Iceland, Give Us the Keys
One of the things that pisses me off with our nation is real ‘sit on the fence’ mentality our government seems to have painted us with. The last PM to really have any sort of strong stance was old Maggie. One minute we are dancing about with the yanks over in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting a war that is too big for us, thinking we are the big boys of the world who can dole out punches. The next we are pissing our pants over something trivial.
The sad truth is the United Kingdom is no longer the super power it once was. The days of the empire are long gone, its time for us to come to terms with that and start scaling back the amount we spunk on aid to 3rd world nations, aswell as the crazy amount we spend on defence. Start reinvesting that money back home. The Gerries are a great example of how to eat humble pie. Roasted after WWII they have re-invented themselves into quite a modest country now in less than a century, not to mention they are the biggest economy in Europe.
If we are not going to do that, we need to get back on the offensive. I sat and read this article with disgust today. Now I fully appreciate the Icelandic people here, they are looking out for themselves. What they need to understand though is their main export was financial services before the boom, so they effectively stole out of our pocket, to the tune of £3.5 billion. Yes, because the UK government bailed out these savers, it was out our pocket.
So what do our illustrious government do in a bid to get the money back……”give us back our lunch money or I’m going to tell on you”. Absolutely pathetic. I tell you what might sharpen the attention of the Icelandic’s, a couple of laser guided tomahawks right down the jacksy of their precious geysir. Let’s go to war with the thieving bastards, let’s sort the men from the boys.
Here me out here, before you think I’m daft, we fought tooth and nail for the Falkland Isles which pumps out a whopping GDP of $75 million per annum. Chump change compared to the £3.5 billion these turkeys owe us. I’m not some kind of crazed war monger, I just want to see a big of dig back in the country, it’s like watching a car crash is slow motion living here sometimes.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:22 am
Make up your mind – do you want to reduce defence budgets or increase them?
If we go to War with another nation then defence budgets would have to increase to compensate for the increased military activity.
Plus I don’t think the rest of the world will look on in good favour at us going to war with a “friendly” nation of 300,000 people for a sum of £3.5bn when the government in this country will owe about £710bn (or something near that figure) in the next year or so. Our budget deficit is still massive as well so our overall debt isn’t going to go down in the near future either.
But I’m with you on this one – send in the heavies to steal their telly’s and microwaves.
January 6th, 2010 at 9:28 am
Oh, and I don’t think the British Government should have paid back the Icelandic savers. These savers obviously knew there was risk involved in investing money in Icelandic Saving schemes, especially when some of the interest rates were as high as 12%. We should not have bailed out these savers due to their greed. If they had kept their money in British Banks then their money would have been safer (granted only the first £50K is safe in a British account) albeit at a more reasonable savings rate of about 4-5%!
January 7th, 2010 at 11:57 am
That was the whole point, we either kill the defence budget or we put it to good use by acquiring land from enemies. Build the empire again.
January 7th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Let’s build up the Empire – I feel like I could rule the world. After all, would a dictatorship in the world be any worse than the corrupt governments we have now. The expenses scandal of our own government is a perfect example.
January 13th, 2010 at 6:28 am
not everyone hates iceland, they do good frozen foods