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sparkson

Listed below are comments made by sparkson between Wednesday, 7th May 2008 and Friday, 24th April 2009.

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Newsnight & Newsnight Review: Friday, 24 April, 2009 11:12pm on 24 Apr 2009 The government should scrap its unnecessary and dangerous Chinese ID Card / NIR scheme, thus saving at least £5 billion. Of course, it will not do this; New Labour has long had an agenda of removing our civil liberties.

Tony Blair had already awarded contracts for the ID scheme before parliament voted on the bill, and Gordon Brown has an authoritarian obsession with imposing more intrusion and control on us. His ministers, especially Jack Straw and Jacqui Smith, who could show sense by opposing him in this, are themselves too besotted by power to remember they are supposed to be the servants of the people, not the masters.
Tuesday, 7 April, 2009 11:57pm on 07 Apr 2009 Roy Hattersley is right; British parliamentary committees have no power over government policies or edicts. The committees which investigated government anti-civil liberties measures: ID Cards, NIR, detention without trial, protest bans, police powers, data protection violations, etc. have had no effect on government whatsoever.

The government just gets its MPs to rubber stamp its decrees; most of the few MPs who threaten to rebel are bullied, bribed or blackmailed into submission.
To Bruce and the Amazon 01:57am on 24 Oct 2008 Thank you Bruce Parry for such a brilliant, informative series.

The desperate state of the Amazon rainforest came across far more than in the statistics we get about deforestation and its effects on global warming. The rainforests are the lungs of the world, and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is a threat to us all.

The simple directness, lack of guile and natural decency of the Kayapo contrast starkly with the greed and cynicism in the developed world. Their respect for the environment and non-destructive lifestyle is shared by many of the old, indigenous peoples in other countries who have been decimated to make way for the land-grabbers and developers.

Looking at the effects of Western-style wealth, power and corruption on the Native North Americans and the Australian Aborgines, it is hard to believe that the Kayapo and their beautiful reserve will be allowed to remain unchanged.
To Bruce and the Amazon 01:56am on 24 Oct 2008 Thank you Bruce Parry for such as brilliant, informative series.

The desperate state of the Amazon rainforest came across far more than in the statistics we get about deforestation and its effects on global warming. The rainforests are the lungs of the world, and the destruction of the Amazon rainforest is a threat to us all.

The simple directness, lack of guile and natural decency of the Kayapo contrast starkly with the greed and cynicism in the developed world. Their respect for the environment and non-destructive lifestyle is shared by many of the old, indigenous peoples in other countries who have been decimated to make way for the land-grabbers and developers.

Looking at the effects of Western-style wealth, power and corruption on the Native North Americans and the Australian Aborgines, it is hard to believe that the Kayapo and their beautiful reserve will be allowed to remain unchanged.
Fannie, Freddie, Cheshire and Derbyshire 6:29pm on 07 Sep 2008 Wow! Milton Friedman must be turning in his grave, or standing on his head. His economic policy views helped bring about monetarism, privatisation and deregulation around the world, and influenced Ronald Reagan in the U.S., Brian Mulroney in Canada, Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, and (after 1989) in Eastern Europe. He advocated minimal government and a free market to create political and social freedom. The neo-Con government of President George W. Bush also supports this policy, yet here it is nationalising two giant financial institutions.

Not long before he died, Milton Friedman asked who in the world would want state-owned companies to run businesses. He said private corporations were the only way to get success and progress. So Friedman joins other economic theorists (like Karl Marx) in having his theories bite the dust.
Tuesday, 12 August, 2008 00:47am on 13 Aug 2008 I was shocked to hear the comments on Newsnight, that having a "pretty" girl mime to the singing of a "less-pretty" girl is no worse than putting make-up on TV interviewees. How must a young girl feel, to be told that she can sing at an event, but is too ugly to be seen, so a pretty girl will be on show miming to her song?

The disclosures of this and the other deception of computer simulated fireworks epitomize the whole sham of this Olympics and expose a sad, hugely-wealthy nation whose totalitarian government clings to power, does not trust its own people and fears loss of face from any public display of imperfection.

These glimpses of falsehood are the tip of the hypocrisy iceberg that is China. A much-persecuted campaigner for human rights in China has said that the Olympics have made the human rights situation worse. Far from bringing liberalisation of the system, the Olympics have pushed the regime to use desperate measures to conceal human rights abuses. This has caused more extreme suppression of pro-democracy activists, as well as more detentions (and ill-treatment) of potential protesters and dissidents.

Also, in constructing the Olympics site, the government has made thousands of poor people homeless in order to bulldoze their homes to make way for the new development. These hopeless people have been beaten and locked away to prevent the world knowing their plight.

What price the Olympic ideal? What price the pretence of the nations involved in the Olympics?
Have the UFOs stopped coming? 00:20am on 14 May 2008 Even though Newsnight's report on crop circles was intended to be humorous, it does not excuse sloppy research and broadcasting of false information.

Whoever created (and is still creating) crop circles, it is not an old man with a plank of wood. He might have done a simple circle somewhere but he could not have created more than a hundred of the most complex, intricate designs, especially considering that they usually appear overnight in different locations around southern England.

If you doubt this, look at the crop circle pictures on http://cropcircles.gajda.cz/ covering a 16 year period. Why did your reporter not show some crop circle pictures to the old man and ask him how he managed to make these incredible shapes?
David Miliband on Newsnight 11:14pm on 07 May 2008 Why is the government defying the Information Commissioner and Tribunal by blocking Freedom of Information access to the results of the Gateway Reviews into ID Cards? What is it hiding? What value is the Freedom of Information Act if the government can ignore it at will?

Why is New Labour pushing for an early referendum on Scottish Independence which it originally opposed, yet reneging on a referendum on the EU constitution which it originally promised?

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