Zombie
@Zombie@feddit.uk
- Comment on Couldn't be me 5 hours ago:
I get the impression from your comment you’re under the illusion that Labour are still a left wing party.
Labour have not been left wing since 1995, when they reworded clause 4 of their constitution and reformed into New Labour.
The UK hasn’t seen a left wing government since the end of the Callaghan ministry in 1979. We had Tories after that, New Labour in 1997, Tories from 2010 to 2024, and now more New Labour despite them going back to the old name of just Labour.
Third way politics uses the marketing and “niceness” of the left whilst implementing right wing policies. For example, the modern Labour party claim to support the NHS, while at the same time selling parts and data off to private companies.
Farmers are workers, workers lives improve when left wing parties rule. The only left wing parties with a viable chance at some form of power right now are The Green Party of England and Wales, the Scottish Greens, Plaid Cymru, and the SNP.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
- Comment on Couldn't be me 16 hours ago:
didat
Latin
Verb
dīdatthird-person singular present active subjunctive of dīdō
Verb
dīdō (present infinitive dīdere, perfect active dīdidī, supine dīditum); third conjugationto give out, spread abroad, disseminate, distribute, scatter
- Comment on Couldn't be me 16 hours ago:
Well shit. Nothing apparently. I guess you have dibs on the meaning of this unclaimed word!
What’s it gonna mean?
- Comment on Couldn't be me 21 hours ago:
- Comment on British Charlie Kirk wannabe beaten up debating people in Manchester 2 days ago:
The
anti‐Semitefascist has chosen hate because hate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. How futile and frivolous discussions about the rights ofthe Jewothers appear to him. He has placed himself on other ground from the beginning. If out of courtesy he consents for a moment to defend his point of view, he lends himself but does not give himself. He tries simply to project his intuitive certainty onto the plane of discourse……Never believe that
anti‐ Semitesfascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. Theanti‐Semitesfascists have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.- Jean-Paul Sartre
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre
Fascists don’t care about words or reasoning. They spread hate, discrimination, and lies and when challenged spout more lies to justify it. Even if presented with cold hard, unrefutable, facts.
When words, debate, and diplomacy can no longer prevent the calls to violence, the bigotry, the intolerance, then there is but one option; to speak the language they do understand.
The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance.
- Comment on London Synagogue real estate event admits promoting Israeli settlement property 'by mistake' 4 days ago:
“Mistake”
- Comment on Amnesty International exposed years of anti-trans reporting at four UK newspapers. They ignored it. 5 days ago:
Analysis commissioned by Amnesty determined that the Times and Sunday Times, the Telegraph, the Sun and the Guardian published a combined 16,913 articles on trans-related topics between January 2020 and April 2025, an average of around nine per day. The Times and Sunday Times had the most with an average of 83.5 articles per month. The report noted the coverage was “entirely disproportionate” to the number of trans people in the UK, who, according to the 2021 Census, make up 0.5% of the population.
Even if we’re generous and say “yeah but that’s spread over 4 papers!” that’s still 2 stories, per paper, per day, for 4 1/4 years. Dedicated to a tiny tiny percentage of the population. Insanity and cruelty.
- Comment on ‘Unbelievable’ waste and inefficiency at MoD, says ex-defence minister Al Carns 5 days ago:
Is that why he’s pushing for more money for the MoD?..
It’s rank hypocrisy to complain that there’s vast wastage and inefficiencies, and then claim that you need more money.
- Comment on Trio of senior defence figures accuse Keir Starmer of underfunding military 5 days ago:
Trio of war hawks demand more money for their pals, despite 2.5% of GDP being spent on defense. With increases to 3% already planned, plus membership of NATO and a European defense pact.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
Trio of war hawks demand more money for their pals, despite 2.5% of GDP being spent on defense. With increases to 3% already planned, plus membership of NATO and a European defense pact.
- Comment on Bran flakes could be classed as junk food under new healthy eating guidelines 6 days ago:
Added sugars provide no nutritional benefit, but are a source of excess calories that can lead to overweight and increased disease risk.[2][3][61][62]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar#Health_effects
Natural sugars tend to be mixed with fibres, starches, and vitamins. These slow the process of digestion, reducing a glucose spike within the bloodstream, and providing other nutrients beyond just raw calories.
Added sugars provide none of these benefits.
- Comment on NHS staff battling wave of food supplement disinformation 1 week ago:
We have a shortage of doctors partially because they’re often fighting fires with short term solutions. Providing reactive medicine instead of preventative. Treating symptoms instead of underlying root causes.
