Misguided Policy or Manipulation & Exploitation concerning health, commerce and freedom: Chocolate Bars and Fast Food
Whilst buying a multi-pack deal of chocolate bars at a supermarket recently, on opening the packet, I noticed the deal was not as good as it first seemed to be, as the bars were small. I usually wouldn't have fallen for this, as being aware of these tricks, I feel the pack first to examine it (and find the wastage of packaging masking the reduced proportions inside...I guess the environmental responsibility claims are not as important as the health mantra deception). I have grown up with these bars and remember my father buying them for me on the way home from work. I didn't end up as a fat child due to this regular treat, as my parents did feed me more than chocolate bars, I did learn about nutrition, exercise, balanced diet, excessive eating, and dietary deficiencies at home, school and later in life as part of general education, experience and common sense.
However, I was not taught at school about economic exploitation under the guise of 'health' and excessive governmental interference in consumer and company choice under the guise of 'social and commercial responsibility'. I don't want my eating habits enforced on me. A gun doesn't kill someone, a human does and a chocolate bar doesn't make you fat, it is your use of it and the rest of your time.
When I buy a chocolate bar, I know roughly what I am buying, I know that it isn't supposed to be a health food or dietary staple. I am unaware of any traditional culture that advises abandoning the natural sources of fibre, minerals, vitamins, protein, complex carbohydrates and healthier fats while replacing them with manufactured confectionery. I am also unaware that the food manufacturers themselves ever offered such advice. The last time I checked human physiology and biological processes, it seemed that fats and sugars are bodily, biochemical, nutritional needs, they are not toxic alien invasions of the food chain. Yes, in excess, or without a balanced diet and exercise they may well contribute to a whole range of health issues, but this maybe the case with many things. As long as a manufacturer does not deceive the customer and advertise a product as serving a function it it does not, nor misrepresenting its content and nature, nor directly recommending harmful usage levels, then there should be no problem. You can after all, drink too much water, so will the government start rationing supplies on this basis? Should all desserts in restaurants be replaced with fruit salads, but only small ones due to the fructose sugar content?
To say there is too much sugar in a chocolate bar is a little like saying there is too much potato in chips. Perhaps the government and manufacturers need to be reminded "This is a CHOCOLATE BAR,it is not excessive calorific content...because, it is a CHOCOLATE BAR...this is what any rational person would expect of a chocolate bar." What reaction did they want? "Oh! We can't believe it, they have been putting sugar all this time in the chocolate bars?!" Perhaps this idiocy is an extension of the general dumbing down of the education system and swapping the original meanings of words for opposite meanings.
There should be freedom in the manufacturer's development of their selection of products, along with their sizes and ingredients unless directly harmful. Equally, there should be freedom from interference between the manufacturer, supplier, retailers and consumer in such transactions. We know the government will find this concept difficult as seeing as it already interferes with the oppressive usurping of 20% of each such transaction under the absurd misnomer of 'value added tax'...
If portion sizes are being reduced, somebody might end up eating more than they originally wanted, as they might buy two instead of one to fulfil their want. More importantly, if portion sizes are reduced then the price has to match the reduction otherwise this is exploiting and duping the customer under the dubious guise of "we are making you healthy." In reality a poorly concealed ruse to snatch more money for less product, a wicked collaboration of government and big business disguised as altruism and health policy. Indeed, if this new government-business collaboration is not sinister it is at least ludicrous and misguided. Sweets are treats and not meant to be the main-meal, no business is advocating eating their confectionery for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If some people are irresponsible concerning their own health and diet or that of their children, then these people need assistance with education or decision making if that is their problem. The answer to this isn't to punish and restrict manufacturers and consumers for their normal behaviour and restricting their access to products that meet their needs, preferences or desires. We announce today that there are some irresponsible parents down your street who made their children sick with sweets and therefore to save you all, none you can any longer buy what you want! What happened to freedom of the market place, consumer choice, products that reflect the diverse needs and desires of the market? It seems the uniform social engineering (via media and education) extends to dietary engineering, maybe soya milk will replace dairy milk...not too far away from the apocalyptic nightmare invoked by the dystopian 1970's movie 'Soylent Green' (don't read any reviews or trailers before you watch it).
