Things that annoy you ?

[Ed209]

FIFY.

Edited August 23, 2012 by Ed209

[kaosmark2]

The democrats don't seem any better than our politicians. Better than the Republicans isn't exactly a challenge.

[Spartacus Mars]

I know I know, they're very similar... but still... but the Democratic leader is trying to push through health-care provision, the Republicans want to make abortion an act of premeditated murder.

The Democrats can be pretty bad, but the Republican Tea Party Wingnut Division is waaaaaaaaaay out there.

[Spindles]

Ayn Rand devotees (of whom there are many in the tea party) are the worst. The fact that the republican vice presidential nominee is one is scary, or would be if anyone believed that Romney could get in without electoral fraud.

[Ed209]

I believe Romney can get without electoral fraud, provided other republicans keep their mouths shut and stop coming out with stupid shit that's fucking up his own slightly less fucked up campaign.

Do i think Romney will win? No. But democrats need to get off their lazy ass and vote to be sure. Hear a lot of democrat complacency and that's exactly how Romney might sneak in. Frightening but true

[The Nal]

I believe Romney can get without electoral fraud, provided other republicans keep their mouths shut and stop coming out with stupid shit that's fucking up his own slightly less fucked up campaign.

Do i think Romney will win? No. But democrats need to get off their lazy ass and vote to be sure. Hear a lot of democrat complacency and that's exactly how Romney might sneak in. Frightening but true

[Spindles]

yeah, the electoral fraud line was a flippant comment to illustrate the disregard with which I hold Romney. I realise that, not least with the rise of the far right in the US in the last couple of years or so, that he could be elected. I just think it would be one of the worst decisions that could ever be made by the few swing states that make any impact on the electoral result.

[Spindles]

True that. That one of the first 'priorities' of this government was to close the forensic science service, which employed around 1600 people at a cost of around £24m pa, in order that private firms could instead make profit still stinks to high heaven and illustrates that most cuts are no thing to do with saving money and everything to do with ideology and helping their mates make more money. If anyone, prior to may 2010, was asked what public services needed trimming, I don't think anyone would have answered the FSS.

Of course, private companies being responsible for the evidence that convicts us is not something that should worry us, is it?

[Ed209]

Does democrat complacency ever go away?

[AcademicPistol]

Fuck American politics. They don't give a shit about our politics.

[Ed209]

Fuck American politics. They don't give a shit about our politics.

[Spartacus Mars]

Fuck American politics. They don't give a shit about our politics.

[Spindles]

Rhetoric suggests that Syria (those lovely people who were complicit in torture and rendition on behalf of the US and UK over the last decade of all those dangerous people, you know....journalists) are next on the list. Hope was that the Libya model (provide satellite info, intelligence, comms equipment, body armour, ship out a fuckload of really cheap oil on the quiet the morning the dictator is killed) would work, but as it is taking too long they are moving towards the Iraq model ("We know you have these weapons because we sold you them, now we are going to pretend you are moving them around the country to prepare for deployment as an excuse for intervention").

Of course, I could be one of these loonie leftie cultural marxists we hear so much about. Funny how the trickle down of language of the hard right means that you hear the same phrases from brevik, the EDL, Tory MP's and Rupert Murdoch. Fujck Brevik. Just fuck him, still so angry. The only sentence they could have given today, the right sentence, they will keep extending I am sure and he will never see the light of day. Sorry to ramble, but you know...he is like a distillation of what is wrong in the world.

Has anyone seen the movie War Inc? As an aside. It's satire based on Halliburton, but with every passing year/nation it becomes less satirical and more like a documentary.

[AcademicPistol]

unfortunately their politics influence ours much more than ours influence theirs

[Spartacus Mars]

True. The majority of Americans don't have a clue about whats going on outside their own country though.

[Purple Monkey]

We are less Great Britain and more like Little America.

Most of us all work for American owned multinationals, our economy is linked massively to the dealings on Wall Street, and we are all paying for a war that America wanted. We should be allowed to vote for their President too since they like to fuck with us so much.

But then democracy would have to actually exist in reality in the first place. We're just Americas little bitch - like the weak suck up who hangs around with the school bully just so they get picked on less.

