Zoe Sorry, but I'm very proud of throwing things in demos. But that was France 1968. It was not against police. It was against CRS - armed, extremely violent paramilitary forces which have no equivalent here. The French government unleashed them against peaceful demos to break them up by brute force. We fought back whilst running for our lives. You'd have to be there to understand it. It is far removed from anything you ever saw in UK. Actually I'm a languages graduate and the economics is the result of running companies over the years. Economic principles are simple. Identify your objective, make a business plan to achieve it, cost it and work out how to fund it. The government seems pretty good at that in many ways. And it does achieve lots of things. But a supposedly prudent chancellor is presiding over a period of unparalleled increases in personal debt to the long term detriment of the people of this country. We save less than anybody else in Europe. We are not putting enough into pensions to fund retirement. We are being encouraged to spend by banks who beg us to borrow money. Their reckless lending policies have pushed house prices to obscene levels which suit nobody but banks. My house cost £27000 in 1984. By 1997 it was worth £150 000. During the 8 years of Labour governance it has risen to over £500 000. That is a direct result of allowing banks free rein in lending. In 1984 you could borrow maximum 2.5 times your annual salary for a mortgage. In 2005 the average house price in UK is around £176000 - about 7.5 times average salary, landing younger borrowers with lifelong debt. Running up debts on credit cards at usurious rates of interest is now the norm. Money that should go into savings goes into servicing debt. The people of this country are being encouraged and allowed to live beyond their means. That , Zoe, is irresponsible Government fiscal policy in spades. As for the 1980s, agreed, Labour was a spent force and had to reinvent itself and come to terms with the modern world, and it took a long painful time. But they did so spectacularly. We were cheering like mad in 1997. But something's happened over the last 4 or 5 years. I don't know how to describe it, but it reminds me of the pigs in Animal Farm. In the end, power always corrupts. This government has forgotten that it is the servant of the people. Tony Blair talks in terms of having to take decisions he knows to be opposed by the majority of people because he believes them to be right, and that is what leaders have to do . He talked in those terms during the election about Iraq. And that showed clearly that power has corrupted him and those around him. I wonder, Zoe, if , when you demonstrated against Thatcher 20 years ago, you thought you would ever see the day when a Labour Government would lie to the people of this country in order to take it to war in support of an extreme-right US invasion of a foreign country in order to secure oil supplies for the USA and to provide the first stepping stone in the Far Right's PNAC (project for the new american century. Heard of it? Wonderful reading)? Of course you didn't. You'd have scoffed at the idea.

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