In Reply to: *Still* evading the question posted by The Nit Nurse on July 17, 1996 at 13:49:07:
As my reply did not get there in one piece, I repost it. Sorry everyone for the inconvenience.
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> > If you had bothered to put your biases to one side while
> >reading my messages, you would have discovered that I have
> >dealt with all relevant issues in which case we could have
> >got somewhere.> Really? On June 11 I posed the following point. I redirected
> you to them on June 24 and July 4:>
> Do you consider it better that those who work in McDs were
> unemployed than working under the current regime? Remember,
> many of those running this current campaign are Animal Rights Activists
> and are unlikely to be concerned about the welfare of those working
> in the meat industry. (check out some of the links from
> the home pages)I did much better than that & checked out ALL the links. The result: the list of links
include a mixture of sites with a broad spectrum of ideologies ranging from
Vegetarian activists to Environmentalists to European Journalism to _McD's
own web site_. I don't see any problem with this. do you? Or perhaps the
coloured glasses you see the world through blocked some of these sites out of
your sight and let through only the "nasty" radical activists' ones that so
outrage you & bring out the worst of your paranoid feelings about THE
RADICAL ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT! ( You may think I am again
focusing on one of those "asides" of yours. Oh well, at least I have given you
something to rant about again!)Now so far as your question is concerned, the dichotomy you are posing is a false
one. It is false because it assumes that no matter how unfair and unacceptable the
current regime, the employees will have to lump it because they have no other option
ie. a put-up-or-leave (or in McD's case, put-up-or-get-sacked!) situation. Now this
may be acceptable to large corporations and their apologists like yourself. But as far
as the majority of working people are concerned, this is not a fair situation. They see
a 3rd option - stay with the company and work towards improving those aspects of
your work environment that seem unfair to you. This is what trades unions (oh dear,
I have mentioned those dreaded words again ) have been advocating for years. And
of course this is precisely why McD and many other big corporations have banned
TU activities within the company - that is, in order to increase staff insecurity and
make it easier to impose on them the unacceptable.Furthermore, provision of employment is not the only criterion to judge the value of
a company or an industry by in relation to the society. Drug trafficking provides
employment and income for some but this does not make that activity acceptable to
the society at large (or is that acceptable to you too?). The same is true about the sex
industry, arms industry & trade etc etc etc....
> Instead of answering it, you deleted it in an attempt to
> evade it by making an issue instead, of your own soapbox posturing.
> Indeed, on June 11 posting, I requested that you stop eveading
> the issue, it wasn't *I* who stuck up the peurile subject
> title of 'workers vs capitalist' and requested that you address
> the issue.> You are the one who made the issue out of your political leanings by
> your own actions, not I - yet here you are a month later
> *still* evading the question and instead focusing solely
> on my asides regarding your political posturing here and
> try and pretend that it is I, rather than you, who are making
> an issue of your political leanings, by the use if judicious
> selective editing.ha ha ha, please don’t make me laugh. First of all, I did a simple analysis of your
article - the one you are referring to above. Guess how much of it was devoted to
attacking my imagined political views - about 2/3rd of it! If you call this your “aside”
then you can have very long “asides” - long enough to overshadow the main subject.
Or perhaps once you start rambling on about a subject that really bothers you, you
find it hard to stop and get onto the main issue, in which case you have a problem.
So blame me if I focus on those subjects that you allocate most of your message to. So
please, let’s have no more complaints about this. Specially now that I have discussed
your pet subject above.Secondly, you just can’t go around ascribing political views to your opponents on
the basis of the flimsiest of evidence and then attacking these imaginary views so
vehemently. Moreover, once you have done such a thing, you are answerable for it.
You just can’t ask your opponents to treat it as an “aside” if, that is, you want to be
taken seriously. Slander is a serious matter! Sure I have my ideological views like
everybody else. They may even be radical left wing. But who the hell are you to
judge them without even trying to first ascertain what they are. You wouldn’t like it
if I insisted on calling you a Thatcherite or worst still, a fascist, purely on the basis
of your right wing approach to a particular subject - ie. McD employment practice.
Perhaps one day (and in a different forum) you will tell us what the Militants, TU
activists and Marxists supposed to have done to you to piss you off so much.Now that the lecture in proper conduct of polemics is over, let us carry on.
> Now why not answer the question for a change, as I have asked
> you to do on a number of occasions? Or will you simply delete
> this and continue with the smoke-screen?As you can see, I have not deleted anything this time and also answered your
question. Hope you will sleep better tonight. But don’t ask me to do this every time.
Otherwise the articles will become extremely extensive dull to read.> > Let me tell you something serious.
> Fine.
> >I can understand why as a McD apologist you need to prove a point.
> >However, plucking political views that you have little knowledge about
> >out of the air and attributing them to your opponents is clearly not going to
do your cause any good.> I think I've just shown that you're the one doing the political
> posturing here.Do you? I can’t see it mate. Maybe you should try a bit harder so that we can all see
it.>Are we to believe that you are surprised when someone
> points it out to you?You have lost me now. Point what out to me? Why surprised?
>Of course the ad hominem at the beginning is
> quite poor, but not unexpected.Of course it was expected. After all you seem to know everything in advance,
including my thoughts. It put it down to that cristal ball of yours!>
> > > However, if you insist on sounding like someone whose
> > > just swallowed the complete works of Marx, Engles and Lenin
> > > at one sitting, don't expect a reply from me.> > Well, perhaps this Is a good moment to draw this discussion to a
> > close before it degenerates further.> Ah, Another neat edit. Here I asked you to address the issue
> regarding the workers without resorting to cliched rhetoric. You
> delete the pertinent part and leave in the aside to create
> the 'Boo! Hoo! He's focusing on my politics!" illusion and
> use it as an excuse to do a 'runner'.> Incidently, you didn't answer my question regarding Ronald
> McDonald Houses .I didn’t want to comment on a topic I don’t know enough about. But as a general
rule, McD would not support any activity that does not push its unhealthy products.
It would be naive to think otherwise. Now I suppose you think we should all be
grateful to McD for their charitable activities too!>either, nor the general point about
> low pay and poor working conditions in the High St retail
> sector or NHS.This is a forum for discussion of McD related issues don’t forget.
>But, perhaps a straight answer was expecting
> too much.Happy now?
>
>