Sampson

We already do and we already have as have other countries. And we constantly try and improve it further but what is better? Taking tax from billionaires to give to the NHS, teachers, the police, the firefighters etc. who make all our lives better or allowing them to invest in businesses which may or may not create jobs or create products and services which make people's lives better or allow for investmènt in equipment to push prices down or keep their money in the bank so banks can give loans out or risking them leaving the country and going elsewhere? An which one allows for the better interest in society? It's not an easy question to answer and never has been but there's no perfect system. There's no such thing as not accepting the good and bad - every decision which is made by a government will have a negative affect especially when it's just trying to affect the hundreds of thousands of decisions which 70 million seperate people (we'll ultimately 7 billion people) make everyday (which is all the Economy is). Every system will have massive flaws and bad sides and affect millions of lives negatively! The only way it wouldn't is if the government tried to treat everyone as the same and wanting the same goals and wanting the same things and to spend on the same things (which is what Communist countries tried to do). You can't have both to a perfect level. You have to find the balance which allows both to a certain degree and we've found a system which works over the long-term over the past century or so - it's not perfect and it has short or medium term blips but it works - and putting innovation and the freedom for goods and services which people want and which there is demand for to through before equality has pulled people out of poverty in a way Socialist and Communist countries which put equality before innovation never managed - and for me pulling people out of poverty and making people's lives better should be the aim - not equality - and the incredible comfort we live in compared to other countries and eras is testament to that working. Yes it can be evolved as new ideas come into play but it absolutely isn't a broken system.

Why are you assuming they don't? Why are you assuming they don't give money to charities, invest money in small businesses, invest money in their own businesses creating jobs or store money in banks which allows banks to give loans and mortgages to less well off people? And why does it matter? The reductions of levels in poverty in tg is country and all of the West since WWII have been insane and the reduction of poverty in many other parts of the world like Eastern Europe, China and India have been insane since globalisation in the 1980s - like completely unprecedented in human history. If there's one thing travelling and studying history have taught me it's how incredibly lucky we are! Very few people starve in Britain today - in fact suicide and obesity are both fat bigger killers than dying of famine or dehydration - and it's only in Western countries in the past few decades that that's ever been the case - in all of human history! Of course it can be better, but seriously, go travelling to parts of Asia, South America, Africa and even parts of Eastern Europe and it will make you appreciate just how lucky we are in this country at this stage in history! Of course it could be better, but you always remember how lucky we all are - you're literally reading this on a computer screen or phone which most people in history could never afford. I can literally go into a pub or restaurant and have a meal whuch a professional chef who's trained specifically to cook and make great food withour having yo grow it, without having to hunt animals, skin them or cook them, withour having to build an oven and I can get that for abour 1 and a half hours worth of work at minimum wage. I can rent a room for a month in an urbanized cities which cost thousands of labour hours to create a safe inside shelter with man made heating, man made security, man made electricity and water for about a week and a half labour. I can get electricity and light in my house for a pennies a day when candlelight cost hours of labour just 4 generations a go. I can afford a device in my hand which communicates across vast distances and allows me nearly all of human knowledge and history at my fingertips for about 15 hours labour. And this is all while the standard working day has even managed to go down from approximately 45 hours a week to 38 hours a week in that time. Absolutely everyone in history and the majority of people who live today would look at what is affordable in Britain today and be in awe at how we live. Communist states wanted equality over prosperity and it ended up just keeping everyone poor because they didn't allow the innovations which make all our lives better a chance to get through. Yes our system allows a lot of people to get rich by luck but it also allows freedom for innovations which make everyone's lives better to get through - which has as a result pulled way more people out of poverty over the long term. It isn't perfect but it's taken thousands of years to get to this point and thr rapid increase in thè quality of lives just in the past 3 generations has been entirely unprecedented in human history. Everyone gets what you're saying - we all want to live in such a world where no one is poor and everyone can but what they want and afford to own their own property, but I think you've got to look at the bigger picture in the world and history - and I'm constantly amazed I was lucky to live in such a time where food is plentiful, man made wonders like the internet, electricity and clean water and available to all for such tiny amounts, I can rent a room with central heating, whuch is protected from the elements and I still have money to spend in leisure time like football tickets, computer games, going for a drink with friends, going to the cinema, going travelling etc. where I can take advantage of other people's thousands of labour hours and trained skills and expertise. This has literally only been an option for the past 2 or 3 generations in the 200,000 odd years in which homo sapiens have existed. The comfort we have in this country at this point in history is ridiculous compared to pretty much any other time or country - and no that shouldn't allow us to get complacent - but it also shouldn't allow us to get complacent with a system which allows the innovations which get through and make profits by selling them to the masses.

