This whole thing is a con job. Sorry for any one who cant see it but. The amount of destruction that this nonsense has caused is just ridiculous. And I am sorry but if you do not see or cannot see it but. You are just a Fucking Idiot.

Aaaaah...dearest oraljim it was a long long time ago that u visited...i think it was out of curiosity more than anything else and i failed to impress u...x

As to my style of writing...many do not like it :))...but thank goodness there are many that do.

PM it shall be! I like platonic chats with 'oraljims' like u and, most important, i know u are sincere in sharing of yourself with me without hidden agenda's...x

On 2021-12-10 21:53:55 Churchill said:
This whole thing is a con job. Sorry for any one who cant see it but. The amount of destruction that this nonsense has caused is just ridiculous. And I am sorry but if you do not see or cannot see it but. You are just a Fucking Idiot.

This post - or more specifically, this KIND of post - makes me sad. It is terribly self-defeating. If you hope to sway even ONE mind - and if you don't then why the hell are you posting your opinion on a public forum? - then calling the very people whose minds you want to change "fucking idiots" is, I humbly suggest, a sub-optimal way of reaching people.

I personally think the way the world governments, all of them, have dealt with this crisis has been abominable (Australia is probably one of the worst). So much emotional jumping from opinion to opinion like a drop of water on a hotplate. I think our leaders and the media (however you define THAT mess) have abjectly failed in their duty to serve the public.

However, what I do NOT think is that everybody who is vaccine-hesitant is an idiot. I think people who think this is a Bill Gates / 5G / microchip / mark of the beast / Illuminati / Freemason / billionaire-class / alien attempt at population control are idiots.

What I am saying is that this is a criminal take over of the World. And if you do not see that you are sleeping. Distracted. Or an Idiot. Choose 1 2 3. Vaccines. Irrelevant. COVID 78689. Irrelevant. Its all irrelevant.

"No sir, absolutely not. I have said absolutely nothing of the kind. "

I basically said "let's mitigate the risk". You responded with "there's risk in everything we do". Why you think that's an argument against mitigating the risk to the extent that its possible to do so, is beyond me.

"What I am saying is that it is fine to do anything you damned well please to mitigate YOUR risks - but what you seem to be championing is controlling *EVERYBOIDY ELSE'S BEHAVIOUR TOO* - you are NOT just living your best life you are wanting to, and more sadly believe it is morally acceptable to, dictate actions *FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD* just to make yourself and people who think like you be safer.

The key difference between your view and mine is one of ideology. I believe in *INDIVIDUAL* freedoms and rights. You seem to believe in GROUP rights. I don't believe that *ANY* law, custom, policy, tradition, opinion, habit or preference that is granted to a group but not to an individual is at all valid. Individual rights are the absolute cornerstone of the enlightenment, and modern society. It is the basis of both Roman-Dutch and American jurisprudence. Your attitude is handily dismissing the last 250 years or so of sociological and political progress."


- That's a cute high-school debater's understanding of the nature of rights, but its a little too simplistic for the real world.
Societies limit individual rights literally all the time. Its the nature of rights that they need to be balanced against each other, the cost of limiting your freedoms against the benefit to others/society. You're not allowed to drive drunk, you're not allowed to inject heroine into your eyeballs, your right to freedom of speech is limited to prevent harassment /incitement to violence etc etc etc. They are all examples where society has decided that the benefit to society at large outweighs the limitation to individual liberty. So the notion that limiting rights "dismisses the last 250 years or so of sociological and political progress" is laughable.

So to the question at hand: what is the benefit - a lot less people dying for a start. What is the cost? some people who don't like injections have to get one (we keep asking for evidence of greater harm, and not getting it) . I happen to think that on balance, that as a moral question that falls pretty squarely on the "let's do it" side.

On 2021-12-10 21:43:19 oraljim said:
On 2021-12-10 20:37:57 JP82 said: - Oh dear lord. Do I really need to explain how analogies work? Just because I'm saying one aspect of a particular situation is analogous to another doesn't mean all aspects of the two situation are.
Then frankly, yes, you do need to explain how you THINK analogies work, because the way *I* think they work is different. According to the Cambridge English dictionary, an analogy is "a comparison between things that have similar features."

I admit it's been 3 months since I got the jab but thus far life, the universe and everything has SPECTACULARLY failed to exhibit any features or similarities between those jabs and a seatbelt. So, your smarminess aside, me dismantling your argument based on accepted and commonly understood meanings of simple words is perfectly valid, despite the discomfort that causes you.

You'll notice that the definition of analogy says "has similar features". Can you see the difference between "has similar features" and "are identical in all aspects"? or do I need to explain that too? If I say Hitler's invasion of Russia is analogous to Napoleon's, I'm not saying the Nazi's rode in on horseback while speaking French. I'm saying there are relevant similarities.

Since the point of the analogy (as previously explained) was to highlight the difference between *safe* and *safer*, your denial that there are any similarities between the two situations can only mean that you don't think that there are differences between being *safe* and *safer*, which I guess would explain your apparent confusion. I don't really know how to explain it in simpler terms than a pretty straightforward analogy, so you're on your own here.

