Youtube comments of iggle (@iggle6448).

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  152. ​ @tonycatman  I agree that amongst men's primary 'purposes' is to protect women, children and those more vulnerable. I was brought up by a man who was a perfect example of a protector and provider - he was magnificent in his kind and caring maleness without compromising a scrap of his masculinity. I also have male relatives who were the same. But, Tony, you're absolutely completely wrong about women's inability to understand boys' fighting. Indeed, one of my sons appreciates the fighting with his brother because he says it made him able to be a better, more effective police officer. (Police being, along with the military, the epitome of controlled male power). I did not stop their fighting. Because boys. As a mum it was totally clear to me that boys NEED an education and upbringing that helps them to be good men, proud to be men and to be able use their power in good, constructive ways. For the most part, our schooling does not enable boys to be boys, that is, men-in-training. I can't count the innumerable times I was at their schools standing up for their needs to be boys and do boy things that stretched their physical abilities, physical problem-solving abilities, stretch their courage and needs for adventure and their need to conquer and succeed through pitting themselves against others and the elements. I was the mum from hell as far as their teachers were concerned always pushing to stop their mostly lefty women teachers from treating boys like girls expecting them to be compliant and demure. I made sure that they had loads of organised boy/man-training activities outside school. I could write a book about all this, even years later, I am so annoyed at their schools.And even though they have indeed become MEN, leaders in their fields (whilst many of the boys of parents who went along with the feminisation schooling have sons who became drug abusers, got into trouble just for the fun of it in some sort of misplaced man-training they created for themselves, now in 3rd rate jobs well beneath their potentials....). No Tony, please don't disrespect what many mothers actually do to bring up MEN - but please feel free to castigate leftist, feminist social engineering which has been going on for decades now.
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  466. ​ @telephassarose3501  Quite. I have to hope that the original concept was good and beautiful. Though the execution was utterly abominable. IMHO, it's not about romanticising Diana but simply about presenting her as she actually was. Queen Victoria's statues, without variance as far as I'm aware, look just like her photos. How did the Victorian sculptors manage that? And, as you say, how did this present sculptor, with myriad forms of technology available to him, go so badly wrong? I can think of three deliberate reasons: 1. The RF didn't want such a beautiful, alluring statue that would become a Diana shrine, which I think is still a possibility, given her enduring popularity. 2. Diana's sons, remembering her with childish memories only saw Diana as 'mumsie' and not the extraordinarily attractive, feminine, elegant and captivating woman that she was. Thus, they approved all the sculptor's drawings and photos as he progressed his work, and perhaps made suggestions for tweaks to make it more mumsie according to their memories of her. 3. The sculptor is simply not into women. His male forms are striking and beautiful. Maybe he's gay and Diana's beauty and allure simply didn't touch him - this is, after all, a depiction of her that reduces her to that of an almost comedic weekend M>F crossdresser with bad wigs and a penchant for Primark end of line bargains. Perhaps he's had more practice at creating male art forms. Perhaps he's not all that good at sculpture.And perhaps those who were in charge of selecting sculptors deliberately bore all this in mind. Whatever, this piece is a total travesty and nothing like it could very easily have been if done by a sympathetic sculptor. (What also bothers me is all the many people trying to turn themselves inside out and upside down, trying to wipe the evidence of their own eyes and cognition, to find something good, something of Diana in this leaden scowling, lumpen hausfrau.)
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  611.  @rogerwoodhouse7945  Yes, I can see that's one layer of joining the dots though it looks to me that there are other layers. Like very limited voting choices - now it's very clear that we have a uniparty which means no choice at all. They've been converging for decades and leaving behind their original bases. Not being contentious, I just don't remember the last 4 decades anyone in Westminster seriously saying that we deserve more. My recollections are more like 'the country needs austerity', 'we need to reduce welfare spending', 'we need to get people back to work'.... Another layer is that wages have been declining in real terms since the early 70s. We never had food banks until Osborne's austerity and now they've exploded so many working people live in poverty, 1 child in 3 lives in a poor family. This are all direct results of gov fiscal strategy. Such poverty isn't just about money - it brings a shedload of other problems with it. What are people to do if their wages are low and taxes are rising? We know that now the tax burden is the highest it's been in 60-70 years! So it's fuelled a need for all sorts of 'helping agencies' that are a huge draw on the public purse with little to benefit to people. A couple of years back I was doing a piece of research that brought me into contact with some of these agencies. One manager told me, in a head-in-his-hands sort of way 'I don't know why the government just doesn't give money direct to low income people instead of contracting organisations like ours to try and help....mostly all the problems start from too little income. People need money to sort out their problems, we're the middleman that top slices most of the available funding...and there's not much that we can really do under our contract for a lot of people that need help.'
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  629.  @floriangeyer1  Well, I reckon that for the time being there's nowt more we can do in the face of absurdity but laugh! Watching GBN last night when Andrew Doyle was longform talking with Heyden Prowse (Wokieleaks, which is gaining serious momentum apparently) who pointed out the utterly cynical absurdity of Nike flamboyantly waving the wokester flag whilst paying the Trump Organisation $millions for prestigious office space. The wokesters will eventually wake up to the way every corporation is similarly cynically sucking them $dry simply for profit. I bet some smart person is even now compiling a dossier of how big business is all into a whole range of odious scams and various forms of modern slavery etc. The media presstitutes are a pushover - they'll soon find another Big Thing to butter their bread. The UKgvt's already quietly 'adjusting' university operating principles and various ministers have had the green light to quietly rein in certain elements. (To mount an overt full-on crack down would only provoke further wokeist excesses. So I think they're going about it the right way.) No movement with such profound duplicity at core, based on such flimsy premises and which operates primarily by bullying can survive for long. Plus, it's silly season. And the gvt is very much appreciating how we're all being distracted from their myriad covid handling debacles. The plebs are adroitly being nudged into getting angry about something other than the actual cause of their frustrations -18mths of having their lives terrorised and totally disrupted by buffoons and nincompoops. This time the bait and switch is racism and all the other wokey preoccupations.
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  637.  @tonycatman  Thanks for your response and acknowledgment. I find this subject of great interest - because my whole, visceral purpose was to grow happy, healthy men (and a daughter but girls are a completely different species!!). And on an intellectual level, I have long been very concerned about what Western culture and its social engineering is doing to men. One of my sons called me just after his first child was born and told me, choking back a tear, that when he first held his minute-old baby he was instantaneously totally overcome, flooded by a feeling of ferocious k!ller-protection as he tenderly spoke to her for the first time . That's a MAN. He's still the same. I've done my job, somehow I managed to press the right buttons to get them on the right track!. My biological purpose fulfilled. And,you gave me pause for thought...you may be right, a lot of their classmates' had mothers and fathers who seemed to go along with the programme (amongst their friends were boys like the budding ballerina, a nascent actor who did make it to stage and screen, several who became artists, countless web designers and sysadmins...Meanwhile, my sons are in action careers which are the stuff of the movies/tv series that the IT guys watch...). Point I'd like to make is that I don't think we should blame mothers alone for allowing their boys' healthy masculinity to be eroded. The social engineering power behind this programme is far too great for most parents to counter. I'll recount the story behind a then well-known study by 'reputable experts'which concluded that children aren't affected by single-parenting, in fact they do as well as children in 2 parent families. This study was much quoted, gvt policies were founded on it etc.Years later it turned out that the male experts had skewed the data to give positive conclusions because they had separated from their wives/children and were feeling deeply guilty and suffering terrible angst about what they'd done to their children . I don't trust any academic study unless the results are copiously internationally and independently replicated. Yes, I'm not moved either by the sort of tears you describe and the sort of personalities that can manipulate people that way. To my mind, to get out of the mess we're in, we need MEN! Of the courageous action type we're talking about.
