The Demise of Personal Freedom.

[Finless]

Perhaps I liked the idyllic world of 'jolly good chaps', being 'sporting', the clash of hockey sticks and the smell of sweaty girls blue knickers in gymn class. Ah, the good old days.

[alrhem]

pol·i·tic (pl-tk)
adj.
1. Using or marked by prudence, expedience, and shrewdness; artful.
2. Using, displaying, or proceeding from policy; judicious: a politic decision.
3. Crafty; cunning.

[alrhem]

SHould we start with "democracy begins at home"?

If a family can live and prosper toegether this can be brought outside the home to the workplace where teamwork is needed and so on and so on....

Should we start with building family/street or estate/community/county/country????

based on a moral belief system?

[chrisch]

Originally Posted by Finless

...
Do you mean to say we have no such thing? Why are most people in the UK opposed to this?

I haven't had any government that I have particularly 'deserved'. I don't trust or believe any of them will actually do what they say 'pre election'.

No - the UK has no written constitution, whatever written legal rights we have come mainly from European legislation of some form and so are generally opposed (the tories want to pull out the Human Rights act that this government ratified). UK law generally works on the principle that if it isn't specifically banned its legal. That's why UK governments tend to want to ban things.

Popular prejudice is behind most opposition to most things. The idea that other people are getting something you aint - driven by a dishonest press with a dodgy agenda. We all know the tabloids are full of shit, but the broadsheets too are politically driven and often owned by folk whose morals and honesty is questionable - Conrad Black anyone?

Getting the government you deserve is a saying that recognises that most people don't take any interest in politics and are too busy having a good time in their youth then old and grumpy in later life. Ask any 3 people that you know who their MEP is - I bet you get three blank looks.

I don't trust anyone either. The tories are liars but at least they are consistent in that they favour the rich at the expense of the working class (by that I mean 90% of people who work for a living). Oddly they tend to be more in favour of personal freedom than the Labour party. "New" Labour claimed to be sleaze and dishonesty free but have been anything but. They did however keep many of their manifesto pledges.

Politics now has degenerated into single issue arguments about things that are often on the periphery of the most important things. Immigration is the latest made-up bullshit that is rabble-roused by the press. I predict that 2008 will see the headlines turn to the economy and house prices as the issues of the day.

Protests for the year - petrol prices again (please fuck off to Saudi and protest to them), pensioners' revolt (get a job and stop scrounging you old gits) and anti-Brown protests over troops in the Balkans (you read it here first).

Have a good 2008 Bryan, my fellow grumpy

Chris

[Finless]

Originally Posted by chrisch

No - the UK has no written constitution, whatever written legal rights we have come mainly from European legislation of some form and so are generally opposed (the tories want to pull out the Human Rights act that this government ratified). UK law generally works on the principle that if it isn't specifically banned its legal. That's why UK governments tend to want to ban things.

Ah, I now understand about 'the UK people being against the legislation'. I thought UK governments wanted to ban things because they are/were a load of cnuts?

Popular prejudice is behind most opposition to most things. The idea that other people are getting something you aint - driven by a dishonest press with a dodgy agenda. We all know the tabloids are full of shit, but the broadsheets too are politically driven and often owned by folk whose morals and honesty is questionable - Conrad Black anyone?

Prejudice seems to be the driving force behind survival and creation?

Getting the government you deserve is a saying that recognises that most people don't take any interest in politics

Well it is an exceptionally boring subject made worse by an ingratiating lying bunch of tossers. Boris Johnson gets my vote!

.......... and are too busy having a good time in their youth then old and grumpy in later life.

Inconsiderate bastards . Actually, I always tended to vote Conservative because I liked Winston Churchill just like I support Spurs now because I liked Jimmy Greaves.

Ask any 3 people that you know who their MEP is - I bet you get three blank looks.

Do they have to be friends because I might only get one answer (or blank look). FFS, OK, I won't get any response!

