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It does feel like the short term keeps over-riding the long term and in many ways it is understandable when Governments are only in place for a few years and need quick wins to keep them there. Taking tax payers money to invest in long term infrastructure that doesn't give anything back to taxpayers now, doesn't make for popularity. How can we encourage the public to accept a necessary increase in tax to pay for long term security (ie infrastructure, safety from flooding etc)for the country? How can we trust the Government to invest that money effectively?
The Dutch water board (Hoogheemraadschap) is a diary worthy subject and quintessentially Dutch.
Of course not, The market will provide. Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Housing isn't being connected to the communities that live in them. We often talk about social issues that we've arrived at because the individual is sovereign these days and 'community' and the collective go out of the window. More effective town planning could play a role in regenerating and strengthening communities. Instead any spare bit of land gets another block dumped on it, without any connection being made to amenities, schools, shops, leisure, transport.
we can't...
the public is asleep at the switch, encouraged to be that way by corrupt leadership.
short term is right...
nothing less than a breakdown will convince enough people to seriously question the status quo, the orwellian brainwashing is complete....
a war criminal is invited to bring peace to the middle east.
most of the ads on mainstream italian radio exhort us to buy new cars and change to new brands of petrol.
one of the recent ones invited us to 'cuddle' (coccolare) our internal combustion engines, (by switching brands of petrol).
every day is a strange miracle of survival, as the coming tsunami is receding before rolling in...
there's no way to be really ready for this...
a whole bunch of letting go...a time of consequences...
it is some (small) comfort that we have been given the time to try and mentally prepare ourselves...it's the ones who will wake up too sharply that worry me. 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
In other news:
He was due later to attend a state banquet at Buckingham Palace, where senior members of the Saudi royal family are staying as the Queen's guests.
Abdullah is scheduled to hold talks with prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday.
The Queen's meeting with the Saudi monarch came after a day of controversy in which the King said Britain had failed to act on information passed to it by Saudi Arabia which might have helped prevent the 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people. Advertisement Click here to find out more!
In an interview with the BBC, he accused London of failing to do enough to combat international terrorism and said al Qaeda remained a major threat.
The government quickly issued a statement that information received from the Saudis at the time was not specific.
Officials were then forced to deny that Foreign Secretary David Miliband's cancellation of an appearance at a conference on Monday -- where he had been scheduled to speak alongside Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal -- was not a snub.
Officials said he cancelled because he was taking leave after adopting a second child.
Rights demonstrators and protesters against the lucrative arms trade between Britain and Saudi Arabia have planned to stage meetings outside the Saudi embassy in London later this week.
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