florence + the Machine dog days are over one more time i'll bloody scream. It seems to have take over from Here come the girls as the tune that every TV show wants to slip in somewhere
25 comments:
Hi, Mambam, seems I'm like the first on this one. I think that our ancestors went through a great struggle to get us the vote, in the face of opposition from the few who owned the country, so that we would have a representative who had a real influence on how we are governed. The tragedy now is that those who own the country moved the goalposts and shifted power away from Parliament, so that all our vote now gets us a representative who has absolutely no influence on how we are governed. That's no help to you (or me) but it's what I think. Love, Alec
I've got my soapbox out now! Marx said 'Religion is the opiate of the people' (he didn't, of course, it was that in German), meaning that those who owned the countries used religion to keep the people quiet. Now that religion has no power (except to lynch gays, drive planes into skyscrapers, or abuse children) it's fucking reality tv and Jeremy Kyle that saps our brains and stops us rising up and striking the establishment down
Elections always seem to bring out the worst in everyone, the tv adds are the worst...
family guy cracks me up;)
Beyond asking "who is gonna do what for me," I'd recommend asking "who is gonna do what for, or to, the country."
It may be television that is principally responsible for the dismal state of political discourse nowadays. Television favors the sound bite. Extended explanation is virtually impossible. So slogans, hyperbole, and appeals to emotions and self-interest are all we hear. It takes some digging to get to what one party proposes and why, and why another party thinks it's a bad idea.
But Alec Lindsay is right that universal suffrage is nothing to take for granted. So give it a go.
Vote !
I don't care for whom but vote.
For the the reasons given.
Alec is nearly right in his quote, but the rest of his points are spot on.
I've just finished rereading Farenheit9/11 and in it Michael Moore writes about Bush's and by implication Bliar's faith based approach to the truth.
i.e. god told him to invade Iraq so they distorted the facts to convince the country to back them.
Read 1984, Orwell meant it as a warning, Bliar took it as a manifesto.
I agree about the toons I watch them most nights or QI on Dave.
What did we do before Dave ?
Alright, so the quote as it is usually delivered, is a contraction of the passage from Marx's 'Critique etc.' but it conveys the sense of what he said - more baldly perhaps, more unkind to religion perhaps - but although his original may have dressed it up, there's no escaping that he was saying the purpose of religion was(is) to spin the poor a line to hide the fact that they are exploited.
I'm in the US. We have a very crooked government but I feel I should try to make a difference. Our financial downfall is the result of greed and corruption and will probably take us years to fix if ever... I know this doesn't make you positive about voting but we have to do our part and hope it makes a difference..
I'm sure you realize that the quote is simply a tissue of unsupported opinion. As long as one realizes that it is as unscientific as religion itself, it can be amusing I suppose.
Kinkynik: *clutches brow, rolls eyes upwards, and groans*
Naturgesetz: well naturally it's opinion but then it's not exactly an area for science, although I think the dear old thing and social 'scientists' like to think it is. I like your patrician dismissal tho'. 'Amusing' - you mean a bit like an impudent claret?
@ Alec Lindsay — Thanks LOL Not precisely what I had in mind, but close enough. If one accepts materialism on faith, which is what is required, then I'm sure it's great fun to trot out old Karl's bons mots.
I agree with Alec's points, well done Alec.
on a different level of course, I think the person who doesn't vote, doesn't have the right to bitch about whats going on when everything goes tits up. When the fan hits the shit, or tother way round!
So get off, your pretty lil tush when the time comes and vote!
I agree if you accept materialism (as I'm not quite sure what, but) it has to be done as an article of faith - just like, at some level, everything else. By the way what happened to Mambam? I'm missing his cutting through the crap.
It is fun because I have always enjoyed acting as devil's advocate.
Marxist I ain't but there is a certain poetry in these words.
naturgestz seems to have set himself up as the bishop of the internet, hunting down dissent and heretics where ever he can.
What next virtual burnings at the stake ?
Of course it's only Marx's opinion but all the blurb in your bible is only opinion and some people want to run the 21st century by decisions taken at Carthage 1600 years ago.
To be populist for a moment, anyone that can view the evidence of child rape by members of his religion and not want to apoligise for these deeds but instead becomes an apologist for them deserves all that's awaiting him.
Alec appears perhaps a touch too precious for his own good.If you re-read my comment you will see that I accurately stated you had slightly mis-quoted Marx but otherwise you were correct.
Your jumping on your virtual high horse was therefore misplaced.
And as I said calm down dear.
Kinkynik: devil's advocate is it? Dream on babe. You've got your own agenda just like the rest of us. I don't think I misquoted Marx - that would be dificult since he wrote in German and my version was in English, or is that being too precious. I also think it may not be a good idea to chuck out an idea because its old; better probably to judge whether it's still got any use, or maybe that's a silly thought as well. Ah well, I'll keep trying, and try harder to stay calm, love, Alec
@ kinkynik — I hope that when you say that there is someone who refuses to "apoligise for these deeds [of child rape] but instead becomes an apologist for them," you aren't referring to me, because it is false if it refers to me. Here is what I said in comments I made on another blog.
