It's all about point of view. Empiricaly, from the point of view of everyone else, the Japanese were an agressive foreign power, who were hell bent on taking over most of Asia.
However, the reason for this was that, from Japan's point of view those areas were "essential for their survival", now, from our point of view this was patently not true, but they saw these areas as within their sphere of influence and felt threatened by America. So it is not historical revisionism, just a different point of view.
Woah My God!!! A partially obscured nipple, what are we going to do! Think of the Children!!
Because no one has ever seen one of those before. Have you not noticed that every single mammal on this planet has nipples, all of them (except platypusses). Including all of the people who complained about Janet's.
People's reaction to a body part that they all have tells you a lot about the society in which you live.
Except there is a finite ammount of airspace, especially in the UK. There needs to be an equitable way of dividing it up between aircraft with adequate safety margins.
Furthermore, most pilots do not have the gods eye view or access to other pilots flight plans, and do not have the radar range to see other planes coming.
And fundamentally, people, including pilots, are selfish. They will all want priority and not want to cede space to other planes. Air traffic control is needed to decide who has priority.
The thing a lot of the Americans posting here don't understand was that even before the handgun ban, no one carried a gun anyway. The concept of citizens armed with handguns doesn't work in the UK because people don't want to go around carrying guns as part of their day to day business. Unlike America serious violent crime was never high enough to warrant it. Before the handgun ban, almost all of the handguns were kept at gun clubs anyway. Some people in this country will go their entire life without ever seeing a gun except on TV. Even today Police do not carry guns as a matter of routine. Guns are carried by specialist armed response units trained to deal with armed criminals.
One of the reasons for the change in gun crime is the change in criminal gun usage. Nowadays more low level criminals carry guns to settle personal scores, whereas in the past guns used to be the preserve of criminal gangs who used them mainly for gangland hits or serious armed robberies.
Hold on,
The Met does have guns, in fact if I remember rightly they recently bought assault rifles from Germany to deal with terrorists.
Despite not having separation of church and state, we are a much less religious country. your government is significantly more theocratic.
Actually, what they got him for was that his shotgun was illegal, and he shot them in the back as they were running away.
You are right they shouldn't have been there, but I got the distinct impression that rather than taking adequate measures to secure his property he was just looking for an excuse to shoot gypsies.
And our crime rates are still lower per captia than yours.
As someone else replied, the other week a policeman was stabbed in the line of duty, protecting passers by from a suspect. It was front page news here for 24 hours.
This tells me two things,
- Events like this are rare enough that they can take over the media for a significant period
- The Police in this country do work to protect the people, no matter how cynical you are about their ability.
You would probably argue that if gun laws were looser, then a passer by would have probably shot him. However, if gun laws were looser, the suspect himself would have probably been carrying a gun, hence escalating the situation.
The martin case was a bad example, a number of pro gun campaigners stated that he was not a good example of the need for self defence weapons.
He had already lost the shotgun certificate for his original shotgun.
He shot both of them in the back as they were running away
He had shown to the court a degree of premeditation with regards to killing them
He then purchased an illegal pump action shotgun on the black market, for the specific purpose of killing anyone who came to his house
Frederick Forsyth, a well known author, and in favour of gun ownership, pointed out that, for the price of the pump action shotgun, which was illegal, he could have paid for any number of legal detterence methods. Trained dogs, high tech alarms or spent it doing up his shambles of a farm with decent locks and windows to prevent them getting in in the first place.
Except that in 1997, post Handgun ban, the total number of firearm murders was 59 with a further 628 attempted firearm murders. Which leaves a probability of being shot and killed in the UK of 0.000000983 percent, or a probability of being involved in a handgun attack at all of 0.00001145 percent. Which in my book spells good odds.
The Zimmerman telegram was World War One, I was talking about World War Two.
Concerning deferment of entry into World War Two, Germany was a major industrial power that posed a threat to a number of democratic states who were not agressors and were allies of the USA. Iraq was never really a direct threat. Which is not to say you were wrong to get involved. Your methods on the other hand leave a lot to be desired.
