Mr Jib Fingers

Ok fair enough about the money comment. What would you like him to do to atone for having gone to a posh school? I can never quite get my head around what exactly the problem is.

Why do the Scots hate Cameron so much? I understand them hating Thatcher because of the poll tax and the fact they blame her for the end of heavy industry, but what exactly has Cameron done to make them so angry? Only gave them a couple of grand extra each every year? Or is it because he's English and went to a posh school?

And yet this wouldn't be allowed in the food industry. Why bring up the US system when it has already been pointed out to you that it is a state run cartel rather than the free market system that you're arguing against? At least try and read the posts of people you are branding nutters first.

If you think housing is completely privately run and not completely screwed up by the government land monopoly then you can't have been paying much attention on here. Private housing worked fine until the government started laying down restrictive planning laws. Yes anyone can grow their own food, but hardly anyone does so that's not really relevant is it. I think you need to at least take on board the fact that the private sector creates a good working market for food. Just pointing out pretty irrelevant differences to shout down a valid point isn't particularly convincing. If there had always been a National Food Service then I'm sure you'd be on here arguing that it is impossible for the private sector to provide something as good.

Who can forget the Europe wide ban on the 2CV, that caused quite an uproar at the time I seem to remember. I think in hindsight they would have been better to just have allowed the market to phase them out gradually as newer and better cars became available.

I live in Central Portugal, quite near Coimbra in a small town. I just bought a large four bedroom place with a large garden for 27.5k Euros which needs a fair bit of work. Have spent about 10k on it so far and it is liveable. You can rent a decent three bedroom house for about 250 Euros a month. If you move further away from the coast the prices are even cheaper (Guarda is incredibly cheap, but is very remote indeed and as cold as Britain due to altitude).

Completely agree. Massive increase in size and scope of the state, massive government intervention in the markets, benefits extended to millions of middle class families, more difficulty in planning permission, more regulations than ever for ordinary people, huge government spending and deficits. You can't get more right-wing than any of that. Seriously though, defining anything you don't like as "right-wing" (ie. bank bailouts) means that you can also discredit the good parts of it (such as the desire for a more free market) through intellectual dishonesty. A real right-winger would have let the banks go bust, or at least regulated them properly. People forget that the banking boom was centrally planned by Eddie George in cahoots with Gordon Brown: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/exgovernor-george-says-bank-deliberately-fuelled-consumer-boom-28524833.html Why did Brown want to do this? Firstly to keep the economy booming for his own personal gain whilst waiting for Blair to step aside and also because he wanted more money to splurge on public services and generally buying votes. To restrospectively try and brand this action as a form of Thatcherite neo-liberalism is complete and utter nonsense.

Completely agree. There's always the use of memes by the statists as an excuse to get yet more power. Words like neo-liberalism, trickle-down economics or Thatcherism trying to shift blame from distortions of the market caused by the state to the "free market" using intellectual dishonesty.

They don't just empty the bins, they do a lot of administration as well. Those fat pensions need a lot of looking after and of course they need to make sure everyone pays their council tax on time.

Well this shows that austerity clearly doesn't work! Oh hang on they've had more stimulus and bailouts then everyone else put together.

I believe that a lot of them were used as a way for getting people into the country. They gave working visas to those who wanted to work in fast food places, although I think they might have changed the rules recently.

Some kids just don't suit the school enviroment and learn better being out there doing stuff than locked up in a room being bored to tears. I know I was one of them. The main problem is most stuff they can do is artificially restricted so they have no hope of doing anything without the right piece of paper. They can't buy some land and learn how to build their own home like a few boomers I know did at 16, it's just not allowed these days.

I think most people who don't want to tax more of those at the top also think that having marginal rates so high at the bottom is ridiculous.

There's not enough houses where people want to live, so more need to be built there. It's pretty simple and it is amazing the mental gymnastics people will go through to try and make it sound like a bad idea.

The housing market isn't deregulated in the slightest. If it was then people could build on their own land and the situation would be far better than it is currently. When you've got a state shaped hammer, every problem looks like a nail.