Verbal

Don't forget ITV and Desire, the oil company that can only discover water and has about £3.15 in the bank for one final drill.

So to sum up so far: we have one meaningless fact.

Women must fall at your feet. Dead.

'What are you? An idiot?'

Kelly was always mine. Never aim too high.

Get lost. But it was aimed elsewhere.

Or (phonetically): ughrub kaffir.

You forgot Indian.

So taxes go up under Thatcher no matter HOW you look at it, and you're relieved? Like so many Thatch-lovers, there's something of the masochist in you, right trousers?

What you would rather have is beside the point - Thatch was the high-tax PM bar none.

At 4.15pm, to be precise.

Attention span of a newt. Still that's better than one or two on here.

Which rather proves my point. Tax take inc NI reaches a peak under Thatch - just at the point when, were it not for the Malvinas, she'd have been slung out of office.

You're on the wrong thread. You're clearly thinking of Dr Who's little investigation.

Healey. Healy at the time was the leader of IMG, the International Marxist Group. If he'd been chancellor, we'd all have axes in our heads.

So can YOU answer tim's point? I've given up with grandad.

Your accent is terrible.

As ANYONE who lived through the dark days of 80s knows all too well, income tax cuts were matched - and more - by backhanded tax rises, in everything from VAT (almost DOUBLED), to national insurance and the poll tax.

delldays é um tolo.

The point I keep coming back to is that tim has highlighted the contrast in government debt between 97, when it was proportionately HIGHER after eighteen years of Tory 'competent' governments, and 07, when it was LOWER after ten years of 'profligate' Labour governments. It rather undermines the received wisdom trotted out repeatedly here and elsewhere...

Compare like with like. Putting the UK economy in the same bracket as Hong Kong - now the 'City' for China - is pointless. If LD's point were to be true, Germany would be poorer than us. A simple response to a singular point.

On that basis, Germany would have a weaker economy than ours.

The credit crunch was a liquidity crisis. Liquidity comes from the international banking system. The banks themselves got hooked like cheap junkies on derivatives. You could have an argument about what 'caused' the sudden flight from derivatives - but not that derivatives and similar financial instruments were piling bad debt on top of bad debt as they spiralled ever upwards in international trades. A bank-stoked bubble. Not one of those links you quote demonstrates the point you keep pushing beneath the surface, that Labour's 'overspending' substantially caused the crisis. So let's get back to tim's comparative point about debt in 97 and 07.

No, not the one which enables you to disappear into voodoo economics, but the comparative point about 97 and 07.

You can't just ignore tim's point though.