Woodstock Jag

A job is not a job for life. That might not be fair, but it's reality. Three points. Firstly employers will use government cuts as an excuse to trim their workforce with the general economic climate proving less favourable. Labour is for many sectors the most expensive cost and if an employee's net worth is under threat, the harsh reality is that their job is under threat. Secondly the example of private contracts is a prime example of companies being too reliant on individual clients instead of spreading their business interests. Is that really any different from a company which relies on one big private sector contract which falls through because the client cannot secure the finance? Thirdly why do you assume that it is somehow the Coalition's fault that government is pulling out of contracts with private sector companies? Labour wrecked the public finances leaving a huge deficit to be plugged. It's like blaming the Dundee administrator for making players redundant when it was the Dundeee BOD who were responsible for the shortfall accumulating in the first place. Please don't take this personally, but right to stay in a house being rented only exists on the precondition that rent is paid continuously. I'm astonished anyone could think anything else... Life's not easy. Resources are finite. Sometimes people have to suffer. Sometimes some will suffer more than others. Sometimes that won't seem fair. That's just life. No one's saying they're the best thing since sliced bread. People need to face up to the reality, however, that these cuts have come out of necessity to safeguard the jobs of 5-10 years time. Failure to deal with public sector debt over the next 3-4 years would mean recession becomes depression, and depression becomes default, long-term unemployment would rocket, government wouldn't be able to afford to help those struggling, and there would be no obvious way out as the government tries desperately to pay off a debt that behaves like a neglected credit card. People also need to face up to the reality that it was under Labour's watch, not the Tories' or the Lib Dems' that these economic problems were allowed to ferment. Labour were going to make £53 BILLION of cuts over the course of the next Parliament. They now go around opposing every cut saying that it will hurt group x, y or z, blithely ignoring the fact that most, if not all of the pain being seen with (thus far, very small) cuts would have also had to happen if they were still in power. Labour also wanted to increase National Insurance, putting thousands of jobs at risk and making it harder for small businesses to grow their way out of the recession. Let's be completely clear about this: these cuts are not the fault of the Coalition. They are the FAULT of their predecessors who made unrealistic spending commitments off the back of a fag-packet, especially from 2007 onwards in a desperate act of political electioneering without any consideration of the consequences. Can't say I disagree with that. I'm sorry if you found that condescending and it certainly wasn't the intention. I just fundamentally do not agree that someone has an unqualified and indefinite right to the house they live in if they do so whilst under a standard security or if they rent.

Cutting civil servant numbers isn't a false economy. Excess bureaucrats should get themselves to You eulogise about Marx and dialectic materialism. If you can't call that Commy, then there's no such thing as a communist. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Self-assessment has hugely decreased the cost of tax collection and hasn't made it any less efficient. The only difference is that instead of wasting valuable hours on routine tax returns, civil servants instead EXAMINE the completed accounts of those who self-assess and flag up anything that is obviously wrong. More civil servants would not necessarily increase the amount of dosh brought in. It would have to be in conjunction with a (probably very expensive) overhaul of HMRC procedure and practices to have an effect worthy of the additional resources. As I recall, the Coalition actually ARE putting more money back into anti-tax-avoidance measures (£6 billion IIRC) to mitigate the culture that was bred of tolerating tax avoidance by Labour in the last 13 years. And to say "you are talking shite" is not designed to discredit the person. It is a judgment on the evident lack of logic and reason in their argument. When the Commies all team up, market anarchists have to fight their corner. It would be profoundly hypocritical to slunk off and surrender to the coercive evil of statist "you want to trample on the poor and then piss on their face" propaganda.

Like they already do? If you seriously think that promoting and recruiting a few hundred more civil servants is going to make billions magically appear out of thin air, then you're deluded. Do you actually know what "ad hominem abuse" means? Saying that someone is "talking shite" is not ad hominem abuse. Saying that someone "is a shite" is ad hominem abuse.

