EUBanana

I think thats what Uncle Joe said.

I think there should still be a Commons elected by universal suffrage, but an upper chamber that uses some radically different approach seems like a very good idea to me. I'd be in favour of at least some of them (like, 50%) by lot. Appointment would be the very worst option, unsurprisingly thats the one Labour control freaks like! And election would be redundant.

The ancient Greeks knew a hell of a lot more about democracy than we do...

For some reason this thread reminds me of this :- http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/my-epenis-bigger.php

They are toast. Rejoice! Rejoice!

Oh, I f*cking detest this attitude. I'm sorry, but my future house is more important than your middle class view, or what you see out the car window when driving down the M4. And its crap anyway, 90% of Britain is undeveloped. Think about what you are saying. You are saying that, in a free market, more houses would be built than currently are - that there is demand, and that, assuming there was no restriction, more people would be housed. You are furthermore saying that the government should intervene here - using force, as thats what the government does - and prevent that from happening. Therefore denying people homes that, in a free market (ie a market devoid of government force backed interference) would be provided. And for what? Your view? I find that view repugnant in the extreme - forcing people out of the housing market, to protect your quaint middle class idea of what Devon (where I live) should look like. Have you got a house already, I wonder? I think you must have, to think like this.

Well, I'm not all that sanctimonious. I've been on benefits before but never for very long - I think 3 months was the longest stretch. Which is a fair while but not the 2 years long term type stuff.

If your atrocious capitalisation is anything to go by I imagine you'd be the last to know.

I assume PE teachers get paid the same as any other teacher, so I would assume they are not on benefits. It is? I remember my old rugby coach. Girls work, it was not.

Well, there was a lot of pub time as well... A /lot/ of pub time. Happy times!

And I thought he was a landlord?

I'm sure it paid for a roof over his head? Or you saying he was on benefits as well?

Not me, I love sitting at home all day. In fact, last job I chose to work part time, 3 days a week, just so I could sit at home as much as possible. Work to live, not live to work, thats my motto!

Not at all, its quite laudable actually, assuming he's already worked as a PE teacher, and has lived the life of 55k a year, and still chooses to be a PE teacher. Why on earth is that 'sad or what'? I can only assume you're some sort of weird control freak, who feels uncomfortable in a world populated by something more than clones of yourself, who have motivations unfathomable to you.

Hardly. They can... not claim benefits. Then they don't have to do anything.

The problem is mainly with political parties it seems to me. Its the same in the US, its the same in continental Europe, its the same here. Whatever (modern) constitution you have, our one, the US one, that of Holland etc., it is parties that have power. In every single one the issue is party control. PR, first past the post, whatever system you choose, it will not be 'more democratic' if the party machines run everything. In fact I think PR is actually less democratic as it practically removes the electorate from the equation altogether. In this country PR would mean that we would have zero control over who governs us. In practice it would be the Liberal Democrats who would be the ones choosing either Labour or Conservative. Why people think thats an improvement I have no idea.

For those who liked Threads, IMHO this one is even worse. Its earlier, from the 60s, and more documentary in style. A docu-drama? Enjoy! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3247573482818086914

Actually, no, I'm advocating axing the tax and letting the market find the true price. I wouldn't deliberately price out anybody. Thats hardly "socialist". I think it shows how atrophied political awareness is in this country when what is effectively an anarcho-capitalist argument gets confused for socialism! The government attempts to reduce consumption by heavy taxation, ie, pricing out the poor so they don't buy any. Someone who is minted probably couldn't care less about paying £30 a week or whatever on fuel. This is interventionism in the name of some abstract goal, ie environmentalism. It is ill thought out, authoritarian and grossly unfair to boot. It is the very definition of socialism.

