Oh, so you judge the success of the demonstration by the
disruption (disruption = attention) it causes?

No, I judge the success of something like this by the effect it has,
and by the attention (disruption may bring attention, but so do other
things) it attracts.

In other words, to Hell with the flotsam and jetsum (i.e. those trying to
travel about London) that may unwittingly get caught up in those seeking
"attention".

I thought it was
done for the pleasure of those who attended communing with
like-minded souls and feeling good in themselves for doing
something that they thought was right.

Don't be so stupid. It's done to attempt to change things, to attempt
to get a message across. Not to feel good. People demonstrated against
war in Iraq because they didn't want it to happen, not because they
wanted to 'ave a larf.


Now who's having a humour deficit, and missing my carefully-worded sarcasm!

Let's take the example of a socialist. Who can they vote for? They can
vote for Labour (not socialist), the Conservatives (not socialist) or
the Lib Dems (not socialist). Or some party who won't get in because of
the way the electoral system is set up.

Sadly, for the individual concerned, that's simply because hardly anyone else
is a socialist.

We all have our crosses to bear: I desperately want us to leave the E.U., but
who should I vote for?

And by the way, you said you don't have any control over the EU. You
can vote for a member of the European parliament, so surely by your
standards you do have control over the EU.

You will no doubt read my lengthy reply to another of your posts as to why my
view is that we have little or no control over the E.U. I won't bore you by
repeating it.



So? What do those visits have to do with the current subject? Obviously
there wasn't such a mass of public opinion against those people. End of
story.

I have already stated that I do not regard a million or so people a "mass of
public opinion".

If I invite Pinochet round to my house
does that mean that people who so desire should protest to me
about him getting away with murder? Or should they do the sensible
thing and protest about him?

If you invited Pinochet to your house presumably as a guest, you
would protect him from such protestors

Yes, I'd use my personal army of riot police. This is getting
ridiculous.

No, I was simply making the point that it is not unreasonable for there to be
security around Bush for his visit.

- or are you the sort of
person that would invite someone just so that their enemies can
have ago at them?

Well to be honest, you seem to have gone a bit mad here. I was talking
about a hypothetical situation to illustrate a point, and you've taken
it a little bit too far. I'm not really mates with Pinochet you know.
I'm not really in a position to ring him up and say "oi, Pinochet me
old mucker, feel like coming round for a visit?"

No, but you seemed to be suggesting that if Bush was in the U.K., he should be
left to the wolves, so to speak.

Doesn't the Government want free trade with the world? Isn't that what
globalisation and all those summits are about? Because if the
Government does want free trade, that involves free movement of labour
(ie economic migration).

Nonsense.

If what you mean by "free movement of labour" that everyone who doesn't have a
health or education service in their country should be able freely to travel to
those countries that do, whilst those same countries lose most of their jobs to
those that pay wages a fraction of those paid there, this is clear economic
suicide.

And anyway, what's so bad about economic migration in your opinion? We
get a load of cheap labour to clean toilets and do the other jobs that
British citizens don't want to lower themselves to - sounds right up
your street.

Because those in the black economy pay no tax, and those of us who do will, as
a proportion of the population, decrease and have to pay more and more as the
resident population needing those taxes (pensioners, benefit claimants etc.)
increases in number.

This is something I've never understood about the whole asylum seeker
thing. Asylum seekers come here and are allowed to stay while their
case is being dealt with, and the government is blamed for this? They
came here themselves, the government didn't cause them to come here.

The Government allowed them to stay. Nobody forced this on the Government. The
Government CHOOSES to adhere to its treaty commitments, it CHOOSES not to vary
its treaty obligations, it CHOOSES not plug the illegal entry methods by
adequate entry checks, it CHOOSES to allow in vast numbers with no visa
requirements whatsoever and, last of all, it TOLERATES whatever regimes they
have allegedly fled from (often subsidising with aid): to allow asylum seekers
free entry is the surest way to guarantee whatever regimes they have fled will
continue.

If you think asylum entry, and other immigration is a good thing in principle,
please let me know what your cut-off point (numerically) would be, or, in
principle, do you believe that the entire World's population should be allowed
to migrate here should it so choose.

Marc.

Marc.