Is Humanity Dooomed?

STN

sou'wester
In that case can I register myself as an enemy of the people now? I'd like my last meal before I'm dragged through the streets from the back of John Eden's car to consist of Buckfast and Foxes Party Rings.
 

martin

----
Yeah, the very same. Best bit's when he stands up on a box to 'reach the mic', then remembers he's a midget anyway.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
if only after 1 week anyone who watches it turns into a die-hard anarcho syndicalist.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
but Mathew Herbert will be DJing, after Diamonda Galas sings.

pimples or not, the party will be more like this:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value=""></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
 
Last edited:

vimothy

yurp
At the risk of straying from the truly important subjects (girls; in-jokes; booze; why students are knobs), Martin Wolf's recent column in the FT seems closer to the mark, re where we are headed:

Another ideological god has failed. The assumptions that ruled policy and politics over three decades suddenly look as outdated as revolutionary socialism.

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Thus quipped Ronald Reagan, hero of US conservatism. The remark seems ancient history now that governments are pouring trillions of dollars, euros and pounds into financial systems.

“Governments bad; deregulated markets good”: how can this faith escape unscathed after Alan Greenspan, pupil of Ayn Rand and predominant central banker of the era, described himself, in congressional testimony last October, as being “in a state of shocked disbelief” over the failure of the “self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity”?

In the west, the pro-market ideology of the past three decades was a reaction to the perceived failure of the mixed-economy, Keynesian model of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The move to the market was associated with the election of Reagan as US president in 1980 and the ascent to the British prime ministership of Margaret Thatcher the year before. Little less important was the role of Paul Volcker, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, in crushing inflation.

Yet bigger events shaped this epoch: the shift of China from the plan to the market under Deng Xiaoping, the collapse of Soviet communism between 1989 and 1991 and the end of India’s inward-looking economic policies after 1991. The death of central planning, the end of the cold war and, above all, the entry of billions of new participants into the rapidly globalising world economy were the high points of this era.

Today, with a huge global financial crisis and a synchronised slump in economic activity, the world is changing again. The financial system is the brain of the market economy. If it needs so expensive a rescue, what is left of Reagan’s dismissal of governments? If the financial system has failed, what remains of confidence in markets?...
 
Top