Tim Berners-Lee awarded the British Order of Merit

MarsBar writes "The BBC is reporting that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded The Order of Merit, a royal award granted directly by the Queen. Previous recipients have included Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Sir Edward Elgar, Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher."

discussed it with my kids

[bcrowell]

I discussed this with my kids just now, and they agree 100% with the award. After all, this is the man who made barbie.com [barbie.com] possible, as well as trollz.com [trollz.com], clubpenguin [clubpenguin.com], and neopets [neopets.com].

Re:discussed it with my kids

[Anonymous Coward]

He also made this [goatse.ch] possible. Thanks, Tim Berners-Lee...

Re:

[GFree]

This would be the first time I've ever see an apparent goatse link rate funny on Slashdot.

Then again, it might not even be goatse, but I'm still too-damn scared to click. :)

Re:

[Faylone]

Your fear is justified. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to drive nails into my eyes.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll need to keep your eyes open in order to nail them, so follow the link to see how.

Re:

[CalSolt]

Actually, posts containing goatse seem to be getting modded +5 something a lot these days.

Re:

[ncc74656]

Actually, posts containing goatse seem to be getting modded +5 something a lot these days.

Do you suppose that a goatse.cx reference getting modded 5, Troll would qualify as a sign of the apocalypse?

Re:

[Chandon Seldon]

It's safe. It's the really cute and funny kitty cat picture that occasionally shows up on goatse-looking URLs.

Re:

[Kastar]

That may be because it's a goatse link with "Re:discussed it with my kids" as the title.

Re:

[HermMunster]

I applaud the man. He's a true contributor. He helped make a significant change to the world.

If he had patented his idea we'd be in a world of trouble or it would have been stolen and patented by Microsoft.

Re:

[rapidweather]

Although it is possible, and certainly was with the Automobile and the Airplane, someone else might have come up with the idea sooner or later. Who would have known, that no matter how lofty the original purposes and goals were, the internet would evolve into a place where we could all find spirit-uplifting images like this one? [photoamp.com]

And on those days when you just can't get some odd software you are working on to actually work as intended, you can turn to another hand-picked image like this one also [imageshack.us], to give y

Re:Margaret Thatcher!!!!!!! FFS ... :-(

[terrymr]

You forget that Thatcher invented "soft frozen ice-cream"

I kid you not.

Re:

[dbIII]

She also probably stopped WWIII by convincing Reagan to actually talk to Russians instead of threaten them from afar. Stopping the incredibly expensive British nuclear energy program without stopping nuclear research was also a good move.

Re:

[basingwerk]

You appear to have missed a Conservative PM called John Major, who governed from 1990 to 1997. Are you sure you know much about British politics?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

No he's really not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_ice_cream [wikipedia.org]

Re:Margaret Thatcher!!!!!!! FFS ... :-(

[Brickwall]

Yes, she only broke the destructive unions that were impoverishing Britain, won a war that many thought was impossible to win, and was a staunch ally of the US in the fight against communist totalitarianism, despite severe criticism of that policy from the weedy left, who were all preaching detente and co-existence. Thanks in part to her help, over 100 million Eastern Europeans are now living free and better lives. Yes, what a loathsome witch.

Twit.

Re:

[hoofie]

I think the plan [Operation Mikado] referred to landing a C130 onto an airfield [Rio Grande] in ARGENTINA and then attacking the aircraft, which were being used to lauch Exocets, and kill all the pilots. When it was presented to the SAS, it was remaned "Operation Certain Death". I remember reading one sergeant and one other point-blank refused to do it, understanding full well that such a mission would be plain old suicide. [You don't put 55 SAS troops into that kind of situation, they are too valuable. And

No, she merely had the nation pay for it in jobs.

[sethstorm]

Thanks in part to her help, over 100 million Eastern Europeans are now living free and better lives.
Well, mind that Ronald "PATCO" Reagan did some heavy lifting [wikipedia.org] to help on that one.

Yes, she only broke the destructive unions that were impoverishing Britain
No, she simply gave businesses the green light to sell out on their country, with hollow results. Same poverty, just swept under the rug, and with foreign knockoffs of tons of UK vehicles.

The only thing that she did was to make the UK serve as a reminder of

Re:No, she merely had the nation pay for it in job

[dbIII]

Hmm, the Tom Clancy dedication - Ronnie, the man who won the war has a fan it appears. In hindsight now that we have the soviet documents about how their empire was falling apart the Stategic Defense Initiative and other attempts to provoke some military action in the cold war were an expensive, dangerous and counterproductive sideshow with a variety of corrupt profiteers feeding off the edges while contibuting toys that did not work.

Re:No, she merely had the nation pay for it in job

[mike2R]

The only thing that she did was to make the UK serve as a reminder of what happens when you institute such anti-domestic policies.

Why don't you move to France? You could discuss the merits of protectionism with the locals in the dole queue.

The unions were out of control, even the last labour government had tried to reign them in - only to be humiliated. Brutal, yes it was. But it only needed to be quite so brutal because the idiots of the previous decades protected massive nationalised companies from real competition. Thats what killed British industry, decades of protectionism that left us with manufacturing industries that hadn't a hope of competing globally. Thatcher just convinced the corpse to lie down, and IMO this was her greatest acomplishment.

Re:

[phlinn]

Given the combination of France and protectionism in one post, I am compelled to link one of the great ant-protectionist [bastiat.org] essays.

Re:

[dbIII]

ally of the US in the fight against communist totalitarianism, despite severe criticism of that policy from the weedy left, who were all preaching detente and co-existence

Hang on, you have that as the complete opposite of history - Thatcher was pushing for co-existance and talking Reagan out of war. What we got was Thatcher, Reagan and Gorby sitting down at the same table on multiple occasions and a peaceful solution that looks prety good to me from here a few decades on. The hard line imagined here wou

Re:Margaret Thatcher!!!!!!! FFS ... :-(

[Brickwall]

Hang on, you have that as the complete opposite of history - Thatcher was pushing for co-existance

Well, the following is from Wikipedia, so you can take it with a grain of salt if you like:

On 19 January 1976, she made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union. The most famous part of her speech ran: "The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns."

Also from Wikipedia:

n the Cold War, Mrs. Thatcher supported United States President Ronald Reagan's policies of deterrence against the Soviets. This contrasted with the policy of détente which the West had pursued during the 1970s, and caused friction with allies who still adhered to the idea of détente. US forces were permitted by Mrs. Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

However, I will agree with you that when Gorby came to power, she famously said "He is a man we can do business with". But perhaps she sensed that Gorby was a man who could be talked into the sort of reforms that were needed to break up the Soviet bloc. I'm not on intimate speaking terms with the lady, so I'll never know for sure.

At any rate, I never suggested she wanted to go to war with the Soviets, just that she wanted to put up a strong front againt them, while practically every other country in Europre was begging to make some deal with the Soviets that would have kept the entire Warsaw pact intact.

Re:

[dbIII]

I was reading the newspapers at the time and paying attention. Reality has ended up a little different to what you have described - hence the lack of a war at the time in Eastern Europe. What she did would be seen as "appeasement" by hardliners that forget that you do not have to give away your country to talk to those you disagree with. There was no fighting, there was negotiation.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think there's debate about whether Thatcher was good for the economy.

Most debate is centred around whether this outweighs the things it took to achieve it: increased police powers, reduced personal freedoms, CCTV culture, greed culture, privatisation of swathes of industry and transport infrastructure. The iron lady certainly took her toll on cultural britain.

Re:

[gowen]

was a staunch ally of the US in the fight against communist totalitarianism

And an equally staunch ally of South Africa in the fight against racial equality.

Re:

[spectrokid]

I 'd say she cured the disease but nearly killed the patient. Of all my (Danish) companies factories, the UK one is still the one with the most problems because of the negative influence of their unions. Hard handed cleaning was necessary. But Thatcher also paved the way for disasters like the privatization of British Water and the total underfunding of British Railway system. At one time she closed coal mines which were still profitable, just to break the power of the mining unions. That, in my book,

Re:

[segedunum]

Yes, she only broke the destructive unions that were impoverishing Britain

The trade unions needed sorted out, but she did it by destroying the working class and throwing away, and literally flooding, the best natural fuel resource we had - coal. Britain's coal is pretty much the best there is, and now all the pumps in the mines have been turned off, they're flooded and we can never get them back. We are now paying for that badly in terms of where our energy is going to come from in the next few years. Tha

Re:

[0123456789]

I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but what war did Thatcher deliberately start? I'm not a particular fan of Thatcher, but there are more than enough facts out there about her that there's no need to fabricate criticisms.

Re:

[hoofie]

Well done - another muppet who's quite happy to make puerile assertions without having the bottle to put their login id against it.

