Quote: playfull @ 3rd September 2015, 3:37 PM BSTWe (the EU) buy Detroit and settle them there. There are certainly enough empty houses. With the entrepreneurial energy many immigrants display I would bet that in 10 years the City would be an economic powerhouse again.
Have you been to Detroit? There aren't many empty houses left. It's mostly empty lots, occupied homes and burned shells of former houses.
Quote: DaButt @ 3rd September 2015, 3:53 PM BSTHave you been to Detroit? There aren't many empty houses left. It's mostly empty lots, occupied homes and burned shells of former houses.
Was there three years ago. Loved the Motown museum, loved the Ford Museum, loved Slows - could not believe what had happened to large swathes of the City. Fantastic houses and really impressive buildings that people had just walked away from. I don't know how many people have left the city but it was just full of the kind of heart achingly sad imagery that just stays with you.
This was not a real suggestion BTW.
Sounds kind of good though!
Quote: playfull @ 3rd September 2015, 4:15 PM BSTWas there three years ago. Loved the Motown museum, loved the Ford Museum, loved Slows - could not believe what had happened to large swathes of the City. Fantastic houses and really impressive buildings that people had just walked away from. I don't know how many people have left the city but it was just full of the kind of heart achingly sad imagery that just stays with you.
This was not a real suggestion BTW.
It's almost unbelievable that Detroit went from being the wealthiest city per capita to bankrupt and nearly abandoned in the space of 50 years. A remarkable success story for capitalism and industrialization was destroyed in the space of two or three generations.
The American auto industry sustained the city for 3/4 of a century, but it got greedy and complacent. By the late 1970s they were churning out gas guzzlers that began to fall apart after 4 or 5 years because they assumed that Americans would just buy new ones to replace them. When the oil crisis hit, the market was opened to cheap, fuel-efficient vehicles from Japan that actually ran for 10 years without falling apart. People started buying Toyotas and Datsuns and never looked back.
The unions in Detroit also brought about its downfall. Quality suffered and there were endless strikes. Automobile prices continued to climb in order to pay inflated salaries. In swooped Japan.
The NAFTA agreement also wounded the city. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs headed south to Mexico. Adios, Detroit.
Race riots and the government's forced busing of suburban students to inner city schools caused "white flight" that saw middle class workers fleeing further and further from the city, so Detroit decayed from the inside out.
My parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents were all born and raised in the Detroit area. It's painful to see what's become of the city. When I visited the Ford factory in the mid-seventies it was a remarkable place. Iron ore from northern Michigan was converted to steel in a huge blast furnace on site. Window glass was created from raw materials -- they were actually creating vehicles in front of our eyes. About 5 or 6 years ago I took my son on a tour of the plant and was disappointed to see that nothing was actually being made on site, rather a bunch of bored-looking workers were lazily assembling vehicles from parts that originated overseas. It was heartbreaking.
I've read reports that suggested that the city be flattened and turned into a forested state park. Maybe it would be better than watching the city rot.
People can make a difference.
Quote: playfull @ 3rd September 2015, 6:39 PM BSTPeople can make a difference.
Making a couple of thousand coats isn't going to fix Detroit. First of all, they need to figure out how to reduce the city's 50% adult illiteracy rate.
What was Australia set up for in the first place?
Looks like my pension pot took a hit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-33389577
Small invester? I never wanted to be an invester. Just have a pension to live off.
I can think of two lawyers who should be made to sleep together in the same bed on a remote island until the age of 103.
Surrounded by a selection of books by Enid Blyton, an inflatable Naomi Campbell and a coyope that is trained to munch their money so slowly in front of their eyes that they have to watch it doing so for all the years that they are there.
Oh well
That's another ten years of Tory tyranny at least then...!
Quote: lofthouse @ 12th September 2015, 11:45 AM BSTOh well
That's another ten years of Tory tyranny at least then...!
Absolutely hilarious.
Tony Benn must be observing it all saying "I told you it would happen".
Everything's gone mental.
Place your money on a Lib Dem-UKIP Coalition Government in 2020.
Actually, no, it's the end of UKIP and SNP - Labour will take us out of the EU.
And tbh that's the first time I've had an excited shiver up my spine all year. 
Now I have come back down to earth I hate the right wing of Labour as much as I hate the Tories. I'm a left wing Lib Dem/Green but have gone anti-EU so I look forward to a grand coalition of Labour, Lib Dem, reduced SNP/PC and a reduced UKIP. The LDs and Nats will have to accept leaving EU. Labour and UKIP will have to be drawn to the centre left economically. There you have it. All the nasty Tories/Blair/Clegg weirdos smashed.
(Centre left LDs are way to the left of Blair's Labour of course or at least we always have been in my head - UKIP score very big plus points on social liberalism against the oppressive nannying miserly-liberal state)
Quote: lofthouse @ 12th September 2015, 11:45 AM BSTOh well
That's another ten years of Tory tyranny at least then...!
As opposed to the massive swing that to Labour that would have occurred if one of the others had been elected?
It is dubious whether Jeremy will succeed in bringing in more supporters than he alienates, but at least it should be more edifying than watching a re-run of the Milliband fiasco.
Changed my mind again.
Nothing works.
It's all a waste of time now. 
I have been delighted to see how many young people are taking an interest in politics due to the Jeremy Corbyn effect.
I would like to give him a chance but feel the Tory press won't. They will be up to their old tricks shortly, just wait for the 'Jeremy Commie Bin' tag.
Then we will just have to wait as usual to see who Murdoch chooses to win the next election.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
Quote: playfull @ 12th September 2015, 6:12 PM BSTI have been delighted to see how many young people are taking an interest in politics due to the Jeremy Corbyn effect.
I would like to give him a chance but feel the Tory press won't. They will be up to their old tricks shortly, just wait for the 'Jeremy Commie Bin' tag.
Then we will just have to wait as usual to see who Murdoch chooses to win the next election.
The more things change the more they stay the same...
It turns out he was raised in a million pound mansion:
But BBC comedy would be safer in his hands than if it the corporation was bought by Noel Ernest Edmonds who is five months older than him: