TigersTokyoDome comments

Probably the best ever commentary on this topic from US reamer above.

The perfectly choreographed pomp and circumstance expended on one mortal's funeral was designed to impress the masses and it succeeded splendidly, but the Ruritanian flummery of a host of uniforms, bemedalled breasts, brass bands, bagpipes and horses was a reminder that, to anybody familiar with life in the UK today, the superficial veneer of the funerary ceremonial stands in sharp contrast to the reality of the gutted and hollowed out UK economy with its pay-day loan shops, betting shops, food banks. mountain of student debt, unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, hungry, ill-educated children, pensioner poverty and poor health of millions etc. As the UK returns to mundane reality, King Charles will have his work cut out putting a brave face on the cracks and fissures in the Union that might soon threaten the throne of the Windsors.

The UK is of very little consequence to the World these days, even within the European Union. It sold off its industry and infrastructure to private shareholders. The brass buttons and bagpipes cannot cover up the skeleton lying beneath.

this encompasses the things that the majority of British people do not agree with.

If the British people did not want the monarchy, it would be gone.

I missed that referendum. Show me the vote on keeping this family. Pretty sure you are just highlighting your own opinion.

Brits are feeling quite good about their country right now

You obviously are not living in the UK right now. And tomorrow everyone will return to 5 hour waits for emergency ambulances, overnight waits in A&E, a broken public transport system, and a year of public workers strikes.

When people can't get an emergency ambulance to save them in time the country are spending this money and giving this send off for someone that none of us are related to.

Absolutely not even in the same league as Diana was. No, sadly this one loves the establishment role.

Take a good look at the cover photo from JT. The stuffy privilege, the establishment, the flag waving, the acceptance of someone supposedly greater than your average human being, and the partition of a rigid class system. Take a good look at that photo because this encompasses exactly the things that we do not want in a humane civilisation. I truly hope this is one of the last times we have to witness this forced deference turning people into subjects.

She is not greater than nurses working to save lives everyday and living poorly, or charity workers helping children in war torn Syria or Afghanistan. So don't doff your cap or bow to her.

Over 17,000 British sailors lost their lives in the West Africa Squadron putting an end to slavery. Britain can be very proud indeed.

Are you seriously claiming that the British are the victims of the slave trade? And can be proud of their part in that sorrowful part of history? No mention of African lives torn apart, the deportation of people from their families and homeland, along with the murder and beatings? You are actually writing here how we should show pity on British sailors and no mention of the African slaves themselves? Goodness me that really is beyond redemption.

This is the moral high ground that some (not all) Brits take. A high ground built on lies, deceit, and theft.

Being English, I wouldn’t be interested to go stand in line for half a day for this.

Each to their own I suppose.

Anyway, screw the CCP.

As Jim says. On both points.

We can do that, what do you need explaining?

Presuming that I am also a 'we' (being British) let me answer the colonial question on behalf of Clippety Clop who appears to be standing atop a mountain of moral ground.

The so-called empire is a historical embarrassment. If you use such a light expression as embarrassment for the slave trade, stolen artefacts and stolen diamonds, the ethnic partition of India which made tens of thousands of children homeless, stealing the natural resources such as sugar cane from the West Indies Islands, dealing opium in the Chinese Canton to control the population.

It was a very relevant point by okuniyoshi - the British establishment are in no position to dictate to anyone.

Alex, huge difference. JFK was shot in the head at the age of 46. The queen died of old age at 96. Huge difference. Nobody murdered her. Abe was also murdered, although I don't recall such a massive outpouring of sympathy for him.

Nothing in my post was gloating whatsoever nor bullying anyone else. People need to get a sense of perspective and stop being so silly and so melodramatic over a super affluent monarch passing in her 90s.

The royal family are constantly in the public eye because their press office puts them there. They are super wealthy and live in absolute opulence, paid for by the working taxpayer and stolen from others.

In today's age of cost of living crises, climate emergency, war in Europe, pandemic etc people need to stop being so silly by gushing over such a persons passing. Concentrate on your own lives and those less fortunate instead.