I absolutely do sympathise with those who lost their jobs and lives in the mining closes and in the Falklands, fuchsntf! Don't get me wrong. And I'm absolutely not overlooking the harm she did to many people, but politics is about making hard decisions and I think the decisions she made in her early years were absolutely what a country on its knees needed at the time! And we absolutely needed to embrace free trade, globalisation and free markets and change the shift of our industries at the time.

But unemployment was a short-term inevitability. She sold off the mining industry because it was cheaper to by in coal from abroad. The 70s and oil crash is what saw the world abandon Keynesian theories and protectionism in favour of globalisation and free trade.which I think almost everyone on both sides of the spectrum agrees are good things and have helped improve the lives of billions of people worldwide over the past 30 years or so. Protectionism was dead - protecting national industry in favour of free trade and not allowing for the different specialisation of nations (as per the Production Possibility Frontier) was gone. Look, I totally get it was hard for people who lost their jobs at the time, but what other options were there at the time other than to open up markets and international trade and sell off our industry? We would have had to open them up eventually. The coal mines in the UK would have to have been closed to input coal from abroad eventually - free trade was being embraced by the rest of the West and we would've been undercut on every international market had we not also embraced it. I don't think she was perfect - along way from it - but she was clearly what the country needed back in 1979 and she helped pull the country out of its slump and into the modern globalised world.

It absolutely does and Capitalism absolutely is a better system than Socialism! I just don't think you understand the difference between Capitalism and Socialism! The UK has never been Socialist and wasn't Socialist in the 1970s it was Keynesian - which is still an overwhelmingly Capitalist system! The Soviet Union was Socialist, Maoist China was Socialist, North Korea is Socialist Cuba is Socialist, Iraq under Saddam Hussein was Socialist, Zimbabwe under Magbwe is Socialist, Venuzuela is Socialst. Modern day Nordic countries are nothing like Socialism - Socialism is and always has been when industry and business is collectively owned (nearly always by the state). Again! It's this chopping and changing of the term Socialism to suit your own definition which is so dangerous and politicians still do it to sound anti-establishment and so they can rag on Capitalism and so they can sound "anti-establishment" and people eat it up just because it's anti-establishment. What you are describing are just different forms of Capitalism - but all of which have the overwhelming majority of our industry in private hands, allowing for private ownership and run for profit (which is what Capitalism means and always has meant). The last time the "death of Capitalism" entered the public consciousness was in the 1930s awhich led to the rise of Fascism, Nazisim, Socialism and Communism because they were seen as the alternatives - it's dangerous shit to spread. If you want to get behind Keynesian ideas (which is what I'm guessing by your posits what are actually refering to) then fine, but that isn't what Corbyn and Macdonnell are talking about when they talk nationalisation of industry, worker co-ops or workers taking controls of future technology rather than their bosses.

They really didn't! They happened because of the post-war Keynesian consensus - which couldn't deal with the oil crash (which no one could realistically have predicted) - the oil crash was a small recession for other countries but it was exasperated in the UK when it wasn't elsewhere (unlike the 2008 crisis) because of high government spending and a government in the late 70s who just bent to the wills of the trade unions. Heath was a Keynesian and even though I don't rate him one bit and he absolutely was partly to blame (as was the whole damn post-war Keynesian consensus), you've got to be doing some serious revisionism not to think Callaghan and Wilson exasperated the problem because they tried to spend their way out of recession and kept giving into worker and trade union demands. Thatcher was the one which brought that recession under control when it had been brought under control years earlier everywhere else but was spiralling further and further out of control in the UK.