For someone who claims to be a man of the world and open minded, you're tremendously dogmatic. I'd suggest a swatch of Murray Rothbard's work. Three publications I found particularly insightful are: The Ethics of Liberty - he destroys the legitimacy of state Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature - he examines the reality of state-led attempts to engineer equality inevitably leading to coercion and consolidation of elites Perhaps most pertinently in today's environment, The Mystery of Banking - in 1983 he shows huge foresight predicting that state-assisted fractional-reserve-banking has devastating effects on the populus And a cursory glance of the following 3 works wouldn't go a miss either: Milton Friedman - Capitalism and Freedom Friedrich Hayek - The Road to Serfdom Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

It should gradually decrease as the economy recovers. Slowly but steadily. Their life, liberty and property aren't being violated by government cuts. No one is inherently entitled to a job. They must earn it. No one is inherently entitled to a house. They must earn it and pay for it (if you have a mortgage, you have not yet earned it... that's the whole point of a security on a loan). They shouldn't expect everything to be handed to them on a plate by the taxpayer. The world has finite resources and sometimes people have to suffer because there simply isn't the money to sustain their lifestyle.

I have never met a right wing woman. Shame really. But the consequences would be so utterly ridiculous that it shouldn't be taken seriously. By concentrating on tax alone you would force all wealth creators abroad, stifle business' ability to grow and piss off the population when a trade deficit balloons. Mervyn King is an economically illiterate moron who doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Tax avoidance is virtually impossible to close down. By closing one loophole you create another, such as is the nature of the hideously complex tax law. Some tax avoidance is DELIBERATE: indeed government often create tax avoidance schemes to encourage certain types of behaviour (see ISAs and employee registered pension schemes as prime examples). Tax collection has always and will always be chronically inefficient. Saying you can improve tax collection is like saying you can cut government waste by billions. It's a nice idea in theory but in practice it just doesn't work. And if tax collection was so horrifically inefficient under a Labour Government, what makes you think that the Coalition can suddenly wave a magic wand and close all the gaps? When a gap is being estimated between two such huge figures it rather suggests that a ) the tax system is simply too complicated b ) they have been concocted using artistic licence c ) it's such a meaningless hypothetical as to be of no practical tangible use. Because you are!

Inspired by the Barmy Army's Mitchell Johnson number... He jinks to the left! He jinks to the RIGHT! Chrissy Erskine... you're good then you're shite!

That wasn't what I said. In the grander scheme of things, though, a 1 million rise in short-term unemployment following one of the biggest recessions in peacetime history really isn't that significant. The choice is a spike in unemployment 12 months either side of now or sustained unemployment later when the government debt spirals out of control and they have to put the begging bowl out to the IMF.

