[JohnDClare]

On tonight at 10pm

[Stephen Daughton]

Saw the prog about 'my father was a communist'. It was interesting in showing how young kids in the 60's were brought up differently by their communist parents.

Also recall watching the series a few months back about 'the lefties' was it called? various episodes about the greenham common women and those streets of squatters communes in an area of London that tried to set up an alternative society.

Must be my age but i just thought all these people were incredibly niave. Of course that's easy to say with hindsight, but even in the 80's growing up i was astonished at some of the far left's claims and desires.

Is it just my age?

Stephen

This post has been edited by Stephen Daughton: 11 October 2006 - 11:01 PM

[Dafydd Humphreys]

No, you're just a conservative!

[Chris Wilde]

Dafydd Humphreys, on Oct 12 2006, 07:17 AM, said:

No, you're just a conservative!

lol! It didn't take people long to catch onto that one did it Mr Donut!
Wilder

[Ed Waller]

The best jokes about communism are that in the West we're living in democracies and that we should celebrate our freedom.

[Russel Tarr]

A socialist, a capitalist and a communist agreed to meet. The socialist was late. 'Excuse me for being late, I was standing in a queue for sausages.'
'And what is a queue?' the capitalist asked.
'And what is a sausage?' the communist asked.

[Dafydd Humphreys]

No wonder the capitalist didn't know what a queue was - he was probably driven on a route which avoided the queues outside the local soup kitchens, labour exchanges, unemployment offices and drug abuse clinics.

[Russel Tarr]

"What is the longest, sickest joke in the history of the world?
74 years of communism in Russia."

A Russian, a Frenchman and an Englishman argued about Adam's nationality.
The Frenchman said, "Of course Adam was French. Look how passionately he made love to Eve!"
The Englishman said, "Of course Adam was British. Look how he gave his only apple to the lady, like a real gentleman."
The Russian said, "Of course Adam only could be Russian. Who else, possessing nothing but a sole apple, and walking with a naked ass, still believed he was in a paradise?"

A woman walking in the street is carrying a bag full of rolls of toilet paper.
A passer-by opens his mouth, "Hey, where did you buy that?"
"Buy? Are you crazy? Where could I buy it nowadays? They are five years old. I am taking them back from the cleaners."

Plenty more on this page.

[Stephen Daughton]

I have no jokes about Communism but i do have some memories as a child.

My father was a soldier posted to Berlin in 1984 and i lived there until 1988. I lived 400 meters from the Olympic stadium which at the time was derelict. I played with friends on the closed off S-Bahn stations. Closed off because they ran cross sector into the Russian Zone. They were untouched since the WWII and you could easily still find shell casings and see shot up stations where there had been fighting. This was immensly fascinating for a young boy to be so physically close to the war.

Amongst the other things i distinctly remember a visit i made with my family to East Berlin. He had to dress in uniform all day and consequently people stared at us all the time. I as a child noticed only certain things. Everything was wrapped in paper and tied with string when you bought something from a shop. I asked why they never gave us a plastic bag and was told it was because they didn't have any and they didn't...nowhere. I can only assume that all the plastics were used for other industries, notably weapons.

We also visited one of the big department stores and got off the lift at the fourth floor. the entire stores floor was jampacked like an exceptionally keen game of sardines. you could barely move. My father asked what was going on and was told that it was the first shipment of trainers for 6 months. Again rubber was used for commercial goods and public consumption very sparingly.

These two instances impressed on me in a very visible way that things really were very different here. I found it worrying because it was the same city. I had no real comprehension of the differences in politics i was only 12 but i came away with a feeling that these people were put upon and relief that i didn't live there.

Just thought i'd share that memory with you all. Of course 2 years later it all changed.

Stephen

This post has been edited by Stephen Daughton: 13 October 2006 - 12:31 PM

[Russel Tarr]

Interesting stuff. I lived in Berlin 1994-1995 - and although it had changed, I was also struck by the difference between East and West. Each half of the city had been a "showpiece" for a different ideology - Capitalism on the one side, Communism on the other. The West was superficially affluent (sickeningly so) whereas the East was painfully run down - the windows of its buildings had no glass, there were bullet holes in many walls which had not been repaired since World War Two, its four-star hotels looked like hostels for the homeless (I worked in one of them!). Pretty stark, even a few years after the wall had come tumbling down.

Didn't leave me with a particularly good impression of the realities (rather than the abstract ideals) of communism in practice, and my subsequent studies of Stalin / Hitler haven't exactly softened my contempt for any sort of ideologically-driven political position (left or right!)

(Time to change my avatar to Edmund Burke, I think...!)