King Charles III on Friday is due to address his new subjects

I am British but I am not his subject. Just because I was born here doesn't mean that I have signed up to being their subject. Time to scale down this whole monarchy thing, especially considering their recent and embarrassing history.

My advice amongst all this adoration and monarchy? Love your own family. Your children, your partners, and your friends. Don't support a fairy story family who live in palaces and own vast swathes of land. A royal family is fine for history but yet again the Europeans have taught us about keeping this royalty thing minimal and discreet. Yet again the British will wave their little flags and sing their little anthems for someone who provided no support in their lives. Respect a passing but let's not blow this thing out of all proportion.

the UK is facing a recession caused by Putin's invation of Ukraine

Oh that old chestnut. The main reason for the global rise in energy bills is due to demand in Asia following the effect of the Covid pandemic. Norway are by far the biggest natural gas import into the UK. Also we are not "at war" with Russia. Ukraine are. The UK merely sells arms to Ukraine.

the pressure on public services due to populatio growth

This gets funnier. Since 2015 the UK's population growth numbers have been falling downwards. Public services are failing due to a reduction in their budgets.

she is highly intelligent and well educated

Sunak was educated at Stroud, Winchester, and Oxford and attained a First. He then achieved an MBA at Stanford and worked for Goldmans. As I said, Truss is not in his league.

And you call yourself an economist? I doubt that.

As ian says they don't want tourists back in Japan. On my last visit in the summer I hated it. Purely Japanese faces only outside and izakaya not friendly at all to the one foreigner wanting to eat and drink. But even if they did invite me in the scene was totally un-cosmopolitan in Tokyo.

Sunak came close to being the first Asian PM, with 43% of conservative party members voting for him

Don't be fooled by that. On paper Sunak should have absolutely walked the leadership contest. It should have been a no-contest in terms of his education, his career path, and his dialogue. And I'm not a conservative. He is brown therefore his own party voted instead for a complete amateur who is white with white hair. Truss is not even in his league in terms of economic intelligence.

"Verging on" means it hasn't happened. Therefore it is not "reality."

JeffLee, oh I am corrected. Everything is just great here in the UK. No recession and seriously all fine. People have lots of cash to spare, the health system is working just fine, and the public transport system is getting us all into work on time.

(that's being ironic).

The government also worries that a non-Japanese speaking tourist who suddenly falls ill may struggle to get appropriate care without someone knowing the language and the country's medical system

Just like the thousands of Japanese travelers currently holidaying all around the world at destinations where they do not speak the local language.?

Japanese Doctors have to learn English quite fluently. I also imagine that hotel staff in Japan would have no difficulty getting a tourist to hospital.

This is called satoku. Plain and simple.

Just putting socialism versus capitalism to one side and the red against blue division that David Cameron created with his referendum vote (don't be fooled by his 'first past the post fairness' - it was another India style class partition). The stark reality is that the UK is verging on another big recession, has emergency ambulance waiting times of up to 5 hours (a real basic in the lives of any nationality), a severe reduction in national health dentists for children, an acute energy bill problem, big increases in the cost of food, accident & emergency overnight waits in hospitals (another human essential), not enough staff to run full train timetables, and our own sewerage running through our beaches.

I haven't mentioned any of my own politics or opinions. Forget all of your personal politics and finger pointing - this is the current situation in the UK today.

And for the posters here trying to deflect this truth onto Keir Starmer or the Labour Party, they are not the government and haven't been since Gordon Brown.

Whilst the queen sits up in her tax-free castle in Scotland and gives her blessing to this current catastrophe, elderly people will sit in public libraries (the ones that weren't sold off) or ride on buses to heat themselves this winter.

An absolute disgrace in the history of the UK (but there again they put up statues of queen victoria who had children in workhouses under her watch).

It is a complete disgrace. And in a year where people will die from the cold due to high energy bills. It's about time fans walked away from the Premier League, and I'm a big Arsenal fan. We should universally dump this millionaires sport with its new shirts every season and expensive ticket prices. The Premier League have completely ignored the cost of living crisis and energy squeeze, as if life is great for everyone.

