Winston Churchill

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3215]

Apparently also caused many of the problems in the Middle East which are still haunting us today.

 

Utter dribbling nonsense. The middle east was divided by religion.

 

In 1921 as Secretary of State for the COlonies Churchill carved up the Middle East and chose members of Aristocratic Families to become the kings of the countries which made up Britains land Bridge to India. These included Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Part of the problems which led to the fall of the Shah and the ascension of the Islamic Republic was the simmering resentment of a ruler who did not belong. The same for the revolutions in Iraq and Egypt. Churchills actions have had serious repercussions since.

 

No you've lost me. Britain (not Churchill, who was only a minister at the time) had been fucking about in the middle east since well before that. I also dont in any way see the connection between the installation of a leader who many nationalists consider the father of modern Iran and the issues in the middle east i.e. Jerusalem, Palestine, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the crusades, the holy sites etc

 

I'm very aware of Britain's role in the middle east but to blame 'many of the problems' in the region on Churchill is as i said.

 

It was Churchills decision as Secretary of state for the Colonies to impose these people as rulers. What part of that do you not understand?

The people of these countries were extremely unhappy as these rulers ran the countries for the benefit of themselves and Britain (later America who continued to prop up these unwanted governments) and so got pissed off and created revolutions which in Iran led to the Ayotollahs and in Iraq eventually led to the rule of Saddam Hussein. What part of that do you not understand?

The bit where you blame the problems of the middle east on Churchill.

 

See above.

[Guest Barrack Road]

Good find Alex.

Some of those stats are appalling like, aren't they?

 

Y'know, for reals, if I ever took a couple of you guys down to East St. Louis, you wouldn't be at all surprised why we don't have stuff like nationalized health care.

 

I used to go into East Saint like 2 or 3 times a week in the late 90's when I was working for a computer services outfit. I honestly didn't think places like that existed in the U.S. It was like driving through a warzone- no street signs, burned-out buildings tangled in vegetation, no painted traffic lines on the roads.

 

It was unreal- public libraries and schools that never turned on their lights because their budgets didn't afford it. The main hospital had an emergency room entrance with cameras and a buzzer system to open the door. The projects had fences and gates around them, and just like the hospital, you had to be buzzed in (course, I saw people actually jump the fences as I was standing, waiting to get in, lol). One old guy who was a minister at a nearby church asked me to park at the church and walk down the street to his house (it was about half a block away). The reason? He didn't want me parking the computer van in his driveway- then everyone would know he had computer equipment in his house (and would come steal them).

 

The first time I went down there to work on a printer, I asked the client for directions to his business. He gave me a burned down building as a navigational landmark. Crazy, right? The fucked up thing was when I got there, I wasn't sure which burned down building he meant- there were several.

 

I used to believe that if somebody hadn't made something of himself, it was largely due to the individual. After working in and around East Saint for a couple of years, I realized there are more people in this country who are completely and totally fucked at birth than anyone would care to admit.

 

And from reading that bit about Detroit, it actually sounds worse.

In this country according to the last census there are 584591 who are in the same boat, calculating the population of Liverpool and Middlesbrough.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Good find Alex.

Some of those stats are appalling like, aren't they?

 

Y'know, for reals, if I ever took a couple of you guys down to East St. Louis, you wouldn't be at all surprised why we don't have stuff like nationalized health care.

 

I used to go into East Saint like 2 or 3 times a week in the late 90's when I was working for a computer services outfit. I honestly didn't think places like that existed in the U.S. It was like driving through a warzone- no street signs, burned-out buildings tangled in vegetation, no painted traffic lines on the roads.

 

It was unreal- public libraries and schools that never turned on their lights because their budgets didn't afford it. The main hospital had an emergency room entrance with cameras and a buzzer system to open the door. The projects had fences and gates around them, and just like the hospital, you had to be buzzed in (course, I saw people actually jump the fences as I was standing, waiting to get in, lol). One old guy who was a minister at a nearby church asked me to park at the church and walk down the street to his house (it was about half a block away). The reason? He didn't want me parking the computer van in his driveway- then everyone would know he had computer equipment in his house (and would come steal them).

 

The first time I went down there to work on a printer, I asked the client for directions to his business. He gave me a burned down building as a navigational landmark. Crazy, right? The fucked up thing was when I got there, I wasn't sure which burned down building he meant- there were several.

