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Post by TheCritique on Nov 16, 2004 7:51:42 GMT
Naselus, while your point is valid, your example is not. Would you agree with the statement:
Daddy Bush was a great leader.
I failed to mention it in the original post, but the parents have to be good leaders for the rule to work. And the rule is less than general. I was asked for reasons why birthright was a good idea and I suggested this.
In any case, birthright as a way of selecting rulers of a state is not a good idea.
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Post by ringmasterrob on Nov 16, 2004 12:25:24 GMT
To be honest, even a great leader is not going to produce a decent successor, in fact the greater the leader then the harder the son or daughter would have to work to be seen in the same light. There are plenty of examples of good leaders having bad children, in English history and certainly elsewhere. Therefore it is obvious that birthright is a very poor way of selecting one's head of state.
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Post by The mekanik on Nov 16, 2004 16:30:19 GMT
My appologies for completely failing to answer any of these questions, but as you may have guessed i have been away from the critique.
Correct, you all are. A complete Monarchy would not be much of a good idea at all, unless the Monarch was a very good one indeed.
Somone before me quoted some figures, saying that at least 80% of the populous wanted a monarchy in some form, so i think i am quite right in saying so.
You say that i think that Bureaucracy Is Democracy and vica-versa, well, you are pretty close. I agree that there is some red tape with all forms of goverment, the only way to get rid of it is to abolish all forms of governent together. But, what i am saying is that there is more Red tape etc in a Democracy than in any other kind of goverment. At least in a Dictatorship everything gets done super fast.
Democracy mentality: I might do that later, but for now i have to do something else, which is much less taxing on my brain...
Dictatorship/Other Mentailty: I have got to get this done, even if i have to break a few heads on the way. At least it will please (whomever)
The point is, some of the best things about this country happened in all together less - cushy times. Take this for example - the British railway network. Allthough people never stop moaning about it, it is one of the best of the world - indeed the Very Best in europe (and before you chase me up on that it is indeed true), but if it had never had been built, and was proposed tomorow, the proposal would get laughed out of existance. By todays 'Compensation Culture' 'Pander to the smallest minority' 'Lets not do anything dandgerous' mentality, it is a complete hazard. People would be rolling around on the floor cackling over the 25,00V overheads, 2,000V third rail, the possibility of people actually STANDING on the platform, near TRAINS. Dirty, nasty Dandgerous TRAINS. What about cars? If that idea had just been thought of, the initial meeting would be something like this:
'This fantastic new invention will allow mega fast travel, boosting the economy, and bringing a new start to the world. oh yeah, and at least six people will die becasuse of it every day in this country ALONE'. What do you think would happen? Nothing. The world is stalling becasue no-one is willing to do anything anymore for fear of being sued or whatever.
Q'uapla!
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Post by ringmasterrob on Nov 16, 2004 19:44:51 GMT
So, yes we should have some form of monarchy for tourism's sake and, in the eyes of some, for the sake of our heritage. The problem with your dictatorship idea Oliver is that the only things that get done 'super fast' are the proposals the dictator is interested in, he can ignore an area he doesn't have interests in and simply develop the country how he sees, problem with that of course is that if he does a bad job the only thing the people can do about it is attempting a revolution. This is often bloody, long and can leave the country afterwards in a terrible state. I do agree with what you say about too many ideas these days not moving fast, but as Naselus said;
Mainly for the reason that one person is going to take a heck of a long time to do the whole of the country running, and when they are not accountable to anybody then it means that they can be delibrately unhelpful to the process to make their job easier. Basically, democracy is the lesser evil with regards to government systems, all have flaws and bureaucracy, but dictatorship is not a better option than democracy.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 17, 2004 22:24:43 GMT
Oliver, if dictatorship is such an excellent idea, why exactly has the entire course of human history been spent moving away from it? Sure, occasionally a nutter (or the CIA) will push a country back to the 'I'm in charge and I'll kill anyone who doesn't do what I say' idea, but the finest minds in history have constantly sought better forms of government, and none chose dictators. Plato's concept of 'The Republic' hope for ogliarchy because he didn't think people should goven themselves, but you'll notice it still wasn't one man with all the power.
