If someone were to ask you, what qualities make a good political party leader, I'm pretty sure that faking a "ram packed train" to make a point, or saying that you'd never step down in the event of your party losing a general election wouldn't be among them.
The reasons why Jeremy Corbyn is the worst Labour leader in a long line of bad Labour leaders which - seeing as how we've had war criminal Tony Blair, unsmiling Gordon Brown, and weirdo Ed Miliband and his political tombstone - is seriously terrible and just... very, very sad.
First off, he just doesn't understand how the first rule of politics works: dress to impress. If you dress like you're about to be bumming around on the street, people assume you'll be doing that. If you dress like you're about to go on holiday, then go ahead, have fun - people will assume you're off to Barbados or Spain.
Jeremy Corbyn has never entirely dressed like he's the head of a political party. He's always tried to go with the smart-casual vibes, which means it's highly unlikely that, even if he got into power in the first place, which is itself a tall order, he'd be laughed out of office in no time.
Secondly, when the hell has this man EVER held public office? He's been a lifelong back-bench politician; even former leaders his own parliamentary party have never given him any form of responsibility, like making him a member of their actual or shadow cabinet. He's just been left to sit on the back benches, simply because he caused them too much trouble by voting against the party Whip at every possible vote.
On top of that, the one quality we're always going on about wanting to see in a politician, is honesty. If 'Train-gate' is anything to go by, Jeremy Corbyn's a first-class liar (pun absolutely intended). Any man who thinks it is smart to get caught on CCTV filming himself, on a half empty train, and pretending that it's 'ram-packed' to try and outline your policies, does not deserve to be a political leader.
Corbyn's other problem, is exactly what got him into first place in the labour leadership contest after Miliband left: his supporters. Momentum are a dangerously aggressive, and dangerously loyal band of supporters, absolutely determined to turn the leadership of the Labour party into a dictatorship.
By all reports, they have cut Corbyn off from his shadow ministers short of Diane Abbott (but then, they've got history), which means that the Labour party has essentially regressed into a protest group with no understandable or clear policies whatsoever, except for the nationalisation of just about everything known to man.
Top of this very brief list of his problems is his complete failure at communication. Granted, Ed Miliband was probably just as bad, with his speech at trying to communicate by saying, "sorry, I'm really bad at this", but Corbyn can't even manage something like that! Watching any one of his PMQs, against either Cameron or May is just cringily painful, all because of two things:
A) he reads out emails from his constituents, his groupies, his fans, whatever you want to call them, and he reads them out like they're the most boring thing imaginable. Take a hint from your fellow parliamentary colleagues, Jerry - if they ain't doin' it, then it ain't a good idea.
B) Corbyn has no concept, even after decades in Parliament, of what PMQs really means - which is to really interrogate the current government on what the hell it's doing. Corbyn seems perfectly happy to just ask the question in his hand from Joe or Jane Bloggs, and get the answer and sit down without trying to push any advantage that he might have.
To any Momentum or other Corbyn followers, I'd only put it to you like this: If you were in the middle of a war, and had to elect a leader, who would you choose, a pacifist with no experience of commanding troops, supplies, or using weaponry of any sort, like Corbyn, or someone with some experience of leading, no matter how small their role may have been, like May?
I think that Corbyn, and many other MPs could learn from this quote, by Oscar Wilde. He said:
"Experience is one thing, you can't get for nothing."
Wednesday, 24 August 2016
Friday, 24 June 2016
Great Britain, Great Shame
Too late, people have realised that we're losing a certainty, if a deteriorating one, for a future of uncertainty, instability and certainly of extended austerity. Nothing could have made that clearer than the bottom falling out of the FTSE and the pound. And we're only asking for decades of the same once we've invoked Article 50.
Written down in the Treaty of Lisbon, Article 50 is only ever invoked when a member of the EU wants to call it quits. And it has never, EVER been invoked before. If I've learned anything, nothing good ever comes from this kind of a first time.
Once it's been invoked, Article 50 starts a 2 year count down for trade negotiations to be completed and ratified with national governments, while membership treaties between the UK and the EU will stop having any meaning, but even this is being debated now, with EU leaders demanding that we hit the button now, and the Leave Campaign saying "eh, let's leave it a little while".
