Is Pm Cameron Delusional?
More bang for your buck
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Alex is rather apt today: Alex - Peattie & Taylor
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Nutloose
I am simply pointing out that in the UK our political leadership be it Conservative or Labour never sought or obtained a mandate to transfer powers from Westminster to Brussels so allowing the EU to become what it has. I find that un-democratic.
I am not anti EU by the way but have real reservations about how EU powers and functions arrive more by stealth than after open debate! The Lisbon Treaty was a good example of this. How did you vote? Ooops not asked
I am simply pointing out that in the UK our political leadership be it Conservative or Labour never sought or obtained a mandate to transfer powers from Westminster to Brussels so allowing the EU to become what it has. I find that un-democratic.
I am not anti EU by the way but have real reservations about how EU powers and functions arrive more by stealth than after open debate! The Lisbon Treaty was a good example of this. How did you vote? Ooops not asked
Caz
Hello again; yes we had a similar thing after the Jan 2009 hurricane. Six trees down across our drive,I went up to the hamlet to check on status of electricity and to request help at cessation of the storm, about 5pm on a Saturday and by the time we had dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning a bunch of guys had sawn and moved the trees. No charge, just a bunch of smiling faces!
Nutloose, contrary to what many of us have said in the past 'great country,shame about the people' the French away from the big cities are fantastic. The secret is to always speak a little of their language, even if you are useless at it,as then they will respond with humour and kindness.
However if you live in rural England,say Herefordshire,Dorset etc people are just as kind and friendly - the closer you are to 'The Great Wen' the more you experience the rat race.
Nutloose, contrary to what many of us have said in the past 'great country,shame about the people' the French away from the big cities are fantastic. The secret is to always speak a little of their language, even if you are useless at it,as then they will respond with humour and kindness.
However if you live in rural England,say Herefordshire,Dorset etc people are just as kind and friendly - the closer you are to 'The Great Wen' the more you experience the rat race.
Nutloose - where in this country with the best health service are you buying "cheap" fuel - unless you are on LPG. Petrol seems pretty expensive on the Vendee-Deux Sevres border!
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draken55
You have there, I never said anything??
As for the fuel prices in other posts,
well I have to admit I have'nt a clue what it is, if the car needs filling up I just pull in and fill it up, not one of these that will travel 15 miles to save 1p a litre..... I do not even look at the prices, my car gets filled up once a month and that is that, costs me about £50 quid..... in fact thinking of it I couldn't tell you how much a loaf of bread is, whenever I go shopping I just pick what I want and pay for it...... I never bother looking at prices at all...... I either want it or not and the fact Tescoopmorrisonsasda has it cheaper does not enter into it.... I go to my local coop superstore as it is the nearest store, or I use my local shop, anything else I order on line.
You have there, I never said anything??
As for the fuel prices in other posts,
well I have to admit I have'nt a clue what it is, if the car needs filling up I just pull in and fill it up, not one of these that will travel 15 miles to save 1p a litre..... I do not even look at the prices, my car gets filled up once a month and that is that, costs me about £50 quid..... in fact thinking of it I couldn't tell you how much a loaf of bread is, whenever I go shopping I just pick what I want and pay for it...... I never bother looking at prices at all...... I either want it or not and the fact Tescoopmorrisonsasda has it cheaper does not enter into it.... I go to my local coop superstore as it is the nearest store, or I use my local shop, anything else I order on line.
Whenurhappy:
With the greatest respect;
Like hell "it doesn't exist any more". I was married to an English lady for Twenty years, and I've lived it.
The class system is alive and well, read the Speccy and Country Life! I've lived it first hand. I've heard the braying about shooting and fishing and the country house. I had a brother in law in the City and watched the goings on of these conceited idiots. I still have my green wellies and old barbour jacket to "blend in'.
Two things are killing Britain:
1. The class system that ensures that GOOD IDEAS and TALENT are wasted unless the come with the "right" accent.
2. A backwards looking mentality that pines for Empire.
What has occurred since at least the 1870's is the building up of a myth about Britains heroic past that is simply untrue, but worse, it is self perpetuating and damaging to the future of Britain, because it informs peoples attitudes today.
That myth is something like the idea that the pure, self sacrificing, British gentry built the country and empire out of pure goodness of heart. That Britains rise was pre ordained because of it's unique culture, values and social structure. It includes the idea that the British public (ie: Private) school system is something of value instead of a perverse aberration of human behaviour. It includes the idea that all knowledge flows from Oxbridge, which is a self serving University myth and the subject of much learned debate even today (Find a copy of "The Economics of Scientific Research" if you can).
Your own words perfectly encapsulate this myth:
Mate, there was "talent and youth" a plenty lost from all the little grammar schools that was just as valuable!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is what I am trying to say. Britain has the awful habit of valuing an idea, and a person, not on the basis of intellectual power and worth, but on the social background of the person concerned!
Take Tony Blair for example, he graduated from Oxford in 1976 and Six years later entered Parliament. What sort of life experience is that????
Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics. How do you expect him to make rational and difficult decisions about the future of Britain? He has no working life experience whatsoever to guide him.
If you keep promoting people to leadership positions on the basis of where they went to school or university, instead of upon past performance, then your decline is assured.
BTW, this is not a p1ssing competition. Australia has its own problems and is not immune from "The British Disease."
Anyway, I should shut up. I'm wasting my time.
Sunfish,
You demonstrate a not-uncommon and erroneous Antipodean view of a Britain that doesn't exist anymore.
Britain (a country that adopted me, I love and have devoted my working life to) has suffered from a crisis in confidence since the end of World War I. It has been characterised by the managed decline of greatness. Arguably it has never recovered from the grevious human and financial losses of the Great War which shook its self image (and acutalite) of invincibility. One just needs to visit any Public School or Oxbridge College and see the In Memoriam boards and weep at the lost of talent and youth (no escaping the fact that these schools and colleges did produce Britain's leaders). At my son's school they lost a hunderd 'old' boys on the first day of the Somme. The youngest had just turned 18; almost all of them Temporary (very temporary) officers. My own College produced Sigfiried Sassoon and three VC winners, amongst many others - all 'bright young things' whose lives were forever changed. Who can blame them that they didn't want Britain to fight more wars and saw the realities of Empire. Just read Orwell's 'Burmese Days' to get a sense of what Empire was all about.
You demonstrate a not-uncommon and erroneous Antipodean view of a Britain that doesn't exist anymore.
Britain (a country that adopted me, I love and have devoted my working life to) has suffered from a crisis in confidence since the end of World War I. It has been characterised by the managed decline of greatness. Arguably it has never recovered from the grevious human and financial losses of the Great War which shook its self image (and acutalite) of invincibility. One just needs to visit any Public School or Oxbridge College and see the In Memoriam boards and weep at the lost of talent and youth (no escaping the fact that these schools and colleges did produce Britain's leaders). At my son's school they lost a hunderd 'old' boys on the first day of the Somme. The youngest had just turned 18; almost all of them Temporary (very temporary) officers. My own College produced Sigfiried Sassoon and three VC winners, amongst many others - all 'bright young things' whose lives were forever changed. Who can blame them that they didn't want Britain to fight more wars and saw the realities of Empire. Just read Orwell's 'Burmese Days' to get a sense of what Empire was all about.
Like hell "it doesn't exist any more". I was married to an English lady for Twenty years, and I've lived it.
The class system is alive and well, read the Speccy and Country Life! I've lived it first hand. I've heard the braying about shooting and fishing and the country house. I had a brother in law in the City and watched the goings on of these conceited idiots. I still have my green wellies and old barbour jacket to "blend in'.
Two things are killing Britain:
1. The class system that ensures that GOOD IDEAS and TALENT are wasted unless the come with the "right" accent.
2. A backwards looking mentality that pines for Empire.
What has occurred since at least the 1870's is the building up of a myth about Britains heroic past that is simply untrue, but worse, it is self perpetuating and damaging to the future of Britain, because it informs peoples attitudes today.
That myth is something like the idea that the pure, self sacrificing, British gentry built the country and empire out of pure goodness of heart. That Britains rise was pre ordained because of it's unique culture, values and social structure. It includes the idea that the British public (ie: Private) school system is something of value instead of a perverse aberration of human behaviour. It includes the idea that all knowledge flows from Oxbridge, which is a self serving University myth and the subject of much learned debate even today (Find a copy of "The Economics of Scientific Research" if you can).
Your own words perfectly encapsulate this myth:
One just needs to visit any Public School or Oxbridge College and see the In Memoriam boards and weep at the lost of talent and youth.......
.........My own College produced Sigfried Sassoon and three VC winners,
.........My own College produced Sigfried Sassoon and three VC winners,
Take Tony Blair for example, he graduated from Oxford in 1976 and Six years later entered Parliament. What sort of life experience is that????
Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics. How do you expect him to make rational and difficult decisions about the future of Britain? He has no working life experience whatsoever to guide him.
If you keep promoting people to leadership positions on the basis of where they went to school or university, instead of upon past performance, then your decline is assured.
BTW, this is not a p1ssing competition. Australia has its own problems and is not immune from "The British Disease."
Anyway, I should shut up. I'm wasting my time.
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Sunfish
Can only speak for myself in saying that I don't have much of an issue with what you say.
However, I think that that our politicians and bureaucrats have found their new Empire in the EU rather than pine for the old one.
Can only speak for myself in saying that I don't have much of an issue with what you say.
However, I think that that our politicians and bureaucrats have found their new Empire in the EU rather than pine for the old one.
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Take Tony Blair for example, he graduated from Oxford in 1976 and Six years later entered Parliament. What sort of life experience is that????
Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics.
Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics.
Anyone who doubts there is some basis in Sunfish's accusations, take a look at "Longitude", (ISBN: 1841151637 / 1-84115-163-7 ) by Dava Sobel), the story of the life of John Harrison, the man who created the first accurate chronograph, without whom Great Britain's Navy and Merchant Navy would never have been able to dominate the world for 200 years.