Good for him...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Simply put, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Johannes Gutenberg of the Internet.

His simple invention, and his polite, modest manner should make him the IT icon of our time. I wonder, though, how many people could even tell you what he's done or recognise him by his picture?

Good for him. He deserves all the recognition that he can get.

Re:

[WIAKywbfatw]

And, yes, before someone decides to educate me about (D)ARPANET, etc, I do know that there's more to the Internet than the world wide web.

My point was that what Gutenberg did to the printed word (made it faster, easier and thus more accessible to all), Berners-Lee did to the online word (put together a system that made it simple to use and thus acheived the same feat).

Re:

[rs79]

I don't get as excited about Sir Tim as perhaps maybe I should. It was Einer Stefferud who invented MIME which is really at the heart of http, and Brian Reid whose PhD thesis, SCRIBE, begat SGML which begat HTML. Sir Tim just put the bits together which seems to be to be another one of those inevitabilities.

Stef also invented and ran the first mailing list and Brian is also responsible for the firewall, Alta Vista and the laserwriter among many others.

Re:Good for him...

[SenseiLeNoir]

Well the key is, Sir Tim did a LOT to make it accessible. Sure some of the ground work was already done, namely: TCP/IP, SGML, MIME, etc.

What Sir Tim and his team did is:
- Created HTML, which was arguably much simpler than SGML (yes it also allowed some mediocre "designers" to also design pages, but ultimately it lead to greater adoption)
- Created the HTTP protocol, which by far and large was the greatest "enabler" of the technology, ie allow anonymous access to the information held in a ordered and secure manner.
- Still actively in charge of W3C, and creating new standards, largely without breaking old ones.
- Helped begat XML.
- Did not try and patent it.

So his contributions are large, and he is still actively participating. More importantly, he didnt try to patent it, but freed it.

Agh, bollocks!

[jotaeleemeese]

Do you remember gopher, do you?

Or even ftp using a browser.

the http:/// [http] is not casual. it simply wasn't clear back then that you would not need to specify the protocol used in the future.

The idea of linking documents in a computer network was revolutionary and in spite of all the flash and youtubes and what have you, that simple idea is the core of the Internet as we use it today.

THe disparate bits and pieces to create it where all around the place but it took the ingenuity of Sir Tim to put all those bits

and expressing the links

[spage]

Continuing in the same vein, not only did HTML/HTTP/URLs link nodes across a network together, it also made the links apparent. There were all kinds of hypertext systems in the 1980s (Hypercard and Notes blew my mind, and OWL and Folio had great insights too) and there was SGML, but when Sir Tim came up with

<a href="some protocol:a host/path/to/resource?some action">the link text<a>

he changed everything. It's easy enough that several million people have Learned It In 21 Days and

Re:

[Viol8]

"Sir Tim's synthesis isn't earth-shattering, is deluded. He's by far the most significant person alive."

Oh BS. Far more significant to the internet was email. If it hadn't been for that it would have been a complete non starter outside very specialised areas. As for TBL being the most significant person alive , I think you need to re-adjust your set. The Web isn't even close to being a daily relevance for the majority of the worlds population and even in the west a large proportion of the population couldn'

Re:

[WIAKywbfatw]

As for TBL being the most significant person alive , I think you need to re-adjust your set. The Web isn't even close to being a daily relevance for the majority of the worlds population and even in the west a large proportion of the population couldn't care less about it. Most significant person alive , jeez , get a grip... Try looking up the names of some doctors who are battling diseases , or engineers who are helping design more efficient engines or 101 other things. Not some guy who made it possible to

MIME at the heart of HTTP?

[Viol8]

Excuse me? MIME might be an important part of HTTP but is its certainly not at the heart of it. You could run a complete , albeit simple webserver without ever sending any mime information in the headers simply by using plain HTML or text.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Order of Merit, Schmorder of Merit.
They oughhta make him an URL.

(Yeah, it's an old joke. But it's still funny.)

Re:Good for him...

[pipingguy]

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

Re:

[SenseiLeNoir]

Its a pity I don't have mod points, but if I did , I would definitely mod you insightful. Its very true that true success is often unnoticed, simply because it "works".

Re:

[pipingguy]

It's a quote from Futurama.

Re:

[rise.and.sinh]

That quote reminds me of W.H.Auden's poem, "The Unknown Citizen":

This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State) He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn

Re:Good for him...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I wonder, though, how many people could even tell you what he's done or recognise him by his picture?"

