HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Free Trade (was Re: Currency Problems)
Date: 2 Oct 92 03:10:52 GMT
Organization: sgi

In article <JIM.92Oct1105400@hunter.cs.strath.ac.uk>, jim@cs.strath.ac.uk (Jim Reid) writes:
|> 
|> British Coal produces the cheapest deep mined coal in Western Europe.

A non-sequitur, since there's mountains of coal that is *not*
deep-mined and it that that is the competition.

|> It's too simplistic to just compare the cost of domestic coal with
|> imports.

Not when you're paying for a bag of, it isn't.   If you want to 
consider "other factors" then factor them into the cost.   Give
British Coal a subsidy.   That way you honestly proclaim to the
rest of the world "We have decided to tax our people to prop up
yet another dying industry.  Aren't we smart?"

|> This ignores the impact on other economic factors - balance
|> of payments, GDP, unemployment, and so on

No it does not ignore those factors.   Keep using expensive British
coal (and expensive British other things, too) and before too long
the Pound will be at DM1.50, and then coal miners' wages will be so
low that British coal *will* be competitive.   Maybe.

|> - as well as environmental considerations 

Pardon me?  British coal doesn't harm the environment as much as
that nasty foreign muck?     If that's really true, slap an
environmental damage tax on the dirty stuff, and compare prices
again.   This isn't rocket science, now is it?

|> and the strategic issue of a stable, long-term energy source. 

Aren't you forgetting the strategic importance of a stable long
term supply of cast iron and buggy whips, too?

|> It is insane for an island built on coal to be importing the
|> stuff.

You mean as long as we have osiers in Essex, we shouldn't import
baskets from Portugal.   As long as we have any tin in Cornwall,
we shouldn't import it from Malaysia?   As long as the Japanese
have a square inch upon which to grow rice, they shouldn't import
rice from Thailand?

Why not simply abolish trade altogether.   It would be simpler and
more honest that all these devious arguments you are presenting.

|> 
|> Another point is that the biggest power stations are right next 
|> to British Coal's mines. The coal comes out the ground and 
|> straight into the power station. With imports, millions of tons 
|> of coal will have to be shipped by rail or road to these power 
|> stations.

In that case it *will* be cheaper to take the local stuff.
If it's not, then British coal really is out of sight, isn't it?

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: gerard@caliban.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Gerard Fryer)
Subject: Re: Abuse A Brit (was Re: Pardon my ignorance and such)
Organization: University of Hawaii
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 21:28:26 GMT

In article <1992Sep29.100313.14028@osf.org>, david@postman.gr.osf.org (David George) writes:
|> Then there's the marvelous French term: Rosbif, nice try France, you'd better
|> bring on the Joker for that one.

Apparently rosbif is more than just French.  In "The Last Grain Race"
Eric Newby reports of being addressed as a "fockin rosbif strongbody,"
although it was a compliment rather than an insult.  The ship he was on
was Swedish.
-- 
Gerard Fryer  (g.fryer@soest.hawaii.edu)
School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency problems
Date: 5 Oct 92 09:48:30 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <BvJ9yC.Ant@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater) writes:
>But you don't, in principle, *want* subsidised jobs. The money for these
>subsidies has to come from somewhere. By spending it in this innefficient way,
>you have less money around to invest in more productive things. I am thinking
>of R&D, here.

In an ideal world, I might be persuaded of that.  However in today's
Britain, it is often the case that the OVERALL costs of eliminating the
jobs is more than would be the cost of sufficient subsidy.  This is
basically because there are not alternative jobs for the displaced
people to take, so that they end up on unemployment (direct cost), and
not paying taxes (indirect cost).  Thus, in many instances, not
subsidising leads to less money to invest in more productive things.
Worst of both worlds.  The problem is that these costs are external to
the industry (they are costs to society as a whole) and so don't tend
to show up on the balance sheet.

>Seems to me it is
>better to produce the energy cleanly in the first place than to have to clean
>up the act afterwards. That way we may avoid paying doubly: once with more
>expensive British coal (assuming this is still the case), secondly to clean up
>the sulphurous results.

(This appeared to be a defense of nuclear.  If so, it misses the boat.
The cost of cleaning up after nuclear is already incredibly high, and
will become more so once stations reach the ends of their lives and
need to be 'decommissioned'.  Again, however, a lot of this cost will
be borne by future generations, and so it tends to vanish into the
externals, when the accountants are working on things.  Further,
nuclear IS heavily subsidised.)

>Incidentally, Paul mentioned that gas-fired stations are not suitable for base
>load generation. What is the reason for this?

Gas-turbine (which is the particular form of gas-fired being pushed
over here, and so is what I had in mind) is a VERY expensive way to
make electricity.  It is great for handling short (and particularly
unanticipated) peak-load demands, because it can be turned on and off
more or less instantly, unlike most forms of generation.  However, it
burns a LOT of gas per unit of electricity generated, and is therefore
one of the most cost-inefficient means of generating base-load -- i.e.
stuff you need all the time.  

I don't have any information about more-conventional types of
generation which just happen to burn gas.  It might, for all I know, be
a very cheap way of doing it, but that's not relevant here.  Gas
turbine is the competing technology in question.  (And which, again, is
subsidised.)

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,rec.arts.books
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Subject: Re: Enforced Shakespeare?
Organization: sgi
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 92 19:57:05 GMT

In article <92Oct05.104057.18274@acs.ucalgary.ca>, quigley@acs.ucalgary.ca (Martyn Thomas Quigley) writes:
|> livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> >|> >
|> >|> >What are we going to do next?   Excuse the little darlings
|> >|> >from listening to Mozart because it doesn't have a nice
|> >|> >solid disco beat?
|> >|> 
|> >|> No, because it does.  To paraphrase Glenn Gould "A day without
|> >|> Mozart is like a day without memos."
|> >
|> >You wouldn't be one of those people who saw Amadeus and concluded
|> >that you had heard His music, would you?
|> 
|> No.  Simply pointing out that some people don't like Mozart.

Oh, I could have sworn you were saying his music has a disco beat.

jon.
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency problems
Date: 5 Oct 92 18:57:10 GMT
Article-I.D.: zola.qnaq3do
Organization: sgi

In article <26556@castle.ed.ac.uk>, adam@castle.ed.ac.uk (Adam Hamilton) writes:
|> In article <qihtch4@zola.esd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
|> >
|> >The last Labour
|> >administration had taxes jacked up to 60% of GNP.
|> >
|> 	The figure is marginally incorrect (but I forget what the real one
|> is).  More interestingly, taxes, as a proportion of GNP, are HIGHER under
|> this Conservative Government than under the last Labour one.  A greater
|> proportion is indirect, however.

Why is that more interesting?   Not only is it not more intrinsically
more interesting: it's actually irrelevant to the point I was making, 
and which you deleted, taking one sentence out of context.

Someone asked me why we can't do this and that, and I replied that
we have tried to, and the result was 60% taxation.   Then the UK
literally went bankrupt - as in "could no longer pay its bills" -
and the IMF came in with big boots, and *ordered* the Labour 
administration of the day to reduce taxation.

Oh, is that what's more interesting?    That Labour ran the 
country into the ground to the extent that they had to surrender
sovreignty to the IMF.   Yes, I'll agree that is fairly interesting
in an embarrassing kind of way.

jon.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: sp@osf.org (Simon Patience)
Subject: Re: Currency Problems
Organization: Open Software Foundation
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 1992 12:54:45 GMT

In article <1992Oct6.123845.29266@osf.org>, david@postman.gr.osf.org (David George) writes:
> In article <1992Oct6.090555.5483@nuscc.nus.sg>, hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell) writes:
> > Six years ago (6 YEARS) the
> |> ability to open the car boot (trunk for US readers) from INSIDE the car
> |> was standard on the cheapest SUZUKI on the market. There wasn't a car
> |> made in Europe below the mid-luxury range which had that device.
> 
> On my VW Beetle (ran of the production line at Wolfsburg, Germany in November
> 1970) it was possible to open both the Boot and the Petrol Cover from inside
> the car.  Looks like those Japs knew a good European idea when they saw it.

You could even mend the engine from inside the car, what a great idea.

Simon.

-- 
  Simon Patience
  Open Software Foundation			Phone: +33-76-63-48-72
  Research Institute				FAX:   +33-76-51-05-32
  2 Avenue De Vignate				Email: sp@gr.osf.org
  38610 Gieres, France				       uunet!gr.osf.org!sp
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:13081 soc.culture.celtic:6245
From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Re: Getting some intelligent discussion going.
Date: 27 Sep 92 16:39:23 GMT
Organization: U of Cambridge, England


Alan Smaill writes:
>  Personally I think it's useful to have a larger
> perspective.  The group has never been restricted to things celtic in
> the purely language-related use of the term.

I think a perspective that includes regular posts of Scottish football
results and discussions of pre-Celtic Britons is too large!
Let's have a Scottish group, and keep Celtic racialism out of it.
I mean, I don't even know whether I'm 0% or 100% Celtic, and I don't care!
--
Alasdair Grant
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:13151 talk.religion.misc:17339
From: wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: In response to Jon Livesey, also stand on EC, Maastricht and the
Date: 28 Sep 92 14:27:01 GMT
Organization: Oxford University VAX 6620

In article <Bc9sRB6w165w@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca>, yadallee@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Dave Shariff Yadallee) writes:
> kevinh@hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch (kevinh) writes:
> 
> -
> - Slight, but important, difference is that people  are voting on the issue
> - and not being invaded by Napoleon or Hitler. 
> 
>   Wait a moment.  Both Hitler and Napoleon, more so Hitler, HAD the DEMOCRATIC
> backing of their people before they went on their corruption rampage. Here, it
> is  appropriate to say beware power-mongors looking like democrats.
> 
Dave, dear, I'm sorry to spoil your little party, but I'm afraid that any
European Union will require the democratic backing of all the countries
involved and will not involve Hitleresque annexation of weaker neighbours.

> - Not having read Revelations recently I don't know about this prophecy in
> - detail, but didn't somebody point out that it mentioned 10 states, not 12??
> -
> - Anyway, there's no reason whatsoever to think that *any* power will move
> - away from Brussels/Strasbourg (they quite like it :-). On what do you base
> - your belief that Rome will become the seat of the EC?
> -
>  May I ask a polite favour?  Please read the total thread!!  I did state
> previously that there is always the possibility that some states could withdraw
> from the EC, a viable possibility.  AS for the seat being moved to Rome, have
> you ever heard of that bring-back-the-good-old-days syndrome??
> 
The Good Old Days of what? The only connection Rome has with anything to do
with the EC is the Treaty of Rome.... Silly me! Of course that's enough for you
isn't it? It's always the same. We intelligent, rational, liberal people can
never find arguments against you fundies who use anything to justify your
views, however tenuous a link there is in reality.

-- 

Stephen Wilcox             |   Remember what happened to the dinosaurs!
wilcox@maths.oxford.ac.uk  |    I did---and look what happened to me.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: hiscrp@nuscc.nus.sg (C R Pennell)
Subject: Re: VNS, Fri 25-Sep-92
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 01:38:31 GMT

james@syacus.acus.oz.au (James Smith) writes:
: 
: >Simon 
: 
: >P.S. Who was the Home Sec/ Foreign Sec/ other senior cabinet member who was
: >nailed for drunk driving a few years back (1980 ish ? I seem to remember: 10mph,
: >bumping into the kerb every now and then around St. James's Park) ??
: 
: There are two possible candidates here. One is the fictional Home Secretary in the last episode of Yes Minister which saw Jim Hacker elected party leader and hence became PM and so the series changed its name to Yes Prime Minister. The other candidate is Sir Gerald Nabarro (spelling ?), a Tory minister in the seventies. I don't think he had a particularly high office, may be just transport minister.

