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Bryn-UK

Listed below are comments made by Bryn-UK between Friday, 30th January 2009 and Thursday, 8th October 2009.

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Generals as politicians - lessons from history 04:28am on 08 Oct 2009 Last time I looked we asked elected ministers to distribute our tax money, not senior officers from the British army. Didn't a general recently say an army can't have too much equipment, or too much funding? If military spending affects our capacity to keep ourselves healthy, educate our children, and give a fair chance to the poor, then it's definitely too much.

I agree there are issues with the military covenant right now; but we don't have to listen to everything the generals say. Largely because we're lucky enough not to live under a junta.

That would be shocking. Not as shocking as a Sandhurst-graduate general joining the Tories, obviously. Now that's a real jaw-dropper.
Brown agrees to debate 1:22pm on 04 Oct 2009 #116 I_hate_NuLabour: 'NO, I don't drink'

That explains everything.
Brown agrees to debate 6:29pm on 03 Oct 2009 Like the blog Nick, but the standard of the comments has really plummeted unfortunately.

I agree with #15 LaughingDevil - has anyone really considered why we need American-style TV debates? The US presidential elections require them because the candidates don't face each other in congress; Gordy is maybe right to insist that, whatever the importance of the media in holding politicians to account, first and foremost for that purpose we have, y'know, that building in London, got a big clock on it, what's-its-name - oh right, yeah - Parliament.

At a time when respect for Parliament is at such a low ebb, I reckon there's a fair argument that transferring crucial political debate from the Commons to a TV studio will do little to stop the rot.

Still, I agree that once challenged Gordy couldn't back out from the debate. To those of you who suspect the leaders will only agree to an audience stuffed with their supporters - what sort of banana republic do you think we live in? For 'Question Time' the BBC selects its audience members to ensure a political balance (see link at the bottom). There would be no question of the leaders having any say in the make-up of the audience.

As far as I can see, US presidential debates are slick, anodyne, and cosmetic, with too much leeway for showboating and not enough poking and prodding. We have rough-and-tumble politics in this country and we should stick to it. The already existing alternatives to the televised debate are all far preferable: 1. the leaders leading their parties in parliament and facing down their opposition; 2. the leaders getting rammed by Paxman; 3. the leaders facing the public directly on a Question Time special.

I still agree direct, face-to-face debate has its merits - in which case, how's about a Question Time special with the three leaders, the public, and Dimbleby? No need to come up with anything fancy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newswatch/ukfs/hi/newsid_4200000/newsid_4202800/4202877.stm#How%20does

P.S. To those asking for UKIP and BNP inclusion - neither of these parties have yet achieved parliamentary representation. If at some point they do, then there will be a debate to be had - though all the sensible people may well have fled the country by that point.

P.P.S. Gordy should look forward to a debate - let the country see Cameron for the lightweight estate agent he really is.
Changing tradition of Speaker 5:31pm on 23 Jun 2009 Off the top of my head (followed by a quick sneaky-peaky at Wikipedia just to check)

Michael Howard (party leader & Home Secretary)
Oliver Letwin (shadow Home Sec.)
Malcolm Rifkind (Foreign Sec.)
Benjamin Disraeli (PM)

Were all Jewish and Tory. Patricia - what on earth are you going on about?
American Exceptionalism 01:05am on 07 Apr 2009 Sam #103.

No, I don't get it. I fail utterly to see how the United States is the only democracy to 'derive' power from the people, when that is the basis of all democracies. Indeed, when that very notion 'derives' from a common historical development initiated and shared by (among others) America, France, the UK, and Holland.

It is one thing to say that America is the least statist of the democratic nations. It is sloppy thinking to say that, therefore, America has rule by the people and other democracies have rule by the state.

Who, exactly, do you think make up the 'state' in (to limit the argument) European democracies, other than politicians elected by the people? Their power derives from their being elected by the people. You can say that Europeans identify more with the role of the state, and that they accord more legitimacy to the state than most Americans do. But in all of these countries the power to control the state derives from and is conditional upon the will of the people.

I guess you could also say that Americans are more likely to talk and think of themselves as governed by the people, and that it plays a bigger part in the rhetoric they use identify themselves as American. But that depends on whether you believe in rhetoric or reality.