 

I used to believe that if somebody hadn't made something of himself, it was largely due to the individual. After working in and around East Saint for a couple of years, I realized there are more people in this country who are completely and totally fucked at birth than anyone would care to admit.

 

And from reading that bit about Detroit, it actually sounds worse.

In this country according to the last census there are 584591 who are in the same boat, calculating the population of Liverpool and Middlesbrough.

 

Lol?

[Park Life 70]

Good find Alex.

Some of those stats are appalling like, aren't they?

 

Y'know, for reals, if I ever took a couple of you guys down to East St. Louis, you wouldn't be at all surprised why we don't have stuff like nationalized health care.

 

I used to go into East Saint like 2 or 3 times a week in the late 90's when I was working for a computer services outfit. I honestly didn't think places like that existed in the U.S. It was like driving through a warzone- no street signs, burned-out buildings tangled in vegetation, no painted traffic lines on the roads.

 

It was unreal- public libraries and schools that never turned on their lights because their budgets didn't afford it. The main hospital had an emergency room entrance with cameras and a buzzer system to open the door. The projects had fences and gates around them, and just like the hospital, you had to be buzzed in (course, I saw people actually jump the fences as I was standing, waiting to get in, lol). One old guy who was a minister at a nearby church asked me to park at the church and walk down the street to his house (it was about half a block away). The reason? He didn't want me parking the computer van in his driveway- then everyone would know he had computer equipment in his house (and would come steal them).

 

The first time I went down there to work on a printer, I asked the client for directions to his business. He gave me a burned down building as a navigational landmark. Crazy, right? The fucked up thing was when I got there, I wasn't sure which burned down building he meant- there were several.

 

I used to believe that if somebody hadn't made something of himself, it was largely due to the individual. After working in and around East Saint for a couple of years, I realized there are more people in this country who are completely and totally fucked at birth than anyone would care to admit.

 

And from reading that bit about Detroit, it actually sounds worse.

 

You lot need to take your country back.

[Guest alex]

Apparently also caused many of the problems in the Middle East which are still haunting us today.

 

Utter dribbling nonsense. The middle east was divided by religion.

 

In 1921 as Secretary of State for the COlonies Churchill carved up the Middle East and chose members of Aristocratic Families to become the kings of the countries which made up Britains land Bridge to India. These included Iran, Iraq and Egypt. Part of the problems which led to the fall of the Shah and the ascension of the Islamic Republic was the simmering resentment of a ruler who did not belong. The same for the revolutions in Iraq and Egypt. Churchills actions have had serious repercussions since.

 

No you've lost me. Britain (not Churchill, who was only a minister at the time) had been fucking about in the middle east since well before that. I also dont in any way see the connection between the installation of a leader who many nationalists consider the father of modern Iran and the issues in the middle east i.e. Jerusalem, Palestine, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the crusades, the holy sites etc

 

I'm very aware of Britain's role in the middle east but to blame 'many of the problems' in the region on Churchill is as i said.

 

It was Churchills decision as Secretary of state for the Colonies to impose these people as rulers. What part of that do you not understand?

The people of these countries were extremely unhappy as these rulers ran the countries for the benefit of themselves and Britain (later America who continued to prop up these unwanted governments) and so got pissed off and created revolutions which in Iran led to the Ayotollahs and in Iraq eventually led to the rule of Saddam Hussein. What part of that do you not understand?

The bit where you blame the problems of the middle east on Churchill.

 

See above.

It's not as though he would have been acting independently though, is it? His boss would have to take more responsbility I think

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Good find Alex.

Some of those stats are appalling like, aren't they?

 

Y'know, for reals, if I ever took a couple of you guys down to East St. Louis, you wouldn't be at all surprised why we don't have stuff like nationalized health care.

 

I used to go into East Saint like 2 or 3 times a week in the late 90's when I was working for a computer services outfit. I honestly didn't think places like that existed in the U.S. It was like driving through a warzone- no street signs, burned-out buildings tangled in vegetation, no painted traffic lines on the roads.

