At last, the 20's

Previous to the year 2000, decades were widely known and called by the 60's, 70's etc. They came to define a particular time, attitudes, fashion, music etc. But, for the past 20 years, we've lived in a kind of cultural wilderness. The "noughties" and whatever this decade is called (2010's?) never attained the popularity and more importantly the emotions, nostalgia and feel for the decades that the 20th Century elicit. 

But now, at last, we're going to come out of this cultural wilderness. We're about to enter the 20's! At last we're going to be grounded in an era that has a universal name with the associated feelings and place in history that will be engendered.

Blair's advice to the Labour Party

Just recently there was a General Election in the UK.  For a change, the opposition party, the Labour Party headed by Jeremy Corbyn, advocated policies that would have alleviated some of the poverty in the UK.

Just reading this article.  It says:

[Tony Blair] argued the party had been taken over by the "misguided ideology" of the radical Left, which had "never appealed to traditional Labour voters and never will".

Traditional Labour voters enjoy being poor? And wouldn't it be correct to say that it's the present economic situation that is radical since the top 1% have the same wealth as the bottom 60%? (see another blog post of mine).

Blair said:

Any fool can promise everything for free. But the people weren't fooled. They know life isn't like that.

Of course life's not like that, the rich have the vast preponderance of wealth and use their wealth and power to persuade people into voting against their best interests; namely for the Conservatives. There's plenty of money around, we're awash in it, it's just that it's concentrated in the hands of a small minority. Why exactly is one a fool for suggesting the rich should be compelled to share it out a little? I would say the fool is the person who accepts his poverty, who accepts the fact that he is downtrodden, and does nothing about it. If the Labour party consigns itself to dancing to the tune of the rich and gives up on radically redistributing wealth, then there's little purpose to its existence. Tony Blair is a warmonger, further he doesn't have the best interests of the poor and downtrodden at heart. I would advise people not to listen to this man

The Emperor has no Clothes

The origin of this phrase comes from a Hans Christian Anderson's fable The Emperor’s New Clothes. A vain emperor spends a vast amount of money on clothes. One day a couple of con men pay him a visit and offered to make him the most expensive clothes ever which would have a magical property of being invisible to those unfit for office or who are simply stupid. So the emperor ordered that they be made. Of course the con men made nothing at all but pretended they did. Since no one wanted to appear to be incompetent and stupid, everyone, including the emperor, pretended they could see the clothes. But one day a small child piped up that the emperor has nothing on. The bubble of pretence burst and everyone then admitted they could see no clothes either. 

We pay lip service to certain ideas because everyone else seems to subscribe to them and we don't want to appear to be idiotic, or even a loon. But then certain ideas are perpetuated, not because of their intrinsic merit, but because no one dares say anything.