I don't trust anyone either.

You can trust me and I can prove it if you send me £1000 for a most excellent investment opportunity I know of.

The tories are liars but at least they are consistent in that they favour the rich at the expense of the working class (by that I mean 90% of people who work for a living). Oddly they tend to be more in favour of personal freedom than the Labour party. "New" Labour claimed to be sleaze and dishonesty free but have been anything but.

I paid £35 but I haven't become a 'Sir' yet.

They did however keep many of their manifesto pledges.

They did?

Politics now has degenerated into single issue arguments about things that are often on the periphery of the most important things.

Popularity politics rather than conviction politics.

Protests for the year - petrol prices again (please fuck off to Saudi and protest to them),

a. I can't afford to go there. b. Why blame the Saudi oil peeps when I can pick on the governments fuel taxation levels?

pensioners' revolt (get a job and stop scrounging you old gits)

I'm only 50 and I'm already pissed off with work (and life, the univers and everything) only to see well over one third of my money removed in taxes.

and anti-Brown protests over troops in the Balkans (you read it here first).

You could have stopped typing after 'anti Brown protests'?

Have a good 2008 Bryan, my fellow grumpy

Shan't, so there!




Happy 2008 to you too.

[MarkP]

Originally Posted by Finless

Well it is an exceptionally boring subject made worse by an ingratiating lying bunch of tossers. Boris Johnson gets my vote!

I'm glad you don't live in London!

Originally Posted by Finless

Inconsiderate bastards . Actually, I always tended to vote Conservative because I liked Winston Churchill just like I support Spurs now because I liked Jimmy Greaves.

Hmm...

Originally Posted by Finless

I paid £35 but I haven't become a 'Sir' yet.

Eeek - you paid money to the Labour party? Yet you vote Conservative? You traitor.

Besides, as any fule kno, £35 won't even get you an OBE, never mind a knighthood. You should, however, have been awarded a couple of minor honours. Complain!

[Finless]

Originally Posted by MarkP

Eeek - you paid money to the Labour party? Yet you vote Conservative? You traitor.

Well, maybe, but the Tories were soooooooo honest that I couldn't get an honour from them (well, not at that price). Besides, the gong is given by some gay bloke at the Palace and doesn't involve any political party?

Why do you have to kneel down in front of a queen when receiving an honour? If this involves anything 'sucky' then I don't want my honour!

[NotDeadYet]

It all smacks of gimmick. Any attempt at denial of service due to lifestyle choices would quickly be slapped down in the courts, it's an unenforceable contract.

On the other hand, I don't see anything wrong in trying to change the lifestyle of people who are potentially going to be major drains on the health service. As for people whose sporting/hobby choices also have an increased chance of big medical bills, as unpopular as it will be but I agree that some sort of insurance should be required. If you can afford to dive then you can afford £50 a year to DAN (or someone else). I'd guess the treatment for my bend cost my local NHS trust in the region of £10k. At the time I didn't live in a particularly affluent area (the nearby council estate is where Shameless is filmed) so why should my hobby cost the community, say, a part-time physio or nurse or maybe one less operation for a pensioner?

We whinge about taxes but our NHS system, certainly for anyone who can afford to go diving regularly, costs us f*** all compared to private schemes (consider how much it would cost if there was no local GP network) or to other countries' national schemes. The way successive governments have treated it has been pathetic too but we are still faced with an underfunded, underresourced medical service. On a population-wide scale, making choices about how lives are lived makes a massive difference in health -- look at the huge improvement in health in Scotland since the smoking ban. No government is obliged to provide medical treatment for anyone, we are in an extremely lucky situation. When I lived in the US, my medical insurance was keeping enough credit on my Visa card to buy a one way ticket home. I'm paying for the NHS, like everyone on here, so I don't want that system abused by people sucking tar into their lungs or living off pies. It's not a brilliant service so if something can be done about it getting clogged up then great.

