View Full Version : The Empire Strikes Back - UK most powerful nation on Earth
Britain is now most powerful nation on earth
US toppled from No 1 slot as British influence enhances its 'soft power'
The empire is gone and we no longer rule the waves. But Britain is once again the most powerful nation on earth, according to a new survey, when it comes to "soft power". From Danny Boyle's inspiring Olympic opening ceremony, to 22 No 1 albums overseas, to Andy Murray's long hoped-for first Grand Slam title, Britain projects more positive influence around the world than any other nation.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-is-now-most-powerful-nation-on-earth-8326452.html
Soft power: is that anything like fuzzy math?
Soft power: is that anything like fuzzy math?
Not sure what you mean by fuzzy maths, so I can't say.
MellonColly
11-19-2012, 15:22
This is like The New Yorker calling the US the most powerful. If some news group other than your UK based one wrote this maybe I would believe it more :P
This is like The New Yorker calling the US the most powerful. If some news group other than your UK based one wrote this maybe I would believe it more :P
The Article is from a British Paper but the survey was carried out by an unbiased source :)
MellonColly
11-19-2012, 17:50
ya serves me right commenting before I read it :P
How much money did the UK send them!?!?!? :)
Divine Intervention
11-20-2012, 03:36
Yeah, its no surprise were the most powerful. How else would we be able to afford to allow so many people live the life of kings without actually working....as well as encouraging the most refugees & immigrants that can physically fit on a bout, so as to lavish them with more riches once they get here! no worries, still some hard working taxpayers at work to provide for it all!
personally i'd vote for norway with there 720 billion $ oil fund that they can spend should they choose to do so ;-) now thats a nice little nest egg for country to have... especially considering they only have 6 million people... $120k surplus per capita stored for bad times... mind you this is not part of their regular budget which is also running a surplus...
BladeEWG
11-20-2012, 05:43
personally i'd vote for norway with there 720 billion $ oil fund that they can spend should they choose to do so ;-) now thats a nice little nest egg for country to have... especially considering they only have 6 million people... $120k surplus per capita stored for bad times... mind you this is not part of their regular budget which is also running a surplus...
Huh? A budget that is actually running in the positive?
What a concept!
;)
MellonColly
11-20-2012, 08:06
someones gotta be lieing there :P
personally i'd vote for norway with there 720 billion $ oil fund that they can spend should they choose to do so ;-) now thats a nice little nest egg for country to have... especially considering they only have 6 million people... $120k surplus per capita stored for bad times... mind you this is not part of their regular budget which is also running a surplus...
actually there is only 5 017 518 of them but yeah the oil fund is worth around 700 billion us.
Producing 2.1M barrels of oil a day kinda helps to balance the budget ;-)
Budget surplus (+):
15% of GDP (2011 est.)
Divine Intervention
11-20-2012, 14:15
Norway is a socialist leaning country, right? No doubt they'll be in the shitter before this century (maybe even half? ) Is up.
Norway is a socialist leaning country, right? No doubt they'll be in the shitter before this century (maybe even half? ) Is up.
Have you been reading that work of fiction the Daily Mail again? :P
Divine Intervention
11-21-2012, 16:28
Have you been reading that work of fiction the Daily Mail again? :P
nope, ive simply begun seeing 30-40 percent + of my salary disappear to fund god awful government programmes. If I was in charge I'd vastly reduce spending and use that to fund tax breaks for the lower tax brackets (and not as we did by scaling back additional tax rate brackets). Currently studying tax for my job doesn't help with the attitude. All the unnecessary complexity and admin! thieving innocent hard workers at every corner!
nope, ive simply begun seeing 30-40 percent + of my salary disappear to fund god awful government programmes. If I was in charge I'd vastly reduce spending and use that to fund tax breaks for the lower tax brackets (and not as we did by scaling back additional tax rate brackets). Currently studying tax for my job doesn't help with the attitude. All the unnecessary complexity and admin! thieving innocent hard workers at every corner!
If you reduced spending that much you would end up with riots every week. London would be a warzone. Which government programs are particularly bad?
