Julian

From : papa smurf

Q: julian i just wanted to say again what a pleasure it has been conversing with you these last couple of days. now though it is time buckle down once again and refocus my energies on the companies but hopefully i will have time to pick your brain again one day soon. it has been a very nice diversion. garth .

Replies:

From : exit

papa smurf wrote papa smurf wrote papa smurf wrote papa smurf wrote papa smurf wrote papa smurf wrote scrape at mindspring dot com wrote on sun 06 jul 2003 222342 gmt exit exit@nomore.com wrote scrape at mindspring dot com wrote on sun 06 jul 2003 204007 gmt exit exit@nomore.com wrote forgive my lack of knowledge of us political parties as i am an englishman - i take it the democrats are the very right wing party and the republicans are the even more right wing party nope. youve got it wrong. the democrats are the socialists and the republicans are the liberals. democrats are socialists to be a socialist like tony blair or karl marx you need to believe in state ownership of big business. a command economy. redistribution of wealth. that the struggle between the proletariat and bourgeois is a politcal struggle. state provision of services. it still looks to me as though you have two right wing parties neither of whom would know socialism if it hit them in the face! ;- perhaps you need to look a bit closer. im not familiar with the phrase command economy but everything else you mentioned is dead on what the democrats want. really which industries have the democrats nationalised recently if they were socialists a national health service would be top of their list but they dont ssem to have provided one yet. we run into a little trouble with that one. since largely it is us companies fronting the bill for the r&d that provides cheapers better drugs and procedures for the rest of the world it becomes difficult for us to achieve a leechbased healthcare system without putting at least some of the cost on the non-producers. im afraid thats not true. global trade information services show that the us exported 8695 and imported 14309 gbp millions pharamceuticals in 2002. the uk by comparison exported 10031 and imported 7446. we dont put the costs on the non-producers so why would you need to id be very curious to see how pharameceuticals is defined to make that statistic true. same way the us govt defines it. id also be curious to know how many of said drugs are we originally developed or knockoffs thereof. none are knockoffs the uk is one of the worlds leading pharmaceutical developers not some 3rd world sweat shop copying us drugs. us giant pfizer is the worlds biggest pharmaceutical co. with 7.5% of the world market share. glaxosmithkline in the uk have 7.0% of the world market and none of the other us companies comes close. bear in mind that 53% of the worlds patents are registered to uk individuals or companies and a significant part of that is pharmaceutical. i was completely unaware of this. btw i am very much enjoying our conversation. do you have any links that i could look into this with always like to upgrade the worldview where it is flawed. it is rather enlightening isnt it always. it is nearly impossible to have a nice reasoned political arguement any more. both sides are so charged so pissed so wary of being lead it a trap and neither side really listening that mostly it rapidly breakdowns into ridiculous statements and personal attacks. and im just as guilty as this coming in with as much baggage as i have. its been very pleasent to have a discussion that hasnt hasnt imediately been reduced to the im a dickhead no youre a dickhead. level. agreed - i think party politics is treated a little less seriously here and is all the better for it part of why it is taken seriously here is that it is serious. the differences argued might seem little from your vantage point but for me it means how deeply others are allowed to rip into my pocket and for others its how deeply into the trouth they can dig. since i dislike being robbed it upsets me. since others have been taught not to handle things themselves they live in fear of this support being taken away and are angry at the reality of the situation. so angers and fears run high and cloud judegments on all sides. and then the politicians stir up and exaggerate those fears to get votes.... you should remember its only money - nothing worth getting stressed over. there are more important things in life. i personally put a lot of this stress down to inadequate holidays/vacations in the us - you chaps work hard and take no time off to appreciate the finer things in life. most people get around 25 days holiday per year here which is very civilised. before my wife i had a girlfriend from ireland. i always envied the holiday system over there. however while i do work hard i work for myself and i tend to hire competant self reliant people so i delegate a lot. while i tend to not take off too much time in a block of days i dont work all that hard. money for monies sake has never been a goal of mine. smelling the roses is very important especially as i get older. i could have been much richer than i am but the sa