Sluts and Slappers

  So we drift nonchalantly into the world of sluts, slatterns, slappers, loose women and harlots.

Odd?

Yes. Very odd.

Let us consider the double standard that exists here but we will divest ourselves of religious convictions and considerations.

If we consider the potential for a male person to enter the house of many females, in the United States that may be a Sorority House, and have his sordid way with each of the inhabitants he would emerge from the evening’s activities with noble epithets ringing in his ears. Such a feat would be famously passed from ear to ear with the associated and progressive embellishments.

He would, of a certainty, receive accolades from ‘Jack-the-Lad’ to ‘Hero of the Mutton Rivet’ and many, less savoury, in between.

We need not, at this point, consider the physiological unlikelihood of any male being able to perform this miraculous performance and that the evidence for such an event would, very likely, be contrived at best.

A woman attempting a similar deed would emerge with somewhat less savoury pronouncements on her character. Her titles bestowed by others would be more animal-related than heroic.

One wonders at this.

We have entered the 21^st Century. It is, we are told, a modern and civilised time; a time in which equality for all is the hallmark of our existence. A time in which scientific knowledge is the cutting edge of our being; a knowledge that will thrust us forward in safety and well being, health and prosperity into the years and centuries to come.

It is a time that is portrayed, in stories and on film where men and women labour, equally, in knowledge and exploration of far places.

Yet men and women are not equal.

Not by a very long chalk.

Even now, in this enlightened time, there are women doing the same job as men for salaries that are reduced below that of male pay.

Why?

Because they are women.

Men need to earn more because they are supporting a family. Women work for pin money; women are supported by their husbands or their daddies, aren’t they?

Women do not need to be paid their worth because they are only working for pin money. They are working to ‘get the little lady out of the house for a while’.

Condescending, no?

Arrogant, yes?

Of course it is both condescending and arrogant. Old people and teenagers suffer the same thing at the hands of corporations. These groups are paid less because, very often, they cannot get jobs elsewhere; corporations see this as an opportunity to employ people for less money. Overheads are reduced in terms of manpower and profit go up for the owners and shareholders.

Do not misunderstand me here; I am not against profit. Profit is good. Profit makes the World go around, without it companies would go bankrupt and everybody would be out of a job.

The argument here is about justice.

Justice is for everyone irrespective of race, religion, nationality or gender.

Or should be.

But, inevitably, it is not.

We understand that there are certain people who rise above the law; whose wealth, fame or social success makes them, pretty well, immune from prosecution or tort.

Is this wrong? Of course it is but it is human.

As is the desire to place other people down the list of entitlement. It is a kind of pecking order. Those who feel they are superior will wish to place those they regard as ‘inferior’ farther down the list.

Women, youngsters and old people are those who sink towards the lower orders.

If we are genuinely in the 21^st Century and equality for everybody is to be our trademark then this is a list that needs to be banished from our mind-sets. It is a paradigm that urgently needs shifting.

If someone is doing the same job to the same standard to the same parameters as another person then they should, must, earn the same salary.

Equally, women have the same right to enjoy themselves in the same way as men without being benighted with slurs on their character or else we are guilty of double standards. We become hypocrites.

That attempt towards equality extends, does it not, into a multitude of other areas?

Clean water for everyone at minimal or zero cost…

       A story about the Corporations and the rebellion against them:

http://www.amazon.com/My-Name-Number-David-Leyman-ebook/dp/B00R6OBJXU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430295034&sr=8-1&keywords=david+s+leyman

Millionaires

  I have been assailed, of late, by people making remarks about other people who they regard as being ‘filthy rich’.

What is it that makes them ‘filthy’? Is there a belief that people with ample cash reserves do not take showers or bathe? Is it only poor people who care about personal hygiene?

Perhaps the reference is not about personal cleanliness; perhaps they are talking about the means whereby they came by this largesse.

Is there a suspicion that those who have a lot of money are, somehow, dishonest?

Can it really be that wealth equates to dishonesty?

Really?

There are a lot of people out there who have acquired money by the simple expedient of inheriting it from their forebears. Providing the tax is paid this is perfectly legal and entirely honest.

Just maybe there is the thought that those who have inherited money do not do wisely with it; that the wealth is squandered on things that, for the general population, would be regarded as ‘unhealthy’.

The example comes to mind that the Beckhams spent a considerable fortune on the first birthday party of their boy, Brooklyn.

Think what you may of the boy’s name and the reason for it being in place, the fact remains that the Beckhams are entitled to pay whatever they like for whatever they like whenever they like. It is their money—they can choose what to do with it.

Nobody tells you what to do with your spare cash should you actually have any. It is yours; the options of choice are yours.

On the other side of the coin there are many local traders who benefited from that party; it was, as they say, a fortuitous injection of cash into the local economy.

More power to their elbow, then.

It may come as a gentle surprise to you that I am apt to rub elbows with several people who are distinctly well off in financial terms.

I can count on the fingers of three hands those people who have a generously large bank account; those who do not fear the arrival of the monthly bills. One of them now has eighteen cars; another has nine and was warned by his wife that another car would necessitate the purchase of a house with larger grounds—he promptly went out and bought a ‘Bentley’ because, he said, he fell in love with the colour. Another friend has bought a ‘Bentley’, too. The salesman asked how ‘Sir will pay for it?’ with that somewhat condescending air that some salesmen have. My friend wrote a cheque for the full amount.

(Surprising how fast a salesman can go from ‘condescending’ to ‘fawning’!)

Why do I mention this? Because all those people that I know who have wealth all started with nothing. One of them, who has the eighteen cars, had nothing eight years ago.

Nothing.

Several of them had negative bank accounts. One of them lived in a squat in a ‘kong-si’ (a ramshackle hut for poverty stricken workers) on the edge of the jungle. One was a teller in a bank but had the good fortune to meet someone who was being ignored by the other bank workers—but that is another story for another time.

Many of them have received the comment, “Oh, it’s all right for you—you’ve got money!”

But they did not to start with.

Everyone has the same chances.

One of my friends has no qualifications. He abandoned school in his early teens to help his father out doing odd jobs for a few dollars here and there. Now he has an import-export company and a string of successful restaurants. He is an authority on ancient Chinese history, myth and legend. An engrossing man to listen to.

Apart from starting with nothing they all have something else in common.

Every single one of them is kind, warm-hearted and generous. They will help anyone out who wants to start a business. They will advise and mentor any person that has a serious desire to become rich.

Several of them are in a group called ‘Peopleology’ [http://www.peoplelogy.com/index.html] that are dedicated to assisting those who wish to start a business and do not know how to go about it. They have made so many people successful with little thought of reward other than the satisfaction of helping others.

Self-made people who had a vision for their own future and followed a dream until the dream became a reality.

These are not nasty, mean, corrupt people. They are all genuinely good souls—every single one of them.

Of course there are those out there who are selfish and greedy. There are corporate people who will skim off the wages of workers to increase their own net worth.

Those are a minority

Before you curl your lip up and sneer at someone in a ‘Bentley’ or a ‘Range Rover’ you might just want to think for a moment that that person deserves it. It is the reward for hard work and taking risks.

Perhaps you deserve it. There is nothing stopping you but yourself.

Nothing.

Hypocrisy

       Right now there is a certain hypocrisy under the spotlight. Well, my spotlight, anyway.

       It appears, to me, to be a mite strange that people are so concerned with what they see as ‘cruelty to animals’. They are, as one, appalled at ‘ritual slaughter’, for example.

       To give you a clue as to what they are referring to, the killing of an animal in order to obtain its meat for human consumption can be done in several ways.

       Officially, in an abattoir, an animal may be stunned or not. It is then despatched by either shooting a bolt through its head or cutting open its throat.

       Of course, those who are sensitive to the needs of animals will tell you that pre-slaughter stunning is the only acceptable means of compliance under humanitarian grounds.

       Unfortunately, stunning is not always carried out efficiently or, indeed, properly. The process of stunning, if carried out imperfectly, leaves an animal writhing around in agony before it is then despatched with the bolt through the brain.

       Except that brains are useful so if the brain is to be eaten then, perhaps, the bolt might not be employed for fear of damaging edible foodstuffs.

       The alternative is to cut the throat.

       You will have seen, no doubt, unpleasant images of animals with the throat (being) cut dying in torment. These tend to be the exceptions rather than the normal way. If the animal is stunned, properly, first then the animal just slips into death.

       If a sharp knife is used on an unstunned animal (as prescribed for halal or kosher slaughter) in a single stroke the animal usually dies quite peacefully.

       In all these cases there are exceptions. There will be times when the prescribed way of killing doesn’t quite work as it should. Nothing is certain.