"Of course the abuse and the failure to deal with it effectively for a number of years will, as you [Micky] say, 'haunt the Catholic Church for generations.' We did indeed fail to stop the abuse in many instances and for a number of years. At some point, however it is simple honesty to acknowledge gratefully that past patterns have been broken and things have changed."
I think anybody who reads my comments fairly will find, not an apology for any sexual abuse of children, but a partial explanation of how it was possible for so much of it to occur and a pointing out that there has been a vast improvement here in the states.
Nevermind Alec, you not often right but you are wrong again.
"Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkes"
I'm right you are wrong !
Who's the daddy ?
If you're going to use a quote, it's not hard nowadays to check for accuracy.
When you're in a hole, stop digging.
And when you've fucked up, say sorry.
I've no agenda at all sweety, I just enjoy winding up the pretentious.
As a small "c" conservative, I have no problem venerating things and ideas from a previous age but they have to have been valid to start with.
e.g.
The Earth being at the centre of the Universe.
The cosmos being created in 6 days.
6 billion people all being descended from the same ancestors. No wonder catholics don't seem to despair too much at child rape when they've got all that incest going on.
@Kinkynik: thanks for that. Suddenly I'm 'not often right'. Ok, I don't mind that but you do seem to need to calm down, dear. Who'd have thought Michael Winner and Marx would crop up in the same post! And winding up the pretentious IS an agenda, but you might have to start in on yourself just for the sake of balance - or maybe you have!
I did look the original quotation up when I wrote the second comment, but misquoted 'Opium' as 'opiate'. Personally I think it's a more elegant version; German doesn't have a generic word derived from opium for a calming drug (there are other words), so it's a reasonable substitution imao, even tho' literally wrong.
Volkes could be translated as 'masses', but also 'people' or 'peoples'.
I don't think a reasonable alternative translation counts as fucked up, but I guess I'll just have to cope with your easily deployed anger and try not to get hissy in my answers. If it helps I'll say - sorry, Daddy, and thanks for saying that the 'rest of his points were spot on'.
Best wishes, Alec
Where's Mambam ?
These comments have all got a little to heavy and personal.
Oh ! And there are no "God" or "God's".
Religion is just another mass addiction, like Alcoholism.
The amount of "ex-alcoholics" I used to know, that "found god"....meh, from one addiction to another.
@ Alec Lindsay, you have my vote.
Handsome, Cute Avatar Pic too... You ? ;)
He has nice eyes and very sexy nipples but the rest of him looks too fake, too modelish.
@Windswept *simpers*.
@anonymous. Don't know how you know about my nipples, but thanks ;) Not so good about the rest but still ... :(
@ kinkynik — "There is no improvement until not a single child gets raped by a member of the clergy." This absurd statement shows how irrational your position is.
Windswept it's a picture by Gareth Watkins. LMFAO !!
NG one point, how many rapes are acceptable ?
@ kinkynik — There is no such thing as an acceptable rape, whether by clergy or anybody else. But there considering that there are always people who will commit all sorts of crimes, the number of rapes committed can never be reduced to zero, unless we kill everybody. To suppose that as long as there are people, rape can be totally eliminated is unrealistic.
To harp on the Catholic Church, which is cleaning up its act, while giving a free pass to all the other institutions where rape occurs and and all the other rapists, suggests that the target is not rape but the Church, and the child abuse is merely a handy weapon to beat the Church with. You are writing as if you were hypocritical bigot.
"hypocritical bigot"
Define and give examples.
That is so beautifully ironic coming from one who has these characteristics imbued in him from the moment his dad came.
I know you are old and entrenched in your sad world view, but if you recall I mentioned the child rapes as a codicil to a longer post.I admit it was bait and you took it hook, line and sinker.
Why should it he impossible to guarantee that your local friendly neighbourhood priest won't fuck your son ?
You've been haunting these pages since Sunday to continue the arguement, on Mickeys pages you were arguing with yourself.
Your last point is so childish it exposes how desperate you are. Two wrongs do not make a right. I saw elsewhere you harped on about some Jewish abuse, perhaps that reinforces my contention that all religion is bad rather than mollifying the harm yours has done.
I happen to disagree with any organised religion because I've moved on past it.
I despise the catholic church because inevitably it has been used as a means of control and not freedom. If your Christ was ever to ressurect, the tired old nazi in Rome would be the first one cast out of the temple.
In the U.K. the catholic church gave succour and support to 20+ years of real terrorism and thus was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people..
In the rest of the world it could actually achieve so much, yet refuses to budge on points of dogma, thus condemning millions to die unnecessarily every year.
As at 07/01/10 ; 6,830,586,985
people inhabited this ball of rock.That is more than doubling in 50 years.
How long can this continue before the famines take hold and then there will be bloody revolution.Or is that what you are hoping for in your end of days scenario?
Of course I'm talking about the need for use of condoms.
Finally, for now as I have things to do, mother church's attitudes to us poofs.
How you can live your life betraying yourself I don't know.
Peter allegedly denied Christ three times, you deny yourself everyday.
Love the sinner, not the sin ???
WTF?? I mean WTF ???
Where's your compassion now ?
And here's the rub, these non-hypocritical robbers of innocence and dignity preach at us, telling us not to follow our desires when they are inflicting theirs on others.
Thank you for proving my point.
Have a nice day.
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