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MunichMadrid7980

Listed below are comments made by MunichMadrid7980 between Sunday, 22nd March 2009 and Saturday, 11th April 2009.

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Tories to break up banks? 6:12pm on 11 Apr 2009 280

By selling large chunks of their equity to the govt, RBS etc have sold us taxpayers their assets, at distressed levels. Last October, we were the only buyer at any price, hence the bargain levels [in a long-term view]. The alternative [allowing the banks to collapse] would have resulted in nothing short of global catastrophe.

In my opinion, the current situation is as good as it could be for taxpayers, under the circumstances. The economy has not collapsed, and by pumping our economy with low interest rates and the banks' assets bought by us last year will quite quickly become worth a lot more than we paid for them. The danger is inflation, but that's far less of a risk than total global economic collapse.
Tories to break up banks? 9:01pm on 10 Apr 2009 274 socrates

Amazing, it's well over a year now since NR was rescued, and still some like 214 don't get it...

Back to the article, this is Osbourne in pure dreamland spninnery mode. Forget it, he would never split up RBS, and nor would any mainstream UK govt.
Chancellor of the World 10:44am on 03 Apr 2009 24 danlee

Yes,thank goodness, it's your view of the world economy which will win, unless we go back to foraging / subsistence farming.

15 Westkent

Don't be fooled by the Eurojokers, their banks were just as much involved as 'Anglo-Saxon' ones, more in some cases, and it's their system as much as ours, except our version has fewer brown envelopes. Convenient for Sarky and Merky to say 'eet ees ze folt off ze eenglish' to their own electorates, presumably in their own languages.

Good point about Scottish banks, though, and I suppose Northern Rock is almost Scottish!

What about UBS, Lehmans, Fortis etc...? Yes, those Swiss-NewYorker-Belgians have got a lot to answer for too.
Awkward questions ahead 7:04pm on 26 Mar 2009 These allegations against the UK can never be proved, this is a total non-issue, and colossal waste of money. Binyam Mohammed was simply caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, by the wrong people from his point of view. If the Americans mistreated him, he should address his complaint to the US govt, and then the International Court.
Perils of political promises 6:30pm on 25 Mar 2009 188 wasow

There's no need even to read PG W for examples of the perils of the young being able to live off inherited wealth. You only need to consider the younger members of Europe's current aristocratic elite, plus US preppies, to realise that fortunes to be inherited by birthright are not always of benefit even to their recipients.
Perils of political promises 10:00am on 25 Mar 2009 182 fubar

I'm in the lucky category of those few whose heirs would benefit from Dave's IHT proposal, there's no green-eyed here, and I still think that that policy is about as odious as you can get; even Thatcher and Tebbit would never have contemplated it- but then they do not come from families with that kind of wealth to pass on...
Language of the downturn 7:22pm on 23 Mar 2009 Of course you make sense, I just didn't get the bit about English or any other MPs 'clubbing together' in your previous post- from the evidence it's the last thing any politicians do, even those with very similar political views.

Personally, I wish MPs would club together for Britain as you suggest, and I do not mean England [as you know by now for me that's a term which should be used sparingly]...

Part of our problem in western, British-style democracies, is that politicians find it very hard to focus for longer than 5 years, and as things stand even that's looking ever more ambitious. Even so, that's probably better than lifetime periods in office.

I take your point that from your perspective it looks like British = English when it comes to Westminster MPs.
I would go further and say that their collective no.1 priority is London and its hinterland and much of the rest of the UK comes second. Some parts of the north of England especially come a very poor third, post-Thatcher.

Part of this London-centrism is probably connected to the fact that ambitious people from all over the UK head for London in their youth and become bedazzled by it. For all London's many faults, this Dick Whittington syndrome is at least understandable. Perhaps the main reason for London-centrism, however, has to be simple economics- London and its hinterland contribute a very large proportion of the total tax-take of the UK govt. They could not risk making an error the other way, ie neglecting London in favour of the rest of us!

I certainly do not consider that that situation is justifiable, but it's definitely not an English - Scottish - Welsh -N. Irish thing. It's London v the rest, and actually when you break it down we aren't even talking about the whole of London, just its main wealth-creating parts to the west, centre and City, plus their hinterlands. It's not personal, it's only business, to quote the Don.