To be honest, I think that America is more directly democratic than the UK - you guys vote on more matters than we do (the caucus system is fantastic, for example), though I don't always prefer that way of doing things (esp. politicization of judges, prosecutors, lawmen etc.). On the other hand I think the American political elite is much more plutocratic and distanced from the people than here, and that US politicians enjoy much more deference.

That Bush had to pretend to be a Texan good ol' boy when he was a privileged Yankee with a rich daddy tells you something about the rhetoric and reality of 'rule by the people'.
American Exceptionalism 00:17am on 07 Apr 2009 Hi Sam (#90),

The power of the Lord is severely restricted and has been since 1909 (or so): it can only reject Commons legislation three times. This is because of the supremacy of the House of Commons. The House of Commons is supreme because it has a democratic mandate and the Lords doesn’t. This is why Prime Ministers no longer lead the govt. from the Lords (which previously they did). In theory, they actually could if they wanted, as there is no rule either way.

But then since when did we need a rule-book telling us how to run our country? We've been doing it for long enough.

Either way, the House of Lords can revise legislation, and it is indeed known as the 'upper house'. But it does not hold the executive in check - that is what the Commons does.

The Queen is a figurehead. Her power is, in a sense, figurative, in that it is not in any way literal or real. Believing, on the other hand, that the words ‘we the people’ enshrine and protect all of America’s democratic practices is literalism. Fundamentalism, even.

Frankly, I don’t care too much about what is said on paper. I care more about how we do things. Rights are, in a sense, also pieces of paper, and so they are important. But mighty principles written in fine language mean nothing unless there is a culture that remembers, values, and uses them.

America has the greatest freedom of speech laws in the world, and the greatest respect of any country for the principle of freedom speech. Until very recently the UK had no such law. And yet the US media couldn’t fight its way out a wet paper bag, whereas the UK media is, at heart, savage.

You can carve the words out of stone or, as you do, make them mantra. But that won’t make them come true.
American Exceptionalism 00:11am on 07 Apr 2009 Hi Gary (# 74 & 77),

Thanks for the replies. A fair point on the usage of American Exceptionalism. I reckon you’re right, and that Justin’s capitalization was pointing to some sort of codified notion of what the term means: problem is, I think there might now be quibbles as to what this ‘American Exceptionalism’ entails or what is codified by it – in a way that you don’t get with, say, the ‘American Dream’. I’d suggest that one reason for that is, mainly because of a recent eight-year period, there is ambivalence as to whether this exceptionalism means ‘justified awareness of own pre-eminence; exemption from systemic faults of other nations’ or ‘plain old truculence’.

Interestingly enough, as everyone is throwing around definitions, the Oxford English Dictionary reckons that the principle (and original) meaning of the word ‘exceptionalism’ on its own relates to the American flavour. This rather backs up your point and defeats mine (rather awkward, as they happen to be my employers):

The theory that the peaceful capitalism of the United States constitutes an exception to the general economic laws governing national historical development, and esp. to the Marxist law of the inevitability of violent class warfare; more generally, the belief that something is exceptional in relation to others of the same kind; loosely, exceptional quality or character.

Mind you, that’s a definition written in 1993. For me, for what it’s worth, the term ‘American exceptionalism’ has taken on decidedly negative connotations (exception from rule of law, from the consensus against wars of aggression, from the abomination that is torture, etc.).

I agree with your first point, and originally planned to include something to the same effect. Agreed that Athens was something like a direct democracy, and no modern one is – and that this doesn’t diminish our democracy. My argument was against Sam’s – in any democracy worth the name the elite and the elected body are the same thing, and to a certain extent the elite and the people are the same thing (in that ‘the people’ can join the elite). Sam seemed to be attacking a straw-man figure representing non-US democracies: in the US the people rule, he said, whereas in lesser democracies an elite rules and the politicians elected by the people (no more than a regulatory watchdog) nip at their heels. But this is nonsense.
American Exceptionalism 7:46pm on 06 Apr 2009 Sam #52: I think I'm right in saying US states bring prosecutions against people by announcing 'the people (of wherever) vs. John Smith'. Just like we in the UK say 'the Queen (or Regina) vs. John Smith'. Of course, it's not actually the Queen herself bringing the prosecution - it's the criminal justice system of the state, working under the name that supposedly confers legitimacy upon it. Is there really anything different going on when Americans talk of 'the people'?