 

It was unreal- public libraries and schools that never turned on their lights because their budgets didn't afford it. The main hospital had an emergency room entrance with cameras and a buzzer system to open the door. The projects had fences and gates around them, and just like the hospital, you had to be buzzed in (course, I saw people actually jump the fences as I was standing, waiting to get in, lol). One old guy who was a minister at a nearby church asked me to park at the church and walk down the street to his house (it was about half a block away). The reason? He didn't want me parking the computer van in his driveway- then everyone would know he had computer equipment in his house (and would come steal them).

 

The first time I went down there to work on a printer, I asked the client for directions to his business. He gave me a burned down building as a navigational landmark. Crazy, right? The fucked up thing was when I got there, I wasn't sure which burned down building he meant- there were several.

 

I used to believe that if somebody hadn't made something of himself, it was largely due to the individual. After working in and around East Saint for a couple of years, I realized there are more people in this country who are completely and totally fucked at birth than anyone would care to admit.

 

And from reading that bit about Detroit, it actually sounds worse.

 

You lot need to take your country back.

 

True dat.

 

Forgot to mention, any of you lot see Escape From New York? They filmed in East Saint largely to save on set dressing and construction costs. For reals.

[Rob W 0]

Aye - they did Blade Runner in Middlesborough for the same reason....................

[Guest alex]

I propose the American dream will be exosed as a myth in times to come, one certainly that had a very short shelf life. It is the case that the war itself destroyed all our fiancial might however and with that our ability to take the commonwealth to the next level as a worldwide trading and ideas board.

In the defence of America I will say that the PEOPLE often in times of trouble and need show a very big heart and genorosity.

 

Detroit: the last days

Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope.

Julien Temple

 

Vegetation engulfs an abandoned car wash in Detroit. Photograph: Films of Record

 

When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.

 

Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.

 

Like The Passenger, it's hard to believe what we're seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.

 

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.

 

One in five houses now stand empty. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in Detroit over the last three years. A three-bedroom house on Albany Street is still on the market for $1.

 

Unemployment has reached 30%; 33.8% of Detroit's population and 48.5% of its children live below the poverty line. Forty-seven per cent of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate; 29 Detroit schools closed in 2009 alone.

 

But statistics tell only one part of the story. The reality of Detroit is far more visceral. My producer, George Hencken, and I drove around recce-ing our film, getting out of the car and photographing extraordinary places to film with mad-dog enthusiasm – everywhere demands to be filmed – but were greeted with appalled concern by Bradley, our friendly manager, on our return to the hotel. "Never get out of the car in that area – people have been car-jacked and shot."

 

Law and order has completely broken down in the inner city, drugs and prostitution are rampant and unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone. This makes it great for filming – park where you like, film what you like – but not so good if you actually live there. The abandoned houses make great crack dens and provide cover for appalling sex crimes and child abduction. The only growth industry is the gangs of armed scrappers, who plunder copper and steel from the ruins. Rabid dogs patrol the streets. All the national supermarket chains have pulled out of the inner city. People have virtually nowhere to buy fresh produce. Starbucks? Forget it.

 

What makes all this so hard to understand is that Detroit was the frontier city of the American Dream – not just the automobile, but pretty much everything we associate with 20th-century western civilisation came from there. Mass production; assembly lines; stop lights; freeways; shopping malls; suburbs and an emerging middle-class workforce: all these things were pioneered in Detroit.

 

But the seeds of the Motor City's downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

 

The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population.

 

On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together.

 

With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.

 

So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end.

 

 

Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10...y-urban-decline

 

Should be worth a watch. It's a city that fascinates me particularly because of its musical heritage, coupled with my love of soul and techno.

The place looked fucking weird, like some post-apocalyptic movie. It showed what can happen when capitalism is allowed to run riot with communities being destroyed to allow the car manufacturers' dream of a city where no one can live without a car. And then they upped and left when it became cheaper to produce their vehicles elsewhere, leaving behind one almighty mess. When you see places like this within the US it makes you wonder what Western civilisation is really all about.

[snakehips 0]

I propose the American dream will be exosed as a myth in times to come, one certainly that had a very short shelf life. It is the case that the war itself destroyed all our fiancial might however and with that our ability to take the commonwealth to the next level as a worldwide trading and ideas board.

In the defence of America I will say that the PEOPLE often in times of trouble and need show a very big heart and genorosity.

 

Detroit: the last days

Detroit is a city in terminal decline. When film director Julien Temple arrived in town, he was shocked by what he found – but he also uncovered reasons for hope.

