On Sat, 2008-12-06 at 07:12 +1100, Max Richards wrote:
> frightening and no longer funny, Chris.
More frightening if you continue the critical analysis and consider that
tonight as a I write this there are hundreds of thousands of pensioners
who have not been able to pay their winter power bill, their water
bills, have been left without transport not being able to pay
registration on their car or even pay for fuel, that go without
medications since the costs are too high and must out of financial need
eat an inadequate diet. And then, if we add to this low income working
families and even extending into mid income working families who are
having to make wheat based bread their staple diet because the costs of
fresh fruit, vegetables and meat have exceeded their abilities to pay
then we are starting to talk in the millions. Today in Australia
millions of people are unable to eat a healthy balanced diet and as such
are malnourished not because they are ignorant but because they do not
have the financial ability to pay. Children, working men and women,
elderly pensioners, the disabled unable to work are in a relative state
of starvation.
It is most definitely beyond dispute that tonight as I write this
Australia is in the midst of a severe social crisis. If you look back at
the history of the social crisis of the 1930s and 1940s and the Great
Depression you would see that most people were not fully aware of the
extent and seriousness of the crisis. If they were the Government would
have been overthrown. Very obviously the same thing is happening now.
Most people seem relatively unaware of how severe the social crisis is.
The real question becomes, is the current social crisis now more serious
and more severe then the crisis of the 30s and 40s?
When was the last time you saw one of our politicians, government or
opposition, stand in a supermarket queue? They live on a different
planet.
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