B
(This is just a sample of things, to see the full B listings, scroll down the left side bar).
Bars and clubs are not a good place to meet people
I've heard that from many people. They have a very old fashioned and unrealistic idea that you can not meet anyone 'serious' in a bar or club. Not the kind of person, of any gender, who you could start a serious relationship with.
Actually, bars and clubs are an excellent way to meet people. The people that go there are mostly just ordinary folk. That prejudice against them is a bit silly. It's basically an ill-thought out attitude. A bit like saying 'Supermarkets are not a good place to buy food'.
I've heard that from many people. They have a very old fashioned and unrealistic idea that you can not meet anyone 'serious' in a bar or club. Not the kind of person, of any gender, who you could start a serious relationship with.
Actually, bars and clubs are an excellent way to meet people. The people that go there are mostly just ordinary folk. That prejudice against them is a bit silly. It's basically an ill-thought out attitude. A bit like saying 'Supermarkets are not a good place to buy food'.
Basic income
Some say: 'Won't people avoid doing work if we all get money in a basic income/citizen's income way?
(those 'some' people are always talking rubbish, aren't they? Why don they go back to 'Some-land' where they came from!)
I think if we all had that basic income then working would still be seen as necessary and good. To NOT work would be seen as bad, and socially discouraged. In my view we dont work JUST for money, we work for the sake of creative attainment, social respect, because we like focusing our brains on stuff, we like the routine, etc. I think more than 90% of people would do some kind of useful work, even if they did not have to.
“...in a 1970s pilot study called Mincome in Canada, establishing a citizen’s income didn’t produce a workshy population. In fact, the only people who stopped working or worked less were young mothers, teenagers in education and those due to retire soon.”
(this image below is from a 4 page strip we made for the UK branch of the basic/citizen's income movement. Click image to see full strip)
Beatles hair cut
Originally, Stuart Sutcliffe’s girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, tried the combed down hairstyle to cover up Klaus Voorman floppy ears! Later, of course, this style became THE classic 60s style haircut, and is still with us today, in one form or another. How funny that all those millions of haircuts all over the world come from, basically, a German guy having floppy ears...
On the other hand/head, Astrid herself has denied this:
"All that rubbish people said, that I created their hairstyle, that's rubbish! Lots of German boys had that hairstyle...All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him.Kirchherr says that after she cut Sutcliffe's hair, Harrison asked her to do the same when she was visiting Liverpool, and Lennon and McCartney had their hair cut in the same style while they were in Paris, by Kirchherr's friend, Vollmer..."
Originally, Stuart Sutcliffe’s girlfriend, Astrid Kirchherr, tried the combed down hairstyle to cover up Klaus Voorman floppy ears! Later, of course, this style became THE classic 60s style haircut, and is still with us today, in one form or another. How funny that all those millions of haircuts all over the world come from, basically, a German guy having floppy ears...
On the other hand/head, Astrid herself has denied this:
"All that rubbish people said, that I created their hairstyle, that's rubbish! Lots of German boys had that hairstyle...All my friends in art school used to run around with this sort of what you call Beatles haircut. And my boyfriend then, Klaus Voormann, had this hairstyle, and Stuart liked it very very much. He was the first one who really got the nerve to get the Brylcreem out of his hair and asking me to cut his hair for him.Kirchherr says that after she cut Sutcliffe's hair, Harrison asked her to do the same when she was visiting Liverpool, and Lennon and McCartney had their hair cut in the same style while they were in Paris, by Kirchherr's friend, Vollmer..."
Best way to keep friends?
Q: What is the best way to keep friends and be seen as a nice person?
A: To never do or say anything interesting!
Because then there is nothing for anyone to fall out with you about. This is advice I have been unable to keep myself.
Big Expensive hotels
The normal attitude to big expensive hotels is: 'its nice to be spoiled, and get good things.. i work hard so i deserve it'. All that sounds fine. But if you look beyond the facade it turns out to be something quite bad. Oh, you knew I was going to say that, right?
On such holidays it's REAL human beings doing the 'spoiling' of you. Waiters, room cleaners, cooks etc - often its black people, or asians or poor local people And the guests are normally rich white people over from Europe or North America, or Japanese people, or Chinese who became rich recently and want to indulge in a spot of the old CCC ( 'crude conspicuous consumption'.) in less well off Asian places. So first of all there are racist aspects to it - there is often a very marked difference in the race of the customers and the staff.
There is also a class aspect -well paid upper class or middle class people coming to be served by working class people or poorer people. Its unfair and unpleasant.
People would then say in their defence 'Maybe all that is true - but I'm giving them a job by going to their hotel. If they didn't have that hotel job they would be even worse off!'
Well, what kind of job are they getting? One that pays maybe $2 an hour, while you earn $100 an hour in your job in NY for doing work that is less onerous than theirs, for less hours. A job from which they get no enjoyment, do the same boring things everyday, in which their boss treats them badly, the guests treat them like 'inferiors', they get no health benefits, have almost no say in how things are run, etc
Do YOU want a job like that?
(and if you are a white middle class person who feels like their job is radiply becoming like the above then all the more reason to extend solidarity to other people around the world in such situations, no?)