       The only sure way of preventing animal suffering on this scale—however small, is for everyone to become a vegan.

       Chickens are routinely slaughtered by dipping their heads into electrified water. This is, sadly, an imprecise method of killing, it does not always work and leaves the fowls still conscious while they are being plucked and disembowelled. Hopefully the plucking will cause themn to die of shock because the disembowelling will certainly despatch them to the granary in the sky.

       Ritual slaughter means their throats are cut. This means they are dead well before they are plucked. Yes, there are stories of how the chickens struggle and peck the people holding them prior to being killed but, then, most birds will struggle and peck when being held irrespective of whether they are to be slaughtered or not.

        Seagulls caught in fishing lines would struggle and peck heartily, although ineffectually, whilst being freed from the line.

       Let’s look farther afield.

       We are concerned with the welfare of animals that are to be killed for human consumption but what about other animals?

       Cats and dogs are to be humanely ‘put down’ at the end of their useful lives or when they are of no further interest to us. Yet, really, ‘humane’ is a somewhat imprecise word. A lot of money has been spent on how to ‘humanely’ kill human beings on death row. Most have failed.

       Since most murderers are not known for their humane methods or sensitivity to their victims and the victims’ families one wonders at the need for subjecting them to a dose of humanity when it comes to executing them.

       I digress.

       Do we, I wonder, feel the same compassion for rats? Mice? We lay down poison for those in tubes so that the poison will not be taken by cats or dogs. Cats and dogs are regarded as ‘nice’ but rats and mice are, it seems, not ‘nice’. They are vermin.

       It is all right to kill rats and mice in any way we choose because they are not cute and furry. An agonising death at the mercy of poison is fine for the likes of them.

       Pigeons? Rabbits? Crows? We can blast them all with shotguns. Rabbits can be dropped with a single .22 shot assuming that the person squeezing the trigger is a marksman—or woman.

       Deer? Deer are often wounded in the hunt and have to be tracked, sometimes for many miles, before delivering the coup de grace.

       Even rabbits, pheasants, pigeons and other game can be wounded and lay cowering, shaking with fear and pain, in the undergrowth or corn until they succumb to their injuries.

       How small would you like to go? We exterminate vermin like snakes and insects at will. We employ pesticides that kill the ‘good fellows’ as well as the ‘bad chaps’. Insects have lives.

       They have, pretty much, everything we have but on a smaller scale.

       I mentioned snakes. What about other reptiles that we do not like? Can we kill them? Maybe we can because they intrude on our habitat or, perhaps, because they are just downright ugly.

       Where do we draw the line? Is size the criteria or is sentience the determining factor?
       Are we sure that a cow is unaware of death? We see films of Wildebeest* being brought down by Lions; the prey seems unaware that it is being killed, it tries to stand even with a Lion dangling from it throat. Is a Wildebeest sentient?

       What about snakes? Praying Mantis? Spiders? These all munch their prey while it yet lives as they, too, are often eaten while still alive.
       Sometimes this living meal is a design feature of the diner. Some bugs lay eggs inside living hosts so that their larvae can eat the host live—fresh, as it were. Is that humane? Does that give us the right to crush ants under our feet or burn them with focussed sun’s rays as a sport?

       Where do we draw the line? When is it all right to kill inhumanely and when must we observe kindness and consideration for the animal involved?

       Trawl nets drag up fish packed, squeezed, into a tight bunch and then dumped gasping, asphyxiated, into a hold before treatment that involves gutting and slicing. Are they dead? Who knows? Who cares? Fish have no feelings. Do they?

       And humans?

       What about humans?

       We send people off to war on our behalf. They get a 7.62 bullet smash their spines to shreds, renders them para- or quadraplegics. Maybe a grenade or a mortar bomb blasts bits off them—an odd arm or a leg, or two.

       Those are the survivors. Not those who have lain in the mud or on the sand screaming for their loved ones, writhing in agony until, at last, loss of blood or shock releases them from their torment.

       Then they come home. The lucky ones are buried in the ground. The unlucky ones are buried in society. Forgotten, ignored and stepped over in the street.

      

       They, the veterans, are treated as less than animals. Animals we care for. Animals we cry over. Veterans are people for whom we have no further use.    

       Animals can be eaten.

*But not Gardner.

(See: the ‘Hawksworth stories on

www.davidleyman.com)