Must be a railfan who made the cartoon, they taken care to mark where the Scharfenberg couplers are and early 19th century english couplers
Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
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The Americans joined the war against drugs on the side of the drugs btw. Boston was basically built on opium profits.
All I hear here is basically the UK refuses to reflect on itself and try even a little to at least make an attempt to focus on itself and fix its own problems but no, it’s leadership is still stuck in the mud, focused on doing the bidding of Washington with absolutely nothing in return. In the end, the UK is fated to die a long drawn out death with no hope for the future, a just fate for the nation that has given China no end to grief with their roles in the opium wars along with the HK riots and even in Taiwan although to be fair, the UK now is far too weak to do anything there. I wonder, with all those HK rioters there along with those so called leaders would have no brains to be honest, can the UK ever recover or will these people simply fade away with no sympathy from anyone because as everyone can see now, their previous actions in relation to Nordstrom 2 has made the continued existence of the UK to be of no benefit to anyone in fact what does China hope to gain from the UK as of now except perhaps give back all those relics you pompous b@stards have stolen from us years agoI'm sure a case of schadenfreude from the German media, but Germany isn't much better with strikes and inflation, highest in 70 years.
Food shortages, moldy apartments, a lack of medical workers: The United Kingdom is facing a perfect storm of struggle, and millions are sliding into poverty. There is little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon.
By in London 18.04.2023, 15.17 Uhr
In the innermost chambers of the old palace, Britannia is still just as large as it once was. Vast paintings stretching up to the ceiling narrate the glorious triumphs of a stupendous global empire – of battles against the Danes, Napoleon, the Spanish Armada, of the subjugation of India and the settling of America.
Those wishing to enter Westminster Palace, for centuries the seat of British Parliament, must pass by bronze statues of pioneers, commanders and thinkers – Walpole, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Thatcher – and a life-sized Winston Churchill, who still seems to be watching over the lower house, once destroyed by German bombs.
With every echoing step, British parliamentarians are reminded by these weighty premises of their own importance.
It is rather rare, however, that one of them makes their way from the halls of parliament into the underworld of the old palace, which was once built on a swampy island in the Thames. Here, in the low-ceilinged, labyrinthine catacombs, the foundation of Britannia’s democracy is literally rotting away, largely out of sight and out of mind. Most of the structure is contaminated by asbestos, while thick tangles of cables hang chaotically from the ceiling and pipes suddenly come to an end, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
Gas, power and water lines – all bunched together – run for several kilometers through the damp cellars. The fire alarm has been triggered more than 40 times here in the last 10 years, and fire experts are allegedly on patrol in the building 24 hours a day.
Seven years ago, an internal report outlined a "substantial and growing risk of … a catastrophic event," and the 1,000-room neo-Gothic monument with its 100 staircases is long overdue for a comprehensive renovation. It would take decades to complete and cost up to 22 billion pounds. But thus far, the honorable members of parliament have been unable to agree on when and how.
Built on a swamp: Westminster Palace in London
Foto: Andrew Testa
Pipes leading to nowhere: The basement of Westminster Palace
Foto: David Levene / ddp
Instead, inside the gold, brocade and hardwood-trimmed imperial halls upstairs, the country’s representatives continue to put on a show of democracy week after week while a time bomb continues to tick below them.
The old palace, in fact, has become a perfect symbol for the United Kingdom of today.
Boarded Up Windows
Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days. For the past several months, the flow of bad news has been constant, the country’s coffers are empty, public administration is ineffective and the nation’s corporations are struggling. As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months.
Boarded up windows and signs reading "To Let" and "To Rent" have become a common sight on the country’s high streets, while numerous products have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future.
Boarded up shops in Blackpool
Foto: Andrew Testa / DER SPIEGEL
"Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty."
Last year, 560 pubs closed their doors forever, with thousands more soon to follow, according to the industry association. Without Oxfam, the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that operate second-hand stores, numerous city centers would have almost no shops left at all.
Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that in no other industrialized nation would the economy develop as poorly as in Britain this year. Even Russia is expected to end up ahead of the UK.
One Pound Wonders
Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty. Newspapers and television channels are full of cheap recipes and shows like Jamie Oliver’s "£1 Wonders." Since December, hardly a day has passed without a strike by bus drivers, medical workers, teachers, public servants, university employees or rail workers. Last week, assistant doctors across the country went on strike for four days, with the media calling on the populace to avoid all activities that could result in injury.
