BBC Blog Network

User Profile

Wherewhich

Listed below are comments made by Wherewhich between Friday, 12th June 2009 and Friday, 26th June 2009.

«Newer
Older»

The first set of ears 00:04am on 26 Jun 2009 Ministers and Parliament? If it mattered, Mr Bercow would not be Speaker.

Ministers and the BBC? At least we get to get rid of ministers every five years or less.
The Conspiracy Files: 7/7 09:28am on 25 Jun 2009 #58 "Are there any real journalists left in this institution?"

It's a rhetorical question I guess and we all know why, and that is what this blog is about. When the media fail to protect sources and acquiesces to "con-characters" in Whitehall to protect an illegal rally call rather than honestly inform the people they are paid to represent then we would be wise not to trust them about anything. What is worse is that we then incur thousands of casualties of wars and "terrorism" (and the "suicide" of a good man) rather than have just two heads on a pole somewhere close to Downing Street.

The problem I have with 7/7 and 9/11 is that the official view just does not stack up to close inspection. Why haven't the US ordered a criminal investigation into 9/11? The answers are in the heads of a few evil people just as the answers to 7/7 may be equally embarrassingly located.
The Conspiracy Files: 7/7 07:13am on 25 Jun 2009 #51

This is a great example of what my whole posting was about.

In criticising my "throwaway" you come up with one of your own and choose to "believe" in it rather better than you "believe" in my theories.

So let's remind ourselves how the US ended up in Iraq according to one GWB. (I paraphrase) "They have WMD confirmed by satellite images and Saddam Hussein's reluctance to let UN inspectors anywhere near the place."

Reason to invade Iran, thus far, according to US intelligence. (I paraphrase) "It's a nasty regime. They are developing nuclear stuff. They will not cooperate with the west and therefore must be a threat. They do not like Israel. Our previous plan to scupper them backfired so we owe them another."

I am not sure what planet you are from but the US imported 627 thousand barrels of oil per day from Iraq in 2008 according to your own Administration's figures, a quantity that has grown steadily since the removal of Saddam Hussein.
Mervyn's done it again 11:40pm on 24 Jun 2009 The problem with plucking unemployment figures out of the air is that it is a risky game of statistical truths.

Current unemployment stands at 2.2m and the Government state that "new claims" have fallen for two months running (they are still rising but at not such a steep rate). Even this is potentially fallacious given that this time of year is notorious for slackening claim rates.

Talk of 4.5m out of work now or 7m in a few years time are okay until one looks at what the Government's bail out of the banks has not achieved. Nothing positive has happened from the banks and it is public investment that is not doing what is needed - creating jobs that will at least generate some economic movement and hold off increasing unemployment. The row over the economy is a part of the "Gentlemen's Club" battle of words - it is not a realistic attempt to get to grips with the UK economy by being innovative. We have a serious shortage of housing so why are we trying to prop up property prices by failing to build new houses or change the use of the many commercial properties that now lay idle?

The "money men" didn't see the recession coming so how far can we trust what they say now?
The Conspiracy Files: 7/7 9:55pm on 24 Jun 2009 #38

I am sure you are familiar with the Dylan song "God on our side". I am also sure that you are aware that Hitler was a "devout" Catholic until he saw his own special light (if indeed he ever did). I am sure that you are aware that the intelligence service appeared to be tracking the "Muslim cell" that attacked London on 7/7. I am sure that you are aware that we (by that I mean the greater public) have not been told everything about the 7/7 attack or about 9/11. I am sure that you are aware that the west had been lining up Iraq and Saddam Hussein once it appeared he was not going to be easy to manipulate. I am sure that you are aware that Pakistan was full of warring factions with no clear leadership of the Islamic response to Bush and Blair ( as it still is). I am sure you are aware of the strategic and physical importance of Iran in providing cheap fuel and energy to the west.

There are many other ingredients that I have chosen to leave out for brevity, but my point is the importance of opportunity, appearance, and innovation in the pursuit of desire. If you mix these ingredients up several times you will not get a uniform cake - indeed you may not even get a cake at all - you will get something that looks different and tastes different each and every time.

For you the absence of any other known influence over the four men who carried out the attack on London means it was Islamic and in the name of Islam. That may be fine for you but it doesn't wash for me - so are you two halfpennies short of the full ticket or are you going to call anyone who doesn't agree with you stupid? Is that what the authorities imagined would happen all along?

Much of what happened after WW2 suggests that many Jews did blame "all of Europe" for the Holocaust and most of Europe was indeed Christian. And the battle for Palestine was nothing new to WW2 seeing as it had been going on for a long time before. So do you put two and two together and call those who disagree with you stupid again? Is that what the Jews would have wanted at the time?