So these kind of 'high class' hotels are - for me - kind of horrible places. In such places if YOU are high class, these other people are cast down to be 'low class' - and I dont like systems that seperate people into high and low because of money or race. It's a bad world made that way. While you are enjoying that 'high class service' you are also helping to make the world a more unfair place...
Of course people dont think of that, and hotels hide that side of things as much as they can - but its true, nevertheless.
One good about such big hotels is they are often very beautiful, well designed, give jobs to architects and artists - some of them are like galleries! So, Mr lefty moaner, if they did not exist those artist would not get the work, right?
Oh wrong again, he he...
That is true in a capitalist society, yes. Where things are organised according to profit. But some odd people, like me, want to have a different society in which things are organised for PEOPLE not profit. Oh what a mad idea!
In that kind of world artists would get paid to make art for the BEAUTY of it, for the sense of meaning and purpose that creation brings us...
and not the rather lowly, despicable thing of making expensive, profit obsessed, hotels that actually make the world more ugly.
Blaming the boss
you bring up some basic and important points.
1. working in capitalism is working for someone else, not you - this is a basic element that most people dont realise. they think its great top get a job at some big company and dont realise that if they make 200 quid a day in that work, they only get to take home, say, 100 of it (much less for most people). where does the other money that YOU have made with all that work go? Some to running costs yes, but a large % to people like Donald Trump. you are basically working at least half for their benefit, not your own. in some poorer countries you are working 90% for their benefit.
In the socialist-anarchist system i prefer (the SAS!) that would not happen. we would all share fairly in the rewards created from our own hard work.
2. most people bitch and moan about their manager being a cunt and the work system is so bad, and the boss is a tyrant, and the folk below them are lazy etc. that is probably the main problem most of us have (not me, luckily, in most cases). In the SAS their would be no bosses or managers who have greater power than us. we would all be equal workers and ALL would have a chance to decide how the company is run. there would still be a balls up sometime, but it would be OUR mess and we would sort it ourselves. that is a hugely better situation. because what people complain abut in capitalism is that things are a mess and there is nothing we can do about it! because the boss or manager has the power. they abuse us and there is nothing we can do about it, but go back and complain to our family - because the boss or manager has the power. in SAS way WE have the power, all the workers there. so we CAN do something about it.
3. the whole thing about capitalism is that it makes money and profit too important, so that it becomes the way we define ourselves, yes. but clearly we humans are more than that. the SAS way would say that we need to make thing and have houses and food etc, and so yes we need work hard. but that the aim is to make a decent and happy life for us all, and that we are al of value. its a much more positive system. it wont be perfect. folk will still divorce, fall out, tell lies, etc... but it will be a LOT better than now.
Lastly, i AM positive about the future- i think we will sort this crap out and live better.
nice!
you bring up some basic and important points.
1. working in capitalism is working for someone else, not you - this is a basic element that most people dont realise. they think its great top get a job at some big company and dont realise that if they make 200 quid a day in that work, they only get to take home, say, 100 of it (much less for most people). where does the other money that YOU have made with all that work go? Some to running costs yes, but a large % to people like Donald Trump. you are basically working at least half for their benefit, not your own. in some poorer countries you are working 90% for their benefit.
In the socialist-anarchist system i prefer (the SAS!) that would not happen. we would all share fairly in the rewards created from our own hard work.
2. most people bitch and moan about their manager being a cunt and the work system is so bad, and the boss is a tyrant, and the folk below them are lazy etc. that is probably the main problem most of us have (not me, luckily, in most cases). In the SAS their would be no bosses or managers who have greater power than us. we would all be equal workers and ALL would have a chance to decide how the company is run. there would still be a balls up sometime, but it would be OUR mess and we would sort it ourselves. that is a hugely better situation. because what people complain abut in capitalism is that things are a mess and there is nothing we can do about it! because the boss or manager has the power. they abuse us and there is nothing we can do about it, but go back and complain to our family - because the boss or manager has the power. in SAS way WE have the power, all the workers there. so we CAN do something about it.
3. the whole thing about capitalism is that it makes money and profit too important, so that it becomes the way we define ourselves, yes. but clearly we humans are more than that. the SAS way would say that we need to make thing and have houses and food etc, and so yes we need work hard. but that the aim is to make a decent and happy life for us all, and that we are al of value. its a much more positive system. it wont be perfect. folk will still divorce, fall out, tell lies, etc... but it will be a LOT better than now.
Lastly, i AM positive about the future- i think we will sort this crap out and live better.
nice!
Blaming individuals
to use an analogy its like someone complaining that their garden is full of litter, and instead of focusing on the real reason for that - because it’s windy and litter from all over the area has blown in - the person says ‘Those no good kids next door did it’. So then they come up with a policy of punishing the individual that says those kids are not allowed any treats. ‘If they have no treats then they have no wrappers to make litter with. That’s tough love!’ But it’s a mistake. You are blaming the wrong thing. It’s a waste of energy and it’s hurting weak people - you are depriving those kids of something, for no reason. Since it was the wind that made a mess of your garden you need to focus on that wider problem, the real source of the trouble. Then you can have a nice tidy garden!
Block on innovation
Diagnostic machine that regulates your diet – will not be allowed by capitalist food companies