Divine Intervention
11-21-2012, 18:05
If you reduced spending that much you would end up with riots every week. London would be a warzone. Which government programs are particularly bad?
exactly. a culture of entitlement and assumption that the government will provide. changes would have to be made gradually obviously. but even then its so engrained one has to wonder, is there any hope for many of these people? So often Im going on my way to work / in shop / walking on streets and there are just so many people who I have no idea how they would survive in a professional, salary earning environment.
hmm things that are particularly bad? how about the Department for International Development. Cut the whole lot out. I dont buy this whole "Britain Brand Building" bullshit. Nor do I believe that people should be forced to help starving kids etc across the world. Why not increase Gift Aid benefits or something if the goverment wants people to help the 3rd world out?
Spending on military projects that are none of our business - Libya conflict, Syrian conflict support....if were gonna be helping out terrorists, why not start helping out Hamas against Israel too?
EU? I dont really care for all the "omg our trade will suffer with EU" argument...or the "we can work in EU now too and get equal benefits..."....Personally, for me, the possibility of staying as an independent country without having power centralised to a massive extent in a federalist state (with no real representation or oversight and a loss of national sovereignty) outweighs all possible economic benefits (and with the massive unnecessary spending and corruption at EU, one could argue about which way things weighed in terms of benefits). Not to mention theres a whole other world out there with whom we can trade with and with whom we have much closer ties to on so many levels if we wanted to start integrating.
Im sure there are many things that need to be changed economically in this country, but the fact that a social-cultural change needs to happen is even more obvious. We have too many people who's net contribution to society im just unsure about. Although I guess you could argue that they do bring in valuable revenue through purchase of cigarettes & alchohol on which they pay tax :unsure: etc etc
Btw Will, have you read the book "Jennifer Government"? Highly recommend it. Its somewhat a dig against anti-big government people, but the irony is, i actually quite liked the vision it proposed as opposed to what big government might entail in a dystopian future :D
exactly. a culture of entitlement and assumption that the government will provide. changes would have to be made gradually obviously. but even then its so engrained one has to wonder, is there any hope for many of these people? So often Im going on my way to work / in shop / walking on streets and there are just so many people who I have no idea how they would survive in a professional, salary earning environment.
hmm things that are particularly bad? how about the Department for International Development. Cut the whole lot out. I dont buy this whole "Britain Brand Building" bullshit. Nor do I believe that people should be forced to help starving kids etc across the world. Why not increase Gift Aid benefits or something if the goverment wants people to help the 3rd world out?
Spending on military projects that are none of our business - Libya conflict, Syrian conflict support....if were gonna be helping out terrorists, why not start helping out Hamas against Israel too?
EU? I dont really care for all the "omg our trade will suffer with EU" argument...or the "we can work in EU now too and get equal benefits..."....Personally, for me, the possibility of staying as an independent country without having power centralised to a massive extent in a federalist state (with no real representation or oversight and a loss of national sovereignty) outweighs all possible economic benefits (and with the massive unnecessary spending and corruption at EU, one could argue about which way things weighed in terms of benefits). Not to mention theres a whole other world out there with whom we can trade with and with whom we have much closer ties to on so many levels if we wanted to start integrating.
Im sure there are many things that need to be changed economically in this country, but the fact that a social-cultural change needs to happen is even more obvious. We have too many people who's net contribution to society im just unsure about. Although I guess you could argue that they do bring in valuable revenue through purchase of cigarettes & alchohol on which they pay tax :unsure: etc etc
Btw Will, have you read the book "Jennifer Government"? Highly recommend it. Its somewhat a dig against anti-big government people, but the irony is, i actually quite liked the vision it proposed as opposed to what big government might entail in a dystopian future :D
I've heard of it but not read it.
Can't say I disagree with you much on where to cut spending, though I'm more pro-EU.
Divine Intervention
11-21-2012, 19:31
I've heard of it but not read it.
Can't say I disagree with you much on where to cut spending, though I'm more pro-EU.
Oh, and I'm also anti-green energy subsidising. Its all a big scam IMO and a way to rinse the tax payers and funnel money into the hands of vested interests. This is coming from some one who spent several months working for a green-tech start up. I have no problems with supporting entrepreneurship and enterprise, but supporting an industry on the tax payers back seems a little too left wing for me.
