Be Excellent To Each Other

Err, I don't know how to approach this, for fear of ridicule, but I do think there is a lot more going on behind what we are told is going on. Senior civil servants stay in their jobs when government changes and they are the ones who really control things. So how do we feel about this?

[Vote:Steve]

I learned all about the illuminati in Deus Ex. Morgan Everett is in charge. He's got Lucius DuBeers in the freezer. At least, he did until I shut off the power and killed that fucker, hahaha.

Nice concept, but given official governments with real and direct power are completely inept, I don't imagine a secret guiding hand would be any better, even if such exists.

But what we concieve as ineptitude might be part of the master plan. That is one of the things that worries me, government seems to be deliberatly inept. I would welcome the "credit crunch" if I thought it weren't a really good reason for the govenrment to own the majority of banks.

I learned all about the Illuminati from The Illuminati Trilogy. It apparently involves significant amounts of acid and bumsex.

FTFY.

I'm all for bum sex, but does anyone have any real views on this?

I don't trust this 'Steve'.

I think he may be a lizard.

Cover your blood, everyone.

Steve is exhibiting the classic behaviour of a mole, everyone. Stay alert. In fact, Hugh's lizard theory fits perfectly.

Calm down anyway Steve. It's not like we live in a country where there are cameras on every street corner, or ISPs will soon (officially, anyway...) be keeping all data for government collation, or have closest ties to a nation where its own program of spying on its own people's communications was infamously revealed in recent years. I mean, that'd require a whole special echelon devoted to it, and who could be bothered with that?

Ahh that will be a David Icke reference. He has to be included in the debate but I was more thinking the Bilderberg group or something. There are surely many sinistar things that go on behind government. This is one of those things where if you offer evidence it is quickly "disproved" with both sides just argueing, and it ends in a mess. I really just wanted to gauge the thoughts of people.

I think it's possible but improbable. The logistics of such an organisation would be prohibitive.

I created databases for the FCO for a while. I know there is more behind the scenes than people think.

Okay then. I wonder how many OMGDISASTERS will prompt teh governments to say "The only way to save your own financial collapse and that of Britain is to go out into the high streets and spend all of your money! But not on-line, use our world-famous shops! QUICK!"

The last time there was a global recession, folks were a bit worried about Russia and if they were plotting something nasty. You know, by bullying a load of countries together under one umbrella. Fortunately we in the west would never do anything like that, and there's no chance that any of the harsh tricks used in the USSR have ever been used over here; and further more, it could never happen ever, because this is a democracy. Oh, but then of course, the 20th century saw the rise of spying-related organizations. Famously of course, MI5 investigated Harold Wilson, then MP, for possibly being a communist mole; and for possible involvement in the sudden death of Hugh Gaskill, the previous, more anti-socialist Labour leader.

The point is that there's no chance of there being any kind of dodgy secrecy over here, because let's face it, that's never happened before, and anyway, the state of the world these days is totally different, completely different to say, 85 years ago, and nothing happened then either.

So shutup Steve, you must be paranoid.

Except for the fact that our money seems to be be supporting the forefront of capitalism i.e. banks. Do any of you really think you will get your dividend from the money we put in. Also, technically these previous "big city bankers" were on £600000 bonuses. Surely now they are civil servants who should fit into the pay band policy the government uses (the PM gets about £110000 a year for reference).

I think the huge stock crash has been engineered by the big players in the market to make them comparatively richer, even though it will look like they have less on paper.

Exactly Grim... Things look like they are out of control, but it is actually a ruse to maximise profits and specific govermental intervetion, look at how oil prices have gone. Despite our recession they are 40% higher than they were when the fuel proteests went on.

My solution is to ban MaliA

Wait, I was being serious. The "shutup you are paranoid" bit was the sarcasm. I've been thinking about this for the past fortnight particularly.

Capitalism is the great nurturing umbrella under which we all shelter. Just like communism except that's OBVIOUSLY evil, and is foreign too.