For many, the situation is reminiscent of the 1970s, when high debt, punishing inflation and widespread protests brought the country to its knees – leading Henry Kissinger, who was U.S. secretary of state at the time, to grumble from across the Atlantic: "Britain is a tragedy, reduced to begging, borrowing and stealing."
To be sure, after two years of pandemic and one year of war, the rest of Europe isn’t doing particularly well either. But nowhere is the feeling of having "lost the future" stronger than in Britain, according to the public opinion pollsters from Ipsos. In 2008, the year of the banking and financial crisis, 12 percent of people in the UK believed that their children would be worse off than them. Now, that number is 41 percent, Ipsos has found.
One significant reason for that pessimism is the fact that many simply no longer trust their speechifying politicians in Westminster to get much done. The Tory party, which has been in power now for a dozen years, has gone through four prime ministers since 2016 alone.
And even if the fifth in the series, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is doing all he can to leave behind the period of sloganeering and slapstick, the UK isn’t likely to recover from his predecessors any time soon. Particularly not from Boris Johnson, who still refuses to admit any personal responsibility for the plight in which Britain finds itself and continues to bleat in a huff from the sidelines.
See link for rest of this massive article...
The big problem is that ''Rational interest'' don't have the same definition in EU and US than in China.
Rational interest of the leadership in China is for China to thrive. Leadership will be at the receiving end if things turn sour.
Rational interest of most western politicians is for their banks accounts to thrive whatever the result for their populations or countries. They will stay and live in a protected fortress or quit and live in a giant mansion in a small country if things turn sour.
This time, as per the previous article on the UK, the USA will experience that same collective loss of hope and will finally start suffering the consequences of their clowning around. Normally death via drugs and despair is not something I normally wish on others, I can say without shame that this is a fate that is long over due for the USA. These stupid f@ckers who continue to dance on Chinas red line, upon Taiwan as though they have the right to do so, in the coming days, China will wipe out every single one of their soldiers along with their leadership and the rest of these mindless trash will end their days a slave to even the poorest folk in China while lamenting the end of their American dream. They better start praying hard because this time, I do wonder, will God bless them this time because all these disasters happening even from the start of this year alone seems to point to an extreme lack of such a thing, that they simply do not deserve
This is my suspicion of the Chinese Communist Party.
They are awesome political force.
That is why they are in power, because they are able to rule the Chinese people, and you know, we ain't so easy to be ruled effectively. Heh.
The CCP rules because they know politics, they know how to play politics, and the masses not that interested in politics.
The point is, the CCP is always interested in politics, and the Chinese always knew how to play politics, and the West for some reason always underestimates China's ability to play politics.
This disregard of CCP playing politics, bites the west in the ass really hard.
BRI, West Asia peace, RCEP, excreta excreta.
The CCP really knows how to play politics, and this time, they learned from the Americans.
This is how Donald Trump got elected as president of the United States.
What Cambridge Analytics did for him, a data firm the Trump team hired, they basically spread disinformation about Trump himself on the internet. A lot of these messages or stories, they were planted, and often they were contradictory.
But that worked wonders. People read and believed only what they wanted to believe. People supported Trump for varying reasons, which are often not the same. Give a potential Trump supporter two different messages, one negative and one positive, the potential Trump supporter will always support Trump, because they heard something they wanted to hear. About that other message that was contradictory, in one ear, out the other.
Same thing happened here. The ex-Soviet states are clearly illegitimate according to international law.
There should be no problem with the Shanghai-5 grouping.
That's how the CCP will play politics.
Look how sharp the CCP is. They incorporate the latest theories of how to win hearts and minds, and how to attack.
I think English language has made UK complacent much earlier than many countries. German division has saved it from same fate but Germany is now going same way as UK decades earlier. Germany is making increasingly expensive vehicles that will be expensive to maintain as they get older or crash and those vehicles need global parts. That unreliability and price of UK motor industry was start of its decline. this is visible symptom of mismatch what society can afford and what it actually produces for profits and overseas interests.
Considering his dad and his grandad are called Vytautas, which seems to have some dubious meaning.