I'm not talking out of a textbook. The reality is that higher taxes a) aren't enough and don't necessarily bring in more revenue. Rubbish. Higher tax rates yield lower overall tax receipts. The 50% income tax rate alone costs us several billion pounds per year because it causes more tax avoidance. The higher the rate at which you tax the rich, the greater the incentive for them to arrange their affairs (perfectly legitimately) to avoid it. Tax law is a ******* nightmare and it is next to impossible to close all the loopholes without opening others. Tax advisers are and always will be several steps ahead of HMRC. Land value taxes are profoundly unfair and completely arbitrary. It also punishes people who are asset rich but cash poor. The bank levy put in place by the Coalition was more substantial than the one put in place by Labour. It's also a huge red herring as you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Taking money out of the banks just as they're starting to recover makes them less competitive than their foreign counterparts, and also devalues them to the taxpayer, who just happens to own a huge wedge of them. All the myths about the Robin Hood tax getting rid of the need for cuts doesn't stand up to scrutiny as people base the likely yields on the profits they were making pre-crisis. Encouraging banks to behave like they did before in order to get a big wedge out of them would be economically illiterate and short-termist. Higher corporation tax reduces overall yield as companies then (perfectly legitimately) arrange their affairs to avoid it, or leave the country outright. If you want a proper economic recovery you leave business the **** alone and don't tax it through the nose. They already foot the bill of their input VAT, the obscene fuel costs of which fuel duty and VAT comprise more than 70%, employer's NI contributions and more besides. Economists are not agreed on that. You are guilty of chronic short-termism. Obviously lots of cuts are going to have more effect on growth than relatively small tax rises. Huge tax rises would stifle growth far more than cuts, especially in the long-term. The fundamental problem which you willfully ignore is that the price of spending more to get an extra 1-2% growth is to make the structural problems of the public finances worse. I cannot stress enough that the cuts that are being made only take public spending back to 2007 levels, and even then they are only going to REDUCE THE RATE AT WHICH WE LOSE MONEY EVERY YEAR. These cuts are ABSOLUTELY TINY and people are throwing their toys out the pram over an unavoidably difficult period. No, his insistence that this is the only credible plan reveals pragmatism and realism. If anything your attachment to high taxes and high public spending is ideological. It's funny how it's always the other guy that's ideological and you that's not, eh? There is absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever. That decrease is absolutely tiny. Public spending as a percentage of GDP will be HIGHER than in 2007 if you want to use that figure. I don't recall people rioting on the streets and complaining that the public sector was too small in 2007... This is just all flatulence and no end product. You have absolutely no evidence that these cuts are driven by small state ideology. As someone who believes that the state should be shrunk by at least 4 or 5 times as much as the Coalition are doing, I can assure you this is minor tinking at the edges. They are going to INCREASE spending in cash terms and revert it MERELY to 2007 in real terms. How you can possibly say that is ideological when it's virtually within the margin of error for every single year c.f. public spending as a % of GDP since 1950. Statist, tax and spend monsters, some of which aren't quite as bad as others. If I may paraphrase your good self: "Meister Jag, as ever, I think you’re talking out of a text book."

He didn't say it was back on course. He said that the fiscal consolidation package of cuts and tax rises have reduced the risk of double-dip recession and have put the long-term position (rather more important than short to medium-term growth) back on track. There is absolutely NO evidence that the cuts are motivated by a desire to see people suffer. One set of economists. On the other hand, the IFS, IMF and OBR all predict sluggish but stable growth. Even if they don't reach their fiscal targets, it would be better that the economy grows slowly and that the foundations below it are more secure than to continue to pump money into it now and defer and increase the problem for later. That's the cut and thrust of the IMF's view and most other independent analysts. High growth is less important than long-term sustainability. It's not Tory ideology. If these cuts were truly driven out of a desire to substantially cut the public sector, bash the unions and hand out contracts to their mates in the private sector, they would be a hell of a lot deeper than they are. People don't seem to realise that these cuts are absolutely tiny. They bring public spending in real terms back to 2007 levels and in cash terms public spending will still RISE by the end of the parliament. If they were fuelled by ideological desire the cuts would be at least double, if not treble what they actually are. It was never going to stay on course anyway...

The whole article essentially says if growth stops or drops alarmingly, the cuts have to slow down. That's if your gran had balls she's be your grandad sort of stuff. The article even goes on to say: "Mr Blanchard said the UK’s plans would undoubtedly have a negative impact on growth, but did not think they would kill growth entirely and thought the risks of a double-dip recession were "low"." and "He added that the scale of the fiscal consolidation in the UK needed to be bigger than some other major, advanced economies because the initial deficit was also much bigger."

1. It's to do with Eurozone debt consolidation. 2. It says absolutely nothing about the cuts packages causing more damage than good. If anything it says failure to go at it hammer and tong will cause more damage in the long term... "Delayed or half-hearted fiscal consolidation in countries facing high spreads could trigger a further loss of financial market confidence in the fiscal sustainability of some member states, a spike in risk premiums and a sharp depreciation of the euro"

