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timsingapore

Listed below are comments made by timsingapore between Tuesday, 22nd April 2008 and Thursday, 29th October 2009.

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Changing Britain's relationship with Europe 6:14pm on 29 Oct 2009 Seen from outside the UK, the euroscepticism of the Conservatives as expressed by Hague and Cameron seems rather pathetic. It seems to me that constructive engagement is far more likely to bring results to Britain's advantage than flouncing off into an isolationist corner - the UKIP position seems based on a misconception of Britain's position in the world. No one is taking the slightest notice of the UK other than in an EU context. The Americans' attitude to Britain is benign indifference - the 'special relationship', as loved by the Atlantic-orientated Brits, is a sad and embarrassing delusion.

Get in there, take part more full-heartedly, and you will have many of the nations of Europe on your side.

Associate yourselves with the ghastly Farage and Griffin and Britain will lose even the support of its natural allies in Europe.
Nick Griffin on Question Time 7:02pm on 28 Oct 2009 [LimeCandy wrote: ... Many people (including myself) are becoming more and more sympathetic to the BNP because they is actually addressing the core issue....Britain has no spare capacity for a population increase of 10 million. Where will the houses/schools/hospitals be built, the power stations, the reservoirs, sewage works, roads, etc etc? Only the BNP seem interested in tackling this issue. We can't kill off pensioners or impose Chinese birth-control laws, but we have to slow (and ideally reverse) the rate of population increase. The only way to do this is to stop immigration. That’s why the BNP's support will continue to grow.]

I disagree with these conclusions.

Given the demographic ageing of the British population, who will pay for the pension that LimeCandy and others will expect from the state in years to come? An increase in the size of the working population (as opposed to the retired population) is the only viable way of funding people's expectations - and that means continuing immigration.

I agree that the main parties have failed to address this issue honestly, but I am sure LimeCandy and I disagree about the conclusions they should reach.

That said, I think Bonnie Greer's opposition to Nick Griffin was unbelievably vacuous; Jack Straw wasn't much better - so I fear that the BNP (whom I detest) came out of that mess of a programme having garnered more sympathy than they deserved.
Not so special? 10:21am on 24 Sep 2009 The United States is a very large and powerful foreign country where a large number of people happen to speak English. This whole 'special relationship' thing has given me the creeps since the days of Margaret Thatcher and even earlier. It's partly patronising, partly sycophantic - and I'm sure it generates at worst irritation and at best an amused tolerance on the American side. It's time we gave up this sentimental tosh and devoted a bit more commitment to building relationships within Europe, where it would have more usefulness.

Of course that might involve Gordon learning a bit of French, which would be a bit of a challenge, no doubt.
How Rover executives pocketed £42m 00:26am on 11 Sep 2009 This is merely the last chapter in the humiliating decline of the British-owned motor industry, where the suicidal tendencies of the unions were matched only by the incompetence and lack of vision of successive managements. Both 'sides' of the industry have been guilty of greed, greed, greed compounded by political motives on the union side in past decades, and management inadequacy throughout. Austin, Morris, then BMC and then all its sorry successors had no global vision - Renault, Volkswagen, Peugeot and all the others have achieved nothing that could not have been achieved had BMC and the people who ran it and worked for it then and later shown more awareness of the world beyond our shores, learned a few foreign languages, and built cars that someone outside Birmingham or Coventry might actually have wanted to buy or drive for more than 20 miles. This latest fiasco is no worse than the destructive greed shown by Red Robbo and the like over decades. But it is depressingly in keeping with want went before.
The real question about waterboarding 12:55pm on 21 Apr 2009 Cheney misses the point. Torture could well work. It may have worked for those often condemned for their treatment of prisoners during World War II, but the Japanese and the Germans came in for their fair share of American criticism afterwards for the use of torture. The point is that torture is immoral and degrading even if it does work (which is probably only sometimes, if at all).

I can't say that there would be never ever be conceivable circumstances in which one might think torture justifiable, but it hard to imagine them. I am pretty sure that the post 9/11 situation did not justify it, and certainly not on the scale that is now emerging.

