Is Naim dying?

If the topic is as boring as hi-fi, maybe it's best to move off it as quickly as possible.

If Naim is dying, it is certainly stringing it out - this is the 250th reply.  The forum is not what it was though....

Don

Dr Mark, if you think my reply was fuelled by "pro-Western propaganda", then you really are being as hysterical and as wilfully obtuse as  your rather prolix post suggests.

Condemnation or criticism of Putin and his regime does not, as you seem to be suggesting in your rather shouty way, imply support for Obama, Cameron or anyone else.

Nothing like stereotyping is there - at least David Cameron hasn't left the Country bankrupt like the previous idiots,  Just love it when people want to sustain the so called "class war".

Kevin's description sounds about perfect to me.

This definitely needs the padded cell, along with half the contributors...

Oh, I've contributed haven't I...

Why are there people with white coats knocking at my door?

To recover that bottle of local anesthetic you're sniffing right now.

See ? I moved with the thread.

Nothing to do with class war. At Oxford, Cameron (along with Osborne and Johnson) was a member of the Bullingdon Club, a ghastly organisation which has become a byword for boorish behaviour and an unmerited sense of entitlement; a bit like the current government really.

I am no lover of New Labour either. As I've said many times it wasn't the "previous idiots" who nearly bankrupted the country (although they played a good part in it), but 35 years of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy. Cameron will leave the country no better (and perhaps worse) off as he seeks to carry on running down the already weakened public sector, allow the financial services sector and executive class to run rampant, sell off non-fungible services like Royal Mail (for the benefit of his chums in the City), snoop on UK citizens (usually at the behest of the Yanks) and generally advance the flabby and degenerate ideology of neo-liberalism.

Brilliant! Even a teapot like me thinks that's funny.

I literally laughed 'til I cried.

LOL

Urm Labour planned to sell off Royal Mail if I remember correctly and mortgaged the country up to the hilt with a series of ridiculous PFI Health Service initiatives.  Consider the facts - by most sensible economic readings the conditions in 1997 were the most favourable in a generation 13 years later blown to pieces.  And frankly it was the same in 1979.

And frankly I've got no greater problem with David Cameron and George Osborne being a member of a club than I have Blair, Harman, Milliband(s), Straw etc and their Islington love in - the birth of so called New Labour and so called Cool Brittania which of course was one ridiculous money wasting gimmick after another.

What is it with people like your good self and Dr Mark who automatically assume that criticism of one position is automatically support for another? Are you that unthinking, or do you do it deliberately in order to deflect critiques of your own positions?

For the record - I'll say it AGAIN - I am on the libertarian left. I am in favour of free speech, self-determination, complete equality before the law, removal of religious privilege, state ownership of non-fungible assets and services (gas, water, electricity, post, railways, buses, Tube etc), holding the security services, financial industry, manageriat and police to account, media plurality, fair play and freedom of expression and religious worship; I am against neo-liberalism, private monopolies, tax avoidance and evasion, censorship, neo-conservatism, neocon interventionism (a la Iraq 2003), spying on one's own citizenry and unfettered power and privilege of any sort.

This, I would imagine, puts me in complete opposition to New Labour, with its toxic mix of cronyism, control-freakery, neoliberalism and granting of unearned privelige. So it's no good telling me that Mandelson wanted to privatise the RM - I know that. The thing is, he didn't but Cameron, Osborne and Cable did, at huge cost to the long-suffering taxpayer. The PFI initiatives you mention are a symptom of neoliberal policy, not old-style socialism.

It is 35 years of cretinous neoliberal orthodoxy, not 10 years of New Liebour, that has near bankrupted this country, stifled social mobility and strengthened unmerited privilege in almost every aspect of contemporary British life. New Labour's biggest error was to carry on riding this particularly egregious bandwagon, rather than using their enormous '97 and 2001 majorities to derail then reverse it.

And all the stuff about Islington, Cool Britannia, polenta and Labour luvvues? Much of it (just like the so-called Chipping Norton set) was a media invention, a convenient handle to hang on a loose agglomeration of alliances and friendships. Blair and Co didn't even invent "Cool Britannia" (that was Newsweek in 1996 and Vanity Fair magazine in 1997) and he hardly ever used it, except for a very brief period (when, of course, it suited him to do so).

By 1998 it had largely fallen out of use and favour, and by the turn of the century, and the failure of the Millennium Dome, it had become a term of derision.

I'm with you all the way Kev although the thread has completely moved off track and in the padded cell, where it quite rightly belongs after it's mutation.

One of the great things about the web Stephen - you never quite know where you're gonna end up!

Nothing wrong with mutant's, and I speak from personal experience.

This is why I never quote.

Wow! You've outdone Mista H there Stephen... 

It's a trap!!   By the way - the naim set is sounding is sounding brilliant!!!

Not my type of music but old Luther is sounding - so amazing!! 

In answer to the original question.

No...

But, they do need to update the pre amps, especially considering that you can now get a pre for £1200 which is better than a 282/SupercapDR in my experience...

Regards,

Nick

Nick

Thanks for  returning this thread to topic. I agree with you that the mid range amps and preamps need a freshening. They still sound very nice but the competition has not been resting this past 10 plus years.

Actually Kevin - that "assumption": came because you explicitly stated that Putin was worse than Cameron and Bush, and my post was merely the tip of the iceberg to show they are all cut from the same cloth.  I agree with you 100% that denigrating one side does not even imply support for the other.

During the Bush era I was on the attack about him all the time, which automatically got me branded a "liberal/progressive democrat."

Now when I attack the current regime, I am accused to being a Fox News watching Neanderthal.  This is because in the USA everything has become so politicized (and even more so, polarized) that no one looks at what is happening.  The things that Obama has done that progressives would have screamed about Bush doing are OK, because, well, because "Obama!"  By the same token troglodytes like McCain (and now even Hillary for crissake) lambast him for "not being forceful enough" - how many non-combatants does he have to kill to make the grade?  Both these guys hands are literally covered in innocent blood.  (How many people can you kill and still keep your Nobel Peace Prize?)

My concern is the lack of statesmanship these clowns have - they strictly do the bidding of the US' "shadow government."  And they do not seem to be concerned that starting WW III is a real possibility following the path they are on.  THAT is my concern. 

 
I really have a difficult time envisioning a world without a major, WW III type event within the next 10 years.  American politicians and the American public seem to want it - and whoever starts losing will likely take it nuclear.  If we think pushing around Iraq and Afghanistan is going to be the same as taking on a the second most powerful nation in the world just because their leader won't play by our economic rules...and it's the kind of bogus anti-Russian rhetoric that led to this discussion that foments an acceptance of such an event.

I am sure in a "regular" war the USA can defeat Russia, let alone with the help of the EU.  Putin knows this.  He is showing more restraint than the USA/NATO/EU crowd is.  A war with Russia is a really stupid thing to provoke - so we "win", but at what price?  Remember, a lot of you guys live on the European continent - even if the West wins, very many of you will pay dearly.

I guess because war has become such an abstraction to US citizens, inculcated & conditioned as we are to it...it's something that happens far away while we watch TV and buy stuff we don't need with money we don't have to "stimulate the economy."  Americans seem to think their military is invincible, and it is the best out there, but the funny part is, the strongest defense we have is still those 2 huge bodies of water on both coasts.

I just don't see anyone out there in positions of "leadership" who acts smart enough to not take this down a path none of us common folk want to go.  America wants war, and primarily for financial reasons...God help us all if smarter behavior doesn't soon take hold.

Sorry, I am missing something. Hi fi forum?