Will, I'm surprised that you're not more anti-EU considering that I remember you as being a British patriot? Do you want to see UK become some little bit of a massive state? Sure we might be able to "compete" more with China and USA as a whole economy...but at what expense? To have our money being spent on some unaccountable project in some back water part of europe? To have our voice have such an inconsequential voice in the greater manner of things? How can such different people be represented by one unanimous body? Obviously were suffering massive sociol engineering to make us some homogeneous group and have us lose our sense of identity, but until that fated day comes....should we not be fighting for whats in our best intersets?
btw, Croydon by-elections happening atm, funny thing...my mum wanted to vote National Front lol. Had to explain why its not really a good idea xD
Oh, and I'm also anti-green energy subsidising. Its all a big scam IMO and a way to rinse the tax payers and funnel money into the hands of vested interests. This is coming from some one who spent several months working for a green-tech start up. I have no problems with supporting entrepreneurship and enterprise, but supporting an industry on the tax payers back seems a little too left wing for me.
Will, I'm surprised that you're not more anti-EU considering that I remember you as being a British patriot? Do you want to see UK become some little bit of a massive state? Sure we might be able to "compete" more with China and USA as a whole economy...but at what expense? To have our money being spent on some unaccountable project in some back water part of europe? To have our voice have such an inconsequential voice in the greater manner of things? How can such different people be represented by one unanimous body? Obviously were suffering massive sociol engineering to make us some homogeneous group and have us lose our sense of identity, but until that fated day comes....should we not be fighting for whats in our best intersets?
btw, Croydon by-elections happening atm, funny thing...my mum wanted to vote National Front lol. Had to explain why its not really a good idea xD
Tell her to spoil the ballot :) Did you vote for a police commisioner?
Patriotism is a waste of time unless we somehow bring back the empire, and there's more chance of Poland conquering Russia than that.
As to the EU, I agree there's plenty wrong with it, but the UK is too small to be credible standing on our own, and the other option is to become 51st state. Sod that, better the French and Germans than the madness that runs rampant in the US. (no offense to the yanks here btw) We either become:
1) Insignificant Island
2) Major player in EU
3) Officialy a US colony (arguable we're already one unofficialy)
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 14:36
Tell her to spoil the ballot :) Did you vote for a police commisioner?
Patriotism is a waste of time unless we somehow bring back the empire, and there's more chance of Poland conquering Russia than that.
As to the EU, I agree there's plenty wrong with it, but the UK is too small to be credible standing on our own, and the other option is to become 51st state. Sod that, better the French and Germans than the madness that runs rampant in the US. (no offense to the yanks here btw) We either become:
1) Insignificant Island
2) Major player in EU
3) Officialy a US colony (arguable we're already one unofficialy)
Well Poland did conquer Russia for a tiny bit of their history :p im sure theyre still masturbating over it xD
Well what about countries like Australia/Canada/New Zealand? Mexico? There are shitload of countries in the world and im sure theyre not butthurt about being "insignificant". Who cares if were no longer credible. Hey, hopefully that stops the legions of benefit seekers and political asylum seekers coming in here. Borders should be closed. Only immigrants allowed in should be either v.skilled ones or high net worth investors (thats how my family got here :p). Theres all this talk about local population not willing to do the jobs that low skilled immigrants are willing to....well that seems to imply our local population is somehow highly 100percent skilled. It is anything but that.
A sense of pride in community & society needs to be installed in these people. They should be forced to work for charities / doing public works if they want to continue receiving their benefits and are somehow unsuccessfull in their job search. or something along those lines. But then again im sure theres some EU Human Rights bill that will deem that against their human rights of doing only 1-2 hours worth of job searching a week, collecting benefits then playing Xbox rest of time.
