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The 'Take it Outside' thread This thread will no longer be moderated ***
Michael Cargill wrote: "That's why we need a benign dictatorship."I expect there'd be thousands of Azeris who would disagree. Although I'm not sure how benign it is here.
Will wrote: "Income producing assets such as the Royal Mail ... when we are all using the internet more and sending less by post? Hello?Getting out of the postal business is one of the smartest moves that the..."
That's just ridiculous, and in fact entirely untrue. Apart from anything else, the mail is expending with the parcel delivery (internet shopping as Rosemary pointed out). geoffs example - so what? Any poorly run operation without sufficient national coverage can fail...
Then there is the public service element to consider. Plenty of smaller, non broadband communities rely on post. A purely commercial company would cut them off for ever in minutes... Also lots of people are not using email for sensitive information transmission anymore, and I bet that trend continues.
Finally, Osborne has no actual moral right to sell public assets without an actual mandate from us all. Which he emphatically did not get.
Sorry, but the facts are clear. The monopoly enjoyed by the Royal Mail is for sending letters and we are sending fewer letters than ever before. That trend is only going in one direction. We are sending more parcels as we buy more goods over the internet, but this is not a Royal Mail monopoly. Other companies can and do undercut Royal Mail on cost and performance.
Selling off the Government's stake in Royal Mail does not automatically mean that smaller communities will lose their mail service. We do need to rethink how we pay for declining services like the Royal Mail. We also need to rethink the relationship between rural communities and towns. But there is no rational reason why a Government should have a financial stake in something that could not be provided more effectively and efficiently by the private sector.
Osborne has no moral right or mandate? Of course he does. He is the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Government which secured the majority of votes in the last general election. We had the chance to vote for proportional representation rather than first past the post. We didn't take it. We had the chance to vote for the labour party. We didn't take that either.
So the Chancellor is doing his job. There are things we could and should be questioning about his most recent cuts announcement. But selling off the stake in Royal Mail isn't one of them. Future historians will wonder why we hung on to assets like these for as long as we did.
I am sorry Will, but your whole argument is specious.Osborne received a minority of the overall votes cast in the election. He may have Office, but not a majority in favour of his policies, which should be a requirement for the disposal of Public Assets which belong to us all, and should not be transferred (at look how cheaply the last lot of shares were sold, at undervalue!) to large corporations, which is where the shares always end up.
And have you any evidence at all that private is better than public? Look at the state of the railways, an equivalent once public asset. Privatisation has produced a decline in service, quality and efficiency. The only truly successful franchise was the line that had to return to public ownership...
And if you think a privatised Royal mail will continue to provide rural services, you live in fantasyland! I'd give it a month before services withdraw. Look at BT: they were given a shed load of money to provide rural broadband across the whole of the UK. Ask Jim (no lefty he) how well that is working for him...
The UK has a first past the post election system. Until and unless we change it, that's the system that applies here. We had a referendum on electoral reform back in 2011. We voted pretty convincingly to keep the first past the post system.That's democracy in action. If we believe in democracy we now need to respect the electorate when they make a decision like that.
The railways were better in the days of British Rail? Hell no. A thousand times no. I have worked in the transport sector all my adult life. My first job was in 1985 in the Railways Directorate of the Department of Transport. The railways are far more efficient in the private sector than they ever were in public hands. There are improvements that could be made, but no-one with any knowledge of the industry is suggesting that we recreate BR. Good God, no.
Rural broadband? Well to be sure it hasn't reached everyone yet, but the speed that it is advancing is pretty impressive. The local authorities that I work with are aiming for 98% coverage in a very short space of time. It's never fast enough, especially if you are in the last 2%. But let's look at what they are achieving rather than whinging about the remaining gaps.
A privatised Royal Mail will withdraw rural services within a month? That would depend on how it was privatised. Private bus and rail companies are still servicing rural communities because it is written into the service specifications of their franchise agreements.
Look at the facts and not the rhetoric.
Will, what about Golden Brown when he sold off bullion reserves at a price far less than market value?