I’ll give an example; a common ailment for women is iron deficiency. A shit side effect of losing a lot of blood once a month. To cure this, many doctors will prescribe iron tablets. Not enough iron? Take iron tablets! Seems logical enough, yeah?
The problem with iron tablets is they fuck up your stomach. They’re difficult to digest, you get painful jet black shits, and never quite feel right while taking them. They also have a shit absorption rate. Only a fraction of the iron in the tablet is actually absorbed by the body. And they take weeks to bring you back to sufficient iron levels.
If instead there was a concerted effort to educate women to include spinach, varied beans and legumes, tofu, figs, dates, broccoli, pistachios, etc. Foods rich in iron, into their daily diet, then the amount requiring prescription iron tablets reduces significantly because they’re getting iron in their diet every day.
But many aren’t taught these things. They’re taught if you start feeling shit, come to the doctor, we’ll take a blood test and prescribe you some tablets that will take weeks to help, and make you feel like shit the whole time you’re taking them.
Repeat the process again in 6-12 months when your iron levels inevitably drop again because the root cause wasn’t fixed.
This is what I described earlier as a “bad experience” with professional medicine. And is part of why there’s a doctor shortage, because many aren’t fixing root causes but immediate symptoms instead. Creating a larger demand than there is supply of doctors.
- Comment on NHS staff battling wave of food supplement disinformation 1 week ago:
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a doctor is.
A medical doctor… …is a health professional who practices medicine. Medicine aims to promote, maintain or restore health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental conditions.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_doctor
In the modern era that has most often been practiced via chemistry’s interaction with biology. Or as you put it, a pill. But prescribing pills is not their job, it’s just a function of it. Their job is to ensure good health and often that is best done via other means than chemistry. Chemistry is just the first port of call for many doctors because that’s one of the main things they’re taught and it’s a simple solution to a complex problem. But not always the best solution.
A doctors job is to be your dietician or personal trainer if that’s the best course of action. Obviously, not literally, they’ll give advice or refer you to others. But that’s the idea.
Many people do need a doctor to tell them to eat better or exercise. Nutrition is complicated. Many don’t know what contains carbs, proteins, or fat. Not to mention micronutrients. And then you’ve got to have the time, energy, knowledge, and finances to buy and prepare this healthier food. The time and energy to exercise after working 40h a week, commuting 5-10 hours a week, performing household chores, and potentially raising children.
The simple solution of pills has had many negative effects for people, so now they’re looking elsewhere. If people were happy and satisfied with their medical experiences they wouldn’t listen to influencers on TikTok, but they do. And it’s not because TikTok has some magical hypnotic brainrot function, people are dissatisfied and looking for alternative solutions. TikTok says it has the answers, so they give it a try.
- Comment on NHS staff battling wave of food supplement disinformation 1 week ago:
“What particularly worries me is the widely held belief that if something is sold over the counter, marked as ‘natural’ or endorsed online, then it must automatically be safe and harmless, while prescribed medicines are somehow toxic,” she added. “As doctors, we know this simply is not true.”
Unfortunately many people’s experience says otherwise.
Doctors are often too happy to prescribe medication instead of a change in diet or exercise. Too often happy to use chemistry to fix problems that are societal or political. Too happy to prop up the capitalist pharmaceutical industry that treats patients as guinea pigs. That’s why many have turned to alternative medicines. Trust has been eroded in professional medicine. Too many people have had bad experiences with professional medicine.
I personally would still trust a GP over a TikToker, but I am skeptical of everything they say and still read up on it afterwards. I’m well educated and can relatively confidently do that. Mostly understanding what I’m reading. Many aren’t or don’t know where to go to read, so can’t be confident, so they rely on their social interactions instead.
This is an institutional problem that needs fixed at the Cabinet level, and yet nothing constructive will likely be done. Some bullshit like banning nutritional advise online perhaps, which won’t fix anything.
- Comment on 🙄🙄🙄 1 week ago:
I don’t think the term “drive”, which you used in the first comment, is generally associated with cycling.
I understand what you’re getting at about using your head, but unfortunately we live in a society that needs to cater to the lowest common denominator.
At 3am, when there’s nobody around, and you’ve slowed down and can see for absolute certainty that’s it’s clear then yeah you could perhaps justifiably run the red light.
But then that concept gets normalised, people start pushing boundaries. Trying it at midnight when there’s still some traffic and pedestrians around. Trying it at 4pm because “it was quiet”. Guess what’s going to happen? Baring in mind how many terrible drivers you witness every single day.
With driving we need to apply Kantian principles.
“I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”
Or more simply: “What if everybody did this?”