It's not just disliking his policies! He's literally advocating workers taking control of technology and the means of production - he's literally advocating Communism. It's like reading something out of a history book on the 1930s - a big economic crash happens (which are well known issues of capitalism because unlike other systems it doesn't pretend to be perfect and is very long-term based) and people proclaim it to be the death of capitalism - and populists on the Hard Left and Hard Right pop up all over the West to exploit it - one side blaming the immigrants and a religious minority and the other side blaming the bourgoise owners of business and industry - each to connect with the common worker. I sincerely hope I'm wrong but I've never seen anything like what's happened in Europe and the US the past 3 or 4 years with the rise of both hard Right and hard Left populism and no, I absolutely don't want to see *these* alternatives! The Tories are still an infinitely better alternative than a government admitting more and more like they're into worker control of the means of production and Communism all the time though and that's the problem. I'd really like a non-crazy Labour party who don't sound like they're from the charasmatic populist rhetoric of the 1930s which every history book has warned us against, to offer that alternative, I really would.

Jeremy Corbyn: Let workers control robots - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41614820 I just don't know how anyone can read this and not just think the guy is some Marxist nutcase. He's about as close as you can get to saying "workers - seize the means of production" without actually saying it. I'm imagining an Uber which ran co-operatively by their drivers - and all I can see is endless hold ups with the beaurocracy of negotiations and drivers wanting to charge more and more and work less and less hours and users getting tired of bartering meaning no one would use the service anymore and the drivers would all lose their jobs (and we all know Uber makes huge losses anyway so if the profits would be shared - how would any losses be shared?) - and someone would rise to the top to negotiate it all and take their share - they always do. I just don't get the guy's popularity at all. At least since the election he seems to be getting more and more confident and based on the Labour conference and this more and more explicitly radical and showing his true colours. Just hope that ends up shooting himself in the foot.

Completely agree with everything you've just said! And I don't like sticking to individual parties for this reason (and have voted for all 3 major parties in the past) But that being said, I absolutely do think this is a phenomenon of the Left even more than it is the Right or the Centre (although it absolutely does exist there a lot too) and I do feel that there is a much bigger stigma attached to being a Tory or Right of centre and more people will sneer at you for voting Tory or being Right of centre and just bash everything because it's the Tories than they will do for voting Labour or bash everything because it's Labour or because you're Left of centre. It's also always been really notable how the far-Right is rightly castigated by nearly everyone, but the far-Left doesn't seem to get anywhere near the same treatment and I've never understood it - why does such an obvious and vile evil not get the same treatment as another obvious and vile evil does? As Andrew Neil once said to a certain shadow home secretary - "why is it you can wear a Hitler t-shirt and (rightly) get castigated for it, but if you wore a Mao t-shirt no one would bat an eyelid?" - I mean people actually wear Che Guevara t-shirts as a sign of pride ffs! I guess it's because Conservatism by definition is the establishment and it's always been trendy to be anti-establishment - let's not forget how trendy it was to be a Trotskyite in the 70s and the reason people still bizarrely claim to be anti-Capitalist and support Socialism after 100 years of its Utopian delusions have failed time after time and murdered well over 100million people is because it's anti-establishment.

