“You’d better send a meat-truck…..Charlie copped a saucepan in the throat!”

“There’s a spherical object in the middle of the road…..and it’s not a piece of the car!“

“Hi, this is car fifty-five…..we’re in a truck!”

Great car-crash related lines from…..anybody?

I find it hard to proud of anything, least of all an accident of birthplace.

But do you want to be proud of something?

Yes, an accident of birthplace but ask people from any other country and they’ll usually give you a list a long as your arm.

Ask the British, or more specifically the English, and most of us struggle to come up with anything.

The previous post reminded me of another (much less eloquent) favourite line of mine from Zulu Dawn. Imagine the most formidable British Regimental Sergeant Major speaking to the lowliest private soldier:

RSM: “Put your rifle above your head and run round this parade-ground until you DROP BL00DY DEAD!”

After the world’s greatest display of shooting…..and firing fourteen shots from two six-shooters without reloading!

Butch Cassidy: Is that your idea of giving covering fire?

Sundance Kid: Is that your idea of running?

Followed by the immortal line:

Butch Cassidy: You never could shoot…..not from the very beginning!

I do wonder what all those complaining would have done – let all the banks fail perhaps?

Letting any banks fail would have been financial suicide for Britain…..but who said anything about banks?

The £12.5 billion VAT giveaway is a different matter completely; it is a huge sum of money to be adding to national debt at the moment. It is supposed to stimulate the economy but clearly from your laptop example it had no effect on your ‘big ticket’ purchase at all; you bought something you were going to buy anyway…

…and don’t forget you ‘saved’ tenner will be taxed back off you in a few years time…..with interest. 😉

It isn’t a matter of ignoring GW, it’s pretending that we can do something about it, and making you pay for the honour!

Maybe it isn’t possible to do anything about Global Warming but if we’ve got to pay taxes why not shift those taxes onto something that may benefit all of us.

Britain is a relatively small producer of CO2 but we can hardly criticize the USA, China, India or anybody else if we don’t put our own house in order.

Even if Global Warming is some vast conspiracy fossil fuels will not last forever so promoting measures that conserve existing stocks and investing in alternative energy technology would seem wise. From a national security perspective is it also wise to be reliant on importing most of our energy; what happens when they turn the taps off in Russia, Saudi Arabia or anywhere in between?

And at any rate to import their oil and gas we have to export our wealth!

Britain opened the first commercial nuclear power station in 1956 and now Britain has decided to build more, but we are having to import the technology from France, and therefore export jobs, to a country that invested heavily in nuclear power because of the lack of domestic oil supply (and for national security reasons). Even Britain’s existing nuclear power stations were recently sold to a French energy company.

Great investments are being made in wind power in the UK but much of the technology and hardware is again being imported from countries such as Denmark that looked further into the future. We bemoan the loss of our traditional heavy industries but completely miss the opportunity to be at the forefront of new ones.