The purpose of the lights is to remove the requirement for everyone’s judgement at junctions, because human judgement has been shown to often be poor and result in collisions. Yeah, sometimes it may be unoptimised and you have to wait an extra minute, but really, what’s the rush?
- Comment on Physical punishment of children is harmful and must be banned in England and Northern Ireland 1 week ago:
Striking a child is outlawed in Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland but remains legal in England and Northern Ireland. Proposals to make physical punishment illegal have just been dropped in Northern Ireland – similar plans were abandoned in England last year.
Alba, Cymru, and Éire showing compassion for their population as usual. I’m curious what the justification for dropping such proposals were. “Can’t even give your own kids a good beating these days. It’s political correctness gone mad!”?
I was struck regularly as a child. Even if some of us “turned out fine” (and there’s people who didn’t), there’s more to it than how we are 20, 30, 40 years down the line. Especially when parents get carried away in the heat of the moment and go further than they intended.
The way some adults interact with children it’s like they think children have the memories of goldfish. Like they’re some other species. A pet or something, until they reach around 16-18. Children are just small inexperienced people, they still experience the present, pain, and emotions. Not only do they experience that but they now have a paradox in their heads of “this person is my care giver and yet also beats me”.
It’s fucked up. It’s authoritarian. Obedience through violence. And it’s even more fucked up that two parliaments have dropped proposals to stop it.
- Comment on A Marker of Distinction 1 week ago:
- Comment on Tough US-style courts to crack down on repeat offenders 1 week ago:
US style courts, Dutch style unemployment schemes, are the Labour party lacking talent so much that they can’t come up with anything themselves?
- Comment on General Sir Nick Carter, former head of the armed forces warns that Britain risks becoming ‘Belgium with nuclear weapons’ 1 week ago:
Tap for reference if not understood
- Comment on VAT's The Problem campaign hopes to stop the tsunami of restaurant closures we're seeing right now 1 week ago:
The largest single share of the benefit goes to big business to increase profits (rather than cut prices)
- Comment on Shopworker sacked for tackling suspected bacon thief 1 week ago:
You already live in a society rife with theft. You’re just propagandised from birth not to see it.
Yes, you are right: the law forbids theft.
If I should steal something from you, you can call a policeman and have me arrested. The law will punish the thief, and the government will return to you the stolen property, if possible, because the law forbids stealing. It says that no one has a right to take anything from you without your consent.
But your employer takes from you what you produce. The whole wealth produced by labor is taken by the capitalists and kept by them as their property.
The law says that your employer does not steal anything from you, because it is done with your consent. You have agreed to work for your boss for certain pay, he to have all that you produce. Because you consented to it, the law says that he does not steal anything from you.
But did you really consent?
When the highwayman holds his gun to your head, you turn your valuables over to him. You ‘consent’ all right, but you do so because you cannot help yourself, because you are compelled by his gun.
Are you not compelled to work for an employer? Your need compels you, just as the highwayman’s gun. You must live, and so must your wife and children. You can’t work for yourself; under the capitalist industrial system you must work for an employer. The factories, machinery, and tools belong to the employing class, so you must hire yourself out to that class in order to work and live. Whatever you work at, whoever your employer may be, it always comes to the same: you must work for him. You can’t help yourself. You are compelled.
In this way the whole working class is compelled to work for the capitalist class. In this manner the workers are compelled to give up all the wealth they produce. The employers keep that wealth as their profit, while the worker gets only a wage, just enough to live on, so he can go on producing more wealth for his employer. Is that not cheating, robbery?
The law says it is a ‘free agreement’. Just as well might the highwayman say that you ‘agreed’ to give up your valuables. The only difference is that the highwayman’s way is called stealing and robbery, and is forbidden by law. While the capitalist way is called business, industry, profit making, and is protected by law.
But whether it is done in the highwayman’s way or in the capitalist way, you know that you are robbed.
The whole capitalist system rests on such robbery.
The whole system of law and government upholds and justifies this robbery.
That’s the order of things called capitalism, and law and government are there to protect this order of things.
Do you wonder that the capitalist and employer, and all those who profit by this order of things, are strong for ‘law and order’?
But where do you come in? What benefit have you from that kind of ‘law and order’? Don’t you see that this ‘law and order’ only robs you, fools you, and just enslaves you?
‘Enslave me?’ you wonder. ‘Why, I am a free citizen!’
Are you free, really? Free to do what? To live as you please? To do what you please?
Let’s see. How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?
You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don’t you? And your wages determine your way of living, don’t they? The conditions of your life, even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, — all of it depends on your wages.
No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your wages. You are really a wage slave.