Why? Because he believes in Economic Liberalism? So did all 3 major parties until Corbyn got into power (even Ed Milliband and Gordon Brown did) - like Theresa May said the other day - I thought there was a general political consensus on that until Corbyn. It doesn't make you a Tory to believe in that. I believe in it and have voted for all 3 major parties in the past and will happily vote for all 3 again in the future if I feel I like their ideas at that particular election. And I really don't think this dislike of individual parties and people looking down on them helps There should be no stigma on being a Tory or a Labour supporter - their ideas change drastically through time (which is why I've never supported one party) all it does is not allow people to take their arguments in. It reminds me of that old Christopher Hitchens quote - who at the time was a well-known and self-confessed Trotskyite when he said he didn't vote in the 1979 election because he couldn't bring himself to vote Tory, but deep down he knew not voting would allow Thatcher to get into power which he secretly wanted (and he ended up becoming a great admirer of hers) - because he could see like everyone else that the Wilson and Callaghan governments had been a disaster and they constantly bowed to the whims of the trade unions and gave them anything they asked for which was bankrupting the country - why allow that stigma to ever come into play, vote for who you think's best for the country at that particular election, regardless of the name of the party. And I still find it strange people don't appreciate Thatcher if I'm honest - regardless of your political persuasion. I get that it wasn't easy if you were one who lost your job and identity - absolutely it wasn't! And some of her Social Conservatism was vile - her treatment of gay men during the AIDS crisis especially and Section 28 has rightly been seen by history as evil - and I'm not belittling the people who suffered under her, but she literally saved this country from bankruptcy! She saved the country from run away inflation, huge national debt and a government which would bend to the will of the trade unions and just kept spending and spending and giving into workers' slightest demands and refused free trade for goods which were cheaper in other countries even when it was bankrupting the country - who knows what kind of state the country would've ended up in if Callaghan's government would've got another 5 years, it would likely have been far worse for all of us - she absolutely was what the country needed at that time.

I actually tried doing night classes in German too earlier this year but found it tough going. Would like to go back and do some more eventually. Actually only started doing night classes the past couple of years and have really enjoyed it. It was my 2016 new years resolution to do some adult education courses and I wish I'd done some sooner. Currently doing an astronomy one which I'm really enjoying, I'd love to find a good History one too as I've always loved history. Definitely recommend night classes and adult education classes to anyone.

He's the Richard Littlejohn of the Left. Just talks over people, constantly changes his definition of things to match his ideology, doesn't listen to opponent's arguments in debates etc. etc. He's the absolute definition of a champagne Socialist ideologue. That video of him trying to defend Venezuela is one of the cringiest things I've ever seen.

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It's a research report by Vitor Gaspar - the former head of finance of Portugal who had to resign after implementing these plans sent Portugal further into recession and he was getting spat on in the streets for his Economic blunders. The researcher's very own empirical evidence goes against what it "proves". And I don't think people have been arguing against higher taxation for the rich for more spending on primary and secondary education and healthcare on its own necessarily (especially of every nation did it at once rather than just the UK, whuch won't happen) - so much as higher taxation along with hiking up the minimum wage along with tax payer funded universities and nationalisation of several industry and large government spending on housing while rent caps push out landlords and drive down the quality of housing in the private sector within a few years is going to cause mass government spending - and it's hard to see how this won't affect small and medium.sized businesses as well, lead to inflation and more national debt over the long and medium term (as it did in the 70s) or how "small" taxation can generally cover this huge government spending over the medium and long term (and given what we know about Corbyn, MacDonnell and Abbott's beliefs - It's just hard to not to see them continuously spending long after the goals of the manifesto (which are always just primary targets) have been achieved or whenever the inevitable issues of government day to day arise). The major worry I have about a Corbyn and MacDonnell (who is definitely the member if the Labour Party I mist have issue with) led Labour party is doing too much too quick - Thatcher absolutely was what the country needed in the late 70s and early 80s but her major failing was doing too much too quickly - (which is one of the problems as to why privitising the rail had so many issues) - and I find it hard to see how nationalising so much so quickly wouldn't have a similar impact. If many of the policies in Labour's manifesto were set out over a number of years and not just over one term I think it would be much easier to swallow even if I strongly disagree with a lot of it. But it's the old adage of evolution not revolution and it's why Boris Yeltsin was such a catastrophic failure and why China's economy has flourished as a result of the fall of Communism in a way Russia's didn't - because Russia tried to open it's markets up far too quickly whereas China has done it gradually over a number of decades - any quick shift in governmental philosophy or spending ends up doing more harm than good.

Robber Beetwat.