Personally I have no idea how people can stay on the dole. When I graduated University I had no job lined up and spent ages looking for one. I was also living alone and spent all the money left to me on various recreations. When I ran out of money I applied to job seekers allowance whilst still searching for graduate jobs....I was on that for a whole 2-3 weeks before I got so fed up that I found a flexible PT job on an OK income. After working in that I found a FT one afterwards...the whole process of always needing to go the the job centre and deal with their massive ineptitude and beauracracy was mind blowing numbing. I felt I had a better grasp on the employment market than some of the people working there. Who couldn't even type without spelling errors tbh.
Anyway, I guess you could say im quite the isolationist. Switzerland is loving it. Why can't we? The people of the EU are too diverge in their beliefs and opinions to be able to have as a result a unified policy on things such FA etc. and i 100percent sure that as soon as UK loses any chance of leaving and are forced to stay, people will start shitting all over us inside the EU too. Major player my ***.
I dont see why we cant try and rebuild the ties with NZ/Aus/Canada. Atleast those are countries we are really close to rather than French and Germans.
Well Poland did conquer Russia for a tiny bit of their history :p im sure theyre still masturbating over it xD
Well what about countries like Australia/Canada/New Zealand? Mexico? There are shitload of countries in the world and im sure theyre not butthurt about being "insignificant". Who cares if were no longer credible. Hey, hopefully that stops the legions of benefit seekers and political asylum seekers coming in here. Borders should be closed. Only immigrants allowed in should be either v.skilled ones or high net worth investors (thats how my family got here :p). Theres all this talk about local population not willing to do the jobs that low skilled immigrants are willing to....well that seems to imply our local population is somehow highly 100percent skilled. It is anything but that.
A sense of pride in community & society needs to be installed in these people. They should be forced to work for charities / doing public works if they want to continue receiving their benefits and are somehow unsuccessfull in their job search. or something along those lines. But then again im sure theres some EU Human Rights bill that will deem that against their human rights of doing only 1-2 hours worth of job searching a week, collecting benefits then playing Xbox rest of time.
Personally I have no idea how people can stay on the dole. When I graduated University I had no job lined up and spent ages looking for one. I was also living alone and spent all the money left to me on various recreations. When I ran out of money I applied to job seekers allowance whilst still searching for graduate jobs....I was on that for a whole 2-3 weeks before I got so fed up that I found a flexible PT job on an OK income. After working in that I found a FT one afterwards...the whole process of always needing to go the the job centre and deal with their massive ineptitude and beauracracy was mind blowing numbing. I felt I had a better grasp on the employment market than some of the people working there. Who couldn't even type without spelling errors tbh.
Anyway, I guess you could say im quite the isolationist. Switzerland is loving it. Why can't we? The people of the EU are too diverge in their beliefs and opinions to be able to have as a result a unified policy on things such FA etc. and i 100percent sure that as soon as UK loses any chance of leaving and are forced to stay, people will start shitting all over us inside the EU too. Major player my ***.
I dont see why we cant try and rebuild the ties with NZ/Aus/Canada. Atleast those are countries we are really close to rather than French and Germans.
NZ/Aus/Canada are closer to the US nowadays than us. Unless we can somehow outbid the yanks I doubt they'll be that bothered about closer ties.
Most of the other "insignificant" countries don't quite have the history we do, and our government just lovesto poke it's nose where it's not needed.
As far as the "immigrants do the work british people don't want to do", this is largely crap. The problem is that the jobs don't pay enough to have any kind of decent living standards on. Combine this with people looking down their noses at you if you don't earn a ton of money, and it's not surprising people stay on benefits. How many cleaners could be employed on the salary of a banker? and who does the most good for society, the banker or the cleaners?
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 15:38
NZ/Aus/Canada are closer to the US nowadays than us. Unless we can somehow outbid the yanks I doubt they'll be that bothered about closer ties.
Most of the other "insignificant" countries don't quite have the history we do, and our government just lovesto poke it's nose where it's not needed.
