kingsgate

They were always very expensive for lessons compared with everyone else, even when I learned to drive 20 years ago.

Tell him you will do a small claim against him, and then if he won't pay up, go through with it - its really easy on www.moneyclaim.gov.uk. He will then have to pay you (plus the court fee) unless he can successfully defend his actions in throwing away your stuff, which he probably can't

Kids who have gone to private schools seem to do better at most exams, get into better universities etc etc. You state that teachers at private schools "do not need teacher training". Others on this thread have stated similar things, including that the teachers (being unqualified) work for less pay than at state schools. How do people square these allusions to the teachers being so inferior at private schools with the higher results that they apparently achieve? Don't private schools pay more to their teachers? And in fact demand that they definitely know their subjects, in order to teach them well and result in far more of their pupils getting better results?

Why not just let people spend their own money on their kids if they so choose, eh?

People see fascists and commies as great opposites, but they aren't really that far apart. Hitler's lot were not called "National [socialists/i]" for nothing.

Well, then they deserve to go bust then, if three days of bad weather would tip them over the edge.

+1. A definition of "poverty" as being a percentage of the median or average income cannot by definition be a definition of "absolute" poverty, because the definition itself is "relative. That is, someone could be above this "poverty line" one day, and then a few months later, be below it, even though their own circumstances have not changed at all, just because some other people got a pay rise.

I would probably agree with most of what he said.

We could always get back to being more homogenous, if we really wanted. No-one every properly asked the existing homogenous population if they wanted to have the population of Britain massively changed by an influx of people from countries whose own populations had turned them into crap places to live.

Maybe we should be doing some of this here in the UK?

If there is a really serious economic collapse, are these people likely to: (1) have steady jobs (2) be able to borrow money (3) even want to buy a house in those circumstances ? I think that prices will slowly fall, and inflation will gradually unwind people's debts. Unless things to really go titts-up!

I don't think that "they" actually want or are trying to create much further "HPI" (House Price Inflation). They are just trying to stave off a sudden and serious collapse of the housing market. This is not as simple as "thats because they are VIs", although this is a big part of it. Unfortunately, a sudden big crash in house prices would inevitably result in a general "nightmare scenario" for the rest of the economy. Suddenly loads of banks would be revealed as being insolvent with the security for their loans being insufficient, you'd get bank runs, total drying up of any lending (not just mortgages) which would mean loads more businesses running out of cash and going broke, more unemployed, even those who still had jobs would batten down the hatches and stop spending on ANYTHING not essential, which in turn would cause more job losses etc etc. People on here (some of them) wish for a neatly contained and yet major collapse in house prices that conveniently leaves everything else, like their jobs, and the economy generally, pretty much untouched. I think that this is like asking the US Air Force to carry out a "surgical strike" with no "collateral damage". Can't be done.

I also think that things were a lot worse in the 1980s. Things are bad now, and will get worse, but they have been worse before, and for quite a long time, and society did not collapse.

I do understand this. Although this in itself does not justify New Liebour increasing the public payroll by over a million people during their years in power. Lets have another quango! Regional development assembly outreach co-ordinator, yeah why not, its not real money, we borrowed it. What could possibly go wrong? What's that? Oh, now we have to pay it back? Oh, sh1t!

Many of these people are just unproductive, tax-sucking parasites. If people could choose whether to pay for their "services" and were not forced to do so, then I would bet that many more of them would be out of work.