37 Life expectancy at birth in Zimbabwe
60 Average life expectancy in 1990
81 The infant mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births), compared with 53 in 1990
$340 The national income, per person, compared with $4,960 in South Africa
5.5m Zimbabweans live with HIV
1.1 m Children have been orphaned by Aids
6 People out of every 100 have a phone, compared with 47 in South Africa
56% Of the population earn less than $1 a day, compared with 11% of South Africans
8 Facts about 10 years of New Labour
ReplyDelete1) Under New Labour. The life expectancy of a man in the east end of Glasgow in 1977 was 69 years of age. After ten years of New Labour it is now 59 years of age (one paper reported it as low as 57 years of age).
2) Unicef tells us that our country is the worst place in the developed world to be a child.
3) Under New Labour. An average of 3,000 pensioners die in Scotland every year through fuel poverty.
4) Under New Labour. More newborn babies die here than in any other western country.
5) Under New Labour the number of young people aged 16-24 not in work, training or education is up 15%.
6) Under New Labour 20% of Scots now live under the breadline.
7) Under New Labour we have the fattest, un-fittest people in Europe.
8) Under New Labour Scotland's youth has the biggest drink problem in Europe.
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=442372007#comment466603
Appare ntly, Mugabe learnt everything he knows from Gordon "Uncle Jo Stalin" Brown. ie High inflation, poor healthcare, unfair taxes, inadequate education etc. etc.......
ReplyDeleteEx-Whitehall chief slams ‘Mugabesque’ Brown
ReplyDeleteLord Turnbull: “... you cannot help admire the sheer Mugabesque ruthlessness of it all ...”
I'd love to know what the equivalent figures were when Iain Smith was running the joint.
ReplyDeleteDreadful, what ever was Maggie Thatcher doing when she handed power over to him?
ReplyDelete'A Conservative government will have no truck with that bloodstained Marxist Rober Mugabe' M.Thatcher october 1978
1 : Percentage of Zimbabwe Population that is white.
ReplyDelete70 : Percentage of farmland owned by whites.
Tiny Rowland funded Joshua Nkomo as candidate to run Zimbabwe - Margaret Thatcher put Robert Mugabe in charge at Lancaster House......he's never lost an election since
ReplyDeleteCome back Ian Smith all is forgiven.
ReplyDeleteZimbabwe today, South Africa tomorrow.
Both black and white in Zimbabwe were a hundred times better off under white rule and that will eventually also be the case with South Africa.
Anonymous 6:55 - how very revealing. How very, very revealing.
ReplyDeleteThe communist/socialist/Marxist meme does hang together, doesn't it?
Once again, as during most of the post-War period, we in Britain face two threats from foreign-nationalism in our midst, each with a small clique of hired help and a wider circle of fellow-travellers, commanding almost no popular support but enjoying enormous influence where power resides.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, each of these owes specifically patriotic allegiance, not to this country, but to something extraneous and indeed hostile. Today, one foreign-nationalism is neoconservatism, and the other is Islam. Not "a perversion of Islam", but Islam itself.
Neoconservatism entails strong support for America and Israel, and therefore also, as anyone reading the Statement of Principles of The Henry Jackson Society can see, for the American-sponsored project of European federalism, which is what that project has been ever since the 1940s, both in its American sponsorship and in its federalist intent.
But that support does, up to a point, depend on American, and arguably even Israeli, adherence to certain explictly neoconservative policies.
And then there is Islam.
By contrast, there was no such vagueness about foreign-nationalism in its two older forms. One of those forms used to defend even the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, such was its devotion to the Soviet Union.
The other used to defend even an act of high treason against The Queen, because the territory in question thus became a satellite and client of the Boer Republic, set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown by persons who had been interred during the Second World War because of their pro-Nazi activities.
Which brings us to Zimbabwe. For the treason in question was in Rhodesia, while Mugabe and others like him were Soviet-backed. I cannot help thinking that the present fuss being made on the British Right over Zimbabwe, justified though it is in many ways, is because of nostalgia for the days when pseudo-Tories were expected to worship at the altar, not of a foreign and rabidly anti-British ideology called neoconservatism, but of a foreign, rabidly anti-British, and very solid entity called the Republic of South Africa.
Likewise, I cannot help thinking that the British Government's lukewarm response is because so many of its members and closest advisors have their roots, not in the Labour Movement, but on the sectarian Left, where they were often active in the period between the Rhodesian UDI and formal Zimbabwean independence, a time when, again, things must have seemed so much simpler, for the very good reason that they were.