It's actually quite remarkable that Scotland is so over-represented in the London Establishment when compared with the rest of the UK, and I'm not just talking about Westminster. This cannot be to do with oil, for it's at least two hundred years old. There has been a very strong link between London and Edinburgh in finance and law especially, but also in scientific research and so on, since the 18th century.

You don't seem to think that Edinburgh's [and elsewhere in Scotland's] well-established hordes of senior figures in the UK elite do very much for Scotland as a whole, and I have to defer on that, but it's surely not a question of nationality here. The English members of the same elite do very little for anyone else apart from themselves either! It seems to be a universal truth that once people become important as individuals [in their own eyes] the collective element of their beings becomes subjected by their egos. They'll look after what's in their own interests to look after, before they even think about the rest of us. Depressing, yes, but until someone comes up with a better system than democracy we're stuck with egocentric politicians...

One improvement I would make would be to build a new UK Parliament in say York [close to the UK's geographical centre] and, since modern communications technology allows it, reduce the number of MPs to say 100. Unfortunately that would be akin to asking turkeys to vote for christmas, but like the coalescing of economies unless technology goes into reverse gear I'm sure that it will eventually happen [not necessarily the York bit, the reduction to 100 MPs]. Eventually people are going to realise that we do not need close to 50K councillors, MEPs, MPs, MSPs etc to govern us. A couple of hundred could do the job, probably better, and cost 100 times less!

The course proposed by separatism's advoctes is to add yet more layers of politicians and their attendant bureaucracy and support staff in the name of local accountability. To me, aside form all the arguments about identity and long-term economic and strategic risks [which are by no means trivial] the economics of adding yet more bureaucrats and no doubt self-serving politicians to our collective ranks is economic madness- it could only have been dreamt up by politicians themselves. Small wonder then that they bang the drum for divisive notions such as Englishness, Scottishness, Londoners, etc louder than anyone else.
Language of the downturn 7:03pm on 22 Mar 2009 The MPs at Westminster who represent English / Welsh / N. Irish constituencies do not 'club together'. So England, Wales and N. Ireland do not have a separate voice determined by geography. Nor do Texas and the other US states under the US system.

I could get what your complaint is if it were the case that Westminster MPs voted on a regional basis, ie all eg London MPs had a separate pre-vote on individual issues and then voted as one bloc for London, or all English / Welsh MPs etc did likewise. Obviously in that case, England would get its MPs' will every time. I don't know of any such system anywhere in the world, but if it did exist it would be morally and practically indefensible, and you'd have me waving a tartan or whatever placard all the way to wherever you wanted, in order to protest against it.

My point on Texas was simply to illustrate a similar problem to Scotland-UK from a more objective standpoint- I assume that neither of us cares that much whether Texas remains part of the US or not. Of course, we should care, because if it were to split all hell could break loose, but we have little, I assume, emotional attachment to that situation. I was sort of hoping that it would help build bridges, but you appear determined to view all my posts as confrontational, I have no idea why!
Language of the downturn 12:36pm on 22 Mar 2009 1797 A-W

I know I said that you could have the last word, and you still can [not that you need my permission!], but...

Missing the point or not, Texas has a smaller percentage of the total US population and hence representation than Scotland does in the UK. Texas is as much dominated by the rest of the US as Scotland is by the rest of the UK [not very much, if at all, in both cases].

Why would Texas want to split from the US? You tell me! I guess it would have something to do with separatists lamenting the 'lack of a Texan voice' in the govt of the US etc. Such people do exist in Texas.
They also believe that they have this special identity apart from the rest of the US. It's utter nonsense, but there you go. Us rational human beings just have to tolerate these fanatics! It's part of what makes us British!!
Language of the downturn 09:21am on 22 Mar 2009 oldnat

Thanks for that. On Ireland, perhaps it was on another thread that I stated that in my opinion all the North Sea countries should move closer together, perhaps forming a parallel bloc to the EU. This would be both practical and theoretically sound, since the Scandinavian countries, Ireland and Britain have so much shared history and culture. In addition, we as the UK and Ireland have separately been on friendly terms with them since the Middle Ages. An important difference between Ireland and Scotland is that Ireland was conquered by Anglo-Normans and then British forces, whereas Scotland and the Scots were formed with / by a large number of Anglians ie English and as such we have always been one, it's only the labels English and Scottish which have made us seem different [for the benefit of first medieval, now some modern rulers]

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