As for the idea that democracy has the most 'red tape', that's utter uninformed opinionated unsupportable bullshit. Dictatorships have hideous bureaucracy. Everyone has to sign everything in triplicate to establish their responsibility for any decision, since if it's a bad one heads will literaly roll. Have you ever been to one of the small African dictatorships? It's impossible to get anything done. In Botswana, you have to bribe your way past the bureaucratic system because otherwise you'll never get a damned thing done. It's a dictatorship. Not the strident exiting kind that you seem to dream of, with it's total population of seventeen people and two cows, but one with enough people to count as a country.
The idea behind the red tape is to see if there's any benefit behind an idea, rather than doing it regardless. If Hitler had had red tape stopping him from invading Russia, he might have won the second world war. As it was, he did something unbelievably stupid and lost horrendously. Showing how marvelous dictatorships really are.
Thank you for acknowledging that we're correct that an absolute monarchy is an appallingly stupid shit idea. However, don't try and claim that because 70% ( not 'at least 80%') of the population want a tourist attraction, you are 'quite right in saying' that 'he majority of people in this country would like to see the monarchy in control again.'. That's like saying because most people like Alton Towers we want it to take over from Westminster.
The Briitish Rail network isn't the best in Europe, and I'd like to know what part of 1924 the person who told you that lives in. The French rail system, and the German one, both laugh at ours before depositing neat efficient turds all over it. French trains crash less than half as often, are twice as frequent, and move 70% faster. Their rails are in better condition, get replaced more often, and are thicker to allow bigger trains. The concept of our trains would get laughed at today because it runs something like this:
'Imagine standing on a platform for four hours, before a clapped-out old diesel rools into your station. Imagine being eight hours late for your meeting. Imagine a deadly crash every three months. Imagine British Rail'.
Cars wouldn't get laughed at, because they're actually a good idea. And the 'Let's not do anything dangerous' idea's actually quite a good one, by the way. If you disagree, why not prove how right you are by hangliding in a nuclear reactor? It's tremendous fun, and you'd get a great tan.
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Post by TheCritique on Nov 19, 2004 17:16:53 GMT
Actually nuclear power is a brilliant idea. It's amazingly efficient (by comparison to fuels like coal). However, we still need to develop an efficient method of disposing of the deadly waste.
It isn't a problem with the concept of dictatorships, it is a problem with who is at the top of them. If Hitler had been wise enough to leave most military instructions to his generals, the Nazis would have walked over Britain, and then Russia, and then conquered the Americas...so on, so forth.
Dictatorships have their place, and they happen to work brilliantly in warfare. Could you imagine a democratic army, where the soldiers vote on how to attack the enemy? The army would collapse overnight. Hence, we have generals.
But that's military. In theory a state dictatorship could function if it is more lax. I.e. heads don't roll when people make mistakes, even if they are big ones. But in practice that doesn't happen and couldn't be sustained. An ambitious subordinate could overthrow the top man and take his position.
...Enough rambling. Any thoughts?
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Post by Naselus on Nov 19, 2004 17:36:55 GMT
Yes, I believe that Saddam showed us exactly how well a dictatorship works in warfare compared to a Democracy...
Dictatorships only work BECAUSE of the over-zealous response to insubordination. Otherwise everyone starts doing it, and then you end up with a democracy. Dictatorships are actually no better at warfare than democracies, since to become a dictator you have to be the kind of paranoid idiot who cripples his own armies (cough cough Stalin cough) to avoid any opposition.
Unfortunately, democracy is the best known method of government. If we could get one, it would be wonderful...
Generally, however, you end up with a corporate republic of the kind the USA and, to a lesser extent, the UK now enjoy. This is where the rich's votes are worth far more than the poor's. Bummer, eh? Make the corporation powerful, and the people who work for it will support it in some deluded belief that what's good for the boss is good for them. This, I'm sorry to say, isn't true Business is intrinsically bad for the consumer. That's half the point.