I've been thinking about "The Great Game" between Britain and Russia, itself an interesting precursor to the cold war, and the efforts of America to curtail the spread of communism by trying to prevent the 'domino effect' it thought would happen if Korea or Vietnam were to become any kind of puppet state of the USSR.

But then all that ended didn't it? No way it could be still going on. And anyway, we were on the 'good guys' side, a side empirically proven to be entirely righteous, noble, and always putting the public interest first. Man, imagine if we'd been on the other side! All those people, living under oppression, and they didn't even know it / wouldn't admit it. I wonder if any of them even suspected anything?

And it's not like Britain is still part of any of that anyway, that 'game'. *kicks Aghanistan under rug out of sight*

@Grim: and don't forget the public have been encouraged to 'spend more' too. So the 'less' is even less than it was before to the 'more' of the truly wealthy.

@CUS. Welcome back indeed my friend,

I think we will agree then that our problems are not in fact due to our government stretching themselves too far for once. This "Credit Crunch" is down to a lot of highly paid city bankers gambling on the stock exchange thinking they knew the markets and then they got burned. I really fail to see how public money should come in to this, especially as the heads of these operation are getting multi million pound payoffs.

It fucks me off.

It's also down to many, many ordinary people spending considerably more than they have and then cretinously acting surprised when it turns out badly. Much of this can be laid squarely at the feet of greed and irresponsible fiscal planning, both corporate and individual. The only downside as far as I'm concerned is that people who've been sensible will also suffer as a result of their collective stupidity.

And our prime minister has gleefully shafted an entire nation (and a friendly one at that) just because he could, of course.

@sinistaragent: There has been a massive cultural shift. In my day ( I am 30 in 2 months) people didn't buy what they couldn't afford. Now they stick everything on the never never. Banks are the ones to blame for this with high risk lending. I really fail to see how we should be responsible for bailing them out.

That so many building socities couldn't resist a taste of the banking pie, is also a big problem. Greed, there.

The people who took loans to buy stuff they didn't need are also to blame. People who wanted to buy unnecessary things that they couldn't afford and didn't have the stones or sense to simply do without are also to blame. I can't afford a lot of things, and for a while could barely afford food. I did without those things. I could have accepted the idiotic loan and credit card offers I'd get in the post, but all that would do is make things worse a few months down the line. People are as much to blame as the banks, although admittedly the banks should really have known better.

We shouldn't be responsible for bailing them out, but the government needs the economy to function, so what else could they do? We also shouldn't be spending billions on killing foreign people for the heinous crime of being foreign in Iraq, but we do anyway (the US in particular could have rebuilt every school and hospital, funded universal healthcare and a handful of enormous research projects into renewable energy sources with that money, but hey ho).

I don't see a conspiracy as such. I see a pack of greedy bastards cashing in on the greed, gullibility and childishness of a large portion of the public. Unfortunately, they've ogne and shot themselves in the foot.

Can someone explain to me how people who have savings can be gauranteed £50000, but people with mortgages aren't let off at all? A £150000 will still be honoured? That is not even a small mortgage these days. It just seems like one rule to keep assets of one group and another another to screw the assets out of the other.

Simply see 'Yes Minister' for details. It isn't a conspiracy, its a cheerfully quiet, unapologetic, system. We just pretend it doesn't work that way and that all power is in the hands of elected officials. I'm of two minds, if we didn't have them - we'd have chaos and heightened special interest corruption, as we do have them, we have a status quo of big business wheel greasing and stagnation with no willpower to change things.

Steve Holt!

Hmm right..



This is the thing. Could we get on quite happily live by ourselves without a government? Are we all such savages that one week without the Sun (not star in our Solar System) and we would be animals. No Giros and it is evrey man for himself?

There is no way in hell this country is ready for anarchy. Most people can barely function as it is, and we have a pretty liberal democracy and a lot more freedom to get on with our lives than some places.

Indiddly doodly. Absolutely no way would Britain cope with anarchy in any 'good' sense. The only revolution we only managed was industrial - says it all really.

