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I'm a British Student studying history at University and am in the process of publishing my first novel.


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arron hook's Profile

Name:
arron hook
Hometown:
Wordsley
Joined:
Oct 7, 2012

Recent Comments

arron hook

concerned citizen

'Bystanders with cameras.  Nice.  I'd like to think that if this happened in the States, we'd have at least one Concealed Carry permit holder pull out his/her gun to keep him subdued until police arrive.'

I'd hope the same, but the shock witnessing attack like that does freeze people.

arron hook

BrentB67

'May the soldier victim rest in peace and any medical treatment for the attackers be suspended.'

 

Here, Here. My feelings exactly.

arron hook

Quinn the Eskimo

arron hook: 

  • Saki. Saki was a master of the short story and the finest satirist Edwardian England produced, but was sadly killed by a German sniper on the Western Front. This is sad as a Conservative, because Saki was Reactionary Tory who would have had field day at the expense of the Bolsheviks and Western Leftwingers who supported or were fellow-travellers of the Soviet Union.

I read something by Saki in school when I was very young.  I don't remember what, but I remember liking it. · 0 minutes ago

He's very darkly comic. If you want an audiobook of his short stories, you should go to librivox where they've got beasts and super-beasts and the Chronicles of Clovis. The narrators are good and have the right accents for the stories

Edited on April 3, 2013 at 11:42pm
arron hook

I support the suggestions of Misthiocracy and She, but I'd add these couple.

  • Anything written by Tom Sharpe. He is a savagely funny writer in the vein of Tory Satire of the type written by Evelyn Waugh and Thomas Carlyle. Of his numerous books, you should start with either Riotious Assembly (A Satiric attack on Aparthid South Africa), Porterhouse Blue (About Conservatives and Liberals fighting in a Cambridge College) or Blott on the Landscape (In which a group of Tory Country Squires fight the building of a motorway).
  • Wyndham Lewis. Lewis is unforgivable forgotten these days though he was writing at the same time as Waugh and is even darker than Waugh.His finest work is Revenge For Love, a satire on the British Left and their antics during the the Spanish Civil War.
  • Saki. Saki was a master of the short story and the finest satirist Edwardian England produced, but was sadly killed by a German sniper on the Western Front. This is sad as a Conservative, because Saki was Reactionary Tory who would have had field day at the expense of the Bolsheviks and Western Leftwingers who supported or were fellow-travellers of the Soviet Union.
arron hook

Foxman

arron hook: You shouldn't be worried about the the Freemasons. They are the only people on earth to have been persecuted by the Soviet, the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, the Catholic Church, Islam, New Labour and Saddam Hussein. They must be doing something right to have a coalition of enemies like that.

The Jews were persecuted by most of those.  I'm not sure about New Labour. · 3 hours ago

In concern of Jews, New Labour weren't anti-semitic, though the Labour Party is itself quite anti-semitic.  And of course the Freemasonary has always been lumped in with the idiotic Protocols of Zion conspiracies, because you did't have to define your religious beliefs, only that the person believes in a 'Supreme Being' unlike most societies or fraternaties founded in the 17th Century.  

arron hook

You shouldn't be worried about the the Freemasons. They are the only people on earth to have been persecuted by the Soviet, the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, the Catholic Church, Islam, New Labour and Saddam Hussein. They must be doing something right to have a coalition of enemies like that. Also the Freemasons are big supporters of charity (All masons have to give to charity annually to be a mason) and the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England has usually been a member of the Royal family since 1813 (The current Grand Master is the Prince Edward). 

arron hook
Scarlet Pimpernel: Do the British still use the term "King-in-Parliament"? I don't recall hearing it outside the classroom when I taught over there.  Nowadays, they just say "Parliament," even if, legally speaking, "King-in-Parliament" may still be the correct term.  But it is certainly true, legally speaking, that Parliament can pass whatever law the majority wishes to pass. They modified the Act of Union rather significantly a few years ago, and they are still dealing with the consequences. · 24 minutes ago

Not really, but sometime you hear the Term: Crown-In-Parliament. The recent vandalism done by the Labour governments of Anthony Blair and Gordon Brown has less to do with the will of the people being imposed on the constitution and more to do the rise of a political class that needs to destroy or corrupt the constitution and the Institutes of the Crown so they can gain control for their personal betterment or to enable the furtherance of the disasterious Euro Project.

arron hook

Paul A. Rahe

Paul A. Rahe

arron hook

Paul A. Rahe: They have no written Constitution. · · 1 hour ago

The British Constitution is written, but is not codified. The difference between these is simple. The US Constitution is a single document and therefore is codified. The British Constitution is un-codified, because it is made up of many Documents such as Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus Act 1679, the Bill of Rights 1689 and Act of Settlement 1701. · 1 hour ago

Not really true. In principle, the King-in-Parliament could real any of these acts. Mores and manners prevent this, but there is no legal obstacle. · 3 hours ago

Unless I am mistaken, the Act of Settlement has recently been amended -- to stipulate that the first-born heir of the ruling monarch (whether male or female) will succeed. · 2 hours ago

Your correct that the Act of Settlement is being amended, but to allow Roman Catholics to succeed to the throne. The change of succession from Agnatic primogeniture to absolute primogeniture amending the succession rule of the Elector of Hanvour, which should have ceased to apply when Queen Victoria became monarch in 1837 and detached the two thrones. 

