Galloway on UK Child Poverty

[ItzMeRon]

At the last family occasion I went to...

I dunno I think in the US where people join up to get a tertiary education or healthcare for their family you have a better argument.

The British army would fit into Hampden and I think a fair amount of them joined up for the adventure and excitement. At this stage after 5 years you can't say they didn't know they would end up shooting people in a couple of dumb unpopular wars...

Sir,

It is not fair that you lay out the only two stipulations about why people join the military in America. We are way less intelligent than that.

Americans also join because it has been a family tradition since before they knew. Others join because their spouse is involved or because they want to travel the world. There are those who join to fight for Bush and to fight against him and change things. There are those who are recruited because they are tricked by the person they talked who, from the military who had to fill a quota. There are those who join because they want to have a pension. There are those that want to join because they want to kill. There are those that want to join because they are racist. There are gays who join because they want to meat shop. There are peope who want to join to server their counry proudly, whatever that might be. There are those that join because their family makes them. There are those who join because it wil look good on a resume. There are those that would join simply because they felt no where else to go.

America has a volunteer system for the military, but with the way things are going in America and the way America paints such a bullshit picture that Amreicans buy everyday about what is really going on in the world.....Well it is no wonder why America has a military at all. Then again, it is a wonder how they could get away with having a military at all.

[seshme]

Able people that won't work serve no purpose.

but in doing so they fulfil the capitalist ideal... and you can't blame them for taking advantage unless you're prepared to put limitations on everyone. I'd be careful though, that way lies the danger of socialism!

Lets look at it another way.

How many children in Africa should die so that we can give your guy that won't work in Partick an XBox?

[faceless]

The answer is and will always be none. But there may be one or two who survive because of the cheap labour that is employed for that Partickular (ahem) bloke's clothing. The element to consider is that the wealthy couldn't care less about the difference between even the rich in Africa and the poor in Europe - the only factor is the government and the exchange rate.

[seshme]

Sir,

It is not fair that you lay out the only two stipulations about why people join the military in America. We are way less intelligent than that....

It was a lazy post.

It's kind of shocking to someone from the UK sometimes because we speak the same language and enjoy much of the same media, films, music and so on to suddenly realise that we have such different cultures.

I took my very young kids to Florida this Summer and as part of this visited what I thought was the slightly dodgy but generally ok Sea World.

You'll know the main attraction of this the killer whale show in an amphitheatre of maybe 6000 people?

I was a bit uncomfortable with the animal rights morality of the place but whatever I eat meat so that argument only washes so far compared to the joy and experiences you want to give your kids.

To cut a long story short before the show started we had to sit through something I didn't think was possible a 5 minute long pro-war pro-environment video. I still can't believe this happened. I was looking around thinking this place is mad how can you be for launching uranium shellls at people and worry about squids or some shit.

But then it got much much worse.

Over the PA the message comes 'We would now ask you to stand and salute our heros and their allies in the UK in the war against terror'.

Apart from anything specifically only mentioning those in Iraq rather than elsewhere made it clear what was being said.

So there was us and I think an arab looking family at the other side of the arena remained seated whilst thousands of people stood up, applauded and a lot of them looked at us sitting there, some bemused some a bit aggresively.

I'm still pretty angry about being put in that situation. Even worse I paid them money for them to put us in that situation. The kids were maybe about 2 or 3 years too young to really notice what was happening but we would have still done the same thing and then taken the time to explain afterwards why we had.

I have some great American pals and have visited there many times but I was pretty appalled by the whole thing.