If they are, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, I don't think that they would really bother with you.

I don't even understand this post. You're saying if the bank goes tits up we should buy its customers free houses they haven't paid for and apparently this is only fair because people putting money they HAVE paid for in might get it back?

I have no confidence that the Home Office could organise a conspiracy on a grassy knoll.

I live a few miles away from these people

Malc

The Free Masons indisputably exist, and (i) count among their numbers many people in positions of power and (ii) are completely bonkers.

How this is any different to Public School, I don't know.

So: you can pick any "thing" that ties together many of the people in positions of power, be it the Masons, the Old Boy Network, Christianity or "the Illuminati" or whatever. It's not a massive leap from this to suggest that a group with ties to each other with similar self-interests may be acting in concert for their own aggregate self-interest. With lots of acid and bumsex, of course.

The big Freemason building ( lodge? temple? ) in Covent Garden is one of the ugliest buildings I've seen. It also has a few crazy shops next door selling bonkers Freemason medals and aprons and hat's with feathers. It's all fairly odd.


Whilst I don't doubt that there are groups trying to scratch each others backs, stories of super-mega powers behind the throne that run everything strike me as fairly unlikely, mainly because the world has been a bit of a screw up for pretty much all of history, and if you were clever enough to have a shadowy cabal running the world, surely you'd do a better job of it than this?

I think that is perhaps our tinfoil-hat-wearing friend's point- it looks like a screw up because it's bad for the rest of us, but what if all of these "screw ups" have, in fact, been entirely to the benefit of the shadowy cabal running things and are entirely in accord with their evil and ineffable plans?

See?

*handshake*

I think it's fair to say that not everything is quite as it seems, but that doesn't necesarily mean that everything is as sinister as is oft made out.

See, this sounds like a man in the know. TELL US THE SECRETS.

This is one of those "never attribute to malice something that's just as easily explained by stupidity" situations. I've got less difficulty believing that old-boy-network cronyism is bailing out idiot lenders and borrowers than I have believing in some overarching Grand Design shaping the world.

More to the point - even if we were governed by a shadowy conspiratorial cabal, who really cares? What practical difference would it make to our lives?

Occam's razor is a useful tool, but it can sometimes cut your throat rather than cut through bullshit.

See, the Evil Grand Design People *want* you to not believe in them, and they've propogated this "ahhahaha, silly conspiracy theorists, aren't they funny! This is all just incompetence and tawdry back scratching. Nothing special to see here!" line as a cover. And you've fallen for it.


Well, for one they've got the hydrogen cell engine that just runs on water locked in a basement. That could be useful for the rest of us.

And the aliens. The aliens could probably help us all, but no. The Shadowy Cabal have them in a shed and occasionally poke them with sticks.

Not necessarily, no. But possibly. Maybe even probably.

Clearly, a top secret organisation would leave obvious clues to its existence lying everywhere, wouldn't it?

(Oh, you mean 'The Da Vinci Code' was fiction?)

I'd just like to say the following:


CONSPIRACY THEORISTS! FUCK OFF!


Ta.

See, this is the thing though. If they're really THAT clever and devious then to be honest I want them running the world.

But they're not running it for your benefit, see. You could be much wealthier, healthier and happy if they weren't being all devious and evil all over yo'socio-economic system.

Yeah, but being a self-interested, manipulative, backstabbing ethical chameleon is pretty much a prerequisite for gaining any sort of political power. So if we're going to be ruled by evil anyway, it might as well be evil geniuses.

I don't think you really need to invoke secret organisations to be worried. Why would big business need to corrupt democracy in secret, when they can do it right in our faces, all the time?

Some people have no sense of dramatic narrative. Cuh.

It's fun to make the world more sinister. Cos there's no bad stuff going on at the moment anywhere in the world and tinfoil-hatters need their thrills.

Yeah. It's just religion, plus Oliver Stone.

And not Lee Harvey Oswald. It never is.