Comments on: China as a world economy

By: Macarnie

Macarnie — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:52:53 +0000

Talking of smash ; I hear that Boris , in the company of one of his sons, did a fair job of spiflicating a valuable vehicle which he was ” test driving”. Not really news, but interesting nontheless.

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By: Macarnie

Macarnie — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:59:59 +0000

Since one of the original slang meanings was
“To smash” , the american use of spiflicated, instead of that same word to convey a state of drunkenness ,was not too far a leap.

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By: Jack Ramsey

Jack Ramsey — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:33:29 +0000

I thought spifflicate was a word from the Goons but I found the following on Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words. Could be a hoax. I’m always making up stores about words

http://worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-spi1.htm

The dictionary senses given for this now rather rare word hardly do justice to a slang term that has had several meanings. Its origins lie in the eighteenth century in Britain, though where its first users got it from remains a mystery. The experts hazard a guess that it was probably a fanciful conflation

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By: Will Poyntz

Will Poyntz — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 02:02:01 +0000

“spifflicated”

Has Boris by any chance read one or any of the Borrible Trilogy?

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By: David

David — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:02:39 +0000

Boris’s article is interesting as usual, and i am always fascinated at the humourless element permitting themselves to get all upset about his comments. Boris is similar to Brian Sewell in that respect – a few strategically-placed, controversial [but playful] words, then waiting for the fuse to burn. [I suppose someone, somewhere, will find that distasteful].
Amongst all those very serious issues, the only objection i can raise is about the trifling matter of calling the sport of table-tennis ‘ping-pong’. How does that grab you?

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By: Bryan

Bryan — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 13:53:51 +0000

“it is unlike Mandy to come between a British woman and her knickers” – careful now B, that is likely to draw comparison with your own skills in that department.

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By: markgamon

markgamon — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 10:09:45 +0000

Simon – OK. Fair comment. I was being a bit flippant.

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By: Peter Ellis

Peter Ellis — Tue, 06 Sep 2005 09:41:40 +0000

Boris is wrong about bird flu – dead wrong. Most major outbreaks of pandemic flu have started when a bird strain crosses into humans, including the Spanish flu of 1918 that killed more people than WW1.

And no, it’s not just the elderly with only a couple more years to go that die – Spanish flu preferentially took out the young and fit, most likely due to transmission in barracks.

The lethality of H5N1 flu is currently higher than any previous strain of flu including the Spanish flu. If it alters to become human/human transmissible (and it’s moving that way: look at the incidence graph over time), then there will be a worldwide pandemic, and many many people will die.

We are looking down the muzzle of a gun, with the chance to try and disarm it by stockpiling antivirals and vaccines, and Boris wants to ignore it because hey, it’s only a few foreigners that have died so far.

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By: Simon Holledge at The Skakagrall

Simon Holledge at The Skakagrall — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 14:45:21 +0000

MarkGamon: “The Chinese will grow in economic power for a good while yet. They may overtake the West, just like the Japanese did in their day. . . . Then their lifestyles will catch up . . . Wages will rise, productivity will slow down. . .”

The problem with this scenario is that China has an immense hinterland. Unlike Japan, which is equivalent, very roughly, to two major European countries combined, China has 1.3 billion people. Compare this to Europe which has about 730 million (47 countries according to UN figures).

Production can be shifted from one area to another as China industrializes (in practice from the eastern seaboard to the western interior), but still within China. This is in fact already happening.

If the whole country ever does achieve European levels of productivity, consumption, living standards etc. – as Japan did – our world will be a different place.

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By: Gert

Gert — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 11:03:03 +0000

China and India lack oil. I read an argument that Bush’s main reason for invading Iraq was not so much to get hold of Iraq’s oil, but to prevent China and India doing so, because without it they can’t become Superpowers.

They have, however, signed trading alliances with Russia and Brazil, and IIRC, Venezuela. All based on oil.

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