Happy Face

Tories stopping free school dinners.... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/education/10273613.stm They'll be after the milk next.

Of course Joe Public himself has to shoulder some blame for revelling in the credit provided by that deregulation. As I've said before if Brown had at any time said "I'm going to massively limit personal credit and lending" he would have been crucified. I think I've responded to this a few times and said it's baloney. If the government said loan companies could and should be allowed to shotgun your ankles off for defaulting then people who are desparate enough will go ahead and take out that loan. The governments role is to protect those idiotic enough to take out a loan with an APR of 2600% or mortgages worth 150% of the property value.....as well as the intelligent ones like you who know not to take out those loans but suffer the consequences of those that do. That's not limiting lending, it's limiting the return from a loan that's likely to default....and for that he wouldn't have been crucified, because it was already the approach.

I wouldn't blame the average American for anything....apart from voting for anyone but Nader

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/0...mands-for-pain/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/0...pean-austerity/

http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/mystery-of...ube-videos.html

As the clip you posted shows, Maher invites dissenting voices on to argue against Israel. Just because he personally is pro-Israel it doesn't make him as bad as Fox. I don't see how you can show an anti-Israel clip from US TV....then say all US TV is pro Israel.

The Real Time podcast is quality.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/20...chancellor.html As i posted earlier in the thread, on average Thatcher increased spending. She only cut spending 2 years. So ANY cuts will be deeper and tougher than hers. according to paxman last night, thatcher increased public spending every year she was in office. He never said that. He said on average she increased it 1.1% every year. She is responsible for the biggest single year cut in the last 30 years. This is how it breaks down.... Of course, the increased spending went exclusively on the military and law while she cut the shit out of education, health, housing etc.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/20...chancellor.html As i posted earlier in the thread, on average Thatcher increased spending. She only cut spending 2 years. So ANY cuts will be deeper and tougher than hers.

Funny watching Paxo rip the shit out of it on Newsnight. "who makes the ultimate decision?" "The government!" "So why are the public involved? They've elected you to govern!" "So we can implement their ideas" "but the country is full of widely divergent ideas, you can't implement them all" "yes, we'll make the ultimate decision" "So why involve the FUCKING PUBLIC DIPSHIT?" Gimmicky bollocks that's no different to listening to voters in constituencies....and ignoring them.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/0...-rise-recession

Even if it's true, I don't see why one persons idiotic views justify the murder of 9 people. Leazes has said anyone protesting the war should be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan (or somewhere, he's never been particularly specific), does that justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 9 Toontastic posters?

...but they released them without charge.

Some scary shit like. Having won the Superbowl in 2003 their Buckaneers now have the lowest wage bill in the NFL.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/07....html?ref=world

Why the fuck are we taking macro economic advice from a bunch of fucking risk assessors in the fucking first place? Would they be the same risk assessors who looked at risky sub-prime mortgages that had been lumped together and had no clue what the risk was so just gave them a thumbs up and slapped a triple A sticker on them to keep the financial industry happy?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ENGLAND-1990-NIGEL-C...T-/190402541840 I think Nigel Clough has devalued it tbh

Is that true as a percentage of GDP?

NUFC Box Office fuck up? Inevitably. Most of the old codgers with enough points for a derby ticket haven't been to another away game in 10 year. They should base it on the preceding season points total rather than an ongoing accumulated total.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...id=opinionsbox1

When (then) speaker of the house Dick Amrey insisted Palestinians should get out of the West Bank... http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn0508.html ...No-one made a peep. That a journalist can't view the same opinion from the other side shows the lack of discourse that's accepted in the US.

Benefits aren't waste. The job of a government is to tax the wealthy members of society and distribute it to the poor so that no-one is left in poverty. The biggest shame is they've not been taking enough from the wealthy....and the Tories plan to take less. I find it incredible that any working man would be flag waving for increased crippling cuts. Spain aren't having it... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10261567.stm I didnt say they were But you did say they should be cut. We are overspending and need to save money, surely Stopping child benefit payments to Mike Ashley and Richard Branson would be a good start? But you said to £15k+ households. Well you tell me where you think it should be cut off. Regardless what figure you come up with the points still the same, I would rather see the partys tackle these issues than get rid of people like peaspud who sounds like he is actually saving us money. BP's profit in the last quarter were £3.6Bn. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/ap...oil-prices-rise I don't know what their current tax bill is, but the most recent one I can find said it was 20%, so using that, they paid £720m in tax over those three months. If they paid what any person on a good salary pays, you could double that. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2002/jan/11/oilandpetrol It is estimated that in 2008, £12.6 million of public money was lost through benefit fraud. http://www.stopbenefitfraudni.gov.uk/cost.htm £12.6m...in a YEAR!!! Compared to BP's favourable tax rate saving them £720m in just 3 months. If you increased BP's rate of tax by 0.045% (less than one twentieth of a percent), you'd cover the cost of benefit fraud. Interesting but you didn't answer the question Sorry, I misread your post. I wouldn't. It's a red herring policy which will save relatively little. How do you determine a persons/households income? It needs people to be given jobs assessing claims...and systems to perform the complex calculation taking into account existing benefits, earnings, pensions, tax paid, shared care of the child etc. The system/people to do that calculation doesn't sound like a quicjk saving, it sounds expensive additional waste. Just make a standard rate available to all and generally the well off won't even want the stigma of applying.

Good work Ewerk, i was struggling to see how that could be right...I missed the NI on the link. The point still stands like.