No, not really. Negative freedoms are rights not to be inhibited from doing things (e.g. freedom of speech is a negative right because it's the right not to have others prevent you from saying what you want to say). Positive freedoms are of debatable existence. They require actual acts by society rather than inaction (e.g. a right to education is an aspirational positive right, as it requires action from society in the formation of education providers. This would only be a negative right in the sense that, e.g. unlike in Afghanistan, there should be no legal impediment to women being allowed to receive an education at school. There's no such thing as the positive freedom to conk someone over the head unless you take the Hobbesian view of liberty. Ah, you're going down the Hobbesian route! No, I'm a Lockean. Reason is the cognitive ability to reach conclusions based on perceptive logic and evidence. The existence and greatest ends of my liberty is best procured by respect for yours. The laws of nature derive from that and the limits nature places on our liberty. For example our liberty of movement does not extend to natural flight because our bodies are incapable. No. I said that the application of reason could only lead to a conclusion which states that nature limits liberty. I then said that because the cognitive ability of humans is imperfect it approximates the 'nature' and extent of those limits, hence humans disagree about the extent and nature of liberty. They are not baseless assertions. Of course they are axioms: all statements are to a degree. Dogma requires a lack of openness to change of view in light of evidence and reason. Unless anyone can substantiate the claim that I fit that description, I am not dogmatic. I have concluded, by the application of reason, that coercion is contrary to liberty. It oppresses the ability of an individual to act according to reason (that's the definition of coercion as it is by definition the act of making someone behave in an involuntary way). I am open to the axiom being disproved, but from all the evidence I see I have yet to see it refuted. In fact, I don't necessarily argue that liberty is good, merely that it is the more logical impulse of humans than coercion. I see a correlation between liberty and personal fulfilment and between coercion and the prevalence of "right answer theorem" and dogma and oppression of ideas. Of course I am open to a Western cultural bias. As an evident scholar of political and philosophical theory, however, you will know that bias does not itself invalidate truthfulness. No problem A theoretical one. It's pretty difficult to give practical application in such a coercive society. In any case market anarchism holds very strongly to the principle of private property rights, and is quite distinct from more commonly found collectivist forms of anarchy. I don't really see the relevance of subsistence farming or squatting in such an anarchy! I'd gathered you were being glib No one here is suggesting that private sector healthcare is perfect. Indeed a true libertarian would fight every bit as much against the bureaucracy in a free-market system as they would against the state bureaucracy. I happen to believe that the state is not justified in providing anything regardless of the merits because it is by nature illegitimate. I also hold that competition in a truly free market system (note privatised capitalist does not necessarily mean free market at all) drives down the cost to the service recipient and improves the quality of the service. True. My attitude towards this is completely different. I take the view that government intervention creates a situation where the success or failures of banks relies less on genuine long-term sustainability and more on who can best lobby the government. If you remove intervention, banks can keep falling on their own swords until they realise actually it's bloody painful. Market failure is absolutely essential to get the markets themselves to learn about what does and doesn't work and what is and isn't sustainable. The intervention of government in this, as in all fields, is at best good at treating the immediate symptoms, but at the expense of not actually getting those in the market itself to change their attitudes. Why should "society" be obliged to pay for them? 1. What choice is removed? Simple question unanswered from earlier. 2. There is no absolutely level playing field in ANY society. I also resent this assertion that I don't give a toss about the well-being of other people less fortunate. It's unhelpful caricature and has no basis in reality. 3. And there's the patronising life experience line again