Julien Temple

 

Vegetation engulfs an abandoned car wash in Detroit. Photograph: Films of Record

 

When the film- maker Roger Graef approached me last year to make a film about the rise and fall of Detroit I had very few preconceptions about the place. Like everyone else, I knew it as the Motor City, one of the great epicentres of 20th-century music, and home of the American automobile. Only when I arrived in the city itself did the full-frontal cultural car crash that is 21st-century Detroit became blindingly apparent.

 

Leaving behind the gift shops of the "Big Three" car manufacturers, the Motown merchandise and the bizarre ejaculating fountains of the now-notorious international airport, things become stranger and stranger. The drive along eerily empty ghost freeways into the ruins of inner-city Detroit is an Alice-like journey into a severely dystopian future. Passing the giant rubber tyre that dwarfs the nonexistent traffic in ironic testament to the busted hubris of Motown's auto-makers, the city's ripped backside begins to glide past outside the windows.

 

Like The Passenger, it's hard to believe what we're seeing. The vast, rusting hulks of abandoned car plants, (some of the largest structures ever built and far too expensive to pull down), beached amid a shining sea of grass. The blackened corpses of hundreds of burned-out houses, pulled back to earth by the green tentacles of nature. Only the drunken rows of telegraph poles marching away across acres of wildflowers and prairie give any clue as to where teeming city streets might once have been.

 

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.

 

One in five houses now stand empty. Property prices have fallen 80% or more in Detroit over the last three years. A three-bedroom house on Albany Street is still on the market for $1.

 

Unemployment has reached 30%; 33.8% of Detroit's population and 48.5% of its children live below the poverty line. Forty-seven per cent of adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate; 29 Detroit schools closed in 2009 alone.

 

But statistics tell only one part of the story. The reality of Detroit is far more visceral. My producer, George Hencken, and I drove around recce-ing our film, getting out of the car and photographing extraordinary places to film with mad-dog enthusiasm – everywhere demands to be filmed – but were greeted with appalled concern by Bradley, our friendly manager, on our return to the hotel. "Never get out of the car in that area – people have been car-jacked and shot."

 

Law and order has completely broken down in the inner city, drugs and prostitution are rampant and unless you actually murder someone the police will leave you alone. This makes it great for filming – park where you like, film what you like – but not so good if you actually live there. The abandoned houses make great crack dens and provide cover for appalling sex crimes and child abduction. The only growth industry is the gangs of armed scrappers, who plunder copper and steel from the ruins. Rabid dogs patrol the streets. All the national supermarket chains have pulled out of the inner city. People have virtually nowhere to buy fresh produce. Starbucks? Forget it.

 

What makes all this so hard to understand is that Detroit was the frontier city of the American Dream – not just the automobile, but pretty much everything we associate with 20th-century western civilisation came from there. Mass production; assembly lines; stop lights; freeways; shopping malls; suburbs and an emerging middle-class workforce: all these things were pioneered in Detroit.

 

But the seeds of the Motor City's downfall were sown a long time ago. The blind belief of the Big Three in the automobile as an inexhaustible golden goose, guaranteeing endless streams of cash, resulted in the city becoming reliant on a single industry. Its destiny fatally entwined with that of the car. The greed-fuelled willingness of the auto barons to siphon up black workers from the American south to man their Metropolis-like assembly lines and then treat them as subhuman citizens, running the city along virtually apartheid lines, created a racial tinderbox. The black riots of 1943 and 1967 gave Detroit the dubious distinction of being the only American city to twice call in the might of the US army to suppress insurrection on its own streets and led directly to the disastrous so-called white flight of the 50s, 60s and 70s.

 

The population of Detroit is now 81.6% African-American and almost two-thirds down on its overall peak in the early 50s. The city has lost its tax base and cannot afford to cut the grass or light its streets, let alone educate or feed its citizens. The rest of the US is in denial about the economic catastrophe that has engulfed Detroit, terrified that this man-made contagion may yet spread to other US cities. But somehow one cannot imagine the same fate befalling a city with a predominantly white population.