It infuriates me when I hear people talk like we are somehow immune from what's happening in America. Nations don't exist, only corporations exist. Those corporations exist on a global scale. This whole flag waving bullshit means fuck all. If the big American conglomerate you work for decides that relocating your employers operations to Canada fir tax reasons or India for labour reasons - bye bye more UK jobs. No amount of ignorance or national pride will make a difference to the fact America is fucking us all.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Purple Monkey

[Spindles]

I was talking to my neighbour a couple of weeks ago (one of the generation who can be summed up by the phrase "Your grandad didn't vote for fascists, he shot them") and he describes it as being a process that started in the 1970s, where companies were being divided up and bought and sold so you could no longer tell who owned what and who profitted or was calling the shots, so you could no longer follow the money.

In the 1980s share ownership was pushed at all levels from the government to the media (Privatisation being the obvious example), this has continued to the level we are at now, where a company could be seen as being a wholly uk company, but the vast majority of shares owned by corporations or individuals outside of the country. Thus, when profits are divided up they are walking straight out of our country. We do not benefit. Sadly with talk of "stakeholder society" in '97 the idea of share ownership was pushed further as being some sort of miracle that could ensure we could ALL get in on the party, which of course, we cannot.

The principle of business is that for every profit there must be a loss, for every winner there must be a loser. Economists try and convince us that we are not working from a finite pot of resources, this is not the case.

There needs to be a global rebalancing, WE are the people who won the lottery by being born into a wealthy nation and we are the ones who inevitably have to pay, because we have, whether we accept it or not, been living wealthier lives for too long at the expense of others.

Your last paragraph is the absolute truth. To believe in nations is to believe in a principle lost a generation or more ago, global corporations have more impact on our economy than the decisions of government, The only people who do not understand this are the people who believe the financial crash of 2008 was the fault of Gordon Brown, whilst simultaneously ignoring the preceding crashes of US banks, the knock on crashes of global banks and then our own. Gordon Brown was not responsible for the irresponsible lending of US banks, nor the wholesale theft of vast sums of money, sums greater than the wealth of nations, from several key institutions which have never been recovered nor those responsible brought to justice.

The only answer that nations could really come up with is that of countries like Ecuador or Iceland, to stick 2 fingers up to global capitalism and make the decision to protect householders, not bondholders.

[Spartacus Mars]

Iceland didn't stick two-fingers up to global capitalism when it had it's fingers in the pie. It just pulled it's fingers out when the pie got too hot. Not really a principled decision so much as reacting to the market.

Ecuador is an even stranger example to cite. Highly economic growth rates with the majority of state funds unambiguously targeted at the very richest (just over 5% of budgets on health and education for the poorest fifth of the population, around 40% for the richest fifth), with huge international exports of oil and tuna.

It used the banking crisis as an excuse not to repay interest on a $500m loan - money it used on infrastructure projects - despite having more than $5b in reserve currency.

So yes, Ecuador. Giving Julian asylum isn't the same as sticking two fingers up at global capitalism given they are such as keen participant of it.

[Purple Monkey]

I was talking to my neighbour a couple of weeks ago (one of the generation who can be summed up by the phrase "Your grandad didn't vote for fascists, he shot them") and he describes it as being a process that started in the 1970s, where companies were being divided up and bought and sold so you could no longer tell who owned what and who profitted or was calling the shots, so you could no longer follow the money.

In the 1980s share ownership was pushed at all levels from the government to the media (Privatisation being the obvious example), this has continued to the level we are at now, where a company could be seen as being a wholly uk company, but the vast majority of shares owned by corporations or individuals outside of the country. Thus, when profits are divided up they are walking straight out of our country. We do not benefit. Sadly with talk of "stakeholder society" in '97 the idea of share ownership was pushed further as being some sort of miracle that could ensure we could ALL get in on the party, which of course, we cannot.

The principle of business is that for every profit there must be a loss, for every winner there must be a loser. Economists try and convince us that we are not working from a finite pot of resources, this is not the case.

There needs to be a global rebalancing, WE are the people who won the lottery by being born into a wealthy nation and we are the ones who inevitably have to pay, because we have, whether we accept it or not, been living wealthier lives for too long at the expense of others.

Your last paragraph is the absolute truth. To believe in nations is to believe in a principle lost a generation or more ago, global corporations have more impact on our economy than the decisions of government, The only people who do not understand this are the people who believe the financial crash of 2008 was the fault of Gordon Brown, whilst simultaneously ignoring the preceding crashes of US banks, the knock on crashes of global banks and then our own. Gordon Brown was not responsible for the irresponsible lending of US banks, nor the wholesale theft of vast sums of money, sums greater than the wealth of nations, from several key institutions which have never been recovered nor those responsible brought to justice.