Capitalism is based entirely on greed. It's the idea that you can get more than something's worth simply because you have it and no one else does. Thus, the system beccome one based one responsibility rather than work, and so the people paid the most do the least work, as they are the ones held most responsible. I may write an article about this.
Oh, and Nuclear power is a good idea if your society puts an emphasis on safety instead of profit. Sadly, ours doesn't, so generally the poceedures in place are nowhere near sufficient. And hangliding in a reactor is, even with the finest safety precautions, still not a good idea.
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Post by TheCritique on Nov 19, 2004 18:04:38 GMT
Actually capitalism is based on more than that. One definition I've seen is the right of people to keep the fruits of their labour. Think about it...you'd be pretty peeved off if, regardless of how much you earnt, the government took it all and paid you the same amount.
And that brings to life another problem with the opposite ideology: Why bother? If you are always going to get the same, why work to better yourself?
What is good for the company is usually good for the employees. Take an increase in profit. The consequences of that would be increased salaries, bigger bonuses etc. Trust me, I do Business Studies for GCSE.
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Post by ringmasterrob on Nov 19, 2004 18:49:57 GMT
Tell that the the people who used to work at Enron, or in fact any other company when the it turned out all that money was in fact going back into his pocket. While these are only some cases and I note you did say 'usually' but business is greedy, look at the obscene amounts of money people recieve for having a certain job title. Take schools where the difference between 'deputy head' and 'assistant head' is that deputies get a higher rate of pay!
Doing a Business Studies GCSE does not qualify you to claim you know everything about business, and as I am in the same class then it's obvious that for the studies and examples we do then honest companies are used. The problem is all the other companies, and you may think it doesn't matter but if you get to retirement age to suddenly find your pension no longer exists thanks to a company bigwig embezzling the company funds for his 4th home and 12th holiday, then you might just care a little bit more.
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Post by The mekanik on Nov 19, 2004 18:53:26 GMT
Naeselus! I am quite shocked at the rudeness and incorectness of your post.
Yes, my point may be unproveable with no tangable backup, that is still no reason to call it bullshit. To prove one of my (many) points, I point out the German Rail, Road, Education, and Health systems were all built Under a dictatorship, in the 1930's. Before hand, Germany was little more than a series of interconnected villiages. The Dictatorship made it into a unified country, with international standard services etc.
Actually, the British rail network Is the best in europe. Of all of the things on this forum, do not correct me on the railways. Not only is my father Top brass in NR (so naturaly I get all of these statistics drilled into me all of the time), but the Railways are also a lifelong passion of mine. I have traveled on trains all over the world, and beleive you me, we have got it pretty good here. Sure the germans have got trains that allways run on time, but they are facing the same problems we were during Privatisation. Thetre network is falling to bits, just like (more or less) every other countries in the world. We have been having so manyproblems recently, becasue we are completely rebuilding the rail network. Recently, I have been going to london every other week by train. Although this is not terribly often, I would hazzard that this is more often than most users of this forum. And also, your little 'statistic' of a crash every Three months is complete Rubbish. Its more like one every two years. And further more to that, Four hours on a platform? Clapped out deisel? The only time I have EVER spent more than two hours in a station was in, funnily enough; Germany. Your so called bastion of rail perfection. There arent any clapped out Deisels in england any more. The only really old ones are in scotland. And even there are all being fazed out. the majority of Trains now are either HST's (Clapped out? I think NOT) or brand spanking new ones. For example, Virgins New fleet of tilting trains. Ok, they have had some teething problems, but apart from that they are fab.
Dont Knock the British Rail Network becasue it is actually quite good.
Signed,
Oliver 'Defender of all things British' Lane
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Post by TheCritique on Nov 19, 2004 19:11:12 GMT
To add to that, the Nazis started out very well. They gave everyone jobs (one such occupation was building the fabulous autobahns), so unemployment plummeted. To conclude, when Germany first came under the command of Hitler, things got immeasurably better. Sadly, Hitler's world conquest ambitions, combined with military stupidity, trashed all of that good work.
