Treasures from the threads - Number twenty-four

In response to an incredibly weak article by Shadow Chancellor George Osborne in the Telegraph this morning, linked here, came the following: My dear George... We need a (massive) ground-shift rethink on how to run Blighty, if we are going to see any turnaround from this gawd-awful mess that Neue Labour has steered us autopilot in to... (One of my favourite sayings is... “Exactly what has America done for us?”) The ‘Americanization’ of our eating standards, the dumbed down broadcast media, and our teenagers obsession with all that is so vacuously, smiley Emotocon driven that is Facebook/Playstion3... all they aspire to is to be ‘Peaches/Amy’ clubbing like...i.e. a cretinous drug and boozed taking selabrittie über alas... (oh deary me)... And what with the imminent ‘Halloween’ now a new supermarketing driven spending opportunity, slipped betwixt Xmas and Easter...just see the look of joy on the mega queue bearing consumers... then dial in the Haymarket card driven Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Errant Father’s Day, Dysfunctional Daughter’s Day... And finally congrats on Your Completed Divorce Day... and what we have is anything but the joys of happy communal spirited Brit peeps living the ‘dream’ on the McBarrett built graffiti ridden suburban streets... Dial in the never ending b#llsh#t that is the legislation of the Neue Labour nanny state, added to which we have the mandates of the EEC... and you quickly realise... that politics as we currently understand them are failing the common people on mass... and like never before. Question Time with Dimbleby proves that the masses are collectively starting to wake-up though.... and there disquiet is starting to more regularly appear. In these times of seismic change (muck like the industrial revolution of the late 18th Century).... I can assure you ‘true’ accountability, best value for money and investment in anything less than brilliantly well thought through will be punished severely come voting time... (So think on that before you fill the media void with light-weight drivel) Finance is going to be driven by what energy we can command, home grown... and geopolitically things are rapidly moving on that score fast... During 2008 we have seen two things happen. First, and probably most importantly, the resurrection of the Nation-State - shifting the global balance between the state and commercial business. Second, it’s redefined the global geopolitical system, opening the door to a resurgence of Russian power and revealing the underlying fragmentation of Europe and inherent weaknesses of NATO. (And as we all scramble to survive and compete in an increasingly asset depleted world expect the survival of the fittest attitudes to override) The most important manifestation of this is here in Europe. In the face of Russian power, there is no longer a united European position. And though on the surface during the last few weeks of financial crisis, we Europeans sorta coordinated, but as the Irish proved we no longer act as one. After the summer of 2008, it is no longer fair to talk about Europe as a single entity, about NATO as a fully functioning alliance, or about a world in which the nation-state is obsolete. The nation-state was the only institution that worked...and McBruin has always been a key architect of that... (PS: Do let Dave know General Election soonest please!!) Posted by Peter Stone on October 29, 2008 11:48 AM