| Top 10 political leaders of all time? 11:01 - Jun 14 with 9266 views | Ryorry |
Prompted by a question from VT on Shawsey's NZ thread, who would yours be? Leaders of country, party or movement. Mine -
1. Nelson Mandela
2. Mahatma Gandhi
3. Martin Luther King
4. Winston Churchill
5. Franklin D. Roosevelt
6. Keir Hardie
7. Harold Wilson
8. Mikhall Gorbachev
9. Jacinda Ardern
10. Open for choice of wildcards - Greta Thunberg (OK, not politician, but trying to influence all current & future politicians on biggest threat to humankind); Salvador Allende (heroic failure?); Benazir Bhutto (flawed, but then aren't most?); John Smith, the late Labour Party leader.
Although I said "of all time", my own historical knowedge isn't really up to doing that, so I've stuck to 20th & 21st centuries. If Guthers or anyone else wants to bump mine down the list with Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great or whoever, feel free! |  |
| |  |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 21:33 - Jun 15 with 646 views | Ryorry |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 12:26 - Jun 15 by WeWereZombies |
Like Churchill and Mao, he got the job done and was not too fussed who got hurt on the way. But just about everyone around them knew that was the way it was and therefore kept their own council. It is people further away from the top table who suffer the most. I accept that Churchill was not in the game of disappearing rivals in the way that Mao, Stalin, various Argentine and Chilean despots were, not even into the extreme discouragement that Castro and Tito indulged in (I heard a tale about the Tito tactic of moving your desk out of your office and into the basement being imitated by Robert Maxwell except that the guy's desk was put in a lift at Mirror Group).
Will Churchill ever be vindicated over the two to three million deaths that resulted in taking food from Bengal and sending it to Burma and Singapore? The Wikipedia page seems to expand every time I look at it and further charges of complicity on Churchill's part are being laid, also the time frame is shifting from the winter of 1941 to 1943. Other troubling incidents are the bombing of Dublin being allowed to go ahead so that the Luftwaffe did not realise their systems were being interfered with by Bletchley Park and the abandonment of the 51st Highland Division in the lead up to the Dunkirk evacuation; but these have justifications from the point of view of military tactics.
What we can take away from the Bengal famine, rather than the propaganda gift that it was for the Mahatma and other proponents of Indian independence, is the doctrine put forward by Amartya Sen (and that had similarities to the distibutivism ideas of G.K. Chesterton and some other Catholic thinkers) that there is never any need for famine when the mechanics of food distribution can be employed to best advantage. One tragic example is the Ethiopian famine of 1985 which was of a fairly standard level for that state and could have been alleviated with few casualties by normal avenues of aid, however the Marxist dictator (who is said to have murdered Haile Selassie - another name to consider for the list) was so resistant to outside help that over a million died as a result. [Post edited 15 Jun 2020 12:37]
|
You argue for your cases very well. My autumn & winter reading list is growing to impossible lengths!
Will try to get round to t'other thing tomoz/Weds, a bit of wet weather's forecast so should get some inside time. | |
| |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 21:43 - Jun 15 with 632 views | GlasgowBlue |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 20:30 - Jun 14 by vapour_trail |
I had to edit my response in the NZ thread.
I believed it to be a statement of such ridiculousness as to warrant a challenge. But then I remembered not to engage with the op.
For me. Michael Collins. Not well studied in our schools, as is the case with all those we killed. [Post edited 14 Jun 2020 20:35]
|
Michael Collins wasn’t killed by “us”. He was killed by another faction of the IRA.
Edit. Here’s a controversial one that I’ll throw in. Martin McGuinness. Not in the top 10 worldwide but a politician who alongside Trimble and Hume made a massive contribution to achieving peace in Northern Ireland. [Post edited 16 Jun 2020 14:01]
|  |
| |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 13:43 - Jun 16 with 558 views | WeWereZombies |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 21:33 - Jun 15 by Ryorry |
You argue for your cases very well. My autumn & winter reading list is growing to impossible lengths!
Will try to get round to t'other thing tomoz/Weds, a bit of wet weather's forecast so should get some inside time. |
Sorry to pile yet another thing on here but I have just listened to this:
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/studio-b-unscripted/2020/03/big-tech-empire
Also posted this link on Steve_M's Maria Ressa thread but that was before I listened to the interview (48 minutes but all pretty vital) and noted how FaceBook can disappear someone as easily as the best of dictators these days. |  |
| |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 15:25 - Jun 16 with 534 views | Kropotkin123 |
Clement Atlee for introducing the NHS when tasked with rebuilding post-war UK. The population were still on rations, if I remember correctly. An outstanding legacy whose staff are still the pride of the UK today.
Emmeline Pankhurst Organised the UK's suffragette movement, bring the vote to women. Now women all over the country are just as guilty as the men for legitimising this shower of...
Norman Borlaug is probably the most underrated human being to grace this planet. Nobel Peace prize winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal owner. He developed small, high-yield, disease-resistant crops that improved the food security of countries across the world, pretty much ending starvation due to food shortage in India and Pakistan (doubled their yields across five years). Many put the number of lives he saved in the billions.
Just look at Ethiopia's famine in 1984. The World Bank, Rockefeller and Ford Foundation pulled funding of his implementation in Africa in the early 1980s, due to pressure from people who weren't scientific. The result was famine. Borlaug was then later reapproached to help in Africa, tripling the yield of maize. This is why we don't see pictures of famine in Africa like we used to. Food security, green revolution... whatever you think he led, it cannot be exaggerated. |  |
| Submit your 1-24 league prediction here -https://www.twtd.co.uk/forum/514096/page:1 - for the opportunity to get a free Ipswich top. | | Poll: | Would you rather | | Blog: | Round Four: Eagle |
| |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 15:33 - Jun 16 with 531 views | Half_Idiot |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 11:38 - Jun 14 by Ryorry |
My reasons for citing Jacinda Ardern on the NZ thread were that not only does she always seem to make the right decisions (from what I've seen - there may be things I'm unaware of) but for the right reasons. She sets high ethical standards, consideration of the future is a key part of her thinking and she clearly has the ability to empathise with other people living very different lives in very different situations, in spades. Contrast with the uncaring & short-term selfishness of so many UK politicians.
Obviously most of the others on my list were much older, so some might say simply had a longer timespan for flaws to emerge! |
If we did a list of current political leaders it would just be her name repeated 10 times.
From what I've read she is an incredible leader for the reasons you've already stated. |  | | |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 15:38 - Jun 16 with 529 views | GeoffSentence |
| Top 10 political leaders of all time? on 11:39 - Jun 14 by BlueBadger |
Which Cromwell - Thomas or Oliver? |
Got anything against Richard? If you are looking for famous Cromwells he must be right up there |  |
| |
| |
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
