D.C.

Another good start would be to insist that shop owners either cough huge amounts of dosh for leaving high street shops empty or they have to lease it to the council on six month terms so that the council can get new small businesses in there. There are tons of empty shops all boarded up and tons of people sitting on the dole queue with talents like photography and tattooing and arts & craft etc. They can't get access to capital to start a business and can't afford the extortionate rates and rents when starting up from scratch. Six months to a year of free shop space on the high street would be enough for a lot of them to get a business started and get their name known with some customers.

It probably is. But you don't actually think the official 'real' inflation figure reflects reality do you? How is that the most expensive thing we will ever buy, a house, was inflating at 25%-50% a year during the height of the boom and yet the official inflation figure was 2.5%? How is it that any proper study (Daily Mail rants don't count) into lifestyle and household expenses indicate that the average working household has been getting a lot poorer over the last 35 years? Pretty simple really, they lie about inflation.

I thought this government was supposed to be all about 'the big society' and individuals taking matters into their own hands? What is wrong with a shotgun marriage at the hands of the father?

On the surface seems fantastic. But wait a minute. The birth rate for white British women is 1.4 children per woman. Turns out that the responsible career oriented middle class feminists aren't preforming their biological duties and if it wasn't for the chav slappers and feckin immigrants we would be undergoing population collapse and eventual extinction. But don't let biology or maths or harsh reality stop a good rant, lets light some Daily Mail torches and burn some whores and harlots! The evil scum! Kill them all, god will know his own!

Poland did it a few years ago because so many Poles came over here. Ireland is about to start knocking down brand new estates of 5 bedroom homes because they can't sell them. (Yes 5 bedroom, they are Catholics, they don't do birth control)

Somebody give this man a blowjob! Finally someone that points out Keynesian policies are very different to Blair/Brown/Bush/Bernake/Bastards beginning with B polices.

easybetman: Joined in 2005 but only has 88 posts. Pops up when there is a mention of China. Can not speak English well enough to pass for a native and makes typical grammatical errors of all Chinese students. Writes glowing reports of the Chinese government at every opportunity. Hello to the Chinese internet police, locked up any Tibetans recently or is it just easier to sterilise them? While your quotes from people's daily and xinhua sound like the Chinese are doing a smashing job, lets not forget that they are both mouth pieces for the Chinese government. Let us also not forget how odd it is that most people in the West see video from Tienanmen square and see a government running over it's own people in tanks and the majority in China read the the people's daily and xinhua and think Tienanmen square was a terrorist atrocity that killed hundreds of poor Chinese policemen. Guess that says something about the quality of the reporting. Back to reality and China is now the biggest supplier of arms to Africa while not providing a penny of humanitarian aid. Still I suppose you did learn that from us, it's just a shame you didn't skip the nasty bits in the history lessons...

Not really, the DNA doesn't hold that to be true. My family & family name came over in 1066, but I have ginger stubble and Viking, Khazak, mongol, jewish high priest and erm welsh genes in my DNA. I'm still a penniless peasant if that makes you feel any better, I think it's the welsh bit

I got to 2003, thought about buying, looked at the accelerating HPI and thought 'WTF?! I'm not buying now, the BofE is going to put a stop to this insanity asap' I didn't account for the government willingly going on a nation destroying bender to avoid a recession...