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  747. I entirely agree. I went to a grammar school. Except for picking up a smattering of useful Latin and enjoying a great music teacher who kindled my love of classical music, It didn't benefit me at all. All my substantive learning was had at private schools from age 3 and then at university. The reason that grammar schooling failed me and likely a huge cohort of pupils for several years? Before I went to grammar school, the gvt had a year or so previously declared the demise of such 'elitism'. Looking back, my grammar school at least was in disarray and trying to work out its new identity, its new curricula to meet the new one-size-fits-all diktats, amidst a slump in staff morale and alacrity. I imagine that this 'anti-elitist' edict had the same effect on state grammar schools all over the country. With that experience and having taught age16+ students at college (young people who'd been brutalised and diminished by their comprehensive experience - their fear and loathing of education and teachers was palpable and I recall it very clearly even now), I made sure to send my own children to public schools where they each flourished. (Thankfully, they all earned scholarships!) I became a comprehensive school governor in my own little bid to do what I could to raise horizons and standards. Of course, it was a forlorn project: the rot was well-entrenched by then, the 2000-odd pupils were largely commodities being processed through the machine . And that school was officially classed as a 'good' comprehensive. Come hell or high water, my grandchildren will be going to public schools, even if I have to sell everything I own.
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  780. Born and bred Brit here who used to be proud of our nations and always used to be 100% invested in the UK. For the last decade or so, I've been 100% certain that the UK is not 'invested' or interested in me or any individual, except in so far as it must by law fulfil some very minimal duties towards individuals. When push comes to shove, one discovers that most of our public services, legislators and public servants are not actually legally bound to do anything much in practice for individuals. All statutory public services have so many largely covert 'get out' clauses that absolve them of responsibilities. Mostly what we're left with is a sort of feel-good generic concept of 'providing services for the people' (but not really for individuals). So, I'm certainly in that 73% majority and really don't relate to the UK as 'my country' anymore. Especially since we're forced (too often by law) not to be proud of our United Kingdom and our specific nations, it's become something that's very difficult to identify with. It's far more like a massive, faceless corporation that uses people for its own ends/shareholder profits and then spits us out. (Note well, this isn't a hidden tirade about immigrants even - they're equally subject to the de-humanisation and being valued only for their utility as 'resource units'.) Yes, GBNews would do well to research this phenomenon in depth, as should Dr Luntz. Because this 'de-national priding' and escalating dehumanisation is very fertile ground for all the tribal divisions that we now see growing exponentially. I note that de-nationalisation and the introduction of regionalism, alongside the free movement of labour (originally it was 'labour' and cosmetically changed to 'people'), was a deliberate project of the EU - with, as we see now, quite horrid and probably unintended consequences.
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  923.  @OkTxSheepLady  Ah, OK, thank you for your explanation. We, like most Europeans, have a very different perspective. Everyone here pays into a gvt administered National Insurance scheme (since 1947) and via taxation (everyone - e.g. part of the tax on the sweeties and toys that children buy from their pocket money goes towards the welfare system too). It could have been set up as a private while-nation health and social security insurance scheme but wasn't - it was introduced by a Labour gvt. In short, think of it as an insurance policy - when someone gets ill and/or loses their job they apply to the insurance company which everyone else has a policy with and the company pays for healthcare and/or your basic living costs when you've fulfilled all the strict rules for payout. Most welfare systems work exactly like this. Most people are glad that they DON'T have to claim. Most people are pleased that the insurance is there for all even though others might get more out of it. National Insurance/taxes are also enforced with criminal penalties - we all pay into it and it's distributed according to qualified need - but no one looks at that as 'secondhand stealing'. The basic principle is for the basic communal good. I don't want hordes of homeless people sleeping on my property or along the High Street, or burgling my home. I don't want people to lose their homes because they had to pay for cancer/stroke/heart/accident injuries. Nor do I want people going to work with transmissible diseases to infect us with because they can't afford to stay off work and get treatment. Looking at it another way, what do you think about some of your taxes paying for jails and the criminal justice system, or for state education, for the FBI, for your national government etc? Also, I assume you're aware of LBJ's great wheeze to pull in more Democrat votes by instituting a massive nationwide welfare scheme which made it easier to claim benefits than working, which undermining not only the family unit amongst poor people but also skewed their education and the job market so badly that it's never recovered? Our welfare system isn't like that. I think you're right to be upset with yours in the US, but not at individuals - your gvt actively caused this dire state of affairs, not individuals who have been and still are conditioned to be co-dependent. with gvt.