What makes me so ashamed is that both Brexit and Bremain have operated under the illusion that 'Fear makes it Clear' - scare the voters into voting how we want them to, hence the whole idea that, whatever we do, the world will end.
Neither side, has made it clear exactly what will happen, or what we stand to lose or gain, and I think that the Remain Campaign is particularly guilty of this.
Why? Well, they never really explained what kind of deal we have - had - with the EU. I don't think many voters will know that, when we joined, we were allowed to refuse to join both the Schengen Agreement, for essentially free and open travel, and the Euro. And it's hard to gauge just how much of a calming influence we were between France, Germany and Italy. Mostly because, set slightly apart by the Dover Channel, we could see it differently, I guess.
And I don't think that I ever once heard Cameron or any other Bremainer warning us that, if we wanted to leave and then rejoin the EU, we'll have to join both Schengen and the Euro - the EU has made both of these a compulsory requirement for new members. Thanks for the heads up, guys!
And on the other hand, Brexiteers can never say for sure how Brexit will actually go. NOBODY else has left the EU, except for Greenland, and they didn't even invoke Article 50; they just slipped out with no muss, no fuss.
I think that the only safe bet is that it'll be really shitty for us for the next few years after invoking Article 50. The pound and the stock markets will take a beating, and no matter how much we save from paying the EU, you can bet your arse that the austerity will begin to bite a bit more.
One thing's for sure: we'll regret leaving practically from the beginning, and if we ever decide to rejoin, we will NEVER have it as good as we did.
Feel the shame, "Great" Britain - you just fucked up your future.
Friday, 25 March 2016
Doctor, Doctor - NHS needs some medicine
OK, joking aside, the NHS is in serious trouble. Operating across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales since 1948, it's gone a long way towards its original goal of "let's look after the health of everybody in the country, and then the cost of it will go down".
At least, that was the theory. Now, most surveys of the NHS budget are saying that it's going to or will have a £2.3 billion deficit by the end of March 2016. £1.8 billion deficit would be a fantastic equivalent.
And so, I can't help wondering if there's something the government could do to try and fix this. Granted, my first idea will probably never, EVER get put into effect, if only because the NHS is the favourite political football of the moment, but here are some general ideas.
1) Take the NHS out of Government control
That's damn right. Give control of the procedures, the rules, the pricing of everything, even the targets, over to either the General Medical Council, or a totally new group dedicated to running the NHS with AS LITTLE, IF NO government interference.
In an ideal situation, the Government of the day would simply say "Here's your budget for the next 5, 10, 20 years; it'll go up by X no matter what, get on with it.
2) Get the NHS to help fund itself.
This one I can't really help blaming Tony Blair for, and is kind of connected to the next one. With tons of money lying around, he decided to try for instant solutions, without trying to make those solutions last.
At the moment, the NHS is free at the point of delivery, including GPs and walk in centres. This needs to stop. People walk in with a stubbed toe convinced by Google that it's cancer, and they're doing this free from a nannying healthcare system.
Not to say look at France, but... look at France! They have a good system where Joe Bloggs will go to his GP, pay roughly 23€ to get looked at and then, if he can't afford to let the fee slide, he fills out a form and sends it back to claim his money back.
That should be implemented in the NHS. Regular GP appointments should cost between £15 and £18 (the equivalent of 23€, anyway). If you miss your appointment without having called to explain or reschedule it, a fine of £10 should apply. If you can't afford to lose that kind of money, fill out the form and claim it back.
Any "non-essential" operations like boob reductions, or cosmetic surgeries of any sort should never be "on the NHS" UNLESS it is medically necessary i.e. operate or he dies, and only if the patient can prove he cannot afford the costs.
3) Set REASONABLE targets
Again, Tony Blair went totally wrong here, because while he got waiting times down, he didn't try to keep them down. That wasn't reasonable purely because of financial issues - mostly because of his assumption that the money would be there forever and ever and ever.
That being said, you can't expect instant solutions from the NHS. Part of the reason that it's floundering right now is that the government of the day can't make its mind up on targets, and yet always demands instant results.
We're talking about a business that spans 4 countries! That's the mother of all supertankers, and it ain't changing direction every time a slick politico snaps his fingers.
