US election

[12gauge82]

9 minutes ago, oowee said:

It's unreal. It looked like he would be released with a caution. The US seems to have lost it big time. I thought Biden was at least a step beyond but clearly in there with the rest. 

No longer a Democracy.

Jarred Kushnor. Pardoned by Trump and then gives Trump a donation....

Kash Patel to run the FBI ......

 

Agreed Oowee. I don't know what's happened, I don't know with the Internet if we're just more aware these days, but it feels like the world has gone backwards. 

[Scully]

Akin to third world political corruption. 
Just goes to show they’re all cut from the same cloth and separated by small degrees. 
Astounding! 

[TIGHTCHOKE]

I thought old Joe had repeatedly said he would NOT issue a pardon...............................

 

As others have said, they all seem to be as bad as each other, they are after all just POLITICIANS.

[JohnfromUK]

42 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

I thought old Joe had repeatedly said he would NOT issue a pardon...................

I doubt he remembers what he says from one day to another.  He is very clearly not all there.

[Yellow Bear]

8 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

I doubt he remembers what he says from one day to another.  He is very clearly not all there.

Has not been for the period of office, I just wonder who his particular puppet master/mistress is

[Graham M]

[serrac]

On 02/12/2024 at 09:09, oowee said:

I thought Biden was at least a step beyond but clearly in there with the rest.

You actually believed Biden was a man of integrity? 🤣🤣🤣

[oowee]

17 minutes ago, serrac said:

You actually believed Biden was a man of integrity? 🤣🤣🤣

Best of a bad bunch maybe? It's certainly looking more like a failed state now. 

[Rewulf]

42 minutes ago, oowee said:

Best of a bad bunch maybe?

The best ??
I cant think of any worse choice ! The man cant speak, walk in a straight line or keep from falling over.
Was there literally no one else who could have been a dem POTUS, and Harris as VP ? Again, the worst possible choice.
It makes you wonder if they wanted to win at all.

On my recent trip to the States, I spoke to a lot of Yanks, I didnt meet a single one who was unhappy about Trump taking over.

[oowee]

47 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

The best ??
I cant think of any worse choice ! The man cant speak, walk in a straight line or keep from falling over.
Was there literally no one else who could have been a dem POTUS, and Harris as VP ? Again, the worst possible choice.
It makes you wonder if they wanted to win at all.

On my recent trip to the States, I spoke to a lot of Yanks, I didnt meet a single one who was unhappy about Trump taking over.

Worrying. 

[Gordon R]

oowee - if Donald brings about peace in Ukraine and gets the Israeli hostages released, will you give him any credit?

[Rewulf]

16 minutes ago, Gordon R said:

oowee - if Donald brings about peace in Ukraine and gets the Israeli hostages released, will you give him any credit?

If Trump bought total world peace, put a man on Mars, and ended poverty worldwide, there would be some who would still scream 'NOT MY PRESIDENT !'

[Graham M]

Biden was openly anti British and didn't mind showing it.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8922741/Picture-Joe-Biden-Gerry-Adams-IRA-chief-tried-kill-Army-officer-emerges.html

 

[oowee]

24 minutes ago, Gordon R said:

oowee - if Donald brings about peace in Ukraine and gets the Israeli hostages released, will you give him any credit?

Of course. Do you think its likely? His track record, with the Afghan troop withdrawal negotiation (excluding the Afghan govt) is not great. 

Kellog looks a sound choice but It's as much a matter for Europe as the US and he will no doubt be hampered by the anti Ukraine undercurrent. 

Hostages.......... I don't see an effective way for US engagement given the radical factions on both sides. 

The bigger concern is the backsliding on democracy in the US.

[Graham M]

I think there is a greater sense of democracy in the US than there is in the UK

 

[oowee]

Just now, Graham M said:

I think there is a greater sense of democracy in the US than there is in the UK

 

Why? 

The UK has a separation between the judiciary and the executive. 

[Rewulf]

20 minutes ago, oowee said:

Why? 

The UK has a separation between the judiciary and the executive. 

It also has a separation between government and the civil service, if the civil service dont like a government policy, they do their level best to not carry it out ?
The separation in the US is between federal and state lawmakers, so technically there is a separation between the executive (federal) and state judiciary.

