@ossobuco,
Quote:Goodness, its been a while since we 've heard from Rebecca.
I hope that she is still OK.
Aww, David, thanks for your concern. I'm fine. I went to visit a friend in Basingstoke which can be a little bit of a rough, old town, but made it there and back safe and sound.
According to my friend, who could be considered fairly poor, and at one point was homeless and indigent, there was a small attempt at rioting at the Toys R Us in Popley (which is a section of Basingstoke) but nothing came of it.
I asked him what he thinks about the whole thing and he called it an 'opportunistic greed-fest'.
We had some long discussions about it, and when I tried to talk about benefit cuts and dissatisfaction and lack of jobs for young people, he said that from what he observes in the circles in which he travels - which are decidedly NOT middle class and posh (except for me - ha, ha, that's a joke - I'm middle class but NOT posh) a lot of the people he runs into wouldn't do the jobs if there were jobs to do - so there are his two cents.
And I tend to believe him - he's an insider- right there getting the inside scoop from the 'unwashed masses' (as he called them).
In other words, they say stuff to him that they would never say to an outsider like me -American, educated, liberal-minded do-gooder that I am seen to be.
While I was there, went to a pub on a housing estate where there's this little tiny Thai lady who makes Thai meals for £4.00, and you can play pool.
There was this guy we played pool with there, and he'd ridden his bike there but had had a little too much to drink. We didn't want him riding his bike home drunk, so as we'd parked my car in a friend's yard and walked the rest of the way and this guy couldn't even walk far enough to get back to my car for me to drive him home (I hadn't been drinking), I said, 'Wait here - I'll go get the car and come back and pick you up and we'll drive you home', but I got lost on my way to the car because I went out the front entrance of the pub, forgetting that we'd walked in through the back garden and I ended up on a different street in a stange town
So I'm walking through a housing estate at 12:30 am and this young man in a hoodie walks by and I think, 'Oh ****...should I ask, or should I just put my head down and try to make it home alive and intact,' but I decided not to keep wandering in the wilderness and asked, 'Can you tell me how to get to Eastfield Avenue?' and the guy walks me there...nice and polite as can be.
But when I get back, I see the drunk guy taking off on his bike, having grown tired of waiting for me to get back. Anyway, my friend had gotten his number and called him last night and long and short of it, he fell off his bike, hit his head and lay there unconscious until four in the morning when he woke up to find himself okay and alive, but his bike gone.
My point is - I never make generalizations. I was lucky enough to run into a good person -t he drunk bike rider wasn't. But both of these people- the one who stole (the man's bike) and the one who could have stolen (my purse) and didn't, probably lived on this estate and experienced similar life circumstances.
And I think it was spendius who said that people followed morals and the law out of fear. I disagree because to my mind morals are not about fear - they're what an individual believes is an acceptable standard of behavior for him or herself.
One last thing - I'm not going to go back and find it, but you said that you were glad you never had any 'weeping, naked men on your conscience.'
That was my laugh of the day - I think you should make that your signature- except that honestly - given what you did for a living - you very well could have a few weeping, naked men on your conscience- ha, ha, ha - get it?
But then a lot of women (and gay men) probably do too - when you come right down to it.
Enjoy your Sunday.
URL:
http://able2know.org/reply/post-4698934
Quote:A person's standards of behavior or beliefs concerning what is and is not acceptable for them to do