However, I don't think Mr Brown's idea is the way of doing it and cynic that I am I can't help thinking this is aimed more at Express & Mail readers than helping anyone.

Cheers,

Stuart

[Roger Cardy]

Originally Posted by Bantam

Nuclear Power is an interesting one.

I am totally for nuclear power - but I think everyone needs to know something and it needs to be in the wide open before the majority understand it and get to know why it's useful, and history.

The reason why we have so much nuclear waste in this country is not because there's so much byproduct from nuclear power generation.

Far from it.

Anyone who has studied Nuclear Power will know that the old-style nuclear power stations weren't designed to generate electricity - that was a cover story / a by product.

The *actual* reason for older style nuclear power stations was to create fissile materials for the nuclear weapons programme. It just seemed a waste to not put all the generation potential to good use.

Now we're no longer making quite so much fissile material, you can build a nuclear power station that is extremely low risk (in fact, a coal fired power station would probably be more risky) that couldn't be blown up by terrorists, that would be clean, extremely efficient to run and would create very little waste. Heck - how do you think a Nuclear Powered Sub runs so well?

The problem is that you have the NIMBY syndrome where all the negative publicity around things like Windscale, THORP and Douneray, as well as Chernobyl, to make people believe that it's not safe, and it will take a huge amount of education to change that.

Got to get my 4 pennys worth in on this one.

The level of high level waste estimated to be about 2 detached houses worth (Volume), has been accumulated over the last 50 years or so of nuclear power. Sure the first reactors (Windscale) were there purely for the production of Pu239, and when Calder Hall and Chappel Cross were built, electricity was a by product. Since those days however, 1962 in fact the civil nuclear programme was there for the primary purpose of producing electricity. What they did with the Pu239 after reprocessing well I'll leave you to decide. The Nuclear programme established by the C.E.G.B (Central Electricity Generating Board) set about giving the UK a balanced energy mix, with caol around 70% and Nuclear the remaining 30%. Now things have changed Nuclear will soon be below 20% with gas and coal making up the balance. We heve nearly exhausted our gas deposits, are now becoming reliant on overseas coal (we closed our own mines they were unecomonic see Maggie for detals), so where do we go next.

Nuclear power is safe, as long as it is managed well. As I work in the industry perhaps I am a little better informed than most, the scare stories in the press are just that, they are normally factually incorrect, and nearly always have an anti nuclear slant. But who wants there lights to go out, the answer I suspect is no one. The alternatives whether people agree or not is Nuclear, it's not an if but when we will start a new build programme, unless of course we leave ourselves open to ransom but our overseas suppliers ie Russia, and the middle east.

Can we blame the government for our current energy crisis YES we can. Privatisation of our contries core businesses, Gas, Oil (BP), Electricity, Railways, Water etc was a very short eyed view. Now we have a system wherby we can choose where we purchase our goods from, but does anyone think it is cheaper in real terms, shareholders to satisfy, big cats to pay, and who pays US the consumer. Nationalisation may have been poorly managed, but those industries employed 10's of thousands more than they do now, supported 100's of thousands of other workers.

Rant Over taking cover.

[Sean]

My take on this is if they got rid of all the middle managers that do sweet F all but drain the NHS of funds if would save a fortune, I’m lucky to be able to afford private cover and given the choice would get out of the NHS, as someone said why should I pay for those who never worked a day in their life, or those that are in the UK illegal, they are a drain on society, but we don’t live in the states and like to help everyone regardless of statues, size, habits, or hobbies.

If that total tosser Brown wants to introduce a two tier NHS then I believe that I should be given the option to get out of it and not pay. I have never used the NHS (lucky I guess) and never intend to. Its just more Labour shit.

Another thought Brown is not democratically elected not buy the general public only by the MP’s now someone is going to come along and say the MP’s are voted in to act on our behalf, anyway enough of my crap bring on the general election I say