As far as the "immigrants do the work british people don't want to do", this is largely crap. The problem is that the jobs don't pay enough to have any kind of decent living standards on. Combine this with people looking down their noses at you if you don't earn a ton of money, and it's not surprising people stay on benefits. How many cleaners could be employed on the salary of a banker? and who does the most good for society, the banker or the cleaners?
well thats the thing. why do people feel entitled to have some sort of decent living standard if they dont work hard enough? and decent standards shouldnt be available on benefits. survival should be available. thats about it. no spare money for things like TVs, xbox, gifts, holidays etc. nothing above survival. why should others pay for it?
salary is given based on contribution to the firm not on contribution to society. theres a profit motivation. cleaners produce 0 profit and are a cost centre hence aren't paid much (not to mention most of them are probably gov workers?). Bankers are profit makers (theoretically) for their firms and hence get paid more. Not that I support the banking industry in general....but salary should be based on how much fiscal benefit youre giving to your salary payer.
Besides, im sure if there were less people willing to take those poor *** cleaner salaries (ie no EU & rest of the world unqualified flood), theyd be higher due to a more constricted labour market and people would be more willing to take them up.
well thats the thing. why do people feel entitled to have some sort of decent living standard if they dont work hard enough? and decent standards shouldnt be available on benefits. survival should be available. thats about it. no spare money for things like TVs, xbox, gifts, holidays etc. nothing above survival. why should others pay for it?
salary is given based on contribution to the firm not on contribution to society. theres a profit motivation. cleaners produce 0 profit and are a cost centre hence aren't paid much (not to mention most of them are probably gov workers?). Bankers are profit makers (theoretically) for their firms and hence get paid more. Not that I support the banking industry in general....but salary should be based on how much fiscal benefit youre giving to your salary payer.
Besides, im sure if there were less people willing to take those poor *** cleaner salaries (ie no EU & rest of the world unqualified flood), theyd be higher due to a more constricted labour market and people would be more willing to take them up.
While it's technically true that cleaners don't produce profit, it's arguable that they save tons of money by removing issues that would cost even more to clean up. Take a hospital. Full time cleaner on minimum wage costs about 12k/year. However, if they weren't there, you'd get major problems with infections which would cost far more in both costs to clean up + compensation claims/fines. You can't measure value to society (or even a company) based on purely how much money someone makes directly. There are other factors in play.
As far as benefits are concerned, I'm increasingly convinced that the system is in effect a massive bribe to the "underclass" (chavs and such) since if you reduced them to subsistence level only, crime would skyrocket and rioting would replace jeremy kyle as the new form of entertainment.
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 16:02
While it's technically true that cleaners don't produce profit, it's arguable that they save tons of money by removing issues that would cost even more to clean up. Take a hospital. Full time cleaner on minimum wage costs about 12k/year. However, if they weren't there, you'd get major problems with infections which would cost far more in both costs to clean up + compensation claims/fines. You can't measure value to society (or even a company) based on purely how much money someone makes directly. There are other factors in play.
As far as benefits are concerned, I'm increasingly convinced that the system is in effect a massive bribe to the "underclass" (chavs and such) since if you reduced them to subsistence level only, crime would skyrocket and rioting would replace jeremy kyle as the new form of entertainment.
Yes Government spending is a massive bribe. Thats why politics are so disgusting. Governments do what they can to stay in power rather than progress the country. Maybe if they were forced to work on some nation wide programmes all day long theyd be too tired to then go and riot. dunno. The culture and attitude of this nation has gone down the shitter. Maybe the answer is to stop all immigration except that from China where people are super hardworking, let them interbreed overhere and eventually maybe a hardworking attitude will be instilled in the population. Theyre attempting to do socio-engineering either way, might as well do it with people for whom laziness is a sin :p
Yes Government spending is a massive bribe. Thats why politics are so disgusting. Governments do what they can to stay in power rather than progress the country. Maybe if they were forced to work on some nation wide programmes all day long theyd be too tired to then go and riot. dunno. The culture and attitude of this nation has gone down the shitter. Maybe the answer is to stop all immigration except that from China where people are super hardworking, let them interbreed overhere and eventually maybe a hardworking attitude will be instilled in the population. Theyre attempting to do socio-engineering either way, might as well do it with people for whom laziness is a sin :p
You'd be just as likely to make the chinese lazy:p
Though I don't think they're so much as chasing votes as simply having no idea what to do. Way i see it, you either engage in a program of wide scale training + employment by the government, as you say on public works and such, or you have a policy of sterilisation of the underclass, which while it would probably work very well in reducing costs, any government trying it would be lynched. So they take the third option - pay them off.
