OneGuyFromBarlick

Trevelyan is surprisingly modern. He wrote this over 100 years ago when talking about the 17th century apprentice laws.
"Seven years was a needlessly long period...... Yet for all its faults the system maintained the best trade traditions, supplied domestic discipline generally at a time when it was most wanting, trained the hand, the eye and the mind and afforded a technical education on a natural economic base which no diminution of the revenue or of the rates and no lapse of educational enthusiasm, could in the slightest degree affect."
Just as true today as it was then.

Quote from Guido Fawkes Blog website.

"Could someone please explain what the difference is between the media hacking people’s phones and the NSA/GCHQ hacking people’s phones?Do the same laws not apply? Can we expect a show trial with MI5 ,GCHQ and every western government in the dock? Oh, thought not."

I hope , but am not certain of the law , that any phone hacking is 'legal' if in the public interest. So something that exposes a criminal wrong-doing would be in the public interest , hacking to find out at what time a person is due to pick up their dry-cleaning with their new girlfriend probably not. Given that all telecoms are on governmental licenced or provided systems may give the right of interest for any government to pick up such communications. That we still have 000s of unsolved crimes seems to point that its not very effective at preventing or detecting most wrong-doing against the person or personal property. I assume though that we all normally have the right to communicate , face to face , in any place , without any interference from state authorities, there is probably should be an exemption from 'phone-tapping' for disabled persons (deaf text-talk for example )and so on , whom rely on alternative contact media to have the same rights as all other individuals.

From todays Sunday Mirror who have looked into MP's claims for utilities at their second homes. All within the rules of course.

"Ex-Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain claimed £4,571 on his designated second home in his South Wales constituency. He said he no choice because the property only uses ­expensive heating oil."

I saw that news report as well. They used to talk about 'feather-bedded farmers', things have evidently moved on.

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue. - Confucius

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. - Thomas Sowell

And Thomas Sowell still believes Milton Friedman and the Chicago School are right. Not necessarily the best source of opinion on socialism. The same statement applies to conservatism and is equally unreliable.

While often described as a black conservative, he prefers not to be labeled, and considers himself more libertarian than conservative

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell

It is a quote Stanley, you are quite welcome to build a thesis if you desire.

Don't worry, I will. (LINK)

Must get the eyes fixed, I read Libertarian as Libertine! That put a whole new context to the quote first thing.

Julie in Norfolk wrote:Must get the eyes fixed, I read Libertarian as Libertine!

Reading a book last night about Cornish tin miners and their confrontations with the mine owners I was so sleepy that I got puzzled over a reference to alligators causing trouble. In Cornwall? Alligators? I had to read it again to find that is was agitators.

From The Daily Mash. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said:

“This is an exciting experiment for The Guardian, because it might broaden our readership beyond teachers and people who make their own pesto.

"The taxpayer; that's someone who works for the federal government, but doesn't have to take a civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

John Kenneth Galbraith [“Stop the Madness,” Interview with Rupert Cornwell, Toronto Globe and Mail (6 July 2002)]

"One definition of an economist is somebody who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it will work in theory." - Ronald Reagan

"The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense."
Tom Clancy

Caroline Flint Shadow Minister

"It will take more than hot air to keep peoples houses warm this winter"

Retirement is twice as much Husband, half as much money.
Seen on a coffee mug in a gift shop.

That quote from Ronald Reagan on economists is a variation on the one in this country (attributed to whom I know not) on the Civil Service Mandarin class, to whit: 'it's all very well it working in practice Minister, but will it work in theory?' I think it was a reference to the skills of a Cabinet Secretary of yesteryear Sir Burke Trend, famous for being able, of an idle afternoon, to draft the most complex of policy papers in his head before putting them down on paper as a perfect first draft.

On economists, the one I prefer (again attrbuted to whom I don't know) is this: 'an economist is someone who will explain tomorrow why what they predicted yesterday did not happen today'.

Richard Broughton

By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.

John Maynard Keynes

" its a shame that the aid is not arriving at the same speed as the media did"

Thomo of this parish.

If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder!, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required . .Why, then, to this other question: What is property? may I not likewise answer, It is robbery!, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?

—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Tracing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft.

Marquis de Sade

“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more” - Robert A. Heinlein.