I will give Cheney credit for honestly expressing his views, even if I find them repugnant.
Has alcohol sapped the British spirit? 4:37pm on 03 Aug 2008 MarcusAureliusII said ...

"The widespread problem of alcoholism in Britain and in fact all over Europe is only one symptom of a much more deep seeded problem of European society in general. That is a realization on an individual level that they have no control over their lives. They are helpless and hopeless. The USSR was an alcoholic society for the same reason. The EUSSR is replacing the individual governments which put up a sham pretense of democracy with a central tyranny which doesn't. That alcoholism is not only widespread but that it is tolerated is symptomatic of an entirely disfunctional civilization in the throes of final collapse."

Oh come off it - most of the lager-can-waving louts in the centres of British towns on a Saturday night wouldn't know the difference between the EC and a dead fish. The problem of alcohol-fuelled drunkenness in Britain goes back decades: it is a profound cultural phenomenon that has simply become worse in recent years. I remember crossing from Ostend to Dover on a ferry back in the 1970s, as the Brits returning from a beer festival shouted and vomited their way across the English Channel. Among them were travelling some Dutch and Belgian families who obviously thought they were travelling to a very different kind of Britain, and sat there in a state of frozen terror, quite incredulous at the behaviour they saw. And many of the over-drinkers were middle-aged men ... and women.

What amazes me now is not the scale of the problem: anyone who visits Britain regularly can see that. What is surprising is the the British themselves have not brought themselves to acknowledge the scale of the problem until now - and even now I doubt the will of any politician or journalist really to address it.
Has alcohol sapped the British spirit? 11:27am on 02 Aug 2008 threnodio (#178) - if the problem were a matter of 'a handful of louts' I for one wouldn't have contributed to this thread (see earlier). It is the self-delusion on the part of many who matter in the UK, the belief that the binge alcohol problem is confined to a handful of louts, that has prevented any meaningful and constructive response to the problem. What that response should be I for one do not know. But there sure is a problem ...
Has alcohol sapped the British spirit? 4:12pm on 31 Jul 2008 Justin you are correct. I've visited many capital cities throughout the world and nowhere have I seen more puffy faced, red eyed out-of-control human disasters, and more vomit on the floors of trains and buses, than in London. Actually one place that's worse is Manchester, where late on a Saturday night the streets are filled with the traditional sound of fat women standing in the street shouting. What they shout about, who can tell?
Rallying the troops 5:05pm on 14 May 2008 If Gordon Brown relaxed a bit, and learned the value of giving a straight question to a straight answer, he would do much better. Even when he was more popular, he would tend to thump home a series of pre-rehearsed bullet points, rather than answer any question as posed. That approach just doesn't work, and it works even less when used by more junior cabinet members.

Unless he can relax a bit more in public, he should never try to smile. His forced leer is a grisly sight indeed.

Unfortunately he is also facing the fact that, having been conspicuously unsupportive of the PM during the Blair years, he is now in a very bad position to demand support from people he badly needs as supporters. I feel a bit sorry for him, but he largely created the situation he is in.
Clear brand 00:41am on 22 Apr 2008 An earlier responder said, 'this is reminiscent of such momentous moves as from "British Air" to "British Airways"--that is, much ado about very little except, presumably, channeling fat fees to PR agencies.' I completely agree with this. The terms in which you have put the issue to the public - your preoccupation with branding, your use of the term 'brands' as applied to particular popular programmes, your whole-hearted embrace of the marketing jargon used by consultants - seems to indicate a worrying culture within BBC News. You are spending too much time and effort impressing your colleagues with your awareness that the BBC is in a 'global marketplace', and too little on the real skills of news presentation. When an organisation starts spending a lot of money on cheesy rebranding to very little effect, perhaps even (as in this case) to negative effect, it's a sign of ill-health. Of course it's a good idea to have a reasonably consistent identity across the organisation, but you shouldn't lose the positive qualities of your old offering in the process, and that is what has happened here. I'm sure you will have an internal meeting this week, and someone will say, 'give the punters time to get used to it...' and the comment will indeed die down. But the BBC news website will have been damaged.

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