I am someone now into their 40th year, and feel we are losing it in this country. 1 Million reasons why. But i think our no1 failure is for some of us (not all, some are brilliant) have lost the ability to work hard and work properly, to many excuses.

Did anyone hear the very sad story on radio 5 live on J. Derbershire show this morning on the events that followed his son being killed in the Eygption bombings at sharm el shiek last year. The foriegn office and government ministers should hang their heads in shame.

An elederly relevative has at to sell her home for full time care due to alzheimer's. The first 2 homes wanted her out within 2 days because they could not cope even though they were being paid 500 quid a week. This could be absolutely any of us reading this now in the future. Is this the way we treat our own in Great Britain??? What do these homes want to do for 500 quid a week.

If we are great please explain why!! Would love to hear your stories why you think/know, like me, we are going down the pan.

Only IMHO,

Greatness starts to fade when future actions are justified by past results.

Close to my opinion that greatness starts to fade when past actions are viewed by modern standards and apologists are justified.
Alan

We're in league with the most right wing and corrupt, both financially amd morally, American government for decades. One wonders whether or even how far that corruption has pervaded into UK! Try todays article from the Financial Times as a taster ;


Jacob Weisberg: A White House caught red-handed
By Jacob Weisberg
Published: March 15 2006 20:23 | Last updated: March 15 2006 20:23

Last week, the magazine I edit broke the news that Claude Allen, until recently the White House chief domestic policy adviser, was arrested for theft in the suburbs of Washington. The US president has expressed his shock and disappointment. If the allegations are true, how could one of his top aides, a devout Christian who passed a series of Federal Bureau of Investigation background checks, have been a common thief? But the more we hear about what Mr Allen is accused of, the less it sounds like kleptomania and the more it sounds like an application of Bush economic policy.

Mr Allens alleged scam was something called return fraud. According to the police, he would purchase a home-theatre system or a computer printer from a department store and put it in the trunk of his car. Then he would come back to the same store with his sales receipt, pull an identical item off the shelf and take it to the return desk for a refund. Using this technique, a brazen perpetrator pays for the item once, but derives value from it twice he gets his money back and keeps the merchandise. Mr Allen is alleged to have stolen more than $5,000 over the past year in this way. His lawyer has described the incidents as a series of misunderstandings and Mr Allen denies any wrongdoing.

As a point of comparison, consider the presidents Social Security proposal, which died in Congress last year. George W. Bush wanted to set up a system of private retirement accounts for future retirees. This would have required him to divert $1,000bn or so from the Social Security Trust Fund, which pays for benefits for current and future retirees. Since Mr Bush did not propose to reduce benefits, how was he going to make up the difference? By sauntering to the customer service desk and asking for his money back. In this case, the receipt was a bogus projection that the retirement funds invested in the stock market would grow so quickly that everyone would come out ahead. The main difference between Mr Allens alleged scam and Mr Bushs attempted one is scale.

Mr Allens former colleagues in the West Wing are now trying to slip more tax cuts out of the door without stopping at the cash register. Their trick is to claim that with the managers special, tax cuts are on sale for nothing. You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase, Mr Bush said last month. In other words, tax cuts will mean more money for the Treasury, not less. There is, of course, no economic support for the concept that tax cuts are cost-free, just as there are no shops where customers are encouraged to walk past the checkout without paying. Mr Bushs tax- avoidance scam is based on the truism that government revenues almost always rise in nominal terms because of inflation, population growth and gross domestic product growth. Even if Congress cuts taxes, government is likely to take in more in 2007 than in 2006 it just will not take in as much more as it would have otherwise.

Another scam the president and his budget cronies favour is price-tag swapping. Here Mr Bush picks out a high-priced item sudh as a fat package of lamp chops or the Iraq war. When the security camera is pointed elsewhere, he peels off the $200bn price tag and attaches a lower one removed from educational reform or something in the congressional pork aisle. Should a subordinate threaten to speak to security, the ringleader deals with the problem Tony Soprano-style. For instance, when the governments chief Medicare actuary came up with a too-high price tag of $551bn for Mr Bushs Medicare prescription drug bill, members of the presidents gang who preferred an estimate closer to $400bn over 10 years made him an offer he could not refuse. Only after sceptical Republican legislators fell into line and the bill passed did it emerge that the accountant, Richard Foster, had been threatened with the sack if he revealed the higher figure.

Presidents set a moral example, and given the message Mr Bush has been sending, it is no surprise that the problem of inventory shrinkage has spread to Congress as well. For example, Republicans in the Senate recently proposed a novel way to pay for extending Mr Bushs tax cut on investment income, which will otherwise expire in 2009. They want to allow the wealthy and not just the middle class to convert their private retirement accounts to a type that is not taxed when funds are withdrawn at retirement. This would produce a temporary revenue boost, because taxes are due on the initial conversion, but would be a big money-loser for government in the long-run. With this swindle paying for one tax cut for the rich with another tax cut for the rich Bushonomics has reached its larcenous apogee.