Perhaps because it will double his sentence if
caught. Illegal possession of a firearm is 5 years minimum, on top of 5 years for stealing someone's phone.
Yes I admit we owe you for your support in WW2, especially as it was so timely!
The nice life the French have was bought and paid for with Russian blood and don't kid yourself. The USA lost 500,000 men in the entire war, both in the Pacific and Europe. Russia lost over 13 million against Germany alone.
Likewise the European powers lost over 2 million, not including civillians.
Furthermore, your economy only started to recover from its disasterous nosedive thanks to the start of the war and the corresponding increase in European military spending.
And, as for the level of safety felt by most Londoners. I have lived there all my life and visited New York, and the difference in atmosphere was negligible, both were equally safe in my view, the difference being that I know that the majority of people do not carry guns;
We don't require "such protections" because the vast majority of our criminals are not carrying guns. Especially since being arrested with a gun carrys a 5 year sentence on its own, no criminal is going to risk doubling a 5 year sentence for mugging by using a gun. Most guns in criminal hands in the UK are used to settle personal scores and vendettas.
The line is usually drawn somewhere before killing them.
An example is the guy who saw someone breaking into his house while his family were at home. The houseowner attacked the burgalar with a knife, which the court agreed would have been fine, however what was not fine, and resulted in the man receiving a prison term, was when he followed the man into the street and stabbed him 7 times in the back after he had already been incapacitated.
Quite right. Also, the key is don't escalate. In the UK you are unlikely to be mugged by a gun weilding mugger. In the UK most criminals don't carry guns as a matter of routine, instead, most guns are used in gangland killings or to settle personal scores.
The fundamental difference is that in Europe people don't fear the state. The state is something that they have selected and is there to look after them, provide healthcare etc. In the US the state is seen as a negative force mainly because all it does is provide an alphabet soup of agencies who send armed agents out to meddle in the lives of the people.
France has a standing army and a nuclear deterrent, and any nation with a permanent seat on the UN security council is a "relatively significant power".
Now, while i'm not in favour of just handing all our sovereignty over to the EU, I'd rather Britain were a founder member of the US of E than just another state in the US of A.
Except for one thing, one of the fastest growing crimes is youth on youth crime. Out in the suburbs a 15 or 16 year old is far more likely to be mugged than a 60 year old, once you get to CGP314's age (having read his weblog) his risk is far lower, it solely relies upon your actions and behaviour. Stay alert and walk like you own the place.
Red Ken is quite possibly the best thing that has happened to London in a while. You get what you vote for. London has traditionally been a Labour stronghold anyway, people elected him because he gets the job done, whether you agree with his policies or not.
As for when guns are outlawed, well the veracity of that is dubious. European nations generally have lower violent crime rates than America and much smaller gun crime rates. The difference being that you seem to think you need them, whereas strict gun legislation in our countries means we feel safe enough to travel without them. On the other hand if I lived in a country where every other person carried a gun I would probably want one too, thats the whole point of an arms race.
Or it could be that you are just a violent country, Canada have a similar number of guns per head but far fewer gun crimes, and Switzerland has conscription which requires that all men between about 20 and 45 keep an assault rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition at home, yet their gun crime rates are so low they don't even maintain statistics.
Think about this, France does what it likes, when it likes. People in France have more holidays, better food, better healthcare and still manage to be a 'relatively' significant power (either within the EU or on its own). America on the other hand, insists on rubbing the international community up the wrong way. People in America have fewer holidays, poorer quality food, and are worried that their neighbour is about to kill them!
Slashdot Mirror
You've obviously never been to England.
All the great British inventions have come from men with beards in sheds somewhere.
It is quite clear the shed is the mother of invention.
and that facial grooming is somehow detrimental to pioneering research and development.
It's all about point of view. Empiricaly, from the point of view of everyone else, the Japanese were an agressive foreign power, who were hell bent on taking over most of Asia. However, the reason for this was that, from Japan's point of view those areas were "essential for their survival", now, from our point of view this was patently not true, but they saw these areas as within their sphere of influence and felt threatened by America. So it is not historical revisionism, just a different point of view.