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  1179.  @SevenRiderAirForce  In fact, there's a large body of CBT critique out there. Whatever I can say here is just notes! Yours are questions that should be asked! Far and wide, especially in the UK where CBT has become rather a service delivery model instead of a niche approach to a limited range of psychological maladies. That is, in practice CBT holds primacy over all other types of psychological help. The NHS's offering under Improving Access to Psychological Therapy (IAPT) essentially comprises 6, 10 and 20 week courses of 'talk therapy' conducted by people who are most often not qualified clinical psychologists. In such time limited (and very rationed) circumstances, CBT is the go-to approach because it can be used in a formulaic way, slots easily into those time periods and is cheap - all regardless of what the client needs. It's obvious that by the time people have been on a waiting list for up to 18 months (!) people's issues require much more time and a much broader range of input. CBT has been widely researched although there is much contention over the methodologies and values used. There are serious concerns over the boundaries between CBT as just a useful sort of treatment in some people and the actual science and practice of clinical psychology which it seems to eclipse - very much to the detriment of clients and clinicians' practice.( Forgive the length of these notes! I could write a dissertation on the misuse of this particular approach! But I'd much recommend studying the many critiques that are out there.)
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  1396.  @Isnt-it-Lovely  I've read all your posts here, Deborah. It can be very galling to see other people getting things that you think they didn't earn or don't deserve. How we decide what people deserve is a good question. How do we decide that it's a good thing for Bezos, Branson, Musk, Gates, Buffet, Soros et al deserve to rake in hundreds of £billions every year whilst they avoid paying taxes and whilst many or most of their workers are on minimum wage? Honestly, Deborah, these are the real scammers. They take infinitely more from the ordinary taxpayer (in avoiding taxes and in the overpriced goods and services they sell us) than any disabled people ever could. These £multi-billionaire scammers are really the people you should be mad at. Then you have to factor in that government economists actually PLAN to have a certain quota off work on one sort of benefit or another. Too many workers in the system actually reduce wages - and we have too many low qualified workers due to successive governments imposing the wrong highly ideological policies. The government is already subsidising huge corporations to take on these people as workers. If they took on even more workers, wages would be even lower. People aren't overtly encouraged to take up benefits but they are expected and the money is already set aside for them. The reality is that there are not enough of the right sort of jobs in various areas at various times. And there will be fewer of many more sorts of jobs as time goes by, so that there will be increasing numbers of people like you and me on benefits - or Universal Basic Income....how will you feel about that? It is actually very difficult to get disability benefits. Have you actually looked into it? 80% of all claims are initially denied. When those claimants dispute that and take the benefits dept to tribunal 80% of their claims are allowed . It's a game. Then people on disability benefits are indeed allowed to do some work if they can, it used to be called 'therapeutic earnings' (don't know what the terminology is now) in recognition that in certain cases work is helpful to recovery or to mental health. I understand your anger. But it's not well-placed. It's the system: the £multi-billionaires/global corporations call the shots these days. Governments try and iron out the employment/unemployment problems on the ground, as it were, and accordingly adjust the numbers in the workforce with various things like benefits, tax incentives, disability benefits. Some of us worker bees are lucky and we get to have jobs, others of us are not so lucky.
