[ssf] Blair's pledges

[Chris Malins]

Hmmmm.

1. Don't have a family
2. Don't have a family
3. Guess what?
4. Don't care, maybe the vikings would govern better
5. From being bulldozed?

I don't think that I matter to the government as a voter. I find it a 
little worrying that the government should be trying to imply that 
raising a family is the only legitimate lifestyle choice, a use of 
language probably consciously trying to woo the 'Family Values' brigade.

Madness ensues.

Dan wrote:
> Labour reveals election pledges
> 
> The pledges so far:
> 
> 1. Your family better off
> 2. Your family treated better and faster
> 3. Your child achieving more
> 4. Your country's borders protected
> 5. Your community safer
> 
> Wow.  Couldn't get very much more individualistic than that, huh?  Let's 
> compare that to:
> 
> "I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom 
> compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers 
> were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember 
> when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing 
> trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were 
> free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable 
> diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was 
> blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact 
> freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor."
> 
> [Clement Attlee, election broadcast 1945.] (And of course all of these 
> things still go on - but apparently, none of these issues are 
> vote-winners!)
> 
> "This generation has grown up ignorant of the fact that socialism is as 
> old as the human race. When civilization dawned upon the world, 
> primitive man was living his rude Communistic life, sharing all things 
> in common with every member of the tribe. Later when the race lived in 
> villages, man, the communist, moved about among the communal flocks and 
> herds on communal land. The peoples who have carved their names most 
> deeply on the tables of human story all set out on their conquering 
> career as communists, and their downward path begins with the day when 
> they finally turned away from it and began to gather personal 
> possessions. When the old civilizations were putrefying, the still small 
> voice of Jesus the Communist stole over the earth like a soft refreshing 
> breeze carrying healing wherever it went."
> 
> [Keir Hardie, From Serfdom to Socialism 1907]
> 
>