The Difference Between Liberal and Conservative

Helpful observation. If we consider our histories, The native population of the UK was overrun & brutally oppressed by the Norman invaders, who eliminated British leaders & divided the land between the various Norman overlords & establish a ruling dynasty. Various wars took place down the centuries but we are supposed to revere our monarch, her family & consider them our "betters."

The brutal suppression continued for 1,000 years, with the "common people" being oppressed by the Lords & the RC church, with no land rights. Available occupations were the army, navy, seafaring & seasonal farm labour, along with service to the Gentry for the women, frequently resulting in unwilling pregnancy & destitution.

Rather like the situation with the American natives & ex-slaves, only you folk are in the position of the successful invaders.

Always the poor do the hard work for whatever the rich are prepared to hand them, while pocketing the profits & shashing away obscene wealth in tax havens.

And the rich accuse the poor of wanting hand-outs when they can no longer work & want a worked-for retirement. And when the common folk do get an adequate income or pension they pay tax on it with no option of tax evasion like the rich.

 

England does not have a Bill of Rights so police powers are excessive in England in that there is no freedom of speech and there is no freedom to bear arms. Also, high taxes in England cause excessive interference in the private sector because the government is too big. All welfare states tend to favor some groups over other groups but in the long run there is not enough government money for everyone anyway. England won the Second War but lost the peace by turning left and thinking that the English government could do what the communist and socialist governments could not do. Also, the land area is small so that it was foolish to allow commonwealth peoples the right to move to England, probably attracted by the welfare.

I wonder what Yorkshire is like nowadays as I can't imagine that the "Last of the Summer Wine" England exists anymore anywhere.

 

Have you lived & worked in England?

Police are respected & trusted here. And we do NOT want, nor need, "freedom to bear arms."

Taxes would be lower if the rich & corporations paid them, rather than evading them & putting the money out of circulation. It's not welfare that inflates costs, but war, & all the war machines & weapons that if used would make everyone on the planet the losers. The preoccupation with space research looking for life forms is a folly when there are real, living people on earth who would directly benefit from land & water management rather than commercial exploitation.

I haven't been to Yorkshire recently - I met my wife at Hull University, but we've lived in London - 400 yards from the M4 motorway & 4 miles from Heathrow Airport. I did a "Friends of the Earth" air monitoring test for several weeks. Our air quality was well within acceptable limits.

We now live in a village in Herefordshire, 10 miles from the Welsh border. It's very rural, with lots of sheep farming & arable crops & orchards. We have a lovely drive to church along the Golden Valley, below the Black Mountains, before we enter the Wye Valley. The church is in Hay-on-Wye, which is internationally famous for its annual book & literary festival.

When you drive through England, you see green hills & fertile farmland & picturesque villages. The attraction for immigrants is better wages & opportunities than in the Commonwealth countries. They are welcome for the contribution they make to our public services, staffing our care services.

 

What I have seen is that they pay tax at a much lower effective rate that middle income folk because of tax evasion, off-shore tax havens, etc.

What an evil answer.

The winners are the bankers & armaments manufacturers, & the countries that plunder their victims. They also create jobs for the victims, desperately trying to rebuild homes & replant crops & collect water, etc, when their livelihoods & infrastructure are destroyed.

 

You have insight that few people have.

 

Add all non-profits to your list. I believe many so called non-profits are a tax-dodging scam. Yes, I include religious organizations.
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Thanks, but I can't take the credit for knowing what JFK was because I learned it from Cuban dissidents who claimed that he was raping a woman on the night of the Bay of Pigs. Also, Victor Davis Hanson says that JFK was a womanizer. At the Bay of Pigs, the freedom-fighters were winning until they ran out of ammo. JFK messed that up so bad that many people died and freedom-loving Cubans and anti-communists will never forget that the promised supplies and air support were withdrawn during the battle. Perhaps you remember that Ike had to go to Camp David and explain to JFK that these things are all or nothing. People have forgotten what a total playboy JFK was.

 

See, government is your enemy and we learned it from you Brits because you tried to disarm us and leave us at the mercy of savages. The reason that you have the beginnings of a police state in the UK is because the public is defenseless against a power grab and a dictatorship.

As for your crazy idea that money should not be spent on weapons, you would think that the Second War would have taught you something about not being prepared but apparently not.

 

Or maybe not. You were the invaders here as well. We just managed to kick you out eventually, by securing enough weapons. But not before you had 1) thoroughly instituted black slavery (from which you continued to benefit greatly), and 2) fought over territory with the French who involved Indians in the ordeal.

To be fair, there were other nations invading over here whose territories eventually became part of the USA. The point is, we were not the invading monarchs, nor did we instigate everything. Much happened before we ever got involved. Furthermore, ours were hardly the only lands you Brits and Europeans invaded. And being part of an army or navy would make you directly involved in that.

 

I won’t defend war here, but the answer was not evil. The reality, to which you only allude, is that a large number of nations benefit (or hope to benefit) from war, whether by fighting or by selling weapons. It is a sad reality of this world. Those weapons and war machines are being used. To think that you can get by with none while unfriendly nations have them, is to court even greater disaster. But I’ve no doubt those unfriendlies love you to death for suggesting it.

 

You can’t possibly be asking that question seriously. I know you are usually head in the sand about stuff instead of facing unpleasant truths but I mean come on man. You can’t possibly be that naive.