donkey

That's right. If I don't like the service on a bus route provided by First, I charter a helicopter.

Too right. Keep driving down wages and working conditions, and before you know it we'll be able to compete with Bangladesh in textile manufacturing. It's the way forward. The rot started setting into this once great nation after they banned child labour.

That is the problem with this country. Everyone thinks they are entitled to some kind of a life. The purpose of your existence is to make British industry competitive (otherwise known as working for sod all to make the rich even richer than they are already). Bring back victorian values!

Jolly good idea! Bring back slavery. That would make British industry competitive and reduce crime in one fell swoop! I don't know if the public are ready for such radical conservatism just yet though.

Yes, just because G4S almost single handedly scuppered the olympics is no reason to go jumping to any conclusions. I hear they are much better at organising the beating of incacerated asylum seekers and evicting people from the West Bank to make way for illegal settlements. How comforting to know they are now submitting tenders to run public housing in the UK. Imagine how efficient It is going to be! And then there is A4E. Such a caring company! Just because eight of their executives were arrested for fraud doesn't neccessarily mean they aren't doing a good job. For all we know, con artists might be very good at getting unemployed people into work. I love the private sector. It is just so soulful. Especially the companies with two capital letters and a 4 in the middle.

The old privatisation = results fairy story. Is that why we now have the most expensive railways in Europe? Never mind that the actual evidence on the ground contradicts the theory. Just keep repeating the mantra. Privatisation brings efficiency...Privatistation brings efficiency... Privatis... As if the more it is repeated, the more true it becomes. Privatisation brings opportunities to make profits for a small but influential minority. That is what privatisation brings, and that is the primary motivation behind it being rolled out to take over ever greater areas of infrastructure, and government services.

Personally, I don't know a single person who does 16 hours a week on minimum wage. Those you are talking about are a tiny minority of the people who will lose out from these 'reforms.' However, I am all for everyone paying their way. So lets get the banks to pay back the £100s billions they have received in susidies from the puiblic, and then get the tax which should be paid by the billionaires and corporations who use legal loopholes to pay sod all tax on the ££billions they make in profits from the British people. Then, when we have sorted all that out, we can start to cut money from people lower down the financial ladder, if we still need to. I have heard all the arguments of the people who think it more fair for the poor to subsidise the rich, but I have yet to be convinced, because they mostly seem to consist of attempts to split the majority, who are feeling the pinch, into different groups and then turn those groups against each other.

Aljazeera is comparitively good, but RT is just terrible. It drones on dogmatically about the evils of the west while not venturing a word of criticism against fascist gits like Putin and Assad, for example. RT may give their tacit approval to certain mass murderers, but hey, when it comes to Wikileaks or the Occupy Movement, they present themselves as bulwarks of liberty and freedom of speech What you see on RT is idiotic activists from the west being manipulated by the Russian propaganda machine. That propaganda machine which is an integral part of an apparatus of oppression against - mostly - the Russian people. So the westerners who use RT to voice their oppositon to corruption and oppression in the west, are supporting corruption and oppression in the east, which makes them either cynical hypocrites or brainless dicks with no clue of what is going on.

I thought it was Richard Littletwat.

First you - one, that is to say - must interpret the opinions of others without reference to their context, then you - one, I should say - must ensure the information is simplified so it can be fitted into the appropriate brain compartment for various incoming data. Example: Those who complain of corruption aren't worried about corruption at all. They are jealous or bitter. Hey presto. Subject dealt with. And that sir, is how one jolly well acquires life experience outside of ones own social group!

It seems to me that you aren't actually saying anything at all, just arguing against people who are. You tried to defend the political system as it stands, but realising it is an indefensible position, you resort to vague accusations such as that I am going beyond 'a healthy level of cynicism' and am conspiracy theorist. Could you be a bit more specific, and tell me exactly where I have described a conspiracy theory, and what, in particular, goes beyond a healthy level of cynicism?

Again you try and reduce my arguments to soundbites, this time by attempting to stereotype me as a conspiracy theorist. I am not a conspiracy theorist. At no point did I mention a conspiracy. History proves that corruption is the natural state which political affairs always tend towards. I believe it mostly happens through the slow steady pressure of people acting in what they believe to be there own vested interests. It is only avoided when people are not complacent, and a good place to start is by not believing the propaganda which emerges as a result of those vested interests.