Look at the Titanic. It only hit the iceberg because of a lack of enough time to manoeuvre, and the inability to change direction quickly. Treat the NHS like the Titanic, and give it a goal to reach 3, 4, 5 years down the line, instead of right now with tea and a biscuit!
But none of this will ever happen, most likely. Because every government needs its political football or two. Here in the UK, they happen to be Trident and the NHS. And the NHS and the people it is trying to serve will be the ones to suffer for it.
Saturday, 5 December 2015
Dear Jeremy Corbyn: Why ISIL will never accept peace.
Dear Mr. Corbyn,
You have made a lot of headline-worthy fuss of trying to make some form of settlement with the extremist group known as ISIL. You have mentioned the progress made with the talks in Vienna for a potential peace in Syria.
This is not peace with ISIL. This is peace with Syria in the face of, as you said in your speech in the Commons on Wednesday 2nd December "the chaos and horror of a multi-front civil war", and nothing more. This peace blooming in Vienna is a fragile flower that ISIL would love nothing more than to crush under boot, and then execute, shoot and bomb that same peace for good measure.
Sir, I am not a woman to condone senseless violence for the sake of it. I have and did have family in Paris at the time of the horrific attacks three weeks ago; thankfully, none of my family were injured. But the same cannot be said for the 130 victims, both of British and international origin who were killed for an extremist, fascist, and intolerable religious point of view.
Granted, ISIL perhaps entirely owes its existence to the invasion of Iraq - a war based almost entirely on mistakes made by both UK and US governments of the day. However, when even Al Qaeda is attacking ISIL, then you know that you cannot necessarily argue for peaceful and fair settlement!
While I know little of their lives before they became infamous leaders, I know that Hitler and Pol Pot, and others like them, were terrible, and true examples of the adage "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". And yet, it is exactly that kind of absolute power that ISIL is bent on achieving at any cost. And I believe that it is from the bloody crucible of their birth in the Syrian civil war, that ISIL have learned their current means of achieving their ultimate and final goal.
Between them, Hitler and Pol Pot killed over 37 million people - and these numbers are from the time that they came into power. ISIL have yet to achieve any power on the same level as these aforementioned tyrants, and yet besides those killed in their depraved attempts to grab land and power for themselves, they have killed 567 innocent people who had nothing to do with their war or their way of life.
ISIL killed four men for being gay. They killed the Palmyra curator, Professor Halid Al Assad, for being the guardian of, to their mind, heinous and blasphemous relics and ruins. They killed older or elderly Yazidi women for being, in their eyes, too old to be sold for sex. Can you honestly believe that "[Such] a settlement is widely accepted to be the only way to ensure the isolation and defeat of ISIL in the country [Syria]... All our efforts should instead go into bringing the Syrian civil war to an end"?
Hillary Benn described ISIL perfectly in his speech to the Commons: A group of fascists united by "...their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all of the people that we represent. They hold us... [and] our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt."
They will not accept any peace brokered with the West. ISIL will not rest until what happened in Paris happens in London, and Leeds, and Birmingham, and Glasgow and right across the West and they will not rest until the West surrenders to their fascism, their greed, and to their totalitarian control.
And that, Mr. Corbyn, is why we will never achieve any peace with ISIL. We won't even get a table to talk peace at, on, or over.
I rarely tend to quote film characters. However, a quote from Alfred Pennyworth, portrayed brilliantly by Sir Michael Caine in the Dark Knight, sum up the goals and aims of ISIL simply: "Some men aren't looking for something logical, some men just want to watch the world burn."
ISIL is not a logical organisation. If they were, Mr. Corbyn, they would see that peace, in the face of annihilation from 60 different countries, would be an absolute priority to ensure their own survival, let alone the chance to have any country to call their own. Instead, ISIL wants to impose their selfish, brutal ideology and politics on the whole world, or else, much like the Joker, they will want nothing more than to light the match and watch it burn.
I can understand why you want peace in Syria. A lack of it is what gave birth to radicals like ISIL. But some peaces can only be forged in blood, with all the regret and grief that the world can offer. And I believe that, if ISIL can be removed in its entirety, then a peace in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and the entire Middle East can be one of the strongest peaces ever to be forged in blood, and tempered by the grief and regret that ISIL has brought to the world.
