Be Excellent To Each Other

So, anyone else remotely concerned about Gideon flogging off nuclear power stations to, effectively, the Chinese state?

If all these memoranda of understanding that he's gleefully scrawling his stupid fat name on while grinning with his stupid fat face come to something, the Chinese will hold serious stakes in UK water, airports, IT infrastructure and now nuclear power generation. Oh, and allow them to set up banks to help Chinese officials money launder their ill gotten gains, too.

Given the massive paranoia that various sensible states have had about Huawei getting involved in telecoms, are we ("we" meaning the imbeciles in the Tory government) being utterly mad here?

It's one thing to allow foreign entities to own most of our assets and major companies, but quite another to allow a state that we're not exactly besties with to get into our nuclear power stations*.

*I know that EDF is French state owned but we could easily take the Frogs if it came to it.

Sadly, it's not like we don't have any other dealings with nasty or corrupt regimes.
At least Scotland got a couple of pandas on loan from their trade deal.

Given the fuck up in Grangemouth I'm no exactly chuffed wi' the idea. (The Chinese government own 49% & are backing the threats of closure)

I enjoyed* the way George Osbourne was treated on his recent trip to China. He was denied access to the higher echelons and pretty much treated in the same way an envoy from a third world country would be here. It's quite unnerving that at a time when these emerging powers are starting to see us as an aging imperialist relic at best and a tourist/university destination at best that the Scots are trying to break the union and most of the rank and file are screaming to leave the EU. We need to be banking together and getting our collective bargaining powers on before we're cut loose and become irrelevant on the world stage.

The EU as a whole should be approaching China for trade agreements, not separate envoys from each of the states. Doomed we are.

*Mainly due to my personal dislike of him. My sense of horror at how the Chinese view the UK was deeply depressing.

Welcome to the globalised world, Kissyfur. You don't like it; shit, I don't like it - but we've got to deal with it. I've no doubt that Gideon has sold us all down the river with some fat, guaranteed £1000/kWh rate for the next gazillion years, as underwritten by the State, in order to get the Chinese to stump up; most of the British public won't even care enough to ask about these details and yet another mortgaging of their grandkids' futures by government. Still, at least "London" (i.e. the banks/City) got what they came for, apparently.

Even this surely can't be as bad as Broon's PFI "deals" though, not to mention catastrophic defence, Tube and IT government contracts whose sheer waste (perhaps a hundred billion or two, give or take) dwarfs even the total cost of these power stations (seriously). Unlike the UK government and public sector generally, at least the Chinese State will get shit like this done, on time and in budget. We'll have a bunch of shiny new nuke power stations before you can say "special fried rice".

It's only a surprise that the UK government can get even the cash-rich Chinese interested here, what with Millipede's latest broadside just days ago (impeccable timing and economic nous as ever by Labour) about freezing energy prices - lovely investor climate, there, 1970s Labour Broken Britain all over again.

As an aside also, makes me laugh to hear the term "imbeciles in Tory government" just 2 years after the Labour-induced Depression not recession (we now know the economy crashed c.8% in a single quarter), with no double dip, growth now returning strongly, record number of people working, control restored to burgeoning welfare - the country is already in immeasurably better shape than it was mere months ago. (I should know, as I have a proper job and run an actual business and stuff).

I suppose it's too much to ask or expect a modicum of credit where it's due; a little fairness into the equation - as harsh a critic as I myself most certainly am of this government too. Man alive, you think it's bad now, I cannot even begin to imagine how bad it would've been if Broon/Balls had stayed at the helm.

Completely agree. If we leave the EU then I'm leaving the UK.

...I was a harsh Eurosceptic before; I'm positively "Eurorabid" now.

Dude! Be fair, for goodness sake. It's no wonder you get lambasted for being tribalistic.

(1) PFI started under the Tories (PPP as then was, IIRC), and they're still happily doing it (despite slagging off Brown and Co for doing it).
(2) However shit he was, the global recession wasn't caused by Brown, and the second dip of the local double dip recession happened under the Tories. Credit where credit's due, indeed: the Tories have done a really good PR job on this one.

ANYWAY, Chinese.

Any deal done here would almost certainly be fairly bad, as the deals the European companies wanted in order to build new nukes were crippling. I can't see any Chinese deal being any better than another Tory PFI dea, TBH. Either the chinese pay the investment and energy prices skyrocket, or the government pays the investment and the Chinese make the money off it.