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  1745. ​ @Andy Jarman A few thoughts, if I may. Generally, loathing for another tribe becomes ossified when at a distance. Up close it becomes diluted by reality, familiarity, it's less likely to become part of the loather's self-identity. Having said that, it's not hundreds and hundreds of years since atrocities and rank, inhumane discrimination have been committed against the smaller UK nations. It's just over a hundred years since the Irish Easter Rising and the attendant atrocities committed by those acting for the British government - and so it continued throughout the 20th century in some form or other. The Welsh have been variously colonised then dropped on from a great height throughout latter day history depending on the nation's utility in Westminster's economic schemes - Thatcher's treatment of miners and their families was nothing short of atrocious. Similarly, Scotland's been a bag of goodies for the English elites to dip into and then cast aside (I would be writing this from the Highlands and not England if Scotland had been on a par with England and not been treated as an afterthought, starved of the support and services enjoyed by the English. My great-grandparents' village did not have electricity until the late 1960s ). Note that throughout I attribute these abuses entirely to Westminster and English elites. IMHO, successive UK governments have not served the Union well. For hundreds of years, they and not the English people have abused the smaller constituent nations of the UK in just the same way as they've latterly covertly trashed 'Britishness' in their avaricious gallop towards Europe and globalism (as well as, against the sensible qualms of ordinary citizens, having imported - yes, as commodities - millions of immigrants, cheap, tax-paying labour to keep British wages down). Sadly, loathing for 'the English' is very misplaced. 'The English', the ordinary people, have certainly been subject to Westminster's whims and inhumanities too! An initial remedy might begin with a genuinely representative British Parliament for all of Great Britain's constituent nations and governments that are not commandeered by the sons of empire (in this 21st century, how can it possibly be right that most of our current Cabinet members are drawn from public schools and privileged families?? Note that I'm not a socialist! But there is little authentic equality of opportunity and just plain fairness when such Parliaments and Cabinets still hold the reins.)
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  2007.  @RedroomStudios  I had to think a bit about your response. It could sound like you have a philosophical or religious basis for your stance against 'subverting the will of nature'. Isn't this a Jehovah's Witness' type of argument against health care? I support the right to chose such a stance, though there are very robust arguments about the nature of living things to autonomically strive for good health and, indeed, just about every creature is ordinarily well equipped to fight off physical injuries and to heal. Would it be complying with the will of nature to leave a stabbing victim to die in the street because it's just nature that some random psychopath stabbed him?! I think there are gradations of what's 'natural' and what aren't. Given that we do have statutory rights to healthcare I don't see any reason to completely eschew the health system. However, it desperately needs to deliver human-centred, patient-centred care - and I do mean care . This appalling bullying that is rife in the NHS has to stop - it's the last thing a poorly patient needs and cannot possibly help them to maintain decent health, nor does it engender or maintain trust in health care providers. The NHS is NOT a Victorian charity, dispensing largesse or not depending on its own arbitrary judgements of the character and intent of those who seek its aid. About time it brought itself into the 21st century and started courteously offering its paying customers Waitrose quality service. Although I dislike the idea of a wholly private healthcare system, at this rate it's going to happen as more and more people are disgusted by the NHS's high-handed approach.
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  2036.  @Billmaster115  Thank you for your considered response. I think though that you might be making a number of generalised assumptions. It's clear to me, as an ordinary private citizen shopper that e.g. UK supermarkets are not a free market. They closely match their prices to the penny and charge as much as they can get away with, they're in lockstep with each other responding to each others' activities rather than whether a customer is willing/unwilling to buy at a more accurately calculated price based on supply and demand. That's not a free market. Similarly, it looks to me that all the supermarkets source branded and own branded products from the same small cadre of manufacturers/suppliers. That's not a free market, that's centralised production with a very few producers and suppliers who are all doing the same price competition thing. Reading about supermarket suppliers recently I learnt that there are 9 companies in the world that own all the means of groceries production and distribution. Remember a few months back, the US had a baby milk shortage? It turned out that only ONE factory in the whole of the US produced all the brands. The factory had closed down due to hygiene issues. That's not a free market! The energy market is the same, as you indicate. The same suppliers supply us all. So, where we did have more of a free market a few decades back, I don't think the same applies now. Straightforward supply and demand involving billions of customers able to adjust pricing and millions of producers and suppliers catering to demand has gone. Indeed, now it is far more like a tightly controlled soviet production and supply chain - only those running the show these days have worked out how to make more profits out of what they do. Mainly by coercing gvts into special deals and favours, thus bending gvts to their will (and negating democracy). See When Corporations Rule the World: David Korten. Instead of a soviet hegemony, we have a capitalist hegemony. That's not a free market.