Support your local semi-pro or amateur club instead. Much much cheaper and more genuine and good fun. And they won't change their home and away shirts every season.

These union members are spoilt. And let's be honest, they only take those jobs for the union protection and for the pension. If these workers were striking for railway infrastructure investment or for commuters season ticket reductions I would support them. But they're not. They're just striking for their own selfish reasons and the average working person trying to commute into work is affected.

The union leaders are fooling us. Trying to make out they are striking for the rest of us. No they're not. They are striking for their own salary increases and benefits.

Jim, if Lampard sells young Gordon to his old club Chelsea, surely that's the end for Lampard? Is Frank looking for a way out.?

Nemo's post is all you need to know about this strike. It's worth reposting.

You guys all had jobs during the pandemic. No jobs or income lost, no worry about how to pay your mortgage (at least no more than before the pandemic) Now you want to hold critical infrastructure hostage because things cost more.

Guess what? They cost more for us too. I don’t like it either, but I don’t try to hold peoples lives hostage.

The metro compares very poorly with Tokyo’s subway system. Infrequent and late trains. Poor communication, dirty trains (last time I was on one I was thinking “don’t you guys ever clean?”) and high fares. And now, they just aren’t going to work.

This kind of selfishness gives public service unions a bad name.

Exactly as Nemo says.

My politics are Labour Party socialist. But both sides are wrong on this strike and the only victims are fare-paying commuters. What did commuters do to anyone to deserve such a shocking transport system?

I lost my job during the pandemic and had to leave Japan. None of these union members had to endure that. And if I dared to go on strike in my new job now guess what would happen to me.

Their job is to get commuters to work, families to be able to travel to each other, and to get students to college. Striking and stopping the transportation system is a complete dereliction of their very duty.

They are paid to drive trains and operate signals. They knew their salary level when they joined and they know the state of the global economy after the pandemic.

I would sack the management for profiteering and non-recruitment and I would sack the workforce for leaving their duties.

The critical shortage of NHS doctors, airport workers, restaurant waiters, shop assistants, and bartenders with around 1 million workers leaving after Brexit is in no way attributed to illegal hires. Absolutely no way. That's just another pro-Brexit excuse.

Look at the state of the economic figures. They don't lie and they come from the ONS. Export figures are a disgrace. Look at the roadblocks with goods attempting to get out of our ports.

Even if the 'illegal staffing' was true (it is miniscule and the same scale as any other country) - isn't that an admission by the conservatives that large parts of the blue collar infrastructure of the UK has been employed illegally on their own government watch? What an admission.

Brexit was an abject failure, caused by an illiterate electorate waving their union jack flags. They're all in hiding now. Hiding inside their property-boom homes and about to retire without giving a damn about their grandchildren's futures. Brexit cost hundreds of millions of pounds and will continue to do so in economic damage.

Here's a question - where are the great leaders of Brexit now? Farage has disappeared off the face of the earth. May was sacked by her own party and Johnson sacked and missing in action. The great leaders who attacked Brussels.

rocknroll, Brexit an irrelevance?! We may as well believe the right wing lies from Johnson and Rees-Mogg than read your post. You are completely repeating the Ukraine/ refugees/ Covid-excuses for the current economic collapse.

Approximately 1 million rent-paying/ tax-paying/ consumerism-producing workers left the U.K due to a combination of, yes Covid, and Brexit. The UK is shipping refugees off to Africa instead of utilising them to fill the menial jobs that support the infrastructure.

Boris Johnson kept using 'war in Ukraine' as a deflection from his own failures and lies. THE UK IS NOT AT WAR IN UKRAINE. The UK is merely providing arms (for which there will be a future bill for Ukraine to pay).

The rail industry continues to payout huge dividends, salaries and bonuses instead of freezing them and reinvesting in recruitment.

Your post is another right wing hack attempting to excuse the current Brexit-related collapse of the UK economy and infrastructure.

