mockney piers

No no you are right. I might argue that the public private differentiation is a little bit artificial. Just because it's paid for by a middleman doesn't mean it's not servicing a need, nor that the taxman's pound is somehow less real tha. That of my wallet. Just in a society of selfish oafs like me somethings are better protected from the vagaries of the Market. Or at least that's how I like to think of it. Mind you borrowing. Not bad in and of itself, just not a sustainable way of doing things. Why is my iPhone capitalising Market? Has apple got an agenda?

Whilst I agree that Keynesian stimulus is inflationary if the growth it engenders does not take root outside of the public sector and the borrowing required. But denial that it can stimulate wlgrowth seems a bit weird. Well no weirder than the idea that an economy based upon service industry speculation based upon growth based upon service industry speculation based upon growth based upon service indu..........

Supertramp. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. I know they're a bit naf, but School is a tune !!!!!

Unfortunately couldn't as was at a wedding of a couple where the chap proposed at Buddha jazz following a hamlets game. Top man!!!! Anyhoo 3-3 apparently, would have been a good game. Next home game Tuesday 18th, proper league game and everything

Calm down dear it's just a forum

Season begins soon..... Aaaah the smell of the bovril at champion hill, the taste of those awful burgers at the Tevor Brooking Cafe.....kind of reminds me of a header quids.

Arse

Beat me to it!! Is the olympics on soon, tell me I haven't missed it this year. Right we need an edf presence, mutton copstweeds and brogues, who's up for it?

Teasing apart coincidence and causality, rhetoric from reality, these are the basic tools of the historian.

Seriously. Tenuous connections in all your points. Financial crisis had Bern a long time in the offing, I commented on many of the problems regards risk while I worked in banking pre 9/11. The credit boom is down to deregulation of the banking industry in the anglosaxon world and a dependence on spending and house price rises to fuel growth. It has little or nothing to do with 9/11. Iraq, 9/11 helped them get it through but to call it a consequence of judaeo-religiosity is laughable. Read the PNAC documents, their goals are predefined, well expressed and predate the idea of Islam as a convenient enemy. As for your egg question. None of these barbarians were Christians. They are unrelated topics. Some may have become converted within the empire's territory once they adopted more of Romes ways but their faith has no bearing on their tax exemptions or control of income, or in the case of the vandals an Huns, their sacking of Rome (spiritual capital, though seat of power was Milan). If you reframe your place in this debate I'm going to agree on many points regards the influence of christianity and Islam in politics, But you're flogging a dead horse, stop it.

The poit rather being that they haven't actaully caused mayhem at all ahve they. Really, a couple of buildings a few high profile bombs over the past few years. Nothing has changed has it. Commerce continues unabated, peoples day to day lives would be utterly unaltered if it wasn't for the news, and you're saying that a media war like that could have existential consequences for a thousand year old empire 1500 years before the inventionnof the printing press. I don't require a spoon I require common sense. If it looks like massive barbarian incursions with preferable settlement termsover three hundred years and it quacks like them then it's probably a duck.

Ook, look how they laugh at my ignorance "HA HA, nobody PAYS for porn you fucking luddite" they're screaming wiping tears from their eyes with their jizz encrusted fingers. Luddite, it's an angram of dulite ... Almost

Perhaps it gives the fakers some sense of meaning int their tiny pathetic little lives, hunched all sweaty over the rigs, grinding themselves furiously at the thought of conning some uppity middle class dulite with one keyboard while gaining palpitations as they post lengthy reviews on some niche site about their latest motherboard upgrade (most of us have barely touched upon 1% of the Internet I seem to recall being told) on the other keyboard. It doubtless makes up for the lack of interaction in the real world where they would die for a smile from the pretty Bulgarian shop girl at their local shop as they buy pepperami and the latest copies of Wired and Edge (they'd never dare add to their stack of porn while she's working of course). Of course what would I know, I'm doubtless utterly an inferior intellect, I don't even speak a word of Klingon. ??Extradite the lot of them to the Guantanamo I say!!