Sincerely,
Isabelle
You have made a lot of headline-worthy fuss of trying to make some form of settlement with the extremist group known as ISIL. You have mentioned the progress made with the talks in Vienna for a potential peace in Syria.
This is not peace with ISIL. This is peace with Syria in the face of, as you said in your speech in the Commons on Wednesday 2nd December "the chaos and horror of a multi-front civil war", and nothing more. This peace blooming in Vienna is a fragile flower that ISIL would love nothing more than to crush under boot, and then execute, shoot and bomb that same peace for good measure.
Sir, I am not a woman to condone senseless violence for the sake of it. I have and did have family in Paris at the time of the horrific attacks three weeks ago; thankfully, none of my family were injured. But the same cannot be said for the 130 victims, both of British and international origin who were killed for an extremist, fascist, and intolerable religious point of view.
Granted, ISIL perhaps entirely owes its existence to the invasion of Iraq - a war based almost entirely on mistakes made by both UK and US governments of the day. However, when even Al Qaeda is attacking ISIL, then you know that you cannot necessarily argue for peaceful and fair settlement!
While I know little of their lives before they became infamous leaders, I know that Hitler and Pol Pot, and others like them, were terrible, and true examples of the adage "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". And yet, it is exactly that kind of absolute power that ISIL is bent on achieving at any cost. And I believe that it is from the bloody crucible of their birth in the Syrian civil war, that ISIL have learned their current means of achieving their ultimate and final goal.
Between them, Hitler and Pol Pot killed over 37 million people - and these numbers are from the time that they came into power. ISIL have yet to achieve any power on the same level as these aforementioned tyrants, and yet besides those killed in their depraved attempts to grab land and power for themselves, they have killed 567 innocent people who had nothing to do with their war or their way of life.
ISIL killed four men for being gay. They killed the Palmyra curator, Professor Halid Al Assad, for being the guardian of, to their mind, heinous and blasphemous relics and ruins. They killed older or elderly Yazidi women for being, in their eyes, too old to be sold for sex. Can you honestly believe that "[Such] a settlement is widely accepted to be the only way to ensure the isolation and defeat of ISIL in the country [Syria]... All our efforts should instead go into bringing the Syrian civil war to an end"?
Hillary Benn described ISIL perfectly in his speech to the Commons: A group of fascists united by "...their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this Chamber tonight and all of the people that we represent. They hold us... [and] our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt."
They will not accept any peace brokered with the West. ISIL will not rest until what happened in Paris happens in London, and Leeds, and Birmingham, and Glasgow and right across the West and they will not rest until the West surrenders to their fascism, their greed, and to their totalitarian control.
And that, Mr. Corbyn, is why we will never achieve any peace with ISIL. We won't even get a table to talk peace at, on, or over.
I rarely tend to quote film characters. However, a quote from Alfred Pennyworth, portrayed brilliantly by Sir Michael Caine in the Dark Knight, sum up the goals and aims of ISIL simply: "Some men aren't looking for something logical, some men just want to watch the world burn."
ISIL is not a logical organisation. If they were, Mr. Corbyn, they would see that peace, in the face of annihilation from 60 different countries, would be an absolute priority to ensure their own survival, let alone the chance to have any country to call their own. Instead, ISIL wants to impose their selfish, brutal ideology and politics on the whole world, or else, much like the Joker, they will want nothing more than to light the match and watch it burn.
I can understand why you want peace in Syria. A lack of it is what gave birth to radicals like ISIL. But some peaces can only be forged in blood, with all the regret and grief that the world can offer. And I believe that, if ISIL can be removed in its entirety, then a peace in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and the entire Middle East can be one of the strongest peaces ever to be forged in blood, and tempered by the grief and regret that ISIL has brought to the world.
Sincerely,
Isabelle
Friday, 23 October 2015
Sicilia: Limones and volcanoes for a week
OK, so the title probably doesn't make much sense, but I just spent a week in Sicily and I. Loved. IT!
For those God-Father fans out there, though, it isn't the Sicily that they think they know from the films. Yes, there are olive trees galore, more pomegranate trees than I was expecting and enough lemons for Life to get tired of them, but the Cosa Nostra are busy trying not to be imprisoned into non-existence by the Sicilian government.
