To the topic of this thread -...
You think ministerial malfeasance is not relevant to whether we like or approve of our governments? Id say it strikes to the heart of the problem, and repeatedly in a new government....
Norman Fowler (conservative) just said on the radio this mess is the fault of the labour government, because they changed the law to potentially allow one person to own BskyB. So they put temptation in the way of poor Hunt. Oh poor Hunt! The conservative party is in overdrive to try to rubbish the emails. Saying news international staff are liars (they are suggesting the emails were simply made up!) Hardly the sort of company you might want running our media.....
- the UK needs to return to a religious test for holding political office.
You mean like certain arab countries? The majority of the UK are aethiest, do we disenfranchise them?
There is a sense in which there really is now a "crisis" of capitalism. It's horrible, isn't it! We cannot replace capitalism - Marxism has failed.
Sorry, did anyone give marxism a fair trial?
And within capitalism the rich cannot be forced to pay taxes and bankers will get humungous bonuses - and if either of these conditions are breached the pain will be felt by the poorest.
It would seem capitalism is capable of interpretation of meaning just as much as communism. It is a fundamental part of capitalism that for it to work the rich must have money taken away from them. Otherwise it is some other system.
Instead of ungoverned and ungovernable capitalism we need Christian capitalism. We need an expectation that politicians, entrepreneurs, everyone will seek to live by a moral code and be their own most severe judge.
Historically speaking, it has never worked yet. The powerful ALWAYS exploit the weak. They are only prevented from doing so by force of one sort or another, and thats why we have rules and regulations and taxes. So much more civilised than riots.
The big political story right now should be a London council that is seeking to make a political point at the expense of the well-being of 500 people. This is beyond any possible justification. The councillors do not have to do this. They think the well-being and happiness of 500 people is expendable so that they can gain a dubious political point. It is a form of cultural cleansing. This is the politics of evil, of Stalin, of the third reich. I do not know which law of man it breaches - maybe none. I am sure it breaches the law of God. There is a limit to how much I can be bothered about what a minister may or may not have done which is ill-advised or mistaken or foolish (and this is all we are talking about) but I am bothered when elected politician in a London borough assault 500 of their weakest residents.
Now theres a polemic. for the benefit of our foreign friends, a local council has said it cannot rehouse the homeless within its borough because 1) there are no spare houses and 2) all of them have so high a free market rent that it exceeds the amount the government will pay to house someone. So they are attempting to move people somewhere in the country housing is cheaper. They say they have a legal duty to house people and it is the only way they can.
I agree this is pretty outrageous but it is exactly what the government stated it expected to happen when it recently imposed a cap on the amount of housing benefit it would pay towards peoples housing. The council is doing what it was told to do by the government. There was much publicity at the time that this would happen and it is. Someone yesterday said the council has a ten year waiting list for housing. Further, since they are not the most expensive borough in London, they say they already have an influx of people displaced from even more expensive areas. I also saw someone interviewed from one of the northern towns where it is proposed these people might go. The woman said they have plenty of cheap houses but also 70 persons seeking every job vacancy. Which I expect is why the housing is cheap. Isnt it ironic that under Thatcher, Norman Tebbitt had an 'on your bike' policy where he suggested the unemployed should leave areas of high unemployment and move to places there are more jobs. Now we are doing the reverse. Lets just get these nobodies out of London, eh?
Incidentally, the BBC just observed the adjacent council has been shifting people to Birmingham for some time. They are sending out letters that if people refuse to move to Birmingham they will be thrown out of their accommodation. It is also suggested all this has to do with the Olympics, which is happening in this area and pushing up demand for accommodation. Didnt China and India turf out the poor to make their sporting fixtures look nicer?