Thought for today:
"There are some people who always manage to do 'just enough' to get by in life and then there are others who do far more than is ever asked of them or required. It can often be difficult to judge when 'enough is enough', whether we be an artist or author and cannot be sure if our painting or book is complete enough to consider it 'finished.' Similarly, with relationships that have gone stale and have past their natural 'sell by date'; it is often hard for a lover or partner to know that the relationship has run its course and is now 'over.' Sometimes we have to create our own closure instead of waiting for another to end things for us.
Man is an overindulgent creature who is never completely satisfied until he has had more than is required. All manner of 'overindulgence' by mankind eventually leads to greedier appetites, whether it be food, drink, drugs, land, wealth, status, sex or power, and when the addiction is at its greatest, the subject loses the ability to recognise and rationalise that 'enough is enough.'
When I was a young lad and black and white television had just emerged, most of the hours watched involved lots of serious discussion by old men smoking pipes and telling the world how it could spin better on a more understanding axis, if only we accepted their worldly wisdom advocating this change or that in our behaviour. One such old buffer spouting at the time was a man who was born at the turn of the century called Malcolm Muggeridge.
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, was a British journalist, author, media personality and satirist. As a young man, Muggeridge was a left-wing sympathiser, but he later became a forceful anti-communist. I can still recall his words coming from that box in our living room over sixty years ago, as though he spoke them today. He essentially said that there were enough resources and land space on earth to feed and accommodate everyone in the world 'once we learn to lower our living standards and become fairer in our access to and distribution of total resources.'
I must confess to thinking the old buffer stark raving bonkers at the time. Indeed, I even considered that his views were an insult against the intelligence of any sane person. I asked myself, how he could put such a bizarre proposal forward as to learn to exist on less, when the specific aim of every developing country on earth was trying to drive up living standards for its peoples?
And though it took me another sixty years down the line for his thoughts to penetrate my brain, suddenly, I began to grasp the point that he had started to make during the 1950s. I now know that he was right and that only when we are prepared to eat what we need rather than than what we want, will not a single person anywhere be left starving! Only when we are prepared not to eat two slices of bread where one will suffice will we become the sharing nation of peoples that Muggeridge espoused. The man may have been no more than an old buffer in my youthful eyes then, but I would gladly shake his hand if he was still around and apologise for ever having thought him bonkers!
Laozi (Lao Tzu) was a philosopher and poet of ancient China and he is reported to have once said, "He who knows 'enough is enough' will always have enough." Most of us who inhabit the western hemisphere have enough and don't know it.
As a benevolent nation governed by a sense of fairness for all, we should consider nothing less than free trade to all the countries in the world as being a humane absolute! If we wish to regain the national respect that Great Britain once enjoyed across the globe, besides enabling all poorer and developing countries a greater opportunity to develop their own self respect, we will curtail our foreign aid budget of annual hand outs which promotes increasing dependency and instead, increase all areas of free trade across the world, which promotes fairness, independence and self respect. Struggling nations like struggling people require 'hand ups' to get by in life with dignity and not 'hand outs' by patronising trading blocks and business cartels that impose unfair tariffs on their exports.
The simple economical truth is that through the imposition of trading barriers and high tariffs by rich countries upon poorer countries, the wealthier and more economical powerful countries earn ten times more money to add to their GDP than they 'generously' give with strings attached to poorer countries through foreign aid; and worse still, to the despotic rulers of poorer countries and many dubious and corrupt causes.
To see farmers all over Europe burying tons of perfectly good food weekly because their produce do not correspond to the cosmetic measurements and look required by Brussel bureaucrats, when millions of people in poorer countries scavenge from refuse sites daily to live, is nothing less than scandalous. To witness European farmers pouring millions of gallons of milk down the drains daily and see them stock pile butter mountains left to waste rather than give the produce to the hungry poor is nothing short of obscene. To recall the once proud fishing nation we used to be before we were forced to abandon our right to fish in our own waters and to see our remaining few fishing vessels forced to dump back into the sea, tons of dead fish on every trip, because they happen to be too small or too large, stinks to high heaven! Whether it be curvy carrots or bendy bananas that are proscribed unacceptable for human consumption by our unelected and unaccountable European masters, surely it is now high time that we set the record straight.
The time has come for us as a nation to wake up and smell the coffee, which has more than likely come from one of our former Commonwealth partners. I say that 'enough is enough' and that the time to leave behind our old life and to take control of our new has arrived." William Forde: June 11th, 2016.
