Greetings from England

[Mattsa]

Heh he, I would do the same with the politicians!!

Gee, gun control hasn't done a thing to help crime. Crime has gotten worse (though I'm not going to be so bold as to blame it all on gun control). The UK gun ban was a total con. Politicians are always looking for excuses to disarm their taxpayers. The first gun laws in the UK were in 1903. The politicians that got it introduced later admitted it had nothing to do with crime and everything to do with them fearing armed uprisings. Then, more legislation passed in 1920 - again, this was due to the government fearing a revolt like what happened in Russia 3 years earlier. If you want to know more about this subject I suggest you read this book:

Guns and Violence - the English Experience by Joyce Lee Malcolm

It's crazy to think that it was the Brits that gave the Americans the concept of their 2nd amendment (via the 1689 BoR). Yet today, the concept of having a gun for self-defence is absolutely and utterly absurd to 99% of Britons!! Thanks to the self-serving and spineless polticians and their media of course!! Thank God the American 2nd amendment is written more solidly than it's British precursor.

I could write a book on this subject. Instead, I'll cut it short and just say never trust a politician who doesn't trust you with a gun!

I have to say, I'm not an advocate of gun ownership..........

But, I take your point about governments having to temper their enthusiasm for ripping us off if the people are armed!!!!!

 

[qednick]

Mattsa, it's not surprising you feel that way for exactly the reasons I stated. If you had been born in Britain 100 years ago you would have likely found it absurd that you couldn't shoot a burglar and, if you actually did, to get sued and/or jailed for it.

When you disarm the taxpayers, you really do have the fox guarding the hen house.

 

[giskard]

One of the first signs (in recent years) that the ever-growing government was sleighting the BoR was of authorities changing parking and speeding "fines" to "fixed penalties". By simply changing the words, the authorities claimed the receipients could no longer claim right to trial by jury as promised under the BoR and Magna Carta. This fact is swept under the rug by the establishment media to keep the masses in the dark about their rights.

To cut a long story short, when Amercians start seeing their speeding "fines" renamed as "penalties" and, as a result, no right to trial to dispute them, they'll know the end is near and the CCTV cameras will start cropping up in every city in the nation.

Traffic enforcement is one of my pet peeves. Over here in 1969 traffic violations were classified as a new offense, the "infraction". That way you lose your right to a trial by jury, instead you get a trial with one judge in a kangaroo court.

http://www.ticketassassin.com/kangaroo.html

The insurance industry have kept speed limits artificially low and have kept spewing the "speed kills" propaganda; the real experts who design the roads, the traffic engineers, are not consulted. For those interested here are some links:

http://www.motorists.org/issues/speed/speedfaq.html

The result today is that the US has higher road death and crash rates per vehicle mile, than Germany and France, despite their higher speeds and higher speed limits.

Here is a very convincing study on the causes of crashes, using in-car cameras in over 2 million vehicle miles of driving:

http://www.vtnews.vt.edu/story.php?itemno=833

80% of crashes (and 93% of rear enders) are caused by INATTENTION, defined as NOT looking at the road within 3 seconds of the crash. Nowhere is speed mentioned. What do the highway patrols continue to do? Singlemindedly ticket "speeders" while blithely ignoring tailgaters, drivers who put on makeup or read while driving, etc.

How many people do you know get nervous when a patrol car is behind you while you are driving, even though you aren't doing anything wrong? I know a lot of my friends do! That is a sign of a police state! Driving is one area where the government gets the populace used to heavy-handed regulation in our daily lives.

 

[furface]

Mattsa, 400k for a house in England isn't surprising. It's a great place to live. In the SF Bay Area where I live, it's 650k per house.

What's surprising about England is that 400k "house" usually seems to be some sort of converted closet with a kitchen that consists of a hotplate and ice cooler, single bathroom that's a garden hose coming in through the window and a drain. OK, it's not that bad, but the housing there is very substandard by American standards.

What would 200,000 pounds get you in a good part of London, BTW? Maybe a year's rent on a parking space?

 

[Gee]

Yeah, traffic tickets are mostly extortion schemes. They need the fined money to pay for courts and traffic cops. Yay.

 

[furface]

>>>How many people do you know get nervous when a patrol car is behind you while you are driving, even though you aren't doing anything wrong?<<<

Here's perhaps the difference between you and me. I get pulled over quite a bit (for no reason) when that happens. I'm brown, and I look Mexican. The other day I was riding my bike minding my own business and a cop pulled me over. I'm serious. I couldn't stop laughing and asked him to either arrest me or quite wasting my time. He eventually told me he thought I might be running meth. LOL.

 

[giskard]

In the SF Bay Area where I live, it's 650k per house.

And that's about 10 years of median income. It used to be 3-4 years, just 10 years ago. It's a direct result of the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates very low, ostensibly trying to prevent a bubble burst by creating a new one.

 

[giskard]

Yeah, traffic tickets are mostly extortion schemes. They need the fined money to pay for courts and traffic cops. Yay.

Don't forget that the insurance cos lobbied for, and love, the license points scheme.

 

[Gee]

Don't forget that the insurance cos lobbied for, and love, the license points scheme.

Yeah... Capitalism is great, republican governments are great, but when they collide, not so much. Damn lobbiests.

 

[SelkiesTheEn]

The entire western world needs people like Ron Paul or we're screwed. It's not getting any cheaper to maintain our governments with the insane spending they all require. The U.S. for one has massive debts that need paying off, but are not even remotely being addressed by any other candidate other than Ron Paul.

 

[Brandybuck]

Wasn't it Hayek that said [paraphrased] the best defense against capitalism was the free market? If you have to impose capitalism, you're doing it wrong.