Exactly as bucha says.

What kind of idiots have a transportation network in their country where there is zero relationship between management and its workers and they hate each other. Where management use profits to pay dividends instead of infrastructure investment and where the unions hold commuters to ransom in order to demand pay rises.

Maybe the same kind of idiots who voted to kick the Europeans out and then saw 1 million workers leave the U.K causing staffing mayhem in restaurants, shops and airports. And then turn refugees away despite the glaringly obvious opportunity to fill those menial jobs with arriving refugees.

The concluding summary to all this debate is that we can honestly say that the CCP are a truly nasty bunch that the rest of the world could really do without. A horrible intimidating and aggressive government. I hope the world is watching and learning.

It's bad enough watching Putin's psycho play on Ukraine. You would have thought the rest of the world would learn from that madman. But no, the CCP are quite happy to be on his pathetic level.

Anyone who continues to do business with China only have themselves to blame for their take on world domination.

Desert Tortoise, you just totally clarified my point in your response to me.

The proximate cause of Japan's attack on the US was the US oil embargo of Japan. 

As I already said, the Americans finally got involved in WWII due to oil. The US embargoed oil to Japan, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, and bingo. My point was that global economics causes the big players to step into war and you just clarified that.

Davers, I think you completely misunderstand me. I am partly based in Taiwan and I will live there. I despise the current CCP. However, only a global economic impact will get the US, the UK, France etc to step in to this conflict. Our defence of democracy and humanity is not enough to get the big countries to risk the ire of their voters. Just look at Gaza or Myanmar.

Davers, of course it is far more humane to want to protect Taiwanese lives and Taiwanese democracy and sovereignty. Of course I agree. But since when did humanity be a reason for the world to act? Anyone going into Russia to protect Ukraine? Nope. Delays to/ or the suspension of energy imports into Japan would lead to Japanese lives at risk. The winter route for LNG into Japan goes through the South China Sea and past Taiwan.

Moving global semiconductor production out of Taiwan might sound good on paper - but has anyone else been able to capture that size of the market apart from the Taiwanese? No they havent been able to.

Even during WWII the Americans only acted when Big Oil came into the equation. Before then they watched hundreds of thousands of Europeans being killed by the nazis.

The harsh reality of our own history is that the big players only spring into action for economic reasons.

apan, stop living in the past, you have nothing to do with Taiwan. It is Clearly a matter for China and Taiwan to sort out. 

The civil war between China and Taiwan has absolutely Flock all to do with any other country !

Wake up people. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would lead to a collapse of the global semiconductor chip supply chain and control of chip production by the CCP. TSMC alone account for half the global foundry production. And an estimated 90% of global production. We all depend on semiconductor chips for basically everything in everyday life, including iPhones and military chip production. Amazon would essentially be controlled by the CCP.

Chinese ownership of Taiwan would not impact Japan? Northern Taiwan/ Taipei are so close to Okinawa they are almost the same country. Taiwan sits between Japan's critical oil & gas/ LNG shipping lanes between Singapore/ Sulawesi and the Chinese will change the nautical map around Taiwan with the ability to delay and control Japan's incoming oil & gas/ LNG.

Any non-white country that dares to become economically strong will be knocked down. It just so happens it's China's turn.

Nope. Absolutely nothing to do with being 'non-white' and all China are doing is giving non-white nations a very bad name.

In fact fellow Chinese Muslims, Hong Kong nationals, and neighbouring Asian nations are the biggest non-white victims of non-white China.

deanzaCCP, a peaceful China.? Is this some kind of a sick joke? So "peaceful" that they have currently surrounded Taiwan and are firing missiles over Taiwan just because they are unhappy that a US politician visited. Their ambassador to France wants to re-educate the Taiwanese people after they have invaded. Is this your idea of benefitting the Asia region?

Every single missile fired by that military dictatorship and every single comment about re-education is making the rest of Asia wake up and see exactly what they have on their doorstep.

We are better off being poorer than have any relations at all with those bullies. That's my world.