Propaganda is a truth discarded by a person who has another belief (or truth) stronger than that of the propaganda. Your truth is another person's propaganda. What Secratariat may have been alluding to is the entrenched views of the "traditional" European as distinct from those who have less entrenched views. There is nothing wrong about either camp unless we no longer want a free society.
The Conspiracy Files: 7/7 8:50pm on 24 Jun 2009 On the general subject of Islam I support everything Secratariat has written. My personal experience of Islam does not fit "fundamentalism" at all; indeed it has been quite the opposite and I do not believe that the fanaticism exists in anything like the numbers governments and media like us to believe.

On the subject of "conspiracy" I am minded to ask just what some people commenting actually think it is. If our police and secret services knew about a bombing plot in London that affected 840 innocent lives but did not act appropriately is that "conspiracy" or is it poor intelligence? Was the later killing of an innocent person at a London tube station "deliberate mistaken identity" or an act of poor policing? The fine line that runs between something being acceptable to our minds or just too incredible to be true is not easy to trace or even trustworthy. We see something in two dimensions and we will swear that what we saw actually happened when in fact it never did. We see sleight of hand in three dimensions close up and still cannot detect what actually happens. That is how trusted our vision (and most other senses too) should be.

The questions about 7/7 focus on who stood to gain most if it succeeded, just as they did with 9/11 because then we have a motive beyond senseless killing of people for the sake of it. We should ask the same question of every suicide bombing rather than lamely accepting that there are a lot of people for whom life is not very precious at all.

Balancing this is our knowledge of how desperate people can become when a battle is being lost and we ask ourselves who was losing at the time of 7/7? Has the UK learned anything from the terrorism inflicted by the IRA and how it was intended to affect our lives? Did our security personnel have the intensity needed to root out the real villains?

Do we really trust our parliamentarians any more? Do we really trust the public army of civil servants who are in a position to do just what their chiefs require? Do we really trust our media for whom black and white are the easiest colours to use?
A new style of Speaker? 08:09am on 24 Jun 2009 I was just savouring the rather delicious prospect contained in the last sentence of #90 and trying to deal with the whole concept that all the stuff that has been written about the iniquitous houses in Westminster Palace has apparently achieved nothing - I mean Speaker Bercow? What are our MPs on (apart from glorious salaries and expenses for doing very, very little)?

Do these MPs honestly believe that patronising angry people is going to make them go away? Do they not yet see the whole collapse of our democracy and structure because people will start pulling it down brick by brick? And for the sake of a penny pinching career?
PM's Speakers Week 07:36am on 24 Jun 2009 I am unsure as to why the BBC wanted to introduce some more fiction into the Westminster processes. Don't we get this already on the Parliament channel?
Who's planning what cuts? 11:33pm on 12 Jun 2009 #745

I am afraid it is you erring. Boom and bust are naturally occurring cycles that iron out the natural conflicts between different economies going through their own individual phases. Recessions are different since they demonstrate a withdrawal of "value" from the driving economic cycle. In the current case the withdrawal has occurred via deceitful manipulation of property (and corporate) valuation which did not filter through in inflation but did, nonetheless, exist in book values. So we have something left so over cooked there are only cinders.

Friedman's logic was flawed as has been demonstrated in articles both before and after he was dragged into the limelight. Corporate interests must be regulated unless they are allowed to enter a "dog eats dog" fight to the last dog. This has not happened and as a result economies have been lead by faulty business models - and we are still lead by these same mal-constructions. Contraction of labour is a daft thing to do and Friedman recognised this placing much emphasis on construction and infrastructure in the public sector and retention of significant production in local commercial sectors to provide options in times of trouble. Both those "requirements" have sadly been ignored.

In short micro-economic solutions have been applied to a macro-economic problem. Hence a recession with so many teeth it hasn't finished with us by a long way. Bailing of banks will prove to be a huge folly; money should have been used to drive a recovery and that will not come about through banks who are still largely shell shocked and still largely driven by the same old faces.
Who's planning what cuts? 9:47pm on 12 Jun 2009 Whilst I enjoy the banter between party faithful I do wish that people would get their economic cycles right. The current problems began with a major shift in economic thinking in the mid-seventies adapted by the US and then the UK in the early eighties. This reigned in the workers, depressed the labour markets, and gave almost total and pivotal control to big business.

Worker rights were decimated both by legislation and exporting jobs, compounded by rises in migrant labour. And the expected but sudden collapse of the Soviet Union gave the west an even bigger headache.

This recession is the result of almost three decades of mismanagement of the Corporate sectors. In the UK a third of that period was the fault of the present Government who failed to move away from Tory policy.

In essence the claims about "boom and bust" have always been false since they follow patterns that have little to do with political influence. But New Labour have been guilty of complacency, as has the USA. And they have not been lonely as every country who paid up to Milton Friedman has fried in the same fat. The degrees of burn are irrelevant since the corpse has been dead a long time.

«Newer
Older»

^ Back to top

BBC MMVI

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

BBC.co.uk

BBC Blog Network

Find and talk to the BBC's bloggers.

User Profile

Wherewhich