Marmora Man

TLS - at the risk of starting a 10 page thread I disagree. I saw Leonard Cohen twice last year and on both occasions he was superb. Concert 1 was the better of the two - well orchestrated, it had LC leading with all his classic tracks but backed by a great ensemble of musicians and backing singers. He laughed and joked with the audience and ran over the scheduled 2 hour concert by a further 50 minutes - making the evening great value for money. To have penned one piece that was at No. 1 & 2 in the charts last Christmas is also pretty impressive.

SeanMacGabhann Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > or pay as you go or insurance).] > > And when you set your weekly budget at ?10 or > whatever it was last year MM, how far do you think > some individuals can "make arrangements" for all > of these things. Especially given the fact that in > your world the state wouldn't be funding all of > the free schools for people on low budgets anyway? But I'd have a larger budget as my taxes would be lower. The whole Libertarian "thing" also includes local charity - something that has taken a major knock since the creation of a welfare state. Pre 1948 there was, contrary to popular belief, a pretty decent healthcare system. Consultants worked fro free in charitable hospitals, employers ran 1p week subscription clubs to also subsidise healthcare etc. I was talking last week to an arts administrator (now there's a strange profession, becoming a specialist in taking government money to manage amusements)- he was protesting against cuts in Arts Council funding. In the US anyone who makes good is expected, and under pressure from peers and society, to give back something to his community. Most obvious examples are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet but other - less high profile businessmen do this all the time. Whole schools, libraries, orchestras, hospitals are endowed by private charity. KIngs College Hospital is our local hospital. Unless someone actually visits it - it is unlikely that they'll ever give a penny in charitable donations - and even at a visit the opportunity for giving is usually limited to a fairly dingy "Friends Shop" run by well meaning, but unprofessional, retirees. In the US and Canada most, if not all hospitals employ a professional to raise money for the hospital - with targets measured in millions of dollars. In the UK we've handed over much of such charitable works to the welfare state. Libertarianism would seek to reverse this and, such actions would do more for binding communities together than ever "The Social Services" would..

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Love that film. V. close but no cigar. Must have a Mason's connection tho'?

Amidst the political flim-flam of the past few of weeks, the deeply unfashionable Liberal Democrats chose to kick off a campaign for one-hour bus tickets aimed at solving premature ejection problems. How would this work. The majority of bus users these days carry an Oyster Card. The card reader on a bus deducts the cost of the trip - which can be from origin to terminus of from one stop to another - depending on user needs. There are few bus journey's in London that take over an hour - Forest Hill to KIngs Cross at peak time is usually less than 50 minutes. To run a one hour ticket every oyster reader and oyster card would have to be changed to register time of starting the journey, carry out a calculation and determine how much time was left. What happens if you have used up 59 minutes and get on another bus? Do you get one free minute and then have to pay again in some fashion. I think TfL and Boris were right to call it complex and costly with little to recommend it. If I might presume it smacks of many Lib Dem policies - great initial thought but low on detailed thinking. Rather like the Lib Dem local income tax. Great in Kensington and Chelsea where the vast majority earn well over the median wage. Not so good in Peckham and Camnberwell where the reverse applies. With this policy wealthy neighbourhoods can afford weekly bin emptying, free bus passes, street cleaning - less wealthy with lower incomes, what do they do?

Peachey Carnaham - "Man Who Would be King" in Kipling's story and the film where he was played by Sean Connery

It was easy and not at all embarassing - Labour have blown it in spades. I am a Libertarian and prefer smaller government and greater personal responsibility. I voted Conservative as it is the only mainstream political party that has in its programme some elements of what I believe in. In theory the Liberals should be my ideal home but: 1. They are unlikely to gain power 2. They have signed up, long ago, to a woolly left of centre view of life that requires larger and larger institutions to govern us the people. My views on tax arise, naturally, out of my libertarian values. Smaller government = lower tax BUT libertarianism also requires the individual to take responsibility for their own actions - making arrangements for educating children (home or independent schools), for health (pay as you go or health insurance) and for old age (family looks after family [as we have done for last 5 years] or pay as you go or insurance).

This rather boring game of whiff whaff (or ping pong if you're not a Boris Johnson fan) is losing its allure. I see no likelihood that either proponent will dent the other's views or prejudices - so why bother? Hugenot & I took a discussion about climate change off the EDF line - it's an option to consider.

Try this KURSK on for two more weeks at the Young Vic.

AFN - for a while the USA was pressurizing UK to go for a negotiated deal as some elements of the US Foreign Department felt S.America was more important than UK and old colonies.

