Ed
12-06-06, 11:10 PM
Nice posts. Ok I haven't read them all but I think it's safe to assume follows the usual pattern as in source , links , facts etc.
Anyways what I want ot know is
'Do the police have the powers to move the demonstrators on?' I only ask because they are interrupting traffic and being a general nuisance.
Look on the bright side though. I mean no one got killed and they have a big payout to look forward to.
Cheers
Ben
This is from the current terror thread. I couldn't agree with it more.
I am bored, I mean bored damn silly, with reading anti-British and anti-American threads on here. It's not what I come on here for. They're from the same people, time and time again. OK I know what you think and where you're coming from. You're entitled to your views. And I'm entitled to mine.
Course, I don't have to read them. But why shouldn't I? I make a few comments on some of them, just a few mind, to indicate that I have fairly conservative views, and generally I keep my head down. But the current one just sticks in my craw.
I shall be flamed as a corny, naive, narrow minded, ultra right wing, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant bigot. I don't really care any more, we have freedom of speech here in the United Kingdom, I'm free to say what I like, a luxury that so many others in the world don't have but would dearly aspire to. We have won it over a period of nearly 1,000 years. And this no doubt explains why the United Kingdom is such a popular haven for immigrants, for people who flee persecution in other less hospitable parts of the world. Perhaps this freedom of speech (for all the curtailments we have to put up with) is a peculiarly British concept, based largely on the defeat of European-style absolutist monarchical government in the early modern period, and the outcome of the English Civil War and its development in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 with the accession of William and Mary to the throne: an outcome that was developed by Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in the United States (a country for which, for all its faults, I have the profoundest admiration and respect), and an outcome which so many other cultures in the world find alien to their way of life.
Much as I hate the BNP and all it stands for, I can understand why they prosper, traditional British people are so fed up with the agenda being hijacked. We have to protect our way of life and we should not be afraid to do so simply because it's inconvenient to others, because others have a kneejerk reaction of 'racist' or 'imperialist'. I'm simply so fed up with the Establishment being bashed. When I was aged 16 - 24, I thought that the Establishment sucked. Put it down to the immaturity of youth. I grew up, got over it, moved on, learned what was more important to me and to other people - a stable, family-centred, loving home. I got married, in 1987, at age 26 to a beautiful woman who I loved, and whom I love to this day. The much-longed for kiddie took rather longer to arrive than we'd have liked, but in the end she did in 1998 - with a bit of perseverance :D and a few imaginative but ultimately very painful :( solutions along the way. I count myself lucky. And I thank my Christian God, every day, that so far I have landed on my feet. As Paul wrote to Timothy, 'For I can do all things through Him who gives me strength'.
So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that there are others to replace me, the me as an immature and impressionable teenager. But this is a vitriol that I never had, I detect a hatred, a loathing, that wasn't me. I can only guess at where it comes from. Yes of course I don't live in today's Middle East, instead I'm smugly immune here in the sticks, in a leafy, rural and prosperous English county, immune from the horrors of life in what is now Iraq. A country that our American friends are turning into custard, as Gudster so memorably said on another of these threads. I don't have unconstitutional mullahs in Iran or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else telling me what to do and how to do it (I just have to account to the VAT-man, seems a small price to pay :roll: ).
And I feel proud, very proud, when a RAF Tornado flies overhead, because I help pay to train its crew, for the people who maintain it, and for it to stay up in the sky keeping the peace which, thanks to NATO, we here in the United Kingdom have learned to take for granted.
Perhaps, therefore, by proxy I'm part of this global Westernisation, this imposition of quasi-American ideals of freedom and democracy where they're not wanted, because I bankroll the corrupt British State to pursue its illegal wars. Perhaps by extension I'm responsible for slavery, and so perhaps I should apologise for that, too.
