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Not only is David Cameron a liar, he is a bad liar “I feel I am one of them” Cameron bleats, regarding the hilariously named “Loongate” incident that has set the UK media atwitter.
How many people actually buy this crap I wonder? Precious few I suspect. Cameron is so remote from the Tory grass roots, who are ever more rapidly becoming the UKIP grass roots, that I very much doubt he has more than the vaguest idea who “they” actually are.
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Wasn’t there a song by Eric Carmen, from some 80s film.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,
I’ve got this feelin’ that won’t subside,
I look at you and I fantasise,
You’re not alright,
Now I’ve got you in my sights
With these swivel eyes,
One look at you and you can’t disguise
You’re full of sh*te,
I think it’s tragic between you and I”
Well, “swivel-eyed” might be a stretch, but you don’t think Cameron is a loon?
@ Laird, if you are not UK based, you may be unaware that a member of Mr Cameron’s inner circle was reported to have referred to certain Conservative party activists as ‘swivel-eyed loons’. This is on the back of Mr Cameron openly referring to UKIP members as ‘fruitcakes, nutters and closet racists’.
Concerning Laird’s point above (I presumed pot/kettle/black): on seeing the Express photo of Cameron, I could not avoid thinking of Benny Hill.
They are (well was for Benny) both rather good at presentation – but somehow that is not everything.
Best regards
What sane person would go into politics, have a look at politicians in the English speaking world and identify more than ten where the lift goes to the top floor?
@ Regional. The late, great Auberon Waugh said that all decent people should regard politicians with scorn, and all they were interested in was their own self-importance and pushing buttons and seeing us all jump.
The problem is that unless decent people manage to hold their noses and obtain power, and systematically demolish the ruling caste of state functionaries abolishing jobs post by post, repealing laws Act by Act, and cutting spending £ by £, then they will go on.
Any decent person should keep a picture of Nikolai Yezhov on their desk as the ultimate symbol of bureaucracy.
Off topic sort off, when Virginia and the Carolinas were being settled by Englanders slavery was being practiced in Europe, it was called Serfdom, today we have a new elite that hold power and they’re enslaving the sheeple with debt and regulation but giving handouts financed with debt, you can live by kite flying credit cards but one day you’ll come unstuck, Gordon Brown did it with without scrutiny from the Meeja because socialism is like loons who have difficulty taking off and landing because every thing is the wrong shape and in the wrong place. While reading about Medieval history in England I’ve wondered how the elite kept the peasants in check, if you have a large gang of goons in your castle they require rations, clothing and shelter and given the standards of hygiene of the time keeping them alive would be a challenge, apparently the dukes and earls relied on intimidation of the peasants on a retinue of 20 knights who were the equivalent of a modern battle tank, today socialist governments have the Meeja and regulation to keep the sheeple in line as they’re pushed into the abattoir to be slaughtered by debt.
Rant finished.
@ Regional, by “loon” may I take it that you refer to a bird, a kind of Diver? In the UK, ‘loon’ is an abbreviation of ‘lunatic’, not a bird.
Loons are good at catching fish and they can feed themselves, socialists end up with famines. Just trying to keep consistency across a large expanse of sea.
@Regional. your understanding of Medieval England is flawed. Firstly it was only in the early Medieval period that there were a significant number of castles acting as homes for the nobles, later on they lived in manors and mansion houses. They were served largely by lesser nobles of both Anglo-Saxon and Norman extraction. It was in these peoples interests to keep the system going as these lesser nobles were usually waiting on inheritances. The only ‘peasants’ allowed to live within the keep would have been highly skilled craftsmen and so forth who also would have faced ruination if the system had fallen. You appear to have overlooked the importance of religion in keeping the masses in check. Just as today most ordinary English people (sadly) think that Government must necessarily provide healthcare and welfare benefits, it is probable that the idea of doing away with nobles was an equally disturbing thought to the 13th or 14th century peasant, partly because of religious belief in the divine right of kings. Note that as religious reform spread empires and kingdoms crumbled, except those that changed their ways.
The notion of the incredibly poor hygiene is also flawed. There were certainly some practices that today would be considered unhygienic but on the whole they lived much as we did.
Are there swivel-eyed loons all over the place? What about Woolwich, not a Conservative seat?
Alex: it is probable that the idea of doing away with nobles was an equally disturbing thought to the 13th or 14th century peasant, partly because of religious belief in the divine right of kings.
“the divine right of kings” was a late-sixteenth-century invention to justify centralized royal autocracy – which did not exist in the 13th or 14th century. That was the era when the nobility imposed Magna Carta on the English crown, and many monarchies were elective, rather than hereditary.
I feel like someone from a science fiction story…..
“Once there were millions of us, now there are only a hundred thousand of us left – and our own leaders hate us and are plotting to wipe us out”.
Paul Marks.
Member of my local Conservative Association all my adult life.
As for English nobles – the idea that most of them are Normans is a myth – either they intermarried with the Anglo Saxons (the third Norman King married a direct decendant of Alfred the Great – and did everything he could to get the English on his side so he could defeate his elder brother for the throne) or they were replaced (over time) by wealthy Anglo Saxons – often peasants only a few genertions back
We actually have the letters where the (Anglo Saxon peasant) Paston family reinvent themselves as ancient Norman noblity.