Rob, I am not claiming that just because I do BS I am in an elite position. I was merely suggesting that I might be right on this issue. And also, notice the word 'usually'.
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Post by The mekanik on Nov 19, 2004 19:44:37 GMT
If Mr. A.Hitler Had continued on his merry old way as a builder, Germany would now be more or less the greatest nation on the earth. Everybody would overlook his purges, just like we tend to forget the attrocious crimes other western societies have made. Let us not forget that the victors write the history books, and a lot of american war crimes ect go un noticed.
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Post by ringmasterrob on Nov 20, 2004 10:36:46 GMT
My last post;
Yours after it;
I think that I made it quite clear I noted the word usually but was pointing out that just because something isn't usual doesn't make it a huge problem when it happens, so actually read my post before replying. It seems to me you just read my Business Studies comment and replied on that alone...
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Post by Naselus on Nov 20, 2004 21:25:15 GMT
Man, this threads getting tangled up. Right, I'll address the points one sat a time. Hitler cut unemployment by drafting everyone into the army and removing Jews from unemployment figures, and also from jobs. This doesn't really improve things, it just hides the problems. I presonally spend a great deal of time and effort getting both sides of a story, so I tend to find out about the war crimes that supposedly go unnoticed. You'll find that while the victor USED to write history, nowadays information flows too quickly and too constantly. You can find out the loser's point of view by watching their television. Not Al Jazeera, though. Business Studies at GCSE is all well and good, but I did Sociology at A/S level and I'm quite capable of discussing the measured results of applied capitalism as a result. I've also read into economics as well, and I know whereof I speak when I say capitalism is based on greed. However, you will note that I make no proposal of replacing it; just because I hate capitalist systems doesn't mean I believe in any form of replacement being possible. Same with Democracy, I can't stand the system but there's no other way that works any better. I was exagerating when I said a crash ever three months, but I made no pretnce it was a statistic. It was quite clearly a facitious comment. However, this 'one every two years is nonsense. They're more like one a year minimum, and I can give you examples: 23/6/99 Winsford 5/10/99 Ladbroke Grove 17/10/2000 Hatfield 28/2/01 Great Heck 10/5/02 Potters Bar 7/7/03 Evesham 7/11/04 Ufton Nervet Note that these are just FATAL accidents over the last five years. There's seven. by your claim, the list should be spread out across fourteen years, as oppossed to five. And this doesn't include the ones where people were merely injured. You may travel to London every other week by train, but London has always been favoured massively. Virgin have a different class and model of train to send there compared to the ones they send shuttling round up here in Manchester. I catch trains myself, you see, and I do get to see clapped out old deisels, though how since you tell me they don't exist is puzzling. Also, since your father is top brass at NR, surely he's not going to be the first person to say that the train's here are a pile of cack. Just something to think about. The essential basis to the point is that trains are not as good AS THEY COULD BE, which neatly ties back into the capitalism/Greed thing. The train's are cheap and shoddy, they receive a tremendous whack of government funding to subsides them, and Richard Branson gets five hundred thousand quid a year for pissing about in his damn balloon. Why he gets all that is because the only way to get him to run a train company is by appealing to his greed. I'm not fooled by you, Branson, you're a greedy bugger deep down, and don't think hiding behind a beard will change that. Oh, and the Dictatorship in Germany wasn't responsible for it's unification, nor all of it's industrial development. Remember that they did manage quite well in the first world war too, and that it was only the aftermath of that that crippled the economy. Germany was still an advanced industrialised nation, and in the ten years leading up to 1914 they built a fleet big enough to challenge the British Navy. I admit that Hitler did a great deal for Germany, but some of the things he did look a lot better than they actually were. And besides, the ethnic cleansing bit has too count against him. Dictatorships generally choose the easy option for any problem, so if you have unemployment, whack 'em all in the army/navy/gas chamber (delete as appropriate) and your problem's sorted. Hitler didn't so much create jobs as create the largest and most powerful war machine in history, and everything was geared toward that. The roads and rail were built up to facilitate troop movement. The industries were geared up on wartime principals, which is great for guns but piss-poor for butter, as Goebbels kindly pointed out in a speech. And I like butter a hell of a lot more than I like lots of men with guns running my country, so I'll stick with a democracy for the moment.
