Sorry Don - didn't realise you are an idiot mate - no offence meant. Liberalism in the UK tends to be a form of human resource management - it's not that any one believes it other than as a means to get the troops working better. There are lots of reasons health services should be free at point of us - including keeping the quacks themselves straight, let alone the kind of tosser bureaucrat trying to bloat her paycheck in the bureaucracy. I mean, how could a nutter like me ever trust a therapist I was paying to 'find' my problems! I really doubt the nationalised-privatised stuff makes much difference - it's about making sure white-collar crime is kept to a minimum. In the UK the 'right' tends to support the professional establishment and captains of industry in ripping everyone else off and there is no 'left' - what's left of the 'left' just pumps more public money into the system for the establishment to fight over. What's needed is control and honesty - the arguments on both side of the pond are equally corrupt and don't admit what we are really doing. I guess the answers start with training our own people in large numbers to do the work across the globe instead of stealing the best from where we can - not something the 'West' has proved much good at. The debate is only so paranoid because it's based on lies and self-deception. The NHS is a deeply patronising organisation - I'd welcome a lot of its work going to supermarkets - but it has to be better than waiting for a aid plane to come in as we here is the case in the US.
On 4 Oct, 13:17, frantheman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 4 Okt., 04:42, Don Johnson <[email protected]> wrote: > Liberals across the pond are so much more > > > sensible then they are here. > > The comment that England and the US are two nations divided by a > common language is usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw, Don, > something which can be clearly seen with respect to the use of the > word "liberal." In Europe generally, even most of the conservative > parties would have to regarded as dangerously liberal from a US > conservative point of view. > > While many of the European parties which claim the designation > "liberal" for themselves have strong historical roots in an older > 19th. and 20th. Century tradition in which the the term refers to to a > bourgeois (using the term as a synonym for "middle class" rather than > in a Marxist context where the word is used to distinguish from > political groups which have their roots among the workers/proletariat) > attitude which stressed the importance of the rights of the individual > against the power of privilege, statist control and/or national- > security/conservative viewpoints, such positions are accepted today by > all major political parties apart from those of the far left and > right, with only some differences of shading and emphasis. (The UK > liberals have an even more complex history, one strain of which goes > back to the "Whig" group which emerged in parliament at the end of the > 17th. Century and which was originally the "party" of the upper > aristocracy (the dukes and earls) as opposed to the Tories (ancestors > of today's Conservatives), which was the party of the smaller gentry.) > Most European liberals today can be better defined as those parties > who represent the view that state influence should be minimised in the > economic area and enthusiastically argue in favour of the interests of > business and for a reduction of state involvement in the social area > and in the area of regulation in general. > > Most of them retain a patina of their liberal origins in that they > would be in favour of such things as curtailment of the rights of the > state to observe and collect information about its citizens for > whatever reason, the strict seperation of church and state, and sexual > liberation. The leader of the German liberals (and putative future > foreign minister), Guido Westerwelle, for example, is openly > homosexual and is frequently accompanied by his partner at official > functions. That is just not an issue here, something I could not > imagine in the USA. > > But the German Free Democrats' (as the liberals officially call > themselves) main thrust is what could better be called neo-liberal - a > stalwart espousal of themes such as deregulation, the primacy of > untrammeled free markets and the rights of employers. They are often > referred to as party of the "better-off" (Besserverdienenden) > although, to be fair to them, they (publicly) don't like this > description. Their history in the past thirty years has been > punctuated by a number of scandals, usually involving groups of > wealthy business people who have been hell-bent on illegally providing > them with covert funding which, when such cases have been made public, > they have always officially explained as being the work of individual > party functionaries about which the general party leadership has never > known. (Anyone wanting to know more about such affairs can google the > names, Otto Graf Lambsdorff and Jürgen W. Möllemann.) > > The increase of their vote by a third to 14.6% in the German elections > last week, which will see them as taking place in government, was > largely at the cost of Merkel's Christian Democrats, the larger of the > two partners in the forthcoming coalition. Both the Christian > Democrats and the Social Democrats who made up the Grand Coalition > which governed for the past four years lost votes; the SPD losing > drastically to the Left Party (an alliance of a group which has its > roots in the former East German communists and a disgruntled group of > Social Democrats who left their party five years ago in protest at > what they regarded as Schröder's unsocial reform course). In fact, the > Christian Democrats and the liberals together increased their combined > share of the vote, compared to 2005, by just 3.4%, much of which can > be explained by a fall in voter turn-out from 77.7% to 70.8%. In other > words, more of those likely to vote "left" (SPD, the Left Party and > the Greens) simply stayed at home. But that's the way parliamentary > democracy works and, in this case, the swing was enough to cause a > (partial) change in government (Merkel's CDU will remain in power, > just this time with a different partner). > > Francis --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