a) I don't believe that politicians (who charge the taxpayer to fill up their Mercedes') have the right to socially engineer poor people into avoiding using oil so they can keep it going for the rich a little while longer. This is, bluntly, what taxing oil does. They could ban fuel inefficient cars if they are worried about rich people going around in a gas hog. Not that I would necessarily support that either, but they could. How much time can a rich person spend driving around anyway? Nope. Its about pricing out the poor. I find that despicable. I don't believe people are effectively socially engineered into avoiding using oil anyway. Wake up and smell the coffee, people don't drive around because its fun, or because they are lazy, people drive around because they /have to/, most of the time. The government likes taxing oil because they can argue its moral, but social engineering is not only immoral anyway (see a)) but it doesn't even really work. We have the most expensive petrol in the western world, yet people still use a lot of fuel. c) We are one small country in a very big world. Even when you consider that we are a developed country and use a disproportionate amount of oil, the UK's impact is pretty small. China and the US don't give a flying f*ck about ecologically friendly oil taxation. You think gas tax in the US on the scale it is here in the UK is ever going to fly? Nope. When the Third World industrialises, as they are slowly doing, they won't care either. So not only is it immoral and largely ineffective, but what effect it does have doesn't impact our 'long term prospects' even remotely. If they wanted long term prospects maybe they should start hoarding oil, so we have a national oil reserve - something the US has already done. The great helmsmen running (ruining?) our lives don't do that either. d) If oil cost £1 a litre without any tax on it at all, then all the arguments for tax fall over dead straight away. Presumably, because the government has currently rigged petrol to cost £1 a litre or thereabouts, this is the 'correct amount', the amount you support, the amount which is appropriately geared to protect our future interests and the environment. Therefore if petrol costs £1 a litre without any tax, presumably this is still the correct amount, and so there is no need for tax to make it £5. In any case this thread is about Doomsday, about our economy catastrophically failing because oil prices spiral out of control. I am pointing out that they would have to do way more than double for this to happen. The price would have to go up by about ten times. This is going to take quite a while to happen, IMO, and oil prices that high would encourage the development of presently uneconomic sites. Doomsday from lack of oil may well still arrive in the end, but it happening soon is bunk. If it happens soon its because the government is clinging to its tax share.

Oh I quite agree. But lets not blame peak oil. This is smokescreen and ********, IMHO. Its the scumbags in Parliament who are 100% to blame. They and their state funded mouthpiece will witter on about peak oil, and how Royal Dutch Shell is screwing us, while taxing oil to the tune of 400%. They may well need that money to pay for their other f*ck ups, incompetence, corruption, voterigging and the rest, but its still /their/ fault, and not much to do with the problem of oil being a finite resource. Its expensive not because oil is running out (even though it is running out) but because of the government. I'm not an anarchist but looking at the UK government in all its invidiousness means I could understand why people might choose to be!

...or. They could just cut tax. So much fat in the public sector thanks to Gordon, most of which is utterly unnecessary. Sure it is a good point, the point is that we feel poor and petrol seems expensive to us not because of peak oil, but because of punitive levels of taxation. At its true price, with the tax cut out, we wouldn't be feeling the pinch until the last well runs dry, probably. Incidentally because of the way its geared, if the price of crude oil quadruples tomorrow, unless the f*ckers put the tax up in line with it (they would likely at least try - I remember them bitching about profiteering oil companies being to blame during the petrol protests, when anybody with half a brain knows who the real profiteers are) then the price at the pump would be about £1.50 a litre. Think that over when muttering about peak oil and how we're doomed.

Given 4/5ths of the price at the pump is tax, they have zero excuse to let oil price skyrocket so much as to cause real hurt to people. If they reduced the tax in line with oil price rises we'd be sitting pretty until the price of oil hits around $500 a barrel, at which point they wouldn't be taxing it at all.

I thought you'd like this one. Its a bit old though. http://www.tocqueville.com/brainstorms/bra...orms.php?id=142

As much as I would love this to be an issue - is it not a) a tiny sum of money in the great scheme of things, and simply a normal part of the banking system? According to the article a much greater sum of money was lent out some time ago, that didn't provoke news.