who's to blame for the state of the uk today??? opinions
Discussion
wallnutwhipcoc said:
tinman0 said:
wallnutwhipcoc said:
I will continue to write spell & pretty much do what ever i want to. If you have a problem with it, deal with it, so basically KNICKERS to you
Well, its been great seeing you on PH. Sure is a pity that you just signed your own death warrant.Will it be a graceful retreat in the next 2-3 weeks? Maybe leaving in a flourish with a few strange troll like outbursts? Or will you come on with another userid like all the other cowards?
It's a bit like playing rap music at a barn dance. Sooner than later a good ol'boy will shoot you dead.
tinman0 said:
wallnutwhipcoc said:
tinman0 said:
wallnutwhipcoc said:
I will continue to write spell & pretty much do what ever i want to. If you have a problem with it, deal with it, so basically KNICKERS to you
Well, its been great seeing you on PH. Sure is a pity that you just signed your own death warrant.Will it be a graceful retreat in the next 2-3 weeks? Maybe leaving in a flourish with a few strange troll like outbursts? Or will you come on with another userid like all the other cowards?
It's a bit like playing rap music at a barn dance. Sooner than later a good ol'boy will shoot you dead.
s2art said:
Yertis said:
Serious answer. You can trace our decline back to the First World War. Kaiser Wilhelm is yer man.
Naah, we could have recovered from that. It was the rise of socialism.
Of course "bad spelling" isn't the root cause. But it is the underlying atitude which says bad spelling and bad grammar DON'T MATTER that indicates where the problem lies.
It's not so much "bad spelling" - but a "bad atitude".
Eric Mc said:
s2art said:
Yertis said:
Serious answer. You can trace our decline back to the First World War. Kaiser Wilhelm is yer man.
Naah, we could have recovered from that. It was the rise of socialism.Of course "bad spelling" isn't the root cause. But it is the underlying atitude which says bad spelling and bad grammar DON'T MATTER that indicates where the problem lies.
It's not so much "bad spelling" - but a "bad atitude".
Yertis said:
s2art said:
Yertis said:
Serious answer. You can trace our decline back to the First World War. Kaiser Wilhelm is yer man.
Naah, we could have recovered from that. It was the rise of socialism.We could have recovered from WW1 but WW2 came along and I think they're really just one war, with a bit of rest in the middle to catch breath. The Cold War saw the US trying to screw us over from the top and the USSR trying to screw us over from the bottom.
Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
To blame it entirely on Winky misses the important point of how and why he got to be there in the first place. A century of socialism has brought us to this unhappy state, and even that was a product of something before it. Quakers and Methodists have a bit to answer for.
In my view though World War 1 was the start of the decline and WW2 was the point of no return. That was when we lost it as a power, and it seems to have been all downhill from there. There was the intellectual rot of socialism, and just as bad the fear in the political establishment that the soldiers returning from WW1 would be drawn to revolution.
This brought in a whole range of things like gun controls, licencing laws and social security benefits, which picked up pace with nationalisation during and after WW2. All fairly basic by today's standards but the problems were starting.
Once the state is involved with these things they become forever matters for political interference, hence you will still here people blaming Thatcher for high unemployment in former mining areas, 25 years after they were closed and people still blame the government for their train being late 10 years after the railways were privatised.
Womens suffrage didn't help, also introduced at the same time. Women on the whole are more likely to value security and safety, and to be swayed by appeals to compassion. Most countries have seen a rise in taxation after introducing female suffrage, partly due to the ideological climate of the mid 20th century, but not entirely IMO.
Even the privatisations and "pushing back the frontiers of the state" in the 80s and 90s didn't really reduce the overall chunk of GDP spent by the state, which has risen from about 10% at the end of the 19th century, to over 40% today.
All of these things have been part of wider movements in the world as a whole, but they have been taken up with an enthusiasm in Britain that has made them hit us harder than many. Of course not as hard as Russia or many other places either, but because we had a long way to fall from where we were in 1900, it's fair to say we have declined further than most in the last 100 years or so.
