Man in a Shed: North West Frontier (film)

Monday, August 10, 2009

When was the last time you saw ....

This is my contribution to Culture Wars day ( I migth be a week late here ).

North West Frontier used to be on almost every few months on the BBC, or so it seemed. But that was before we had the disruption of 9/11 and everything that came with it.

This film addresses the issue of underlying loyalties ( but is of course mostly and adventure ). Its a colonial era film, which we've all been programmed to blush at the idea of. But the point that I suspect will make it unshowable in our "diversity supporting" community cohesion challenged society is what it says about peoples deeper loyalties.

I'm not going to spell it out here - but you may have to buy the film to understand, as I'm guessing you won't see it on the BBC again. ( But I could of course be wrong here - feel free to set me right ).

Wikipedia has a film description with a plot spoiler here.

The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

Inflation is taxation without legislation .. Milton Friedman