They weren't though. This is pre-Barcelona dominance where Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal used to make the CL semi finals almost every year and between 2004-09 there was at least one English finalist. Players like Neville, Terry, Ferdinand and A. Coke were not carried by foreign players - they were star players in their team and England had an excellent defence back then - Gerrard, Lanyard, Scholes and Beckham were good players, they weren't carried by foreign players for their club sides, they made things happened for their clubs - but they never worked for England because we spent 6 years trying to shoehorn the midfielders all into the same side even when it became cliche to the point of parody that "Gerrard and Lampard don't work together" - but we stuck to it at a time when other major nations were all abandoning 4-4-2 - you could say very similar issues to what Leicester have at the moment or what Belgium have had in the past 4 or 5 years where they clearly have a talented squad but just can't make them click as a team. I'm not saying we were the best side in the world but we absolutely had the players to reach a semi-final or final (especially in 04) if we got them all working.

It's a difficult one but I don't really think we've got specifically worse after the PL. We're definitely in a very fallow period right now but it was exactly the same in the 70s and 80s and the Graham Taylor era - we had good sides in the 60s, 90, 96 and I do think the one from 02-06 was good but underachieved - but that's not necessarily the PL's fault necesserily as much as coaches at youth level or style of coaching or whatever - we're always baraged with stats about how Germany and Spain have so many more youth coaches than us for example. Idk there's no easy solution, but things about overhauling the style of play, we don't train our youth technically enough or we train the technical skills out of players in favour of physicality - I remember similar complaints being made about England back in the 80s before the PL even began - in fact the main reason the top division was reduced to 20 teams was because the "too many games" complaints were going on decades ago. I think one of the biggest problems is we don't trust our own footballing culture and instead are always trying to follow the flavour of the month - 5 years ago we were trying to follow the Spanish model, now the FA are always trying to follow the German model etc. We're always following other footballing cultures rather than embracing our own and creating our own model.

We were just as shit back in 1992 tbf and back in the 70s and 80s we were worse - we never eased through qualifying or usually made the knock-our stages back then. The 90 and 96 sides were great but they were well overdue given what we put up with before and let's be honest Gascoigne and Lineker/Shearer were a bit part of carrying us back then - I rate Kane as being able to be a similar talisman to Shearer and Lineker but we don't have a Gascoigne. That side of the mid-00s was full of genuinely quality players at a time when the PL was absolutely dominating Europe and often had 3 of the 4 semi-finalists whos star players were all English - Neville, Ashley Cole, Terry, Ferdinand, Campbell, Beckham, Gerrard, Scholes, Lampard, Joe Cole, Owen and Rooney - Kane is the only one who would come close to making that squad today - that side should have at least made a semi-final especially in 2004 - but Sven wasted it. So I don't think it's the Premier League's fault neceserially. Our problems go back much further than that.

20 - Tony K aka Knockaert?

Absolutely! And I think most of us want to seek change - by either a reformed Conservative party or a better Labour party. But the problem is right now that the Conservative party is the clear lesser of two evils when the alternative is made up of a front bench of Corbyn, Macdonnell, Abbott and Starmer - who are all clear-as-mud old school Socialist ideologues - not advocates of the Nordic Model or Social Democrats - but clear-as-mud old school hard-Left Socialists (and let's face it, MacDonnell and Abbott at least, are pretty obviously Marxists (and Corbyn is clearly sympathetic towards pure Socialism given the regimes he's supported in the past and in every speech he gives he seems to treat the state and the public sector as infallable and every speech he gives is just "opposing cuts" "opposing cuts" "opposing cuts") - and I'm not even saying that through hyperbole which is the scary thing) who haven't changed their opinions for decades - and while their party tried to moderate them for the purpose of the election we all know that manifestos are only short-term goals and that any moment the Economy starts stalling or the inevitable day to day issues of a nation come up, I find it hard to believe they won't go to their core fundamental beliefs they've held and refused to compramise for decades (which are notoriously unwavering amongst that front bench) of more government intervention, more government spending and more nationalising industry which always leads to short term gain for long tern disaster and it's going to be the young people and voter's children who end up paying for it. Not to mention that having an anti-war pacifist who is not prepared to press the nuclear button who's entire shtick in foreign policy seems to be to celebrate anything anti-American and anti-establishment in charge of foreign policy and defence and trying to deal with Vladamir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Ali Khamenei is a frightening prospect. And so many of us who want to see reform absolutely will be voting for the status-quo because the alternative is abhorrant and it's success is frightening - were Labour offering an alternative that wasn't preaching Utopia and wasn't just massive Government spending, "but don't worry the rich will pay for it" then I would be for it - if they offered many innovative ideas but recognised that the average person and the average tax payer will inevitibly have to end up paying for massive Government spending then we could actually have a good debate as to whether this spending was worth it or not. I think most people want change and reform absolutely but I cannot remember a more frightening group of front-benchers than the current Labour Party and absolutely will not and absolutely can not vote for change when this is the alternative which is being offered and this is only why I hope we keep the status-quo in power. I really hope the Tories can sort themselves out before the next election but I feel like I will have to vote for them regardless which is a sad place to be in and one I don't feel like I've ever been in before as a voter.

