State of the nation

[NoddY]

...Did you know that a crash is being put off by spiralling debt, both national and personal debt? That is the secret of our "stable" economy.

It is also the secret of the US economy - but unlike the US we don't have the military machine to enforce our will when it all goes pear shaped.

[Dundeegeorge]

Indeed we have a stable economy

but from memory aren't stables generally full of horsetulip?

[mcquiggd]

Well, my local supermarket now only employs polish women... the ones who arent pretty enough to work in the bars, lapdancing clubs and massage parlours I 'spose....

Ho hum...


And if you seriously think its only 345,000 that have entered the country....

Mwahahahahahahah!

[partimer]

State of the Nation

Ripped off from another web site ...

THE CLASSIC VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

THE BRITISH VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate, like him, are cold and starving. The BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper; with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table laden with food. Britons are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty. The Labour Party, Greenpeace and The Grasshopper Council of GB Demonstrate in front of the ant's house. The BBC, interrupting a Jamaican cultural festival special from Notting Hill with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome" Ken Livingstone rants in an interview with Trevor McDonald that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share". In response to polls, the Labour Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant's taxes are reassessed, and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers. Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, the government repossesses his home. The ant moves to Spain, and starts a successful wine-exporting company. A Panorama special later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food, though Spring is still months away, while the council house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he hasn't bothered to maintain it. Inadequate government funding is blamed, Trevor Phillips is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost £10,000,000. The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Daily Mirror blames it on the obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity. The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Britain's multicultural diversity, who promptly set up a marijuana plantation and terrorise the community.

[Shimano105]

Too right, feckin grasshoppers

[benn0]

So Cable and Wireless are shedding 3000 jobs? I deal with them on a day to day basis and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. MFI have been a shambles for years, so again no surprises there. Who do you know who buys furniture from there any more? I cannot see the difference between this and the job cuts forced on so called inefficient industries in the early 80s.

Except of course that Maggie's govt was responsible for the latter.

[wendigo100]

I cannot see the difference between this and the job cuts forced on so called inefficient industries in the early 80s.

You don't surprise me benn0, so I'll tell you. The UK economy was on the way up then, it is on the way down now.

[benn0]

You don't surprise me benn0, so I'll tell you. The UK economy was on the way up then, it is on the way down now.

After Thatcher engineered a recession by cutting public spending across the board there was only one way for it to go.

If you don't like it here why don't you get on your bike?

[expat]

I read somewhere that MFI are trying to go upmarket.... shouldn't be difficult.

LOL!

[stackpole]

After Thatcher engineered a recession by cutting public spending across the board there was only one way for it to go.

So you believe that the parlous state of the economy in the early eighties was due to "Thatcher engineering a recession".



Would anyone else like to support that view?