And then I read of British soldiers court-martialled for trying to do the impossible job of keeping the peace in a country that has only known savagery and fear for so long. Of their colleagues butcherered by a bloodthirsty mob at a police station in Basra, or blown up by a roadside bomb, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them lived close to here. And it makes me sick. And selfish me is glad that I'm not there, glad that I don't live in that hell-hole with all the chaos that so many brave British and American soldiers are doing their best to prevent, in the teeth of the most fervent and passionate opposition by people who post on forums such as this which can't logically be an appropriate place for their spleen, hate and fury, people who are following their own agenda for reasons best known to themselves, so that I can enjoy my fabulous British motorcycle that runs on Iraqi oil (after all, that was the purpose of the war wasn't it, so that I can continue to ride my bike on the cheap and on the back of other peoples' suffering, no???)
And then we have flawed intel that leads to raids on houses in London and occasionally in other places too. And people who are really innocent have their houses turned over. Of course I wouldn't like it if it happened to me. I acknowledge that.
And then we have a pile of people who criticise the slightest error of judgment, who jump on the bandwagon and create so much anti-police hysteria. Funny how these are largely the self-same as those I mention above, who oppose the liberation of peoples from years of repression. And Sir Ian Blair gets a toasting. How was it his fault???? He wasn't responsible. He is a good Christian man, and I respect his integrity. I choose not to speculate on the reasons for the raid.
But I do accept that if we are to keep at bay those who would otherwise blow us all to kingdom come given half the chance (and I don't doubt that there are a fair few of them in Guantanamo Bay) then we have to be prepared for this. Of course it ain't nice, nobody said it was. But it happens. People are human, so is Sir Ian Blair. And we get hordes of complaints from Muslims who say they're being picked on. It's complete BS, but no doubt some of that VAT I mentioned earlier will go on a fat payout to those concerned and will smooth ruffled feathers, and then they'll stop their bitching about how unfair life has become simply because they worship Mohammed instead of Jesus.
I think we need to remember where we have come from, why so many have come to this great land, and also to remember our American, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, Canadian, South African, Indian, Fijian, Norwegian and all other Allied friends who paid equally dearly for a free Europe and a free world 60 years ago. Because whether you like it or not - and it isn't at all PC to say so - if they hadn't, we wouldn't be free now. We'd probably have self-government, of a sort, as long as you spoke German and voted Nazi.
And we should remember from that, what we have come to. To a prosperity that our great-grandparents couldn't even dream of. And to remember that the threat from those who would destroy it is ever present.
Anyways what I want ot know is
'Do the police have the powers to move the demonstrators on?' I only ask because they are interrupting traffic and being a general nuisance.
Look on the bright side though. I mean no one got killed and they have a big payout to look forward to.
Cheers
Ben
This is from the current terror thread. I couldn't agree with it more.
I am bored, I mean bored damn silly, with reading anti-British and anti-American threads on here. It's not what I come on here for. They're from the same people, time and time again. OK I know what you think and where you're coming from. You're entitled to your views. And I'm entitled to mine.
Course, I don't have to read them. But why shouldn't I? I make a few comments on some of them, just a few mind, to indicate that I have fairly conservative views, and generally I keep my head down. But the current one just sticks in my craw.
I shall be flamed as a corny, naive, narrow minded, ultra right wing, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant bigot. I don't really care any more, we have freedom of speech here in the United Kingdom, I'm free to say what I like, a luxury that so many others in the world don't have but would dearly aspire to. We have won it over a period of nearly 1,000 years. And this no doubt explains why the United Kingdom is such a popular haven for immigrants, for people who flee persecution in other less hospitable parts of the world. Perhaps this freedom of speech (for all the curtailments we have to put up with) is a peculiarly British concept, based largely on the defeat of European-style absolutist monarchical government in the early modern period, and the outcome of the English Civil War and its development in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 with the accession of William and Mary to the throne: an outcome that was developed by Abraham Lincoln and George Washington in the United States (a country for which, for all its faults, I have the profoundest admiration and respect), and an outcome which so many other cultures in the world find alien to their way of life.