[Graham M]

That ugly cow in that picture is an IRA activist who tried to murder a British army officer. She cleared off to America where she was given a warm welcome by Biden.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Bloody Rita O'Hare

[Vince Green]

8 minutes ago, Gordon R said:

oowee - if Donald brings about peace in Ukraine and gets the Israeli hostages released, will you give him any credit?

The only way he could possibly bring about peace in Ukraine is by betrayal of the Ukrainian people.

[oowee]

20 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

It also has a separation between government and the civil service, if the civil service dont like a government policy, they do their level best to not carry it out ?
 

🤣 It would be fairer to say the CS works within the rules set by the state.

22 minutes ago, Rewulf said:

The separation in the US is between federal and state lawmakers, so technically there is a separation between the executive (federal) and state judiciary.

Oh dear. Have you seen the Trump picks and the Elon selection process? 😂

[old man]

1 hour ago, oowee said:

Why? 

The UK has a separation between the judiciary and the executive. 

Mm, a separation with reality too?

[amateur]

4 hours ago, oowee said:

🤣 It would be fairer to say the CS works within the rules set by the state.

.... is the theory.

In practice the civil service avoids doing anything that might require action.

[JohnfromUK]

6 hours ago, amateur said:

.... is the theory.

In practice the civil service avoids doing anything that might require action.

My view is similar, but I would correct is to;

In practice the civil service avoids doing anything that might require action doesn't suit its view on policy.

[Mungler]

7 hours ago, amateur said:

.... is the theory.

In practice the civil service avoids doing anything that might require action.

I have a theory. 

When I was at school, all the kids who left around GCSEs went out into the world and onto the tools or into a family business. Many were not suited to the class room environment. Those that stayed visible, grafted and became successful self starters. Real jobs, real work, long hours with early starts and touching cash and a real connection to actual real money and the real world, working in an ‘eat what you kill environment’.

Then there were those that stayed on to A level who were pretty much on track for office jobs either after A level or after degree.

Of those, those with a penchant for English lit, social sciences and the ‘ologies’ fell to the left and the dreamier side of life. They ended up in the left leaning universities and in careers where ambition was not particularly required or where they would make no difference and headed into the public sector for an easier life - the next 40 years entirely mapped out, pay rises, career progression and pensions automatically catered for, shorter working days, union membership  longer holidays and extras gained by staying still.

Everyone else one way or another fell into the real world and chased money and in so doing fell into productivity and being productive. Some did fall into corporate machinery - those with ambition climbed the greasy pole, others stayed put and settled for the same desk for 40 years. 

As an aside I got a holiday job in a large insurance company in my late teens and there I saw people in their early 30’s with retirement clocks on their desks counting down the next 30 years. It was dystopian. Any one of them could have been hit by a bus and no one would have cared or noticed, certainly not the actual business they worked within. 

One of my brother’s best friends from school got A levels, went to a left leaning university and on leaving joined the tax office and the office workers union (etc) where he is now 40 years later. I remember one of his first roles was being assigned to a project that lasted a year to select the correct photocopiers for the office. The lack of energy, enthusiasm, productivity or return was off the chart. He said at the time they could have wrapped the project up in a week but it was in no one’s interest to do so and there was no pressure on them to accelerate. The embodiment of unproductive. Indeed, you could not get any further away from ‘eat what you kill’.

The public sector is a basket case - the human machinery that runs the state is ideologically captured, entirely unproductive and we’re lumbered with it. To my mind, the only way forward is to shrink government, shrink the state and teach mandatory economics alongside maths and English to at least add a commercial counterbalance to the dreamy nonsense injected into kids that remain in education.

There is no chance of educating a civil servant who is 20 years in and institutionalised. The only way is to limit the entire machinery by having small government / small state. However our election cycles won’t allow for that - the Conservatives get in and block 50,000 public sector jobs, but 5 years later Labour get in and announce an extra 50,000 public sector jobs. 

If only people understood that for every public sector employee you need at least one productive private sector employee to pay for them. Everything has to be paid for. 

.

 

Edited December 5 by Mungler