meganiwish

It'll take longer than two months until you're good enough for their boy. Hey, who wants to be approved by the in-laws anyway?

Hi E, I feel a bit of a klutz, looking like I'd made an unreasonable assumption. Sorry. Megan

I should have been more precise and said 'At least enough to eat, drink, have shelter and warmth'. I never meant to imply that a fair share meant an equal share. I'm happy to live frugally and work little. Not everyone is. That's their choice. It doesn't make me lazy, it just means I have different priorities. You chose to quote me missing out four important words: 'While this situation exists....' There's a global economy and we in the West live as well as we do at the expense of others who live worse. I was careful to include myself in that. I don't claim to be able to solve that, but at least I won't make excuses for it. It is morally repugnant that I should live reasonably well because people elsewhere starve. There's an exchange at the end of the film The Mission. Slave trader says, 'We must live in the world, the world is thus.' Bishop says, 'No, thus have we made the world.' Thank you for the History lesson, but please don't presume to know what I know and don't know. Also please don't assume I'm a Marxist. Marx believed in political solutions to what was essentially an economic problem. I see Marx as misguided at best, and probably worse. Actually, at no point did I say that the rich are exploiting the rest of us. But a money economy works by money moving, and rich people's money moves less, so they are affecting the rest of us. Reality. Well in the interests of reality, shall we knock on the head the idea that richer = harder working, which we all know to be less than the truth. I don't doubt that there are hard working rich folk, but do we honestly believe that all the richest people are the hardest working? And there are many people who work hard for no economic gain. Our own dear Tech is a fine example, but there are others across the board. I stand by what I said about not having a right to live or secure one's future at the expense of others' present Well done, that was the response I was expecting.

Oh no, you've been a perfect gentleman. It's me that can't be trusted with a lovely young man and no chaperone

Boulevard

Strip

Is it Fairtrade Coffee??

Anyway, hello Manluvheels and Freshinheels.. Tom-NL and I might have been getting up to no good without chaperones. Still, lots of you other chaps and chapesses should come and join us here. When there are ten I'll move on. Or should it be twenty? Depends on you.

Hi Marit, I don't know that I can help. I suppose I'd say what's most comfortable or convenient? Or looks the most right. And I don't know who might be the one to talk to. eoneleg, is this your domaine? Actually, Marit, you might do better to go to the infirmary thread, where some of the chaps might help you. Megan

Fish

Ecuador

And beyond!

Would it be worth remembering here, I wonder, that in most of our countries there are no legal restraints on what one wears, but it is illegal to attack or abuse someone for whatever reason. I know it's less likely to happen to me than it is to you chaps, even though, no doubt, there will be some people who are affronted by how I look. But then I'm less likely to be abused for any other reason either. I've never worried for my daughter as much as I have for my son

Etcetera

In fairness, probalbly not the exact response I expected. 'Fair share' is quite easy to define. Enough to eat, drink, be sheltered, warm and able to function as a member of your society. It's nothing short of a disgrace that there are people in the world who don't have this minimum. While that situation still exists, anyone who has more than it has more than their fair share. In this sense, and thinkng globally, most of us in the West can consider ourselves culpable. Of course, it's prudent to put something aside against the future. Even a subsistance farmer would try to store some of an especially good harvest for use in a year of poor harvest. What's not fair is to secure one's own future at the expense of someone else's present. I would argue that this is exactly what people with millions in the bank are doing. Very hard to say how big a share is too big, because when people have enough they tend not to worry too much about those who have more. But throughout history you can see tipping points when resentment grew: France in the late 18th Century, Russia in 1917, Mexico in 1910. Most people don't expect everything to be completely equal, but they do know when the rich are taking the micky. I wonder if that's happening at the moment.

We don't need water, we'll just have an espresso. Why don't you join us?

Play

Hallo, leuk je te ontmoeten, Tom NL

ILK, of course fair employment isn't exploitation. That wasn't what Orwell meant. I was an employer once, and I hope I never exploited my employees. I cared about them, and I know you do, as is evident from your distress at having to let them go. I'm sure you suffered hardship before your employees did.

I think it's worth remembering here that money isn't a real thing, it isn't wealth. To get wealth you need to dig something out of the ground, or grow something, or pull something from the sea etc. EVERYTHING else is wealth distribution.Where there are miners you have people making picks, where there are fishermen you have boat builders and so on. Richer people are getting a bigger share of the wealth. Sometimes that may be fair. Some people work harder than others, some a particularly skilled. Hard to believe, though, that all the chaps with £1,000,000 a year are working that much harder or are that much more skilled. But too big a share for some means too small a share for others. Hmm, society better off for having rich people. Trickle down wealth. The fact is that the economy needs money to move, to be spent. Rich people keep money in the bank, poor people spend every penny they have. That's why it makes sense to tax the rich. I'm waiting to see if I get the response I expect.

Wood

Nice to meet you, deedee.

Hi, Megan, and welcome. It's always nice to have another girl join us. Megan (Hope this doesn't get confusing lol)

Knocks

At the risk of straying off topic, but in the spirit of recent posts, I wonder if I might take the liberty of quoting George Orwell:

"The liberty of the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century. But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names in the English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern peoples, the English are in the process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, 'co-ordinated'. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction and the kind of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified as a consequence. No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting or 'spontaneous' demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability." England Your England, 1940

When I first read this in 1980 I was struck by how true it still was. The last two decades, though, have seen governments increasingly believing that it's their job to interfere in people's private lives, to try and modify behaviour. But laws don't change behaviour, they only give the mechanism for sorting out the aftermath. Trying to change society with legislation is like trying to mend a wristwatch with a cudgel.

There's a chap in my town who goes about his business in lacy mini skirts and sandals sporting the most impressive beard. No-one seems to bat an eyelid, though I can't say for sure that he never has trouble. Among 80,000 there must be some idiots, and also those who disapprove. But I like living here because the town openly leaves people to get on with being whoever they are. I can't believe it's the only town like that.

Well two people came and found me. Thank you, chaps. But I'm bored of Baffin Island now, so I'm moving on. I need a coffee anyway.