Current government is about as inept as it gets, "Welfare Reform" which will piss off the chavs, and cutting police spending so next time they do some shopping with bricks, there aren't any police to stop it and either the country collapses or we get martial law declared.
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 16:28
You'd be just as likely to make the chinese lazy:p
Though I don't think they're so much as chasing votes as simply having no idea what to do. Way i see it, you either engage in a program of wide scale training + employment by the government, as you say on public works and such, or you have a policy of sterilisation of the underclass, which while it would probably work very well in reducing costs, any government trying it would be lynched. So they take the third option - pay them off.
Current government is about as inept as it gets, "Welfare Reform" which will piss off the chavs, and cutting police spending so next time they do some shopping with bricks, there aren't any police to stop it and either the country collapses or we get martial law declared.
who knows, there are some conspiracy theories abound at the slow attempt to whittle down the underclass through flourinated drinking water and other such similar theories! The problem with eugenics, sterilisation of the society undesirables etc is that it will invariable end up in an attack on all remaining intelligent opposition to the powers that are trying to gain total control and power over us. Dont agree with government party line? Boom - > sterilized or what have you not, even if youre a valuable contributing member. etc etc.
So yeah...society & this country is ****ed up :( but theres no where too run sadly. Switzerland wont have anyone :( WHAT TO DOOOOOOOO
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 16:38
But yeah, back to the matter at hand - were already paying too much of our hard earned money supporting **** tards & corrupt politicians here in UK to afford to pay for the additional **** tards & corrupt politicians in the EU.
Unless of course we use the Guy Verhofstadt way of thinking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNMi8wI-enM
honestly this guy disgusts me so much.
But yeah, back to the matter at hand - were already paying too much of our hard earned money supporting **** tards & corrupt politicians here in UK to afford to pay for the additional **** tards & corrupt politicians in the EU.
Unless of course we use the Guy Verhofstadt way of thinking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNMi8wI-enM
honestly this guy disgusts me so much.
****, someone should have put Nigel Farage in the room with him. That would have been quality :p
Divine Intervention
11-22-2012, 17:17
****, someone should have put Nigel Farage in the room with him. That would have been quality :p
I went to school with Nigel Farages son lol. Oh and instead of voting National Front, I got my mum to vote for UKIP for the by elections with me lol. Although the guy just seemed to be a compromise minority candidate. Most of his leaflet was about being a local guy, waiting on platform X for train and taking bus Y to work and shopping at centre Z etc lol ah well.
but yeah, how can you not like him :p? thats what the EU is about. decreasing national sovereignty & local obligations, to be replaced by some massive beauracracy of highly paid eurocrats. What im most surprised is that nations who are vehemently nationalist and patriotic such as the polish & croats are rushing headlong into the EU :-/.
I went to school with Nigel Farages son lol. Oh and instead of voting National Front, I got my mum to vote for UKIP for the by elections with me lol. Although the guy just seemed to be a compromise minority candidate. Most of his leaflet was about being a local guy, waiting on platform X for train and taking bus Y to work and shopping at centre Z etc lol ah well.
but yeah, how can you not like him :p? thats what the EU is about. decreasing national sovereignty & local obligations, to be replaced by some massive beauracracy of highly paid eurocrats. What im most surprised is that nations who are vehemently nationalist and patriotic such as the polish & croats are rushing headlong into the EU :-/.
Speaking of UKIP, looks like being a member is grounds to have your kids taken away "because you're a member of an anti-immigration party"
Divine Intervention
11-24-2012, 20:01
Speaking of UKIP, looks like being a member is grounds to have your kids taken away "because you're a member of an anti-immigration party"
only if its at the discretion of pinko-commie multiculturalism spouting bastards :))) i think UKIPs policy of promoting one British culture is awesome :)
nope, ive simply begun seeing 30-40 percent + of my salary disappear to fund god awful government programmes. If I was in charge I'd vastly reduce spending and use that to fund tax breaks for the lower tax brackets (and not as we did by scaling back additional tax rate brackets). Currently studying tax for my job doesn't help with the attitude. All the unnecessary complexity and admin! thieving innocent hard workers at every corner!
