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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Bookending the 20th Century: South Africa’s gifts to Humanity
In ancient Rome, the passing of great leaders would be marked by their elevation to the status of gods. While religion has moved on, the death of Nelson Mandela will no doubt see an equivalent secular process – and rightly so. In captivity, his name motivated a movement; in office, it symbolised unity; in retirement, it became iconic; in death, the transformation to legendary status will become com…
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http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/12/nelson-mandela-the-man-and-the-mask/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAIFZedFQ2w
As usual, the reality is much more complex than your one line posts make out.
This is a dark and depressing morning.
I had £50 with my brother on Prince Philip dying first and I've had Morrissey for ages in the office Dead Pool.
The big four (in no particular order):
Mandela: for his reconciliation and forgiveness, and for starting the process of unifying the nation.
Reagan: for winning the cold war and forging increased security to the world, and bringing democracy to eastern Europe.
Thatcher: for providing a united front with Reagan, for reforming Britain, and for starting a political philosophy that is named after her and which has continued for 35 years through governments of all stripes.
Zhao Ziyang: people mentioned Deng Xiaoping last night. IMHO the true honours belongs to Zhao Ziyang. He was instrumental in setting China onto the economic road that has taken it back to greatness. Like all greats, he suffered: his sympathy for the Tiananmen Square protesters led to his being placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. An ex-colleague had his last speech displayed on the wall of his cubicle.
I bet some people disagree with at least one of these ...
His record in reconciliation after the Boer War, however, and his efforts for peace in the conferences that created both the League of Nations and the UN (flawed though both might be, they can only be tools in the hands of politicians), combined with his service in both world wars - his opinion was thought so highly of that he was a member of the British cabinet in WWI, and he was a genuine option to replace Churchill as PM should the latter die during the conflict - mean that to my mind, he can legitimately sit with the very greatest that the 20th century produced.
I agree with DH that Smuts was the only South African political figure who could be considered a world figure, though clearly a distant second to Mandela.
If you had any intellectual rigour you would admit that Smuts - like any major figure who is around for decades - is a much deeper and complex figure than the one you represent. You have to look at the totality.
Do I find some of what he said and did reprehensible? Yes. But the same can be said for every major world leader. Look at Gandhi's comments and attitudes I linked to below.
Mandela's passiing is sadi, but it hasn't made me cry like that of Thatcher's.
RIP MHT
RIP NRM
You must be hung over.
In the early 1900s Fabian Society members advocated the ideal of a scientifically planned society and supported eugenics by way of sterilization. This is said to have influenced the passage of the Half-Caste Act, and its subsequent implementation in Australia, where children were systematically and forcibly removed from their parents, so that the British colonial regime could "protect" the Aborigine children from their parents
Her presence at Nelson's funeral would have been the final act of reconciliation.
I am sure Dave will do a good job, but it won't be quite the same.
Sad to hear of Mandela's passing.
A good piece by Mr. Herdson, and it was interesting to read of Jan Christian Smuts, who I'd never heard of before.
I name four other great persons of the 20th century:
Churchill, for his Wisdom, Statesmanship and Foresight.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for maneuvering the Japanese to attack the USA and so bring
America into the war to fight Hitler (The greater menace).
Ronald Reagan, for Stewardship and his contribution to the downfall of the USSR.
Margaret Thatcher, for her contribution in saving Britain from itself (for a few years), and governing with close enemies all around her.
Smuts actively reconciled the Afrikaaner and Uitlander peoples of South Africa after a very bitter war, and put a previously inward looking country on the world stage. It was in Smuts South Africa that Mandela had a Christian mission education. Mandelas attitude to peace and reconcilliation arose out of this context.
South Africa is a fascinating place to visit, but not one without challenges.
Mitterrand was a very successful machine politician who started under the Vichy government and ended up a socialist. But beyond being an example of lean and hungry politics what really is his legacy ? A pyramid at the Louvre and he helped launch Le Pen's Front Nationale.
Lol.
Remember our conversation about McBride before his book came out?
It is specious to claim that David's comparison of Mandela to Smuts is flawed because of the passing of a couple of acts.
Margaret's legacy is not destroyed by the Poll Tax, nor will be Dave's by the spare room subsidy,
Leaders can become great by being a moral beacon and uniting figurehead. Politicians have to to get their hands dirty. It is the combination of both roles that makes for complex retrospective appraisal.
His forgiveness and honesty set him apart. A tragic shame that little or none of his greatness seems to have rubbed off on his successors.
One wonders at what will happen when the ANC no longer wins elections on cruise control.
Shared captaincy might sound good for the two involved, but if you run the ship aground it's not a great sign of success.
Oh, hang on.
It's always tempting to be an iconoclast when everyone's grieving (I'm not saying anyone here is doing that, but some will), but it's right to see him as quite exceptional, and we should perhaps leave it at that.
Mandela, a man who did many great things.
And with that, I'm out....
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/JCB-create-2-500-jobs-new-Uttoxeter-factory/story-20269937-detail/story.html
I don't apologise for choosing Smuts as the counterpoint. Apart from being more obscure than most, I think it would have been unfair to both men to pick Ghandi, for example, where their parallels were so close that it becomes difficult to talk of the achievements of one without apparently diminishing those of the other.
They are not listening tim. They are off squirrel watching.