I cannot help thinking that the present fuss being made on the British Right over Zimbabwe, justified though it is in many ways, is because of nostalgia for the days when pseudo-Tories were expected to worship at the altar, not of a foreign and rabidly anti-British ideology called neoconservatism, but of a foreign, rabidly anti-British, and very solid entity called the Republic of South Africa.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought it was just the British right that was protesting about the Mugabe regime.
Never mind, I will put my hand up and admit (should that be boast) that my feelings towards Rhodesia during the days of UDR were of warm support. But I must correct you.... MY feelings in this matter were nothing to do with "worship" (what an odd word to use) of the South Africans, but arose merely from a sense of fair play and fair dealing towards the Rhodesian people who had shown great loyalty to the UK during WW2 and who didn't want to see their country fucked over by a rising tide of black marxism. Which is what happened to the poor so and so's of course.
Add to that the fact that Britain was at the time governed, if that is really the word, by the Wilson Gang and it is easy to see why the word 'treason' bandied about earlier doesn't really fit.
The passing of time has served to reinforce my opinion on this matter.
Of course the UDI was treason! That's not a matter of opinion, it's a legal fact. The Queen, moreover, never accepted the title "Queen of Rhodesia", and the rebel regime there declared a republic a mere four years in. Get out of that one. You couldn't and you can't, just as over the vengefully anti-British Boer Republic of South Africa.
ReplyDeleteAgain I say, if you supported white Rhodesia, then that can only have been because you had made an idol of apartheid South Africa, itself ferociously anti-British. Just as the Smith regime itself had done, as first the UDI and then the declaration of a republic made abundantly clear.
The alleged war hero Smith was also closely allied to the Salazar regime in Portugal, then still clinging on to Angola and Mozambique. His regime was fatally wounded when the Portuguese had to pull out of Southern Africa, so dependent was it one of the last two Fascist dictatorships in Europe. Indeed, in his memoirs, Smith wrote that if Salazar had lived longer, then Rhodesia would still be in existence today.
"Loyalty" to Britain? Don't be so ridiculous! Rhodesia was more a matter of where the Mosleyite sections of the British aristocracy and lower middle class went, to try and set up a state of their own, a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won, but with better weather and with someone else to do all the work.
Mugabe is the new Mobutu. He is terrified of being killed by the mob, he awaits 'the horror' but will fight to the death. His support is down to an inner circle of a couple of hundred and so must import secret police from Angola(ruled by the biggest thief in history of politics). He will not last another six months.
ReplyDeleteRe: Rhodesia was a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won ...
ReplyDeleteIan Smith's Rhodesia was economically successful despite UN sanctions. It was practically self-sufficient in all 3 sectors of industry: primary (raw materials), secondary (manufacturing), and tertiary (services). Not only was the country self-sufficient, it exported surpluses, including food, to other parts of the world.
David Lindsay, you are plainly mentally unbalanced. There is an element of truth underlying your argument but you ruin it by being so ridiculously over the top.
ReplyDeleteWhich part of what I wrote was "over the top"? That the Rhodesian UDI was in point of legal fact, an act of treason? That the Queen never accepted the title "Queen of Rhodesia"? That Rhodesia declared itself a republic early in its history after UDI?
ReplyDeleteThat it was allied to, and dependent on, the Republic of South Afria? That that Republic was an act of anti-British Boer revenge by persons who had been interred during the War for their pro-Nazi activities? That both the UDI and the subsequent declaration of a republic were, by definition, anti-British acts?
That Smith was also closely allied to Salazar, and heavily dependent on his regime in Angola and Mozambique? That Salazar was at that time one of the last two Fascist dictatorships in Europe (the neocons later sponsored the creation of another one, in 1990s Croatia)? That, in his memoirs, Smith wrote that if Salazar had lived longer, then Rhodesia would still be in existence today?
That Rhodesia was settled by the very sections of British society from which Mosley had drawn his support, and taht its regime reflected the views of such people? That a Mosley-run Britain would have had close ties to the regime idolised by that of apartheid South Africa (and, indeed, to apartheid South Africa itself)? That it would also have had close ties to Salazar's Portugal?
That, all these things taken together, Rhodesia is as near as (mercifully) we will ever see to a model of what Britain would have been like if Hitler and Mosley had won, but with better weather and with someone else to do all the work?
Which part of the above is "over the top"? Every point except that last three is a matter of fact, the following two are not reasonably open to dispute, and the last follows inescapably at least from the three that immediately precede it.
Of course Mugabe is bad. But that doesn't mean that Ian Smith was good. He wasn't.