Producing 2.1M barrels of oil a day kinda helps to balance the budget ;-)
Budget surplus (+):
15% of GDP (2011 est.)
exactly. a culture of entitlement and assumption that the government will provide. changes would have to be made gradually obviously. but even then its so engrained one has to wonder, is there any hope for many of these people? So often Im going on my way to work / in shop / walking on streets and there are just so many people who I have no idea how they would survive in a professional, salary earning environment.
hmm things that are particularly bad? how about the Department for International Development. Cut the whole lot out. I dont buy this whole "Britain Brand Building" bullshit. Nor do I believe that people should be forced to help starving kids etc across the world. Why not increase Gift Aid benefits or something if the goverment wants people to help the 3rd world out?
Spending on military projects that are none of our business - Libya conflict, Syrian conflict support....if were gonna be helping out terrorists, why not start helping out Hamas against Israel too?
EU? I dont really care for all the "omg our trade will suffer with EU" argument...or the "we can work in EU now too and get equal benefits..."....Personally, for me, the possibility of staying as an independent country without having power centralised to a massive extent in a federalist state (with no real representation or oversight and a loss of national sovereignty) outweighs all possible economic benefits (and with the massive unnecessary spending and corruption at EU, one could argue about which way things weighed in terms of benefits). Not to mention theres a whole other world out there with whom we can trade with and with whom we have much closer ties to on so many levels if we wanted to start integrating.
Im sure there are many things that need to be changed economically in this country, but the fact that a social-cultural change needs to happen is even more obvious. We have too many people who's net contribution to society im just unsure about. Although I guess you could argue that they do bring in valuable revenue through purchase of cigarettes & alchohol on which they pay tax :unsure: etc etc
Btw Will, have you read the book "Jennifer Government"? Highly recommend it. Its somewhat a dig against anti-big government people, but the irony is, i actually quite liked the vision it proposed as opposed to what big government might entail in a dystopian future :D
Oh, and I'm also anti-green energy subsidising. Its all a big scam IMO and a way to rinse the tax payers and funnel money into the hands of vested interests. This is coming from some one who spent several months working for a green-tech start up. I have no problems with supporting entrepreneurship and enterprise, but supporting an industry on the tax payers back seems a little too left wing for me.
Will, I'm surprised that you're not more anti-EU considering that I remember you as being a British patriot? Do you want to see UK become some little bit of a massive state? Sure we might be able to "compete" more with China and USA as a whole economy...but at what expense? To have our money being spent on some unaccountable project in some back water part of europe? To have our voice have such an inconsequential voice in the greater manner of things? How can such different people be represented by one unanimous body? Obviously were suffering massive sociol engineering to make us some homogeneous group and have us lose our sense of identity, but until that fated day comes....should we not be fighting for whats in our best intersets?
btw, Croydon by-elections happening atm, funny thing...my mum wanted to vote National Front lol. Had to explain why its not really a good idea xD
Well Poland did conquer Russia for a tiny bit of their history :p im sure theyre still masturbating over it xD
Well what about countries like Australia/Canada/New Zealand? Mexico? There are shitload of countries in the world and im sure theyre not butthurt about being "insignificant". Who cares if were no longer credible. Hey, hopefully that stops the legions of benefit seekers and political asylum seekers coming in here. Borders should be closed. Only immigrants allowed in should be either v.skilled ones or high net worth investors (thats how my family got here :p). Theres all this talk about local population not willing to do the jobs that low skilled immigrants are willing to....well that seems to imply our local population is somehow highly 100percent skilled. It is anything but that.
A sense of pride in community & society needs to be installed in these people. They should be forced to work for charities / doing public works if they want to continue receiving their benefits and are somehow unsuccessfull in their job search. or something along those lines. But then again im sure theres some EU Human Rights bill that will deem that against their human rights of doing only 1-2 hours worth of job searching a week, collecting benefits then playing Xbox rest of time.
