oil

[George Waite]

So here we are 28 years after I was asked to leave a British Embassy social evening in Dubai for "making unpatriotic statements" when I had the temerity to insinuate that the Falklands conflict was about Oil and not people, (the Oilco map on the wall of my office showing six block drilling allotments around said Falklands at the time) and the Argentines are up in arms because somebody is about to start drilling!
George

[Mike]

Ha ha ha! :rofl: Serves you right, George. I mean, how dare you tell it like it really is? Especially within the hallowed halls of a British Embassy.

I think it was we Brits who invented what is loosely termed 'diplomacy'. Methinks it is a political term meaning 'I'll tell you what I think you want to hear'. Put very simply, it is the art of making lies sound truthful and utterly sincere.

Were there any such 'block drilling allotments' in evidence with respect to Afghanistan, I wonder? No need to answer with respect to Iraq, of course.

The obvious question is to enquire why it is that we haven't interfered with events in Zimbabwe - on humanitarian grounds or in seeking a 'regime change'. One could go on to discuss Sierra Leone and its diamonds or countless other places where there has been an ulterior motive behind what our government is really doing as opposed to what it would have us and others believe it is doing.

Woe betide all of us who want to discuss truth rather than fantasy and outright lies. We are branded as conspiracy theorists or as unpatriotic when we are, in fact, the opposite. :loopie:

[Clip]

The obvious question is to enquire why it is that we haven't interfered with events in Zimbabwe - on humanitarian grounds or in seeking a 'regime change'. One could go on to discuss Sierra Leone and its diamonds or countless other places where there has been an ulterior motive behind what our government is really doing as opposed to what it would have us and others believe it is doing.

Easy answer to that. It is not what is right or wrong, but what was politically correct and would read well in the papers. Rich farmers getting booted off their own oppresive farms by the poor. Had cousins there who lost everything, and when they asked for help, they got, "Africans look after African problems." as an answer.

[Mike]

Well, when I was first flying in Africa, Rhodesia, as it was then known, delivered what was held to be 'Africa's Bread Basket' and was perhaps the only place in Africa upon whose air traffic control system one could rely.

How times have changed. It never ceases to amaze me how former British colonies, when given self rule, seem to disintegrate into a morass of self destruction. Perhaps it's because when we leave, what is left behind is little more than a form of government that is fundamentally corrupt. What little infrastructure remains soon decays into telephone systems that don't work, roads and highways that become dangerous due to unrepaired disintegration, police and military forces that are little more than armed bandits, and nothing but the 'dash' system to sustain the local population.

The French seem to leave behind something just a little more humane, with roadside cafés, baguettes galore, and a form of government that seems partial to socialist domination.

I really don't know the answer to Africa's problems but African states seem at least as much in need of our interference as did Iraq or Afghanistan. The truth seems to be that nations that have no oil or diamonds are deemed unworthy of our assistance and they are left to their plight, no matter how appalling that plight may be.

Much the same might be said of the Palestinians. I simply do not understand why we respond to Israel in a positive way when it seems clear to me that their successive governments are prepared to deploy phosphorous and cluster bombs upon a civilian population, including women and children. I am no sympathizer with Hamas if it's a terrorist organization but it occurs to me that, were I Palestinian, I might be a supporter given the atrocities perpetrated by Israelis upon what would be my kith and kin.

The world seems to be in a state of madness without end - and I am most uncomfortable with that. I mean, who cares if our PM is seen by some of his staff as 'a bully'? Would we prefer to have a mild mannered, double dealing hypocrite leading us? I don't know if GB is a bully and I don't really care very much. All I know is that I'd get mighty peed off myself with some of the crap that our Civil Service dishes up for our consumption. Maybe they are in need of some bullying.

Geez, I do rant when you guys get me going. And I have this feeling that you rather enjoy having me do that. Wind-up merchants, the pair of you. :frog:

[Clip]

Mike, it just that things haven't changed at all. It was the same way 100 years ago, or even 200 years ago. I love cruising the old newspaper archives that are now being posted on the Net. Really we are not any more advanced now as we were a 100 years ago.

After reading my Grandfather's diaries (as an apprentice on a barque) from a 100 years ago, I realized he differed very little from some of the young pups I train today.

By the way I don't know if you would be interested but I can send it to you. 8mb. They include copies of the official logs, it is interesting how he grew in maturity from one voyage to the next. At one point he talks about teleporting supplies (as in "Star Trek") in the future much like the new method of communication of the time - morse code. The diary is on my mind as he had an entry much like the recent sinking of the Concordia, except they survived.

[George Waite]

Peter
Your point re lack of change is a good one the human race does seem to go on re-inventing the wheel because it does not learn from the past. It does not help that we are all led by greedy grubby politicians with 2 nano second memories. You mention training people, I am glad to hear that you still do that in Canada because I have not trained anyone in either my trade or my profession in 50 years, so now we have a complete generation who do not know enough to know how much they do not know, and I have a recently graduated son stacking shelves in order to pay off his study "loans", when he should be here learning something at least from me, as I did from my father.
George

[Mike]

Mike, it just that things haven't changed at all. It was the same way 100 years ago, or even 200 years ago. I love cruising the old newspaper archives that are now being posted on the Net. Really we are not any more advanced now as we were a 100 years ago.Yes, I think that is probably right. We place so much importance upon things that really haven't made much difference at all. We can do without most things we think are whiz today. Okay, it is perhaps in the field of medicine that we have advanced farthest. However, even that 'success' has presented us with a seemingly insoluble problem - longevity, an aging (and largely ignored) population that becomes a huge financial burden upon the young.