The only real mistake Gordon Brown made there was announcing his intention to do so beforehand.
The only real mistake? What about when he called a constituent."that bigoted woman" and made it sound like 2 insults!
Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "The only real mistake? What about when he called a constituent."that bigoted woman" and made it sound like 2 insults!"Did you see her interview she only went to get a loaf of bread .
I was referring to the selling of the gold!I certainly wasn't suggesting that Mr Brown only made one mistake during his time with New Labour...
The consequences of that lapse made toast of him anyway :0)
Yes, but did you also hear what she said to Gordon Brown? She put him on the spot because she was very anti immigration, with a point of view that was more UKIP than Labour.And that has been very difficult for Labour. Their traditional stance has been to support immigration on humanitarian grounds, but there has been a huge populist movement to oppose immigration.
His gaffe was to leave his microphone on.
Yes and he misheard her. Whatever her point of view it was the emphasis on 'woman' that made me angry. As I said he made it sound like an insult.
Here it is, in all its gory glory...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTr8I...
I'm no fan of Gordon Brown, but there are two sides to this one.
Meh, it was just a gaffe... albeit a devastating one for him, but amusing for everyone else.
I can't see what the woman said that made him call her a bigot. Unless a bigot nowadays is anyone who doesn't agree with your policies. That's how Hitler treated objectors. If we are a real democracy you should accept that others have different ideas. There's no right or wrong just different. I'm seeing more of this vilification of other opinions. I don't like the way it's going.
The comparison with Hitler is very apt. The bit that Brown struggled with was when she launched into her anti immigration rant. He tried to point out the positives around immigration, for example that as many people leave the UK as enter. But she was having none of it. She was fixed on this idea that foreigners were bad and wasn't listening when Gordon tried to put his points.It was the same in the discussion of policy and funding. Gordon Brown tried to explain the positive things that his Government was doing, but she wasn't listening. All she wanted to do was to complain about the things that she wasn't getting.
As you say, real democracy means listening to other people's ideas. I got the impression that Brown was listening to her, but she wasn't listening to him. She had a very fixed and simplistic view of the world and was not going to budge from that: foreigners are bad and I'm not getting enough.
And spookily enough, that was exactly the same message that Hitler used.
The vilification of other people's opinions? Yes, there was an awful lot of that happening in that incident. In one direction. To be fair to Brown, he was trying to accommodate her opinion. She did not try to accommodate his.
They both trotted out their spiel. Neither were prepared to change their ideas but with hindsight and the cameras/microphone it was more shocking to hear what Mr.Brown said. It showed how insincere he was. All that bonhomie about her grandchildren etc. I understood she asked where the foreigners were flocking from. I was told he misheard it. It was Rochdale and that place has seen enormous scandals and changes no wonder the locals feel disadvantaged to put it mildly.
The two of them were there for very different reasons - it wasn't supposed to be an exchange of ideas.She just wanted a rant/moan at the bloke in charge, and he was out fishing for votes on a PR exercise.
That sums it up Michael. Nobody changes their mind in debates or exchanges like that. People just like to have their say when doorstepped. Its cheaper than throwing tomatoes.
Actually political parties of all colours try very hard to listen to the electorate and come up with policies that will appeal to them, but which are also achievable.And that's the problem. Politicians would like nothing more than to give the electorate what they want. That way they could almost guarantee to win every election.
They can't do this, of course, because some of what some people want is unaffordable, illegal, immoral or will not do what they expect it to do. So politicians have to find a balance between appeasing the public and doing what is actually worth doing.
If you look at Miliband's position on immigration in the last general election you will see that he shifted Labour's position to try to appeal to voters like this woman. For that matter, what Gordon Brown was trying to say to her at the time was perfectly reasonable. He was trying to fit her extreme world view into something that could actually be delivered.
Every politician gets exasperated with how simplistic and racist some voters can be. Normally they get a chance to express this in private, as we all do. On this occasion, Brown made a mistake and what he said was recorded.