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  2088.  @radcyrus  1. I did not write that 'the world is in a worse shape than it ever was before'. YOU wrote that. then you based much of the rest of your response labouring under the assumption that that's what I wrote or what I meant! Not a great start. But it kind of proves my point about taking a few bits of information and then subconsciously filling in with one's own assumptions! To verify my claim that 'the world is in a really, really bad way', look at all the many economic performance and projection data out there. Look at inflation per country. Look at the stats for bank failures around the world. Look at stock market trends. Look at unemployment rates and business bankruptcies internationally. Look at the UN data on quality of life and poverty around the world. Check data on current conflict zones.Look at crime statistics. Look at happiness surveys. Look at the real terms decrease in average worker pay since 1974 to now. There are countless varied metrics out there. 2. No, I'm not willing 'to consider that maybe your assumption about what people do is by itself a judgement on your part'. because I don't make this assumption. I know factually that cognitive and neuro science has shown that humans are hard wired to make quick judgements on other people or situations and then fill in their knowledge gaps with their own assumptions. Do a search on cognitive/neuro science of making assumptions and the psychology of making assumptions.Also related is confirmation bias. 3. Bear in mind that we've been talking about 'snap judgements', based on very little knowledge of a person, the first impressions/ in the moment type of judgement .based on little factual and situational information and/or failure to verify facts and reality. 4. I didn't say anything about achieving a balance between judgement and acceptance. I have to say that this flummoxed me for a bit! I've never seen 'judgement' and 'acceptance' posited as opposites before. The opposite of judgement is reserving judgement (that is, not making a judgement unless or until you have enough information to make a conclusive, accurate judgement). The opposite of acceptance is rejection. None of us has to judge things or accept things we don't have facts and good reason to be able to do so! There's no law that compels us to do either! But if we want to make a judgement or accept something, it's our own responsibility to ask questions, research, discover the facts and apply rational thought to what you find out. Quite often, I find that there's a lot of wisdom in simply reserving judgement until I have enough reliable information to make a judgement or decision about someone or a situation. I hope this sounds useful to you. I invited you to do some searches for yourself because why would you trust the data of a stranger on the internet ? And, most importantly, you'll probably learn a lot more from your own discoveries. Thank you for asking questions.
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  2096. I thought a bit more about your excellent point. It's probably not as clear cut as the misleading and disingenuous figure they put out. Here's the thing: I recall being told something like there are separate categories for claimants, one is the shorter term 'Sickness Benefits' list where people are expected to recover and resume their normal day jobs. Another is the long term disabled list (those expected to be incapacitated for longer than 1yr) and where few are expected to recover - the 'write-offs' in other words. The people on the long term list are paid more and are more numerous than the people on the short term list. Here's a quick figure from the UK Office of National Statistics: 24.8 million households contain 1 or more disabled people. (out of 28million households in 2020). Not all will be on long term benefits but the majority will be receiving some sort of state aid. It's really difficult to find clear, up to date figures but these give a flavour of the numbers involved. From the DWP site: - 2020 : the total number of people claiming DWP benefits was 22.8 million in the year to August 2020 12.5 million were Pension Age, 9.5 million were Working Age, and the remainder children claiming Disability Living Allowance. - June 2023: More than 6 million disabled people across the UK are set to receive a £150 Disability Cost of Living Payment from today. (These 6 million comprise a large contingent of those on long term disabled benefits, there are more in other categories. Many of whom will be in the 7 million NHS wait list) . So, there's upwards of maybe 10-12 million people who are on sickness and longer term benefits) To my mind, a great many of all these sick and disabled people represent the chronic ineptitude of the NHS over decades to treat and support people to recover and get back to some sort of paid work. The NHS has always had a very low bar for categorising people as disabled and thus minimising treatment and support. Let's not blame sick and disabled people - many of whom want to work and could be back in work with better treatment/support. Bottom line, I guess paying millions of people benefits is cheaper than providing better healthcare.
