Politics

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rockfreak
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Re: Politics

Post by rockfreak »

Freaky does it again. Another letter in today's Grauniad (9 Oct) under the main heading "Contrast egg throwing with Tory personal attacks".
rockfreak
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Re: Politics

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Went to see "Suffragette" film this weekend. Compelling and harrowing by degrees. Better than any Hollywood crap. Things don't change. Powerful vested interests still use whatever means to protect their wealth and privileges. It would be nice to see some input from the ladies again but they seem to have disappeared into a distaff huddle on their Facebook page. How sad.
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

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rockfreak wrote:Went to see "Suffragette" film this weekend. Compelling and harrowing by degrees. Better than any Hollywood crap. Things don't change. Powerful vested interests still use whatever means to protect their wealth and privileges. It would be nice to see some input from the ladies again but they seem to have disappeared into a distaff huddle on their Facebook page. How sad.

Very true.

I suppose this country has come a long way in a relatively short time. From the women campaigning for the vote and getting it, to the bra-burning womens libbers of the 60's. At least it makes life interesting.
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
rockfreak
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Re: Politics

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Bryan Magee gets a mention in Adam Sisman's new, and massive, biography of John LeCarre. After Burgess and Maclean defected to Russia MI5 decided they needed to beef up their efforts to detect lefties in our universities. While at Oxford David Cornwell (LeCarre's real name) was recruited and asked to pose as a leftie and join the leftist clubs in order to get to know the people in them. Magee was Oxford Union president at the time and having an affair with Caroline Carter who was suspected of being a communist and who ran the university Socialist club (although Magee himself appeared to be more mainstream social democrat). Near the end of his time at Oxford Magee sat the exams for the Foreign Office and was surprised at failing to be selected. Years later he was told by a highly placed source in the FO that information had been received that he was likely to marry a member of the Communist party. Magee suspected that this information had come from Cornwell, although Cornwell says that he can't actually remember this and that it would have needed more than one source to blackball Magee. It has to be said here that Sisman notes occasional mistakes, amnesia and inconsistences in Cornwell's accounts of events. These might be the sort of time-fogged mistakes that everyone makes although Sisman notes that Cornwell's life and memories do sometimes seem as tangled and abstruse as his novels.
Anyway, one suspects that it turned out better for Magee for he went on to a life of politics, writing and intellectually stimulating broadcasting projects. He might have vanished into the vast maw of the FO or even become a spook himself - a trade that seems to be populated in real life by a motley collection of drunks, misfits and weirdos.
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

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I'm pretty sure that in the past, during the Cambridge recruitment period into MI6, there were indeed quite a few motley drunks, misfits and weirdos.

However, I'm also pretty sure that wouldn't be the case now. I won't go on to re-call an elder cousins tales of his 21 years as a senior warrant officer in I Corps. Yes - Based in Cheltenham by the time of his retirement.
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rockfreak
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Re: Politics

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J.R. wrote:
rockfreak wrote:Went to see "Suffragette" film this weekend. Compelling and harrowing by degrees. Better than any Hollywood crap. Things don't change. Powerful vested interests still use whatever means to protect their wealth and privileges. It would be nice to see some input from the ladies again but they seem to have disappeared into a distaff huddle on their Facebook page. How sad.

Very true.

I suppose this country has come a long way in a relatively short time. From the women campaigning for the vote and getting it, to the bra-burning womens libbers of the 60's. At least it makes life interesting.
Some months ago I went to see an exhibition about the Suffragettes at the National Portrait Gallery. The story went that as their actions escalated one of them slashed a painting in the National Gallery. As a result, a notice went up saying that in future women would only be admitted accompanied by a man and that they had to leave their muffs and belongings with the cloakroom - which rather appealed to my Finbar Saunders sense of humour.
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Re: Politics

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We boot up the Politics thread again with Freaky's latest letter in today's Guardian (12 February). It's about, wait for it.......Private schools! Some might ask why this is in the Politics thread. Well, I believe that politics is not only personal but also pedagogic. It relates to a letter recently published in the Grauniad trumpeting the altruistic nature of the Orwellian-titled Independent Schools Sector. Here is my reply:
"Chris King of the Headmasters' Conference protests that 99.7% of the independent schools sector work with state schools to expand opportunities for those state pupils. Elsewhere he records that indie pupils dominate the most successful universities and careers. This partnership business doesn't seem to be working then, does it? Perhaps Ofsted's inspectors should descend mob-handed on Mr King's project to find out why."
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