The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.
So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more with it than your wages permit?
Can’t you see that your wage — your salary or income — is all the freedom that you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don’t go a step further than the wages you get.
The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn’t mean that you can do it. To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven’t the means, the opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?
So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, than it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.
You see, then, that the whole situation comes to this:
Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you.
The law upholds and protects that robbery.
The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free.
In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.
But how does it happen that you didn’t think of it before? How is it that most other people don’t see it, either?
It is because you and every one else are lied to about this all the time, from your earliest childhood.
You are told to be honest, while you are being robbed all your life.
You are commanded to respect the law, while the law protects the capitalist who is robbing you.
You are taught that killing is wrong, while the government hangs and electrocutes people and slaughters them in war.
You are told to obey the law and government, though law and government stand for robbery and murder.
Thus all through life you are lied to, fooled, and deceived, so that it will be easier to make profits out of you, to exploit you.
Again from Now and After, Chapter 3: Law and Government. Available to read for free here.
- Comment on Shopworker sacked for tackling suspected bacon thief 1 week ago:
“Luxury” goods.
The story you’re commenting on was packets of bacon.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech 1 week ago:
Oh to be fair “y’know” does grate me, y’know?
Along with every instructional YouTube video having multiple “go ahead and”.
- Comment on Shopworker sacked for tackling suspected bacon thief 1 week ago:
Look at that poor boy, for instance, on the street corner there. He is ragged, pale, and half-starved. He sees another boy, the son of wealthy parents, and that boy wears nice clothes, he is well fed, and he does not even deign to play with the poor kid. The ragged boy is angry at him he resents and hates the rich boy. And everywhere the poor boy goes he experiences the same thing: he is ignored and scorned, often kicked about — he feels people don’t think him as good as the rich boy, to whom every one is respectful and attentive. The poor boy gets embittered. And when he grows up, he again sees the same thing: the rich are admired and respected, the poor are kicked about and looked down upon. So the poor boy gets to hate his poverty, and he thinks of how he might become rich, get money, and he tries to get it in any way he can, by taking advantage of others, as others have always taken advantage of him, by cheating and lying, and sometimes even by committing crime.
Then you say that he is ‘bad’. But don’t you see what made him bad? Don’t you see that the conditions of his whole life have made him what he is? And don’t you see that the system which keeps up such conditions is a greater criminal than the petty thief? The law will step in and punish him, but is it not the same law that permits those bad conditions to exist and upholds the system that makes criminals?
Think it over and see if it is not the law itself, the government which really creates crime by compelling people to live in conditions that make them bad. See how law and government uphold and protect the biggest crime of all, the mother of all crimes, the capitalistic wage system, and then proceeds to punish the poor criminal.
Consider: does it make any difference whether you do wrong protected by the law, or whether you do it unlawfully? The thing is the same and the effects are the same. Worse even: legal wrongdoing is the greater evil because it causes more misery and injustice than illegal wrong. Lawful crime goes on all the time; it is not punishable and it is made easy, while unlawful crime is not so frequent and is more limited in its scope and effect.
Who causes more misery: the rich manufacturer reducing the wages of thousands of workers to swell his profits, or the jobless man stealing something to keep from starving?
from Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 4: How the System Works. Available to read for free here.
- Comment on Shopworker sacked for tackling suspected bacon thief 1 week ago:
No. People trying to maximise profit from basic human requirements is why you need to get cheese taken out of a plastic cage.
Not the poor trying to feed themselves.
Get a grip of your priorities. The management and executives of Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S, Asda, Lidl, Aldi, etc are doing just fine, unlike the people having to risk a criminal record, arrest, public shame, and in some cases physical assault for £4 worth of bacon.
- Comment on The hill I will die on: I really don’t like ‘like’ – or other imprecise and redundant speech 1 week ago:
- Comment on Shopworker sacked for tackling suspected bacon thief 1 week ago:
- Comment on Study Claims Broadband is the One UK Bill That Hasn't Gone up in a Decade - ISPreview UK 1 week ago:
Fuck! I guess my broadband bill is about to go up then. Thanks a lot Broadband Genie.
- Comment on Two men convicted in UK of trying to send weapons to conflict zones 1 week ago:
Idiots. Should’ve sold them to Israel, our government might’ve even provided the shipping for them free of charge.
- Comment on The £12bn VAT cut for hospitality. Who really benefits? 1 week ago:
I was almost flippant and just commented “capitalists” but I thought I’d see what they had to say, and guess what?! It’s profiteering capitalists…
The largest single share of the benefit goes to big business to increase profits (rather than cut prices)