 

On many levels Detroit seems to be an insoluble disaster with urgent warnings for the rest of the industrialised world. But as George and I made our film we discovered, to our surprise, an irrepressible positivity in the city. Unable to buy fresh food for their children, people are now growing their own, turning the demolished neighbourhood blocks into urban farms and kick-starting what is now the fastest-growing movement across the US. Although the city is still haemorrhaging population, young people from all over the country are also flooding into Detroit – artists, musicians and social pioneers, all keen to make use of the abandoned urban spaces and create new ways of living together.

 

With the breakdown of 20th-century civilisation, many Detroiters have discovered an exhilarating sense of starting over, building together a new cross-racial community sense of doing things, discarding the bankrupt rules of the past and taking direct control of their own lives. Still at the forefront of the American Dream, Detroit is fast becoming the first "post-American" city. And amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer's map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all.

 

So perhaps Detroit can avoid the fate of the lost cities of the Maya and rise again like the phoenix that sits, appropriately, on its municipal crest. That is why George and I decided to call our film Requiem for Detroit? – with a big question mark at the end.

 

 

Requiem for Detroit? is on BBC2 on Saturday 13 March at 9pm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/10...y-urban-decline

 

Should be worth a watch. It's a city that fascinates me particularly because of its musical heritage, coupled with my love of soul and techno.

The place looked fucking weird, like some post-apocalyptic movie. It showed what can happen when capitalism is allowed to run riot with communities being destroyed to allow the car manufacturers' dream of a city where no one can live without a car. And then they upped and left when it became cheaper to produce their vehicles elsewhere, leaving behind one almighty mess. When you see places like this within the US it makes you wonder what Western civilisation is really all about.

 

The 'bottom line', Alex. Greed. Me, me, me. More, more, more. Fuck you, I'm all right.

 

And it fuckin' stinks to high heaven, imo.

[Bombadil 0]

The place looked fucking weird, like some post-apocalyptic movie. It showed what can happen when capitalism is allowed to run riot with communities being destroyed to allow the car manufacturers' dream of a city where no one can live without a car. And then they upped and left when it became cheaper to produce their vehicles elsewhere, leaving behind one almighty mess. When you see places like this within the US it makes you wonder what Western civilisation is really all about.

 

The 'bottom line', Alex. Greed. Me, me, me. More, more, more. Fuck you, I'm all right.

 

And it fuckin' stinks to high heaven, imo.

 

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

[Renton 17841]

The place looked fucking weird, like some post-apocalyptic movie. It showed what can happen when capitalism is allowed to run riot with communities being destroyed to allow the car manufacturers' dream of a city where no one can live without a car. And then they upped and left when it became cheaper to produce their vehicles elsewhere, leaving behind one almighty mess. When you see places like this within the US it makes you wonder what Western civilisation is really all about.

 

The 'bottom line', Alex. Greed. Me, me, me. More, more, more. Fuck you, I'm all right.

 

And it fuckin' stinks to high heaven, imo.

 

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

Agreed. Also I don't think 'Western civilisation' and 'American civilisation' are synonymous. I think Western Europe has got the balance between capitalism and socialism much better than the US. Which is why I dispair at so many people looking West for inspiration - they (the States) should be looking at us. That's not to say that many great things have come from America though, obviously.

 

Would Detroit have been allowed to happen here, or in Holland, Germany, or France? Quips about Boro aside, I don't think so.

[NJS 3986]

Would Detroit have been allowed to happen here, or in Holland, Germany, or France? Quips about Boro aside, I don't think so.

 

I didn't see the programme but are we just talking about a city built by one firm for its business?

 

If that's the case you could certainly draw parallels with some places in the UK which were company towns (though possibly not on a large scale) for example a lot of the pit villages in the NE or Bourneville in Birmingham.

 

You could also look at Corby where shit loads of Scottish steel workers were "transported" en masse to a new town/life ony for it to end in the same way after a few years.

[Guest alex]

Would Detroit have been allowed to happen here, or in Holland, Germany, or France? Quips about Boro aside, I don't think so.

 

I didn't see the programme but are we just talking about a city built by one firm for its business?

 

If that's the case you could certainly draw parallels with some places in the UK which were company towns (though possibly not on a large scale) for example a lot of the pit villages in the NE or Bourneville in Birmingham.

 

You could also look at Corby where shit loads of Scottish steel workers were "transported" en masse to a new town/life ony for it to end in the same way after a few years.

