What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

This is one of the things that May, in her nievity thinks we can cherry-pick out of the EU benefits package to keep because it suits us to do so. This of course is being laughed out of the door by her EU opposite numbers as is the ludicrous suggestion that new trade relationship talks can be conducted simultaneously with negotiations pertaining to our exit conditions. The entire thing is beginning to look like a quagmire of uncertainty and risk - the very 'cliff-edge' leaping scenario that the leave campaign swore blind was not going to be the case if the British people voted for Brexit. I genuinely believe the leaders of that campaign should be put to a public televised debate to answer the questions now being raised in order to show the mendacious and untruthful nature of what they told us. (It won't of course happen - there'd be a revolution!)

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Gods forbid...

--A

[peter]

A free and independent media is a fine thing ....... until it becomes concentrated in the hands of a powerful elite with a vested interest in leading the 'herd' in whatsoever direction it chooses with the underlying motive of serving it's own selfish agenda; then it becomes a menace to both fairness and freedom in a society and rightly deserves to be subject to the withering scorn of those it is attempting to dupe!

Yesterday a crane collapsed in Falmouth docks while work was being carried out on a Royal Navy warship in dry dock at the time. Luckily no-one was hurt in the accident, but during the reporting it transpired that the ship had been constructed in S. Korea rather than in the UK itself. Surely this is the type of work a Government should reserve for it's own workers, in order to provide a much needed boost to a struggling and depressed manufacturing sector?

[Kizza]

On Brexit, whoever is running the army wins battles. Controlling the media wins wars.

The Brits would be happy to drop the cost of NI, while splitting the UK or GB ( I am sure the gas and oil up north are profitable) into Scotland, England and Wales would make the rugby even more interesting! I think, as you've suggested, a public debate and Q&A is the best way to inform the masses for a better or more competent decision. The majority learn more from the tv than from any paper or book anyway.

As I don't run the media, I reckon I would head for the lake out the back of Revelstone!

[peter]

Hi Kizza, welcome on board.

There are many of us in the UK who never welcomed the big sell off of the utilities - who believed it was the function of government to provide from taxation an infrastructure upon which a good private economy could be built on. In other words a good mixed economy. For us the quasi Tory manoeuvrings of Blair's new-labour were a distortion of the parties true socialist roots, the establishment if you like, twisting it's enemy from within. For us the events of the last few days can only be seen as a good thing even if they serve only to remind a public innervated by the last thirty years of what can actually be, and our only comment can be WELCOME BACK LABOUR!

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Ah, the public is a fickle beast though. You never know what you're going to get.

--A

[Kizza]

if you make us laugh, you can almost get away with anything....
refer Sascha Baron Cohen, or John Cleese, or Donald Trump.

[peter]

Bizarre that the media and political pundits who are howling with derision at Labour's 'backward looking fantasy' manifesto are the very same ones who screamed most loudly for Brexit - the most regressive and backwardly directed move in British politics for the last half century! But far from actually being the 'Fantasy Land' political vision The Daily Mail and other right wing press would have us believe, this vision is in fact pretty much the same one adopted by the Nordic countries - a mixed economy with a high level of public support - and the very reason these countries score so highly in The Economist Intelligence Unit's 'Where-To-Be-Born Index' on a year by year basis [Denmark, Sweden and Norway occupy positions 3, 4, and 5 compared to the UK's lowly 27].

[Kizza]

Interesting.... if the Nordic theory is true then that would be like a "don't fence me in" approach.
The UK head of population per sq mile versus the Scandinavian countries hop is much more congested.
The freedom and calm that comes with space lends itself to many different behaviours. Mostly more relaxed.
I grew up in the concrete jungle. I rode a skateboard everywhere. I now live in the "hills" and we have woodfires through the winter.
I do miss the dirty 5am smell of Sydney cbd though.

[peter]

The population density point is a fair one Kizza, but I don't think it necessarily has to invalidate the model as applicable to more diverse types of density spread. Improvement of city life can be an area where intervention can do the greatest good in terms of provision of services and culture etc - areas that do not normally lend themselves to private sector interest because there isn't money to be made in them.

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...'Where-To-Be-Born Index' on a year by year basis [Denmark, Sweden and Norway occupy positions 3, 4, and 5 compared to the UK's lowly 27].

Pffft, we rank 53rd. :p

--A

[peter]

Media reports yesterday (nice timing Theresa) say figures show that UK unemployment levels are down to their lowest levels for 40 years. How many times do I have to say that of course they do - because there are more people in part time work, working zero hours contracts, self-employed in failing start-ups and working at lower than livable incomes as well. The quality, reliability and remunerative nature of today's work has, for a huge slice of the working populace, never been worse (in my life at least).

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Lies, damned lies, and statistics, right?

--A

[Kizza]

Some countries make up for shortcomings in different ways. Then there are generation gaps and how appeal changes between them.... bloody hell. Did I just say that?

Moving on. Enjoyed some of the posts around the place.

I used to go with a girl whose father would practise his wing chun on me. He used to think he had a bit of haruchai about him, but he never knew the books.

Ayeeow!

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Sounds like a convenient excuse to intimidate the daughter's boyfriend...

--A

[peter]

Why do karate people always do that - send a flurry of bone crunching blows and kicks around your face that stop a millimetre before actual contact? You know they'd love to land the blows if they were allowed. Haruchai I like to read about in books, not meet across the room!

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Technically not acceptable behaviour for any serious karateka. But people, y'know...

(Also technically, wing chun is a school of kung fu, but the principle is almost certainly the same. )

--A

[peter]

The Tories have pulled of a singularly clever piece of 'legerdemain' in their social care proposals in the recently released manifesto. They have increased the 'protected' threshold of a persons estate from twenty three thousand pounds to over a hundred [very nice on the surface] BUT they have simultaniously removed the bar on a persons property being destrained upon when their estate is administered in respect of their care at home costs. So, where previously a persons home could be left, untouched by care at home costs, to ones offspring, now any care at home costs can be destrained upon from the value of the property when the estate is settled. This would mean that unless you happen to live in the very few parts of the country where the average property value is less than 100,000 pounds, you will be significantly shafted by the above move ....... and chances are most people won't even realise what is being done to them!

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Sneaky.

--A

[Kizza]

Heart goes out to the innocents in Manchester.
Don't know what else to say really.