I wouldn't dismiss the 'common market' so readily, it already exists in an embryonic state and it's called the African Economic Community. They are following an EU style roadmap, but with the addition of regional trade blocks under the large umbrella of the AEC. The African Common Market is scheduled for creation in around 2023, depending on how the individual blocks progress. Don't forget that in the entire span of human history there has never been peace in Europe for more than a couple of years, one bit of us was always waging war against another bit of us, all the way back past the birth of christ and Greek city states. That we have managed 65 years of unbroken peace is truly remarkable, even more so given the huge ideological differences between many of the governments in Europe after WWII. The Americans are a bit schizo when dealing with Africa. On the one side you have the dogooders in the World Bank trying to help development and on the other side you have the IMF who serve only the interests of US ideologues and corporations. Unfortunately the power lies overwhelmingly with the IMF who on good days insist that African nations open themselves up to the free market which promptly results in the collapse of farming/textile industry/ etc/ etc. Or on bad days blackmail entire countries into bending over to get raped by US companies because of a nice tidy bung or job offer. To be fair to the Yanks after slagging off the IMF what they started in Somalia was incredibly impressive. What never gets reported about that adventure is that in the space of six weeks the small contingent that went over had managed to fix a country in the midst of a civil war and famine enough that they could deliver aid to every single area and person in the country. Forget the battle of Moghadishu, black hawk down and killing ten thousand of the enemy in a single day using helicopters and miniguns, before that thet sorted out what was about to become a 80's Ethiopia style famine and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I wouldn't big up the Chinese involvement in Africa too much if I were you, the jobs are all subsistence and the Chinese only ever build schools or roads if the African country pays the Chinese company to do it.

Problem is we can't inflate or QE as the bond market will scream, rates will go up and the housing market will ubercrash as no one will be able to pay their mortgage. Or more accurately, we can't QE until America QE's, but we have to make it look like we are doing less and it is all their fault anyway and not ours.

Minos, I always imagine you as a bloke old enough to have been around in Thatcher's day, (it's the avatar). How accurate is that assumption and where did you spend the Thatcher years? In Wales and a good deal of the North, they didn't appear. What happened instead was local economies almost completely collapsed and multi generational welfare dependency was created.

I think attitudes in most of Africa are changing. The generation enraged by colonialism are mostly dead or dying, the couple of generations that have come after did not know the oppression of the white man, but they are very familiar with civil war and corruption of their own leaders. Rhodesia used to be the bread basket of the world under British colonial rule, now it is a typhoid ridden hellhole that can't feed it's own people. The DRC had it pretty rough under the Belgians (the inspiration for heart of darkness and apocalypse now), it has had decades of civil war and war with it's neighbours but now seems to be pulling itself together. (If you fancy a morally good but high risk investment, the potential wealth of the DRC is staggering, they could make the Saudi's look like paupers). For a good deal of Africa, their only interaction with westerners has been with aid workers or doctors without borders while their own leadership has been murdering them. no wonder they like us! Rather than 'adopt a starving African nation' I would prefer to see power rested from the IMF (who have done a lot of damage to a lot of poor countries), an EU style African trade block that could rival India & China, and a transparent corporate behaviour code to stop the wanton exploitation and corruption that takes place currently.

Oh dear. No government support for industry? That is ok, France, Canada, Singapore and South Korea get the jobs then... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e111258-83de-11df-ba07-00144feabdc0.html Computer games industry hits at tax rethink By Maija Palmer and Tim Bradshaw Published: June 30 2010 03:00 | Last updated: June 30 2010 03:00 Activision Blizzard, the world's largest video games publisher, said the government's decision to scrap planned tax relief for the sector could threaten the company's intention to invest in the UK. "For us to continue to invest in the UK there needs to be an incentive provided for us to do so," said Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard. "The talent pool in the UK is among the best in the world for what we do. But we really need to see some more incentives. We are seeing great incentives in Canada, Singapore and eastern bloc countries," he said. The group employs 700 people in the UK, and owns studios in Liverpool and Leamington Spa that have produced titles such as Blur , a racing game, and DJ Hero , a follow-up to its successful Guitar Hero franchise. This week the company joined Tiga, the UK trade body for games developers, which has lobbied for the tax breaks. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, which employs more than 1,200 games developers and has three development studios in the UK, also said withdrawal of the promised tax relief could affect its plans. "The existing plans will continue, but any further new developments would have to be looked at. Maybe something that was planned for the UK would go abroad now," said Ray Maguire, Sony Computer Entertainment's UK managing director. Mr Maguire said countries such as Malta were considering capitalising on the UK's decision and giving tax incentives to woo games companies. In Canada, games companies can get tax relief of 30-40 per cent on items such as wages. France recently introduced a 20 per cent tax relief scheme for the industry, following which Ubisoft, the French games publisher, boosted its investment. The UK has now slipped from 3rd to 5th place as the biggest global computer games developer. According to Tiga, 44 video game businesses, or 15 per cent of the UK total, closed between July 2008 and July 2009, losing about 1,000 jobs.