So, if it turns out that the charges are true, where might Mr Allen have learnt that you can get the things you want without paying for them? Let us just say it was not at church.

Fascinating programme on Wilson last night. Did you see Hailsham spluttering? Priceless.

it is right there may have a plot to kill him??? or at least lead a coup??

did anyone see the great britain cop spraying the black car driver for absolutly no reason the other night. cop rekoned he was wearing a loud shirt in a built up area and driving on the cracks in the pavement. sorry, to make light of a appaling situation, but who'd of thought a p*ss take from 'the not the nine o'clock news' (early 80's tv prog) could be so relavant today.

Wilson programme was reveling wasn't It?... Secret army ? sounded like something out of Reggie Perrin :-)

thats a.............??????? perhaps someone else will answer my question then??

Didn't see the Wilson programme, but I am reading a hugely funny novel at the mo and it has an interesting passage in about the problems succesfull revolutionaries face.
If i can find the passage, I'll bob it on here cos it is very funny, but also very poignant, and (typical of the author) it is an inspired and cutting observation of human nature.
Alan

I remember when Wilson went in Hosptal for a operation after he stepped down as premier when he came too he had problems with is memory the doctors said it was not dementia and could not say what it was, did they mention that on the T V program ? was it a case of MI5 brain washing ?

NEWSFLASH.
In an attempt to stop the bird flu pandemic before it reaches the USA, George W Bush has ordered the bombing of the Canary Islands.

Kivver - yes it appears that a rogue element in MI5 were paranoid about the imminent threat of communism, the CIA believed that Wilson was a KGB plant after the sudden death of Hugh Gaitskell who had been to the USSR on 1 January for talks with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. The Establishment feared communist plants in the unions, the break down in law and order and the erosion of the old aristocratic order who had for centuries been used to power. The Queen Mother, Lord Mountbatten and leading army members had created secret militia who given the appropriate circumstances would lead a military coup. They clearly had attempted to discredit Wilson with so called 'black propaganda' via friendly press (an affair with Marcia Williams, his membership of the communist party, illegal diamond payments from South Africa). Essentially, there was no need for a coup because Heath won the election in 1970. An army 'training exercise' to take over London Airport was said to be in fact a training exdercise for a coup.

Fascinating to relive again the real naked confrontation of left and right of the 60s and 70s that of course came to a head with Thatcher and the miners later. I wonder if those battles have become quieter as everyone seems more interested in consumerism now but the programme reminded me of the real edge to politics then as opposed to the media circus we have now. And also how threatened and paranoid the Establishment was.

thanks for that scrooge, sounds interesting, wished id seen it.

could be interesting following the repeort nuclear energy may not be the way foward, gaz powered stations are getting to expensive, renewable energy is years off. talk of going back to coal fired stations. uuummmmm i wonder where the coal might come from when all the cheap imports start to get more expensive.

Gazprom as not taken over how power stations yet, did you mean Gas? LOL.

Kivver - think there is part 2 of another doc on Wilson on ITV on Tues.

i was about to phone my mate Gas, and got mixed up.

brainboru, we should also be encouraged there are still writers and media able and willing to investigate and report misbehaviours in high places.

After the recent attemept in redefiniting "torture". I wdoner in what context and senses are the following "great"?

"Alexander The Great"
"The Great Pyramid"
"All Creatures Great and Small"
"It's A Great Day To Be Alive"
"The Great Lakes"
"Great Depression"
"The Great Western Railway"
"A great game."
"A great movie"
...

A little story from America ...

Walker loses weight and finds soul

"...
His new-found profile has seen him inundated with commercial offers - including a reported $5m to advertise a weight-loss pill, and offers to endorse shampoo, vitamins and smoking patches.

But he says he is unwilling to compromise his integrity by endorsing products he doesn't use.
..."

In our age of spins and b%^*s&^*, wouldn't it be an essential small step to greatness by people stops claiming credits for other people's achievments, blame the innocent and clobber those less able to defend themselves.

There can be no greatness without respect.

BBC watchdog report on rogue builders, John Richards, Allan Phillips and George Chaffer, who cons elderly victims out of their life savings.

BBC Watchdog

mentioned in my opening post about an elderly relative who has alzheimer's and clearly has alzheimer's being conned out of her savings by a top building society who i wont mention but are based in the midshires. All the girl wanted her to do when she went into the society was sign up for 5 year bond. why would you ask someone in her 70's and clearly not all there to sign up to a five year bond????? this is the kind of thing we all have to put with.

Kivver
I trust your relative was not persuaded to sign for this bond.
If she was then name and shame the Society.

Ian

she was and there is a big clue in the above post as to who it was. of course her kin are making inquires and complaints.