There's a bit more to Detroit. You're talking about a place that grew to the extent it was one of the biggest cities in the States on the back of the motor industry and, rather than just one company, it was Ford, Crysler and GM but I think you're right about there being parallels, albeit not on that scale or to the same extent in terms of 'rise and fall'.

[Happy Face 29]

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

The Hollywood perception that get's sold around the world is far from reality though, the model as advertised is a lie.

 

Human Rights? The US are one of few countries where the state endorse torture of detainees.

 

High standard of living?

"Russia is top of the world league of child poverty with 26.6 per cent of children living below the poverty line. The US ranks second with a rate of 26.3 per cent; Britain is third at 21.3 per cent, while Italy comes in only slightly behind this at 21.2 per cent"

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...gue-693606.html

 

Freedom of thought and religion are reducing too.

[Cid_MCDP 0]

Aye - they did Blade Runner in Middlesborough for the same reason....................

 

Fair play, but LA in Blade Runner hadn't had a nuclear bomb dropped on it like NY in Escape From New York.

[Renton 17841]

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

The Hollywood perception that get's sold around the world is far from reality though, the model as advertised is a lie.

 

Human Rights? The US are one of few countries where the state endorse torture of detainees.

 

High standard of living?

"Russia is top of the world league of child poverty with 26.6 per cent of children living below the poverty line. The US ranks second with a rate of 26.3 per cent; Britain is third at 21.3 per cent, while Italy comes in only slightly behind this at 21.2 per cent"

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...gue-693606.html

 

Freedom of thought and religion are reducing too.

 

The poverty rate among America's single mothers is also the highest in the world, with 59 per cent raising children on incomes which are less than half the typical national income.

 

So these are relative rates rather than absolute rates? Meaning, for instance, an American 'poor child' will still have huge benefits copared to a child from Zambia? Interesting stuff maybe, but you have to take these facts in context.

[Happy Face 29]

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

The Hollywood perception that get's sold around the world is far from reality though, the model as advertised is a lie.

 

Human Rights? The US are one of few countries where the state endorse torture of detainees.

 

High standard of living?

"Russia is top of the world league of child poverty with 26.6 per cent of children living below the poverty line. The US ranks second with a rate of 26.3 per cent; Britain is third at 21.3 per cent, while Italy comes in only slightly behind this at 21.2 per cent"

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...gue-693606.html

 

Freedom of thought and religion are reducing too.

 

The poverty rate among America's single mothers is also the highest in the world, with 59 per cent raising children on incomes which are less than half the typical national income.

 

So these are relative rates rather than absolute rates? Meaning, for instance, an American 'poor child' will still have huge benefits copared to a child from Zambia? Interesting stuff maybe, but you have to take these facts in context.

 

Of course...and the fact that the cost of living is proportionally higher too.

 

Quarter of the population of the world survive without any electricity and in monetary terms they're poorer than the majority of Americans who have power. But that's attributing disproportionate importance to monetary wealth.

 

Someone can live a far more healthy self-sustained life on a yak farm in Peru where a family get by on $10 a week, than in a welfare house in New Orleans where the entire family gets $200 a week (plucking figures out of the air).

[Renton 17841]

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

The Hollywood perception that get's sold around the world is far from reality though, the model as advertised is a lie.

 

Human Rights? The US are one of few countries where the state endorse torture of detainees.

 

High standard of living?

"Russia is top of the world league of child poverty with 26.6 per cent of children living below the poverty line. The US ranks second with a rate of 26.3 per cent; Britain is third at 21.3 per cent, while Italy comes in only slightly behind this at 21.2 per cent"

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...gue-693606.html

 

Freedom of thought and religion are reducing too.

 

The poverty rate among America's single mothers is also the highest in the world, with 59 per cent raising children on incomes which are less than half the typical national income.

 

So these are relative rates rather than absolute rates? Meaning, for instance, an American 'poor child' will still have huge benefits copared to a child from Zambia? Interesting stuff maybe, but you have to take these facts in context.

 

Of course...and the fact that the cost of living is proportionally higher too.

 

Quarter of the population of the world survive without any electricity and in monetary terms they're poorer than the majority of Americans who have power. But that's attributing disproportionate importance to monetary wealth.

 

Someone can live a far more healthy self-sustained life on a yak farm in Peru where a family get by on $10 a week, than in a welfare house in New Orleans where the entire family gets $200 a week (plucking figures out of the air).

