Blah Blah

But to the ordinary Greek person living in such a dire economy, an antithesis to the market based capitalism in place, sounds like a good idea. Can't blame them at all for it. It's an interesting scenario. The EU doesn't want Greece to leave the EU because of the market crash it will bring accross Europe. The cost of keeping them in the EU is also high. But Germany should remember the lessons of it's own history. Writing off some of it's debt after WW2 helped it to recover. Some of that debt was written off by Greece herself. I don't see why some of Greece's debt can't be written off with a restructered repayment system that gives her economy at least some chance of recovering. They have to get proper tax enforcement in place etc but it can be done. The alternative is that they leave the EU, get fiscally annexed by Russia, or descend into some kind of civil war, right on the doorstep of the EU.

Agreed rahrah and if ISIS make progress we can expect increasing refugees for some time to come. It's not as simple as that Louisa. Remember Sangatte? These people don't want to stay in France. That's the hard thing to resolve.

Louisa, the French do have plenty of immigrant settlers of their own, mainly from French speaking North African countries. They were a colonial empire too in the past. The French did close those camps at one point and it made not a jot of difference. If people are determined to get to the UK through France, only imprisonment will stop them, and we don't want to go down that road. We are born where we are by accident of birth. The distribution of wealth, faireness etc is controlled by a cartel of a few richer nations. When we sort out that out, we might just create a world where every country has an economy that stops people wanting to flee to somewhere else in the first place.

Don;t know how I came accross this but it's funny. http://home.bt.com/news/odd-news/spoof-video-mocks-womens-football-11363988404862

Could never vote for any offspring of the hideous James Goldsmith.

Not really a footy fan beyond world and european cups, but watched the last few games. The standard certainly seems to be high to me. Enjoyed it so far.

Gotchs Dave. Understand your point now and see what you mean. Agreed Otta. That plus the endless haranging about post election deals and coslitions. Many decent policies were lost under that nonsense.

Economics isn't rocket science Jeremy. It's just politicians and bankers that like to pretend it is.

A bottle of Budweiser

DaveR, it's such a lazy response to label something you disagree with as Liberal denial. You can look back to Ted Heath and James Callaghan and others to see the challenges are the same in all times of economic downturns, and solutions are more about timing than the solutions themselves. You presume that those who didn't vote may have voted coservative? They didn't vote. They abstained. That can absolutely be taken as an anti any party vote. Equally lazy is the champagne socialist label. As partisan as your 'all celebrities are in it for themselves' quote Louisa. Agree with rahrah. And Blair had to take the party where he did to make it electable. You are harking back to an era that no longer exists Louisa. And I hate that as much as you. But until we can make ordinary people put collective gain before individual gain, todays parties will continue down the path of giving selected groups of people what they want, rather than building a fairer economy for all. Part of the problem is that government is now in the hand of the markets. Pretty much every avenue has been tried to increase productivity since the early 70's, and failed. One of the marvels of the modern economy is in how it manages to deliver growth without increased productivity. That's the downside of the success of the takeover era and the subsequent replacement of those raiders by the pension funds. The markets are not taking care of anyone but themselves and shareholders, they have no interest in regeneraton, but our economy it totally dependent on them. The left have to recognise that dependence. So I totally agree with Loz that Labour now have a huge mountain to climb. If they don't regain those Scottish seats they will never have a majority again imo. The Labour party will become totally unelectable if say Corbyn becomes leader. All parties are up against strong market forces and billions spent on lobbying. Ordinary people can not compete with that.

I think you are right and there's no reason why the same system couldn't be successful here. Part of the problem is that the main parties are so used to having it all their way that it seems the art of compromise has been lost. Who says that one party government is the only way to strong government? If you really think about it, the best government is the mid ground when the voting share is so definitively split. Only where radical change is needed do coalitions become ineffective, but there is so little difference fiscally between our main parties at the moment that we don't need to worry too much about that.

That's the precentage of those who voted Loz, not of the entire electorate. http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm Have a look at the chart on that link. Turnout dropped drastically from 2001. And to be fair the 2005 Labour win has similar stats but lower turnout and yet they had 355 seats.

No, electoral reform only offered us AV which is very different to PR. I voted no to AV but would have voted yes to PR. We don't know if the electorate want PR as they were never asked. And timing plays a role in these things too. You only have to look at the Scottish Independence referendum to understand that. Cameron wants to reduce the number of MPs by around sixty. You can bet that the boundary changes required to deliver that will be shaped entirely to the favour of his party (and yes all parties would do that). I think it's time for a system where every persons vote counts. Just because something has always been that way doesn't mean it should stay that way. I sense a growing discontent with our politicians and system. The young are particularly impressive in their understanding of the future awaiting them, and they are in no mood to work and pay taxes to keep the over 65s in pensions and benefits while they can't even afford a pension or house etc. There is an antithesis to the free market selfish consumer individuality, developing in them. And you only have to look at how few of the parties offered any policies aimed at them to see why that alienation is developing.