It has been drummed out because they have been worn down by having their money stolen from them year after year by the state. No it isn't. The elderly would rely on building up their own savings throughout their life, free from government stealing it in tax. The unemployed would be helped by these people called employers, who would be able to hire more people as their business grows free from government intervention. Just remember that for every job created in the public sector, at least one is taken from the private sector in lost resources. The ill would have this wonderful thing called health insurance. It could even be organised collectively by wonderful socialists like yourself. The difference is that you couldn't force people who don't want to benefit from that specific collectivist scheme to contribute if they didn't want to. That's choice. That's fair. There's a difference between philanthropy and a STATE hand-out. The former is a move of generosity from those who desire to help others. The latter is a bunch of elites stealing the hard-earned money of Joe Bloggs and giving it to those who aren't even working for it to compensate them for their predicament. State organised work related benefits create a workless underclass by disincentivising employment. If people don't want to share their wealth, that's their prerogative. Tax avoidance should be actively encouraged as I've said before. Tax avoidance is like keeping your car in a locked garage instead of leaving it unlocked with the doors wide open and the key in the ignition in the middle of Maryhill Road. It's about making it harder for someone to steal your money. Philanthropy in this analogy is like offering someone a lift to Firhill or giving a second car you don't use to someone who needs it more. It's your car to give away, not someone else's to tell you to give someone a lift to or to dispense with. Oh and the rich don't make wealth "off the backs" of others. They pay their workers for their labour: often above its true value once exorbitant work-related taxes like NI are taken into account. It would get better because it is rational for them to continue to contribute to valued services. Nothing is "required" of anyone towards society. If people fall through the cracks, it is because society doesn't care enough. And if society doesn't care enough, then that's just life. I'm not arguing for a "horrible barbaric future of despair and misery where the weak are abandoned and the workers are completely at the mercy of those with money". I am arguing for a non-coercive, philanthropic future of freedom and choice, where the weak are helped not because the elite demand that everyone help them but because individuals actually want to help them. I am arguing for a world where employers provide suitable terms of employment not because of government diktat but because it is rational to have a motivated and efficient workforce.

No. Libertarians certainly believe that individuals are autonomous agents, but they do NOT believe that others should have no influence on their behaviour. The issue here is coercion. The idea of a universally expected behaviour is a very dubious one. The only "expected" behaviour is respect for the life, liberty and property of others. Beyond that it is the prerogative for someone to be as nice, or as much of a ******* as they want, and the freedom of the individual to associate and disassociate with anyone and anything ought to make it rational for people not to be ********. The choice should always be there, though. You keep fudging the state and society. I happen to hold they are completely distinct. Certainly with respect to the state, I believe it shouldn't exist, and if it must exist a laissez-faire attitude towards people is certainly what I would expect of it. As for society, it is for individuals to decide whether they want to mitigate the suffering of others. If they don't want to, they shouldn't be forced to. If they want to, they should be applauded. I don't think that's lacking in compassion at all. What the state does is remove the choice and doesn't even begin to solve the problem. It's like a lead bandage. It might kill the infection, but it gives you lead poisoning. Nothing wrong with that. The rational motive behind wealth accumulation is for the benefit of those you value. If there is no desire among society to prevent the weak from going to the wall, then they should go to the wall. If there is a desire to prevent it, those who want to prevent it should have no impediment (save that which invades the life, liberty or property of others) to act in such a fashion. I for one intend to act in such a fashion when the situation allows it, but I'm not going to force others to do so. Not really. The whole point of libertarianism is that it is deeply critical of "order" by definition. It correlates with the priority of individual liberty. What rights have I suggested "removing"? You cannot have individual liberty without a free market. There's no such thing as someone with too much. I don't necessarily disagree that there is virtue in those with more acting out of philanthropy to help those less fortunate. I don't think it's for you, for me, or for an arbitrary thieving coercive state to force them to do it with the force of imprisonment as a punitive threat. It should be their choice.