arron hook

Paul A. Rahe

arron hook

Paul A. Rahe:

Not really true. In principle, the King-in-Parliament could real any of these acts. Mores and manners prevent this, but there is no legal obstacle. · 2 hours ago

I bow to your great knowledge Professor Rahe, but I was always told and read (Mostly from Edmund Burke, Walter Bagehot and Enoch Powell) that your comment above is true in principle, but in practice this has no been true since Charles I tried to have a five dissenting MPs on 4 January 1642. · 56 minutes ago

Edited 39 minutes ago

I note that the British are in the process of establishing a Press Board -- to oversee the press. · 1 hour ago

Yes, my country is about to end 400 odd years of press Freedom. It is being bought about by an unholy alliance of the Socialist Opposition, the Liberal traitors in the Coalition and the rich & famous led by Hugh 'I galloped Devine Brown' Grant. This is what happens when you allow a political class of what Kipling described as 'Lesser Breeds without the law' in the place of people with principles.

arron hook

Paul A. Rahe:

Not really true. In principle, the King-in-Parliament could real any of these acts. Mores and manners prevent this, but there is no legal obstacle. · 2 hours ago

I bow to your great knowledge Professor Rahe, but I was always told and read (Mostly from Edmund Burke, Walter Bagehot and Enoch Powell) that your comment above is true in principle, but in practice this has no been true since Charles I tried to have a five dissenting MPs on 4 January 1642.

Edited on March 20, 2013 at 5:48pm
arron hook
Paul A. Rahe: They have no written Constitution. · · 1 hour ago

The British Constitution is written, but is not codified. The difference between these is simple. The US Constitution is a single document and therefore is codified. The British Constitution is un-codified, because it is made up of many Documents such as Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus Act 1679, the Bill of Rights 1689 and Act of Settlement 1701.

arron hook

Joseph Eagar

Right.  The Euro should never have been created; it was basically an exercise in orthodox Keynesianism.  Traditional Keynesian policies actually work under fixed exchange rate regimes; the idea was that each eurozone state would use fiscal and regulatory policy to maintain a relatively balanced current (trade) account, at relatively full employment.

Of course, democratic political systems are incapable of delivering this result; the northern countries hold on to their trade surpluses, while the southern ones indulge in profligate debt-fueled consumption. 

(This, by the way, is why Milton Friedman advocated floating currencies.  No need for Keynesian policies at all, except for a few minor automatic stabilizers like short-term unemployment insurance.  Discretionary deficit spending, if it has any effect at all, probably makes recessions worse if you have a floating exchange rate.) · 6 hours ago

I entirely agree and things will just get worst, because the Euro-Fanatics in Brussels don't see that the Euro is a failure and think ever closer union is work, but majority of the member states (Including France) don't want ever closer Union. However, this might finally provoke the Tories to exit the EU.

arron hook

Barbara Kidder

arron hook

Joseph Eagar: The Europeans should not have created a common currency without a common deposit insurance fund. · 1 minute ago

The whole European Union idea should not have been created and my nation (The UK) should never have joined. The Euro is self-destructing and it might finally bring the United States to it's sense over the continent which the UK is geographically at part of, but fortunately only anchor off the coast. Since 1945, the State Department (particular under the Democrats) has been fully behind the whole European project despite the fact a European Federal Nation-State will be anti-american and be more prone to side with Moscow and Tehran. · 39 minutes ago

Has your PM said precisely when you will be allowed to vote on EU membership;  that is, anything more specific than, "sometime in  2017"? · 4 hours ago

No and I doubt he will, because he does not actually want the UK to leave unlike the majority of the British people. However, if he wins the next election or is in power after the next election, David Cameron will have to give a vote, because the backbenches will destroy him otherwise.

arron hook
Joseph Eagar: The Europeans should not have created a common currency without a common deposit insurance fund. · 1 minute ago

The whole European Union idea should not have been created and my nation (The UK) should never have joined. The Euro is self-destructing and it might finally bring the United States to it's sense over the continent which the UK is geographically at part of, but fortunately only anchor off the coast. Since 1945, the State Department (particular under the Democrats) has been fully behind the whole European project despite the fact a European Federal Nation-State will be anti-american and be more prone to side with Moscow and Tehran.

arron hook

Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm are given, but also Peter Hitchens' two books: The Broke Compass (2009) and the Rage Against God (2010). Although these are respectively about British Politics and the rise of Atheism in the UK, Hitchens was a foreign Correspondent in Moscow in the final years of the Soviet Union and uses the Soviet Union as an example of the way that the Left prepared to taking the West to get their way.

arron hook

 

Fabius1453: 'I don't see the communist party collapsing immediately, even if China could be in for a round of internal crises. Chinese communism has always been an odd duck, an amalgam of Marx and Mao folded into the traditional Chinese historical narrative. I have a hunch they can survive because traditional China is slowly absorbing and eroding the purely communist aspects of the party.' 

'The demographic/labor/social-mobility/banking problems are probably bigger than most Westerners think, but China also has a traditional resiliency to weather crisis that we're not used to.'

 · 1 hour ago

I don't think the Party will totally collapse, but that much of it's power throughout China will collapse leaving it isolated in Beijing and the greater part of Mnachuria. China does have a strong resiliency, but there have been decades of chaos in which the Chinese Government (Both Communist, Republican or Imperial) has no control what so ever, such as the duirng the Taiping Rebellion in the 1860s and the warlordism of the 1920s.

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