The new proposed routes for the High Speed 2 train, stretching from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds, have been announced amidst widespread controversy.
Apart from personal considerations and the preponderance of Nimbyism, most opposition centres on the irreversible loss of beautiful countryside. Industry, whilst welcoming the benefits of a facility that will half the journey times to Manchester, say, rue the fact that it may be twenty years before the line will be built.
Why not go the whole hog and solve the railway and overcrowded roads problems simultaneously? You can read my earlier article for the solution here
or you can read my novel, 'The Lamb at Nettlesham', available on Amazon at: Lamb at Nettlesham
Tuesday, 29 January 2013
Industrial Britain today.
Watch advertisements on commercial television these days and it might lead one to imagine what sort of industry takes place in the 'Sceptred Isles'. Pay day loan companies share the airways with online betting shops. Both industries make or invent nothing, do not contribute to the advancement of mankind or in other ways add to the sum of human achievement. They exist solely for the purpose of taking money, mostly from the poorest amongst us, and putting it in the pockets of the wealthiest, bringing misery to the people who can least afford it. The use of modern technology facilitates the transfer of money making the impoverishment of the masses both easy and painless at the time.
How is it that the gambling companies can advertise on television? Who is responsible and who benefitted in Government? Gambling addiction leads to personal misery, family break-up and often death by suicide. Somebody is to blame!
Watching these advertisements is embarrassing and leads one to ask what sort of Britain do we live in when its fastest growing industries are such as these and not say, shipbuilding. Shyster Britain!
How is it that the gambling companies can advertise on television? Who is responsible and who benefitted in Government? Gambling addiction leads to personal misery, family break-up and often death by suicide. Somebody is to blame!
Watching these advertisements is embarrassing and leads one to ask what sort of Britain do we live in when its fastest growing industries are such as these and not say, shipbuilding. Shyster Britain!
Reaping the whirlwind
The phrase that suggests that by 'sowing the breeze you might reap the whirlwind' comes to mind when we hear that the foreign office has advised Brits to abandon Benghazi.
It follows a pattern we saw in Egypt and are currently seeing in Syria where the Western nations supported the so called 'Arab Spring' to overthrow tough dictatorial regimes in a ridiculous attempt to impose their notion of Democracy. How ironic that so soon after the British Prime Minister, Cameron, was congratulating himself for his part in overthrowing Gaddhafi, we now find ourselves personnae non gratae in a country that has been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists and is sliding into anarchy. Egypt is also volatile with mobs on the streets again, disappointed that it hasn't turned out as they hoped. They have to learn that you can't please all the people all the time and learn to live with compromise; no easy thing when your opponents are armed to the teeth with kalashnikovs.
Britain and the other Western nations need to keep out. What you mustn't do, like Cameron, is to foment unrest in already volatile parts of the world at the same time as you announce massive cuts in the armed forces. At the very leaast this stupidity will cause uneasiness in the British military ranks which will lead to a loss of confidence that will be hard to reverse on the battlefield.
Pictures from Benghazi streets show protesters carrying banners in English which say: 'No to insults to Islam'. 'No to insults to OUR prophet'. That's right, 'our prophet'. Not the prophet leading the Global crusade to bring the truth to all the peoples of the world, but the prophet of the Arabs. But isn't this what this is all about? The Arabs against the rest of the world; imposing the values and way of life as laid down in a thirteen hundred year old book based on some dreams. Not all the dreams, incidentally, only those selected by a small group of scholars as being suitable.
Instead of misplaced gestures and worthwhile platitudes, Cameron and the other Western leaders must start to address the fundamental problem which is the spread of Islam throughout the poorest regions of the planet and to my mind they cannot expect people to listen unless they also address the validity of the other Abrahamic religions.
To my mind there is no time to lose if North Africa isn't to be lost for all time with Mali under threat, oil installations in Algeria have been attacked and Somalia is all but lost to those that wish to return the world to the dark ages.
Remember it was from Morocco that the Islamicists launched their first attack on mainland Europe by invading Spain and perhaps it is from here that the Western leaders can take comfort. The ruling Nasrid dynasty built the crowning glory of their occupation, the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Throughout the palace, on its walls, it proclaims that 'there is only one conqueror, Allah.' Readers will know that Granada was retaken by the Christians in 1492 and the Moors expelled in the early seventeenth century, almost one thousand years after they arrived. Clearly the Imams are not telling the whole truth. The same can be said of the Popes. Excommunication of Henry VIII, when he challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, didn't lead to purgatory but the rise of the Anglican Church, one of the biggest Communions in the world. World leaders should point out at every opportunity why the Nations should embrace the peacemakers and condemn those who bring conflict before it is too late.
It follows a pattern we saw in Egypt and are currently seeing in Syria where the Western nations supported the so called 'Arab Spring' to overthrow tough dictatorial regimes in a ridiculous attempt to impose their notion of Democracy. How ironic that so soon after the British Prime Minister, Cameron, was congratulating himself for his part in overthrowing Gaddhafi, we now find ourselves personnae non gratae in a country that has been taken over by Islamic fundamentalists and is sliding into anarchy. Egypt is also volatile with mobs on the streets again, disappointed that it hasn't turned out as they hoped. They have to learn that you can't please all the people all the time and learn to live with compromise; no easy thing when your opponents are armed to the teeth with kalashnikovs.
Britain and the other Western nations need to keep out. What you mustn't do, like Cameron, is to foment unrest in already volatile parts of the world at the same time as you announce massive cuts in the armed forces. At the very leaast this stupidity will cause uneasiness in the British military ranks which will lead to a loss of confidence that will be hard to reverse on the battlefield.
Pictures from Benghazi streets show protesters carrying banners in English which say: 'No to insults to Islam'. 'No to insults to OUR prophet'. That's right, 'our prophet'. Not the prophet leading the Global crusade to bring the truth to all the peoples of the world, but the prophet of the Arabs. But isn't this what this is all about? The Arabs against the rest of the world; imposing the values and way of life as laid down in a thirteen hundred year old book based on some dreams. Not all the dreams, incidentally, only those selected by a small group of scholars as being suitable.
Instead of misplaced gestures and worthwhile platitudes, Cameron and the other Western leaders must start to address the fundamental problem which is the spread of Islam throughout the poorest regions of the planet and to my mind they cannot expect people to listen unless they also address the validity of the other Abrahamic religions.
To my mind there is no time to lose if North Africa isn't to be lost for all time with Mali under threat, oil installations in Algeria have been attacked and Somalia is all but lost to those that wish to return the world to the dark ages.
Remember it was from Morocco that the Islamicists launched their first attack on mainland Europe by invading Spain and perhaps it is from here that the Western leaders can take comfort. The ruling Nasrid dynasty built the crowning glory of their occupation, the Alhambra Palace in Granada. Throughout the palace, on its walls, it proclaims that 'there is only one conqueror, Allah.' Readers will know that Granada was retaken by the Christians in 1492 and the Moors expelled in the early seventeenth century, almost one thousand years after they arrived. Clearly the Imams are not telling the whole truth. The same can be said of the Popes. Excommunication of Henry VIII, when he challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, didn't lead to purgatory but the rise of the Anglican Church, one of the biggest Communions in the world. World leaders should point out at every opportunity why the Nations should embrace the peacemakers and condemn those who bring conflict before it is too late.
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