Meh, it always amuses me when I get accused of being "tribalistic" by people who are still spouting precisely the same childish, fundamentalist rubbish, unmodified, that they were 5 or 10 years ago, whereas my own views have changed and evolved immeasurably in all that time.

In case you didn't realise, I couldn't give a flying fuck what people think, or say about me here - as I would've thought fairly obvious?

Am I now? Cheers for that, matey. Nice.


He says, after copying and pasting the same anti-labour "fundamentalist rubbish, unmodified", that you were 5 or 10 years ago.


Indeed.

Thanks for engaging so constructively.

Sigh.

As regards the point you make (yet again) about Brown/Labour not being in any way responsible for the UK Depression, then YET AGAIN, the UK Government has a duty to regulate the City of London, which (together with New York) was pretty much responsible for the financial crash. Brown/Labour were totally in the thrall of the City and did not understand it; his 2006 Mansion House speech is always good for a laugh if you don't believe me:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/200 ... omicpolicy

This total failure to regulate (most especially since Labour tore down the previous regulatory regime that had worked pretty well for the preceding 20 years and replaced it within something that did not work) was a uniquely British governmental one. We can't blame the Germans, the French or whoever - the regulation of the City of London was our government's job, which it indisputably catastrophically and manifestly failed to do.

As for the whole "PFI was invented by the Tories" nonsense, well, they might well have invented it, but they weren't the ones writing/signing THESE contracts, on THESE projects...? I mean, come on, you're a lawyer, yes? You'll know then, of course, how ridiculously weak this argument is. The accountability for the PFI contracts that the Tories signed on our behalf rests with the Tories, and the ludicrous PFI contracts that Labour signed - vastly more numerous, almost immeasurably worse value and much more costly - rests with Labour.

Sheesh, next you'll be saying that the catastrophic failure of the City was actually down to Thatcher's 'Big Bang' reforms 23 years before the crash, and fully 12 years before the start of Labour's decade in power in which to change stuff if necessary...?

...Oh.

From what little I know of Chinese culture, the 'century of humiliation' after 1839 forms a major part of the nation's sense of identity (whereas for us, it's two world wars, one world cup, and that's about it).

Wow, that would be good going, given that I was talking about the recovery of the economy over only these last 2 years.



Tout le plaisir était pour moi.

I'm not sure that's a point I've made "yet again", being, as I am, fairly anti-labour, but don't let that stop you building some impressive strawmen.

Can you take the OT stuff somewhere else, please, particularly if you're going to be such an aggressive arse about it, completely unprovoked, at one of the few people on the forum that actually likes you. Ta.

Could you please quote properly so I don't have to see half-conversations of stuff I've purposed blocked out?

Whatever, man. It's hardly OT if I'm trying to answer stuff/questions you're posting. (Besides, you were the one who very much put a partisan, political spin on this in your OP).

For me, I don't have a problem with robust disagreements; doesn't mean I suddenly don't like you or something. I still think you're a funny, intelligent, likeable person; I just vehemently disagree with you on stuff like this.

Throwing someone's lack of popularity in their face is a bit off imo; I'm well aware I'm universally reviled here and even have my own "Twitter hate club" - see title. It's upsetting at times I guess, but c'est la vie. The feeling's mutual in most cases, and I at least say what I think needs be said to people's faces.

Not that the west is in a position to feel superior about the possible existence of backdoors in its companies' tech stuff.

I still like you, Cavey

Though I don't believe that the current 'recovery' can be called as such until it filters down (if indeed it will) to the people who actually need it. The cost of living is still rising far in advance of wages, and no amount of balance sheet improvements or house price rises are going to convince the vast majority of people that they are anything other than worse off than before (and still worsening).

Slightly digressing here, but for a while I've been wondering if we're going to experience a rise in racist attacks against Chinese people as the country opens up and more choose to visit or work or be involved here.

I remember as a student the commonplace casual bigotry you'd hear in bars etc, as opposed to the actual nasty racist stuff, was usually in relation to the Chinese students, who, the stereotype had it, were never seen except at exam time. Although, given how much they were paying and how much trouble it took for them to get over, I can hardly blame them.

As it goes, I agree mate. Hopefully where we're at now is but an early stepping stone to much better stuff, and not just for the favoured few either.

I'm an optimist.

I sincerely hope that if it ever genuinely came down to it, that puppeteering Big Business interests would prevent the UK from being in a position where it could leave the EU. We'd be a semi-irrelevant banana republic, err, monarchy without our European links.