I’ve been sitting in on a training course today, observing the trainer. The delegates were a group of young men of around eighteen years old. Keen to learn and keen to use their new learning in the workplace.
During a break, I was dragged into a conversation to arbitrate a disagreement. The question being, are pistachio nuts bad for you?
“What makes you think that they are?” I asked.
“They are salted.”
I asked if they had heard about the Canadian study that debunked the scare stories regarding salt. They hadn’t of course. What they were convinced about was that it clogs up one’s arteries. That, I advised them, was fat, not salt. I also pointed out that nuts contain protien and we need protiens to survive. They hadn’t thought about that one…
Anyway, we moved onto the global crisis and the budget. Wasn’t it good, one of the lads remarked, how the government was putting all this money into the economy.
So I asked them a question; where was this money coming from? I received a blank stare for that one, followed by the assertion that all the world leaders were putting money in.
“Yes,” I said. “But where is this money coming from?”
There was a brief pause. Then the lights came on…
I would have loved to have seen their faces.
It was amusing. These kids had swallowed all the government propaganda wholesale and clearly hadn’t been exposed to a contrary point of view; i.e salt won’t actually kill you and the government isn’t giving away its own money because it doesn’t have any of its own. The realisation that they would be the ones paying did cause me a small inner smile. I’ve sown a tiny seed today. One day, maybe, just maybe, an oak will grow…
Long may your acorns grow!
Keep sowing them. We need all the oaks we can get.
Yes – what puzzles me about the whole business is “where is the money coming from?” Actually, it isn’t coming from us – because there isn’t any money: it’s just arbitrary figures on a government computer, and what they are actually doing is debasing the currency by putting more bank notes into circulation [“quantitive easing”] which means that our savings are devalued and everything will cost more, which is how WE get robbed. In the end nobody will pay, because they will just write the notional debt off when it is politically convenient. It’s all just a huge scam.
In Tudor times, persons who clipped the coinage in this fashion had their ears and noses cut off and were stood in the pillory at Tyburn, which is where I’d dearly like to see Brown, Darling and Co.
At least your lot had the sense to work out the answer. Everyone I talk to seems to think it’s a magic pot of gold at the end of a rainnbow or that the rich bastards are finally being squeezed to fund it.
Many the time I have left such a conversation frustrated at how well indocrinated our youth is.
Your lot are clearly the future of the UK.
There is hope, that is true. But the bulk of people are not brainwashed, just permanently dulled and woefully ill-educated. They’d rather spend their time talking about banalities of no interest or, alternarively, leering over women in the newspaper. When politics is mentioned it’s mainly in a sweeping, ‘populist’, anti-immigration tone regurgitated from the meeja. When you point out why things might be the case (like the reason why people don’t take any pride in their local environment and why they can’t afford to go on the holidays they used to be able to afford) they just shut down.
We can’t change anything through debate until people start waking up.
If people haven’t been encouraged to think for themselves during their basic education – which most of them aren’t – it’s extremely difficult to spark off the process in adults.
Many years ago I was guest tutor on an industrial middle management training course [It was in the remote days when we still had some industries]. I was teaching them about British economic history and the development of their industry. I acted like a university tutor, asking them what they thought about the things I told them, and attempted to stimulate discussion. After a few courses I was dropped from the tutorial team, and when I asked why I was told that the “students” objected to being asked questions and simply wanted to be spoonfed information.
And I shall never forget overhearing someone telling how a senior official at the Department of Education had said to him “We don’t WANT a lot of highly educated people in this country, do we? They cause too much trouble!”
Always a good moment when the penny drops. You can just imagine that huge lotto hand and finger……”It’s you!” LMAO.
Nuts………..also contain very useful minerals in concentrated amounts, just like everything else in the nut or seed. Which is why such things are a staple part of our diet. What is saddening is that they think salt causes clogged blood vessels. So all that government propaganda has been a waste of money.
How’s the biking going? I was behind another of those 30 mph mopeds the other day. I was a paragon of patience. Saw another biker riding responsibly the other day too. Makes up for the other two who roared past at 90mph or more on the B660 the other day.
In limbo at the moment. A combination of circumstances, timing and French bureaucracy has left the bike somewhere between leaving the UK registration system and arriving in the French one. I’m hoping that the paperwork will be there when I get back home. I’ll be posting about it when it’s finalised as I came across a few unexpected difficulties.
French bureaucracy………….the word itself is French! Look forward to hearing about it and stuff in general.