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I am the Moral Minority. I am not sure you can have a moral minority, certainly I do not think it would be possible in a social-democracy. However we do not live in such a democracy, our social patterns have more to do with the canine world than anything else.
...mere turning back of the moral clock to the heyday of morality.
I have owned many dogs over the years from Great Danes to tiny little things which look like a rat on a string. Its those little insignificant ones that yap the most and consequently get heard the most.
So what is all this soapbox posturing all about? Cigarette cards of course, did you doubt it for a moment?
The grasshopper and the ant. What happens next?
GALLAHER, FABLES AND THEIR MORALS
Fables on cigarette cards to be precise.
Infopedia UK defines it as thus: Fable Story, in either verse or prose, in which animals or inanimate objects are given the mentality and speech of human beings to point out a moral. Fables are common in folklore and children's literature, and range from the short fables of the ancient Greek writer Aesop to the modern novel Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Aesop is no doubt the most famous of the fable creators and this certainly is something underlined with cigarette cards.
victorian high-ground.
So not for me the mere turning back of the moral clock to the heyday of morality; Victorian England, that halcyon period of British history when the British class system ensured everyone new their place, usually in squalor chained to industrial machinery for endless hours and a one way ticket to Australia for anyone suggesting worker rights might be in order.
They have the feel of children's illustrations... A Britain where one in nineteen women in London had turned to prostitution to make a living. Just the sort of thing the chattering (yapping?) classes of Britain today would like to see again if you believe everything you hear.
I am not saying the world we live in today is perfect but I would rather be tapping away on this keyboard developing a website than being shoved up a chimney to support my poor ailing mother and my younger brother suffering from rickets due to poor diet caused by the economic crisis created when my father was killed in a cave in at the local coal mine.
The Ant and the Grasshopper #13 text:
A Grasshopper that had merrily sung all the summer was almost starving with hunger in the Winter, so she went to sum Ants that lived near by, and asked them to lend her a little of the food they had stored by 'you shall certainly be paid before this time of year comes again' she said. 'What did you do all summer?' asked they, 'why all day long and all night long too, I sang, if you please.' answered the grasshopper, 'O, you sang did you?' said the Ants. Now then, you can dance'.
The Moral:
Winter finds out what Summer lays up. It is best ot prepare for the days of necessity
No matter things could get better, new ideas are coming into Parliament in 1886 the idea to give women votes is floated in the British Parliament.
It got thrown out repeatedly until 1918 when women were given the right to vote in a limited manner, extended ten years later to all women over the age of 21.
All right, if constant upper-middle class, affluent, educated self-opinion is beginning to get on your nerves I will quit now and get on with the plot.
For me it is the great wealth of fable and moral that is Aesop et al. as translated through the Gallaher set of cards, Fables and their Morals [1912, 1922]. Aesop was a slave, something the UK abolished in 1807. It took the USA slightly longer abolishing the whole unpleasant business in 1865.
