The good ship HMS UK - Parliament no longer at the helm?

maninthestreet

It's not an election we need, it's a revolution!

beaujolais-nouveau

chucky wrote: »

people who compare the UK with Zimbabwe in this context are ignorant to the extreme

This soundbite is brought to you by Sweeping Generalisations R Us.

You are unaware, I take it, that until 2000 Zimbabwe was "the breadbasket" of Africa?

exporting wheat, tobacco, and corn to the rest of the continent and beyond. Zimbabwe contains the most fertile farmland on the continent, and until recently was a tourist Mecca, home of Victoria Falls, one the seven natural wonders of the world, and numerous game reserves, now nearly emptied by poachers and starving peasants. The newly independent country had yet more advantages, including excellent transportation and banking systems for its agricultural, mining, and tourism industries.

http://spectator.org/archives/2005/04/13/from-breadbasket-to-dustbowl

Now there is runaway inflation, and its people are starving.

If we don't start thinking and behaving - today - as if we were already a Third World country, we will be one in a couple of years' time. Instead of giving money to bankers, everyone over the age of 8 should be inventing and making stuff to sell, and then we might - just might - avoid the UK having to default on its loan repayments, with all that that means for the currency.

beaujolais-nouveau

Old_Slaphead wrote: »

I do like your idea for the change of New Labour moniker.

Thank you - I can't claim to have invented it: I have borrowed it.

Old_Slaphead

chucky wrote: »

people who compare the UK with Zimbabwe in this context are ignorant to the extreme

Presumably you extend that impression of ignorance to Vince Cable when he suggested Brown had gone from Stalin to Bean (presumably VC was ignorant of Stalin's track record).

chucky

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

Now there is runaway inflation, and its people are starving.

exactly my point, you forgot to mention cholera epidemic

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

If we don't start thinking and behaving - today - as if we were already a Third World country, we will be one in a couple of years' time. Instead of giving money to bankers, everyone over the age of 8 should be inventing and making stuff to sell, and then we might - just might - avoid the UK having to default on its loan repayments, with all that that means for the currency.

:rotfl::rotfl: :rotfl:
do we have room for Mad Max in your dream world?

beaujolais-nouveau

chucky wrote: »

exactly my point, you forgot to mention cholera epidemic

In what way was that "exactly your point" - in Zimbabwe, people are dying from a treatable disease, viz cholera, because Mugabe won't buy the drugs and won't let the international relief agencies give it out.

chucky wrote: »

do we have room for Mad Max in your dream world?

Your allusion is completely lost on me - I have no idea who or what "Mad Max" is.

beaujolais-nouveau

CLAPTON wrote: »

I wasn't aware about the new finance bill but I can't really see how the money supply can be kept secret for long

http://www.order-order.com/2009/01/growing-unease-about-old-ladys-secrecy.html
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/01/12/51012/qe-confidential/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/4214232/Reform-plan-raises-fears-of-Bank-secrecy.html

CLAPTON wrote: »

my point is that it's not easy to see a better structure.. many of the current diffiuclites come down to individuals and not necessarily to the system.

The individuals are busy putting the difficulties into the "system". People like Mandelson will jump ship as soon as it hits the rocks, comfortably equipped with savings off-shore and pension. Back at home, the economy and the taxpayer will have been financially crippled by individuals playing with the system.

chucky

beaujolais-nouveau wrote: »

In what way was that "exactly your point" - in Zimbabwe, people are dying from a treatable disease, viz cholera, because Mugabe won't buy the drugs and won't let the international relief agencies give it out.

again.... exactly my point.

how is Zimbabwe comparable to the UK?

sorry but i don't see the UK government refusing to buy drugs for treatable diseases or even refuse to let international relief agencies give these drugs out.

beaujolais-nouveau

CLAPTON wrote: »

I can't see any real pressure for change as alternatives have their own problems too.

I always have a little happy feeling when I read comments like this - on the lines of "no worries", "it'll sort itself out", "no pressure for change" - because I want most people to go on thinking like this until after I have my recession-survival arrangements all sorted. I hope and pray that I will have all my self-reliance measures sorted long before these commentators even get their boots on.

I am sure that the bankers are thinking and preparing in the same way. Distract and beguile the populace until it's too late - ie until the people who have already seen the writing on the wall have already launched all the available lifeboats and disappeared over the horizon to their temporary island paradise/refuge/castle.

beaujolais-nouveau

chucky wrote: »

sorry but i don't see the UK government refusing to buy drugs for treatable diseases or even refuse to let international relief agencies give these drugs out.

I don't mean to be rude but I just don't have time to explain to someone who cannot - or has not had the chance to - learn the lessons of history. You believe that the UK is always going to be led by reasonably sane people. Why? What makes you believe that the UK could never have its own Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe?