OK Ed, look natural: Milliband

[swee'pea99]

I heard a Tory commentator a couple of days ago saying that politicians should keep their noses out of the Pfizer/AstraZeneca bid "because most MPs could not run a bath". Refreshingly honest.

Or typically dumb, depending how you look at it.

As for the Milliband gif, I think we can take it as read that you could do the same with anyone who spends their whole life in the public eye. Proves nothing. The main thing it makes me think is, who made it, and why?

It's all too easy to 'hate politicians' - indeed it's one of the main drivers for UKIP's success - but I suspect you'd find that on the whole, their levels of intelligence, integrity and dedication to the public good are way above average. It's a dirty job, right enough, but somebody has to do it - and most, I think, do it reasonably well and for honourable reasons.

 

[ASC1951]

..
It's all too easy to 'hate politicians' ... but I suspect you'd find that on the whole, their levels of intelligence, integrity and dedication to the public good are way above average. It's a dirty job, right enough, but somebody has to do it - and most, I think, do it reasonably well and for honourable reasons.

Well there we differ slightly. Politicians are dedicated to what they are individually or tribally convinced is the public good, which is not the same thing. And when such conviction is hardly ever based on evidence of what works and what doesn't, these people can be positively harmful.
With a few exceptions I have no doubt about their integrity or dedication, but I don't see a burning zeal to interfere in every detail of other people's lives as a particularly noble calling.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Is that Nick Park's latest character?

GC

 

[accountantpete]

Cracker from the Independent

 

[threebikesmcginty]

I've half a mind to become an MP.










Apparently it's all you need!

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

 

[ianrauk]

 

[ianrauk]

I've half a mind to become an MP.










Apparently it's all you need!

That... and a Duck House.

 

[SteCenturion]

It's probably the greatest era for British Sportsmen & women.


As this picture of the British, World & Olympic Gurning Champion shows.

 

[swee'pea99]

Well there we differ slightly. Politicians are dedicated to what they are individually or tribally convinced is the public good, which is not the same thing. And when such conviction is hardly ever based on evidence of what works and what doesn't, these people can be positively harmful.
With a few exceptions I have no doubt about their integrity or dedication, but I don't see a burning zeal to interfere in every detail of other people's lives as a particularly noble calling.

Sure - I'm not arguing they can't be harmful: the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as any fule no. But very few, I think, have any desire to 'interfere in every detail' etc. What they do on the whole want to do, rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, is promote the public good. Even if they fail, that seems to me a laudable goal, and worthy of more than the knee-jerk contempt that seems generally to be their lot.

For just one example - as given above - some of them are currently doing their best to prevent a massively powerful bunch of American businessmen with a well-established reputation for rapacious asset-stripping from ripping the value out of a key UK industrial powerhouse and giving it to a bunch of wealthy, mostly American, shareholders. That seems to me a job worth doing. And if they don't do it, who else is going to?

Like I say, it's all too easy - and all too glib - to write them off, en masse, as a bunch of money-grubbing power-hungry know-nothings. Whose game is being played when that story is repeated and repeated and repeated? And who, ultimately, benefits?

 

[Saluki]

Is that his real hair? Or does he get it from the same place that Darling gets his eyebrows. His hair looks impossibly boofy to me.

 

[MikeG]

......... some of them are currently doing their best to prevent a massively powerful bunch of American businessmen with a well-established reputation for rapacious asset-stripping from ripping the value out of a key UK industrial powerhouse and giving it to a bunch of wealthy, mostly American, shareholders. That seems to me a job worth doing. And if they don't do it, who else is going to?..........

I agree with your post in its entirety, but this is a poor example. The answer to your rhetorical question is: the board, and the shareholders. As it happens, it is the board who appear to have won, rejecting the final offer, safe in the knowledge that your so-called asset strippers have declared previously that they wouldn't pursue a hostile takeover (ie without the support of the board).

 

[postman]

Ken Dodd impression,but not as funny.

 

[ASC1951]

..For just one example - as given above - some of them are currently doing their best to prevent a massively powerful bunch of American businessmen with a well-established reputation for rapacious asset-stripping from ripping the value out of a key UK industrial powerhouse and giving it to a bunch of wealthy, mostly American, shareholders.

That is, if I may say so, an easy and glib way of looking at that particular issue - to write both company managements off as a bunch of money-grubbing power-hungry know-nothings. There is an equally plausible view that the left is always happy with racism and xenophobia so long as it directed at the USA and protectionism may be good for politicians but it is in the long run bad for everyone else.

That seems to me a job worth doing. And if they don't do it, who else is going to?

There we disagree again. It doesn't need doing. And if it did, it is a job for the people who own the assets in question ie their respective shareholders.

Like I say, it's all too easy - and all too glib - to write them [MPs] off, en masse, as a bunch of money-grubbing power-hungry know-nothings. Whose game is being played when that story is repeated and repeated and repeated? And who, ultimately, benefits?

I have never regarded MPs as money grubbing.

 

[swee'pea99]

write both company managements off as a bunch of money-grubbing power-hungry know-nothings.

Did I? Where did I?

There is an equally plausible view that the left is always happy with racism and xenophobia so long as it directed at the USA and protectionism may be good for politicians but it is in the long run bad for everyone else.

Eh? Racism? Xenophobia? Do wot John? As for protectionism: if what you mean by that is safeguarding UK assets from overseas asset-strippers, I'm not sure how that benefits politicians, but I can sure see how it's good for 'everyone else'.

There we disagree again. It doesn't need doing. And if it did, it is a job for the people who own the assets in question ie their respective shareholders.

It did need doing; and fortunately it seems to have been done. (Tho' I concede as much by the AZ board as by the politicians who helped generate a groundswell of opposition they could hardly ignore.)