Can't stand Rand. Objectivism is completely contrary to liberty. I believe positive freedoms are procured by action in a world where negative freedoms are absolute. They are largely aspirational. I use the word natural very cautiously too. I mean that the human's innate capacity to reason can only lead him to the conclusion that the laws of nature are the limits to his liberty. Liberty is natural because if we are not free, we are mere animals: this comes close to the bone of a lot of the gripes I have with Rand's Objectivism. Liberty exists because every individual must rationally want it to exist. My liberty only exists because your liberty exists. Objectivism doesn't accept this premise. It really IS victory to he with the biggest stick, which is no liberty at all. No, that's not what I'm arguing at all. Reason is merely a gateway between the mind and the laws of nature. The laws of nature are not exact. Further, their existence is independent of everything, society and social interaction included. Libertarians aren't dogmatic about what is real and what is not at all. Indeed that is another gripe we have with objectivism. It is arbitrary and final (just like the laws of a coercive state). Thus coercion of all kinds are to be rejected, and reason merely used to ridicule the wrong. There is no one accepted reason because humans are primitive pathetic creatures capable only of approximation. People purporting to be applying reason who then use it to justify the creation of coercive structures like state and taxation are dogmatic, and must be fought tooth and nail to preserve the innate liberty of living things as qualified by the laws of nature. The role of religion is relevant in some brands of libertarianism, but not mine. I hold it to be completely irrelevant, and regard any sort of tyranny and coercion to be indefensible. I'm sure I've said before, but within the libertarian family I am nowhere near the objectivist wing and sit more comfortably among market anarchists and autarchists. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what true libertarians are. We want an end to all taxes, end to all bureaucracy and to remove all coercion. We want of society's associations to be perfectly voluntary, and to eliminate punishment as a means of coercion. More recently I have argued there is greater merit in restorative justice than punitive justice, for example, as its basis is one less of coercion and more of dispassionate prioritisation of the liberty of those who might otherwise be put at risk by an individual's violent coercive tendencies. I'm also a realist though. I know that there are simply too many statist and coercive fantasists to end state and to end taxation. I am content to see it withdraw from as much as possible and to open up the free market, the single most effective and efficient economic model to have been conceptualised and attempted to be put into practice. Wherever it has "failed" (please note a recession is not itself a failure in a free market) I see it being a product of government intervention. Even Marx admitted that the role of competition in the free market made it more efficient than any model in which government managed and intervened with idiotic things like bank bailouts. That's just not true at all. Why is it assumed that only the state can provide universal healthcare, education, social services, other public services? Do doctors and nurses suddenly cease being qualified to diagnose infection just because they don't work for the NHS? No. Do teachers suddenly cease being qualified to impart information, knowledge and innovation just because they don't work for the local comprehensive? No. Can bus services only be run if someone has the tender from a local council? No. The poor would be MUCH better off if the state left them alone and did not tax them through the nose. People could establish public services on a not-for-profit basis, with the rich being able to make a larger contribution to subsidise if they WANT to and not because they are COMPELLED to. THAT is fair. What is wrong with that? Seriously? What is wrong with people becoming really really rich? Well she's not an antichrist. Her only major fault WAS that she tried to do too much too quickly in shifting society from a statist coercive dependency to an individualist free aspirational one. Some parts of the country were ready, whilst others simply weren't. Edit: I feel I should also add that her party's attitudes towards things like homosexuality, immigration were hugely backward when she was in power, and completely contrary to liberty. This is just patronising shite. Sorry, but it really is. Political views are forged by innate world-view, which is merely influenced by experience. To suggest that my political views are somehow only theoretical and not valid is utterly coercive and dogmatic. The wee Jakie who sits in the corner of the pub on his tod putting away the halfs and half pints probably can't string a sentence together, never mind have a coherent and logical set of political views. Well sorry, but it is coming across as nothing but patronising. I am not going to pretend that I haven't been fortunate in my upbringing and that others will have fallen on hard times and that have shaped completely their world view. What that doesn't mean, though, is that my world-view, which is any more shaped by Freidman/Rothbard/Smith/Locke than yours is by the writings of Marx, Engels and Hegel. They have had an impact, absolutely, but largely in reflecting my ideas and impressions of the world and providing them with clarity. I'm sure the irony is not lost on you, patronising me with this "if you think that you clearly don't understand dialectic materialism" on this very thread whilst then criticising me for citing other academics in explanation of my politics. I don't question for a minute the personal qualities of individuals on this thread. What I question (and there's a hint of it even there) is this very conservative acceptance of coercion and a quite dogmatic "right answer" theorem that somehow people will be enlightened to a leftist statist way of thinking by "life experience". Unlike those who frequently impute this, I accept that it is perfectly possible through a combination of political education and life experience, to reach perfectly validly completely different conclusions about economics and provision of public services, and on the nature of liberty. What I don't accept is that the conclusion the mere majority reach is validly imposed upon the rest of us. Those who want to organise provision of services collectively should be allowed to... among those who expressly consent to it. Those who do not want to organise such provision of services collectively but individually, should be allowed to do so without being forced to contribute to something they don't approve of, don't want, or don't use.