PS just for a bit more info on the games industry: It has currently been contracting at a rate of 15% a year as companies relocate to the far east. There was a plan for special tax relief in the works, but Osborne scrapped it in the budget...

Please don't take my comment as a defence of NuLabour, it wasn't, I didn't mention them at all, it was a critique of the current bunch (who I voted for). I had hoped that the Tory leadership had matured enough to admit that last time round they were saved by oil and not ideology and I had hoped that the liberal part of the coalition would have sufficient teeth to hold back the ideologues to produce good policies. Unfortunately they seem to be trying to out Tory the Tories instead. Seriously where do you think these 2.5 million jobs in the private sector are going to come from? The much vaunted games industry, the shining star of the modern British economy employs a grand total of 13,500 people in this country. What exactly are we going to do in the space of five years to add the equivalent of 185 games industries?

Well, here is the thing about our wonderful system. The birth rate of white British people is about 1.4 children per woman. The large families popular with immigrants drag the birth rate upto 1.8 children per woman. Still below a 2.1 replacement level. The thing is, we have created a system where people believe they must be responsible before they have kids. So they go to uni, get a career, spend 18-30 in a drunken haze clubbing and put off getting married until they can afford to borrow £20,000 to pay for it. Put off having kids until they can afford a house, can't raise kids in a rented flat, too unstable. Eventually some might make it and get on the housing ladder, but then realise they need 2 fulltime incomes to make the mortgage repayments. Best put off kids for a little bit longer. All this means that when a vast number of women decide it is the right time to have kids they discover that 3.5 billion years of evolution hasn't quite caught up with the demands of feminism, the free market and binge drinking and nature says you left it too late, you are barren and childless. So if you insist that the chavs become more middle class and responsible birth rate of white British women would probably fall to about 1 - 1.1 children per woman, leading to societal collapse in a few decades.

It's better than that. In the West Midlands (the traditional home of industry and birth place of the industrial revolution), over the last decade it has been the only area to consistently lose private sector jobs. Yup, even during the boom years, the collapse of manufacturing meant that the total number of jobs private sector jobs in Birmingham fell by 60,000. When the recession hit, the West Midlands then lost more jobs than any other area in the UK and now has the highest unemployment rate in the country. Local manufacturers are still going to the wall and laying people off despite the drop in the pound and yet apparently the private sector manufacturers are going to create a couple of million jobs by becoming an export power house. They will do this all on their own as the government doesn't believe in doing things like giving loans to Forgemasters. This government is going to be an absolute disaster, there is no oil to bail them out and unless Chinese & Indian workers start getting paid £30,000 a year, there is no way manufacturers are going to save the day.

Not quite that simple is it? Wages for the poor may have risen 25% (woohoo!) But the cost of housing has risen 300% The cost of public transport 200% The cost of fuel 100% The cost of food 75% So the poor are not wealthier, they are poorer. They just have bits of paper with a bigger number written on them.

The 'natural state' of 8 million starving people is to be taking food from the obscenely wealthy living next door, who 'generated' their wealth by exploiting the poor. This is usually accompanied by a guillotine for the wealthy.

HPC isn't being engineered. Being engineered implies creating something unnatural, that would exist normally. Like engineering a watch. Or spending vast sums of money to prevent a house price crash in the middle of a depression caused by an epic house price boom. It is not really engineering they are doing, it is accepting that reality is unavoidable, no matter how much money you try to steal from your children and grandchildren to pretend it is.

Have you read Wealth of Nations of Das Kapital recently? Adam Smith and Karl Marx entirely agree with you.

