is bondage really different from slavery. apparently in the old days the overseers sometimes beat children who had fallen asleep whilst tending the machines.

i seem to remember stories of agricultural workers being beaten by bosses whom they were dependant on for their living and tied cottage.

if one party in a relationship has the power and desire to be abusive - qualitatively there's not much difference to slavery really, is there?

you speak of Dickens, I was still a schoolboy just before the Wilson government was elected - perhaps the year before. there was a lot of talk of thirteen years of tory misrule, which i accepted hook line and sinker - being very young and knowing nothing except tory government.

anyway about this time a book arrived in the school library - The Dickens Way by Humphrey House. House pointed out that Dickens despised ALL politicians. Dickens thought that the only way forward was for people just act decently towards each other.

of course i thought it was all bollocks, in my mind Harold in his Gannex mac would be elected and all would be hunky dory! such is youth...i can laugh at myself these days.

theres a lot to be said for everyone acting with decency.