You genuinely want to see the person who runs our country fail because you don't like their personality? Are you also one of those people who if there's a Leicester manager you don't like the personality of you want us to keep losing or get relegated just so they get sacked? (And I don't think I've ever seen a British politician for a major party who didn't go into politics because they genuinely care and wanted to make a positive difference to people's lives, you may profoundly disagree on how they tried to do that but every major British politician I can remember had good intentions).

Pretty much agree with you yet again KingGTF. No matter what she says or the ideas (and trust me, I love those hour long interviews with men with boring voices, thick glasses, comb overs, tweed jackets and pipes talking about micro Economics and kind of wish all politics was just that) but you do have to show leadership. You do need someone who you can trust to defend this country if needs be and someone who you can imagine sitting in a room with Angela Merkel, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and actually having their voice heard - regardless of what you thought about Thatcher or Blair politically and Economically - they were leaders who you always felt could actually contribute Britain's representation without just being drowned out across in multi-national debate (and I think Cameron was fine for this too), but I just don't feel about that about May. I did feel sorry for her watching it - she's very much got the same ere (air? heir?) about her as Gordon Brown in 2010 where everything she seems to touch just seems to backfire and I do find myself feeling sorry for her more than anything as I did with Brown more than anything, but it's clear she's not a leader. I don't know, I'd just like to see one of the main 3 parties which is traditionally right-wing on Economic issues and traditionally left-wing on social issues with a leader who is pragmatic and not Utopian or anti-establishment populist who you actually feel would be taken seriously in serious discussion amongst other major international leaders. As silly as the referendum was, I do miss the general stability of the Cameron government when politics wasn't everywhere (which is always the first sign something is going wrong) and think he was a dependable PM. I still have a huge soft spot for the Orange Book Liberals, but the endless harking on about another vote on Brexit rather than getting on with what Brexit means (I was a strong remainer but accept a democratic vote and get on with developing a plan for it for ****'s sake!) is really starting to grate.

The interview with LBC was one thing, but I don't think I've ever seen another Britisih politician apologise for the biggest mass murder and possibly the most evil man in human history and get away with it. I still have no idea how anyone can have a political career after something like that, let alone be a front-bencher.