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Post by HStorm on Nov 21, 2004 12:06:23 GMT
It would've been, Oliver, if that was what you had said. But in fact, you said that most of the country was in favour of restoring monarchical AUTHORITY, which is untrue. It's also clear from what you said that even if it were true, which it most certainly isn't, it would have been a fluke that came entirely from hopeful guesswork and not from any research or investigation on your part.
Get rid of government altogether? I'm not sure, but are you trumpeting the cause of anarchism, Oliver? That was one of the prime articles of the COMMUNIST manifesto. I never had you marked down as a leftie, so I'll assume you weren't speaking in favour of it, because even by your standards that's a self- contradiction to be proud of.
But in any case, everything else you say appears to be in favour of Government, just of the unaccountable kind. As I said before, your proposal as a 'cure for the nation's ills' is a very old one that has been discredited for years.
Furthermore, Germany's economy is far greater nowadays, as a DEMOCRACY, than it was even during Nazism, while the problems it had in the 1920's were caused by the annihilating damage of the reparations from World War I, and social unrest between Communists and Fascists, not by Democratic Goverment. I repeat - as we have told you on numerous occasions, Oliver, and yet you keep refusing to pay attention - that Dictatorships are far more bureaucratic and far less efficient than Democracies, because in Dictatorships people are too scared to risk making decisions for themselves and so every decision gets referred upwards. The Dictator winds up having to make every important, social, legal, political and commercial decision for the country, thousands of them every single day. How can he possibly find the time to do all of that? It takes him weeks, even months, to sort through the workload of a single day. That's why the USSR caved in just thirty years after it established itself as a superpower, because it was so hideously inefficient.
If our rail network is so great, how come just three years ago, when we had to import carriages from Germany because the ones we were making for ourselves were so crummy, the German manufacturers had to perform artificial stress-work on stretches of their own railway lines in order to test out the new carriages on tracks that were as bad as ours? That's how ludicrous our system has become since privatisation. Our tracks are so badly maintained that the Germans had to deteriorate their own lines artificially in order to test out how sturdily they'd built the carriages. And maybe you haven't spent four hours on a platform, Oliver, but there are loads of people who have to put up with serious delays every day almost out of routine. So your dad is clearly just feeding you a pile of self-defensive sales-speak.
Here's another interesting problem with Dictatorships, which is that they are in fact weak militarily. The point about Hitler not leaving decisions to his commanders in WWII is all too true. Dictators tend to be paranoid fools who fear their own peoples, especially those in a position of authority. As such they are forever interfering in the affairs of the military, undermining (or in many cases, assassinating) people higher up in the command structure, to keep them from rising above theur stations. Not good for military efficiency. It's the old problem of confusing aggression and extremism with strength and wisdom.
Oh and Will...
No, it's a problem with the concept of who is at the top of GOVERNMENTS. And the problem when the government is a Dictatorship is that when the person at the top of them is incompetent, it's very difficult to get shot of them. It's not too easy in Democracies either, as they depend heavily on there being a better alternative available, but that's equally true in a Dictatorship, and at least a changeover is far more likely to happen (and peacefully) when the people have the right to be consulted.
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Post by The mekanik on Nov 25, 2004 14:19:40 GMT
Sorry Hstorm, but I will have to contradict you there:
We are not importing rolling stock from other countries becasue the ones we are making are cruddy, Its becasue we Cant make carriages/rolling stock/permanent way anymore becasue every god dammned person in this country is working in offices. And the people who are of the correct calliber (you know what I mean) dont want to work in foundries, or factories, becasue they can slack off on benefit or get easy Tertiary sector jobs.
