News - Latest Comments in The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

$42001950 — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:00:14 -0000

Oh - it happened Phil. The problem is that too many people are ill-informed enough to believe it was caused by bankers alone. In reality, the government paid £62 billion to bail out RBS and about another £20bn to buy Northern Rock and a large part of Lloyds. These are large amounts of money, but will be entirely recoverable when they are sold. An amount of £80bn is as nothing to the annual train wreck of the public finances spent mostly on benefits which under Labour were £160bn a year (deficit year after year after year) and the continuing deficit now of around £120bn a year. The national debt is grotesquely large and is growing. Soon, we will be discovered to be incapable of ever paying it back and the country will collapse, but it won't be because of the banks. It will be because we pay out vast sums in benefits that are absolutely un-affordable.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Phil Hall — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:06:58 -0000

It's as if the great financial crash of 2007/2008 never happened.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Prompt Critical — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:47:58 -0000

Who said that? I agree that things would be quite different if the Russian communist revolution hadn't happened... but to suggest that the result would have been German domination of Europe and Britain is leaping much, much too far into hypothesis, in my opinion. After all, the rise of Hitler was only a reaction to the onslaught of communists upon the fabric of German society after 1918 when the war was lost.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Prompt Critical — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:41:19 -0000

That's poisonous rubbish. It's unbelievably gross to equate slavery - the legal ownership of the body of one human being by another - one of the most heinous abuses ever perpetrated by human beings on one another - with financial transactions in which parties are expected to keep their word, or with the requirement for people to do something for other people if they want other people to do something for them (in other words, to earn their livings).

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Prompt Critical — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:38:21 -0000

Not now, but in the old days they could. Then the law was changed. That was my point - didn't you read it?

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

mousemaster — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:07:45 -0000

What does the author want? Hand wringing? An 'apology'? It is absurd to go round trying to change things which earnest progressives now regret. The western world is in crisis, and this writer thinks that the financing of housebuilding nearly three centuries ago is a major issue!

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Tom in London — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:03:55 -0000

Yes. It is now common business practice to refer to people as "resources".

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Tom in London — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 14:03:15 -0000

All it takes is for one person descended from slaves to sue these bastards.

Anyone out there willing to do it?

A black lawyer, perhaps?

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Phil Hall — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:37:59 -0000

You are confusing wage slaves with slavery. A wage slave is a wage earner whose livelihood is completely dependent on the wages earned; Slavery is: 1. The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household. 2. a. The practice of owning slaves. Where as the wage slave is (in theory) free to sell her/his labour to who ever she/he wishes, the slave is property to be bought and sold. These are important diferences.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

shimkusj — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:29:01 -0000

You are wrong, Michaelinlondon1234.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

shimkusj — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:28:19 -0000

"Coloured" unacceptable? Get over the PC nonsense.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

rob_rouge — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:15:44 -0000

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

hughonabike — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:04:13 -0000

What an enlightening piece. I always thought these houses were built at weekends or on days off by grateful peasants or plucky country folks in return for the landlords helping them out in the fields at harvest time. I must have been misinformed.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

NorthernFirst — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:12:12 -0000

Self-evidently.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Rupert Ferguson — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:06:10 -0000

What has also been forgotten is the number of prisoners from the English Civil War that were transported as indentured labourers for life to places like Barbadoes under the Cromwellian Protectorate; and the Jacobite Rebels who shared the same fate in relation to Virginia and elsewhere during the eighteenth century.....

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

lochaber1 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:36:58 -0000

"We can see the alternative in the Russian revolution of 1917"
without which,of course ,we would be carrying out this discussion in german......

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

lochaber1 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:25:00 -0000

"You can purchase a person in Saudi Arabia."
and in London - it's called 'derivatives trading' - when you buy someone's endebtedness,you are buying their future.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

K.Hardman — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:16:23 -0000

Most or all stately homes were built on the backs of slaves... the common man ( and woman ) of this country

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Andrew Lee — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 11:00:15 -0000

Coloured races? May wish to check your lexicon of acceptable terminology, needs updating I think.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

multifinlayson — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 10:00:33 -0000

yawn, yawn

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

snozzle123 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:52:15 -0000

Taxpayer.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

snozzle123 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:51:33 -0000

Same now as it always was.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

snozzle123 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:49:27 -0000

People can be property?

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

snozzle123 — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:48:44 -0000

Ancestors could be traced and made to re-pay the wealth.

Re: The stately homes built on the back of slaves

Prompt Critical — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 09:13:01 -0000

Of course Muslims have been slave traders in East Africa, ever since there were Muslims. And they still are slave traders. You can purchase a person in Saudi Arabia.