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Today, you have had on the bbc website "Beckham poised to miss World Cup"

Clearly the fact that Beckham is going to miss the World Cup is considered a pejorative based on the reading of your reports and their tone. So why is Beckham 'poised' to miss the world cup? "Poised to miss..."

Poised to miss or poised to succeed?

Wow! You employ stupid people! I know eight year olds who can point out how bad that front page bbc website english is.

Really, really stupid people are the ´óÏó´«Ã½ these days.

You have the most amazing remit and funding policy and yet are filled with mediocrity. You should be ashamed. Stephen Fry does not give you carte blanche to fail everywhere else.

daniel

People tend to avoid reality. BRIC are nations that were primarily poor. The big business of the West saw the opportunity to produce products at lower wages taking advantage of these populations as it had done with the poor in the West, only cheaper. Production moved from the West to the BRIC. The bankers decided to provide something close to a death blow when they colluded to rob the West after having financed the movement of production to other lands. It is all very simple. Production follows cheap labor and bankers betray everyone. New ideas are needed or the slow transition of world leadership will continue. The current flock of politicians in all parties are the same old tired group fighting over who will make their friends rich and not producing any fundemental change that is needed. The people in power will lead to nowhere, they can't see beyond their own well-being.

The term was probably first used some twenty years earlier when writer Stefan Zweig published 'Brazil - Land of the Future' in 1941.

Countries that have the political will to act will reap the rewards of economic growth. The UK and US are in political turmoil with banking and big business interests holding economies hostage has they try to maintain their advantages in the political arenas of those countries. As the conversatives attempt to shift blame the liberals want more controls over banking. The countries with strong leadership can make deals with banks that are always looking to lend money if the profits look good. Brazil will not be subjected to exceptionally high interest rates as the banks are looking for a foothold. Cheap labor is the path of business and Brazil may have the modern infrastructure and cheap labor force to be attractive to business. As Europe and the US fight battles that can't be won South America and Asia stand ready to make deals. It is like the cotton trade in the US during the Civil War. Egypt began growing cotton and when the war ended the market for the Southern states cotton was gone. Until Europe and the US can control the banks they will be held hostage to giving banks money that should be allocated to new infrastructre and things that will support a growing economy. The politics in both places are self-defeating, yet continues.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Brazils agricultural abilities, afterall there was a bbc documentary fairly recently that went in to it, i forget the name.

Apprently brazil produces a lot of food so much in fact that the sugar cane they use to pretty much power every car in the country only uses up 3% of there total annual crop. Farming is massive in Brazil on a scale even the US can't match. If ever there was a global catastrophy brazil could feed and provide fuel for its people for a millenia.

@2 GhostOfSichuan - I think you've hit the nail on the head. The BRIC countries largely benefited from exploitation of labour for the benefit of the west.

Still, I do believe the potential available in Brazil from the vast resources available to it (albeit being plundered at questionably high cost to the environment!) makes it a well-deserved member of the BRIC group. Every country in BRIC brings more than just cheap labour - notably India with it's intellectual contribution in terms of tech etc. I believe the cheap labour was the catalyst for growth rather than the exclusive factor for it.

Anna Sempe,

The intellectual captial of India is cheaper than in the West. Call a support line for a technolgy product and you are probably talking to someone in India. The media presents countries from the hotels of the reporters and the financial interest of the media organization itself. India and China for all their gains still have substantial populations of very poor who have not benefited from the progress. There is discontent in both countries because of the consolidation of wealth and the fact that both governments were established to redistribute the wealth and raise all classes, which of course has not happened as those in power and their families have been the primary beneficiaries.

Brazil – land of the future.

I have lived in Brasil for some time now, and I am concerned that this potentially great country will miss the boat, ‘big-time’.

Whereas China and India have developed/are developing market-based cultures to operate competitively in the international sphere, I see Brasil’s international competitiveness based largely on exporting base-products such as metal ores and foodstuffs. These go mostly to China and the US to help them transform and produce secondary products.
Brasil is not a country taking international markets by storm and using the funds produced to create step-changes in education and infrastructure. It just happens to have a lot of raw materials at a time when the big players need them

The Brasilian President, known as ‘Lula’, has just signed the legislation removing the laws of land-ownership in favour of peasant ‘squatting’. He has also introduced into law a raft of additional very left-wing acts designed to destabilize the developmental balance that he took as his legacy from a previous government. These acts he signed saying that he did not read them first. Thus he remains responsible yet not responsible for the chaos that is in the offing. Still, no matter, he cannot stand in the upcoming elections; the strategy is to make the incoming coalition and president have political and practical headaches unpicking the mess that he has placed us in. Should a left wing coalition get in with his PT as the lead-party, his protige, Dilma, will already have the legislative tools in place to complete the swing to the far-left. Venezuela and Cuba seem to be the model of choice; which does not bode well for the evolution of the private-enterprise culture that is so necessary for Brasil’s further BRIC development.

Brasil is ridden with corruption at all levels of governance, but particularly in the higher echelons. To advance in commerce and industry in Brasil is to pay the piper, and the amounts we are talking about are truly vast.

This is a great country but grossly under-educated, largely unsophisticated – right up to the highest in the land, and sorely in need of a ‘Great President’ in the FDR mould. My fear is that the unsophisticated will vote for passion over substance, and the door will close once more on Brasil’s First World aspirations.

If Brasil has in fact achieved 'much more effective cultural assimillation' then it is most likely because multiculturalism has not been a public policy since if equal weight is given to incomers' cultures as what is already there then the gravitational dynamic for cohering and unifying assimilation is removed. If there is no clearly delineated and encompassing boundary then there can no centre either.
Alistair clearly prefers the predominantly monocultural assimillation model to the community equivalences model of US and UK.

Dear jacmak,
could you write your posting No. 9 again, but this time in simple English.
Despite a lifetime in the higher reaches of the UK educative system, I am unclear about what you are trying to say.
Geoff.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

I grew up in Brazil and all I can tell you that the fundamentals of that country are very strong. Unlike USA, UK the population pyramid is very favourable (wide from bottom and thinner from the top). Western nations and Japan are bound to face a catastrophic aging baby boomers without enough younger workers to support them.

Drug/mafia is undoubtedly the biggest threat to the country. Additionally the country lags behind the number of Tech workers it produces when compared to India. But luckily it is in the same timezone as USA therefore it will become a more desirable outsourcing destination for service jobs as well.

Brazil produces so much food that it can support some tiny nations along with it's own appetite. If political corruption is controlled, it will fix both drug problem and overall safety of the society.

There must be a certain pride about being part of a country that is built of smiles and dancing. I know it sounds like a fairly simple breakdown of the situation, and I also understand it's not all rainbows and apple-pie on the South American continent, but there has to be something said for attitude.

As a first experience in a new country I wouldn't put Joe Bloggs infront of a foreigner to have them understand our country, and rightly so. More than likely we'll have to file a report ina small claims court for verbal abuse if nothing worse.

The Brazillians have a way of inviting those who smile into their ranks. It'd be very difficult to class yourself as an "English " when the terms seem to clash so much.

In short: attitude.