We stand with Mandelson

Disraeli's Ghost

But Mandelson is happy to trade away our sovereignty. We shouldn't stand anywhere near him

London Calling

We had better stand tall indeed, Gordon is rubbing his hands over the 42 day detention and the Lisbon Treaty, Barroso is rubbing his hands over the Irish vote and the Four Aces are doing a high five whilst they sign their contracts with Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/iraq.oil

Wake the kingdom, the hundred years are over.

London Calling

We had better stand indeed, Gordon is rubbing his hands over the 42 day detention and the Lisbon Treaty, Barroso is rubbing his hands over the Irish vote and the Four Aces are doing a high five whilst they sign their contracts with Iraq.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/20/iraq.oil

Wake the kingdom, the hundred years are over.

Fergus Pickering

How nice to be yelling 'Death to the French' after all these years. Nelson, you should be living at this hour!

Hysteria

London Calling - do you know anything about the way the oil industry works??

Or more to the point, how the petrol we put in our tanks actually gets found, extracted, transported and refined?

FYI - my company has been helping the Iraqi National Oil Company for many years to understand THEIR resource base and to look to future development. They need Western technology and intellectual resources.

The profits that the oil companies make in the West are returned to the wider society either in the search for more reserves, or as share value - which, by the way , are a substantial part of most pension and mutual funds.

Verity

Yes, but at least Sarkozy is cute. And he shouted "Scum!" at the Muslim demonstrators burning cars in Paris.

Tina

Agree with Verity. Sarko is gorgeous!

Verity

When Sarko was Mayor of Neuilly and was performing a wedding ceremony between his (eventual) wife and her new husband, he was falling in love with her.

How is that for romance?

Elizabeth

The present system of free trade has been a disaster for the working and even middle classes in western nations.
Its been a quick fix for a splurge of materialism all built on created debt - but it is going to collapse as we are seeing, ending in tears and with western nations having little in the way of manufacturing bases and correspondingly no jobs.
As the late Sir James Goldsmith wrote - free trade is fine between two nations with similar wage rates etc but the whole idea of it has been to use semi-slave labour in the east and leave western youth on the scrap heap because they need higher wages.
Three obvious results you can see now. The rich much richer - the poor poorer and the middle class being slowly wiped out and down trodden. Another the underclass. Unemployable because the work ethic has gone. The work ethic that built our ships and made Britian a manufacturing giant.
Of course when that same underclass is needed to go over the top at the next 'somme' the rich will find they exist again. At present they can stay drugged and knifed, producing feral children on their vile ghettoes and estates.
The third is that having built China and other countries up for profiteering from their cheap labour we are now being hoist on our own petards. They want more oil.
However again that is a negative for the western poor and a plus for the rich.
The poor and even middle classes will lose their cars and mobility, their holidays and pleasures, the rich will pay without a pause, enjoy our empty roads, and pocket the profits.
Free trade has been and utter disaster for two thirds of western people.
Cheap washing machines today, long term being reduced, as was probably intended to join the east in corporate serfdom as we watch our whole systems of democracy eroded by fraud and money.
The end of the 20th century will be the golden days and the names of Thatcher, Blair and Brown will go down as the villains who ended the lifestyle we no longer can or will enjoy unless at the top of the pile.
Sarkozy and Mandelson are equally as bad the both of them.

Commondog

Tina and Verity.

I've looked at Sarko's photo and if he's gorgeous, then I'm off down town tonight, as the time is obviously here for middle aged, stumpy, saggy faced blokes to get out there and purvey the good stuff.

BTW, nostril hair, yes or no?

Commondog

Elizabeth.

You've got it fully sussed. How come there is no mention of this on the political scene I wonder?

Frank Pulley

James

You really should have printed my comment about Mandelson - why are you protecting this oily little serpent? I usually give you the benefit of the doubt when you spike my comments, as some of them are tasteless if not indeed obscene when I knee-jerk to some of the rubbish that gets through the filter, but why this magazine should defend a leftist plotter with his previous defeats me. WTF is going on? Has he volunteered to join the Cameroons or something and use his honed Gramscian skills to facilitate NuToryism ? Or has he merely passed on a source for a no-interest mortgage from a rich patron? I think we should be told.

Frank Pulley

Elizabeth

Another belter! Well done, gal!

Elizabeth

Commondog

'You've got it fully sussed. How come there is no mention of this on the political scene I wonder?'

Because the same people promoting free trade control our news media and play our politicians as puppets. Using their money and the politicians greed.
Frank Field and a few rise above it.
They have played the public for fools. That nice TV set and computer you got so cheap!!! Hang on you are actually going to be paying the hidden price for that next week at the petrol pump or in your tax.
They have hidden the true numbers of the unemployed under free trade by all sorts of ruses, sickness, jobseeking, encouraging single motherhood, etc etc.
Its cheaper to pay people benefits than a decent wage. Benefit dependency has been encouraged by those wanting to use cheap labour for ever bigger profits. As has immigration which also depresses wages for the bottom 50%
But the whole phony ediface is coming crashing down.
Sadly its those in the middle and bottom who will take the brunt. Lost homes and bankruptsy.
Some folk are saying a good depression will wake the middle class out of their apathy. It certainly will make them wonder how we are in a position of paying hundreds of millions to Poles for Polish children we don't even know exist whilst they, the British, lose their homes, go cold and carless.
We have to get back to a sovereign and independent Britain, growing our own food and producing our own goods as far as is possible.
We need to regain our sanity as a nation.
In the USA some are suggesting that the best vote is to go and just vote out the existing Senator or congress man/woman as a method of cleaning out the corruption and pork barrelling.
Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea here when you see the greed and fiddling at Westminster. It is disgraceful that our country has sunk to the level it has.

a