Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Pei on November 10, 2004, 09:30:09 PM
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4000265.stm
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Sheesh, you'd think that it was someone from france with that thread title........
:p :lol
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I'm not sure how the Brits see him, but I see Blair as a leader who has the balls to do the right thing when required.
Global warming? LOL
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Here's how the Guardian sees him:
(http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2003/01/31/stevebell512.jpg)
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Originally posted by NUKE
I'm not sure how the Brits see him, but I see Blair as a leader who has the balls to do the right thing when required.
:lol
NUKE... I think you need to focus on more than the single issue of the Iraq war before posting an assessment of Blair. Also, I feel that using Google as your window on life here has its limitations. Actually living here provides a much better platform from which to assess!
Tony Blair's government, "New" Labour, has porked everything they've ever touched, and returned us to the days of high taxation and of being a pocket money society governed by a nanny state. I've got a list of Labour fork-ups that would convert this into a "Beet1e-esque" post...
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Originally posted by beet1e
Actually living here provides a much better platform from which to assess!
Pot, meet kettle!
Ignore that dark hue.
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LOL Lazerus!
I have lived in the US, by the way, for about 3 years in total. :aok
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Lived in the US is about the same as 'lived in the UK' when only three years is the measure.
But anywho, carry on.
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Nuke i see him as the only potential UK leader to have the balls to do whats required.
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riiiiiiiiiiiiiight... (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1353839,00.html)
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I know exactly what you mean, Cav. His tackling of the root problems within British society such as fox hunting, hand-gun ownership and the lack of large, empty dome-shaped objects shows how much of a tough guy he is.
But that's not all. He has vision; he's quite prepared to dispense with centuries old constitutional custom and law which built an empire and carried a small island nation through two world wars with... errr... he hasn't quite decided that yet. In fact he has no idea.
But other than that he's simply outstanding!
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If the people of Great Britain want a Socialist government it's none of my business. But, Tony Blair and his government have been solid allies of the United States in a difficult time and I thank him for that.
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yep otto.. I agree.
lazs
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You guys have term limits over there or can he be reelected? Just like there is here now, there's gonna be some real whining when he's reelected there.
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Originally posted by Otto
If the people of Great Britain want a Socialist government it's none of my business. But, Tony Blair and his government have been solid allies of the United States in a difficult time and I thank him for that.
Given that the majority in Great Britain do not support the war in Iraq I was curious as to why he would risk his political career supporting the US. I don't think he would have agreed unless he thought he was doing the right thing. It would have been easier for him to say "no"..
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Dowding - to what you said, I would add that TB has all the sincerity of a used car salesman.
AKIron - no term limits. Indeed, Thatcher would have liked to go on and on and on and on. In the event, she went on and on and on and... ruh-roh....
As for Britain, the US and the "Special Relationship", Boris Johnson wonders whether it's really a one-way street.
From today's Telegraph - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/11/11/do1102.xml Special relationship or one-way street?
By Boris Johnson
(Filed: 11/11/2004)
Can someone just remind me about this Special Relationship business. I know it's very wonderful and important, and I know the whole country will be sitting on the edge of their sofas and dabbing their eyes, as they watch Dubya and Tony make their glistering-toothed expressions of fiefdom and fealty in Washington today.
But can someone explain, just one more time, what we get out of it? Here we are, giving our blood and treasure in support of an entirely US-inspired plan to conquer Iraq. We send the Black Watch. We lose British lives. We earn the barely veiled scorn of much of the world, for seeming to be the poodles of Uncle Sam.
I am not suggesting that any of these things are dishonourable things to do. It just seems to be give, give, give, this Special Relationship. And that is why, if Tony Blair is casting around for something he might ask by way of requital for his devotion, I have a suggestion. It is that the Americans should stop treating this country like a vassal state, whose citizens can be whisked off for trial - without any evidence as to their crime - in the territory of the imperial power.
Because that is how things are at the moment, under the Extradition Treaty that David Blunkett signed with America in 2003. Presented as a measure to speed up the extradition of terrorist suspects, it has netted a man called David Bermingham, and I assure you that I would be just as outraged about the treatment of Mr Bermingham if he did not happen to live in the beautiful constituency of Henley.
In fact, he has a very considerable property there, and you will deduce that he is not, therefore, one of life's more obvious victims. He is, to be brutally honest, a bit of a yuppy. He is about 41, with iron grey hair, round glasses, and a faint air of irony. He is also accused of a very complicated fraud, which the American authorities have connected with the Enron affair, and the nub of it is that he and his two co-accused have allegedly pocketed about $7.3 million, by niftily persuading their employer to sell a firm in which they had an interest for much less than it was worth, and pocketing the difference - and if you didn't understand that fully, don't worry, because neither did I.
It doesn't matter. The details of the alleged fraud are irrelevant. All you need to know is that the allegedly ripped-off employer was Natwest Bank, that the ripping-off took place in Britain and that all three rippers-off are British. If it was a crime, it was a British crime, not an American one, committed by British criminals, against a British firm, and it is no mere patriotism that makes me think the matter should be tried in this country.
As things stand, David Bermingham and his colleagues are to be supermagnetically sucked across the Atlantic without even the protection of a preliminary hearing in this country to establish whether the evidence is sound. They face years on bail in Texas, and colossal expense in fighting a case in the United States - and, without wishing any disrespect to Texas and its legal arrangements, they would much rather be arraigned in this country.
So why doesn't the Serious Fraud Office take up the case? Why doesn't Natwest pursue the miscreants here, given that the money was, as I say, allegedly taken from a British firm? It is far from clear, though the Bermingham Three say that if they were tried in this country, the case would be thrown out instantly.
It is only the United States that seems to want to put them on trial. The United States says it has jurisdiction in the matter, since American telegraphic equipment (a phone line) was used to transfer the money around the Cayman Islands. The United States has been on to the Home Office and snapped its fingers, and the Home Office has scuttled off to round up these UK nationals, like some satrap doing the bidding of the King of Persia.
I would not mind so much, if the 2003 Extradition Treaty were not so lopsided. Many will recall the chronic difficulties this country has had, over the years, in persuading the Americans to cough up IRA suspects. The American Constitution requires that the requesting country should show "probable cause" that the proposed extraditee is guilty of the crime in question, and, partly as a result, the total number of suspected IRA terrorists we have winkled out of the Americans is exactly nil.
We, by contrast, are far more supple in our approach. We make no such evidential demands. If the Americans request the extradition of a suspect from Britain, we merely require them to establish that the person we are sending is the person in question, and then, since we assume that the American judicial system is admirable in all respects, we hand them over without delay.
That is the imbalance enshrined in the 2003 Extradition Treaty; and yet even so, it turns out that the Senate is refusing to enact the text in America, while here in Britain, good old obedient, wet-nosed, lolling-tongued, moulting-furred Britain, Blunkett has slammed our side of the treaty through the Commons.
When Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister, was challenged on this the other day, she said that both Ireland and France had similarly unbalanced arrangements with America. Nonsense. In Ireland, there is no obligation to extradite an Irishman, if the offence is deemed to be local; and in France there is no obligation to extradite a French citizen.
There are two possible solutions. We could amend our law, so as to allow the Home Secretary to refuse extradition in cases where a crime has been committed in whole or in part in the UK. Or else the Americans could do the decent thing, and change their law in such a way that it mirrors the arrangements of their most leal and trusty ally.
Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of The Spectator