Johnny Bognor

This is unbelievable, but true! Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than 600 employees and has the following employee statistics . 29 have been accused of spouse abuse 7 have been arrested for fraud 9 have been accused of writing bad cheques 17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses 3 have done time for assault 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges 8 have been arrested for shoplifting 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits 84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year Which organisation is this ? It's the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline. ...and we wonder why the country is in a mess?

I've had my spat at the bankers, now it's the governments turn. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/02/the_goodwin_pension_questions.html Either the government didn't know and were therefore incompetent or they did know and failed to act and were impotent. Either way, this shambles of a government should do the decent thing and go NOW!

A little bit, hence I spend a bit more time in the lounge / arcade to get my fivers worth (see new MJ Baby Drop Champion)

Indeed they do, but we've done that one to death and I don't want to get BTF started. However, although Public Sector pay, conditions and pay reviews are very good, they are nowhere near what the bankers have been used to.

I'm with you on this and I'm a Capitalist, but my capitalism is based on creating real wealth rather than gambling. To start with, he should be stripped of his honours - they were given on the basis of the success of his organisation, and now it wasn't as succeessful as we were led to believe, they should be taken back. Rob Peston leaked the pension info in addition to the one about the RBS private jet (which they tried to keep hush). Private jet? These guys had their noses in the trough. As the RBS is now 70% owned by the taxpayer, the RBS is in all but name a public sector organisation and so I am looking forward to their inflation / deflation linked pay rises or pay cuts (with no bonuses). These collective bunch of arseholes have screwed things for everybody else (which is bad enough) but they have been highly rewarded for it? That's not capitalism, that's plain stupidity.

When he was a minister he was too arrogant and too far to the right (and this is coming from a fan of the centre right). However, since he was desposed (in a humiliating fashion) he has moderated somewhat and gained the air of a statesman. He clearly has been doing a lot of soul searching with programmes like making ends meet on benefits. He will be as close to a compassionate conservative as you will ever get. His regular appearance on This Week (after question time) shows him to be in tune with the people and very astute. So I agree with you, he would make a far better PM than Brown, Cameron and Clegg put together.

4 of us travelled up to Man U for the Rumbelows cup game (circa early nineties) - on the way up something fell off a lorry and smashed the windscreen - which caused us a bit of a delay. On the way back, we had a puncture but the idiot driver had left his spare in the garage at home after getting a previous puncture. We were on the M40 (before it had emergency phones - it had just opened) and the one mobile we had between us had a flat battery. We drove along the hard shoulder at about 2mph from just past Birmingham to oxford. By the time we got to Oxford it was gone 2am in the morning. We found a kwik fit and slept in the car all night until it opened the next morning - very cold and cramped. Moral of the story? Make sure you've got a spare when going to Manchester and back.

Witterings? Birdham?

I live in Chichester and I'm about 30 miles away (60 mile round trip) so 35 miles puts you at Fontwell-Arundel?

SaintRobbie = Rabbit Noise Franks Cousin = Can Fours Skin Hamster = He Smart

SaintRobbie = Rabbit Noise Franks Cousin = Can Fours Skin Hamster = He Smart

...and to spice this thread up a bit Sundance Beast = Bad Acts Unseen Alpine Saint = Its Anal Pine Channon's Sideburns = Shuns Nonbasic Nerd Guided Missile = Misguided Lies Trousers = Users Rot The Dell Days = Deathly Sled Wiltshire Saint = Hairless Nitwit

Guy Askham = A Shaky Mug Andrew Cowen = Wee Can Drown Michael Wilde = While Mac Lied David Jones = Dad Jives On Mike Richards = Chaired Smirk Rupert Lowe = **** ...and while I am on a roll..... Saints Web Forum = Abuse, Frown, Mist

Are you assuming that Lowe will buy us out of admin then?

Not seen this posted elsewhere, probably the funniest bit of news I've seen in years. http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20090219/tuk-fat-chav-insurance-claim-form-leaked-45dbed5.html The diagram is especially good.

Another great Carling Black Label advert Another classic If fact the beer adverts were some of the best around. Which beer had the strapline "If you want great lager, follow the bear...."? ...and you can't forget

Ah, but how do you know that your link is not fake?

Bloody hell BTF, you took your time joining in with this thread :-) I was beginning to think that you'd given up political debate. Do you mean free at the point of delivery like dentistry or prescriptions? The "free" bit is a deliberate ploy by the left to makes us think we've got something for nothing - as it is, the current bunch of socialists have actually delivered nothing (a screwed economy) for something (100bns of debt) - quite novel don't you think?

If the socialists could come up with free education, free health service etc I would be mightily impressed - but unfortunately they haven't. The problem is, they are not free are they? Where does the money come from to pay for it? ........from the capitalist wealth created. Yes, the wealth created by Capitalism pays for all of this "free" socialist stuff - so thank the capitalists before you thank the socialists. Well I suppose it is free to those who can't be arsed to work, but that is hardly fair is it?

