HERE HERE! Ludicrous and totally disconnected from the original thread in the extreme. Fair enough if the title of the thread was - self important comments on issues unrelated to e bikes - moderation?Valiant try Lynda, but the odds are overwhelming.
Does anyone else find this thread ludicrous and totally disconnected from electric bikes or am I missing something here
The great british e-bike scam
- Thread starter hech
- Start date
My immediate reaction to this was disbelief tinged with very mild outrage. It just seems so wrong to turn away, stay silent and not interfere when people need help when they are facing persecution, bullying or mass murder.
Having given this some thought, when (we say) / (I say), "we should not tolerate, we should get involved or we should speak out and stop it." What (we are) / (I am) actually saying is that someone else should stick their neck out and risk their life. This is usually our armed forces who we send off to dangerous parts of the world to do our bravery for us and who all to often, end up dead.
If we hear of atrocities taking place in a part of Africa that we have never heard of, a country which is poor or has no important natural resources, are we more or are we less outraged when we hear of the same thing happening closer to home? Are we selective in the fights that we pick and do we pick our fights for the wrong reasons?
I think if we are to argue against turning a blind eye and saying that we should get involved in other countries conflicts, we really need to ask ourselves if we feel sufficiently motivated to fight. Would we be prepared to walk away from our families and everyone we care about and face the very real risk of never seeing any of them again. Does a conflict in another country with a different culture really mean that much to us personally? Or, would it be easier and more sensible to not get involved?
I think this is a fair question to ask ourselves, because by saying that we should stand up to our perception of wrong doing by other countries, we are actually saying, send someone else to risk their neck.
Interestingly I heard just this sort of debate on daytime TV (long story, but I was asked to appear - I don't actually watch it......). The debate was over whether people should be "have-a-go-heroes", or if they should just turn a blind eye to any criminal act, assault etc. As someone who didn't turn a blind eye (and got a bloody medal and Chief Constables commendation for my troubles) I was shocked at how many people in the audience felt that the right thing to do was just ignore anything they saw.
This seems to be the same argument on a global scale - is it right and proper to ignore torture, assassination, starvation, the use of chemical and biological weapons etc, etc, in other parts of the world?
It certainly does seem wrong if viewed isolation, but we have to accept that we do not have jurisdiction in other countries, only the UN has a degree of that. The matter of differing value judgements must be considered, societies have differing opinions on right and wrong and the issues are not always clear cut. And consistency matters, there were no WMDs in Iraq where we did interfere, but we ignore the atrocities currently happening in Syria.
You had jurisdiction in this country to act as you did against law breaking, indeed, as a citizen you had a civil duty to do something. We have no jurisdiction to act in other countries and such actions are usually intrinsically illegal.
But is the debating point really about jurisdiction? Surely the key issue is our view as to whether something is morally acceptable or not. Leaving aside religion, politics etc just for a moment, if significant numbers of people are being subjected to torture, genocide, assassination, etc, is it morally acceptable to just stand by and do nothing?
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, it's certainly not morally acceptable, but realistically we have to if the world is not to ultimately descend into anarchy. Counties have to either remain detached or interact with legal authority, a violent free-for-all is just as morally wrong.
I think that some neutral countries can do this (Switzerland, for example) because they aren't carrying around a great deal of moral baggage.
In the case of Britain, though, things are different. We created the background and environment for much of the strife around the globe, be it by disrupting China through the Opium Wars, through exploiting India, Africa and much of the Arabian Gulf for financial gain, to sending out missionaries who were every bit as zealous as today's religious fanatics to force people to adopt certain beliefs. As such, we have a moral obligation to at least try and put right some of the consequences of our actions during the time of the British Empire. We don't have the luxury of a clean slate, and cannot morally just walk away from the World's troubles just because we decide we've had enough.
I agree with what we've caused, but I reach the different conclusion that we should back away from our past and clean up our act becoming truly neutral. Our political and diplomatic energies can still be used to achieve desirable ends in respect of both disputes and the building of better international methods of making the world a better place.
I cannot accept that we unilaterally go in guns blazing, if we do that then every country can do the same and we can end up chaos and anarchy. That just breeds further atrocities as current events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya so clearly show. Far from solving a problem, matters are made even worse in many cases. Of course there were no active atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan when the west intervened under the dubious guise of NATO, illustrating clearly that we do not have the ability to make fair judgements on when to intervene. Put bluntly, countries including ours cannot be trusted to act correctly.
I cannot accept that we unilaterally go in guns blazing, if we do that then every country can do the same and we can end up chaos and anarchy. That just breeds further atrocities as current events in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya so clearly show. Far from solving a problem, matters are made even worse in many cases. Of course there were no active atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan when the west intervened under the dubious guise of NATO, illustrating clearly that we do not have the ability to make fair judgements on when to intervene. Put bluntly, countries including ours cannot be trusted to act correctly.
Nations dont usually go in unless they have something to gain. while wandering around india looking at the brass domes on temples etc... which where formally gold until the British arrived a reasonable example.
I learnt a hard lesson on this tour, when being constantly approached for money, early on a guide advised us to totally ignore them, as NO means MAYBE and by saying "no" you have opened the door to being constantly pestered and hounded. stay stum and dont look and they are not so persitant and fade away as they realise you are wise to it.... Its a real horrible feeling ignoring another human beings existance and you do feel guilty, but if you want to stay sane you have to. I think overseas policy should be similar unless genocide the issue.
I learnt a hard lesson on this tour, when being constantly approached for money, early on a guide advised us to totally ignore them, as NO means MAYBE and by saying "no" you have opened the door to being constantly pestered and hounded. stay stum and dont look and they are not so persitant and fade away as they realise you are wise to it.... Its a real horrible feeling ignoring another human beings existance and you do feel guilty, but if you want to stay sane you have to. I think overseas policy should be similar unless genocide the issue.
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err....no it isn't Eddie. I do it all the time with a bunch of members here and I chose that description carefully!
Indalo
... and the reason for that is that for every one like you who gets thanked for your efforts there are a bunch of others (myself included) who have come in for a great deal of flack from the authorities for stepping in when they were nowhere to be found. After a couple of bouts of that it's easy to simply conclude that you're better off minding your own business. The grief from the fuzz is simply not worth it.
Regrettable conclusion but a sad reflection on attitudes in British society and some Police forces today.
Peelian Principles
...and such police forces need reminding.
7.Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
...and such police forces need reminding.
7.Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent upon every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.
Fact is in the heat of the moment you never know what you'll do. And yes fear paralyses a lot of people - but you? Who knows. Commeth the day......
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