	This thread can go on for ever: there was Ernie Marples (who
remembers HIM) Transport minister in the Macmillan gov, who was done for
drunk driving, and George Brown Foreign Sec under Harold Wilson,
photgraphed on his back in the gutter, a scene which provoked the
memorable remark in a TIMES editorial "better the Foreign Secreatry
drunk than the Prime Minister sober" - about the only funny remark ever
made by the TIMES.

	But are you sure Nabarro was a minister at all: I thought the
point about NAb was that he was the eternal eccentric back-bencher
He had severa cars with registration numbers NAB1 NAB2 NAB3 etc and when
he had to sell one of them, there were moves to bail him out as a
national institution.
Richard Pennell History NUS 
: James Smith
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
From: streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater)
Subject: Re: Currency Problems
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 06:29:14 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.100255.2630@bristol.ac.uk> P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee) writes:
>
>whatever the overall effects are, figuring them out is not as simple as
>your sentence would make it appear.
>
It is not and never has been my intention to suggest that there are simplistic
solutions to the problem (whatever Matthew may believe of me). My intention is
to try to get some debate going about these questions, since I don't pretend to have many answers. Debate, that is, over and above the normal noise level of
rhetoric, in which problems are blamed on "the other lot" or "That Bloody
Maggie", or the "Loony Left/Right", or the "Unions", or "Speculators" etc etc.
That was why I asked the boom/bust question of last week and why I was rather
disappointed in the response. At least you and Jon appear to be giving it a
good shot although I find it sad that there are not more people, especially
those UK-based, who can contribute here.

So if I ask a question, as in "Is this not a Good Thing", it does not
necessarily mean that I am taking an immovable stand. Rather, I want to get the
person to explain themself, in order to move forward with the analysis. We
may end up at a brick wall, because you may end up taking a base position,
saying "I believe X", and I may say "well, I believe X-bar", but at least we
will understand one another better. And if we can't achieve that, then I really
can't be bothered. I would rather go and buzz a brick at the raccoon who keeps
coming in my kitchen and eating the cat food.

tin.

PS - It was Wildlife Day at SLAC yesterday. We had a skunk under the machine
room floor in the Computer Center, later skillfully trapped by experts with no
"accident" and released in the hills near the ocean. Also a tarantula was found
in the men's toilets.
From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Some of my best friends are speculators
Date: 2 Oct 92 18:33:12 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <qih5k44@zola.esd.sgi.com> livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes:
>In article <1992Oct1.121159.23009@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, mmh@cs.qmw.ac.uk (Matthew Huntbach) writes:
>|> It is hard to square this with increasingly authoritarian
>|> control of local government by the UK government, such as the
>|> recent nationalisation of the education system.
>
>You mean letting parents control schools?   Yes, truly tragic.

Just out of curiosity, have you actually seen any of the recent white
papers, or are you working on the basis of Government 'interpretations
for the masses' of what effect they are alleged to intend?

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
From: livesey@solntze.esd.sgi.com (Jon Livesey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Is Clinton Wilson?
Date: 2 Oct 92 04:00:42 GMT
Organization: sgi

In article <1992Oct1.135017.27650@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu>, cthorne@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Charles E Thorne) writes:
>
> For example, in the U.S. at the present time, Government health 
> care programs cost about 4 or 5 times per person what comparable
> private programs cost and yet we are constantly bombarded by 
> people who want the government to do more.

As you well know, Mr Thorne, the issue is not whether Government
can supply health care cheaply, but who is to provide health care
to the 36 million - or so - Americans who currently cannot offord
it.

jon.
From: streater@unixjr.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Currency problems
Date: 3 Oct 92 06:56:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: unixhub.BvJ9yC.Ant
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

In article <1992Oct1.102531.9152@vax.oxford.ac.uk> wilcox@vax.oxford.ac.uk write
s:
>
>Jon claims that this is not a major problem, but I would disagree with him by
>asking a what-if question. What if the Tories (unikely I know) had continued to
>subsidise a national British coal industry to a similar extent as other
>coal-producers? British coal would have been cheap; coal mining jobs would not
>have been lost; unemployment would have been lower all round.