How do you arrive at the cost of production? This is determined by capitalism. Let me spell it out for you......the cost of production is a combination of labour and materials. The cost of labour is a combination of what the employer is prepared to pay (buy) and what the employee is prepared to take (sell). The materials are what the leather trader is prepared to pay the cattle trader which is what the cattle trader is prepared to pay the farmer and what the farmer is prepared to pay the agricultural supplier and vets and so on and so on. So even your cost of £20 includes profits for all of the people along the line (capitalists if you like) and therefore the cost of £20 is determined by the nature of capitalism. The end product is then sold at a price the consumer is prepared to pay - if they didn't pay it, Nike would be bust as they would not sell any shoes. No one forces you to buy the trainers, so more fool you if you borrow too much to pay for them. I think you are mistaking Capitalism for Consumerism....two different things. The purchase of goods you cannot afford is not Capitalism and capitalism existed before credit cards. Consumerism is more down to human nature and is the pursuit of hapiness through consumption and materialism - consumerism is the problem and not capitalism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerism You could argue that we are living in a state of consumer capitalism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_capitalism) but this is very different to purist free market capitalism as consumer capitalism is a deliberate attempt to skew the market (which by definition is not a free market). So we are all to blame to some extent for consumerism as we are all human....but we elect a government to serve in our best interests and this shower of ****e hasn't. This Govt idly stood by and let a lot of people get into the **** - but Crash Gordon (aka Gordon Clown) turned a blind eye (no pun intended) - the debt-built feel-good factor won them another election, so our elected representatives failed us big time. I think it was deliverate....you could call it buying an election....either that or he really is a complete buffoon / idiot.

To be fair, even if the world switched simultaneously to this new system, the end result would be....it would not work because of human nature. Therefore, it will never happen. In the meantime, Capitalism rocks and no one can come up with a workable and realistic alternative that would benefit mankind.

I kind of knew you would say that and I wanted to draw you in...here is how it goes. So then Cuba isn't truly communist, nor is China and you have to ask why. The reason is that it does not work, which was my original point. Even communism can't survive without capitalism (look at the USSR) whilst Capitalism can survive without Communism - because - it works. With regards to humanity and how we live, that Survivor series on BBC recently did make me ponder somewhat - but even in a crisis, the basic human traits such as greed and envy don't go away. There whilst we all live and breath, the problems of the world won't go away and the best mechanism for development is still capitalism. That's just the way it is.......

Capitalism isn't the only way of creating wealth, but the best method of creating wealth. HTH However, I am struggling with the concept that worth is not what someone is prepared to pay for it - You'll have to help me out on that. How do you value something and what is the worth of something if it is not based on what someone is prepared to pay?

Capitalism is essential to the distribution of wealth, because you can't distribute something until it is created. The other mechanisms may be better at distributing, but infortunately destroy wealth. Why must a country deal with other capitalist states? North Korea don't and nor do Cuba ......and all their citizens are better off as a result....not. What? The technology created by capitalism? Do you think that this technology will continue to develop without the drive to make future profits? The biggest technological advances have been made by the need to make profit or the need to defeat an enemy. Our basic needs are to be fed and housed - the most basic human societies understand this more than anyone. Until this can be removed - which it can't as someone has to make the food and distribute it - commitment to meeting the bills will never go away. You really are already on another planet. Mankind has advanced more in the last 150 years than the last 150,000 years. Until the 1800's we had barely advanced beyond the civilisation that the Romans had brought 1800 years earlier. This started with the industrial revolution and the early components of capitalism. For your plan to work, you need to remove human nature - it is not possible to create your ideal world with humans as they are. Perhaps a catastophic plague or all out nuclear war may make the survivors refocus ...... but you might not survive to see it.

Communism or socialism does not work (as human nature prevents it from doing so). Everyone gets an "equal" slice of the pie (and some more equal than others in any example of socilaist regimes of the current times and past - which is not that different to capitalism) and those with an entrepreneurial spirit or those who are harder working reduce their output - why should they work harder than someone else for the same - is that fair? - the net result is the pie gets smaller and smaller and smaller until there is no pie left. Therefore if you want to have wealth that can be distributed, then you need capitalism to create it. The standard of living of those in capitalist countries tends to fair better than those within communist and socialist regimes - despite 'unfair' distribution. People moan about the rich having money, but they don't just lock it up in a safe somewhere. That money is spent or invested, thus creating jobs and wealth elsewhere - it's a kind of natural distribution. Every other species on earth evolves on the basis of the survival of the fittest - you don't see Lions sharing their kill with another unfortunate lion who couldn't be arsed to hunt for himself.