On 2021-12-10 22:26:03 JP82 said:
- That's a cute high-school debater's understanding of the nature of rights, but its a little too simplistic for the real world.

Gosh talk about condemning yourself with your own words! I never said a single word about limiting people's rights. Free speech is limited by laws against slander, libel and incitement to violence. Freedom of movement is limited by valid incarceration. Property rights are superseded by imminent domain. Never argued against any of that. Nor do I believe that any right is absolute - not even the right to life. Never a word against that have I ever said, and yet you are using those points as if in argument against my words. They are not. You are trying, very childishly, to subvert what I DID say into what would have been convenient for you IF I had said it.

So if you will indulge my "high school debating tactics" a short while longer let me repeat what I actually did say: that the key difference between us is an ideological difference where I believe in the supremacy of individual rights and you believe in the supremacy of group rights. In case you think that is reductive, or dismissive, or childish, or school-level debating or whatever, let me remind you that it is this PRECISE difference that sets apart things like the DA (individual rights) from the ANC (group rights). Labour (group) from Tory (individual). Democrat (group) from Republican (individual). It is the very canvas upon which nothing less than the entire world political spectrum is divided - and yet you so casually dismiss it as "high school debating".

I don't believe in name calling, so I won't actually call you an idiot, but neither will I engage with you further if you repeatedly mis-quote or dismiss things I never actually said. I am happy to spend time debating people in good faith but if all you are going to do is trot out meme-level talking points on topics we aren't even discussing, then we've reached the useful end of this interaction.

So i see Dischem has announced mandatory vaccines for staff as friom feb next year. If a staff member chooses not to vaccinate then he/she must produce a negative Covid test result EVERY monday at the employees OWN EXPENSE. Further more they need to wear N95 rated masks once again emphaised at their won expense.


Now taking in to account that Covid test cost aprox R850 which works out to R3400 per month i, if done weekly. Then factor in the transport costs and inconvenience of having to do a test EVERY weekend. Consider what most shop floor employees earn and the fact that a lot of them probably rely on public transport. Its just unbelievable how cold this pharmacy chain has become.

Oh and failure to produce a valid test result will resukt in " disciplinary action" How nice Dischem!!!

People are now being bullied in to taking the vaccine.


If we dont see anything wrong with this then i just dont know.

Used to do quite a bit of shopping at this store , needless to say they are not getting a single rand from me going forward. And im gonna do the same with all other businesss that follow suit as far as is reasonably possible

@oraljim - well you've certainly plumbed new depths of juvenile debating. You're basically getting pissy because I didn't use your exact words. Because apparently somehow "I don't believe that *ANY* law, custom, policy, tradition, opinion, habit or preference that is granted to a group but not to an individual is at all valid", is supposedly meaningfully different from "we can't limit an individual's rights" in order to benefit society. RRRRRIIIIIGGGGHHHHT.

What I dismissed as high-school debating is the lack of nuance in your original assessment. The distinction between left and right, is a matter of degree - and that was plainly missing from your analysis. By way of example Every single one of the "individual" rights parties you list support some sort of "group/society" policy. e.g. they all support funding government through taxation (i.e. effectively confiscating an individual's private property to provide services for the whole of society) what they differ on is the degree. So the absolutist nature of I don't believe that *ANY* law, custom, policy, tradition, opinion, habit or preference that is granted to a group but not to an individual is at all valid."" without acknowledging that rights always get weighed against competing rights is what i dismissed as high-school debating, not that there exists a distinction between left and right ideologies.

So when I say "Let's do X", and you respond with "We can't, its a violation of individual rights" it is absolutely appropriate for me to say "individual rights are limited on a daily basis" whether or not you originally used the phrase "limiting people's rights".

On 2021-12-10 23:29:43 JP82 said:
So when I say "Let's do X", and you respond with "We can't, its a violation of individual rights" it is absolutely appropriate for me to say "individual rights are limited on a daily basis" whether or not you originally used the phrase "limiting people's rights".

Gosh, you really don't get it do you? There is a difference between "rational curtailing of rights" and "violation of rights". Let's try this for size.

Case 1: You are granted the right to say anything you want, at any time, subject to some basic limitations. You can't slander or libel someone, you can't incite to violence etc, but by default, 99.999% of the time for a normal member of society, you are free to say whatever you want. That is a rational curtailing of basic rights.

Case 2: In the name of "keeping people safe", based only on the most flimsy (to date) and even disputed claims of SOME, but not all scientists, we hereby MANDATE that you put Substance X into you body and carry around the consequences of that for the rest of your life. If you don't do it we will be encouraging under severe threats, if we can't actively force you, to take some medicine that has only existed for 13 months, with limited CLINICAL (not statistical) proof of its efficacy. That is a violation of the sovereignty of your own body.

Do I *REALLY* have to explain that those two positions are NOT equivalent and that the philosophical motivation for case 1 is individual rights and for case 2 is group rights? If I don't then what the hell are we arguing about?