Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2006 22:00:53 GMT From: Paul Halliday <pjghnospamyonder.co.uk> Subject: Re: Well, the convertible is on Ebay now.
in article 48j6fcFk2krlU1nospamvidual.net, Dave Hinz at DaveHinznospamcop.net wrote on 24/03/2006 21:26: >>> I'm trying very, very had not to point out what, to me, is blisteringly >>> obvious. > >> Civil disobedience? National riot? > > Right to keep and bear arms. Good Lord! Your right to bear arms is born out of the need to prevent the King of England charging across your lawn and taking over your 12+ hectares of land in the name of the crown ... Or so The Simpsons taught us :) > Honest citizens are allowed to have guns, > which keeps criminals in fear and doubt, to an extent. That citizen > doesn't need to have a gun, themselves, just that the guy thinking about > breaking in the house knows that they legally can, and might. I'm very much in two minds about this one. It is certainly not in our culture to shoot people and/or to defend ourselves with weapons. I can see it coming, but that is as a result of outside influences. I think there was some mention about our Police not being armed earlier in this discussion. Well, our Police are quite often armed, especially in metropolitan areas. Maybe not the Police on the "beat" (walking the street), but the cars that buzz up and down the inner cities are certainly armed. We had a Policewoman shot in Bradford in the not too distant past (I was having a late curry lunch just over the road, 50 yards away, just a quarter of an hour beforehand) and that started the debate again about whether our Police should carry guns. I'm not in favour. If our Police routinely arm themselves, our criminals will and we have little experience of that so it's bound to end in tragedy every time. I think armed backup is the way to go. Our armed Police cars are always patrolling inner cities and I think we have a very good balance in that respect. > About the > same thing with government abuses; I'm of the theory that civilians > owning guns is a good reminder to our government how the country was > founded, and by what mechanism that was reached. Indeed ... See above. The US is a much newer nation than the UK and our nation was born out of conquering and submission of the clans by various invading forces; Angles, Saxons and Jutes, for starters. While modern day Welsh is the closest to our original Brythonic tongue, I think perhaps the Cornish are the last outpost of that civilisation. >> Well, we had that in 1979 when our government (Labour, kind of Democrat >> people) had made such a fuck up that we turned around and unanimously voted >> them out. Well, if I had known what Margaret Thatcher was about to get up to >> I would not have bothered being born! > > You had a say in the process? My, things _do_ work differently over > there. And now you've got me wondering how old you are? Democracy does work; it's just the choices are always the same :( BTW, I'm old enough to remember that bitch, young enough to remember "Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher!". >> That continued to the point that we'd >> had too much and gave them a unanimous "fuck off" in 1995. There were no >> Tory (Republican kind of people) seats in Wales or Scotland .. Or Yorkshire >> (Yay!) .. New Labour was born. Hmmm ... > > For the record, I find your party names and labels "liberal" and > "conservative" to be very confusing as to how they're applied. Well, the Tories are born out of the old Whigs and the Liberals are the old Conservatives!? The Labour Party was founded in Bradford (yes, Bradford, my home town) and, as Tony Benn said on Question Time last night, they're a Socialist Party in that they have some Socialists like the church has some Christians :) We get confused, too, since they change their spots so frequently! I find myself quite admiring Boris Johnson and lamenting about why Michael Portillo did not go for the Tory leadership :O > Does the phrase "feelgood legislation" translate? > > Lovely place, the old city of York. I suppose that you, living near > there, never go there? Isn't that usually the way it works? Or you > only go there when showing visitors around? We go there quite frequently, actually. I really like York ... and Knaresbrough and Harrogate. York is like Leeds, without the pretention :) When we were in Sweden, we were chatting to the girls on reception at the hotel in Trollhättan about where we were from and one of the said about York and the Ivanhoe mythos ... Well, we had no idea what she was talking about, but she was right. We think of York as Wars of the Roses era, rather than Medieval. Paul 1989 900 Turbo S http://saab.go.dyndns.org/
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