I accept your point on consistency Loz and don't disgree with it, but any government that gains power by such a low voting share is going to be open to criticism and Cameron did stand up in parliament and say his party had a mandate to govern from the people, to huge laughter from the opposition and me :D

So the campaign against the war and the huge demonstration that followed didn't happen Loz? Wasn't it that attack from the left that led to Blair's downfall? C'mon now. That aside, why would the left criticise a government that pumped money into public services after more than a decade of neglect from the previous Conservative government? That's what the left fights for (amongst other things). Better public services, better wages and equality of wealth for all. The conservatives believe only the free market can provide that but as we all know, the free market has never cared if people get education, healthcare, pension etc. So please forgive me for pointing out that that 23.5% is more remarkable than the usual 35% of a majority government. It's crap and you know it's crap. And to say the other parties all had Ausrity too when none of the other parties were proposing anything on the scale of the Tories is BS too. EVERY other party wanted to abolish the bedroom tax for example, so lets argue that 87.8% voted for getting rid of that heinous piece of legislation for a start. I can list plenty more examples..... Meanwhile the disabled are being hit with a mallet, millions need handouts from charity and foodbanks (caused by tory welfare reform and low wages) and the young are facing never being able to buy a home. In my sector, I have less and less resources and more and more patients in need, a good many of them made ill by hardship and welfare reform. I don't know where you get this idea that the marchers were representing every person who didn't vote tory from. No-one has said that. All that has been said is that the vast majority of the population did not vote for the government we have now got. I didn't go to the March yesterday because I have young children and it would have been too much for them I think, but I absolutely support any voice that criticises the current thinking on who should pay the biggest price to fix the economy. It's all BS anyway. We all take on huge debts to buy houses, to go to university, buy cars or just about anything we want NOW! The Tories were the ones who brought us cheap credit and turned our economy into a consumer retail one. New Labour kept the gravy train going. It's totally hypocritical now to be telling us all that any kind of debt is bad.

But Loz, that poster does have a point. If you look at the political map, the urban areas are overwhelmingly Labour. The vast majority of the poorest and lowest paid live in urban areas. Coincidence? I think not. Our electoral system on the one hand can provide stable governemnt with the mandate of the people but on this occasion it is the government of the few. It's perfectly ok to say that and people will say that everytime Cameron says he has the mandate of the people. Louisa, since when did celebrities stop being human beings and have to absolve themselves of having any views? Z list is your sneer, but you seem to think that fame means not having a voice and not being allowed to take interest in causes that you agree with. Yet another 'us and them' view from you?

Relying on a computer to assess calls is completely wrong imo. It's what happens when public services try to cut costs by taking any kind of decision making away from staff. It means they don't have to know anything and are cheaper to employ. I once had to attend to an injured (traffic accident) woman while passing and someone else called the ambulance. In spite of knowing exactly what to do I got exasperated at the person on the other end of the phone who wanted to ask me a long list of questions. I cut her short, telling her I knew what I was doing and an ambulance was required right away. Now if I had to be forceful in that way, what chance do non medical people have? (Glad to say the ambulance on that occasion arrived within five minutes and the woman made a full recovery). There has to be an inquiry into the system I think. It's not the first time things have gone wrong.

Absolutely awful attack. Personally I find it hard to understand that an 8 months pregnant woman being seriously assaulted would be anything but an emergency for the ambulance service.

Maybe to you, but I really like it!

There's a weatherspoons just up behind sainsburys (Fox on the Hill).

I belong to a union Louisa, and it's affiliation with the Labour party is nothing to fear, really it isn't. Unions perform a very important role in making sure employees aren't totally screwed over. And as someone pointed out above, most of them are not run by firebrands. The work they do is important, most of which is amicable negotiation between employer and union. We don't have to go far back to see what a non unionised country was like. DO you really want a country where all parties are funded by corporations and bankers?

Loz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Blah Blah Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > The highest figure I can find for income lost to > offshore investments and tax avoidance schemes is > > 99bn a year (BBC). > > Though that sounds like the rather made-up figure > by the terribly numerically inept Tax Research UK. > The official figure is ?34bn. Thanks Loz, not easy to find good figures sometimes but it still makes the point that if we are talking about income going offshore, immigrants sending money home is nothing compared to other forms of offshore activity.

The highest figure I could find for money shipped abroad by immigrants is 2.3bn a year (Daily Mail). The highest figure I can find for income lost to offshore investments and tax avoidance schemes is 99bn a year (BBC). Banks facilitate these investments and it is estimated the money involved is 23 trillion per year. So let's talk about that shall we if you are really so concerned about money going out of the economy.

Ok how many British people make investments that are held abroad then. Offshore tax havens? Do they have a negactive impact? Of course they do but the only money going out of the country that you seem to be bothered about is that earned by immigrant workers, many of whom are doing min wage jobs btw. I'm all for a sensible balanced debate, but not one that picks on the usual suspects.