ninjacat

"Suicide is nearly always a supremely selfish act with the only exception being those who totally lost their minds and didn't know what they were doing." This is a logical fallacy. Think about it. Firstly how can you say that suicide is always a supremely selfish act except when people do it because they have lost their minds? What of those who might have a fatal illness? Is it selfish to end your life when you know you are just going to degenerate, surely not? Assuming that it's not selfish when crazy people kill themselves is begging the question here. Given the pressure this man was under and who then went on to kill his family seems to suggest that he must have flipped, so I look at his death as being brought on about by his circumstances. He was heavily in debt and under pressure to maintain this way of life. I think it's down to greed and how that corrupts and alters ones personality; he was criticised by a judge for having bad business ethics, so the decline started when his ascent up the slippery millionaire pole started. He owed nearly a million to the tax man and another million to creditors. I notice that now the media are trying to portray him as the man who had everything (pretended to have everything) and when it all started to fall apart he maliciously decided that if he could not have it nobody else could,including his wife and child. As if that's a rational decision and boy the guy must be crazy! Which he was. Who kills their wife and kids because they have failed? Don't confuse his suicide with their murder. Looking back through the past few years there have been a number of deaths where men have decided that ending it was better than facing the imagined shame of failure that their families and friends would have heaped on them because they could no longer keep up the pretence, they were working class and heavily indebted and insured, this however is the first case I can recall where somebody thought he could dispose of everything, including his family as if they were property. My profound sympathy goes to the relatives of the family. I see the daughter and her sweet face and can't square it with the fecklessness of the father.

I saw Nick Davies, journalist and author of "Flat Earth News" talk yesterday on why it is that journalists are incapable of writing anything other than falsehoods, distortions and propaganda. Commercialization of course plays a role but he explained that journalists are now expected to fill three times as much space as they used to in the 80's - this means they have less time to research and can't do their jobs properly. Facts remain unchecked. 80% of the news stories that were researched by Davies were wholly, mainly or partially coming from second hand material provided by the wire agencies and the public relations industry. Both of these sources Davies claimed were inherently unreliable because they are susceptible to manipulation by powerful, wealthy groups who can afford PR - which means government and corporations. Because of all of this the media is now structurally vulnerable to manipulation and to supporting the status quo. Wire agency/pr sources unsurprisingly remain ignorant of what is going on in the country. The job of pr is not to tell the truth but to select truths that serve the interests of the employer and if they don't do this they get sacked. Also the role of journalists today is to report accurately what is said by somebody like the PM at a press conference and not to find out whether what is said is true or not. This is how we ended up with the WMD falsehoods. PR material is sometimes reported verbatim with a reporters byline on the top - Davis claimed that 54% of what appears is PR. Also propaganda since September 2001 has grown enormously which is now called "strategic communications" otherwise known as psyops. This overlaps with PR - phony grassroots groups are invented. He gave an example of how you might see on the news a woman who says that she is unwell and how the NHS are depriving her of a drug that could cure her. She is part of a patient group that has been set up by a pr company working for a pharmaceutical company that manufactures the drug. It was a very interesting insight into the media industry by a man who has been working as a hack for 30 years.

*delurk button off* It would be nice if our salaries were the gift that kept on giving, given the record profits made in the city et alia. With wages stuck it's little wonder that people are mewing to get the readies and don't tell me Gordon Brown as the ex-chancellor didn't know that HPI would take pressure of wage inflation. Those halcyon days are over and people aren't shy of striking to make themselves heard. I spent the last 15 years recovering from the housing crash of the early 90's, Im out of debt but I really feel sorry for the people who are in debt because they refused to think through where this was all going. Like prices can only ever go up. Unbelievable. However, there are winners and losers in every crash, we see this transfer of wealth from the working class, oh yes you who believed you were finally part of the middle class, survey the handiwork of the Gord who giveth and taketh away. Look at what happened in Argentina for the worst case scenario. *lurking button on*

Households are only responsible for 20% of Britain's water use. Water utilities were privatised in 1989, this would have given the private water companies 16 years to re-invest some of the profits into infrastructure. Reasons put forward by Thatcher's govt for water privatisation: * the private sector would be more efficient; * private companies would be better able to finance the large investments needed and * privatisation would create competition. Well, I think we can agree that none of the above is true. Private water companies have failed to repair the system, reservoirs have been sold off or filled in for new developments while neglecting to build new ones. The water utilities should never have been privatised, yet another example of what happens when the greedy get their hands on an asset that is an essential human need. While consumers struggle with higher prices and restrictions the water companies are expected to announce profits of £2bn

Hi all, like others I have been lurking on the forum for a year - I can't tell you how much sustenance I have gained from reading HPC posters' contributions. My partner and I bought a property at the top of the market in 1990 which was the biggest mistake we ever made. The property was devalued by more than half by 1992 and we couldn't move because the banks and mortgage providers treated us as if we were pariahs and did not want to know. We clung on for another 4 years before the property was eventually repossessed (long story) and our lives shattered. We are now in our 40's with three children age 14, 12 and 10. Imagine! More than a decade of our lives was consumed by trying to survive the horrors of negative equity, repossession and bailiffs! I am concerned that there are quite a few people who are going to find themselves in exactly the same position that it has taken us over a decade to extricate ourselves from.