Among their many not-so-legal activities, there were a LOT of solar-farms (think an entire hill covered in solar panels) that the Cosa Nostra had built, only to shell it out to other countries at stupid prices, not to mention a lot of illegal building - in every sense of the word, since a lot of the building seems to be on cliffs over motorways that then get buried under landslides thanks to both the building and some torrential rain!
Anyway, Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, making up the 'football' at the toe of mainland Italy's 'boot'. I say mainland because Sicily is actually a part of Italy, having been owned in turn by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the lords or kings of Anjou, then the crowns of Aragon, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, before being unified with Naples under the Bourbons as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
As a result, there is very little of the natural Sicily to see. A lot of the plants and animals were introduced by its conquerors, namely the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. However, it can boast the oldest chestnut tree in the world - which is unusual considering that this Hundred Horse Chestnut has survived between 2 and 4,000 years on the eastern slope of Mount Etna - which was amazing, but we'll get to that.
One thing that is totally Sicilian is the endangered goats, which are a total mind-mess. For one thing, they are supposedly useless, giving very little milk and icky icky meat. For another, they're endangered, regardless! Also, their horns are epic in the extreme:
But this is all in Agrigento, on the southern coast closest to the coast of Northern Africa. You go up to Monreale, just outside of their capital city of Palermo on the north coast, things get even more mentally messy and cultured, when you find the answer to this question: What do you get when King William the Second (also known as the Good) decides to build a cathedral because he doesn't like the archbishop of Palermo? Apparently, a cathedral with only one painting in the entire building, and mosaics made up of - I'm absolutely not joking - 400 KILOS of GOLD!
And finally we get to the eastern coast, with the most famous of Sicily's landmarks: Mount Etna. For a volcano that went off earlier this year, it is FREEZING at the best of times, thanks to being 3,329 metres high, with a base of 140 square kilometres.
The irony is that it has a skiing resort. Think about it - you can SKI on the most ACTIVE VOLCANO IN EUROPE! And you can go up to the secondary crater (bearing in mind that there are at least 5 non-active craters around Etna's middle, and three closer to its peak. Thanks to its five-day tantrum in May this year, there was a crown of sulphur and a no-access policy to the primary crater, which is a bit counter-intuitive seeing as how even the secondary crater's been active in the past two years:
All in all, Sicily has been an amazing place to visit. I heartily recommend it to everyone, and the Sicilians will honestly not mind the extra people. They have the perfect proverb, after all:
"Unni manciannu dui, manciannu tri (there's always room for one more)'
For those God-Father fans out there, though, it isn't the Sicily that they think they know from the films. Yes, there are olive trees galore, more pomegranate trees than I was expecting and enough lemons for Life to get tired of them, but the Cosa Nostra are busy trying not to be imprisoned into non-existence by the Sicilian government.
Among their many not-so-legal activities, there were a LOT of solar-farms (think an entire hill covered in solar panels) that the Cosa Nostra had built, only to shell it out to other countries at stupid prices, not to mention a lot of illegal building - in every sense of the word, since a lot of the building seems to be on cliffs over motorways that then get buried under landslides thanks to both the building and some torrential rain!
Anyway, Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, making up the 'football' at the toe of mainland Italy's 'boot'. I say mainland because Sicily is actually a part of Italy, having been owned in turn by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Normans, the lords or kings of Anjou, then the crowns of Aragon, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, before being unified with Naples under the Bourbons as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
As a result, there is very little of the natural Sicily to see. A lot of the plants and animals were introduced by its conquerors, namely the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. However, it can boast the oldest chestnut tree in the world - which is unusual considering that this Hundred Horse Chestnut has survived between 2 and 4,000 years on the eastern slope of Mount Etna - which was amazing, but we'll get to that.
One thing that is totally Sicilian is the endangered goats, which are a total mind-mess. For one thing, they are supposedly useless, giving very little milk and icky icky meat. For another, they're endangered, regardless! Also, their horns are epic in the extreme:
But this is all in Agrigento, on the southern coast closest to the coast of Northern Africa. You go up to Monreale, just outside of their capital city of Palermo on the north coast, things get even more mentally messy and cultured, when you find the answer to this question: What do you get when King William the Second (also known as the Good) decides to build a cathedral because he doesn't like the archbishop of Palermo? Apparently, a cathedral with only one painting in the entire building, and mosaics made up of - I'm absolutely not joking - 400 KILOS of GOLD!