That was the way of it – intermarry, or get replaced.
Old Scots law was more honest – any person who could afford to buy an estate was a “noble” (by definition).
Even in the late 18th century Dr Johnson was astonished that his friend Boswell was addressed by the title of his estate – like a noble.
Because, in the eyes of old-school Scots, Boswell was a noble (because he owned an estate).
As for paying rent – the Highlanders were too poor to pay rent.
They offered their swords (and courage) in time of danger under the leadership of their sworn lord – that was all they could offer.
So when “military tenure” was abolished (after the revolt of 1745) the “Highland Clearances” were inevitable.
Not that the “great lords” benefitted – they mostly went bankrupt trying to “improve” the Highlands.
As for those parts of England where direct “peasant” (not a term that English farmers like) ownership was more efficient, it happened.
“Entail” or no “entail” if an estate is not economically suitable, it will eventually be broken up.
This is what people such as James Mill and J.S. Mill did not understand – changing the land laws would NOT change the ownership structure of the land, as clever farmers had found ways round those laws (via “legal fictions” and so on) CENTURIES before.
In reality there was “free trade in land” – those estates that survived, survived because they were O.K. (and if they stopped being O.K. they did not long survive).
One can even compare things – side by side.
Kent had Anglo Saxon land law (right up to the 1920s), next door Sussex had Norman land law.
Were they fundementally different places by the 18th or 19th centuries?
No they were not.
By the way – there was Act of Parliament in under Charles II bannning labour services in return for land holding in England and Wales.
In theory that should have “freed the serfs” – accept no one could find any serfs (in England and Wales) to free….
They had gone centuries before.
What use were serfs to a noble?
They could not pay you, and they could not FIGHT for you.
To French nobles English ones were barbaric – due to their horrible habits.
Fighting on foot (when they needed to), using bows (when they needed to) and HACKING EACH OTHER TO DEATH (even when they did not need to – because-it-is-fun).
Such nobles needed as many free men as they could get (serfs were of no use to them).
Barbaric they may have been – but the warriors of Islam would have faced harsher opposition in those days.
Or even in Victorian or Edwadian Britain.
The people has become more peaceful – but they were still armed.
In Scotland still, a Barony is an incorporeal hereditament that can be bought and sold.
To those people who’ve disagreed with me thankyou for your feedback but as there’re no definitive accounts of the times only bits and pieces it’s difficult to get an accurate perception of life in those times and remember the peasants didn’t keep diaries.
Loons very good at fishing, socialist governments are very good at fishing i.e. taxation.
With regard to having free men fighting for you the Englanders hired mercenaries and a sizeable proportion of the Englander army trying to defend the settlers in the 13 American colonies against the usurpers were German Mercenaries.
Loons is short for lunatics. And it is English, not Englanders. And whilst some of the Hessian mercenaries were press-ganged, most were volunteers recruited by various German princes. About a quarter of the Crown’s army in the Thirteen colonies were Hessians.
Perry,
Loons are lunatics, really?
Thanks for your feedback
Perry,
If your leaders take you into the German Confederation of Europe you’ll be known as Englanders.
I am not sure if the Germans and Gerwomans would want an international finance center like London competing with the new Eurozone. And if the referendum goes as pols suggest, the U.K. will be out of that mess, anyway.
If, by ‘bad’, you mean he is easy to spot when lying, isn’t that a good thing?
Nick Gray,
As a member of the English speaking world I hope so, and
It’s easy to tell when politicians are lying, their mouths are open.
They could just be breathing.
PFP,
The brain dead also breath but most people breath through their nose.
Regional what if George III had “done a Boswell”?
Boswell (Dr Johnson’s friend and biographer) was in favour of restoring the Scots independence – not because he was a radical (far from it) but to strengthen the Crown.
According to the Tory (Boswell style Tory) understanding of the monarchy the relationship between King and subjects was a DIRECT one (not one via the Whig oligarchy that controlled the Westminister Parliament).
[ Rather unlike the “Taxation is no tyranny” like of his friend Dr Johnson (with his famous attack on Americans – “the liberty you support is the liberty to rob indians and enslave negros” a line that Marxists and neoMarxists greatfully took up a couple of centuries, Ike made a similar unintentional propaganda gift to the bad guys – with his “military industrial complex” line which was gleefully used by Marxists from that day to this).]
So when American colonists complained of taxes laid by Westminister – George III could have said (and, perhaps, made it count – via the number of seats in Parliament the Monarchy still had influence in before the Act of 1832) “I quite agree with you – the Westminister Parliament should not be allowed to do such things, let us put a stop to it….”
After all that was the de facto policy followed in Canada and elsewhere.
Someone like George Washington had no real dispute with anther man called George (this was not a feudal dispute) he had a dispute with the tidy minded adminisrators, the modernisers of Parliament.
As you point out Regional it is no Feudal army that is sent to America – but a professional one, a modern one, a mercenary one.
Still the above would have needed George III to be a man of vision – and he was not. He was not the lunatic (at least not till years later) of popular vision, and nor was he a bad man (indeed he was personally a rather nice man), but not a man of vision.