The only answer that nations could really come up with is that of countries like Ecuador or Iceland, to stick 2 fingers up to global capitalism and make the decision to protect householders, not bondholders.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Purple Monkey

[Spindles]

Yeah, more that I am trying to say that we should be concentrating on the people within nations rather than the financial institutions and giving 2 examples of nations who have defaulted in recent years. I think basically all nations had their fingers in the pie (or their financial institutions did), Iceland as an example had that amazing figure where the total debt, if divided up as a personal debt for every citizen, amounted to something like an annual income. Clearly, while there are Icelandic banks who got them into that situation, the people themselves did not profit to that extent, so it is bizarre that they should be expected to pay.

The UK is comparable, I think, to Iceland, in that our banks were playing fast and loose, gambling and eventually losing, then we are expected to pay.

I don't pretend to have any great knowledge of Ecuador's finances, I just pulled them out of the air as a recent defaulter.

[Spindles]

Globalisation could be a marvellous thing, hi dn the right environment. It could unite the world. Unfortunately, it will do the opposite as long as we keep the farcical pyramid scheme known as capitalism in place.

[Purple Monkey]

I am sure we all broadly agree.

[kaosmark2]

True that. That one of the first 'priorities' of this government was to close the forensic science service, which employed around 1600 people at a cost of around £24m pa, in order that private firms could instead make profit still stinks to high heaven and illustrates that most cuts are no thing to do with saving money and everything to do with ideology and helping their mates make more money. If anyone, prior to may 2010, was asked what public services needed trimming, I don't think anyone would have answered the FSS.

Of course, private companies being responsible for the evidence that convicts us is not something that should worry us, is it?

[Spindles]

Yeah, I have to deal with public servants as both a tenant and a consumer of the services provided. I meet incompetence, laziness and bad attitude as much as I encounter it in the private sector.

I just think that privatisation is not the answer, that we have had a generation to look at the results of this school of thought. 26% of all water pumped by severn trent is lost to leakage, this is due to a lack of re-investment and a direct result of profit being the prime focus, it also has the knock on effect of increasing rat population and injuring public health at a time when our councils are reducing pest control budgets. In real terms prices have gone up, the quality of service has gone down. I don't know if there is a public service that was privatised that could be said to have been seen to be an improvement (BT, I think is the closest, but again, they are currently blowing the profits on bad investments like onLive and having to be forced by legislation and the regulator to reinvest). I would be happy to be shown examples of where privatising a service has led to lower costs and a delivery of the service which provides greater benefit to the public if this would help convince me otherwise.

The answer, it seems to me, is better management of the public service, where it is seen to be failing, rather than the ideological jump that profit driven performance is best for everyone. (I do not mean spending more money on managers, this is NOT better management!)

In my own (private company) workplace, we have moved towards using methodology which allows better evidence of performance to be built up, meaning that people can be accurately assessed on their performance and, if they don't shape up they are on their way out. This is a massive improvement on the previous system (basically rumour and social cliqué was used for decision making). Those who selfishly come to work every day, do a crap job and allow the efforts of others to pay their wages are now being filtered out, this did not require additional legislation as the law already allows for it (Some conservatives are asking that it be made easier to sack people for poor performance, something that was jumped on by those who, again, for ideological reasons, believe that all public servants are angels)

I can honestly say that, in my experience, whether public or private, the failings always lie at the feet of the people who are lazy, incompetent and willing to take credit for the work of others.

[Spindles]

Just a quick addition, rather than editing: I DO accept that BT as an entity is an example of a privatised state utility that has gone way beyond the capability it had as part of the GPO, I just believe that if they were to focus more on providing advances in communication service and less on turning one pile of money into a larger pile of money then we as a nation would be better equipped on the world stage. I actually read a quote from a government minister that we would have the fastest internet speed in Europe by 2015, anyone who has any knowledge in the area would know that that is one of the most bizarre and incorrect statements you could make today.

My own politics, while clearly of a left wing bent, do not stand allied to any one party and I certainly do not think that the actions of the previous Labour government were all great choices (PFI, acadamies, the bizarre belief that 50% of students going to university would be a good thing and the list goes on). I think that there is much to be learned by listening to ALL opinions and trying to form a consensus or compromise, whilst learning from the successes and failures of the past by looking at evidence, rather than opinion or ideology.

The reason I focus on the FSS is that it was such a small cost, compared to the number of people employed and that I do not believe that the people are best served by having private companies involved in this area.