In this great Nation power derives from the people, not an elite who are held in check by some elected body or other.

But this is no different from any other democracy, and in the UK dates back to the revolutionary period in the 17th century. Also, why do you imagine the people and the elite to be opposing, separate entities? In the US and the UK, and probably any other democracy, the people wield their power through representation by a political elite (who, especially in the US, tend to be rich men). Further, a country ruled by an 'elite' and only regulated by popular representatives is not a democracy. It is something else. Your description might fit the half-democratic, half-theocratic Iran - but then do you really need to compare American democracy to Iran to flatter it?

And, wait a second - didn't US democracy start, like British democracy before it, by deriving power from property, not people? Neither Lord North nor George Washington were elected by universal suffrage, I think I'm right in saying.

More generally, I think JW has started us off us on the wrong tack: exceptionalism is the wrong word, because it denotes something intrinsically bad: a sense of one's own difference that is inevitably self-justifying and that entails a notion of entitlement to operate by one's own criteria of good and bad, right and wrong, etc.

This does describe accurately some of the worst qualities of the previous administration, but doesn't necessarily go any further (though I'm sure a sophist could argue that it does go to the heart of America's puritan origins).

I suppose really what we want to know is: is there something unique about America's history and character that make it more capable of achievement than other countries? I'd say there is.

We, yank and non-yank, should concentrate more on America's abilities than its spurious entitlements.
What they don't want to hear 02:43am on 04 Apr 2009 Andy, way back there at no. 3 - I'm guessing JW simply found it funny that BHO was told his name means something slightly incongruous (not as incongruous as Helmut 'cabbage' Kohl, however). 'Peach' does, of course, mean an attractive woman (there's a very amusing usage of it by Hugh Laurie in Blackadder Goes Forth); I also remember, some years ago when Ruby Wax made a programme about Hugh Hefner's Playboy mansion, a former model (American) used it to mean something very rude indeed (the OED is too coy to list this definition, alas; the Urban Dictionary has no such qualms, if you want to look it up).

Justin is clearly far too urbane to have meant anything rude by it..

America - it's good to have you back.

Two things: 1. Obama is doing great, but he was stiff as a board at the press conference with Gordy. I like the guy, but I'm not sure I buy this 'golden eloquence' malarkey.

2. BHO is right to press Nato members to step up to the plate - they decreed 9/11 to be an attack on them all, and they have to make good on that. BUT it takes a lot for politicians to ask that people assent to their young going to die for something - the US was attacked, terribly, and so Americans are more willing to grant it. Before that, however, the US had spent almost 30 years steadfastly opposed to young Americans dying overseas - if they cast their minds back eight years, some US critics might find they have more in common with the Euro peaceniks than they thought.

The objectives in Afghanistan just aren't clear or cogent enough to make the Europeans accept war - thousands have to die, a nation has to be destroyed and rebuilt, because of who the Taleban consorted with? That's a big ask. Or maybe this is about nation-building instead? Or Pakistan? What is the mission? And if we have to ask, why are people dying for it?
Prospect of a thaw? 06:59am on 30 Jan 2009 Oh mercy! Oh Lord! A foreign policy post from Webb! And yet just as soon as the new dawn shines its rays upon us, the Today programme lours, soon to snatch him away.

I was Stourton to think foreign policy was verboten around here.

Obama faces a real decider: if he will not condemn Israel's collective punishment of a defeated people, and if he dare not say that such behaviour makes Israel a pariah, an abomination, and a shame to the civilised free world, then much that his victory represents - equality, acceptance, humanity - is meaningless.

He almost certainly won't condemn Israel, just like the UK government didn't & won't. So shame on all of us. We've become friends to bullies and it stinks.

Bryn

p.s. American readers of this blog should definitely follow Justin Webb to the Today programme if they fancy an eye (or ear)-opener. Come see how awkward and plain damn objectionable a real free media can (and should be) be..

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