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Batman's ethics
“This is what leads to the heart of Batman’s ethical failure: he doesn’t trust anyone but himself to take care of anything. His lack of faith in the justice system caused him to bring a gun to his parents’ killer’s hearing. That same lack of trust caused him to become Batman. His lack of faith in those…
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Chinese parenting in the UK
Although the influence of Confucian values has waned in recent years, certain values such as clearly defined gender roles, responsibilities and obligations of the individual, children’s deference to parental authority, as well as reverence and respect for fathers still exerted a considerable influence on contemporary British Chinese parenting beliefs. However in contrast to parents’ childhoods,…
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Unfreedom
[Conspicuous consumption] involves attaching oneself to objects, making one’s continued happiness dependent on the continued consumption of these objects, thus promoting a condition of radical unfreedom, while at the same time encouraging us to define the very concept of ‘freedom’ as the ‘freedom to pick and choose objects with which to construct my identity’ rather than…
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More hopeful, more committed to the challenges of living in a complex world
“We’ve been taught to think that the real question is “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed?” And that’s a very sensible question. But the other way of thinking about it is not “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed?”, but “Do we deserve to kill?” “I…
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The comfortable majority
The state has a duty to protect the most vulnerable, and sometimes these efforts seem to run counter to the interests of society and the community at large. We should be careful when we talk about society and community, not to mean us, the comfortable majority. [John Burnside]
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Folk Devils and Moral Panics
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It’s Just Not Acceptable Any More
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Compensation for slavery?
The abolition of slavery in 1833 included £20m compensation to slave owners. The Glasgow West India association claimed the equivalent of £16 billion in modern terms. [Stephen Mullen, Univ Glasgow researcher]
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GlaxoSmithKline admits some staff in China involved in bribery | Business | The Guardian
GlaxoSmithKline admits some staff in China involved in bribery | Business | The Guardian.
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One of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness” JK Galbraith