After reading my Grandfather's diaries (as an apprentice on a barque) from a 100 years ago, I realized he differed very little from some of the young pups I train today.

By the way I don't know if you would be interested but I can send it to you. 8mb. They include copies of the official logs, it is interesting how he grew in maturity from one voyage to the next. At one point he talks about teleporting supplies (as in "Star Trek") in the future much like the new method of communication of the time - morse code. The diary is on my mind as he had an entry much like the recent sinking of the Concordia, except they survived.Yes please, Peter. I would certainly like to read that diary.


... I have a recently graduated son stacking shelves in order to pay off his study "loans", when he should be here learning something at least from me, as I did from my father.Oh dear. Yet another graduate who has found his piece of paper valueless but is up to the ears in debt having bought it through government loans. Tony Blair and his 'Education, education, education'! I wonder how Blair manages to get any sleep at night, having promised so much and achieved so little.

The education system in this country is a complete let down to our youngsters. Despite millions poured into it, we are churning out young men and women who struggle to add up a column of figures or to put pen to paper. Very sad - and a disgrace of the highest proportion. The reason nothing really gets done about it lies in the fact that mums and dads do not want to accept that little Johnny is not really getting any value for money in his education but is simply being charged for staying off the dole queues and thus omitted from the reality of the true unemployed statistics.

[George Waite]

Mike
His degree is not valueless its just that we do not do Engineering anymore in this country, and what little we do is controlled by morons that want a job applicant who is between 30-35 with a masters degree and 30 years experience. There are no places left here to learn because training someone does not make a profit. I have advised him to do what previous generations of his forbears have done and thats ****** off somewhere else. The problem is that the (deliberate) debt trap he is in keeps him running to stay still, as he has very little "disposable income" to save for possible immigration. We are working on ways around this situation. I have myself just applied for a job with railtrack who were asking for someone with virtually a professorship in Structures to look after the repair/refirbishment of all their old metal bridges (one collapsed last year) I wrote a very simple letter to the "human resources" idiot explaining that they would be very lucky to find anyone with the experience to carry out the works let alone a vastly over qualified one, and volunteered my services but told them to hurry with an answer as I was up for retirement soon along with anyone else who actually knows something in this country.

[Mike]

George

With all due respect for the lad and the effort he must have put in to earn that degree, in my book a degree that does not guarantee employment in the relevant field of endeavour is, to all intents and purposes, valueless.

I suppose some employers may feel a degree shows commitment and take a punt but the difficulties of which you speak seem to apply across all fields of endeavour.

What is the point of committing to three or four years and accumulation of a considerable debt when what awaits you once the piece of paper is in your hand is a job stacking shelves or a place in a dole queue?

I know of many law graduates who are in precisely that boat. Many are stacking shelves but many more are looking at years of menial, low paid, work or unemployment.

[Mike]

... I have myself just applied for a job with railtrack who were asking for someone with virtually a professorship in Structures to look after the repair/refirbishment of all their old metal bridges (one collapsed last year) I wrote a very simple letter to the "human resources" idiot explaining that they would be very lucky to find anyone with the experience to carry out the works let alone a vastly over qualified one, and volunteered my services but told them to hurry with an answer as I was up for retirement soon along with anyone else who actually knows something in this country.My father-in-law was one of the engineers who designed and built the motorways, in particular those around Birmingham, including Spaghetti Junction.

He was pulled out of retirement to help the 'new engineers' work out how to repair and maintain them. He, like you, complained that the so-called 'new engineers' simply did not have a clue how to do the job. Some of them apparently could not even read from the original drawings.

My own experience at one so-called university was that they were churning out people with 'law degrees' who, on the whole, had no chance of ever being employed in the legal profession.

My experience at another university was rather different but then it was 'red brick' and had most of its better students placed in legal employment even before they held their degrees in their hands. There are universities and universities, just as there are degrees and degrees. The thing is that industry is well aware of these things and simply will not even consider those holding bits of paper from 'new universities'. And who can blame them.

The old adage about 'Cornflakes packets' springs to mind as entirely appropriate. What really gets up my nostrils is that the poor saps who are conned into believing a degree from a new university is kosher have to pay precisely the same debt off as those who attend, for example, Oxbridge universities and the best of the old 'red brick' unis. If education is to be treated as a commodity, it ought to be sold at prices related to the value of the relevant degree. In my view, a red brick degree ought to cost at least ten times that of one granted by a 'new' uni. At least those who pay more for the best will actually have a real opportunity to repay the debt and go on to accumulate some financial rewards from it. The others may never see the slightest benefit for their commitment.

I suppose it will all come out in the wash one day but in my view this situation is one of the greatest scandals of our time. We are selling our youngsters a pup in leading them into wrongly believing that a university education is still what it once used to be - and that was when it was free.