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jon_toronto

Listed below are comments made by jon_toronto between Thursday, 23rd April 2009 and Friday, 16th October 2009.

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The right to offend? 2:51pm on 16 Oct 2009 There are two parts to offending someone: what you say, and what the other person finds offensive. Can I declare that I find it offensive when people express negative views about, say, the tellytubbies, and then get people banned from criticising them? The answer seems to be no, unless I also declare that the tellytubbies are a part of my "religion". I have to hide behind the word Religion in order to get away with intolerance, violence, death threats and so on.

My solution: abolish the concept of "religion" in our legal system. That the lovely Tony Blair introduced all these laws banning religious prejudice etc, making religion somehow equivalent to race, was a step in the wrong direction. Not giving someone a job because he has black skin is totally different to not giving him a job because he hears voices in his head and believes that I will burn in the fires of hell for eternity.
The Merkel enigma 5:19pm on 28 Sep 2009 Prima facie, it's a peculiar coalition. The FDP only used about four or five slogans during their campaign, all of which were about low taxes except one about civil liberties. In contrast, history shows us that the CDU/CSU has nothing to do with low taxes and has a worse record on civil liberties than any of the other parties.

However, I suppose this kind of alliance is common elsewhere: smarmy management consultants in bed with religious bigots. The Tory party in the UK is made of the same two elements.
Press #3 for linguistic diversity 11:53am on 14 Sep 2009 Surely the Roman empire was also bilingual: Greek had a special status alongside Latin and was standard in the eastern provinces.
Can we afford the carriers? 8:07pm on 30 Jun 2009 Most of the discussion here follows the wisdom of spending money on aircraft carriers at all, which is somewhat off topic. For what it's worth though, I agree that they are a waste of money however you pay for them.
Can we afford the carriers? 8:05pm on 30 Jun 2009 Isn't this a consequence of the difference in accounting practices between private and public sector? When a company buys equipment to last say ten years, a tenth of its cost is written into the next ten years' accounts. When the government or a local council buys something, the entire cost appears immediately in the accounts. This encourages government to make otherwise irrational decisions such as patching up roads every year rather than doing a thorough resurfacing every ten years, borrowing money at great cost via a 'public-private partnership' or indeed with the example above overpaying in total just to improve this year's accounts.

Is there any discussion of changing this practice which so clearly encourages short-termism?
Declan's democracy 6:54pm on 02 Jun 2009 Mark touches on an important point here: "...Of course, no president or prime minister would wear this reduction in their power of patronage...", i.e. it is the national leaders who are preventing the EU from becoming more "democratic", not the EU itself.
Fishing for news 6:34pm on 14 May 2009 @2 MarcusA..

The Americans often refer to the "real America" you describe as "the flyover". That is where people weigh 25 stone and think that Iraq is in South America. Better stick to New York, SF and so on if you want to keep your sanity.
Keeping track of expenses 4:05pm on 23 Apr 2009 @ flawedlogic

"no indexed linked pension, no guaranteed bonus and no job for life"

are thing I'm very famililar with! I get no pension at all, no bonuses at all, and I work on 3-year contracts followed by forced relocation to another country. I don't know where you get your funny ideas! You shouldn't confuse politicians with other public sector workers. Obviously some public sector workers DO get outrageous bonuses like diplomats with their guaranteed knighthoods and so on.
Keeping track of expenses 3:23pm on 23 Apr 2009 Ah ha, I've just realised the answer is that scientists, nurses and teachers do not get to vote on their own salaries..
Keeping track of expenses 3:22pm on 23 Apr 2009 As a research scientist working in a university, I have the skills to earn twice as much designing nuclear weapons or five times as much as an accountant or stockbroker, but those are not jobs I would want to do. In some sense the free market decides these salaries according to supply and demand -- Adam Smith commented that prostitutes make a lot of money because otherwise nobody would want to do their work. So, ought M(E)Ps' salaries not be set just high enough to attract enough well-qualified people?

I appreciate the argument about allowing people from less wealthy backgrounds to become M(E)Ps -- remember that 200 years ago MPs were not paid at all and they were all necessarily rich landowners. But why is this argument never applied to other public-service professions such as scientists, nurses, teachers, etc. who could earn more elsewhere?

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