Whitey Grandad

Replace 'best' by 'worst' and I suspect you will have a lot more answers. I suppose it all depends on your point of view.

I'm no more a tory than a labour luvvie. In many hours of discussion with our north american friends I seem to be a social democrat, along with most other europeans who were present. There is a place for government and there are services which only a central government can provide, but what we have now is overgovernment and at an horrendous cost, probably by a factor of 2.

... discuss. I don't know, give us a clue.

Good for you! I used to play in the Southampton chess league many years ago. It's a brilliant way to spend an evening and very cheap. I used to find that a pint of beer would often help my attacking instincts. I never would have believed that 2 and a half hours studying a chessboard could be so relaxing but it totally clears all other thoughts out of your head. There was a school in an american city that introduced chess lessons for its pupils and found that it was a great aid in getting them to think ahead and plan what there were going to do. I would encourage you to look around for a local chess club who would be delighted to accept you, no matter what level you play at. Good luck and have fun.

Does full employment mean that evey mother has to go out to work? It was Harriet Harman who said that 'mothers who don't work are a problem'. We are all treated as 'economic working units' who, if we're lucky and do as we're told might just be allowed to keep a little pocket money for ouselves, and perhaps a cup of tea on Wednesdays.

Oh please. They've been in long enough now that they can't pin the blame on anyone else.

The decline of manufacturing has accelerated considerably under the last few governments, who happen to have been Labour.

In America it was Clinton who 'encouraged' the banks to lend money to the 'poor' so that they could buy houses. The rest is history. Economically we have sufered far more from the recession than the rest of Europe.

[quote=Fuengirola Saint;643009 Market forces eh? Is that the same market forces that almost forced the collapse of the banking sector? Could you answer me if the market is so ****ing great why has it needed billions upon billions of government bailouts across the globe to keep it going? Could you tell me why it´s ok to privatise profit but nationalise losses i.e RBOS,Northern Rock,GM,AIG Fanny Mae etc In Britain that has been as a result of this government's obsession with the banking and financial sector and the mistaken idea that it makes money (or used to). It doesn't. It only creams some off the top from the true 'wealth creators', i.e. the manufacturing and trading sectors. The public and service sectors are secondary areas which depend entirely on the former.

Those struggling to earn some money are worried about their wallets because money keeps being stolen from it to subsidise other members of society - and I don't mean the rich because there simply aren't many of them about, unless you mean those in the public sector.

Let's not confuse the wealth of the owners with the wealth of the club.

It's the most simplistic and stupid idea that I have ever heard of. To somehow think that making employers pay more will mean that lower-paid workers will be beter off. It just exports jobs in the manufacturing sector to countries with lower labour rates. In my business we use a lot of piece-rate outworkers and we have to pay them 25% more than the average time for the job to make sure that nobody receives less than the average rate. Work that one out! But in all honesty the benefits system has more effect than the minimum wage in that it sets a platform below which it is not worth going out to work. If benefits pay more than 37x the hourly minimum wage then nobody is going to take the lowest paid jobs.

So you don't expect to win, then?

Quite correct but the figures for incapacity benefiters at the moment are far higher than they have ever been.

There's not much good spalshing the cash in the summer, we ned to have a settled team way before then so that we can hit the ground running at the start of next season.

I remember it up to then as a time of closed shops, restrictive trade, inefficient companies, but the changes were absolutely necessary. You try opening a coal mine now and see if you can get anyone to work in it. Look, if you tax people for making money then they'll stop doing it. Then there's not enough for funding the essential public services. The trick is to set the right levels to maximise the revenue without stifling economic activity and at the moment we are way too far in the wrong direction.

I think you'll find that that is in dispute and subject to a court case. You're either in administration or out of existence, I'm afraid.

Are you on a promise? (Crap day though)

How about long-term sickness benefit? How many on that these days?

I'm looking forward to it already. From now on we shall finish in a higher position every season, and I haven't said that for a long while.

Not doing what he was told?

And what was wrong with the 80s? We have been going steadily downhill since then and the state has been taking an increasingly large share of what we all produce as a society with horrific results. But that is not the main point. If people cannot take risks and earn the rewards in this country then they will go to others where they can. I discussed this once in a private meeting with Nigel Lawson when he was chancellor, and he said that the idea is to encourage people to stay in Britain and pay taxes here. Oh, and the relatively rich are taxed more even with a flat tax, but why on earth should they? Should they pay more for a loaf of bread?

Oh FFS. I bloody well hope note. Have we learnt nothing from the last few years?

No no no. It doesn't work like that. Rich man pays less tax, spends more money. Rich man spends it more wisely than the government. Money is made 'round' to go round. Everything works more efficiently. There is an 'optimum' tax rate at around 20% which maximise the total tax take for the government. Anything above that is pure political spite.

BBC have now corrected the score