We have to Import things like that becasue we have no choice!
And by the way, It just so happens my Dad is payed to Find faults in the railway (some of the time anyway), so I think that observation was a bit harsh. My father is a realist, and is not one to hold back on such things.
And yes true, there have been a lot of crashes recently. I will have to look into that.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 25, 2004 17:24:32 GMT
We are not importing rolling stock from other countries becasue the ones we are making are cruddy, Its becasue we cant make carriages/rolling stock/permanent way anymore becasue every god dammned person in this country is working in offices. And the people who are of the correct calliber (you know what I mean) dont want to work in foundries, or factories, becasue they can slack off on benefit or get easy Tertiary sector jobs. I'm not quite sure where you get the idea everyone in the country works in offices from, Oliver. I've had several jobs, and only one has ever been in an office. Same with Martin, and indeed with many people who've actually worked. Have you? And 'slacking off on benefit' isn't a patch on working in a foundry. Foundry workers get £300 a week. Benefits give you £44 a week. Have you ever tried to live on the dole, Oliver? I have, several times. even living with my mother doesn't make £44 a lot of money. You can't live on it. That's why there's so much benefit fraud; you can't get a decent house on housing benefit, you can't get much more than food on jobseekers allowance (and you also have to look for a job. They check), you can't really afford to look after kids on child benefit. If you wish to lecture us on these things, go and do them for a year or so and THEN I'll listen to you. However, it's true we fired everyone who made GOOD carriges in this country because they cost too much money, and the private companies in charge weren't willing to pay it. Ditto the people who maintained the rails. This means that we DON'T have good railways. Cause, and then effect. Just like physics. Easy, isn't it? We have to Import things like that because we have no choice! Glad you noticed. Britain's a bit crap, really, isn't it? It's that cause and effect thing again, isn't it? And by the way, It just so happens my Dad is payed to Find faults in the railway (some of the time anyway), so I think that observation was a bit harsh. My father is a realist, and is not one to hold back on such things. Not to cause trouble, but he's not done a particularly good job, has he? I mean, the delays, the regular crashes, the whole thing with the rails? Now, I'm sure your dad does the best he can, but he's probably got horrific budget constraints, hasn't he? He can't make the railways work as well as he wants to, since he'd be totally over budget. And who ests the budget? It's the board, who naturally have their responsibility to the shareholders, so the quality will just have to go down. So the railways are a bit crappy, really, aren't they? And yes true, there have been a lot of crashes recently. I will have to look into that. Why, then, did you say there weren't? I think if you actually do choose to look into it, as opposed to simply claiming whatever opinion you hold to be God's honest truth until I show the you figures otherwise, you'll probably see that the crashes have been at least one major fatal crash per year since privatisation. They were around one every two to three years before that. It's simply cutting costs by removing safety controls, and then cutting them some more by removing maintenance. In the end, it means we don't have the best railways in Europe, let alone the world. This doesn't do your credibility much good, you know. You told us not to ever correct you about the railways, but we have and we've used figures and facts to back it up. Your claim was mainly backed up by telling us your dad tells you lots of figures (which you've not shown us) and telling us you really like railways. This means you are impartial (as is your dad), where as I don't have a passionate hatred of British rail, I just used the damned trains and recognise that there's a problem. Yes, we're better than India, or Nicaragua, or Bolivia. But we don't have the best rail network in the world and unless you can show me figures from British rail, and then compare them with German, French and Japanese figures I'm afraid I'm going to have to stick with my own list of them. Which generally shows us somewhere around eighth.
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Post by The mekanik on Nov 27, 2004 15:57:33 GMT
Right:
My Crashes Figure was a Broad average, and reaches far back before Privatisation. So the average may seem a bit odd to the people of today.
As to the British Rail supperioirty thing, it was actually the European Commisioner for Railways who said it, so that must hold some truth.
If you Really want, I will source out specific quotes etc.
Okey dokey?
