Oxygen
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I’m grateful for the fact I’m still here.
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I’m grateful for being born to run, and the support from Mrs Fox who made it all possible.
She truly is ‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’
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the internet
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Through thick and thin, I’m grateful to you all, thanks for having me.
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Ditto… 
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I’m grateful for my state pension it means i dont have to slog my days out working for minimum wage and doing 3 jobs . I’m no longer exhausted and I’ll get it till the day i die
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Its all well and good enjoying something, but, never take anything for granted.
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That’s beautiful Foxy, a wonderful song.
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another day has arrived, did the state pension pay for this, or is it a freebie
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It’ll be the OAPs that go first.
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Best not to get into a “State” over the pension
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My personal Independence tiz wonderful
Also i am extremely grateful to still be out and about enjoying life .
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Not supporting Liverpool…
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I’m grateful for three things because they were beyond my control but turned out alright. In other words, if Murphy’s law had always proved itself right, I wouldn’t be here today or I’d be a completely different person. I’m grateful for all the luck I’ve had up to the present day. That includes not having been born earlier, i.e. before the war.
I’m also tremendously grateful for the opportunity of finally living in a free society for the best part of my life. Those who have always lived in it tend to take things for granted.
All that wouldn’t have been possible, if one man in the 1950s hadn’t made the crucial decision to follow the western model of society rather than the Russian one. I’ll always hold him in high esteem. The bashing of politicians is not always justified,
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Good post Dachs, who was the bloke in the fifties?
And do you think we are living in a free society today?
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Hah! Just this morning as I was making up my bed I felt grateful.
At the end of each day, to feel healthy while turning back my bedspread, removing decorative pillows, turning on my reading lamp, and snuggling up in a clean, warm bed with my tablet and a current fiction book to read before falling asleep and knowing I was kind to someone, and someone was kind to me this day.
Yes, it’s the small things that matter.
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Compared to the unfree society I came from, which was totalitarian and closed, it sure is.
Like many other terms a free society is used for different concepts. I’m using it for a society based on a separation of power and in which the law rules.
Let me explain it by looking at the differences for an individual.
Was I allowed to manage my life by making choices? No. I couldn’t choose a job freely as my children can. Were different ideas tolerated unconditionally? No. If you refused to serve in the military, you’d be imprisoned for 18 months and would have even fewer choices afterwards.
You said you’d been on a cruise. Imagine you wouldn’t even get a passport and were not allowed to leave the UK. Would that be OK?
You wrote you were working hard. Imagine your hard-earned Pounds were virtually worthless and wouldn’t take you anywhere. No savings, no car, no home of your own, only clothing and consumer goods of poor taste and quality. Only a small selection of food. No fruits of any sort except apples if you’re lucky. Queuing up for everything on a daily basis.
Worst of all: No chance of ever improving your lifestyle. No prospects, no changes possible. There’d be limits everywhere. The state would tell you how to live, so to speak. You’d be told which organisations to join, which films to watch, which books to read, what flat would be enough for you. You’d be instructed how to see the world. Your own ideas would not be accepted. You’d have learnt: People in other countries of the free world would be living their lives as they see fit but not you. Your life would be restrained by a dominant party and its ideas. Contradiction and deviance were not allowed. Welcome to an oppressive society as opposed to a free one.
Just a brief and incomplete outline of why I think I’m living in a free society.
In the fifties there was only one chap at the helm, our PM Adenauer being in the right place at the right time. Don’t want to even think of what could’ve happened…
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Thanks for your comprehensive answer Dachs, it sounds horrific, but being born when and where I was, it would be such a contrast and to be thrust into that world would be unbearable.
However, I think someone (or a group) with world power and wealth are working towards that future scenario bit by bit.
But not in my lifetime…
Wasn’t it Adolf who said “If you want to control the people, take away their freedoms in small increments?”
I could be wrong about Adolf, but it’s the quote I was focusing on…
That is where the inconsistency may be.