Being unknown to the filthy masses is the mark of the true Engineer.
Sales and Marketing types are popular, Engineers get shit done.

Re:

[Any Web Loco]

Being unknown to the filthy masses is the mark of the true Engineer.

Ah yes. Like these chaps, all unknown in their time: Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Gustave Eiffel, James Watt, George Stephenson, Thomas Telford...

Re:

[Slashamatic]

I wouldn't say that, it is just TBLs approach to the wide-adoption/reuse of his invention. In a way, the web could be said to be an outgrowth of many existing technologies (Gopher and the original hypertext), but it was so successful because all he did was not to seek patent or copyright protection, just lobbying for interoperability.

Re:

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Not to take anything away from Berners-Lee but Ted Nelson really deserves much of the credit for ideas that later became the web... for that matter so does John Brunner who was astonishingly accurate in his predictions of where computer technology was going... But I once heard Nelson use the phrase "psycho-acoustic tele-dildonics" 30 years before it became realized and for that alone he should be remembered... as well the creators of TRAC ought to be given some credit for what later became the web.

Re:

[simong]

Ted should never be forgotten, especially now when we need something like transclusion [wikipedia.org] more than ever. However, Ted seems to have wandered back into academia, and progress on Xanadu [xanadu.com] and its associated technologies seems to have ground to a halt.

Re:

[bkr1_2k]

I think receiving the Order of Merit is most likely not just because of what he did but how he did it. It's a greater measure of the man that he did this for the good of others (with some personal gain for sure but not strictly for personal gain) and that's why he received an award that only 24 living people on the planet can hold.

That puts him in very high regard and he should be. That said, I knew nothing about him until reading the article. Some people want fame and glory, others just want to do what

Re:

[Zeinfeld]

Simply put, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Johannes Gutenberg of the Internet.

As it happens the first time I met Tim in 1992 it was a couple of weeks after visiting the Gutenberg museum.

Gutenberg didn't invent movable type either, but he was the first person to put all the different pieces together to create a system.

Margaret Thatcher

[hotsauce]

And Margaret Thatcher is the Ronald Reagan of the United Kingdom.

Couldn't they just name an airport after her, instead of sullying the award?

NOT the "web-inventor"

[mi]

Simply put, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is the Johannes Gutenberg of the Internet.

Although widely believed to be such a person, Tim can only be called "the inventor of WWW", if we really need to identify a name with each concept — he didn't think of anything, not immediately obvious to anyone skilled in the art [wikipedia.org]. Even then, we should be crediting the inventors of Hypertext [wikipedia.org], which existed long before Tim's work — if we can identify them, that is. The hypertext system, which Tim built at CERN [wikipedia.org], did not ev

Ok so?

[jrwr00]

So this is the same guy that made the first website on the NeXt Cube right? if so illl give him cred for helping to start the WWW (World Wide Web) he started HTML over TCP/IP before that all you had really was BBS it was a major leap to have content with images, I forget did he help make Mosaic?

I can see him going down is history as a great role is starting the WWW

Meanwhile in other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Ballmer was awarded the Iron Cross which he immediately threw across the room when he learned that Himmler was considering migrating the Reich's infrastructure to GNU/Linux.

What no Diana?

[dwater]

I don't see Saint Diana on the list. Strange that...

Re:What no Diana?

[Don_dumb]

There probably was a nomination but Prince Philip had it killed. Or at least that is what Mohammed Al-Fayed will claim.

Re:

[maroberts]

You're thinking of Charles. (unless he inherited them from his paw)

Re:

[bishopjoey]

That might have to do with the order being limited to 24 *living* members. Keep in mind St. Diana wasn't exactly on the Queen's top 10 list at the time she died.

Re:

[dwater]

> That might have to do with the order being limited to 24 *living* members.

Aha :) That'd do it...

Of course, the other bit was the whole point in my post - if it could be said to be a point...pointless, more like.

And don't forget T S Eliot

[Flying pig]

T S Eliot also got the OM. For those who don't know (this is after all Slashdot) he was the New Englander who came to England, published some enormously influential poems (The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, Four Quartets), wrote religious plays that actually turned a profit and still get performed, but above all was a hard working director of Faber & Faber, the literary publisher, and had a lot to do with making it a very successful literary publisher. And he was no religious fundamentalist: his religious writings are a million miles from the awful stuff in "Christian" bookshops and he was as likely to be writing about Hinduism or Buddhism as the Bible.

