Free society

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Margaret Thatcher gave a speech in 1975 regarding a free society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK3eP9rh4So&feature=related
What a woman!
What are your thoughts on the ideals she espoused?

 

[Mr J]

I know next to nothing about her, but I like what I heard. I'm to the far liberal right myself.

 

[peterh]

"...to have the state as servant and not as master, they are the essence of a free economy. And on that freedom, all our other freedom's depend."

Wise words.

 

[Happy]

35 years gone by and ideas not implemented so far.

Too difficult, or too restrictive to masters.

 

[GumbyLearner]

I think a free society and a free press are very important to maintain democracy.

Snooze scandal stirs Slipper to demand snap judgment
March 19, 2010
THE AGE
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/po...er-to-demand-snap-judgment-20100318-qicy.html

[Age photographer Glen McCurtayne took this picture of a sleeping Peter Slipper. Photo: Glen McCurtayne]

EDITORS used to warn journalists that they could find themselves in contempt of parliament for reporting that an MP had slept through a parliamentary session.

Thus, let's just say Queensland Liberal Peter Slipper was resting his eyes during Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's speech to Federal Parliament last week.

That such a moment of glad repose could become the subject of an inquiry by no less than the privileges committee - the same body that could slap a reporter with a charge of contempt - seems a wonder to behold. But that is what the eyes-at-rest affair has come to.

[The camera-phone image of a sleeping Peter Slipper.]

Mr Slipper's period of serenity was captured on the mobile phone camera of a fellow Liberal MP, who thought it would be a lark to send it to the Sunshine Coast Daily, which circulates in Slipper's electorate of Fisher. And there ended any semblance of relaxation.

The aggrieved Mr Slipper, snapping to attention at a reporter's call, protested that he had been as conscious as a Hansard reporter during the Indonesian President's speech and recited the main points to prove it. The phone camera picture, splashed across the Daily, begged to differ.

But who could have taken the sneak snap?

By yesterday, Mr Slipper was so roused he was all but prepared to name the camera cad.

He said the picture was taken by someone on his right. And the fellow sitting adjacent to him on his right was Alex Somlyay. Mr Somlyay inhabits the electorate of Fairfax, which is right next door to Mr Slipper's electorate. A neighbourhood spat? (Of course it must be party political smearing. Even though their respective electorates are a couple of 100 kms apart )


Mr Somlyay is also the chief opposition whip, who is supposed to enforce discipline. Mr Slipper wasn't about to take this sort of dastardly discipline lying down, even if he had been lying down. In Parliament yesterday he declared straight-faced that the affair had ''seriously interfered'' with his work. Quite. Can't a chap spend an afternoon slumped on a bench without interruptions these days? It wasn't as if he was simply complaining about his own troubles. Why, he told Parliament, ''any of us could be caught in an unflattering position …''

He (Slipper) wanted a ''forensic examination of the photograph by a qualified person to ascertain formally from which seat [it] was taken and thus to confirm the identity of the culprit''. Yes, and he wanted the privileges committee to look into it.

The Speaker, Harry Jenkins, agonised before deciding it didn't quite deserve the full gaze of such an august body. (agonised...holy crap that sounds painful)

Not good enough for Labor's Anthony Albanese. Sympathising wonderfully with poor Mr Slipper, he moved that the privileges committee should study whether rules should be adopted to ensure the use of mobile devices did not interfere with Parliament ''or with the free performance by a member of his or her duties''. (Not such a party political smear after all.

Which, of course, guarantees the eyes-at-rest matter won't be put to bed for some time yet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

And people on ASF continue to argue about the merits of these clowns. And we all pay taxes for ????

 

[Fishbulb]

She and Ronald Reagan were very tight political bedfellows. Their economic policies were very closely aligned. His was called Reaganomics and hers was just Thatcherism. They believed in the free market economy, and didn't like unionism. I don't know whether to like her or loathe her.