I remember drinking PGGB's in the early '80's at Plymouth Theatre at a performance of HHGTG. Good stuff - ours were pink with flames.

macroban Wrote: Not to decry fine seamanship, but is there more to this? After World War II the British Government sold refurbished German Enigma machines to third world countries having advertised them as un-breakable. No - they received the best training we could give them. They chose their own equipment tho' so the sonars may nopt have been fully "state of the art".

Gallinello, You have an interesting take on life in the 80's & 90's and the period 1979 - 1990. Were you a full voting participant throughout that time? I was - and I can speak with authority on the sinking of the Belgrano. The ship was, as Santerme said, a threat to the British Task Force. Britain did not seek the war over the Falklands - Argentina invaded the Falkalnds as a deliberate act of war, and in the best traditions of dictatorships everywhere, to shore up its support at home. Note they are NOT the Malvinas - the British first sighted and recorded the islands in the 17th century and were eventually ceded control by the Spanish in the 18th century. There have been claims and counter claims since early 19th century but the islands were colonised by the British and the claim is bullet proof under international law. At the time the Argentinian Navy was sending it aircraft carrier and other warships to the area - the majority being shadowed by UK submarines. The Belgrano was protected by two Type 42 escorts, powerful warships with effective anti submarine capability. Their crews had been trained, ironically, by the Royal Navy. The Commanding Officer of HMS CONQUEROR, Chris Wreford-Brown, was able to evade the escorts and attack from a range of 1800 yards. Of four torpedoes - three struck and the Belgrano sunk. From that moment onwards the Argentinian Navy was no threat to the British Task Force. A brief history of the Falklands is attached. Marxism is an interesting political theory but has never been made to work in practice.

Nina - played by Juliet Stephenson in Truly Madly Deeply?

PeckhamRose Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Tough luck MarmoraMan. > I had no idea there were such parking regulations > in your street. Why? It's not adjacent a major row > of shops is it. Will he park it in the living room > in future or does that sort of behaviour wait till > he finds himself a bike-owning girlfriend and > moves in with her? We've negotiated space beside the bins - but it's not pretty.

JetSetWilly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > pity it was,nt her @#$%& neck she broke. Good to see careful and deep analysis of Margaret Thatcher's legacy. Perhaps my earlier post on page 1 can stimulate a more rational response?

I've just started to re-read this - having found it hidden under dust at the back of my bookshelves. In it I noticed that Douglas Adams identified the e-book about 30 years before it became a reality. He also suggested the talking lift (something I abhor) and the bureaucratic mindset of all life forms. Are there any other perceptive elements to his works?

Rational debate would be a good idea on this subject - but I'm not sure it's possible. Most of this is from a post I made back in ?08 on the same subject and is re-posted because I'm feeling lazy, it's fun and for clarity. Somehow Mrs Thatcher has become a totemic hate figure, based upon a caricature of her and her policies that is closer to the Spitting Image version of life. She was an outstanding politician who, by hard work and force of personality made it to the top of British politics, despite it being a male bastion, and wrought change - change that was sorely needed. Gallinello ? at least you quoted the full sentence ? most don?t. "There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families" ? it came from a speech where she argued that providing solutions for "society" was not the way to go, society was an insufficiently defined term / concept on which to base policy. There's a very interesting discussion to be had elsewhere about this subject - society is just a construct, one that reflects the prejudices, desires and concerns of the speaker using the term. Your view of society is not mine, nor the next person's. Therefore political policies should be shaped to allow individual men, women and families to make their on way in their lives and, where this is not possible, to support men, women and families when help is needed. As for the alleged destruction of "the North", mining, industry, Northern Ireland and so on - check out Derek Hatton and his Trotskyite ideologues in Liverpool who felt that the first duty of public employees was to destroy the fabric of the community they were working in to engender political change. Or Red Robbo of British Leyland who held that the, nationalised, car industry existed to provide its workforce with high wages not its customers with reliable cars. Arthur Scargill - another ideologue who wanted to create political, revolutionary, change by the use of "workers power" - but who only succeeded in pricing miners out of work. Those that were there may recall that it was pre-Thatcher that the British Army was deployed in Northern Ireland to protect the minority Catholic population. The IRA, a left wing grouping, managed (with the help of inept politicians of all stripes) to turn this positive act into a political cause - with subsequent 40 years of death and destruction. The Good Friday agreement was achieved by Blair?s government ? but built on initiatives set in place during the Thatcher era (Lord Whitelaw holding secret talks with Martin McGuinness ? which failed), then taken up again by John Major who handed over the process in ?97. ?The collective, co-operative spirit that had held since before WWII? is an illusion ? one it came into being during and after WWII, two it was never a consensus ? only an inertia and lack of energy in both government and industry, brought about mainly by paying off huge debts arising from WWII, a serious lack of investment and loss of a world role. The film ?I?m all right Jack? wasn?t so much a comedy / satire as a documentary. The 60's, 70's and 80's were interesting, complicated, controversial times - despair was in the air, the brain drain and flight from Britain was evident. In comparison to today it was grey, good restaurants were few, pub food was dire, a new car would rust within 18 months, a new telephone took weeks to be installed, rail travel was lengthy, costly and boring, air flights were prohibitively expensive, industries were dying on their feet in the face of overseas competition. Major change was needed. The simplistic bashing of Mrs Thatcher as the creator of all ills, who single handedly led a crusade against the working class and destroyed communities, industries and a way of life is just that - simplistic. Give the woman a fair hearing - look at all sides of events she was involved in, check out the context of the times. She did her best in difficult times and succeeded in delivering change. I do not support, uncritically, all the changes that have occurred since her election in 1979 - and would acknowledge that, like many politicians she "lost it" after 10 years in power, but taken in the round Mrs Thatcher was a force for the good of Britain in difficult times. Not many politicians have been that in the last 100 years. Remember - as Osgood said to Jack Lemmon's character in the great last line of "Some LIke It Hot" - "Well, nobody's perfect"

