Monday 22 November 2004

This is what's wrong with Britain

I've just received the latest copy of the journal of a UK-wide professional body. Not that I'm hunting, but, as one does, I had a glance at the job adverts. As well as one role in Paris, there's a job in each of: York, Coventry, Suffolk, Northants, Lincoln and Nottinghamshire. There are another sixteen vacancies in the Home Counties and twenty-nine in London. So every single job advertised in the UK is in the southern half of the country and 88% are in London or its surrounding counties. I simply don't believe that this is the result of market forces. It's something to do with the way we're governed.

4 comments:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Stuart
-"to say five complementary things to Stewart or never to post to the blog again" 
 
Mmmmm...you only managed one (kind of). Are you gonna shut up now?

28 November 2004, 21:13:48 GMT
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Stewfart
The supreme web-being wisely sayeth: "..for the discussion is becoming unpleasing in the Eyes of the Lord." 
 
The wrath and displeasure of the Supreme web being (hereinafter the SWB) is righteous terrible unto me. I will know nothing but fear and trembling when frequenting this blog. 
 
Yea, though I wander from blog to blog no thing will please me, for I have incurred the wrath of the SWB. The whole internet will be nothing as but a desert, and though I might wander through its barren wastes for fourty years I will find no water nor any sustenance, save but those things the SWB might from time to time provideth for me. And yea verily, they will be meat good and I shall fall on them hungrily but lo these things will sustain me. 
 
Verily, the SWB will reveal himself to me whilst I walk alone in the barren wastes, being as the SWB will use multitudinous traditional methods for the purpose, these being but not restricted to, bushes that burn but are not consumed, pillars of fire burning by no visible source of fuel, yea, not even natural gas. For verily the SWB shows but contempt for the advocates of global warming and they will fall into his fires and be consumed. 
 
I am but a frail mortal creature and subject to the sin of pride, thinking in my ignorance that I knoweth all things, but in reality being subject to the corruption of the flesh, and no more knowledgeable than a swaddled babe. 
 
I offer penance unto the SWB, this being to say five complementary things to Stewart or never to post to the blog again, the first of these five being[1].. 
 
Stewart sayeth in good humour." It may well be the title of my blog," 
 
[1]I will visit this thing during my web travails, for it must indeed be a marvel. Composing as it might many themes meat and good for those of libertarian disposition. And I will indeed seize these topics and thrash them to and fro like a dog with a bone, and yea verily, the truth will come forth. And it will be pleasing unto the SWB.

28 November 2004, 19:21:56 GMT
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David Farrer
I am awaiting a remittance. I will have to wait a gey long time. 
 
That's correct I'm afraid. I'm still waiting for my own earnings to start flowing in.

28 November 2004, 18:53:52 GMT
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Stuart
-"freelance troll" 
 
I like that. It may well be the title of my blog, if I can ever be arsed. 
 
Just cos you are in the WTO doesn't mean that you do not face significant barriers to trade from fellow members. Ask Brazilian, Indian and Australian farmers and textile producers. 
 
-"leads a reasonable person to conclude that he is very much on the totalitarian spectrum himself." 
 
Au contraire, I am of a liberal, centrist persuasion; centre-right if you want to be precise. Some would even classify me as a libertarian, but I reject the label as I have encountered too many "libertarians" with repugnant opinions. I strongly oppose totalitarians. Unfortunately there are many extremist contributors to this site. 
 
-"I am led to the conclusion, Stewart is employed by the blog master to generate discussion" 
 
I am awaiting a remittance. I will have to wait a gey long time.

28 November 2004, 14:57:58 GMT
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David Farrer said...

bill paterson
It being the sabbath, let us leave Berwick D.C. in abeyance for the discussion is becoming unpleasing in the Eyes of the Lord. Let us open our Web reading at Gene Expression and contemplate the wisdom therein. Let us, in particular, reflect upon an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible characteristic (or not, as the case may be). We find therein reference unto a study of the difference in the size of the balls, according to whether our brethren are of the tribe of Ham or Shem or whomsoever. The study, it saith, was undertaken by R.V. Short.

28 November 2004, 14:55:48 GMT
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Stewfart
Stewart says:"No, but their government could perfectly legally put up significant barriers to trade." 
 
The EU government could do no such thing, the EU, all members of the EU, the US and China, most South East Asian countries are members of the WTO. The organisation that works to abolish trade barriers. 
 
Stewart says:"Leaving the EU would make trading on the mainland a lot more difficult." 
 
So obviously this statement is bollocks too. 
 
Stewart says:"Don't be a Nazi apologist." 
 
But everything Stewart says, apart from being demonstrably wrong, leads a reasonable person to conclude that he is very much on the totalitarian spectrum himself. 
 