But you don't, in principle, *want* subsidised jobs. The money for these
subsidies has to come from somewhere. By spending it in this innefficient way,
you have less money around to invest in more productive things. I am thinking
of R&D, here.
>
>polluting effects of coal-fired power stations: if the subsidies that have been
>given to nuclear power had instead been given to research into ways of cleaning
>up emissions from coal-fired stations and ways of recycling the heat produced,
>we would now be pretty much self-sufficient and non-polluting.
>
I am not sure about this, either. Anyone have any figures for what the nuclear
subsidy is, and how many power stations that amount of money would "clean up",
each year. I doubt if it's that many. One can argue that nuclear shouldn't get
a subsidy either; I would agree unless it were for R&D to produce nuclear that
really was safe and cheap. The French seem to be able to do this; why can
we not (or are they cheating on safety or something?). Seems to me it is
better to produce the energy cleanly in the first place than to have to clean
up the act afterwards. That way we may avoid paying doubly: once with more
expensive British coal (assuming this is still the case), secondly to clean up
the sulphurous results.

Enter, with no alarums, Hamlet, stage left, from another thread, clutching a
gas-fired power station to his bosom. "To gas or not to gas", he gasps, but
then notices with dismay that the House is almost empty. "They're not taught it
any longer", he says, "It's all the fault of That Woman and her policies, and
her clever academic qualifications. But I'll make them understand me, oh yes".

Incidentally, Paul mentioned that gas-fired stations are not suitable for base
load generation. What is the reason for this?

tin.
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:13078 talk.religion.misc:17210 soc.culture.europe:8653
From: godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british,talk.religion.misc,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: France, je vous remercie pour l'election d'Anti-Christ
Date: 27 Sep 92 18:31:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: sscvx1.27SEP199212312691
Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.4-b1

In article <1992Sep27.165624.7018@philmtl.philips.ca>, ray@philmtl.philips.ca (Ray Dunn)         writes...
>In referenced article, godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY) writes:
>>The EC
>>would be fine without the Germans - this has nothing to do with the Tories
>>pathetic attempts to blame the Germans for the mismanagement of the British
>>economy, it just has to do with the fact that the Germans are extremely
>>objectionable people, and I won't support any organisation that requires
>>having contactswith them.
> 
>The short response to this is "It takes one to know one".
>-- 
>Ray Dunn at home    |    ray@philmtl.philips.ca    |    (514) 630 3749

The short response to that is "Are all jurors who convict, guilty of the
offences"
From: fledgist@weber.ucsd.edu (Fragano Ledgister)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Pardon my ignorance.
Keywords: states within a nation
Date: 30 Sep 92 21:15:47 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: weber.ucsd.edu

In article <Bv2GB2.n1G@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> streater@news.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Tim Streater) writes:
>
>I vigorously deny this. The individual is called the Governor General, and is
>the Crown's rep in Oz. In general, there is one in each country which has the
>Queen as Head of State. The country can at any time (I believe) declare itself
>a republic and send this individual home. This is because the country is self
>governing and can freely alter its own constitution to effect the above change.
>I think that is what Fiji did a couple of years ago. The question of whether 
>the sacking of the Oz PM was constitutional etc etc I leave to others.

You're correct, except for one small thing. The Governor General is
usually a native of the country (e.g., the GG of Canada is a
Canadian, the GG of Jamaica a Jamaican), and may become president if
the country becomes a republic with a ceremonial presidency (this
was the case in India, Guyana and Trinidad-Tobago when they became
republics.



-- 
____________________________________________________________________
Dawn over the dark sea brings on the sun;                      
She leans across the hilltop: see, the light!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british