Well if he did just bugger off backpacking with a fancy lady and his moral defencenia after the fact rather than face the music and then go on his hols, then I'm sure a bit of leisure at her maj's pleasure is inevitable.

It's not a red herring it's absolutely paramount. A legal mandate is not a carte blanche to do anything you want. As Santerme states we've essentaully been making it up as we go go along ever since that tit Hoon said we're going in and no shot will be fired. In this case I think we are staying within our legal remit, I just think it's strategically and politically a vert poorly executed policy. Full force of military law will doubtless be hefted at this fella an I'm not qualified to judge myself, but in any decent society a soldier must at least have recourse to defend himself in the courts and make personal choices regards orders based upon morality.

No no, quite right. Legality is an important point, energy security and Russian resurgency really aren't.

And while I'm at it (and join the tls/Brendan triposterate) I totally concur that the electorate areto blame, and we happily carry on with the status quo. But energy issues, leave alone climate change, and their consequences aren't exactly unforseeable. Wouldn't the nillins have been far better invested in alternative energy sources, into research on better crop yields, distribution of water etc?

Thinking about it the main benefit of it all is that thus far Iraq and Georgia have demonrtrated the limits of their power, America will be cleverer under it's new leader and Russia unsurprisingly has kicked off a program to modernise it's shabby armed forces so that may be a little short term.

Thanks for twisting my words and realpolitik 101. Whilst consideration of resources may have been present in the war designers plans, this was a war about the application of military power. About drawing a line in the sand and daring people to cross it. It was purely about the US trying to maintain a slippery grip on a shortlived world hegemony. It was about oil only insofar as it said to the Saudi people careful what you wish for. Killing was an end not a consequence. The obvious consequence was that Russia would pour troops into Georgia, perhaps next Ukraine. China will crush Tibet, maybe next stop eastern Russia or Vietnam. It was adventurism and may yet usher a new age of imperialism. It's shameful we signed up to it. Law is what you make it, I know we argue these thing but I don't belive you're thy cynical. You argue that legal frameworks are necessary for a functioning society, but thatight makes right is fine in the international arena? Phooey.

I'm merely pointing out that our society isn't supposedtoolerate on might makes right. Had we lost they'd have probably been within their right to charge our boys with war crimes, to which the defence I was only following orders would not have been acceptable. The fact that that was never going to happen means legitimacy was simply conferred by superior might, not a trend I'm particularly happy about on a democratic and progressive society. If the war, suppression of liberties and scaremongering, leave alone rendition and torture, pointed out that this government were remoulding our society as a regressve one then the lesson clearly passed too many people by and the 600,000 did indeed die in vain. I know you supported the war, but Saving a billion?!? You're overplaying your hand there somewhat, old chap, have you been talking to Nick Cohen again?

Indeed much of gibbon's epic history has been found wanting, I wouldn't be citing him as a reliable source. Recent archeaological evidence has shown how many of the small to medium size towns across the empire were thriving in the post Constantine era, hardly signs of a social fabric undone by an immienet eschatological apocalypse. As usual a few vocal nutters do not a social history make, just entertaining reading, especially when half of them end up saints in the pantheon of the only people who could write for the best part of 800 years.

Crikey, the difference one keystroke can make!!

have wondered about thus myself. I asked santerme whether the military needed legal assurances before getting involved in Iraq, and was answered the military only enact policy, they do not get involved in politics. I hate to Godwin this before it starts but isn't that unnacceptable post Nuremberg, 'i was only following orders guv'. I ralise this is a long way from concentration camps, but our position as good guy is vetting tainted, rendition, complicity in torture, deaths in custody...

The truth is of course never one thing or another, they are always complex, but the decline of empires are always down to economics(though this may be a result of climate change or other world altering change) sometimes combined with military issues and often exaggerateded by administrative issues. I've yet to see any convincing evidence that morality has anything to do with it.

Aaaaagh, stop saying atheism is a religion. It's not!!!! It can juuuuust about be termed that figuratively when perhaps referring to some athists zeal, but atheism is not the belief in a supernatural being or adherence to an organisation dedicated to the worship thereof. You're muddying the 'debate' by insisting it is.