Edit: Just another point. I was looking though the old post of this topic and noticed will commenting on the fact that Nuclear Power is efficient! As far as I am aware, nuclear power is not very efficient at all. its just better becasue there is ever so much more power in Nuclear materials than coal etc.
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Post by HStorm on Nov 28, 2004 12:32:57 GMT
Amazing. You've managed to contradict yourself in the same sentence this time! If we can't make things that are longlasting, we are making stuff that is cruddy, and yet you say there's a difference? It's like Dubya saying it isn't pollution that's harming the environment, but impurities in the water and the air.
Anyway, sticking to the central point, you have successfully demonstrated for us the very point you were trying to dispute, namely that the British rail network is crap. You say we still have one of the best networks in the world. Yet if, as you say, we can't make decent stock for our railways anymore, that means what we produce is cruddy. If what we produce is cruddy, our railway network must be pretty cruddy as well. So our network is not one of the best in the world after all. See?
The reason why our railways are cruddy - and that's just assuming the reason you give is a genuine one - is beside the point. Our rail network used to be the best in the world (still not very good, you understand, but definitely the best of a bad bunch) before privatisation, but has become increasingly crap since British Rail was sold off. That was the point we were making, and it remains true regardless of the reason why.
As for quoting broad averages including times before privatisation, that makes your figures misleading and false. The whole point is that our network had been ruined since privatisation, and indeed is now, effectively, a different network, due to fundamental changes in management practises and structure, and the fragmentation of the country into local networks. Therefore BR's figures cannot and should not be used to support the companies who replaced it. They must instead be used as points of comparison, and when we do so, they show that the modern network is an embarrassingly pale shadow of what was there before.
This is hard-processed bull. I'll overlook the pompous insult you aimed at people on benefits on this occasion as unworthy of comment (besides which, Ruzl has already answered it well), and discuss instead your narrow-minded view of people in employment.
People don't want to work in factories, true. That's because in factories the air is almost unbreathable, workers are treated like slaves, and it's frequently dirty and dangerous. However, there are plenty of unemployed people who would happily take a job in a factory if one were available. The problem is they can't because our secondary sector no longer exists thanks to Thatcher, except for those parts that are owned by foreign companies that take over 95% of the funds it generates.
People, including myself, have to take jobs in the tertiary sector because that's all that we have left on offer. Sorry if that seems in some way 'unprincipled' in the face of your theories, but hey, I'll starve to death if I have nothing to live on. I also note with interest how you upper class right wingers always condemn the working classes for being selective about which jobs they want to do and not taking unwanted work while waiting for the right job to come along, yet now you condemn us for taking what's on offer and not waiting for a factory job to come along.
And take it from somebody who actually works for a living rather than goes to school for a few hours each day and has his parents around to pay for everything for him (not condemning you for that, I'm simply pointing out that you're in no position to lecture me or Ruzl on what the employment sector is all about), while office jobs are certainly less productive and more mundane than manufacturing work, they're still not easy. In fact they are awkward, stressful (especially when trying to deal with abusive and angry customers) and grossly monotonous. They can be a severe mental health hazard, especially for people who are new to the environment and haven't had a chance to adjust to the tedium.
Basically, it's easy for you to get on your high horse and preach on these subjects from above as long as you've never actually had to experience them in person. But don't expect anyone else just to accept your thoughts as the truth until you base them on some kind of fact, instead of just assumptions, right-wing doctrine, parental hearsay, urban myth, or optimistic patriotism.
By the way, Oliver, it's not the right wing nature, or even the extremity, of your views that we find exasperating. It's just how uninformed they are i.e. you form your opinions without trying to learn about the subjects beforehand.
Oh I missed this one from Will last week...
I see. Somehow I'm not covinced that that's a very precise definition. To take, as an example, myself; -
When I was working at British Telecom ten years ago, each CSO was estimated to be making the company approximately £27,000 each year. So the fruits of my labour were £27,000 per annum. Yet as a CSO I was paid £3.60 per hour. That comes out at only slightly more than £6,500 per year. Something of a distinction between those two figures perhaps? The rest was retained by the company, including the grand chairman, Sir Ian Vallance, who paid himself over £500,000 per year for doing... er, not very much at all as far as anyone could see. (And indeed as far as I can still see today.)