KingGTF was right - the growth in quality of life post-war has been by far and away the greatest in history but we've somehow become complacent and I don't get it! There are plenty of countries where the growth in living standards has not been anywhere near that of the capitalist West! Hundreds of state controlled and state intervening regimes over several decades all have one thing in common - growth was either not as great as in the Capitalist West or else managed it on the back of brutal dictators and the blood of its own people. The internet may have been originally a public sector invention, but that is not what sold it to the masses! That is not what created the tens of millions of jobs that have been created both indirectly and directly as a result of the internet - that has come from competition and the allowing of the majority of businesses to fail but some of them to make profit making the risk worth taking (which no state can afford to do as it cannot predict what will take off and won't) and the lack of regulation on the start up of internet business. Please explain how the public sector would've expected to create all the tens of millions of jobs and the endless wealth it created and how it would've raised the money to try all these businesses. Please explain to me how more Socialist and state controlled countries like India, Russia or South America have not experienced anywhere near this same boom. Please explain why the internet has been a far bigger success in the allowed freedom and lack of intervention in the Capitalist West. Putting the Economic success of the internet down to the public sector because some guy invented it in the public sector is frankly bizarre. The tech revolution has benefited the Capitalist West (including the Capitalist countries like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Singapore in that) far more than it countries with state control and regulation because software and the internet are very free and unregulated markets because they're such quickly evolving and rapidly innovating industries it would be impossible for states to predict what is happening in then to intervene. In fact, Japan post-WWII is the absolute model of how the free-market has allowed it's incredible tech industry and the numerous innovations they've given the world to lead its country's Economic boom and pull it up from the boot strings after the war - in comparison to the numerous South East Asian countries around it that fell to the tyranny of government meddling and Socialist ideas. Growth of GDP is an inevitibly over time if you give the people and businesses freedom and liberty to make a living and take risks, yes. Not if you take most of a supermarket's earnings from them and expect them to still pay the farmers, supplier and employees and it still be a worthwhile venture it isn't.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/7e9d6e88-a76b-11e7-93c5-648314d2c72c Not a fan of this Tory government at all but everything Philip Hammond says about Corbyn is spot on. Never thought I'd see such a populist and a cult of personality take hold one of the two major parties. I get that the youth of today aren't old enough to remember the old dystopian Eastern European dictators who just used to attack the corporate elite and big business and the "establishment" treat the state as God and infallible and offer nationalisation, price fixing and wealth distribution as easy answers to problems, while never even tackling and completely ignoring the issues of what these things did to shifting the supply and demand in the long-term Economy but I thought we'd got past that and that was part of history. Regardless of what you think about Margeret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nick Clegg, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Ian Duncan-Smith, John Smith or John Major - and many of those I profoundly disagreed with - you at least knew there was grown up discussion had between them taking into account long-term Economic planning who tried to actually get to the crux of the opposition argument - many of them made profound errors - but I never for one second saw any of them think Economics and Government was all just easy answers the way Corbyn does. That giving more money to the poor from the rich is an easy way to solve poverty. I've never seen another leader of major 2 parties try to win favour by claiming that austerity and cuts are simply because the Tories "don't care about nurses and firemen" and want them to starve while they get richer off the back of it which is why they give tax cuts to the rich - there absolutely are grown up discussions to be had about whether austerity has worked or not - but trying to win votes by just attacking it as not caring about firefighters and only implemented so the "establishment" could get richer while the fat-cats sit smoking their cigars - it's dystopian stuff (and this isn't exaggeration - watch Corbyn's Labour Party speech from last week, start at any point and within 3 minutes you'll hear him talking about how the Tories don't care and are only trying to get rich) - it's the stuff we were supposed to learn from history and it's the populism and easy answer peddling every good history book warned us against. And again, it's not so much even whether this gets implemented - but it's what it signifies - that populism can win. That simply attacking the "establishment" and championing the common man rather than actually having grown up Economic discussion can still win in a Western democracy in 2017 and most of us thought we were finally past that. Trump and Farage were and are frightening and it seemed many of the youth rightly saw the horrible dangers which hard-Right populism can do to a democracy - not just in terms of the short-term but how it lessens the power of democracy and debate when people like that get in solely for being "anti-establishment" and attacking the elite while championing the common man without actually having grown up Economic debate and engaging with tough decisions that every government has to make - every one of which will have its downsides and lead to people's deaths and misery. But it's frightening that the same young people who rightly saw this danger can't see the hard-Left populism of Corbyn and Sanders as doing exactly the same thing and using exactly the same tactics. Even if you agree with them, this cult of personality - the bumper stickers and chants for Corbyn to the point where people are just behind the man rather than taking a rigerous look at ideas - and the endless attacking of the corporate elite and championing the people - this is not healthy for a functioning democracy and I've never been as fearful of a leader of one of the 2 major parties and the long-term impact his success could have on our democracy than I am of Corbyn. I know I'm repeating myself now blah blah blah so I'll chill out and stop posting for a bit but it was an absolute worthwhile and spot on speech by Philip Hammond who I'm not normally a fan of.