To announce that manufacturers will be forced into making their products more healthy, less calorific via reduction of portion sizes sounds like some parody of an Orwellian society or totalitarian joke. "We have made this chocolate bar healthier by giving you less!" This is like saying "A kilogram of sugar will no longer have the calorific content of a kilogram, because it will be reduced to 500grams!" But what if I want a kilogram? You have reduced the chocolate bar so it has less calories, but I am buying it because I want a full bar and perhaps the calories too, it is then up to me whether I eat it all now, share it or save some for later. So no matter who you are now, no matter what your needs, tastes and preferences are....no matter whether you are 7years old and two stone in weight or 30 years old, 6ft 5 and 14stone in weight, the government has decided that you will all have the same small chocolate bar. In another era this so called responsible partnership between government and manufacturers might be called communism, or something close to it. If there is so much concern for sugar and obesity and it's connection with chocolate bars, then why not restrict consumers to one bar a week or ban them altogether? Indeed such a measure would be ridiculous, but who is drawing these lines and on the basis of what?
This is all being done for us supposedly. Why not go one step further, as soon as I take one bite, snatch the bar off of me and give it to someone else then tell me you are doing it for my health and my character by making sure I am sharing with others.
Along the same lines we have fast food retailers being forced to offer salads and health options. Well if they want to supply that then fine, but I don't go to a fast food restaurant necessarily for health reasons, I go because I desire what they are known for offering. If they can offer the same, for the same price, taste and texture but more healthily then very good, we are all winners. But if it is at the cost of taste and texture, then this is effectively the government saying "No more burger and chips for you...only wholemeal pasta and salads now." I am all for, burgers being offered in wholemeal buns, I think they will taste just as good, along with the garnish and sauces, but perhaps they will not sell so well, so no-one should be forced, we don't want more piles of wasted food. Will we be forced to have semi-skimmed milk? We don't want to get fat do we? I don't like semi-skimmed, I want milk as it was originally 'milked'...but it seems we are the ones getting milked!
What will be enforced next? Cars with only capacity for 50 miles worth of petrol? "We are doing good for the environment and your journey cost savings, you can only travel 50 miles at a time." It wouldn't be long before we expect to hear "We have removed all the frightening content from this horror movie so all sensitive characters can enjoy it."
If the government is so concerned with the health of people, then they should stop dropping bombs on people and stop promoting their exploitation with the facilitation and promotion of so called 'financial services' i.e. robbing people of their wealth via insurance and usurious banking, they can also stop robbing people of 30-50% of their income or wealth via the plethora of exorbitant taxes. There seems to be a lot less rules concerning consumer protection from the sale of gold bars than there are for chocolate bars.
Complaining about what you mandated yourself...Habitual Voters
The masses have been trained to think that voting matters, indeed it does matter, in maintaining the status quo. People keep on voting and the situation stays the same or gets worse, regardless of the political party or individuals in power.
When radical change is needed to remove endemic problems, minor administrative adjustments via elections, political establishment policy think tanks and committees will not do, not when the problems are fundamental, structural, ideological, systematic and intrinsic.
Almost all the people are complaining about what sort of society we are living in but equally almost all of the people fail to see the link between their habitual actions and that which they are complaining about.
Too much tax? Indeed there are too many taxes and their levels are way too high, astronomically high. The level of tax each individual pays is excessive and oppressive, yet people keep voting for all the parties that are more or less agreed upon maintaining those levels of taxation. The result is the vast majority of people stay where they are, crippled and shackled by a combination of taxation, rent, high prices, low pay and exorbitant energy bills. People are complaining about this but keep voting for it.
Education has been dumbed down, relativised, diluted and manipulated so it has become almost meaningless, worthless and saturated in the dominant secular monoculture, yet people keep voting for those who engineer it and collaborate with its authors and ratify its implementation.
Crime is not punished, justice is not implemented, criminality is not deterred nor its various causes prevented, yet people keep voting for the architects and facilitators of such destructive traits and conditions.
A degenerate and corrosive culture pervades the fashion, music, movie and television industries. It permeates all areas of society at all levels and sullies human relations and moral and intellectual growth, polluting families, communities and individuals. Yet again, the people continue to vote for the progenitors of such culture while complaining about its consequences.