[Dafydd Humphreys]

Stephen Daughton, on Oct 13 2006, 01:30 PM, said:

I as a child noticed only certain things. Everything was wrapped in paper and tied with string when you bought something from a shop. I asked why they never gave us a plastic bag and was told it was because they didn't have any and they didn't...nowhere. I can only assume that all the plastics were used for other industries, notably weapons.

Whereas the efficient West creates millions of tons of non-biodegradable plastic packaging which is poisoning landfill sites across the land.

A friend of mine from Cuba was living in this country as a guest of the Cuban Solidarity Campaign. He was struck by the amount of homeless people destitute in the streets, especially the amount of them who were under the age of 20. He was also gobsmacked by the amount of people who need spectacles compared to Cuba. He could only assume that all the laser technology here was being used to create nasty weapons rather than corrective eye surgery.

[Russel Tarr]

Quote

He was also gobsmacked by the amount of people who need spectacles compared to Cuba. He could only assume that all the laser technology here was being used to create nasty weapons rather than corrective eye surgery.

Rather a curious statement! It reminds me of the classic tautology that "carrots must be good for your eyes because you never see a rabbit wearing glasses".

A friend of mine took a holiday in Cuba and was astounded how many barmen / room cleaners were qualified doctors, accountants and so on who had abandoned hope of making a living from their chosen professions and instead preferred to live off tips from foreign tourists. I'll happily carry on wearing specs and forego the privilege of laser eye surgery if that's the cost of having such a socialist showpiece.

Ultimately, it is easy to "trash" communism, it is easy to "trash" capitalism, and it is easy to "trash" every other ideology besides. All have their flaws, both in theory and in practice, and we all have our own views on which one is ultimately the lesser of the two evils. As Churchill put it in relation to democracy - "it is the worst possible form of government ever devised - apart from all of the others".

[Ed Waller]

Russel Tarr, on Oct 13 2006, 03:42 PM, said:

As Churchill put it in relation to democracy - "it is the worst possible form of government ever devised - apart from all of the others".

Maybe in this (unlike himself usually, of course) he was right. Do you think one day we'll ever get to try it?

[Stephen Daughton]

Dafyyd, I only offered my observations on what i saw as a 13 yr old and why people told me these things weren't there. I think you seem keen to interpret them in some kind of political sense?

Abslutely no plastic anything was on offer anywhere. Dafydd you may think of this as a good thing, given the horrendous problems of degredation for plastic bags. However my observations were clearly not meant in this manner. As a child i saw it as being absent not because of a moral choice but through it being denied by a higher authority. As an adult, i'm sure the masses of the east would have liked cheap plastic comsumer goods in at least some of the 40 years since the war had ended, regarless of our thoughts about them now. I only saw that they were never provided that choice. The same for comsumables that used rubber, as my experience in the department store showed. When i asked why these things should be in such short supply only half a city away i was told that they were probably used in the weapons industry and not on the people. Dafydd you may find this a silly conclusion, but i remind you i was 12 and sought only to relay my experience. In my opinion it was more likely that plastic bags and trainers and other such items were simply not considered a need for east germans by the overarching soviet block. Whatever they did with it they certainly did not have the capacity to keep pace with the production of the west in even these cheap and basic levels by the mid 80's and my experience shows that. A wiser older person might have seen more and seen the end coming for the eastern block, but my observations should really be placed in the context of the time and age they were experienced.

Any good historian should be able to see the true value of them then....and it's certainly not about speculating where plastic was used if not in plastic bags.

This post has been edited by Stephen Daughton: 13 October 2006 - 07:22 PM

[Stephen Daughton]

On another memory my family once drove from Berlin to the South of France for our summer holiday and this required first driving from West Berlin through East Germany to West Germany before being able to drive south.



The road was a two lane motorway and completely sealed. It went ast no town, no house for over 200 miles and was completely flanked by a continuous 15 foot high barber wire fence the entire distance. Both sides of the road next to the fence were also mined and there were occasional gun towers although most were empty. Every 80 miles or so you had to stop at a check point where the east germans would interview the driver and ask for all passports. Everyone in the car was photographed and a guard inspected the car thoroughly whilst you remained sat in it and the driver was questioned in the guard house.



I actually found the entire thing fascinating as a 12 year old and found the whole thing quite fun. I don't think i ever imagined they would ever really keep up or stop us continuing our journey however seriously my parents treated it. This would happen 3 times on the route and they would time you from one checkpoint to another and there'd be bother if they thought you took too long.



I recall on one occasion seeing a car full of several US squaddies in front of us at one checkpoint and they were holding dollars slightly out of the window for the guard doing the inspection to have. I guess they felt a bit sorry for him. He did the most unsubtle of walks down the side of the car to take them. I remember feeling quite sorry for the guy.



The whole situation was bizarre. Presumably this security was because it was mostly a military supply route to a military base in Berlin. I'm not sure there was any other road like this in the world at the time.



Stephen