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Posts Tagged ‘British Media’

The starting point for debating the Honours System currently, comes from the decision to remove the Knighthood awarded to Fred Goodwin during his time at the helm of RBS. Of course, RBS as we all now know collapsed into a pile of dog’s turd that had to be rescued with a £42 billion bailout by the taxpayer because of poor management.

The then ‘Sir Fred’ fought tooth and nail to hold on to a ridiculously generous pension arrangement on leaving RBS which he very reluctantly agreed to hand back half of, eventually. It is easy to vilify all Bankers but there is a case to be answered in a ‘narrow sense’ when it seems that employees of these institutions have enriched themselves greatly whilst the people who own them, the shareholders, have seen their investments fall in value. Whatever one may think, that game is surely truly up.

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I was quite struck by a couple of pieces in The Telegraph by Benedict Brogan. In the first of which he was giving his “take” on the tactics being employed by David Cameron to remain in power after the 2015 General Election.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100134556/why-wont-ministers-speak-up-for-david-cameron/

Whilst I found his article interesting and in a sense, “timely”, I am not too sure that I agree with it all in the sense that whilst for now, that may be an ‘intelligent guess’, reality means that as it is as all such things, a moving target or a “World in Motion…”, and how the game plays out over the next 3 years, may well be very different…

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With the UK currently having the rotating chair for the European Court of Human Rights and David Cameron visiting it to deliver a speech to all 47 members with the theme of reforming the way it operates, there is a fluttering in the Dove Cots of the “European Elite” ever prepared to defend their entrenched positions of privilege. As with many things, the actual “truth” behind the operation of the ECHR and our own, one suspects, very badly drafted Human Rights Act may well be fairly complex and difficult to unravel if left only to the Lawyers.

However, the political reality is all too apparent as the recent decision that the radical cleric Abu Qatada cannot be deported to Jordan where he comes from, is a case in point. David Cameron or even Ed Miliband if he were the current British Prime Minister, cannot ignore the political realities even when you warn that “Hard Cases make bad laws…”

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The other day, David Cameron gave a speech on the “Crisis in Capitalism” as has every other ‘Party Leader’ in recent times as they “struggle to explain” just what went wrong with the UK and even the Global Economy in recent times.

The real problem behind all of this may well be, that politicians are confusing the ‘What Happened’ with the previous held “assumptions” based upon class and politics that frankly, no longer apply in any sense at all… the very idea that “Tories are for treading on downtrodden workers” is no more relevant than that Labour are all for “Nationalising everything”, the world has moved on…

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The other day Ed Balls admitted that if Labour came to power they would not promise to reverse the cuts in public expenditure currently being made by the Coalition Government. Frankly, the only comment one can make to that is “About time !” The reality is if and when Labour next comes to power, the political weather and economic climate will have changed, inevitably.

Although right now both this and the World generally face some difficult financial issues, these are perhaps just symptoms of other problems rather than the core disease. For a country like the UK, we are probably looking at a long term decline that started during the First world War which coincides with the rise of the Labour Party. One could speculate that solving this decline could also coincide with its (Labour’s), decline just as Communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall.

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It is quite amusing to see the current furore in the Media over the SNP and a Referendum on “Scotland leaving the Union”. It is akin to the nonsense expressed by Germany and France over “preserving the Euro at any costs…”except apparently doing what is required immediately to do so. My question in both cases, keeping the Union with Scotland and keeping the Euro alive is WHY ?

If Scottish people are feeling so “inferior” to their English counterparts that the “only solution” in their minds is total Independence from the UK, then, so be it. If Germany is far too successful and therefore in effect impoverishes the “Southern Europeans”, why not split the Euro membership into two, it is only common sense after all. But politicians do get misled far too often for no doubt for well intentioned reasons but in the end mislead themselves…

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Yesterday, there was a report published by a self appointed committee into the question of changing the Law within the UK to allow assisted suicide. The committee was headed by Lord Faulkner and was set up by Dignity in Dying, a lobby group, and paid for by the author Sir Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease and is campaigning for changes to allow assisted suicide.

To that extent one may rightly argue that it represents a bias and therefore taints its conclusions in the same way that a “Tory Think Tank” publishing a report recommending that people should vote Conservative would. However and within all this lies something else to my mind, the whole discussion holds up a mirror to what is becoming a Narcissistic society that has lost touch not just with religious values but with the values that have underpinned humanity throughout the ages and regardless of time and place.

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Although it started with a piece by by John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday and him contemplating the shortly to open film on Margaret Thatcher starring Meryl Streep, it did set me to thinking about the whole concept of “Leadership” in a modern democratic society. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-a-missed-chance-to-tell-the-truth-about-mrs-t-6283694.html

It was a good article but if anything and looking at some of the comments posted to it which seemed to be rooted in past battles long since lost by the Left, my feeling is that it is far too soon to even make a half decent attempt to judge the significance of Margaret Thatcher or indeed any other recent politician. The reality is that if you try to do so, you are not debating “facts”, just unproven myths…

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I was slightly amused by Chris Huhne giving an opinion on the motives of the “Tory Right Wing” with regard to the EU the other day but more than that, I also read a number of articles on Der Spiegel http://www.spiegel.de/international/ with regard to the current Euro Crisis which gives an interesting insight to some German thinking on the whole thing.

What struck me about these articles and however ‘reasonable in tone’ they are, the authors completely miss any basic understanding of a “British Perspective” which has been shaped over a long period of time and is largely influenced by us being “island races”. By the same token, I don’t suspect that we can easily understand Continental Europe with its contiguous land borders either that have shaped their present day views in both peace and war.

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At this time of year, the weekend before Christmas and the New Year, the ‘Media’ is full of “End of Year Perspectives” of one sort or another which generally manage to be totally appalling as the Editorial Staff “Make for the XMAS Hills”. This will be followed by two weekend’s worth of “Sunday Papers” that contain no news and were largely constructed, weeks ago to cover the total absence of any staff on the news desks…all being off on holiday ‘jollies’ whilst the proprietors of the “Titles” still want an income – total bullshit !

To add to that we have the death of a “noted journalist who was an atheist” called Christopher Hitchens and is ‘intimately missed’ by all the other media luvvies, a guaranteed recipe for maudlin sentimentality over a largely mediocre talent if past experience is to go by. Where shall I start ? With the dead atheist of course…

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