All this rubbish about Thatcher is boke-inducing. A dreadfully divisive and bitter person, she created poison and injected it into public life. Just the opposite of Mandela.
New Populus Voting Intention figures: Lab 38 (-2); Cons 34 (+1); LD 13 (+3); UKIP 7 (-2); Oth 8 (=)
The Ottoman Empire had been declining for a century. Ataturk's greatest legacy was preventing his country from falling further into chaos after WWI and the empire's defeat, and for resisting the great powers. He was the right man at the right time, and took advantage of the chaos.
Unusually for a military commander, he reformed his country and led it towards a relatively stable civilian life afterwards.
As I said earlier, all great world leaders have mixed records. Few leaders have so changed their countries for the better, but he was playing more on the national fields rather than regional or international. And the reason is simple: he had enough to do inside Turkey.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n17/perry-anderson/kemalism
1. "Statement? Was there a statement?"
"Just over half (56%) said they saw, read or heard something about it on the news or online, while another 8% said they watched it in full. A third, 34%, hadn’t seen anything about it - and young people were much less likely to have seen anything about it than older people."
Actually that's quite a high level by modern standards. But it still shows how hard it is for ANYTHING in politics to break through
2. "It's not for me"
"Among those who do have a view, they are much more likely to think it will benefit rich people (47% think it was good for rich people, 5% bad) than poor people (14% good, 44% bad). Their initial reactions on the impact for people like themselves are also on balance negative – 42% think it was bad for people like them, compared with 15% who think it was good."
This is what usually happens with budgets and pseudo-budgets. People sometimes concede they might be OK for the country, but they look at their own lives, think "Has that helped me?" and say nah. But that's a bit more negative than usual.
I still think we'll be back with 6-point leads once things have settled.
You may remember the long after-thread conversation (or as you may put it, 'exchange') we had before McBride's book was released. Then, when the serialisation started, you said that you were going to apologise to me.
I'm still waiting, although I'm far from hopeful.
I once had a cardboard model JCB 3CX I made displayed on the trailer (*) in their head office.
Less grandly, I later won a model 3CX that was signed by Noel Edmonds during a product launch. It's in the garage somewhere.
(*) The trailer was the first product Cyril made after splitting from the family company. It is therefore a piece of company history.
Still there is always the cricket er...
Last nights
vote share
#Labour 47.9% +1.1
#UKIP 9.1% +7.2
#CONS 9% -3.5
#SNP 7.9% +1.6
#LibDems 6.1% -1.4
#Plaid 5.6% -1.3
Oth 14.4% -3.7
On a poor night for UKIP - due to the nature of the areas - They still came above all other parties except Labour.
The cricket is an effing disaster again - what's the betting we make this "pancake" track look like a Day 4 Headingley wicket when we try to bat on it?
I reckon England are a bad session from the 2nd and 3rd wheel coming off.
Lab 33% (-9)
SNP 32% (+12)
Con 20% (+4)
LD 11% (-8)
UKIP 2% (+1)
Grn 1% (n/c)
http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Online_VI_06-12-2013_BPC.pdf
In a century that has been largely dominated by World War and genocide on an industrial scale I find myself drawn to only three hugely inspirational individuals that transcended military conflict, racial war and espoused peace, forgiveness and reconciliation :
Mahatma Gandhi .. Martin Luther King .. Nelson Mandela
Too early to say on this one.
LD 46%
Lab 34%
Con 9%
Grn 4%
UKIP 4%
SNP 1%
oth 2%
Now we shall all be united in remembering where we were and what we were doing on the day the great man passed.
Lab 90%
Con 4%
Grn 1%
LD 1%
SNP 1%
UKIP 1%
oth 1%
Con 79%
UKIP 10%
Lab 7%
LD 2%
Grn 1%
oth 1%
When I last met Mandela at his home, he was still fearful that South Africa would follow the way of other African newly-independent states without his stabilising hand. He tried to impress on his successors and his people that change had to be slow and orderly in order to obtain a better life for all and he was very fearful of a descent into a Zimbabwe situation.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4b82f884-5dd1-11e3-b3e8-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz2mcf3HnYb
"The OBR’s best guess is that much of this productivity loss has been structural, rather than just a result of weak demand. The watchdog notes that productivity has continued to languish this year as growth has revived. And while it forecasts output per hour to start growing again next year, it does not predict rapid catch-up growth to regain the lost ground.
This is central to its belief that the economy’s growth potential is lower than it was expected to be before the crisis. By 2019, it believes the level of potential output will be 15 per cent lower than the level the Treasury had expected in March 2008 before the crisis hit.
That is one reason why the OBR thinks more of the government’s budget deficit is structural and is not going to disappear naturally as the economic cycle turns.
“The unexpected strength of private consumption this year has largely come from lower saving, not higher income,” it said. “Ultimately, productivity-driven growth in real earnings is necessary to sustain the recovery.” This will not start to happen properly until 2015, it believes.
The OBR also cautioned that policy makers can do little to resolve the “cost of living crisis”, as the Labour party has put it, without better productivity. “Policy measures cannot continually improve the terms of trade, taxes cannot be cut indefinitely and workers can only work so many more hours in a day,” the OBR said. “Productivity growth is the only sustainable source of real income growth in the long term.” "