Verbal

So just to be clear, you'd also advocate the banning of Beth Din courts in London - which have been established there for decades.

So out of interest, why are .mac accounts blocked? They are certainly not free.

I recall my main account was rejected - ...@mac.com. I suppose it's done to exclude people without jobs so that the riff-raff are kept out. Not sure that's worked so well.

r.i.p.

Where does this happen exactly? And where is there a single example of sharia law being applied unwillingly to a non-Muslim, or even unwillingly to a Muslim?

Mustn't grumble.

Her burgers are rubbish. I suspect that was the problem.

As a veggie, medditeranean-diet, outdoors-y socialist (sort of), I'm happy that you gout-ridden, pot-bellied, chronically diseased reactionaries are repeatedly having to make regular payments into the health system. Hopefully the 'declining numbers' will look after themselves - and if not, the poorer service and health care in the private sector certainly will.

I've never understood the psychology necessary to support one political party so slavishly. You have to give up all rational judgement and independence of thought so that you can enthusiastically rubber-stamp the latest missive issued by other Party flag wavers. Unless you're being paid by the tories, trousers, how do you do it?

Saintsweb motto.

Bad spellers get charged double.

If interest rates are that low, it's time to take out a hefty loan.

I know. Lovely, isn't it.

Tax them until their pips squeak.

That's right Nick. I (and my lot) really meant it. The questions is: are you one the list or not? Personally, I'd like to add all antique dealers. As long as you're not one of those, you have a good chance.

Agreed - apart from the colossal expense of staying at Furnace Creek, the view across Zabriskie Point at dawn is spectacular.

Not pointless at all. We Marxists are busy compiling lists for who's to be stood up against a wall, and we need threads like this to identify candidates.

If you're short on time you could well give Monterey (theme park Steinbeck), Sacramento (capital/dormitory town), and Beverly Hills (richly dull, dully rich) a miss. The rest are pretty great.

I take it that's a no then? Funny, I was sure you'd be happy.

On the one hand, you can get a sensible answer to this from Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB, now variously president/PM-for-life/kleptomaniac/giver of favours to plutocrats like Abramovich.... On the other, sadly there is a list longer than those who died in the holocaust of those who were committed socialists, and who died for their beliefs, whether in 'Marxist' societies, or in South American or South European fascist dictatorships (Salazar, Franco, the Colonels) - so characterising these people, with their ideals, as 'jealous' and 'resentful' is not entirely fair, is it? It's a bit like damning the people dying in the streets of Hama right now for being selfish and resentful.

It really goes wrong with Lenin, and his notion of The Party as 'the vanguard of the proletariat'. And this is where Putin comes in...

What are you measuring this against though? The public sector in the US is a fraction of the size of that in the UK or the rest of Europe. What in particular is heavily subsidised, apart from farming? (And how is that any less of a subsidy than the proceeds of the Common Agricultural Policy?) A little of the 'low tax' argument is a bit of a myth. Compare your council tax bill, for example, with the $20,000+ you'd pay per annum in state property taxes for a two-bedroom apartment in New York.

Debating your imagined you is more fun, it's true. Saying the Tea Party's 'big reasons' for its existence is cutting government spending is like saying the Nazis came to power to rid Germany of hyperinflation. So I wasn't saying you were wrong so much as that you're being shallow. I hope that makes you feel better.

You still haven't got it right. The Tea Party doesn't exist to 'reduce the size of government'. It's not even one of its 'big reasons'. It exists to do many things, one of which is to take sides in the old feds-versus-states debate that goes back to the Civil War. It wants to wipe out Washington, basically, and return power to the states. The same reasoning, although with different tactics, as that used by Timothy McVeigh. Aside from that, it is importantly an ultra-conservative campaign group on social issues. Where this comes together is in their implacable hostility to welfare and publicly-funded health programmes. I'm sorry if my disagreeing with you has caused you such offence. I just think your characterisation of the Tea Party misses the mark. And to repeat, the bigger issue here is that the problem is private debt, about which the Tea Party is stunningly silent.

That's exactly my point. The Tea Party is a socially conservative, back to the prairie movement, wanting to ban single-sex marriage, abortion and scientific work on stem cells, among many other out-there policies. Calling it an organisation devoted to reducing government doesn't begin to cover it. But my larger point was that the real problem in the US is private debt. If you recall, it almost wiped out the world economy in the property bubble that led to the credit crunch.