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........ and on the 'Politics' thread, I'm glad to see Boris has made his position on BREXIT clear.
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HowardH
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Re: Politics

Post by HowardH »

Boris - I have seen more brain cells in a puddle.
The man's a buffoon of the highest order.
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Re: Politics

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HowardH wrote:Boris - I have seen more brain cells in a puddle.
The man's a buffoon of the highest order.
If only that were true! The buffoon is a pose, or, if not a deliberate pose, a facade that comes easily to him. Boris is clever, and ambitious, and he uses his cleverness and his buffoonery to distract people from where his ambition is leading him. He has allowed himself an annual ration of Good Ideas so that Londoners can see an occasional benefit from his time as mayor. He could have made the trains run on time, but he doesn't care for the associations of that phrase.
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HowardH
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Re: Politics

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Thank you, John, for you have made my point even clearer. He is a buffoon if he thinks that anyone with an iota of intelligence will take him seriously. Potentially dangerous to shapeless orts ? Maybe.
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Re: Politics

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HowardH wrote:He is a buffoon if he thinks that anyone with an iota of intelligence will take him seriously.
He doesn't care about anyone with an iota of intelligence. He thinks that they are outnumbered by the followers of sound-bites and clowning. He may be right. Plenty of other politicians share that view.
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rockfreak
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Re: Politics

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Yes, I do agree that if Boris had wanted to do something useful for London he'd have, for instance, campaigned for rent controls, a re-banding of the council tax at the top end to discourage under-occupation, and housing that is genuinely affordable. There's actually no shortage of blocks of flats going up in the capital but few are affordable for the ordinary worker. All this seems to me like finishing off what Shirley Porter started all those years ago - the voter cleansing of inner London. It's always bugged the Tories like mad that certain inner-London constituencies go Labour at election time and they've long wanted to sort it out. What I can't understand is why Londoners can't see through this. Are people so bedazzled by larger-than-life personalities? Why do we continue to "punch down" rather than blaming those at the top? Rents were controlled back in the '60s when I left home and for years I lived in perfectly affordable pads in or around London with a variety of social classes roundabout.
This is all short-sighted of course; once you've driven the workers out who will do the work for the rich? By the way John, Boris's erstwhile employer at the Telegraph Conrad Black did say that Boris's act was indeed carefully choreographed. Much like Tommy Cooper's was in comedy.
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J.R.
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Re: Politics

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So does anyone fancy starting a thread on BREXIT ?

Could be quite an interesting topic !
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Re: Politics

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J.R. wrote:So does anyone fancy starting a thread on BREXIT ?

Could be quite an interesting topic !
Go ahead and I'll start the ball rolling.

Last Saturday on LBC they had some labourite pontificating but IMHO it was a load of bullshit (can I use that word here?) One of his arguments was that people could only enter the UK free of investigation if they were carrying an EU passport (I suspect he forgot to mention ID cards but that's OK). He then singled out Germany which makes immigrants wait eight years to get the nationality entitling them to a Germùan passport. For France the period is seven years apparently and that is where he left it. He conveniently forgot to mention that by staying in we would be forced to take "our quota" of refugees. He also conveniently forgot to mention that certain recent members are allowing refugees from the easter bloc countries to have nationality upon arrivel and therefrore immediate EU passports.

What has also not been mentioned is that the auditors have never in the life of the EU been able to balance the books and give an audit report. Clearly there is some crookedness going on. Having been close to and learned from major bankruptcies (BCCI, Ambrosiano, OPERE, Laker to mention a few my hackles are raised - these are the paople who are taking our money and not accounting for it. How many heads have rolled? None.

All sorts of people are getting tax breaks thanks to EU staffing regulations. Any person working for an EU governmental authority outside their normal country of residence pays no income tax either where they work nor in their own country. To give a specific example there is a teacher living in Ulster who commutes to work at a college in Southern Ireland to work. He pays no tax on his salary and associated income.

Every year the entire EU parliament moves from Brussels to Strasbourg, lock stock and barrel and then goes back again, all expenses paid; the cost cannot be justified

The EU courts overturn many critical cases decided in the UK allowing terrorists and their supporters to remain in the UK to try to undermine this nation. They and the EU have forced on us laws which will prevent us surviving outside the EU - for example excessive, wasteful food and labour laws which are simply ignored over the Channel.

These are just a few of the things being hidden from the public by politicians wanting to stay in. I accept that there are things on the other side but do we want to be involved in questionable financial affairs?
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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