Woah My God!!! A partially obscured nipple, what are we going to do! Think of the Children!!
Because no one has ever seen one of those before.
Have you not noticed that every single mammal on this planet has nipples, all of them (except platypusses). Including all of the people who complained about Janet's.
People's reaction to a body part that they all have tells you a lot about the society in which you live.
What did Smith and Wesson do to piss them off?
Except there is a finite ammount of airspace, especially in the UK. There needs to be an equitable way of dividing it up between aircraft with adequate safety margins.
Furthermore, most pilots do not have the gods eye view or access to other pilots flight plans, and do not have the radar range to see other planes coming.
And fundamentally, people, including pilots, are selfish. They will all want priority and not want to cede space to other planes. Air traffic control is needed to decide who has priority.
From what I understood, they switched off the old
system overnight while they tested the new system.
And when they tried to reboot it in the morning it crashed.
Sorry, I had a sense of humour failure. I get your joke, just failed to spot it at the time.
WARNING: SENSE OF HUMOUR NOT FOUND
The thing a lot of the Americans posting here don't understand was that even before the handgun ban, no one carried a gun anyway. The concept of citizens armed with handguns doesn't work in the UK because people don't want to go around carrying guns as part of their day to day business. Unlike America serious violent crime was never high enough to warrant it. Before the handgun ban, almost all of the handguns were kept at gun clubs anyway. Some people in this country will go their entire life without ever seeing a gun except on TV. Even today Police do not carry guns as a matter of routine. Guns are carried by specialist armed response units trained to deal with armed criminals.
One of the reasons for the change in gun crime is the change in criminal gun usage. Nowadays more low level criminals carry guns to settle personal scores, whereas in the past guns used to be the preserve of criminal gangs who used them mainly for gangland hits or serious armed robberies.
Hold on,
The Met does have guns, in fact if I remember rightly they recently bought assault rifles from Germany to deal with terrorists.
Despite not having separation of church and state, we are a much less religious country.
your government is significantly more theocratic.
Actually, what they got him for was that his shotgun was illegal, and he shot them in the back as they were running away.
You are right they shouldn't have been there, but I got the distinct impression that rather than taking adequate measures to secure his property he was just looking for an excuse to shoot gypsies.
And our crime rates are still lower per captia than yours. As someone else replied, the other week a policeman was stabbed in the line of duty, protecting passers by from a suspect. It was front page news here for 24 hours.
This tells me two things,
- Events like this are rare enough that they can take over the media for a significant period
- The Police in this country do work to protect the people, no matter how cynical you are about their ability.
You would probably argue that if gun laws were looser, then a passer by would have probably shot him. However, if gun laws were looser, the suspect himself would have probably been carrying a gun, hence escalating the situation.
The martin case was a bad example, a number of pro gun
campaigners stated that he was not a good example of the need for self defence weapons.
He had already lost the shotgun certificate for his original shotgun.
He shot both of them in the back as they were running away
He had shown to the court a degree of premeditation with regards to killing them
He then purchased an illegal pump action shotgun on the black market, for the specific purpose of killing anyone who came to his house
Frederick Forsyth, a well known author, and in favour of gun ownership, pointed out that, for the price of the pump action shotgun, which was illegal, he could have paid for any number of legal detterence methods. Trained dogs, high tech alarms or spent it doing up his shambles of a farm with decent locks and windows to prevent them getting in in the first place.
Except that in 1997, post Handgun ban, the total number of firearm murders was 59 with a further 628 attempted firearm murders.
Which leaves a probability of being shot and killed in the UK of 0.000000983 percent,
or a probability of being involved in a handgun attack at all of 0.00001145 percent.
Which in my book spells good odds.
The Zimmerman telegram was World War One, I was talking about World War Two.
Concerning deferment of entry into World War Two, Germany was a major industrial power that posed a threat to a number of democratic states who were not agressors and were allies of the USA. Iraq was never really a direct threat.