Should we be shocked by this? I don't see why. Nothing happened in this incident that we didn't already know. She had a fixed view. Brown tried to talk reasonably to her, but when she refused to listen he lost his patience in what he thought was a private space.
That is the problem with British politics. Politicians and voters aren't talking honestly to each other. And when a little bit of honesty does accidentally creep out we come over all shocked and surprised.
I'm not condoning racism. What I am saying from rather lower down the Ivory tower that a lot of ordinary people think and talk as she does. Politicians corner the moral high ground or so they think, but people like her have to live in the state the politicians create and they don't like it much. They don't cope well with enormous changes. Someone who had lived in a mill town 50 years ago would not recognise the place now. The politicians try to convince them it's their fault, they aren't multicultural enough or educated enough to accept these changes. The politicians can't accept that these people just don't like it and never will. Impasseville. They talk in parallel and each despises the other.
Lynne (Tigger's Mum) wrote: "They don't cope well with enormous changes. Someone who had lived in a mill town 50 years ago would not recognise the place now. The politicians try to convince them it's their fault, they aren't multicultural enough or educated enough to accept these changes...."I think this is the crux of it. You never asked for the changes, they never asked you if they could make them, but if you don't like them, it's you who's ignorant and bigoted
The politicians try to convince them it's their fault, they aren't multicultural enough or educated enough to accept these changesReally good discussion point there, Lynne.
I often think that education of the masses beyond the basic requirements needed to flip burgers, turn on the telly and to read the daily mail frightens those in power.
Not pointing any fingers west or anything, but have you seen the latest coming out of Texas?
Let me see if I can find a link...
Here
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progress...
And a perhaps less biased point of view.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/us/...
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Not pointing any fingers west or anything, but have you seen the latest coming out of Texas?"Hey, I grew up in Texas. I still go back there to visit family. It reminds me why I left. The articles you reference don't even come close to capturing all the crazy that is Texas. Have you paid any attention to the ravings of Ted Cruz, one of Texas' senators?
Oh, gotta say it, Patti. Ted Cruz was born in Canada. :-)
Shame he was 'educated' in the states, eh?
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Shame he was 'educated' in the states, eh?"At Harvard and Princeton, no less. Just goes to show, loony knows no boundaries!
Yes, a mill town now is very different from what it was 50 years ago. But that isn't anyone's fault. And those changes weren't all made by politicians or the establishment. We need to get away from this notion that nasty politicians are doing evil things to us poor victims. For one thing, Governments and local councils have far less control over our lives than most people think. And much of what they are doing is well intentioned, even if we don't fully understand it.
We are living through the most intense period of change that the world has even known. That humble mill town is very different from 50 years ago. And it will be very different again in another 50 years. No single politician did that. It is largely a product of socio-demographic changes, most specifically increasing personal wealth, an ageing population and the impact of new technology.
Shouting at the Prime Minister because the world has changed in the past 50 years is as pointless as complaining to the captain of a cruise ship that it has started to rain.
What I don't accept is that these two groups of people talk in parallel and can never understand each other. The public are getting better at understanding difficult concepts such as austerity, the need to protect the environment, racism, the impact of an ageing population. Politicians are desperately trying to find an affordable way to give the public at least a little of what they want.
We are slowly getting there. We have to get there. These changes are not going to stop just because some people don't like them.
That's why Brown got frustrated. Just about any politician would have been equally frustrated in the same situation. The difference is that most of the others would have the wit to turn the microphone off before saying it.
David wrote: "This probably belongs here:http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07"
Yes, I thought that was one of the good ones :-)
Will wrote: "The difference is that most of the others would have the wit to turn the microphone off before saying it. People have lost elections for no fault at all, he at least did screw up :-)
He was almost certainly going to lose that particular election anyway. Sad to say but I think he was out of his depth as PM.Which is a shame because he had a lot to give as a senior politician. It's just a pity that he wasted so much energy trying to undermine Blair and get the top job. And when he got the top job he wasn't much good at it.