Personally I have no idea how people can stay on the dole. When I graduated University I had no job lined up and spent ages looking for one. I was also living alone and spent all the money left to me on various recreations. When I ran out of money I applied to job seekers allowance whilst still searching for graduate jobs....I was on that for a whole 2-3 weeks before I got so fed up that I found a flexible PT job on an OK income. After working in that I found a FT one afterwards...the whole process of always needing to go the the job centre and deal with their massive ineptitude and beauracracy was mind blowing numbing. I felt I had a better grasp on the employment market than some of the people working there. Who couldn't even type without spelling errors tbh.
Anyway, I guess you could say im quite the isolationist. Switzerland is loving it. Why can't we? The people of the EU are too diverge in their beliefs and opinions to be able to have as a result a unified policy on things such FA etc. and i 100percent sure that as soon as UK loses any chance of leaving and are forced to stay, people will start shitting all over us inside the EU too. Major player my ***.
I dont see why we cant try and rebuild the ties with NZ/Aus/Canada. Atleast those are countries we are really close to rather than French and Germans.
NZ/Aus/Canada are closer to the US nowadays than us. Unless we can somehow outbid the yanks I doubt they'll be that bothered about closer ties.
Most of the other "insignificant" countries don't quite have the history we do, and our government just lovesto poke it's nose where it's not needed.
As far as the "immigrants do the work british people don't want to do", this is largely crap. The problem is that the jobs don't pay enough to have any kind of decent living standards on. Combine this with people looking down their noses at you if you don't earn a ton of money, and it's not surprising people stay on benefits. How many cleaners could be employed on the salary of a banker? and who does the most good for society, the banker or the cleaners?
well thats the thing. why do people feel entitled to have some sort of decent living standard if they dont work hard enough? and decent standards shouldnt be available on benefits. survival should be available. thats about it. no spare money for things like TVs, xbox, gifts, holidays etc. nothing above survival. why should others pay for it?
salary is given based on contribution to the firm not on contribution to society. theres a profit motivation. cleaners produce 0 profit and are a cost centre hence aren't paid much (not to mention most of them are probably gov workers?). Bankers are profit makers (theoretically) for their firms and hence get paid more. Not that I support the banking industry in general....but salary should be based on how much fiscal benefit youre giving to your salary payer.
Besides, im sure if there were less people willing to take those poor *** cleaner salaries (ie no EU & rest of the world unqualified flood), theyd be higher due to a more constricted labour market and people would be more willing to take them up.
While it's technically true that cleaners don't produce profit, it's arguable that they save tons of money by removing issues that would cost even more to clean up. Take a hospital. Full time cleaner on minimum wage costs about 12k/year. However, if they weren't there, you'd get major problems with infections which would cost far more in both costs to clean up + compensation claims/fines. You can't measure value to society (or even a company) based on purely how much money someone makes directly. There are other factors in play.
As far as benefits are concerned, I'm increasingly convinced that the system is in effect a massive bribe to the "underclass" (chavs and such) since if you reduced them to subsistence level only, crime would skyrocket and rioting would replace jeremy kyle as the new form of entertainment.
only if its at the discretion of pinko-commie multiculturalism spouting bastards :))) i think UKIPs policy of promoting one British culture is awesome :)
I will just be damned, Anton, now that yuo are finished with University, you have turned conservative.
Will has not.
You guys could very well be referring to the USA in many of your comments and arguments.
I will just be damned, Anton, now that yuo are finished with University, you have turned conservative.
Will has not.
You guys could very well be referring to the USA in many of your comments and arguments.
err..... why did you dig this up?
also what was the other thread deleted for? no socialist arguments were posted.
Divine Intervention
12-15-2012, 15:53
err..... why did you dig this up?
also what was the other thread deleted for? no socialist arguments were posted.
but had they been, deletion would have been both warranted and welcomed :p
but had they been, deletion would have been both warranted and welcomed :p
Depends on whether you think assault rifles should be available in Tesco. :P
Divine Intervention
12-15-2012, 17:17
Depends on whether you think assault rifles should be available in Tesco. :P
maybe Harrods! With better door security :p
well the UK maybe a unique case... a ban on alcohol might save more lives there than strict gun control ;-)
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