"There are some people who always manage to do 'just enough' to get by in life and then there are others who do far more than is ever asked of them or required. It can often be difficult to judge when 'enough is enough', whether we be an artist or author and cannot be sure if our painting or book is complete enough to consider it 'finished.' Similarly, with relationships that have gone stale and have past their natural 'sell by date'; it is often hard for a lover or partner to know that the relationship has run its course and is now 'over.' Sometimes we have to create our own closure instead of waiting for another to end things for us.
Man is an overindulgent creature who is never completely satisfied until he has had more than is required. All manner of 'overindulgence' by mankind eventually leads to greedier appetites, whether it be food, drink, drugs, land, wealth, status, sex or power, and when the addiction is at its greatest, the subject loses the ability to recognise and rationalise that 'enough is enough.'
When I was a young lad and black and white television had just emerged, most of the hours watched involved lots of serious discussion by old men smoking pipes and telling the world how it could spin better on a more understanding axis, if only we accepted their worldly wisdom advocating this change or that in our behaviour. One such old buffer spouting at the time was a man who was born at the turn of the century called Malcolm Muggeridge.
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge, was a British journalist, author, media personality and satirist. As a young man, Muggeridge was a left-wing sympathiser, but he later became a forceful anti-communist. I can still recall his words coming from that box in our living room over sixty years ago, as though he spoke them today. He essentially said that there were enough resources and land space on earth to feed and accommodate everyone in the world 'once we learn to lower our living standards and become fairer in our access to and distribution of total resources.'
I must confess to thinking the old buffer stark raving bonkers at the time. Indeed, I even considered that his views were an insult against the intelligence of any sane person. I asked myself, how he could put such a bizarre proposal forward as to learn to exist on less, when the specific aim of every developing country on earth was trying to drive up living standards for its peoples?
And though it took me another sixty years down the line for his thoughts to penetrate my brain, suddenly, I began to grasp the point that he had started to make during the 1950s. I now know that he was right and that only when we are prepared to eat what we need rather than than what we want, will not a single person anywhere be left starving! Only when we are prepared not to eat two slices of bread where one will suffice will we become the sharing nation of peoples that Muggeridge espoused. The man may have been no more than an old buffer in my youthful eyes then, but I would gladly shake his hand if he was still around and apologise for ever having thought him bonkers!
Laozi (Lao Tzu) was a philosopher and poet of ancient China and he is reported to have once said, "He who knows 'enough is enough' will always have enough." Most of us who inhabit the western hemisphere have enough and don't know it.
As a benevolent nation governed by a sense of fairness for all, we should consider nothing less than free trade to all the countries in the world as being a humane absolute! If we wish to regain the national respect that Great Britain once enjoyed across the globe, besides enabling all poorer and developing countries a greater opportunity to develop their own self respect, we will curtail our foreign aid budget of annual hand outs which promotes increasing dependency and instead, increase all areas of free trade across the world, which promotes fairness, independence and self respect. Struggling nations like struggling people require 'hand ups' to get by in life with dignity and not 'hand outs' by patronising trading blocks and business cartels that impose unfair tariffs on their exports.
The simple economical truth is that through the imposition of trading barriers and high tariffs by rich countries upon poorer countries, the wealthier and more economical powerful countries earn ten times more money to add to their GDP than they 'generously' give with strings attached to poorer countries through foreign aid; and worse still, to the despotic rulers of poorer countries and many dubious and corrupt causes.
To see farmers all over Europe burying tons of perfectly good food weekly because their produce do not correspond to the cosmetic measurements and look required by Brussel bureaucrats, when millions of people in poorer countries scavenge from refuse sites daily to live, is nothing less than scandalous. To witness European farmers pouring millions of gallons of milk down the drains daily and see them stock pile butter mountains left to waste rather than give the produce to the hungry poor is nothing short of obscene. To recall the once proud fishing nation we used to be before we were forced to abandon our right to fish in our own waters and to see our remaining few fishing vessels forced to dump back into the sea, tons of dead fish on every trip, because they happen to be too small or too large, stinks to high heaven! Whether it be curvy carrots or bendy bananas that are proscribed unacceptable for human consumption by our unelected and unaccountable European masters, surely it is now high time that we set the record straight.
The time has come for us as a nation to wake up and smell the coffee, which has more than likely come from one of our former Commonwealth partners. I say that 'enough is enough' and that the time to leave behind our old life and to take control of our new has arrived." William Forde: June 11th, 2016.