People have the right to keep the fruits of their labour in a capitalist society, eh? Do they bollocks! In a capitalist society, a very small number of people have the right to keep the fruits of everybody else's labour.
Equally, what labour or effort do shareholders, merchant bankers, futures brokers and commodities investors put into the world's economy? Practically none, yet they get paid some of the most obscene amounts of money anyone in the world could ever receive. They sure ain't a product of a communist market, they're a direct result of capitalism, yet their massive incomes aren't the fruits of any appreciable labour they put into anything.
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Post by Naselus on Nov 28, 2004 20:16:51 GMT
Right: My Crashes Figure was a Broad average, and reaches far back before Privatisation. So the average may seem a bit odd to the people of today. How many years were you taking? I admit at one point the railways were quite good, and if you go back far enough then you'll have some great stats. Unfortunately, I don't live in 1924 and you don't either. So I want MODERN figures when I'm trying to work out which is the CURRENT best train service in the world. As to the British Rail supperioirty thing, it was actually the European Commisioner for Railways who said it, so that must hold some truth. No, it doesn't have to. It's a move spurred on by good politics. Do you really think he'd tell us what he thought? He'll have gone for the safe answer his PR people told him to go for, at least in public. And you'll only get to hear the public opinions, not his private ones. If you Really want, I will source out specific quotes etc. Yes. That's what we've been asking for. So if you'd like to do so with your next post (English compared to France, say. Japan'll be the real test, but I want to go easy on you), that'd be wonderful. Edit: Just another point. I was looking though the old post of this topic and noticed will commenting on the fact that Nuclear Power is efficient! As far as I am aware, nuclear power is not very efficient at all. its just better becasue there is ever so much more power in Nuclear materials than coal etc. That's what efficiency IS, Oliver. It's getting more power for less fuel. Hence more power in Nuclear materials is more efficient than less power in coal/oil. What precisely did you think efficiency is in terms of power production? [Edit By RMR: Fixed errors with quotes]
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Post by TheCritique on Nov 29, 2004 14:11:54 GMT
I don't know how accurate this is, but I heard a statistic on this: A nuclear power plant supplying a medium sized city will get through 6.6lbs of uranium daily. 6.6LBS!!! How many tons of coal do coal fired power plants get through?
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Post by Naselus on Nov 29, 2004 17:40:48 GMT
Yes, nuclear power is far and away more efficient than fossil fuels. It still wastes a bit of heat and light, which could be considered inefficiency, but it's still very good compared to oil/coal/gas/tidal/wind. Unfortunately, if things go wrong then they REALLY go wrong, so it's not very popular. Also, the fuel isn't renewable, so it's no better than fossil fuels there. Why the sudden obsession with nuclear power, Will?
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Post by TheCritique on Nov 30, 2004 11:42:37 GMT
Not an obsession, an interest. I have an interest in certain areas of physics, primarily theoretical physics (better described as universe physics).
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Post by Incubus on Dec 1, 2004 10:28:54 GMT
I think we're going slightly off-topic here. What have railways and nuclear power plants got to do with the monarchy?
And for the record, I did read the previous pages of the thread this time.
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Post by ringmasterrob on Dec 1, 2004 14:30:47 GMT
Yes, we are once more we are once more of topic, Liquidus. As I was the staunchest defender of keeping things off topic then you may be surprised I haven't said anything about this, but as most topics show, things just keep getting drawn onto another subject one way or another. I've come to the realisation that it does no harm, a bit of diversity and spontaneity keeps things interesting. So don't worry and lets face it if all topics stayed soully within the original heading then most discussions would end fairly quickly. If you want to discuss the monarchy more just make a post about it and people will pick up on that, but don't discourage them from continuing other discussion in the meantime...
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