Film Review: Bad Boys 2/Gungho US Foreign Policy

 Film, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 242008
 

Format: TV broadcast with an ugly as hell station logo

IMDB entry: here.

This is your usual hollywood action movie; there isn’t enough plot to say anything about it. It is just a vehicle for a lot of special effects, explosions, car chases, and the like. If you want a film to make you think, then this would be a bad choice, but there is nothing wrong with a bit of mindless entertainment. And this is mindless entertainment in spades … which may sound like a criticism, but it is a fine film of its kind.

But it did make me think (so perhaps it wasn’t perfect). The storyline (without trying to give too much away) includes a whole bunch of policemen making a trip to a foreign country to “kick some ass” (or more correctly some arse). It occurred to me that this is a rather common theme in certain US films of the action variety – the evil villains are lurking in some foreign country and the heros just go after them without considering that what they are doing is effectively an act of war.

I am sure that US foreign policy is not controlled by US action films in any way, but the genre may lead the US population to be more accepting of more extreme forms of foreign policy and the belief that the US government is entitled to use practically any form of action against targets in foreign countries. This also implies a disrespect for international laws which leads to very little opposition when the US government ignores those laws.

The US is known (outside the US at least) as being more than a little gungho in certain foreign policy matters. Does the propoganda of actions fims let the US get away with this without as much criticism as it perhaps deserve ? Or even worse does being brainwashed by action films lead those who set US foreign policy act a little more gungho than is wise ?

There is nothing wrong with “carrying a big stick”, but those who do should remember the first part of the phrase “speak softly”. In the right circumstances, the more extreme forms of foreign policy are perfectly justified, but they also alienate the residents of those foreign parts. If you do not need to annoy people, why do so ?

UK Conservatives Confused On Public Debt

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Nov 182008
 

Today the leader of the Conservative party David Cameron spoke on economic policy and went on again about the level of government debt in the Uk. He is quoted in a BBC article as saying Britain was different from other nations because public debt levels were already very high; in fact you can play the video and find that he believes that Britain already has “the biggest budget deficit in the modernised world”. Well perhaps, although it is clearly an attempt by the Conservatives to reclaim the “party of low taxation” banner and frighten the public with talk of a “borrowing binge”.

So shall we take a look at Britain’s public debt ? It is currently at the level of around £660 billion which sounds like a huge amount (and is). It is also around £11,000 per head of Britain’s population. Now lets look at Germany which has a debt level of around €1.5 trillion, or around €19,000 per head of Germany’s population. This comes out to £16,010 per head thanks to Google’s currency converter, or £1.27 trillion in total. I guess Germany is not part of the modernised world which might come as a surprise to the Germans!

Now the US; On 30 September 2008, the total U.S. federal debt passed the $10 trillion mark for the first time, with about $32,895 per capita (cut&paste from the Wikipedia article). This converts to about £6.66 trillion pounds in total and £21,900 per capita. It seems the Conservative party has trouble doing basic arithmetic with such large numbers.

Or perhaps they are being sensible and looking at public debt as a percentage of the size of the economy. Expecting an unsuccessful politician to be sensible is little unrealistic, but hey! I’ve been wrong before so I could be now. Looking at public debt as a percentage of GDP (a kind of measurement of the size of the economy) is a far better way of doing it, as we do not get distracted by all those zeros and is basically what the banks do when deciding how big a mortgage we can get (the old rule being up to three times the yearly income).

The CIA has an interesting table giving the level of public debt in terms of percentage of GDP for the year 2007. The UK is listed at position 50 with a level of 43% of GDP. Lets have a quick look at the big names above the UK in the list :-

  • Japan is listed at position 3 with 170%.
  • Italy is at number 7 with 104%
  • Germany is at number 20 with 64.9%
  • France is at number 22 with 63.9%
  • and the US is at number 27 with 60.8%

Does not seem quite so bad really does it ? Wait! The UK debt has risen considerably since 2007, so we should recalculate the level of debt for a later time. Fortunately the UK National Statistics department have an update for September 2008 showing public debt was at a level of 43.4% of GDP which would still leave us at position 50 in the CIA’s table. Even if we recalculate using the latest debt figure (given above as £660 billion) we get to around 44.4% of GDP which is a pretty big increase, but would still leave us at position 49 in the CIA’s table.

Interestingly the National Statistics page I referred to (here is the link) also gives us the highest percentage of GDP that the UK public debt level reached – 44.2% in 1997 when the last Conservative government was in control.

It seems to me that at best the Conservatives are scare-mongering with talk about huge tax rises to combat spiraling public debt at record levels. That is not to say that public debt is not a concern, but I think we have a fair way to go before we reach the levels of some other modern economies which are still reasonably successful. Of course public debt has to be repaid eventually, but some of that public debt will be repaid by the banks that have been bailed out and by eventually selling off Northern Rock (at a considerable profit I hope).

Of course I could be totally wrong about the level of UK government debt, and perhaps we do have the largest public debt in the Western world, but I cannot see the evidence for it myself. Perhaps someone could point me in the right direction?

Back To The Beach At Eastney

 Photography  No Responses »
Nov 162008
 

This afternoon I was back at the beach at Eastney … which in the summer is full of nudists cavorting, but today had just a handful of textiles fishing and walking. Plus me waving a camera around trying to come up with interesting images.

#0: Untitled (for obvious reasons)

Untitled

#1: Ferries In The Sunshine

Ferries In The Sunshine

Film Review: Ronin

 Film  No Responses »
Nov 152008
 

Format: Blueray

IMDB Entry here

Now this is what I call an action movie. A bunch of mercs are hired to get a case off somebody, and are gradually whittled down by casualties, and betrayal until it becomes about something other than just the job. Not only are the action scenes interesting and believable (too many modern films have action scenes that require the existence of superhumans), but include some of the best car chases anyone has ever seen.

It also has a lot of depth with a surprisingly complex and twisting story. Tons of mystery; not least of which, what was in the case ? Nobody knows.

Definitely worth a watch.

Customer Service at Tesco? Perhaps Not.

 General  No Responses »
Nov 142008
 

On the way home from work tonight (after a particularly hard day that started at 6am), I dropped into Tesco to pick up a lazy person’s meal – a pizza and a four-pack of Guinness. I intentionally queued at the very long queue in front of the human checkout rather than the very short queue in front of the machine checkout because :-

  • I wanted the goods bagged for me.
  • I didn’t want to wait (and queue jump) whilst the checkout people got around to authorising my alcohol purchase.

I noticed several curious things whilst queuing … which was rapidly getting longer :-

  • The checkout people included the slowest checkout person this Tesco has (not her fault I’m sure but it has relevance later), and someone who is not normally found working the checkout.
  • Shortly after I joined the queue, the one who is not normally working the till started suggesting that people use the machine checkout. In fact she was quite insistent about it.
  • She then shut her till and left the counter to go up and down the queue suggesting people use the machine checkout and offering to show people how to use it.
  • She then decided to spend a few minutes moving shopping baskets around whilst the slowest checkout person was left alone servicing a very long queue.
  • Showing people how to use the machine checkout actually took longer than it would have done to just do the checkout normally.

When I finally reached the head of the queue, it was obvious that there were no plastic bags to bag the shopping for anyone … except for those who had chosen to use the machine checkout. Which was decided odd as it is more common for those with full baskets to use the human checkout.

I can understand that plastic bags should be discouraged, but this was a little extreme! In fact the bloke in front of me was forced to buy a re-usable bag because he had far more shopping than could be carried by hand. I would have just left it and gone elsewhere in his case!

It did seem as though this particular Tesco seems to regard customers as an inconvenience.

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