And finally we get to the eastern coast, with the most famous of Sicily's landmarks: Mount Etna. For a volcano that went off earlier this year, it is FREEZING at the best of times, thanks to being 3,329 metres high, with a base of 140 square kilometres.
The irony is that it has a skiing resort. Think about it - you can SKI on the most ACTIVE VOLCANO IN EUROPE! And you can go up to the secondary crater (bearing in mind that there are at least 5 non-active craters around Etna's middle, and three closer to its peak. Thanks to its five-day tantrum in May this year, there was a crown of sulphur and a no-access policy to the primary crater, which is a bit counter-intuitive seeing as how even the secondary crater's been active in the past two years:
All in all, Sicily has been an amazing place to visit. I heartily recommend it to everyone, and the Sicilians will honestly not mind the extra people. They have the perfect proverb, after all:
"Unni manciannu dui, manciannu tri (there's always room for one more)'
Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Swear Words - We need some new ones.
OK - this is going to be a weird one. But I have a problem with our English swear words; none of them seem to really mean the same things they did. This might just be my education talking, but none of them offend me, because I know what they really mean.
Like, fuck means "sex" and bloody means I need a plaster or a tampon, crap means I pooped myself, and shit is what monkeys tend to throw around.
But the one that everybody shies away from is the other C-word. As in, the C U Next Tuesday word. Granted, it's rarely used in "civilized" society, but it still seems to hold a lot of power.
But not for me. To me, calling someone a cunt is liking calling someone a dick. The only response you'll ever get from me is: "Well, yeah - I have one. So what?"
Because the truest definition of the word is a woman's genitalia, although it can also mean having sex with a woman and today, you could just about have sex with nearly anybody.
The same thing with pussy - although most people use it to refer to "womanlike" qualities, it's really just short for a baby cat or pusillanimous, which means "timid or cowardly", and everybody has a different standard of courage. I just don't find constant swearing as brave - or attractive. It just makes you look uneducated and unopinionated and incapable of proper expression.
And what's wrong with politeness? We're BRITISH, for God's sake - we practically own the market for PC and manners, why don't we damn well act like it? As Rachel Nichols said,
"I simply do not think that yelling, swearing, threatening or belittling will get you to the place you want to be faster than kindness, understanding, patience and a willingness to compromise."
Granted, compromising won't taste as good as total victory, but it's better to have a taste of the cake than stand there with no respect from your peers and the sour taste of a stream of swear words in your mouth.
Like, fuck means "sex" and bloody means I need a plaster or a tampon, crap means I pooped myself, and shit is what monkeys tend to throw around.
But the one that everybody shies away from is the other C-word. As in, the C U Next Tuesday word. Granted, it's rarely used in "civilized" society, but it still seems to hold a lot of power.
But not for me. To me, calling someone a cunt is liking calling someone a dick. The only response you'll ever get from me is: "Well, yeah - I have one. So what?"
Because the truest definition of the word is a woman's genitalia, although it can also mean having sex with a woman and today, you could just about have sex with nearly anybody.
The same thing with pussy - although most people use it to refer to "womanlike" qualities, it's really just short for a baby cat or pusillanimous, which means "timid or cowardly", and everybody has a different standard of courage. I just don't find constant swearing as brave - or attractive. It just makes you look uneducated and unopinionated and incapable of proper expression.
And what's wrong with politeness? We're BRITISH, for God's sake - we practically own the market for PC and manners, why don't we damn well act like it? As Rachel Nichols said,
"I simply do not think that yelling, swearing, threatening or belittling will get you to the place you want to be faster than kindness, understanding, patience and a willingness to compromise."
Granted, compromising won't taste as good as total victory, but it's better to have a taste of the cake than stand there with no respect from your peers and the sour taste of a stream of swear words in your mouth.
Sickness of Sins: Everyone has a bad habit
OK, I have a confession to make, to kick start this post: I am absolutely and totally addicted to Diet Coke and McCoy's Salt and Vinegar crisps. My family can back me up on this.
At worst, I could drink up to 14 litres of Diet coke a week (2 litres a day, mostly made up of 4 500ml bottles), and eat 4 50g packets of crisps a day - two with lunch and two after dinner. I won't even try and think of how many packets that is a week. It'll be enough to say that it's been less than helpful to my waistline.