Stewart says:"I would strongly advise against you starting a one-man campaign to change dictionary and encyclopaedia entries." 
 
Which is an activity Stewart positively revels in. For Stewart, "words mean just exactly what he wants them to mean, nothing more, nothing less." 
 
I am led to the conclusion, Stewart is employed by the blog master to generate discussion, on the other hand he could be a freelance troll.

28 November 2004, 12:31:07 GMT
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Stuart
-"Do you really think that German companies would refuse to trade with us if we were to leave the EU?" 
 
No, but their government could perfectly legally put up significant barriers to trade. 
 
Leaving the EU would make trading on the mainland a lot more difficult.

28 November 2004, 10:26:04 GMT
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Stuart
In addition to removing barriers to trade the purpose of the EU is to prevent us ever going to war with each other again. 
 
Revisionist theories about the Nazis nearly always end in tears. Revising almost always means apologising. 
 
Don't be a Nazi apologist. 
 
Nowadays the nasty nationalists are not in Germany; they are in England in the UKIP, BNP and Respect. They all share contempt for the peace-promoting, centrist EU.

27 November 2004, 17:50:54 GMT
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David Farrer said...

eu-Serf
Oh and Stuart 
 
The EU is absolutely nothing to doing with listening to our trading partners. 
 
British companies and individuals trade with continental European individuals and companies, not with their politicians. Successful traders are always listening to their customers and trading partners. They do not need 100.000 pages of useless regulations in order to do so.  
 
Do you really think that German companies would refuse to trade with us if we were to leave the EU?

27 November 2004, 16:56:59 GMT
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eu-Serf
Stuart 
 
Actually I do not think that the Nazis were Fascists. They were something much nastier all together. If you compare them to all the other fascist regimes such as Mussolini's Italy and Franco's Spain, you will see that a "normal" fascist country was just nasty, not totally psycotic. 
 
I also think that Fascism is alive and well today (See Putin's Russia) whereas Nazism is dead and buried.

27 November 2004, 16:54:03 GMT
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Stuart
-"words have meanings and ... those meanings change" 
 
Agreed, and for that very reason, very, very, very few people would agree with your statement: "I am saying that the Nazis were not fascists..." 
 
I would strongly advise against you starting a one-man campaign to change dictionary and encyclopaedia entries. 
 
You have already strayed on to rather distasteful territory by denying the forerunners to the Holocaust camps. Without the Cuban or South African predecessor concentration camps the Nazis would not have had a model to develop.

26 November 2004, 15:46:39 GMT
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David Farrer said...




bill paterson
Stuart, few of us have met anyone who was responsible for the Boer War concentration camps. They must surely be long dead. It was a horror story of incompetence and irresponsibility, and if you want to call it a war crime, I am not inclined to argue. But the camps were NOT what Hitler ran under the same name: same label, different thing. My point was that words have meanings and that those meanings change; moreover, although there are linguists who deny it, some of those changes are brought about quite deliberately, as in the two examples I cited. So to be clear, I am saying that the Nazis were not fascists, in that the Nazis were infinitely more evil and destructive. The fascists shared quite a lot with the Nazis, including the background in conventional socialism, the WWI experience, and the contempt for liberal and conservative political thought and for democracy. In other words, they were both sets of political heretics on the radical left - both loathsome,of course, but to very different degrees They differed enormously too: for example, the founding fascists included a disproportionately high number of jews, and the fascists had no interest in anti-semitic propaganda, robbery and murder until Il Duce decided to suck up to Hitler in the late thirties. Again, my point is about labels: if they obscure differences and suggest false similarities, they are best abandoned. If the labels in question stem from Hitler and Stalin, why would anyone expect them to have merit?

26 November 2004, 14:42:55 GMT
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Stuart
Bill 
 
Are you actually trying to tell us that the Nazis were not fascists? Or that the British Boer war camps were not concentration camps? 
 
Come off it! It never ceases to amaze me how many apologists there are for British war crimes. The Germans have learnt their lesson; it seems the British never will. 
 
I said "English nationalists" because I have yet to encounter a Welshman or a Scot who is proud of being a party to British war crimes.

26 November 2004, 13:16:05 GMT
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bill paterson
Come off it. The British (not the English) used concentration camps in the Boer War, but it was just clever Nazi propaganda to call their camps, whose purpose was quite different, by the same name. 
Similarly, if you call the Nazis, or the WWII Japanese, "fascists", you are using an old Soviet communist propaganda name.

26 November 2004, 11:58:35 GMT
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Stuart
I have no idea where that stupid smiling face came from: it should read "1898".

26 November 2004, 11:16:06 GMT