ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by labrat

Trust me - When I'm supreme dictator, you'll find that we've got some very simple ways of making the UK more productive 'per capita'

I fear that's been tried and possibly may even be the root of our 'management woes'

Originally Posted by BoomShackerLacker

Workshy and 12% more productive per capita.

Yours,

Carla 'I'm off' Bruni

Seeing how the fuckers work shorter hours and retire earlier it must be a per hour worked ratio!
Thats if their not too busy blockading the ports and BBQ ing our sheep.

Originally Posted by Dread

I'll be able to tell you all exactly how crap life is in France in exactly one month: on Friday I'm going on holiday there until the 4th June. I should be able to fill you all with horror stories about the collapse of Champagne, the social upheavals in Bordeaux, the riots in Cognac, etc.

And how much further you go with your GB pounds in Euro land!

I wonder how long it takes until Bruni fucks off Sarkozy and/or starts dabbling in politics?

Originally Posted by glosterbaggie

You make some good points.
I don't know about Thatcher not encoraging new industry as Nissan,Toyota and others set up here.
I used to work in the mining industry very sad what happened to it.

But I seem to recall Thatcher and her successors reassuring us that the "invisible" earnings of the City and Financial sector would replace the industrial decline and lack of manufacturing sector?

And that is what you get from an ideology such as this;

I believe everything in a country can be privatised except the armed forces and police services related to serious organised crime.

IndyBoffin, 2012

(Quick ps, what about trivial crime? We back the hue and cry?)

Thatcher's thinking sprang from the neo-liberalism of people like Hayeck, who believed essentially the state's social responsibilty was the enforcement of private contract, all else was "The Road to Serfdom" (an interesting read). Ultimately it leads to an anarcho-capitalism, where there is no government; but the invisible hand of the market (as Adam Smith puts it) would guide all.

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

Thatcher's quote in full, Women's Own magazine 31st October 1987.

It is our duty to look first after ourselves and their our neighbour

The charitiable sector is therefore the replacement for the state. Sound familar? And I don't just mean to George W's "compassionate conservatism" (compassionate unless you're one of the 152 execution warrants the he signed, critics perhaps draw attention to convictions after lack of due process due to underfunded public defenders, seperate issue perhaps)

Under the government's Big Society plans, ministers envisage charities and voluntary groups taking of providing alternatives to state-run services or, in some cases, taking over their running.

BBC News - Cameron 'will listen' to charity concerns over tax relief

And so for that reason, Independent Boffin, when you state;

I believe everything in a country can be privatised except the armed forces and police services related to serious organised crime

That is why I say:

In my humble opinion the opinion you expressed above is based on utter selfishness arising from the belief that there is no such thing as society, there are individuals and their families.

(In passing it's ironic that you appear to take more offence at me than post #46 who just bluntly labelled you an idiot).

Do you follow the thread of the ideology that you have adopted?

I do not draw a judgement until the end; but do you follow the thread of the ideology?

We may well profoundly disagree; but do you follow the ideological thread?

On a seperate issue

What does that have to do with the price of fish?

Values and Standards. Did you actually read the quote or the link?

They speak of a diametrical opposite the ideological well-spring that you kicked off with.

Hence I point them out. The values and standards of the British Army stand apart from the selfish nature of modern British society created, in part at least, by Conservative and "Labour" administrations in thrall to neo-liberal economist economic thinking. It is not just economic thinking but if makes profound ethical judgements along the way about what it is to be human and the responsibilities and duties inherent in the human condition.

Apologies to the French to stamping my little feet up and down during their election thread.

Originally Posted by supermatelot

I wonder how long it takes until Bruni fucks off Sarkozy and/or starts dabbling in politics?

Carla Bruni - Quelqu'un m'a dit - YouTube

*holds hands*

Originally Posted by CQMS

No we didn't, it was a miasma, a fake. Gordon Brown encouraged a recklessness in the markets, house prices rose artificially, people borrowed more and more, moved more and more and spent more and more. As Chancellor he borrowed and borrowed so much that our grandchildren will still be paying it back. Our economy wasn't strong, it was teetering on the edge of unsustainability. In 2008 it fell in.

Read any of his Mansion House speeches, he actively encouraged the markets to behave the way they did, he needed them to buy his debt.

This is true, you might look across the sea to nearby Biffo-land and see a lot of the same behaviors at work in recklessly fostering an even more dangerous bubble.

Not much socialism involved in Ireland though and it was thin on the ground in the UK if you scratch at New Labor's spin happy record. What Biffo-Brown shared was more unhinged "no more boom to bust" neo-liberalism, a touching faith in the probity of high finance and crazily heavily indebted populations obsessed with making easy money in the property market. Let's not forget how popular this "get rich while sitting on your lazy arse" model was with even the Tory chattering classes.

On the other hand Ireland in the past couple of decades has converted itself from a backward agrarian country into a vigorous high productivity exporter of high tech products, this is a lasting and remarkable achievement that I'd compare to Germany's US assisted recovery from WWII. In contrast the UK despite a windfall of hydrocarbons let its research base shrivel, its industry rot, failed to exploit opportunity in europe's markets, and doubled down riskily on The City.

Maggie disgruntled by an aging social contract, tiffs with organized labor may have started that trend off and to be fair to her it didn't look so daft then but it was Brown who ran hardest with it and that's the most systemically dangerous part of his legacy. Ireland's bloated banks became wards of state after the Lehman shockwave but are at least no longer a ticking bomb, just a crater we will be filling in for a while, at least that's what we hope.

And then there's the interlocked fetters of a decade of over optimistic finance in europe, all those big Euro banks punting out multiples of GDP creating risks the Fed would never tolerate. Not just to the EU periphery but to the developing world, 60% of world banking I read somewhere. That's what the ECB just pumped full of money and Hollande has to try and prop up.

Originally Posted by Dread

I'll be able to tell you all exactly how crap life is in France in exactly one month: on Friday I'm going on holiday there until the 4th June. I should be able to fill you all with horror stories about the collapse of Champagne, the social upheavals in Bordeaux, the riots in Cognac, etc.

You might find you have to pospone untill the 6th of June. Our grandfathers did.