People are being bombed, murdered and tortured around the world, women and children killed, maimed, their houses ruined, their families wiped out...yet people keep voting for those who sanctioned and orchestrated it.
It is either stupidity, insanity or masochism to continuously support a situation whilst hating it, suffering due to it and complaining about it. If you don't like the way things are, then stop performing the actions that maintain it.
People have become so ludicrously gullible, unthinking and unanalytical that they fall for every new ruse and stratagem used to maintain their support. They consider that things will be different this time with the election of a 'younger candidate', a 'black candidate', an 'asian candidate', a 'female candidate' or a party with a new name and a new slogan...Yet all of these surface variations operating under the same structures, ideology, education, motives, collaborators and overseers bring about no needed change. In fact these cosmetic variables are used to further promote a sinister agenda whilst the masses are diverted by the supposed mirroring of demographics. How naive, shallow, indoctrinated and deluded can the people be? Poison is still poison even if it is renamed, repackaged and recoloured.
The largest political group concerning vote statistics in the UK general election are non-voters (those who don't trust or agree with either the mainstream political parties, policies, candidates, system or ideology).
This largest group of non-voters is never represented in mainstream education or media. It would cause too many people to think and act differently if they had someone elucidating the reasons why voting is the wrong thing to do and why the existing political structures and ideas are exploitative, oppressive, deceptive and injurious.
They take the political decision not to vote for any number of good motives whether social, economic, political, moral, religious etc. They may see that the interests and well-being of themselves, their families and neighbours, their countries and the wider world are not best served by supporting liars, frauds, cheats, murderers, thieves, schemers and manipulators in elevating their own status at the expense of everyone and everything else. Perhaps it is time you finally woke up and joined them...the non-voters that is.
A poisoned world of lies and broken agreements
Agreements, contracts and covenants are a fundamental element of human relations and a basic building block of a structured society. In reality, even an unstructured society will have various agreements and will generally exist based on some form of unwritten social contract.
It is necessary to make agreements to define the limits and roles of relationships and transactions, as a reminder of rights and duties and as a means of avoiding and settling conflicts and disputes. Functioning relations and transactions become very difficult, volatile and unsteady once agreements are removed.
There is though, something more intrinsic or socially vital to agreements and that is their connection with truth, honesty, reliability, security, tranquillity and loyalty.
A sane and healthy person desiring benefit and avoidance of harm will naturally seek truth. If we want to live in the real world and make real progress this involves dealing with reality as opposed to fantasy and fabrication (I make a mental note at this point of the anticipated crowds of readers who perhaps consider they are from those grounded in reality, when they may in fact be firmly chained to the opposite). This pursuit of truth will include associating with those who also seek it or manifest attributes which are truthful or consistent with a seeker of truth.
One of these attributes, will be speaking the truth and not lying. If you seek the truth then how are you assisted by a liar, except by way of comparing the value of truth and falsehood or the contrasting value of the truthful and liars? A liar can not be relied upon and his word can not be believed. With the liar we don't know whether yes means yes nor whether no means no. The information derived from a liar is not altogether worthless but cannot be taken at face value and cannot be an authority on its own. Rather, the word of a liar can detract from the weight of the truthful when their opinions, words or reports coincide. This can be because an individual can be so prolific in lying that almost every word they utter is anticipated as being false. This can reach the level where a usually truthful person will be scrutinised closer or his judgement will be questioned if he has a liar in his list of witnesses or adherents. i.e. "...I strongly doubt this view as so and so (the liar) says it also!..."
Certain issues may not be paid attention due to the lying nature of those who profess and espouse such opinions. A little like the tale of the boy who cried wolf.
This attribute however, is not restricted to an individual, but it can also exist in a group, a society, an organization, ideology or system. With regards to a group, then it manifests when individuals gather to collude and conspire upon promoting a lie to serve their commonly held interests, but operating under a masquerading banner. It can also be the case with a system or ideology developed by such a group of liars or when a false ideology was the springboard which initially motivated or gave birth to that group of liars. They may have adopted false ideas which then coloured their outlook and activities in all spheres, such that the ideology, system and society they built was saturated with falsehood. This would mean that such a society of lies serving ideational falsehood could not be trusted in any of its branches.
