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Dreaming_Ben

Listed below are comments made by Dreaming_Ben between Monday, 2nd February 2009 and Tuesday, 19th May 2009.

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He failed to lead 1:10pm on 19 May 2009 Personally, I'm fed up with all the bile and vitriol that is being aimed at Michael Martin. And as for all the people commenting on blogs like this one ... well, it's amazing how many "hard working taxpayers" find plenty of time to spout their drivel on the internet in the middle of the working day.

Everybody knew exactly what the system was like; there is no new information of substance in the latest furore. Yes, the system needs changing - it always has - but there is no need for everyone to get so NASTY about it!
Will Obama pay Goodwin's pension? 11:48am on 25 Mar 2009 The vandalism against Sir Fred is horrid, scary and intolerable.
Jacqui Smith is to blame. She said yesterday that "even when no laws have been broken, we need there to be a civil response against people who do not respect or live by our most basic values". Jacqui Smith prefers the tyranny of the mob to the rule of law. I disagree profoundly with Jacqui Smith. Though Sir Fred does not live by the basic values of equity and fairness that the rest of us adhere to, "civic action" is NOT the correct response.
Goodwin's tax break 09:19am on 18 Mar 2009 There are still ways out for the government from this. RBS is still a limited liability company, so the government can allow it to fail and then pick up the pieces and decide which of its creditors to recompense and which not to. Alternatively, it can pass a "Sir Fred Goodwin tax" into legislation, whereby knights with the name "Fred Goodwin" would be required to pay a 100% marginal tax on earnings over GBP 200,000.
Time to hug a banker? 12:03pm on 17 Mar 2009 Amusingly provocative Robert. But NO, ... sorry ... it just isn't true that the financial industry in the form that it took from 1986 to 2008 confers a net benefit to the rest of society. By and large the bankers are playing a zero-sum game against the rest of us. And winning.
The jeers and not enough cheers in Turin 11:57am on 11 Mar 2009 It doesn't seem to be the fact that Dwain Chambers took drugs that riles Steve Cram, but rather that he admits it and talks openly about the other people that did it.

Crammy and UKA would much prefer British atheletes to play their part in preserving the pretty delusion that drug cheats are all foreigners.

Dwain Chambers used to be a drugs cheat. Unlike most others, he is now at least honest about it. We hope and trust that he doesn't use drugs any more, and if he doesn't then he is unquestionably the best male track athelete we've got: let's therefore celebrate him and everything he achieves.
The real green is in our wallets 3:35pm on 25 Feb 2009 It all makes so much sense. Internationally, it must be agreed that each national state will be charged x ounces of gold for every tonne of CO2 it emits. The gold raised will then be redistributed to each nation state according to its population count (lagged by about 25 years to remove any incentive to population growth). x is determined every ten years or so by asking each nation state what it should be and taking the population-adjusted median.
It's climate change dynamite! 2:32pm on 24 Feb 2009 People who doubt man-made climate change always do so for one of the following three reasons.

Either (1) They have low intelligence (underdeveloped intelligence - like that found in young children or in animals - simply cannot conceive of the world changing; so some people have a strong "intuition" that the scientists must be wrong), or (2) they are attention seekers (in any forum, climate-change deniers get a lot of attention because their opinion is so unusual and so outrageous), or (3) they personally profit by climate-change denial.

(2) and (3) often go together - think Jeremy Clarkson or Bjorn Lomborg, "the skeptical environmentalist" - i.e. in media or academia, attention=celebrity=reward.
It's climate change dynamite! 2:22pm on 23 Feb 2009 One thing. I would use less energy from fossil fuels if others around me (people, firms, and governments) were doing the same.

I could lead a radically different, low carbon lifestyle without being any less happy if only the low carbon lifestyle was the social and ethical norm.
BBC News and disabled audiences 5:13pm on 19 Feb 2009 I agree that this is NOT "PC gone mad", but it IS a reflection that the BBC these days subordinates clear, efficient, intelligent communication of the news to "interactivity", advertising it's website and commercial activities, and other gimmicks.

If the URL was important then it would make sense for the newsreader to labouriously read it out, even if this wastes time and muddles the viewing/listening experience for everybody. But it isn't important, so they shouldn't do it.
Total and the Wimbledon effect 1:33pm on 02 Feb 2009 What RP says here won't matter if the money we (GB) raised by selling our capital at home has been spent investing in capital overseas.

If, however, we've gone and blown it all over the past few years on foereign-made consumables, then we are up a long smelly creek with no outboard motor.

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