Happy Face

£2.99 in hardback at WH Smith

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10641910

He's back in Take That gossip fans.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...wler/index.html

Good lad. You wouldn't catch him doing a world cup single with the fat one off Gavin and Stacey.

I find this thread exhausting. People seem to fall into 3 buckets in this thread: Unable / Unwilling to understand the facts that are quite clear. Making things up to suit their argument. Or the old fail safe. What would the Tories have done differently??? Peoples political views seem so entrenched they can't view the data in an objective manner. I think if you got Gordon Brown in a room who would give more ground than most would on here. Pointless. Tories = Child eating, Eton educated, northern hating monsters. Labour = Friends of the working man whos mistakes can be directly traced to some old Tory policy. As Bannatyne would say. I'm out. You've put yourself in all 3 buckets in a single post. There's been few people more scathing of Labour than me.

The one thing I'd say is that the banks had insurance against those bad loans. They wouldn't have gone under off the back of some bad loans defaulting. The problem was the worry that insurance companies might not have been able to afford to cover the payments if ALL the bad loans defaulted. It was this worry that led to the confidence in the market crumbling and governments propping up the insurers so the banks could rest assured their money was safe. While private investors of the companies that went under were lucky to get any of their investment back, big banks that made the bad loans like Goldman made sure to get 100% of their investment back from their friends at the treasury. There's still as much bad mortgages/loans out there as there was before. it's not like they all defaulted and the slate got wiped clean by the government provided security. They can do it all again.

Panda Bear - Slow Motion Track from the new album due in September. Looking forward to it. I think I prefer his solo stuff to anything Animal Collective have done together.

So the global credit bubble was beyond the UKs control. And spending as a proprtion of GDP was pretty much kept to exactly the the same level it was when labour took power. Still struggling to see what the UK did wrong that everyone else got right.

Just to be clear, you are saying GDP has been artificially inflated thanks to the UKs increased spending? Yes. So was it UK spending that pushed up the US, German, Italian, French GDPs and those of every other major economy? http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi...USA:ITA:FRA:DEU No What caused other economies to double GDP at exactly the same time/rate as the UK doubled GDP then? Have they all made the same mistake of increased spending?

Just to be clear, you are saying GDP has been artificially inflated thanks to the UKs increased spending? Yes. So was it UK spending that pushed up the US, German, Italian, French GDPs and those of every other major economy? http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi...USA:ITA:FRA:DEU

Just to be clear, you are saying GDP has been artificially inflated thanks to the UKs increased spending?

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-stag...ories-honeymoon Who'd have thought, Goldman Sach's pushing governments to tighten spending as drastically as possible, not to ensure social welfare, but for purely political reasons.

What you on about? A single BBC reporter has taken a load of the blame for the entire financial collapse for his reporting on the shit-storm that was coming. The finacial press were talking about the bubble crash back in 2006. Keep up. Parky, keep up.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7914421.stm

What you on about? A single BBC reporter has taken a load of the blame for the entire financial collapse for his reporting on the shit-storm that was coming.

Parky's so confused. Bitter and angry that money gets stolen from the needy and handed to the banks and big business. Bitter that the needy get a free ride and all the protection that regulation provides them. Are you an old school Commy Parky? EDIT: Great minds eh Renton

I'm surprised Cameron is pretending to be outraged given the complicity of private landlords in the scam. Of course you could argue that the legal obligation of councils to house people should be exempted in areas like Kensington - I know that would just pass the buck elsewhere but it would save money. I don't mind Cameron capping how much they'll pay towards rent. Seems very reasonable. Of course, that's the kind of costly bureaucratic regulation that they're insisting they'll put an end to.

Worried they'll lower property value in the area.

http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/global-war...dian-ocean.html

How can you lump all regulation together and argue to take an axe to it all, while complaining the banks have been allowed to run rampant and need to be boxed in? Clearly some regulation is a good thing worth paying for and in some cases should probably be extended.

Danny's favourite paper isn't keen.... http://www.ft.com/cms/s/59cd716e-8f74-11df...F%2Frereferyned

Did I hear right that ITV cut to adverts while matches were on? I thought it was bad when they did it during the Grand Prix, but that's incredible. No surprise they were duly caned on the ratings, irrespective of the commentary/studio teams. Let's be honest, they're not quite Cloughie back in the studio on either channel are they? Bunch of sycophantic friends of the squad. "He'll be disappointed with that!" "HE'LL" be disappointed? I'm seething with it myself. Just say it was shite man!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/artic...iwGyV6W0KRLZwug The Lib Dems seem to be willfully alienating anyone who voted for them. People voted for them to scrap tuition fees, not to re-brand it.