No, I said Vladimir Putin's "but but but the Daily Mail are sensationalist too" post was tu quoque and a fallacy for legitimising the original point made by Blackpool Jags. Socialist Sunday School... that must be even worse than ACTUAL Sunday School! You've obviously misunderstood what I was saying then. I was ACCUSING Vladimir Putin of carring out this so-called "capitalist" deviant trick of tu quoque retort when I accused, if anything, Blackpool Jags of a straw man fallacy by misrepresenting using extremities. We libertarians despise logical fallacy with every bone in our skeleton. We are naturally free. Statist coercion and tyranny of the masses f***s up that natural freedom. Marx is fantasist. When I read the Communist Manifesto (cover to cover) I actually physically recoiled after some sections because they were just so factually wrong, or at least logically absurd. Curses

There is nothing ad hominem or indeed abusive about flagging up a tu quoque fallacy...

Is it not usually leaked to half the Thistle community about 4 days before?

Sorry, folks, was away over New Year and only just come back to this There are only contradictions if you buy into the assumptions that the best way to get business to run effectively and sustainably is to tell them what to do and to legislate the hell out of them. Legislation is parasitic and coercive. The banking crisis is not evidence that more regulation is needed, but that less government intervention is needed. The banks should have been allowed to collapse so the bondholders instead of honest taxpayers take the rap. Except I didn't say "stupidity of the organised working class". I said the IDEA of an organised working class is a stupid and conservative one. I would marketise healthcare like they do very effectively in Germany. I would marketise education as competition drives up standards, while comprehensive schooling preserves geographical inequalities and caters to the lowest common denominator. I would phase out state-supported pensions and abolish the retirement age. It is ridiculous that the state should socially condition people into when they should and should not work. It should be an individual choice and by not taxing people as much they would then be able to make their own choice whether to save for retirement or to work longer. I would also contend that actually these developments of which you speak did not come about because of interventions from the organised working class. They came about because of a Keynesian post-war consensus, brought about by the impact of conflict on the absolute basic infrastructure. The state pension was also brought into being by Lloyd George's Liberals, following the Beveridge Report, might it be pointed out. I am familiar with the works of Marx and Engels, and also Hegel in this field, and I fundamentally reject it. The idea that the division of Labour has substantial social consequences is hugely overplayed, and the premise of efficiency is not "riddled with contradictions". I take the view the likes of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Murray Rothbard share, which is that the division of labour is merely a primitive step towards the growth of efficiency in capitalism. It is the withdrawal of government and power structures that then gives rise to a market that is free, rather than mixed or managed. Tu quoque fallacy.

Say hi to siggy for me.

Except your concept of the middle classes is stereotypical and hugely misleading. You are using the extremes to make a point, which is completely invalid. The wealth gap is NOT the same as the fictitious class gap, or even close to it. Oh, and again you are caricaturing my position to the effect of "if you aren't in favour of the working class taking over the asylum you are in favour of big mean bad business raping and pillaging the world so 3 fat cats and a dog can piss all over everyone." Libertarians deride monopoly and big business using the power structures of government to manipulate the system in their favour. The rationale is that if you remove the coercive, conservative and sectionally interested state from every-day affairs, you get a genuinely free market, the like of which we have never come close to seeing with protectionist façades like the US and EU. It is completely irrational for people to think in terms of class conflict. It implies a degree of social solidarity, but it then immediately splits the human race into factions so you can have this pathetic "class conflict". If people stopped trying to split into camps of "us and them" the so-called "working class" would actually benefit substantially from marketising their own labour. This idea of an "organised working class" just smacks of conservative, sectional stupidity. It preserves the wealth inequality it purports to fight. There was nothing libertarian about the coercive, violent and slave based Roman Empire. Nothing at all. Oh, and just a final point on basing your entire post on Marx's dialectic materialism: it's a load of steaming pish and should have been consigned to the dustbin as soon as it was conceptualised.

I genuinely cannot make any sense of this post at all. Kudos.

What did the Coalition do that made them to blame for said redundancies?