We see that opposing States and ideologies regularly accuse the adherents of the other States of lying and they have a systematic distrust of the ideology and groupings that oppose them.
The colliding spheres of broken agreements
Agreements occur in all spheres of life, economic, social, judicial, educational, political etc. And as seeing as these varied spheres are at least partially built upon agreements, then all of these spheres can be damaged or even destroyed by broken agreements.
We appear to live in a time when many do not hold their personal integrity, credibility, honesty, decency, loyalty and reliability to be valued treasures worthy of preservation. The mainstream news is full of broken agreements in all of these aspects of life. Bankers acting dishonestly against the interests of their clients, businesses manipulating agreements to force their hand upon the dependent in their complete or near monopolies, politicians breaking promises and declaring lies as truths in order to gain votes and pave the way for their personal fortunes, even at the expense of innocent lives, social relations everywhere based on deceit, false foundations, cheating and concealment.
We have a society where there is distrust in all directions due to the awareness of deliberately broken agreements that people witness, participate in, hear about and justify. Technology has increased the capability and opportunity to engage in betrayal, deception and dishonesty. The hopes of people for new technology to allow pathways to truth and scrutiny has only proved partially true as the tools of communication only reflect the principles that already exist. Technology generally doesn't change the beliefs, motives, character and activities of people, it just tends to enhance them.
Cracked foundations make the house fall down
Once a society starts to accept broken agreements and acclimatizes to them, the next generation of transactors are automatically absorbed into the destructive practise of breaking their word or tolerating those who do. The common toleration of such behaviour encourages it and allows it to flourish. This is to the extent of whole industries based on lying, deception and fraud. The accumulative demise in transactional and interrelational morality transfers to people's personal relationships, decision making and criteria for action. It is not long before reliable, truthful, honest and loyal people become very rare.
People regularly re-elect politicians who lie not only about specific issues but generally falsify or conceal their motives, allegiances and portrayal of political philosophy and ideology. This culture of dishonesty permeates the whole political system down to the local level so that local self-serving fraudsters are attracted to the political sphere with a vision of self-elevation on a grand level, such is the blatant false nature of its face and activity.
In the social sphere, people who have been cheated on numerous times become cheats themselves or become accepting of lies and regard it as the default human trait. Others, hurt by years of deception, broken promises and multiple concealed identities move into a dark world of depression that may lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, self harm, prostitution, gambling, pharmaceutical dependency or even suicide. So many of the self-destructive behaviours we find in society are directly connected to people losing all trust and hope in humanity due to continuously smashed dreams, ruined houses and endeavours made futile by insincere collaborators.
Husband and wife make an agreement for marriage which is the foundation of the family, the family the basic building block of the community. Once marriage is polluted by broken agreements, especially when deliberately, deceptively from the beginning, we have the building blocks of the community shaking and falling, landing on our houses and heads.
If the family is the building block of society, then government is it's chief architect. Where do the economic, social, political, ideological, cultural, judicial and educational spheres receive direction from? Where are the parameters and laws set? The government acts to bring these spheres together in a supposedly coherent system in society whose objectives, branches and method are consistent together and subservient to their foundational ideological aim and vision. So what if the governmental architect is a liar who regularly breaks his agreements but also makes fraudulent agreements from the beginning? Indeed we have the walls and foundations of society turned into a prison, where the fraudulent collective contract conceals a reality opposite to its claim on paper.
Lies to cover lies, liar lies to liar, everyone suffocating themselves with the cloth of falsehood, the truthful gagged to maintain the pantomime, agreements made behind agreements, words transform to the opposite meaning, no-one knows anyone, including themselves.
The enslaved are called free and the liars are called truthful and everyone meets everyone with a smile while wishing for their death behind their face, a firm handshake and promise of goodwill is swiftly followed by a knife in the back and a declaration of immunity and innocence.
We are all in this together, we built it with our consent to break agreements and fulfil those that are false. Read the small print carefully next time, especially if you wrote it.
- "And those who keep their trusts and covenants." (QURAN al Ma'aarij 70:32)
- “And make not your oaths a means of deception among yourselves...” (QURAN an Nahl 16:94)
- "And be not like her who undoes the thread which she has spun, after it has become strong, by taking your oaths as a means of deception among yourselves..." (QURAN an Nahl 16:92)
