cakehead

1. I agree. It was a flirtation with non-socialist policies that enchanted the party in a bid to get elected. To be totally even-handed, it's much more expensive to re-nationalise than muddle on and politics is the art of the possible, mainly the possible inside three years until election day beckons. 2. I disagree, though it did little to decrease the gap between home owner and non-owner which exercises most people on this board. 3. Completely agree. All such schemes must be brought back in house, another reason why I think the new labour project was one-nation toryism in all but name. 4. Which the tories would also have done. The war illustrates the danger of suppressing dissenting voices in any party. 5. Continued the propaganda coup begun in the 80s of insisting the city is the only wealth creating medium in the UK and without it we'd wither and die. All of which goes to show that if you ignore core beliefs the party is nothing. I hope they've learned a lesson. UKIP is still a party for nutters and has no philosophical framework except a belief in a contradictory and quasi-romanticised nation state.

The French, along with continentals generally, don't subscribe to the home-as-castle nonsense that has lead directly to house prices in the UK. if you have an invading army sweeping through every forty years or so the investment potential of bricks and mortar and the fetish surrounding it isn't quite the same. I never fail to be surprised at British surprise that France and Germany and western Europe as a whole want closer ties. A session at the Imperial War Museum dispels most doubts on the matter.

I've voted Labour at every local and national election for over 40 years because I believe in things like community, reciprocal aid, the most able pay the most and all the stuff that was spun out of existence, if not actually made illegal years ago. Why should I apologise? UKIP is a crank magnet. Its world view is intellectually and morally insupportable and its followers demand simple solutions to complex problems. Hard economic times throw up bad politics as the 1930s shows but I'm confident the UK is not stupid enough to make UKIP anything more than a protest vote for purple faced suburban types.

What a curious, depressing and misplaced analogy. How about London draining the talent that should rightly be spread throughout the country to ensure a vibrant and diverse nation, the home counties being the dormitory for the worker ants who service the nest in the belief they're at the centre of things, the Midlands being the industrial heartland and shire which was ruthlessly dismantled to ensure there was no competing ideology for Britain as a financial service sector, and the North as the intellectual and artistic core of the nation whose talent formed the basis of the world's industrial revolution which the City has pillaged ever since. If Britain was a community, the city would be the Kray twins. As someone who spends a little time in France I would suggest that it is more capable of surviving economic crisis than the UK as it is nearer its self-sufficient agrarian roots. This summer I watched a Norman mayor take a bag of tarmac from the boot of his car to fill a pothole in the road one Sunday in his spare time. The chance of seeing his British equivalent doing something similar would be non-existent, he'd expect the job to be farmed out to tender and if funds weren't available would see the road closed before he'd pick up a shovel.

UKIP will implode long before they become a serious party because senior members won't be able to resist calling northerners clog wearers, the French frogs and people of colour whatever 1970s soubriquet they dream up. In fact their mindset is stuck firmly in that decade, fighting old battles, obsessed by political correctness and generally existing in a hypertensive bubble of Daily Mail bile. A tape recorder left anywhere in the vicinity would stop the whole show.

It's called morality. You look after your hardest fighting allies when the fighting stops.

In my humble whatever, Britain has a duty to commonwealth citizens. The way the gurkhas have been treated for instance, is beyond belief.

House prices in most of the Saddleworth villages suggests it's solid ConDem territory. I can't see Farage's M25 smarm going down well in Delph, though he might get two cheers if he plays the xenophobia card at the Oldham side.

Why does Germany keep coming up, apart from the fact Brits are overly keen on their motor cars?There is no reason why the UK can't compete in domestic automotive, textile and hi-tech industries. If the government were serious about R&D they'd harness it and commit to a manufacturing base to create wealth. As it stands the UK is a dormitory island for firms like Nissan and Toyota and anyone other multi-national who wants to park up for 15 years and take the tax breaks and new road access free and gratis. This is a country who between 1940 and 1943 designed and built a munition arm for european invasion as well as keeping Britain fed and our allies supplied and you're saying we can't make a car or a pair of trousers? If Russia decided to pull the plug on gas, or China no longer found trading terms to their liking we have no plan B for autonomy. We are at the mercy of international caprice.