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  2162. Having worked in senior roles with, not for, local and central gov, I can tell you for certain from my perspective that it's not the fault of the 'all talk.no action' people. 1. They are educated and trained to fulfil narrow gov/political agendas, they are not trained to be creative and to take initiative, no matter how many great solutions they personally can talk about and would love to carry out. 2. All gov-funded interventions are hedged round with tight legal and political requirements, timetables, tickboxes, notional outcomes that people in remote places have dreamed up to satisfy their political masters' agendas. Most often, these conditions fall way short of what's actually needed and can do more damage than good. 3. People who work for local/central gov are by nature those who need the structure, security and stability (and other things) that working for gov affords them. They're not the most courageous of people, nor are they initiative takers, independent-minded enough, nor are they leaders. No matter how many great solutions they think up, they're quite risk averse and they've fundamentally accepted the quid pro quo of a secure job and commensurate loss of perhaps much of their own agency. This isn't to denigrate gov workers. We're all different, with different aptitudes and talents. 4. There are very few people in the world like Najah, Erin Pizzey, Harriet Tubman, Oskar Schindler, Elizabeth Blackwell, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King..... our communities and schools should encourage more, but that's not what schools are for.
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  2175. Seems to me that Brendan is quite out of touch or naive. People increasingly look to the government for help when things go pear shaped because : - We are taxed at the highest rate in 70 years....the gvt is stealing from us and we know it. People are simply asking for their own money back. - The whole 'community support' thing hasn't actually been a thing since at least WW2 and it was rather a contrived notion even back then. Successive gvt policies have continuously eroded community solidarity and family functionality. Community solidarity brings down gvts. Ask Lech Walensa. - Probably all public services are now deeply dysfunctional. They're no longer there to help people when their problems are small and easily fixed. We know that gvts have done this to us through bad management, and favouring their own pet priorities . Expecting gvt to do something in times of dire need is merely asking them to clean up their mess, holding them to account. - The 'nanny state' has been a huge long power grab by successive gvts. People didn't just give up their liberties for benefits increases of £2.83 a week or free school meals that they were able to afford 5 years ago. Their liberties (including the right to earn a decent wage) have been pulled from them. Gvts have instead subsidised huge corporations to employ people. It's not just ordinary people with their hands out. Business gets far bigger welfare cheques than we do. - Gvts since 97 have increasingly lied to us and nudged us relentlessly. People know this, intuitively they know they're being gaslit even if they don't have the words for it. Please Brendan, hold and express whatever opinions you want, but do not blame the casualties of these govts, do not underestimate ordinary people's ability to understand what's been going on , and do not misunderstand their ways of acquiring recompense and restoration.
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  2385.  @FelipeElLocito  You write so eloquently and accurately about HMTQ's extraordinary service to our nation and the Commonwealth. Thank you. I wish I could give you a thumbs up - the one thing that I can't support is your view of constitutional monarchy. I can understand how it seems anachronistic, though it's worked phenomenally well for the UK and many other nations, and clearly still does. For the superb way HMTQ has reigned and built a c. 2.5 billion citizen Commonwealth of Nations founded on mutual support, respect and friendship I would happily give my support for her to be proclaimed 'Elizabeth the Great'. The mere suggestion of abolishing our Monarchy fills me with horror at the thought of the inevitably ignoble and vulgar activities of all those who would then jostle and spar for the presidential role every 4 or 8 years or whatever. Alongside which, the UK would have to change its constitution almost completely, we'd lose so much for the gain of seeming to be 'up-to-date'. I'm not expecting to change your mind here. But I wanted to add another perspective. Because the types of people who'd be up there badmouthing each other as fellow candidates for UK president would be exactly those you so rightly pillory in your next comment! Yes, this gvt is monstrous and incredibly incompetent, maybe the worst in my lifetime. But BoJo and his similarly hugely privileged cabinet are so entitled, self-righteous and greedy that they would all have the brass neck to stand....and one of these self-serving, duplicitous incompetents would then get elected... We can never allow this to happen. Thus, an apolitical constitutional monarchy which is wealthy enough not to be bothered by the opportunities for yet more wealth and power-gathering is the best compromise IMHO.
