Are all rich people wealth creators?

[OwlHoot]

How about we accept that enough tax is already too much and start to stop the state from administrating loads of stuff that has no effect on the country other than building civil service empires?

Seriously even if I was a fifth generation blue blood and I did nothing apart from party and drive expensive cars all day at least the state gets 30k in vat Plus petrol every time a new toy gets bought... Not to mention several thousand pounds in beer & wine taxation....

The idea that for some reason the state deserves to take and redistribute cash just because the owners have more of it than the other 99% is pants.

At the fathest end of the view point, we have too many people on the planet, so why shouldn't a large number of them starve if they can't fend for themselves?

Well said

Too many are taken in by sanctimonious hogwash about "paying their fair share". It's no different to credulous fools in the Middle Ages being persuaded to feel virtuous about paying Peter's Pence for the good of their souls.

[DodgyAgent]

Jeremy Clarkson hits the nail on the head:

We return this morning to a subject I’ve talked about before. It’s a subject close to every man’s heart: the sheer, unadulterated, trudging misery of shopping for clothes.

I buy my shoes at Tod’s on Bond Street in London. Its window is always full of many attractive designs, and if I have a few minutes left on the meter I will sometimes pop in to buy a pair. But they never, ever, have anything in a size 11. The lady always comes back from a lengthy trip to the storeroom brandishing a pair of size 5s, asking cheerfully if they will do instead.

Which is a bit like someone in a restaurant ordering the vegetarian option and being asked if a nice, juicy T-bone steak will do instead. No, it won’t. And now, thanks to this time-wasting, I have a parking ticket.

Shops never keep shirts in the size I want either, and every single available jacket would only really fit Ziggy Stardust. Trousers? Don’t know, because I’m way too big to fit in the overheated postbox the retailer laughingly calls a changing room. However, if by some miracle you do find something in your size that you like, your problems are far from over because you have to pay for it.

When you buy £100-worth of petrol, you put your card in a machine, tap in your code and seconds later walk out with a receipt. When you buy £100-worth of trousers, you must stand at the desk while the sales assistant inputs what feels like the entire works of Dostoevsky into her computer. And then she will want your name and address so that you can be kept abreast of forthcoming clothing lines that won’t be available in your size either.

And you can’t get round the problem by going somewhere else because these days there is nowhere else.

This is my new beef. Every single high street and every single shopping centre in every single town and city is full of exactly the same shops attempting to sell exactly the same things that you can’t buy because they don’t keep your size in stock.

A recent trip to San Francisco has demonstrated that it doesn’t have to be this way. I took my children to Haight-Ashbury so that I could talk to them about the summer of love and how Janis Joplin was about a billion times better than any of the talentless teenage warblers on their iPods.

At first I was a bit disappointed to find that the whole area had been turned into a vast shopping experience. The kids weren’t, though. And soon neither was I.

The first shop was rammed with Sixties clothing and accessories. Purple hippie sunglasses. Vietnam Zippos. Joss sticks and curious-looking chemistry sets. There were posters of Hendrix and CND badges and I bought more in there, in 10 minutes, than I’ve bought in Britain in 10 years.

Then I found a shoe shop. It was selling shoes and boots the likes of which you simply would not find anywhere in Britain and it had in stock every single size you could think of. I bought many pairs. Then I bought two jackets that fitted, and then we decided to visit one of the many coffee shops. None of which was Starbucks.

Every single high street is full of exactly the same shops attempting to sell exactly the same thing Not a single one of the shops wanted my name or address when I bought anything. They had no intention of sending me exciting product information and they did not expect me to hang around while they updated their stock figures.

You hand over your card, provide the inevitable photo ID, sign your name and leave.

Of course, you may imagine that all of the hundreds of tiny independent shops in the area are being run by free-love people who arrived in San Francisco in June 1967 and who are therefore not interested in profit. You might imagine that as long as you worshipped at the altar of peaceful protest, you could barter for one of the chemistry sets with beans.

There was plenty of evidence to suggest this might be so. One shop was being run by a chap in his sixties. He wore his hair in a ponytail, a pair of John Lennon glasses, a poncho and a set of groovy loon pants. Later, though, I saw him locking up his shop and climbing into a brand new Cadillac Escalade.

So why, if there’s money to be made, have the big boys not moved in? Bloody good question.

Because that’s exactly what’s happened on the British equivalent of Haight- Ashbury: the King’s Road in London. Back in the day this was a mish-mash of small shops selling individually made items to Mick Jagger and Johnny Rotten. Now it’s WH Smith, HMV, Marks & Spencer. It’s exactly the same as Pontefract and Pontypool. Genesis has gone all Phil Collins.

The trouble is that there are only a few streets in London where the big multinational retailers want to be. This means the rents are six times higher on the King’s Road than they are on Haight Street in San Francisco. One American chain called Forever 21 paid almost £14m in key money to HMV to take over its lease on Oxford Street. And against that sort of financial clout, a slightly off-his-head jewellery designer with a fondness for growing beans and a laissez-faire attitude to payment is going to find himself priced out of the market.


The good news is, however, that I’m by no means the only person who shivers with despair at Britain’s one-size-fits-nobody attitude to shopping. I’m not the only person who fumes with rage over the sheer length of time it takes to pay. And how the financial pressure to make every square foot count means stock and changing rooms are smaller than most lavatory cisterns.

Which means that one day the Starbucks and the Forever 21s and the Banana Republics will be brought to their knees. And the streets of our towns will be handed back to Ronnie Barker, who’ll open all hours, sell us things we like and let us pay at the end of the week. In beads.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

Clarkson is right especially about shoes. When everyone stopped doing half sizes I had to start getting 12s except no-one ever has any.
As for the rest - it's the free market so it must automatically be right according to Dodgy et al's usual mantra so I don't why you're whinig

[DodgyAgent]

Clarkson is right especially about shoes. When everyone stopped doing half sizes I had to start getting 12s except no-one ever has any.
As for the rest - it's the free market so it must automatically be right according to Dodgy et al's usual mantra so I don't why you're whinig

So how else do you create wealth then?

[Peoplesoft bloke]

So how else do you create wealth then?

How else other than what? The free market? The free market ensured that neither Clarkson nor I can buy clothes in our size and that all UK high streets are crap. You said he hit the nail on the head - did you post on the wrong thread?

[DodgyAgent]

How else other than what? The free market? The free market ensured that neither Clarkson nor I can buy clothes in our size and that all UK high streets are crap. You said he hit the nail on the head - did you post on the wrong thread?

You are perfectly free to sell shoes of whatever size you like.

[Halo Jones]

Some people are so poor all they have is money.

That’s a bit deep for CUK and on a Monday too ..

[Robinho]

How else other than what? The free market? The free market ensured that neither Clarkson nor I can buy clothes in our size and that all UK high streets are crap. You said he hit the nail on the head - did you post on the wrong thread?

The UK high street features shops that the people of the UK want in all its vulgarity.

Unfortunately you have freakish feet.

Have you tried shopping on the internet?

[hyperD]

Have you seen Mallorcan TV? I thought most foreigners exposed to UK TV reckoned it was a good deal.

Are you ******* serious?!?! There isn't even a TV in the house I'm staying at. Most of the group I'm with are out partying rather than staring in stoney silence at a load of bollocks in a prism of RGB.

Talking of which, my even more favourite expression: "Una cerveza Grande, por favor!"

Be nice to one another peeps!

[Scoobos]

Some people are so poor all they have is money.

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Cliphead again.

The youngsters need some experience to see the point in that though.