Aye. All of which makes your 'comparisons' less valid imo.

[ChezGiven 0]

HF is quoting 'relative poverty' data, not absolute.

 

Of the proportion considered in poverty in the UK, how many have access to heat, light, social security, health, education? Possibly all of them, which makes relative poverty data the realm of agenda drive social research, not a meaningful comparison of basic 'levels' of services. Rawls, Sen and those who have read and understood their work on poverty and social justice know that basic 'levels' of things like healthcare and education (freedom?) are the building blocks of justice, not relative comparisons across society.

[Happy Face 29]

It's also about ideals and values like equal human rights, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, as well as unprecented standards of living. For all its flaws - and there are many - Western civilization is still a model that millions of people around the world look up to.

 

The Hollywood perception that get's sold around the world is far from reality though, the model as advertised is a lie.

 

Human Rights? The US are one of few countries where the state endorse torture of detainees.

 

High standard of living?

"Russia is top of the world league of child poverty with 26.6 per cent of children living below the poverty line. The US ranks second with a rate of 26.3 per cent; Britain is third at 21.3 per cent, while Italy comes in only slightly behind this at 21.2 per cent"

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-...gue-693606.html

 

Freedom of thought and religion are reducing too.

 

The poverty rate among America's single mothers is also the highest in the world, with 59 per cent raising children on incomes which are less than half the typical national income.

 

So these are relative rates rather than absolute rates? Meaning, for instance, an American 'poor child' will still have huge benefits copared to a child from Zambia? Interesting stuff maybe, but you have to take these facts in context.

 

Of course...and the fact that the cost of living is proportionally higher too.

 

Quarter of the population of the world survive without any electricity and in monetary terms they're poorer than the majority of Americans who have power. But that's attributing disproportionate importance to monetary wealth.

 

Someone can live a far more healthy self-sustained life on a yak farm in Peru where a family get by on $10 a week, than in a welfare house in New Orleans where the entire family gets $200 a week (plucking figures out of the air).

Aye. All of which makes your 'comparisons' less valid imo.

 

I don't see how that makes the world health organisations (not mine) comparisons invalid. It shows that in the UK and the US there's a far greater disparity between the wealthy and the poor. If anything it's even more shameful that with such a high level of average wealth western democracies don't do more to lift their own citizens out of poverty.

[Renton 17841]

It's not invalid, all I'm saying is it needs careful interpretation (see Chez's post).

 

Anyhow, I have literally just found out I have passed the second module of my distance learning exam in Health Econonomics - I thought I'd fucked it up big style, so now I'm over the moon. Get in.

[Happy Face 29]

It's not invalid, all I'm saying is it needs careful interpretation (see Chez's post).

 

Anyhow, I have literally just found out I have passed the second module of my distance learning exam in Health Econonomics - I thought I'd fucked it up big style, so now I'm over the moon. Get in.

 

 

Well done. Remember to donate generously to those less well off once you're stinking rich.

[Tooj 17]

It's not invalid, all I'm saying is it needs careful interpretation (see Chez's post).

 

Anyhow, I have literally just found out I have passed the second module of my distance learning exam in Health Econonomics - I thought I'd fucked it up big style, so now I'm over the moon. Get in.

Well done Renton. It's people like you that make me proud to work for the NHS.

[ChezGiven 0]

It's not invalid, all I'm saying is it needs careful interpretation (see Chez's post).

 

Anyhow, I have literally just found out I have passed the second module of my distance learning exam in Health Econonomics - I thought I'd fucked it up big style, so now I'm over the moon. Get in.

 

 

Well done. Remember to donate generously to those less well off once you're stinking rich.

 

If everyone had access to the same 'capability set' (which they dont) then i would argue he should not donate anything.

 

Inequalities are not inequitable.

[Happy Face 29]

It's not invalid, all I'm saying is it needs careful interpretation (see Chez's post).

 

Anyhow, I have literally just found out I have passed the second module of my distance learning exam in Health Econonomics - I thought I'd fucked it up big style, so now I'm over the moon. Get in.

 

 

Well done. Remember to donate generously to those less well off once you're stinking rich.

 

If everyone had access to the same 'capability set' (which they dont) then i would argue he should not donate anything.

 

Inequalities are not inequitable.

 

Does that mean you think he should give Jonny Decka a tab when asked or not?