"In 2003, manufacturing industry accounted for 16% of national output in the UK and for 13% of employment. This is a continuation of the steady decline in the importance of this sector to the British economy since the 1960s, although the sector is still important for overseas trade, accounting for 83% of exports in 2003." Also no figures for how much of that manufacturing is overseas owned. The service sector makes up 73% of GDP. Almost 3/4 of wealth is made up of not making anything. Sophistication doesn't enter into it, we don't make things people want in numbers except pharmaceuticals and aerospace. Hardly a diverse manufacturing economy.

No. Look at a typical Mensa cohort to see a group untroubled by social skills, not to mention aesthetics.

British owned cars, coal, ships, computers, white goods, cameras, spuds? Do tell.

It's astonishing that peak rents have not been tackled before. I recall social security paying for absurdly inflated central London flats in the 70s and 80s and it's continued ever since. The answer is not cultural cleansing but more accommodation at sensible prices, which will spill over into the private rental market and house prices generally.

Or soak up the short terms hits and buy the banks and the city as a main course.

If we pull out of europe they could impose tariffs on UK goods. We could look to the commonwealth but what do we have to trade? The US runs one of the most protectionist regimes in the world and would hang Britain out to dry if times got tough at home. Trade is not the same as import. The grand unification project may be on its last legs, it may not, the fact remains we asked to join the common market, repeatedly, and signed up to its subsequent treaties. I'm no fan of the euro but Farage's policies only make economic sense if we have export commodities other than people and intellect.

I think you'll find it was John Major's election promises that were written on the back of a fag packet because the tories never expected to win and implement them. Europe had nothing to do with a nationalised BR. Domestic railways had taken a century to see the inevitability of a joined up infrastructure and undid them overnight on an ideological whim. In wartime the systems were 'nationalised' because it was clear that was the only way to run a railway efficiently. The amount of public money sunk before privatisation is tiny compared with that since.

Farage blurs the line between a meaningful critique of european waste and gravy training, with xenophobia and rabble rousing. Apart from the minority who concur with his Johnny Foreigner monkey business, he'll never speak to a wider constituency because they see through his veneer of 'common sense' to the tub thumping extremism it hides. Until Britain has a self sufficient manufacturing and agricultural base his position is untenable on an international stage.

The greatest con that was perpetrated was to elide human contentment with the consumption of the products of capital. Progress exists only in the abstract and usually at great expense.

This is what happens when ideology takes over common sense.

Have some more Moore: "I believe that all other political states are in fact variations or outgrowths of a basic state of anarchy; after all, when you mention the idea of anarchy to most people they will tell you what a bad idea it is because the biggest gang would just take over. Which is pretty much how I see contemporary society. We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation – that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice."

You won't need reminding how weird it is to be watching TV and typing responses on a house forum. Just add a Pot Noodle for complete pathology.

Paranoia is UKIPs stock in trade, though they're not alone in the fear and loathing business. The great Alan Moore has it down best. 'Doing research into conspiracy theories for his work on Brought to Light, he came to develop his own opinions on the subject of a global conspiracy, stating that "Yes, there is a conspiracy, indeed there are a great number of conspiracies, all tripping each other up… the main thing that I learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists actually believe in the conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is chaotic. The truth is, that it is not the Jewish banking conspiracy, or the grey aliens, or the twelve-foot reptiloids from another dimension that are in control, the truth is far more frightening; no-one is in control, the world is rudderless."[34]

Not for anti-royalists like Farage. Basil Fawlty was a comedy character, not a role model.

Or press Google and have a proper look.

He's an arsehole.