I suspect he'd probably have been better if he'd never been Chancellor or PM. If he'd been foreign secretary for a while then had been moved upstairs to the Lords as senior retired statesman and venerated elder of the tribe, I genuinely think he might have contributed more and been a more benign influence on party and country
David wrote: "This probably belongs here:http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07"
Here and in the climate thread, David. ;)
Will wrote: "He was almost certainly going to lose that particular election anyway. Sad to say but I think he was out of his depth as PM.Which is a shame because he had a lot to give as a senior politician. It's just a pity that he wasted so much energy trying to undermine Blair and get the top job. And when he got the top job he wasn't much good at it."
As the old saying goes, don't wish so much for something, as you might end up getting it.
For Kay (redirected from the Good Morning thread)When the Welfare State was first set up in the late 1940s, the numbers added up. Back then the average life expectancy was in your sixties. We would work for forty to fifty years, then have a few years of retirement and then the first heart attack would get us.
Now the average life expectancy is in our eighties. So we work for the same forty to fifty years, but we then live on for another thirty years. In many ways, that's a great thing. It gives all of us more time to enjoy ourselves. It means that the older generation are hanging around for longer.
But it does give us a headache about how to pay for it. And as we live for longer, that headache is only going to get worse. Some experts say that the first person to live to be 200 has already been born. It would be a bit silly if that person went to school for twenty years, worked for forty years and then retired for 140 years.
So it's a genuine problem. It isn't anyone's fault and no-one is blaming anyone for it. We've all got to work out a way to deal with it.
You might say that it's a good problem to have because it is the price of success. But with healthcare and medicines improving it was 100% inevitable that we would get to this point some day.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "David wrote: "This probably belongs here:http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07"
Here and in the climate thread, David. ;)"
Perhaps you should save the link and in future insert it wherever you think it applicable - possibly even in a rather forceful manner.
Just back from a long walk out on the moors and the first thing that meets my eye is a suggestion for Patti to start inserting links in a forceful manner. I now feel queasy yet somehow strangely exalted.
So, we were discussing charities somewhere.Just gonna stick this here.
http://www.filmsforaction.org/article...
There was a piece in today's paper with various people being asked whether they felt a gap year doing charity stuff in among getting stoned on the beach was better on the CV than a saturday job. (Or equivalent)They came down in favour of the job on the grounds it was more character building :-)
Redirecting "Sir Tim Hunt" from the good morning thread ...David - what Sir Tim Hunt said was clearly unacceptable. Not debatable. Not borderline. Not a matter of opinion. Here was a notable scientist saying that the three things that bugged him about "girls" in science were connected to whether he fancied them, whether they fancied him and if he could make them cry.
Nothing to do with their abilities or competence.
That is 1970s crass and totally unacceptable.
Simply saying that you find something unacceptable does not make it so - no matter how you seek to emphasise it.What I find unacceptable (which doesn't make it so to you) is that the services of a man of vast experience, who has made a great contribution to the field of cancer research, have been lost from the various committees from which he has now resigned.
What Tim Hunt said and what Tim Hunt did afterwards are two very different things.Did you not find his comments unacceptable?
Do I feel that he should have lost his job over it? No.Am I thoroughly dismayed that his dismissiveness toward half the world's population is considered a trivial matter by some? Very.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Do I feel that he should have lost his job over it? No.Am I thoroughly dismayed that his dismissiveness toward half the world's population is considered a trivial matter by some? Very."
Some other views by that very other half:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/co...
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeeho...
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/...
Ah see this is where forgiveness is a wonderful concept! Long live FRUGALITY! ;-)
as a biologist he should have known that he as an XY genetic being would be nowhere without the XX genetic being that spawned him
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Beiderbecke Affair (other topics)The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study (other topics)
The Peasants Are Revolting (other topics)
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I told them it'd be a quarter of the price if they'd use metric. :D p..."
W..."
Yes, sea. Well, partly, anyway. I expect it'd have to be overland to a sea port first as Baku isn't on a Coast. And land on the other end. Her stuff is going to somewhere in the states.