Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

Night lefties.

I'm off to bed in my clean warm house with my well fed and happy children to count my blessings frankly.

I know, but the point I was making is that a choice of one thing isn't so great. And having a choice between two things requires more public policy changes than the British are prepared to accept.

In the Czech Republic (where I'm a strain because I don't go home for my healthcare!) you can choose which hospital you go, which doctor you go to etc. and surveys suggest people appreciate it, rather than finding it hopelessly confusing.

PLUS both major parties (and no libs) ignoring black economy and illegal immigrant working underclass.

david laws 'decisions made against accounting officers adivce'

oh shit, gordon, you didn't did you?

oooo newsnight...anyone watching?

happiness isn't an end in itself!

happiness can result from creativity, productivity (I really really buy Marx's alienation from means of production argument, always have: carpenter looks on at chest of drawers he has made has far more chance of side effect happiness then call centre worker, wage irrelevant).

it can result from a sense of real connection with another person. but connecting (as an example) with another person in order to be happy is a hiding to nothing imo.

jade goody was a lazy example, but i have seen and experienced myself 'shortcut' culture at first hand oftentimes: sense of real embittered betrayal at not getting the whole package yesterday rather than any sense of working towards a modest aim.

the frustrating thing is that the scandies have little populations and big GDPs and excellent education as a result.

so are those societies replicable?

No, I can't agree that the pursuit of happiness is a dead end. It's how you pursue it that matters - Toast's point re the happiest people being the people who "make a difference" is nice to hear.

And I don't think I agree that it's true that people really want or expect the Jade Goody "famous for nothing really" success/wealth. I think that's the work of the media - they tell us that people want/expect this, but does anyone actually know anyone who does? Certainly my older DCs, both early twenties so the Big Brother generation, don't - they're painfully aware that they need vocational qualifications and a decent job. Their friends are all working their socks off.

totally agree...consumerism run riot is responsible for an awful lot of shit...but the capitalists would argue that it is also reaponsible for lifting whole nations out of poverty too.

I think we are very much caught in a capitalist trap - in order for the system to work the population must be convinced that they want, need and deserve 'things'.

totally agree that poverty of the scale and type that exists abroad doesn't actually exist here, and that the poverty that does is rooted as much in ignorance (of what is available) as anything else.

it's why child poverty is such a problem...children are not responsible for the ignorance of their parents.

it comes back to education doesn't it? fix that (from as early on as poss) and the knock on is massive.

It was a very sad day, Sophable.

Vesela, a choice between two things is still choice but the research showed that the more choices we had the more dissatisfied we were. If we chose between two things, we were pretty confident we'd made the right choice, but if there were more options we were always worried we could have got something better. I once read an article by someone who'd got out of Eastern Europe decades ago when her father got a university job in the USA. She and her mother literally couldn't cope in the supermarket for months because all the choice was so disorientating.

You're right, Beachcomber.

that scandies do don't they: cleaner gets paid not much differently to doctor there as i understood it when danish guy explained it to me once?

please explain in full what living wage is (is it raising the basic wage to a level where it becomes motivating?).

i think wages are only part of it, i know i'm going to sound like some kind of tory nightmare, but we seem to be living in a world where working really hard for a living are obsolete in people's imaginations...everyone wants to be jade goody (minus untimely death) rich and famous for nothing. the thought of working way up to things is just gone. this goes all the way through the class strata ime: people don't want to work way up to family home for eg, want one straight off the bat.

don't want to work way up in company or career, want spondulicks and kudos straightaway.

don't know that living wage will do anything about that at all...don't know what will.

Prolesworth, I suppose there's always been jobs that are only done by a perceived 'underclass' - e.g. Irish and black immigrants in 19th and 20th centuries. Everyone always needs to feel there's something that they wouldn't stoop to. Would probably only stop if we started actually valuing unskilled jobs a bit more and recognised their importance.

I can't claim to understand how others feel but we are on a very average (French) income and I would make myself sick if I tried to claim in any way that I wasn't anything other than extremely lucky and privileged.

I know it is not a popular argument but Coolfonz (no matter how much I may disagree with a lot of what he/she says) - is right in saying that people who are truly leftist care about others (a la Gordon Brown funnily enough with regard to the unpayable debt of disadvantage countries) around the world who cannot even dream of the riches we complain about.

I have a house, I have a car, I pay tax, I have a TV and a computer, my children are well fed and have access to healthcare. I consider that rich.

Poverty does of course exist in the west and it is as ugly and devastating as it is anywhere else. It does not, however, exist in the middle classes.

CT only time i ever really saw my dad cry was on the day JL died. apropos of nothing.