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  2478. @Terre Schill The NHS's pitch was "Protect the NHS, Stay Home, Save Lives" in that order. Those were the priorities - in that order. In practice, that mantra really wasn't good enough for the majority of Brits in actual practice. Fine words butter no parsnips as my grannie would have said. They should have been able to manage the situation. They would have been able to manage the situation if: 1) the gvt and NHS had followed the (costly but far less costly than the covid bill taxpayers are facing now) recommendations of the autumn 2016 national major incident drill which found all services under prepared and underfunded. Gvt and NHS shelved the report and recommendations, thus were completely unprepped. 2) Per the Great Barrington recommendations, protected the weak/vulnerable and enabled everyone else to live as normally as possible. 3) they'd had efficient, effective, compassionate management both in the NHS and gvt. 4) they hadn't formally decided that terrifying the public was the best way to control people into 'Protecting the NHS'. The NHS shouldn't have needed protecting. It has been underfunded/misfunded for years; lowest per capita spend in the G7 just above Italy which, not surprisingly, has a similar covid fatality rate to UK's.. 5) they hadn't chosen to rely on statistical modellers to formulate their orders to the public. The models were way off. 6) I could list several more faux pas. Including Bojo's egregious failure of leadership. He just didn't take it seriously until he caught it. He only attended 1 of the first 5 national emergency COBRA meetings. By then it was too late. The concept of nationalised healthcare is excellent. Like you I have international experience, having lived and worked in 1st-3rd world countries. The NHS is on track to be taken over by US healthcare companies. Several are already in here having £huge provision and exploitation contracts as various elements are quietly sold off. Thus, de facto the NHS per se is failing and covertly preparing for privatisation. With utmost respect, Terre, you weren't here to see and experience the horrors and the horrendous fallout from the mis-management, fear-mongering and censorship about everything. It has become almost 'Pravda' soviet here.
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  2623.  @forgivethemoniker8178  My goodness, Moniker! There's quite a heap of passive aggressive anger going on in your last two posts to me! 'Sorry, not sorry' ?? This comes across as a high schooler's badinage. Would you ever say that face to face with a disabled patient struggling with injuries, victimisation, secondary and tertiary victimisation...? What strikes me most is that you re-interpret what I've written in responses to you. E.g. to dislike the mass of humanity doesn't mean to lose hope in them, or to make them enemies, as you re-interpreted. Similarly, I acknowledged that I wasn't being asked to justify myself in the first sentence of my second post. Yet you've turned it into a plank in your defence!? Are your quotation marks around what I described as my life experience an attempt to render that experience less important, less valuable, to demean it? But at least we've come to the crux of your position, one of your life operating principles: "I just don't think that losing hope in humanity is an effective strategy for most of us." Actually, that's all you needed to say in response to my first reply to you. Fine, it's your opinion and how you choose to conduct your life. I would have given you a thumbs up for having a clear modus operandi and gone on my way. Unfortunately though, you went further, and told me bluntly that my perspective is not justified, that it's wrong. Then, through your re-interpreting, you've confected so much more what? I don't know, what does it feel like to you? Annoyance? Anger? Disdain?
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  2796.  @theinngu5560  I rather see the rejection of tradition in the West as an outcome of failed leadership. Where have all the wise and honourable leaders been during the past 50-60 years? Those people who are willing and able to set their own needs/ambitions aside to serve their country and communities? Those with a strong vision of the future that encompasses the needs and ambitions of the people....? What leader has championed and consolidated good traditions? And identified poor and dangerous traditions and ended them? (Why does the NHS come to mind here? We've been endlessly encouraged by those in government to worship this corrupt monstrosity with all its traditions of bullying and cover-ups...) Apart from a notable 2 or 3, all we've had are control freaks, ideologues, incompetents, narcissists, self-seeking puff pieces that'll roll over and feather their own nests and cover their own backs before serving the people who elected them. Now all we have are store managers like Rishi who wouldn't be out of place as a McDonald's regional manager. Who knows who his ultimate boss is - it's not the electorate for sure. Mammon has most emphatically routed leadership. Without traditional leadership , companies and countries fail, leaving the door open for all sorts of barbarians, loons and ne'er-do-wells...just as we see US and Oxford Street stores looted and trashed at will in broad daylight. Leaving the majority of people who are quite content with moderate traditions aghast, confused, annoyed, unsettled, and voiceless whilst the managers, following the money and publicity, pander to the violent, the bullies, those who don't care for any tradition, good or bad, and the would be usurpers.
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