Senate The UK Politics discussion

We still wait for the Chilcot report into the Iraq adventure. I suspect now that we won't see it until after the election. Rumour has it the report will be very critical but of who and what remains to be seen...

I think many of the difficulties the politicians find themselves in with the public goes back to Tony Blair and the disappointment people now feel about his time in power. The hope and euphoria of 1997 to the lies and evasions of Iraq have left people tremendously disillusioned with politics.

 

Yay G-FETT is back! I miss the old days when the British politics thread was really humming. It was educational.

 

GFETT, and in earlier days, DarthKarde. The faces of the UK politics thread?

 

When David Icke first claimed that the world is run by a cabal of extraterrestrial, human flesh eating lizards, I thought he was a nutjob.

Blair's reptilian grimace suggests I may have been wrong.

 

It might just be that I've listened to 16 hrs of him reading his autobio - twice - but I rather like him.

 

Well I for one wouldn't draw any conclusions from an article which deliberately misleads readers by equating turnover with profit. Turnover in his case would refer to accounts receivable, but profit would be net capital after you factor in costs to run the business. I'm not surprised he has a high OPEX, given the image he wishes to project - whilst there is probably tax minimisation at work you can't really draw any accurate conclusions without access to his balance sheets and/or an auditor report.

 

In 1997 I voted for my local (moronic) labour candidate on the basis that I thought Blair would make a good PM. I was seduced by the combination of sound fiscal policy and the promise of a more caring social agenda. Maggie had gone too far with the poll tax and interest rates had too often been manipulated for political ends.

As much as I want to rant at length about the irreparable damage he and the mentalist he had in Number 11 have done to this country, I'll stick with:



Don't listen to the reptilian ****.

 

Yes! Karde was the other I was trying to remember. I remembered the Darth part.

 

Back in the day, every year was a big year, for British politics.

As a UKIP supporter it would be great to hear from Darth Karde given then progress UKIP has made over the past 2-3 years.

Maybe he'll return for the election.

 

Oh yeah, that's right. He was a UKIP supporter. In fact, I think we witnessed his move from the Tories to UKIP.

 

We did indeed. When the Tories chose David Cameron over David Davis, Darth Karde abandoned ship to the party of "loons, fruitcakes and closet racists"

 

He was mainly anti-EU, right?

 

Karde? Yes if I remember right.

 

Yes, he was anti-EU. Then again I'm not that crash hot on the EU myself, but I don't regard it as the be all and end all.

 

Oh god yes, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, of Fettes College and Oxford, Labour statesman, is properly lubed up.

I was talking to my Brit friends last night - surprisingly, across a variety of parties, there wasn't much enthusiasm for the EU. How do you guys see it?

 

The possibility of Greece's exit has come up again here stateside. I say again because the news of it subsided for a few years here where it might not have over there. Merkel and Sarkozy also acknowledged a few years back that an exit of Greece might be unavoidable. The fear of a exit from Greece creating a domino effect is very real. But the EU has had troubles with the peripheral nations for years and I don't see the EU core(Germany,Low countries,France) unraveling or going away.

But the north-south divide(richer north/poorer south) will continue.

 

which parties have committed to move towards unbanning female ejaculation?

 

I like the idea of the EU, and frankly it's nice to be able to potter around using one currency (which nobody will accept once you hit the €50 and above notes) and one visa. But it expanded to non-traditional areas (Turkey? Eastern Europe?) and has found out how nice being able to devalue currency is (or how wickedly wise Messers Blair and Brown were to stay with pounds sterling).

I would like to see more EU like entities, but when the EU was just Western Europe and manageable.

 

Well, you might get more than your wish if the unstable south countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece all jettison(some of those are doing better than others). It might end up northern European Union.

As for more EU-like entities, I think we will see more trade and travel barriers continue to fall and formalized trade blocs forming in the western hemisphere(more extensive than NAFTA, which lack labor and environmental provisions).

The success of NATO as a collective security arrangement might continue to foster further integration of military forces in Europe and the west as a whole.