58% of UK teens think Sherlock Holmes was real. 20% say Churchill was fake.

[C0ckney]

True. Yet despite it being a problem we need to address, I think it's hard to argue against people now being far better off than they were in the seventies. The percentage of income spent on food for instance in rising now, but its still far lower than it was back then, and disposable income in general is far higher.

that's all true, but it doesn't really address the point. people are better off now because of technological change and the fact that they produce more (partly as a result of technological change), yet in relative terms they (workers) receive less. we can look at it another way and say that although the wealth of society has increased dramatically, there are still a great number of workers one pay day away from destitution. this is because of a combination of low wages, a lack of job security, high rents and an increasingly punitive social security system. an effect of this is that these insecure and worried workers are less likely to organise and to take positive or radical action to improve their situation.

Because that kind of clear communist thinking never does that well when it comes up against the realities of how people want to live. People generally congregate with those of similar beliefs, tastes and incomes. Kind of sad, but true all the same.

but it did work, and quite well, from the end of the second world war until the eighties.

How would the land value tax work as a way of really affecting buy to renters though without hurting normal house owners? As for large scale building, that's great but unless you stop the BTR crowd buying them up, it's just going to exacerbate the situation.

a land value tax (as per henry george) would replace existing taxation on labour and capital. it would mean a more efficient land market and encourage building.

As for scrapping private property, yeah I think you might struggle with that one.

That said however, when it comes to housing there's going to be a ceiling somewhere. Eventually you run out of space to build and the bulk of the money collects in the hands of those who got in early. Maybe it's centuries away but somewhere there's going to come a really unhappy wall we run into.

doesn't it just. it's astonishing how much of england is in the hands of the descendants of the original normal conquerers. a little (by which i mean mass, popular) expropriation would go a long way to resolving a number of land problems in the UK.

[molly bloom]

Make your mind up, either Britain was worse before or better before (or the same before). Because the Britain in the seventies I know was a absolute ****hole.

That's your opinion, nothing more.

You mean she didn't come in and immediately fix all problems in the country overnight?

You're the one who thinks unsupported hyperbolic statements stand in for facts- they don't.

Obviously anecdotal evidence means next to nothing

Then stop relying on it.

[molly bloom]

[QUOTE=kentonio;6343037]The famed class system in the UK has largely evaporated. QUOTE]

Did somebody tell the current Tory Party ? Because that seems to have passed them by.

[Alexander's Horse]

a lot passes them by

[MOBIUS]

Kentonio = BK

British Kenobi or Ben Kentonio, take your pick...

Not the obvious lies and dishonesty yet, but everything else seems to fly.

Care to respond adequately over Thatcher's behaviour during the Teacher's strike (or the Miner's strike FTM?)?

I also find it laughable that the wholesale sell-off of council houses is something you're, to quote, 'most proud of' during the Thatcher era. I bet you're fully behind the 'Bedroom Tax' too...

[kentonio]

**** off Mobius.

[Bereta_Eder]

I wonder what percentage of Croatian teens think Ustaše was a pop group.

(sorry onefoot but that was a good one)

[SlowwHand]

Wait a second. I'm doing a quick reread of Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and you say it's fiction?!?

[MOBIUS]

**** off Mobius.

Clearly Kenobio hasn't got a leg to stand on and has to resort to insults instead...