And while my family - my mum, sister, and father in particular - have been urging me to cut this down (scratch that, cut it out entirely), I can't help wanting to follow a certain train of thought.
Whenever we think about addictions, we think of the following: drink, drugs, cigarettes, sex. And those are the ones that usually blow your life apart in a huge way: rehab, debt, overdoses, the whole kit and caboodle.
But then there are... I don't want to say less harmful addictions, but - let's go with more SUBTLE addictions, like food. And I think it's because of our perception of food; the stuff's essential - no food and you're toast.
Yeah, I know - terrible pun, but I didn't have to fish for it. OK, I'll get back to the point.
The way I can't help seeing it is that food's a carer's drug. It can still make you sick in that you overeat in one sitting and throw up then, but it doesn't incapacitate you straight away. You can eat crisps and some chocolate, and then get up and do something that requires good mobility.
If you're drunk or stoned, the ability to walk a straight line juggling oranges and lemons isn't going to work out well.
But when you overdose on junk food and fizzy drinks, the worse that can happen - or at least the worst that HAS happened to me at least - is that you puke all over the place.
As Caitlin Moran wrote once,
"Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers... Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic or a burden. Instead, they are self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone."
And we don't entirely realise it. Granted, we realise the dangers of eating too little food - too many girls puking their guts out in primary school, or eating lettuce leaves because Joe Sexy-DooDah says he only likes girls who weigh the same as a bottle of beer.
But practically nobody sees the opposite end of the spectrum - women eating the entire contents of their fridges at midnight because they think that Joe Pecksey would never look at them twice.
But people aren't talking about it unless there's a 2 year old already puking her guts out without enough fat on her.
But then, maybe I'm not having a go at the sins of fat people. I'm fat myself, I can't talk. I'm just having a go at the hypocrisy of society, I guess. There's a quote - I don't know who by - that I found recently, and love:
"I don't have a short temper, I just have a low tolerance for hypocrites and drama."
At worst, I could drink up to 14 litres of Diet coke a week (2 litres a day, mostly made up of 4 500ml bottles), and eat 4 50g packets of crisps a day - two with lunch and two after dinner. I won't even try and think of how many packets that is a week. It'll be enough to say that it's been less than helpful to my waistline.
And while my family - my mum, sister, and father in particular - have been urging me to cut this down (scratch that, cut it out entirely), I can't help wanting to follow a certain train of thought.
Whenever we think about addictions, we think of the following: drink, drugs, cigarettes, sex. And those are the ones that usually blow your life apart in a huge way: rehab, debt, overdoses, the whole kit and caboodle.
But then there are... I don't want to say less harmful addictions, but - let's go with more SUBTLE addictions, like food. And I think it's because of our perception of food; the stuff's essential - no food and you're toast.
Yeah, I know - terrible pun, but I didn't have to fish for it. OK, I'll get back to the point.
The way I can't help seeing it is that food's a carer's drug. It can still make you sick in that you overeat in one sitting and throw up then, but it doesn't incapacitate you straight away. You can eat crisps and some chocolate, and then get up and do something that requires good mobility.
If you're drunk or stoned, the ability to walk a straight line juggling oranges and lemons isn't going to work out well.
But when you overdose on junk food and fizzy drinks, the worse that can happen - or at least the worst that HAS happened to me at least - is that you puke all over the place.
As Caitlin Moran wrote once,
"Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers... Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic or a burden. Instead, they are self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone."
And we don't entirely realise it. Granted, we realise the dangers of eating too little food - too many girls puking their guts out in primary school, or eating lettuce leaves because Joe Sexy-DooDah says he only likes girls who weigh the same as a bottle of beer.
But practically nobody sees the opposite end of the spectrum - women eating the entire contents of their fridges at midnight because they think that Joe Pecksey would never look at them twice.
But people aren't talking about it unless there's a 2 year old already puking her guts out without enough fat on her.
But then, maybe I'm not having a go at the sins of fat people. I'm fat myself, I can't talk. I'm just having a go at the hypocrisy of society, I guess. There's a quote - I don't know who by - that I found recently, and love:
"I don't have a short temper, I just have a low tolerance for hypocrites and drama."
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