This is going to be quite a long intro...

I spent alot of last night and this morning thinking about the state of play politicaly and economicaly in this country and where this fits in to the bigger picture, the global infrastructure.
The reason I have been considering this is a mix between a conversation on live chat and Panorama both yesterday.
I have noticed that as a rule you generally get the larger contributors to tax on the right hand side of politics and people who are or have been at the lower end of the financial spectrum on the left hand side. Why is this I wonder? I think I know -

When you are poor or chose to live a more basic exsistance you tend to meet political minorities such as immigrants, drug addicts and although you certainly meet some undesireable people you also get to see the struggle and the human beings in these socail minorities.
You learn that at this basic level everyone is struggling all the time and people, decent people are forced to go through the same channels as chronic drug addicts just to feed there families. I think people who have in some experianced these peoples struggles have a deeper sence of empathy with them.

But on the other hand - A hard working, well educated member of society, who is of great value to the running of this institution economicaly feels that there hard work and taxes are being wasted it creates a seemingly unbridgeable gap between themselves and there fellow human beings

Who is right? In my opinion both and neither... It's a case of you cant please everyone.
In my opinion the advantage of having a fantastic NHS and schooling system amongst other things makes this a very desireable place to live. If you were dodging machine gun bullets and watched your family get butchered you too would want to come to this country - our benefits system allows everyone to have a fair shot... If you were a political refugee you also would want to come here... By being such a desireable place it is going to attract allsorts including (lets face it) undesirable types.
But the flip sides to this coin in my opinion are not good... If we were to abolish immigration and obliterate benefits I 'believe' this country would go down the toilet, and also if we gave all the power to the government our quality of life would massivley decrease.

There are many people who abuse this system, but not enough to justify the level of hatred that is prevalent in this society. In my opinion the government gets much more out of dividing and conquering our unity and spirit than it loses in paying the smack heads off... They really could sort the problems with drug missuse if they wanted - it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than a 10 year war with the middle east that IMO has nothing to do with us.

In short I think this country is the most free and most genuinely run place (that i know of) in the world but this comes at a cost - I think the more radical opions of repatronisation and general intollerance and racism really shows a lack of understanding - also the other end of the spectrum, the far too wishy-washy left wing seem not to realise that there is only so much lower-end social saturation this economy can take... Opinion please?

If you have 2 arms and 2 legs (like you) you should get a fucking job. End of.

Darwin got it right Wowzer, its survival of the fittest.....its the way our species survives

Well how do you explain the down syndrome kid who works in the local pub down my way? We as a species (humans) nurture are less fortunate - we have seemingly stepped outside natures plan. Which i think is a good thing. If they could remove this unessasary gene for eternity with eugenics (another thread) then fair enough - but for now it seems that within the human kind sentiant compassion does not follow the survival of the fittest anymore...

I didn't read your starting post sorry, but you certainly have and make a very interesting point there.

Given that we are going against the whole 'survival of the fittest' ideal, What is the human race going to evolve into (assuming we will be around long enough to evolve any further)?

some of our less fortunate fellow humans do get a leg up from others, this is natural as well......but then there are also people who on the face of it are having a good life but for whatever reason fall by the wayside.

This reason could be related to health, work, family, natural disasters, in fact almost anything. For me, life is a lottery..we are born naked with no assets....and for sure, no matter how much of a good life you may have..in the end we are all equal in death....millionaire or pauper.

There was something in the metro about that a couple of years ago. Some research group clamied that we would evolve into two seperate species. A healthy, tall, intelligent breed and an oaf like troll cast.

Very Orwellian (sp).

The idea came from their being a continually expanding gap between the junk food eating, undereducated classes and real people.

Me and the wayside are old buddies lol

Yeah i read that - the claim is it is already irreversibly happening I believe!

I hate to sound like a 'smart ass know it all' but Darwin didn't talk about survival of the fittest!

he didn.t write those words but its the basis of the theory of evolution...

Touchè! :o)

Its survival of the thickest these days.

Teen mum knocks out 5 kids by the age of 20 the kids are raised badly and with lack of morals, those kids in turn have 5 kids. and so on and so forth. Where as the educated tend to have fewer kids later in life.

Stupidity takes over the world, and everyone is on the dole.

But it is this that will branch a sub super species possibly, as the gap widens between the educated and the 'Urrrrm' not so educated we will breed into our own target sexual equivelents - this is how it is described that humans will branch off into 2 sub species...

Quality not quanity will eventually rule the planet I reckon - as the resources become more and more drained only the educated will be able to sustain themselves while the rest will eventually become a third world type. It is human nature to nurture the less privaleged so unless some 'ethnic cleansing' regime takes place it will take many eons for this to become natural order but I thnk this could well be the truth of the distant future!

the Eloi and the Morlocks?

What an excellent analogy ML!

Stop benefits.

Problem solved.

we humans are interfering with nature and causing an imbalance in our population by shoring up the weaker specimins with benefits....this doesnt happen though in many parts of the world, and although we are horrified by famine and disease wiping out 1000's its nature's way of balancing population with available resources...i would also count natural disaster and war in this....

The political left and the political right are two sides of the same coin: we cooperate (left) via competition (right).

I couldn't agree more. If you can't afford kids don't have them.


This is a good point, if you can provide for you and your family then you shouldn't be a hindrance to society.