Harrison was a commoner, and therefore, for years, totally ignored by the Royal Society, whose members chased after a succession of hare-brained schemes for accurate time keeping and navigation because they were the brainchildren of the 'right' kind of people from the 'right' social class.
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Sunfish
"Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics"
- 7 years as a succeful director at Carlton - strikes me as work in the real world outside politics?
"The class system is alive and well, read the Speccy and Country Life! I've lived it first hand. I've heard the braying about shooting and fishing and the country house. I had a brother in law in the City and watched the goings on of these conceited idiots. I still have my green wellies and old barbour jacket to "blend in'"
- no doubt you also were pleased when fox hunting was banned as it was some evil upper class elite sport.... Not realising in fact that it was classless and open to all, and indeed provided much benefit to rural communities in UK at every level. Your broad brush statements about this "class system" are, for want of a better word, b*ll*cks
With the greatest respect, it sounds like there might the smallest chip on those shoulders of yours about NOT going to a private school, not making it into Oxbridge and not owning a country house?
"Look at David Cameron - he has exactly zero experience in anything outside party politics"
- 7 years as a succeful director at Carlton - strikes me as work in the real world outside politics?
"The class system is alive and well, read the Speccy and Country Life! I've lived it first hand. I've heard the braying about shooting and fishing and the country house. I had a brother in law in the City and watched the goings on of these conceited idiots. I still have my green wellies and old barbour jacket to "blend in'"
- no doubt you also were pleased when fox hunting was banned as it was some evil upper class elite sport.... Not realising in fact that it was classless and open to all, and indeed provided much benefit to rural communities in UK at every level. Your broad brush statements about this "class system" are, for want of a better word, b*ll*cks
With the greatest respect, it sounds like there might the smallest chip on those shoulders of yours about NOT going to a private school, not making it into Oxbridge and not owning a country house?
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no doubt you also were pleased when fox hunting was banned as it was some evil upper class elite sport.... Not realising in fact that it was classless and open to all
I've no problem with hunting vermin etc but such an activity requires money so maybe not strictly classest but definitely only open to a certain section of society!
Cheers
Che
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Thunderbird
Hunts are not classest, but yes, for certain things you need money - as is the case in pretty much everything in life. If people choose their hobby to be horses, why does that make them "horrible upper class people" vs those that chose to have say a sports car, or go pleasure flying at weekends?
The incorrect and chippy impression that hunting (or other country sports) are reserved for the upper class is very tedious to hear over and over again when it is simply rubbish from those who typically have never been/tried such activities.
And in agreement on hunting of vermin!!
Tangoe - I agree!
Hunts are not classest, but yes, for certain things you need money - as is the case in pretty much everything in life. If people choose their hobby to be horses, why does that make them "horrible upper class people" vs those that chose to have say a sports car, or go pleasure flying at weekends?
The incorrect and chippy impression that hunting (or other country sports) are reserved for the upper class is very tedious to hear over and over again when it is simply rubbish from those who typically have never been/tried such activities.
And in agreement on hunting of vermin!!
Tangoe - I agree!
Snaggedone:
Dear sweet Sir. I once visited an acquaintance who was farming a place noted in the Domesday book near Taunton. He complained about the foxes getting into the lambs. He explained that he would "have to get the hunt in'. I asked why he didn't get out a spotlight and a 0.22 each night as we would and nail the foxes. I was looked at as if I was Osama Bin Laden.
It was quite clear that growing Lamb was secondary to providing sport.
Further fun has always been provided by :
a) Putting an eye fillet of beef on the barbie, together with a big Australian Red Wine.
b) Giving a visiting bloke a fishing rod or firearm and telling him to do his best, for free.
Please note that I will always do everything in my power to assert Australian superiority in terms of barbecue and vino in the Melbourne area. You only have to ask.
- no doubt you also were pleased when fox hunting was banned as it was some evil upper class elite sport.... Not realising in fact that it was classless and open to all, and indeed provided much benefit to rural communities in UK at every level. Your broad brush statements about this "class system" are, for want of a better word, b*ll*cks
Dear sweet Sir. I once visited an acquaintance who was farming a place noted in the Domesday book near Taunton. He complained about the foxes getting into the lambs. He explained that he would "have to get the hunt in'. I asked why he didn't get out a spotlight and a 0.22 each night as we would and nail the foxes. I was looked at as if I was Osama Bin Laden.
It was quite clear that growing Lamb was secondary to providing sport.
Further fun has always been provided by :
a) Putting an eye fillet of beef on the barbie, together with a big Australian Red Wine.
b) Giving a visiting bloke a fishing rod or firearm and telling him to do his best, for free.
Please note that I will always do everything in my power to assert Australian superiority in terms of barbecue and vino in the Melbourne area. You only have to ask.
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Sunfish,
I am in doubt as to the superiorty of the Aussie bbq skills (and weather!)... not to mention the invention of flip flops (thongs?) with a bottle opener in them - superb!
I am in doubt as to the superiorty of the Aussie bbq skills (and weather!)... not to mention the invention of flip flops (thongs?) with a bottle opener in them - superb!