Didn't this happen a few years ago? Let me just check my history for dummies book, oh yes. We get Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Thank goodness that could never happen again it's not as if in the last two months: Communists burning down banks in Athens Berlusconi praising Mussolini in Italy to ingratiate himself with the far right Wilders PVV party in Holland now the third largest party after tripling their seats Leader of Jobbik sworn into parliament in Hungary wearing his illegal Hungarian Guard uniform Far right gets 45% of the vote in Austria There may well be a black out in the mainstream media but that doesn't mean everything is rosy in euroland. Any of you realise just how much violence was going on in Greece? It's starting to look like Baghdad with all the bombings. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE65O0KD.htm June 25 (Reuters) - A bomb blast at the Greek ministry in charge of police could be an ominous show of strength by militants in a nation suffering austerity cuts that have sparked street protests and scared off tourists. Here is a timeline of major attacks in Greece since 2009: Jan. 5, 2009 - Soon after the police shooting of a teenager in December 2008, gunmen linked to the Revolutionary Struggle group seriously wound a 21-year-old policeman guarding the Culture Ministry in Athens. They said the attack served to avenge the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The Revolutionary Struggle emerges as Greece's most serious domestic security threat since the dismantling of the November 17 guerrilla group in 2002. Feb. 3 - Left-wing guerrillas from the Rebel Sect group attack a police station in Athens. Two weeks later, gunmen fire at least a dozen shots outside a private TV station. No one is injured in either attack. March 4 - Arsonists throw gas canisters and firebombs, causing a fire which seriously damages the Piraeus Bank <BOPr.AT> branch in the northern Athens suburb of New Psychico. March 11 - Revolutionary Struggle says it carried out two bomb attacks at Citibank <C.N> branches in Athens, one outside the headquarters on Feb. 18 and the other, outside a Citibank branch in Athens on March 10. March 13 - A bomb explodes near Athens central police headquarters. The leftist urban guerrilla group Popular Will later claims responsibility. May 12 - A powerful bomb wrecks a Greek Eurobank <EFGr.AT> branch in the outskirts of Athens. There are no injuries. Revolutionary Struggle claims the bombing. May 20 - A time bomb goes off outside the office of a Greek investment company, damaging the central Athens building. Popular Will says it planted the bomb. May 19 - Two bombs explode at Greek police stations under construction. The leftist group Fire Conspiracy Cells claims responsibility. June 17 - A Greek anti-terrorism policeman is killed in Athens. On June 22, Rebel Sect claims the killing. July 11 - A bomb explodes at the home of former deputy minister Panagiotis Hinofotis in Athens, causing damage but no injuries. Fire Conspiracy Cells claims responsibility. Sept 2 - The Athens bourse is struck by a bomb causing extensive damage, but it opens for trading at the usual time. Revolutionary Struggle later claims responsibility. Oct 27 - Two gunmen on a motorcycle launch an attack outside a police station in Athens, wounding six Greek police officers and a passerby. Feb 16, 2010 - A bomb explodes outside the Athens offices of JP Morgan <JPM.N>, the second largest U.S. bank by assets, causing minor damage. No group has claimed responsibility. March 19-20 - Makeshift bombs explode outside a police detention centre, the home of a leading member of the Pakistani community in Greece and the far-right, nationalist Golden Dawn group in Athens. Fire Conspiracy Cells later said it was behind all three small attacks. March 29 - A 15-year-old boy is killed and his mother and sister injured after a bomb exploded outside a building belonging to an association for business management in Athens. April 11 - Police arrest six people suspected of belonging to Revolutionary Struggle. Prosecutors have charged them with participating in bomb attacks, participating in a terrorist group, attempted murder, and other crimes. The accused have denied any wrongdoing. May 13 - A bomb explodes outside the Korydallos prison, Athens' main prison, injuring two and damaging shops and homes. May 14 - A bomb goes off at a courthouse in Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki. No one is injured. June 24 - An aide to the Civil Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis is killed in a blast at the minister's office. A wrapped package had exploded in the aide's hands on the seventh floor of the building.

Odd that the Poverty Tsar seems obsessed with finding ways to make the poor more poor.

They shot the 'purest form capitalism' thing in the foot by bailing out wall street who then used the money to pay themselves record bonuses.