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Rant

The Product

Society is an illusion, an artifice: a construct. It is the lever that keeps those in power comfortable. It creates order, it creates (or at least encourages) homogeneity, to keep its unstable mass neatly boxed and packaged. It sells luxury, novelty, entertainment and a myriad of non-essential trivialities upon which its users become hopelessly, unwittingly dependent, the administration of which lies with the organisations in power (be they government or financial/corporate).
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Ditch the Habit!

Just watched a fairly interesting TV documentary on all this Mel Gibson/Passion business. I don’t know if interesting’s the right word, really. Hmmm. I’ll give that some thought.

60% of Americans are Christians, apparently. I don’t think this figure surprises me—I’d be curious to hear the comaparitive statistic for the UK. I’d imagine it would be significantly lower, but perhaps I’m wrong.

I wonder how many of these people could articulate a coherent/credible reason for their faith, as opposed to it being something they take for granted, having been indoctrinated from an early age and not having the presence of mind to ask the right (or wrong) questions? Is the dynamic really so different to the acceptance and reinforcement of bigotry (because your parents were, yada yada yada), the status quo, etc? ‘My family/tribe’s dogma/system says thus—who am I to say otherwise [bleating sound]?’
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Your Legal Daily Entitlement to Oxygen is…

So now Blair is banning Happy Hours in pubs? Have I heard this right? My reaction: at least, for once, this new initiative isn’t one of the endless stream of ploys to screw more money out of people (to consolidate some of Brown’s humongous debts)… but it’s still another instance of asserting a growing degree of control over people’s lives. *sigh*

Can I just briefly say that Tony Blair is a bastard and all politicians are scum? I’ve said it before, but I’m worried I might not be allowed to do it before long. Thanks.
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Report Schmeport

I’ve been tempted to write a lengthy ramble about the so-called Hutton Report, it being one of the few things sparking my attention in the news… but, nah, I’ll be brief (I think).

What does this report mean, anyway? Are people getting confused about the Lord in Lord Hutton? It doesn’t mean Lord as in God, you know. In my opinion, for a report of this kind to carry any kind of weight, it needs to be the result of analysis by panel (in the same way that a trial verdict is reached by jury). Even that hardly ensures true objectivity—whatever that is—but it’s probably the best we can hope for.

One man’s allegedly objective analysis simply isn’t good enough, particularly when he admits the ‘scope’ of the report is so limited as to rob the process of any genuine context. Aw, who needs a context anyway? Hilarious.
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The Wonderful System

By way of a moan about the government in general, you might be interested in the state of the pension system these days. My mother was 60 on August 13th (which was a Wednesday). Two weeks later, her pension still hadn’t been paid. She started making angry calls. No one had a good explanation for this, except mutterings about ‘backlog’ and things not being ‘processed yet.’

She did finally get sent a giro for the first two weeks of her pension, last week. It should have been paid into the bank, but they seemed to be having trouble with this concept. It was dated from August 18th. Here’s the fun bit: she phoned to inquire what this meant, and they told her the pensions are only paid on a ‘from Monday’ basis, so since her birthday was on a Wednesday, she loses five days of pension simply because it didn’t fall on a Monday! (How much like an evil ‘save every penny we can get away with’ government plot does this sound?)
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Same Old Deal

The New Deal appointment I had today didn’t go terribly well, really. The person I saw seemed intent on using the word ‘mandatory’ every other sentence and underlining every single point with the clear threat of benefit cessation.

Who trains these people? Are they given any hints whatsoever about basic psychology? Or are they so used to dealing with half-witted, apathetic zombots that someone with an individual point of view is an alien concept? What is the purpose of emphasising all the negative aspects of this wretched system instead of trying to create the impression that something positive can come out of it? I might actually respond to positivity—I certainly won’t respond to browbeating, implicit threats or horribly negative words like ‘mandatory.’
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The Meaning of Life: Part 364

I had my fifth ‘mentoring’ session at the Jobcentre yesterday. The first one was back on March 19th.

At my previous appointment, two weeks ago, my mentor had been delving into ambition in a general sense. He told me he felt I was very intelligent and had a lot to offer (although, exactly what, he couldn’t specify). At one point he said, ‘Maybe you’d just like to meet Mr. Right, get married and have babies.’ (He added, ‘There’s nothing wrong with that.’) This comment amused me, really, and yet it did have something—I really don’t think I am all that ambitious per se. I’ve only genuinely realised that in the last couple of years.
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