The point being, that Berners-Lee is actually in much better company than the list given in the introduction might have suggested, and this award extends beyond the British gene pool to Americans like Eliot and Anglo-Americans like Churchill.

Re:

[GauteL]

"The point being, that Berners-Lee is actually in much better company than the list given in the introduction might have suggested, and this award extends beyond the British gene pool to Americans like Eliot and Anglo-Americans like Churchill."

I find it very amusing that you suggest that Churchill is somehow "beyond the British gene pool".

Yes, Churchill had an american mother (of english descent), but he was born and raised in England (at Blenheim Palace no less) and his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was

Re:

[notjim]

and while we are not forgetting people, what about Michael Atiyah, one of the two or three most important mathematician of the second half of the C20.

previous recipients....

[silver]

"Previous recipients have included Florence Nightingale, Sir Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Graham Greene, Sir Edward Elgar, Mother Teresa and Margaret Thatcher."

Damn, talk about the odd one out!

Re:

[tryfan]

Yeay, I was really surprised to see Thatcher among those nice people!

Re:previous recipients....

[lysse]

Yes, my immediate response was "How the hell did that bitch get one"? I didn't even realise Mother Teresa was eligible.

Such great people

[ivalladt]

I can hardly say if I'd prefer to share a merit with Bertrand Russell or with sir Edward Elgar. Such great people!

will lightning strike twice?

[peter303]

A few pioneers like Jobs, Gates, and the YouTube guys have had second and third megahits. Im stil waiting for Tim's encore.

We all should know by now

[the_kanzure]

Internet != WWW.

Re:

[SirSlud]

are you for real?

Re:

[SEMW]

okay, you just posted exactly the same thing I did and get modded up and I get modded down? I guarantee a british guy modded my post.

Hardly. To quote from your post [slashdot.org]:

"The inventor of the world wide web has been awarded the Order of Merit"
I can't believe someone would be ignorant/arrogant enough to actually name one person as the inventor of the internet

The GP was correcting your apparent ignorance on the subject. Neither Tim B-L nor the article summary ever claimed he invented the internet, only the World Wide Web.

Re:

[SirSlud]

Nice try on the troll. The inclusion of Al Gore was a little too much tho.

Re:

[SenseiLeNoir]

No, but, if Al Gore's work directly starts translating to a reduction of CO2, and in the future his efforts are seen to have really made a difference, he would indeed be eligible. His crusade against Global Climate change has been there for 30 years.

Re:Apparently even /. has shifted right.

[Brickwall]

Not that you're an ignorant fool, but from 1975-1990, when Thatcher was PM, British GDP increased from 100,000 million pounds to 557,000 million pounds. That's about 11% per year on average, and far from "destroying prosperity", I think most countries would consider that pretty good economic performance. The changes she made made it more inviting for other companies to come and invest in Britain. For example, the company I was working for in 1979 when Thatcher came to power, Mitel Corp, built two plants in Britain. Later, when Terry Mathews left Mitel and started Newbridge Networks, he built more plants in Britain, creating thousands of jobs. I remember sitting in on a management meeting a few years after Thatcher came in, and Mathews was asked if he would have invested in Britain under a Labour government. He just snorted derisively and said "No".

Re:

[HalfFlat]

Those GDP figures do not take into account inflation. In 2003 pounds, the 1975 GDP was 577,489 million pounds and the 1990 GDP was 814,956 million pounds [eh.net]. That's an annual increase of approximately 2.3%. Or 2.2% if you look at per capita GDP growth.

Re:Apparently even /. has shifted right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that you're an ignorant fool, but from 1975-1990, when Thatcher was PM

Thatcher came to power in 1979, not 1975. Bear that in mind next time you call someone an ignorant fool.

British GDP increased from 100,000 million pounds to 557,000 million pounds. That's about 11% per year on average, and far from "destroying prosperity", I think most countries would consider that pretty good economic performance.

As another poster has commented, those figures don't take into account inflation, which reached 18% at one point. Also, between 1978 and 1983, manufacturing output dropped 30%.

Later, when Terry Mathews left Mitel and started Newbridge Networks, he built more plants in Britain, creating thousands of jobs.

I'm sure that felt great for the 3.6 million who were unemployed in the early 80s (more than three times the number unemployed under the previous Labour government).