Much as I hate the BNP and all it stands for, I can understand why they prosper, traditional British people are so fed up with the agenda being hijacked. We have to protect our way of life and we should not be afraid to do so simply because it's inconvenient to others, because others have a kneejerk reaction of 'racist' or 'imperialist'. I'm simply so fed up with the Establishment being bashed. When I was aged 16 - 24, I thought that the Establishment sucked. Put it down to the immaturity of youth. I grew up, got over it, moved on, learned what was more important to me and to other people - a stable, family-centred, loving home. I got married, in 1987, at age 26 to a beautiful woman who I loved, and whom I love to this day. The much-longed for kiddie took rather longer to arrive than we'd have liked, but in the end she did in 1998 - with a bit of perseverance :D and a few imaginative but ultimately very painful :( solutions along the way. I count myself lucky. And I thank my Christian God, every day, that so far I have landed on my feet. As Paul wrote to Timothy, 'For I can do all things through Him who gives me strength'.
So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that there are others to replace me, the me as an immature and impressionable teenager. But this is a vitriol that I never had, I detect a hatred, a loathing, that wasn't me. I can only guess at where it comes from. Yes of course I don't live in today's Middle East, instead I'm smugly immune here in the sticks, in a leafy, rural and prosperous English county, immune from the horrors of life in what is now Iraq. A country that our American friends are turning into custard, as Gudster so memorably said on another of these threads. I don't have unconstitutional mullahs in Iran or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else telling me what to do and how to do it (I just have to account to the VAT-man, seems a small price to pay :roll: ).
And I feel proud, very proud, when a RAF Tornado flies overhead, because I help pay to train its crew, for the people who maintain it, and for it to stay up in the sky keeping the peace which, thanks to NATO, we here in the United Kingdom have learned to take for granted.
Perhaps, therefore, by proxy I'm part of this global Westernisation, this imposition of quasi-American ideals of freedom and democracy where they're not wanted, because I bankroll the corrupt British State to pursue its illegal wars. Perhaps by extension I'm responsible for slavery, and so perhaps I should apologise for that, too.
And then I read of British soldiers court-martialled for trying to do the impossible job of keeping the peace in a country that has only known savagery and fear for so long. Of their colleagues butcherered by a bloodthirsty mob at a police station in Basra, or blown up by a roadside bomb, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them lived close to here. And it makes me sick. And selfish me is glad that I'm not there, glad that I don't live in that hell-hole with all the chaos that so many brave British and American soldiers are doing their best to prevent, in the teeth of the most fervent and passionate opposition by people who post on forums such as this which can't logically be an appropriate place for their spleen, hate and fury, people who are following their own agenda for reasons best known to themselves, so that I can enjoy my fabulous British motorcycle that runs on Iraqi oil (after all, that was the purpose of the war wasn't it, so that I can continue to ride my bike on the cheap and on the back of other peoples' suffering, no???)
And then we have flawed intel that leads to raids on houses in London and occasionally in other places too. And people who are really innocent have their houses turned over. Of course I wouldn't like it if it happened to me. I acknowledge that.
And then we have a pile of people who criticise the slightest error of judgment, who jump on the bandwagon and create so much anti-police hysteria. Funny how these are largely the self-same as those I mention above, who oppose the liberation of peoples from years of repression. And Sir Ian Blair gets a toasting. How was it his fault???? He wasn't responsible. He is a good Christian man, and I respect his integrity. I choose not to speculate on the reasons for the raid.
But I do accept that if we are to keep at bay those who would otherwise blow us all to kingdom come given half the chance (and I don't doubt that there are a fair few of them in Guantanamo Bay) then we have to be prepared for this. Of course it ain't nice, nobody said it was. But it happens. People are human, so is Sir Ian Blair. And we get hordes of complaints from Muslims who say they're being picked on. It's complete BS, but no doubt some of that VAT I mentioned earlier will go on a fat payout to those concerned and will smooth ruffled feathers, and then they'll stop their bitching about how unfair life has become simply because they worship Mohammed instead of Jesus.
I think we need to remember where we have come from, why so many have come to this great land, and also to remember our American, Australian, New Zealand, Irish, Canadian, South African, Indian, Fijian, Norwegian and all other Allied friends who paid equally dearly for a free Europe and a free world 60 years ago. Because whether you like it or not - and it isn't at all PC to say so - if they hadn't, we wouldn't be free now. We'd probably have self-government, of a sort, as long as you spoke German and voted Nazi.
And we should remember from that, what we have come to. To a prosperity that our great-grandparents couldn't even dream of. And to remember that the threat from those who would destroy it is ever present.