Messages

Foreign travel? 

This, neebs:

The story of our country, Don't work, Have kids, Go on holiday. Meanwhile all working tax payers pick up the slack.

Er, make that Sweden. The figures are really close together, okay!

the thing is that methadone subscription alone cost's around 60 million and I'm not getting started on JSA.

I don't know many junkies or folk on methadone programs who indulge in the foreign travel you were complaining about; for obvious reasons, they prefer to stay near home. The UK has exactly the same rate of unemployment as the booming economy of Deutschland, so that's not the answer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/oct/31/europe-unemployment-rate-by-country-eurozone

[launch pad]

I'm sure that A missile is guided by an onboard computer which is programmed and has nothing to do with the launch platform

The phrase covers the entire weapons system, and shouldn't be confused with the similar but very different concept of a launch pad.

[are]

It's the majority of the system we use at this moment in time. Until we adopt the Libs version then that is how the vote will always be.

It's the false sense of public confidence and perceived democratic mandate which that perverse system encourages which leads Prime Ministers to rule like US Presidents (who are directly elected) and make disastrous decisions like the Poll tax and the Iraq War - disastrous and unpopular decisions which would never have passed a public vote.

The story of our country, Don't work, Have kids, Go on holiday. Meanwhile all working tax payers pick up the slack.

The majority of the welfare bill goes to pensioners and child tax credits (which all working families received until recently):

20.3 million families receive some kind of benefit (64% of all families), about 8.7 million of them pensioners. For 9.6 million families, benefits make up more than half of their income (30% of all families), around 5.3 million of them pensioners. The number of families receiving benefits will be between 1 and 2 million fewer now because of changes to child tax credits that mean some working families who previously got a small amount now get nothing.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/06/welfare-britain-facts-myths

As for Thatcher, I agreed with some of her policies and not with others but hey, she was elected by the majority 3 times and after she went John Major was elected by a majority. You can find the numbers online, if you so desire it!

Yes you can, John. Thatcher never won a majority of the public vote:

1979: 44% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1979

1983: 42% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1983

1987: 42% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1987

At that first election, she had only 2 million more votes than the ailing Labour administration. Whether you agree with the results thrown up by our odd electoral system, which delivered huge parliamentary majorities to both Thatcher and Blair after much less decisive electoral mandates from the voting public, is another matter. Most independent observers agree that it was the squaddies who caught a South Atlantic suntan who actually won the 1983 general election; Thatcher had been odds-on to lose until that point.

There's absolutely no evidence that North Korea has the ability to weaponise the fruits of its nuclear programme. They've demonstrated they can conduct underground test detonations of enriched plutonium (not the more effective uranium), but those devices are massive and unwieldy. Even if North Korea eventually manages to reduce the scale of those devices so they can fit on the end of a ballistic missile, they've never demonstrated the capacity to build a launch platform which does anything but shoot a projectile which goes straight up in the air or which can hit a target any more specific than the entire Indian Ocean.

As for a preemptive US invasion; forget it. China shares a land border with North Korea, and there's no way they'd sanction a US invasion of their backyard anymore than the US would allow the Chinese Red Army to invade and extend their territorial borders to the frontier with US ally South Korea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_tiger

[Old Tankie]

Yep, I remember the 70s (or about 2 to 3 years' worth of them anyway).

Same here. I don't know how old Old Tankie actually is, but his description of the seventies sounds a lot more like the collective picture of the seventies drawn by TV and newspapers than a personal reminiscence, drawn from direct experience. I remember the regular power cuts he mentions (which lasted well into the eighties), but I'm sure I gained my knowledge of unburied bodies in seventies Liverpool from the same sources as he did.

[I'm sure it's what she would have wanted]

Best reaction I've seen so far has been Irvine Welsh, who said that the private sector should pay for Thatcher's state funeral.

It would set them back £5 million, apparently. I think Welsh was grabbing a backie off the freewheelin' Ken Loach's more aphoristic response:

I think her funeral should be privatised, put out to competitive tender, and we should accept the cheapest funeral. I'm sure it's what she would have wanted.

[James]

Mental, James. Is that inspired by this, or this?

Dresden is a fine showcase for late-20th century architecture.

I also enjoy Fanta, the Volkswagen beetle, and the jet propulsion engine.

In a few months' time, Wham, Spandau Ballet, The Smiths and The Pet Shop Boys are going to be wondering why their PRS cheques are made out for about three or four times their usual amounts. The BBC video library must have experienced an unusual surge in requests for clips from Only Fools and Horses too.

Arguing that the actions of any political figure are/were entirely good or bad is a sure sign you're talking out of your hole. The infrastructure which underpins the Bundesautobahn network has long been the envy of the world.