Re:

[gowen]

Labour could only get into power by espousing Conservative policies.

Have you read Labours '97 manifesto? ... a national minimum wage, improving universal free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare, windfall taxes on big business, increased European integration.

These are Conservative policies?
The major Tory policy stolen was that indirect taxes get noticed a lot less than direct taxes, so you can pretend to be tax cutting when you aren't -- which is exactly what John Major did.

Re:

[meringuoid]

Labour could only get into power by espousing Conservative policies.

Have you read Labours '97 manifesto? ... a national minimum wage, improving universal free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare, windfall taxes on big business, increased European integration.

Uhh? That's two elections ago!

Correct. Now, when did Labour get into power, allegedly by espousing Conservative policies? Was it by any chance two elections ago, in 1997?

Re:

[gowen]

Beyond a National Minimum Wage, none of their other manifesto promises have been kept

Well, NHS investment is massively higher. You can dispute the results, but not the expenditure.

Parliaments for Wales and Scotland? Not a Tory policy. Done
Reduction in child poverty? Not a Tory priority, and not a Tory manifesto promise. Done.
Reduced class sizes for KS 1 and 2? Done (see http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nscl.asp?ID=6065 [statistics.gov.uk])
Free education for all under fives? Done
Do you want me to go on ... I could list h

Re:

[gowen]

It was abandonment of collective ownership, one of Labour's core principles.
That doesn't make them Tories.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not that you're an ignorant fool, but from 1975-1990, when Thatcher was PM"

Ummm - you later say yourself that she actually came to power in 1979 however the years you note were key to building growth in the UK. Not much to do with politics as you may suggest though;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullom_Voe [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_crude [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_oilfield [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis [wikipedia.org]

you may wish to review what percentage of UK GDP North Sea Oil represented d

Re:

[smoker2]

And how did she achieve this ?
By selling off the state owned utilities, that WE had paid for through taxes for generations, with the resulting loss of public accountability.
Now our water distribution network is owned by the international conglomerates, as is our power and others. Hardly any of our engineering companies are british owned, and even then, they are usually owned by finance houses (instead of professional engineers) so they are under the threat of downsizing/asset stripping/resale at the slight

Re:

[master_p]

Thatcher and Reagan helped created the society of 2/3: 2/3 of the population living an average life, 1/3 living in poverty so as that the 2/3 are happy. But look where are we now: poverty is on the rise in UK and in USA.

People with money will only invest if they can hold on to their money and multiply it. But is that good for the common folk? in the end, all money will be in the hands of the elite (as if it wasn't, but anyway).

You can try seeing it this way: Earth is a closed system, so the value of its res

Re:

[phlinn]

1/3 in poverty? more like 1/8 [wikipedia.org]. It's a debateble [wikipedia.org] whether the official measure of poverty overstates or understates the problem. I lean towards overstatement [aei.org], due to everyone being materially better off. The official poverty rates were formed [census.gov] with an assumption [hhs.gov] about food being about 30% of expenses, which explicitly has changed. The standards are increased by the Urban consumer price index, but they have not actually gone back and recalculated things from the beginning, and the original assumptions aren

Re:

[seriesrover]

2/3 of the population living an average life, 1/3 living in poverty

First of 1/3 of the country is not in poverty. Half the world can't fill a glass with clean water - THATS poverty.

Look, the point of a capitalistic society is that predominantly you are responsible for your own well being within the laws that make society work. Part of that includes those that can't help themselves but not paying for those that wont help themselves. Socialism only works for a period of time until those creating the wealth

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Note to the Commonwealth of Nations and the United Kingdom--abolish the monarchy. No man or woman is inherently superior to another by accident of birth."

Well, we're all born in the UK, and we're all inherently superior to y'all USians.....

If nothing else, we're superior in understanding words. It's obvious that some people are superior to others by accident of birth - compare an athelete with someone who is born disabled. You probably didn't mean that. When you can tell me what you meant, I'll tell you wh

Re:

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

At least with a Constitutional Monarchy...

1. our businesses don't have to spend so much money on bribes
2 our politicians aren't owned by oil companies and
3 they are able to represent the people who elected them and aren't afraid to pass inconvenient laws.

Re:

[bkr1_2k]

ha, took me a second. I'm surprised someone has modded this up. Someone has to find this funny. Come on mods, let's give a little love here.

Re:

[Smuttley]

errr wtf?