Winky is a product of that. No doubt born to well meaning parents who brought him up according to their midguided ideals, and nurtured at every step by people who didn't know any better. I still think he is a miserable and nasty man with a lot to answer for, but he wouldn't have even got as far as his local council if there wasn't something seriously wrong with the country already.
In my view though World War 1 was the start of the decline and WW2 was the point of no return. That was when we lost it as a power, and it seems to have been all downhill from there. There was the intellectual rot of socialism, and just as bad the fear in the political establishment that the soldiers returning from WW1 would be drawn to revolution.
This brought in a whole range of things like gun controls, licencing laws and social security benefits, which picked up pace with nationalisation during and after WW2. All fairly basic by today's standards but the problems were starting.
Once the state is involved with these things they become forever matters for political interference, hence you will still here people blaming Thatcher for high unemployment in former mining areas, 25 years after they were closed and people still blame the government for their train being late 10 years after the railways were privatised.
Womens suffrage didn't help, also introduced at the same time. Women on the whole are more likely to value security and safety, and to be swayed by appeals to compassion. Most countries have seen a rise in taxation after introducing female suffrage, partly due to the ideological climate of the mid 20th century, but not entirely IMO.
Even the privatisations and "pushing back the frontiers of the state" in the 80s and 90s didn't really reduce the overall chunk of GDP spent by the state, which has risen from about 10% at the end of the 19th century, to over 40% today.
All of these things have been part of wider movements in the world as a whole, but they have been taken up with an enthusiasm in Britain that has made them hit us harder than many. Of course not as hard as Russia or many other places either, but because we had a long way to fall from where we were in 1900, it's fair to say we have declined further than most in the last 100 years or so.
Winky is a product of that. No doubt born to well meaning parents who brought him up according to their midguided ideals, and nurtured at every step by people who didn't know any better. I still think he is a miserable and nasty man with a lot to answer for, but he wouldn't have even got as far as his local council if there wasn't something seriously wrong with the country already.
Yertis said:
We could have recovered from WW1 but WW2 came along and I think they're really just one war, with a bit of rest in the middle to catch breath. The Cold War saw the US trying to screw us over from the top and the USSR trying to screw us over from the bottom.
Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
I have not seen much evidence that a revolution was likely. Strikes maybe. If Marx thought it was going to happen it wont be the only thing he was wrong about. Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
s2art said:
Yertis said:
We could have recovered from WW1 but WW2 came along and I think they're really just one war, with a bit of rest in the middle to catch breath. The Cold War saw the US trying to screw us over from the top and the USSR trying to screw us over from the bottom.
Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
I have not seen much evidence that a revolution was likely. Strikes maybe. If Marx thought it was going to happen it wont be the only thing he was wrong about. Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
I don't think we would have done either, but we might have done.
Marx, of course, was wrong about nearly everything. And I only say "nearly" in case there's something he did right that I don't know about.
Yertis said:
We could have recovered from WW1 but WW2 came along and I think they're really just one war, with a bit of rest in the middle to catch breath. The Cold War saw the US trying to screw us over from the top and the USSR trying to screw us over from the bottom.
Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
Since Marx was wrong about nearly everything else, it's not too much of a stretch to think he would have been wrong about that even without WW1. Revolution always has more appeal to people who are hungry, ignorant and desperate (ie Russian peasants in 1917) than to people who are working, have enough to eat and have a good chance of improving their lives significantly under capitalism (ie the British working class before WW1)Who can tell if socialism would have taken such strong roots had not the wars happened? On the other hand without the wars we'd have had a revolution. Marx certainly thought we'd be first up.
So it's either Marx or the Kaiser but either way it's the Germans.
Yertis said:
Marx, of course, was wrong about nearly everything. And I only say "nearly" in case there's something he did right that I don't know about.
To be fair to him, Marx did understand the colossal precondition at the heart of his theoretical world. He even said, "If this is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist" (of the bolsheviks). But, ruthless people sold his concepts as possible, and enforced it.It is sad that we haven't learned the lessons.
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