Spherical Trigonometry is the specialist maths that enables practitioners armed with a sextant and chronometer to locate their position on the oblate spheroid using sights of stars and planetary bodies. It does use triangles. Spherical Trig

Beard, could it be that the virtually monopolistic provider of education in the country (Government) has screwed it up? They do it better elsewhere, particularly Sweden - where state funds are made available to individuals and organisations seeking to establish independent schools. Michael Gove is proposing something similar for the future. See para 3 of Funding Swedish Schools

LegalEagle-ish Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Ok, very funny, you got me there smartarse! One of the advantages of, once, being a whiz at spherical trigonometry.

LegalEagle-ish Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The World - is it really round? At present it's an oblate spheroid (like an orange thats been flattened at top & bottom) - but changes shape gradually over time.

EDmummy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I know it must seem arcane to you but if you were > visually impaired...or dare I say it, trying to > push a single or even double buggy, it is likely > that the moped would have caused an obstruction. > By all means, fight it if you feel that your case > is strong. Good luck. Fair point - but the pavement in our road is six feet wide and the bike was up against the wall - no more of an obstruction than the many wheely bins that litter most pavements. I think he (read Dad) will have to pay up and shut up.

Gordon Brown was visiting a primary school. In one class they were in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asked Mr. Brown if he would like to lead the discussion on the word tragedy'. So the illustrious leader asked the class for an example of a tragedy. A little boy stood up and offered: 'If my best friend, who lives on a farm, is playing in the field & a tractor runs over him and kills him, that would be a tragedy'. No, said Gordon - that would be an accident'. A little girl raised her hand: 'If a school bus carrying fifty children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy'. I'm afraid not,? explained Gordon, ?that's what we would call great loss?. The room went silent. No other children volunteered. Gordon searched the room. 'Isn't there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?'. Finally, at the back of the room, little Johnny raised his hand. In a quiet voice he said 'If a plane carrying you and Mr. Darling was struck by a 'friendly fire' missile & blown to smithereens, that would be a tragedy'. Fantastic!' exclaimed Gordon. 'That's right. And can you tell me why that would be tragedy?'. Well,' says little Johnny 'it has to be a tragedy, because it certainly wouldn't be a great loss and it probably wouldn't be a f*cking accident either'.

Tony.London Suburbs Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > People seem to be forgetting or not realising that > The Conservatives used to have a solid > Working-Class support, particularly in London. And, to the extent that there remains a "working class" this is beginning o happen again. Equally - the benfitariat that has long been Labour's core support base is beginning to see New Labour for what they are. The next election will be about who the voters feel can best manage the appalling financial hole this government has created. There is a real possibility (not I think, yet, a probability) that LAbour could come third to the Lib Dems.

Marmora Son no.2 has just invested his savings and hocked his future summer job earnings to buy a 50cc moped. Collected at 13.00 today - he parked it on the pavement outside the house at 15.47 - was ticketed (PCN 624) at 15.48 - ?120 fine (?60.00 if we pay up within 14 days). Offence "having one or more wheels on pavement". In our area it is not unusual to have motor bikes of different sizes parked on the pavement - locked to a tree or lampost. Doesn't disturb the neighbours or frighten the horses. Having looked it all up - I think he's been "got" bang to rights - but wondered if anyone has a decent defence he could put up, or knows of any arcane piece of traffic law that exempts small (50cc) bikes?? Otherwise his bike has just cost him another ?60.00.