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englishmaninmadrid

Listed below are comments made by englishmaninmadrid between Tuesday, 4th November 2008 and Thursday, 7th May 2009.

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Rebuilding banks and the City 10:53am on 07 May 2009 Well hallelujah to that. We'll get most of our money back and won't be quite as deep a hole as we thought. I won't let the urge for revenge against bankers overshadow the fact that we all depend on them.
The great human rights debate... 10:56am on 23 Mar 2009 BrisbaneBen: there's nothing wrong with pointing out that some people cannot string words together in a coherent fashion. It is a rather vital skill in debating; if you can't express your ideas clearly, what do you have to offer? It is also a skill in serious decline, so I absolutely support people's right to make such criticisms - they do *not* qualify as ad hominem arguments.
"We blame the parents" 4:11pm on 02 Feb 2009 My final observation on this: everybody seems to be connecting "selfishness" with Thatcherism. This is ignorant nonsense. The cult of the individual and "self-fulfilment" are a postwar phenomenon long predating Thatcher, who was more of a traditionalist on social issues.

If this really is about self-absorbed parents failing to raise their children properly (evidence?!), then the government sure as hell can't fix it. It's up to people themselves.
"We blame the parents" 1:58pm on 02 Feb 2009 "Why is the Church so keen on getting involved in politics these days?" That's been going on for some time, you'll find.

I suspect the report is a bit like this comment page. Everyone and his dog has thrown in their pet theory about what's gone wrong. "80s culture" and "Thatcherism" seem to be particular favourites, along with some batty excursions into "demographic warfare" and moaning about the terrible effects of technology (I can only weep about the wicked effects that the Atari console had on my childhood).

EVIDENCE. Where's the evidence? Correlation is not causality!
"We blame the parents" 10:47am on 02 Feb 2009 Are we allowed to see the full report? Download it? I can only see "summaries". I would very much like to know how you get from a diagnosis of the problem (children are more anxious, or less trusting) to the proposed solutions (abolish SATs and league tables, for example). Where is the evidence supposedly supporting these ideas, which reek to high heaven of ideology?

It's one thing to say we have a problem. Perhaps we do. It's entirely another to suggest that the government can fix it, least of all by tampering (yet again) with education policy.

It feels to me as if lots of people have taken advantage of the report to throw their pet political ideas and hates into a giant grab-bag.
Map of the Week - Community Life 4:45pm on 01 Dec 2008 TheresOnly1Soupey: This is a serious subject that requires thought and analysis, not the usual claptrap about the evils of "capitalism". To my knowledge, the UK has been "capitalist" for hundreds of years. It certainly was in 1971. France is also capitalist. The whole of the West is. How does your rant explain what's changed in the last forty years, or why France (say) might be different from the UK? Presumbly the Soviet Union was well known for its deeply rooted communities, was it?

I think you need to consult more learned sources than "Jamie's Kitchen"...
A history day? 3:24pm on 06 Nov 2008 Akil doesn't seem to be very familiar with the UK. I know of no European country, the UK included, that is close to electing the equivalent of Obama. The reason is quite simple - as Simon Schama pointed out, the USA is an immigrant democracy. In Europe, identity still remains essentially ethnic. The UK may be a less racist place than, say, Spain or Italy (not difficult), but the US, in spite of the difficult history of race relations there, finds the concept of hispanic or black leaders easier to accept.
A history day? 10:09am on 06 Nov 2008 Erda_speaks: you really must be delusional (apparently, a trait shared by many Republicans) if you don't believe that the rest of the world views America much more negatively after eight years of George W. Bush. If you're honest, you can say "OK, but I don't care what the rest of the world thinks". But you really must be taking something if you think that America's image hasn't taken a pounding.

I also notice you imitate Palin's division of America into "real" America (presumably, small-town, white, conservative) and the rest. How dismal. How you utterly fail to rise to the moment.

Iraq may ultimately work out. We don't know. But the aftermath of the invasion was utterly chaotic, and Bush's bad leadership and poor judgement was largely responsible for it. Also, I doubt history will look kindly on a president who dug America into a 10 trillion-dollar debt hole during the good times, leaving his successor (just like Clinton) to clean up the mess, or on a president who did long-term damage to America's alliances, and helped unravel the global anti-proliferation regime. I could go on. The list is long. Pull your head out of the sand and check the damage.
Election 2008 - Live 02:26am on 05 Nov 2008 Ohio has gone to Obama, according to Fox. Surely it's all over. Hail President Obama!
Soft imperalism 2:19pm on 04 Nov 2008 Chris: it's not a question of whether "pop songs have an effect on culture". Pop songs ARE part of our culture. They create cultural affinity with their country of origin, in this case the United States.

As for forcing us to consume their culture, that simply isn't true. The amount of local content on TV varies with time and with tastes. In the eighties there were many more American shows on TV in Britain, but tastes changed and now we have more local content. If that has started to change again in the last few years, it's probably because the quality of American TV has improved dramatically.

I see it's fairly pointless trying to explain the concept of soft power to people who don't get it. It remains a reality, and an important one.

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