What has been said is a lot more complex than can be encapsulated in that sledgehammeringly subtle soundbite by which you have attempted to reduce the arguments, and which would be worthy of The Sun newspaper, or perhaps The Bunty comic. Speaking for myself, it is because I am neither naive enough to continue believing the fairy stories I have been fed concerning politics, in the face of mountains of clear evidence they are not true, nor do I have the vested interest which might motivate me to delude myself that things are otherwise. Thousands of people have stood without the backing of well connected people or powerful organisations. They have all failed utterly to ever get beyond minor and temporary office at the local level. If that is not the case, you will obviously be able to provide me with some names - or even just one - of people who have bucked the trend and risen to the top in politics, without the aid of a mainstream party machine? I eagerly await you answer on this one. Failure to be able to provide one will - for obvious reasons - indicate to me that there is some disconnect between the crude propaganda which you have regurgitated above, and actual political realities.

You need financial support and a good relationship with powerful media people to succeed. The fact that any candidate who falls short of these criterion never gets very far, provides a statistically based objective demonstration that this is true. It is pretty obvious that media barons and financial backers are going to put conditions on their support. If you don't meet those conditions, their are plenty of candidates who do. Then there are the legions of ex-MPs and prime ministers who are awarded paid directorships in companies and corporations upon their retirement from (or sometimes during) political careers. Having supposedly been in full time employment, what could they possibly have done to earn these positions? Do business people lavish these rewards on them for nothing? The fact that avenues to the top of politics for ordinary people have been pretty much shut down is beyond dispute. Andrew Neill demonstrated this in a comprehensive and well researched programme he made on the subject. Or do you believe it is a coincidence that the political elite in all three main parties are extremely wealthy, privately educated and without life experience beyond their own social group?

Western democracy has been subverted by a system of legal bribery known as 'lobbying.' The more money you have the more political influence you can buy. Is it any wonder that the top politicians in all major parties are now posh boys who have been fast trascked to the top through a system of private educational institutions and internships? None of them have worked their way up the ranks, and none of them have anything in common with the majority of ordinary working class and middle class people. They are there to do the bidding of bankers, corporations and oligarchs. All other business comes second. Until we do away with the systems by which politicians act as professional prostitutes to the highest bidder, we are doomed to live in a corporate dictatorship, where we have the democratic right to vote for this gang of lackeys, or the other gang of corporate lackeys over there. Unfortunately - given that any democratic means by which this situation could be remedied has been sold at auction - this is not a situation which is about to change any time soon.

Indeed. Although it isn't neccessary to look at it very often, because its output remains so utterly predictable from one end of the year to the next.

If you had applied this same logic to yourself, you wouldn't have posted on this thread!

Yes, the Queen is heavily involved in 'Save the Sycophants.'

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!! The Daily Mail doesn't approve of a comedian. Oh My God!!! If only refugees and famine victims realised that there are real people out there with real problems, like the hard pressed curtain twitching bigots of middlle England, who are forced to suffer minor irritation by the existence of TV comedians of whom they don't approve. If it weren't for the Mail's dilligent campaigning journalism, the airwaves would be alive with gypsy comedians and asylum seeking entertainers and - worst of all - liberal toffs who won't adhere to the stereotypes they are expected to by those broad minded Mail journaists. Thank God some newspapers aren't snobbish!

Maybe fleas will stop sucking blood. ---------- Post added 06-01-2013 at 14:39 ---------- They have made a difference already, by drawing yet more attention to the revolting spectacle of evicting people from their homes in the financial interests of the very institutions which brought the economic situation about through their reckless negligence. This publicity will encourage more people to oppose the agenda of war on the masses to preserve the lifestyle of the few. The more people who oppose them, the more difficult it will become for them to implement their 'measures'. That is beyond question. It is simple mathematics.

So you don't understand that last post of mine either, even though it is completely straightforward? Life's too short.

"Is there a point to your comments?" is just rudeness in the guise of question. A genuine question would have gone more along the lines of: "What is your point?" or "What are you getting at?"

Because if you don't get it, there can't possibly be, eh?

Tony Blair only has nothing to do with this thread if you fail to recognise that the people at the top of the political establishment (including the ones who like to go on about dole cheats) are all of the same ilk. Some adopt a more liberal stance than others for public consumption, but behind the scenes they are all on the same page, and there is definitely nothing left or liberal about it.

That is just really pathetic! As are the dim wits who take the bait and allow their attention to be so easily directed towards the tuppenny dole bandits, and thus continue to fail to see the ongoing ways in which they are really cheated and robbed by the big business fraudsters and their politician friends. Furthermore, if the stinking rich control freaks who run the country put as much energy into thinking about job creation as they do obsessing about how they can better control the lives of people on benefits, they wouldn't be doing such a crap job.