Which is not to say you were wrong to get involved. Your methods on the other hand leave a lot to be desired.
Perhaps because it will double his sentence if
caught. Illegal possession of a firearm is 5 years
minimum, on top of 5 years for stealing someone's phone.
You'd be surprised
Ken's always looking for a new way to get rid of the pigeons. If he can't starve them, he'll bring in poison, birds of prey...
Yes I admit we owe you for your support in WW2, especially as it was so timely!
The nice life the French have was bought and paid for with Russian blood and don't kid yourself. The USA lost 500,000 men in the entire war, both in the Pacific and Europe. Russia lost over 13 million against Germany alone.
Likewise the European powers lost over 2 million, not including civillians.
Furthermore, your economy only started to recover from its disasterous nosedive thanks to the start of the war and the corresponding increase in European military spending.
And, as for the level of safety felt by most Londoners. I have lived there all my life and visited New York, and the difference in atmosphere was negligible, both were equally safe in my view, the difference being that I know that the majority of people do not carry guns;
Fewer guns=lower probability of being shot
Yes, because that's what the government does in our country. Doesn't yours?
We don't require "such protections" because the vast majority of our criminals are not carrying guns. Especially since being arrested with a gun carrys a 5 year sentence on its own, no criminal is going to risk doubling a 5 year sentence for mugging by using a gun. Most guns in criminal hands in the UK are used to settle personal scores and vendettas.
The line is usually drawn somewhere before killing them.
An example is the guy who saw someone breaking into his house while his family were at home. The houseowner attacked the burgalar with a knife, which the court agreed would have been fine, however what was not fine, and resulted in the man receiving a prison term, was when he followed the man into the street and stabbed him 7 times in the back after he had already been incapacitated.
As I already said, the guy is unlikely to have a gun. Unlike in the US walking in the street in London does not involve an arms race.
Quite right.
Also, the key is don't escalate. In the UK you are unlikely to be mugged by a gun weilding mugger. In the UK most criminals don't carry guns as a matter of routine, instead, most guns are used in gangland killings or to settle personal scores.
The fundamental difference is that in Europe people don't fear the state. The state is something that they have selected and is there to look after them, provide healthcare etc. In the US the state is seen as a negative force mainly because all it does is provide an alphabet soup of agencies who send armed agents out to meddle in the lives of the people.
France has a standing army and a nuclear deterrent, and any nation with a permanent seat on the UN security council is a "relatively significant power".
Now, while i'm not in favour of just handing all our sovereignty over to the EU, I'd rather Britain were a founder member of the US of E than just another state in the US of A.
Except for one thing, one of the fastest growing crimes is youth on youth crime. Out in the suburbs a 15 or 16 year old is far more likely to be mugged than a 60 year old, once you get to CGP314's age (having read his weblog) his risk is far lower, it solely relies upon your actions and behaviour. Stay alert and walk like you own the place.
Were you that priest who kept a derringer in his grandfather clock?
Red Ken is quite possibly the best thing that has happened to London in a while. You get what you vote for. London has traditionally been a Labour stronghold anyway, people elected him because he gets the job done, whether you agree with his policies or not.
As for when guns are outlawed, well the veracity of that is dubious. European nations generally have lower violent crime rates than America and much smaller gun crime rates. The difference being that you seem to think you need them, whereas strict gun legislation in our countries means we feel safe enough to travel without them.
On the other hand if I lived in a country where every other person carried a gun I would probably want one too, thats the whole point of an arms race.
Or it could be that you are just a violent country, Canada have a similar number of guns per head but far fewer gun crimes, and Switzerland has conscription which requires that all men between about 20 and 45 keep an assault rifle and 30 rounds of ammunition at home, yet their gun crime rates are so low they don't even maintain statistics.
Think about this, France does what it likes, when it likes. People in France have more holidays, better food, better healthcare and still manage to be a 'relatively' significant power (either within the EU or on its own). America on the other hand, insists on rubbing the international community up the wrong way. People in America have fewer holidays, poorer quality food, and are worried that their neighbour is about to kill them!
Who's got the better deal?