Wikileaks? Are you for or against what they are doing?

[Gandalf]

Miles you keep saying that governments are run by elites for elites and that no one is tending to the needs of the average ordinary citizen....well please, pretty please with a cherry on top show me a successful government that accommodated the average ordinary citizen and no corporations or elite group had little to no pull.

You won't be able to show me one because its like a unicorn, its a fantasy and that my friend is what liberalism is based on....fantasy

I said it before, I think the most obvious example to me was what The Labour Party introduced to the UK after WW2. A nationalised healthcare system, nationalised utilities and transportation systems, support for those unable to work and subsidised education through the tertiary sector, support for trade unions etc. These were measures that were enacted even though the major British corporations would likely have been against it. In fact it was so successful that it largely stayed in place until Thatcher under the influence of Friedman dismantled it in the 1980's.

Now the average UK citizen has to pay through the roof for utilities, public transportation, university education etc. But we do still have the NHS. It was a system that did work and was successful, but of course it could never come back as large corporations in collusion with the government would never relinquish what they now have.

I hate socialism. It tries to engineer equality by taking from one to give to another, when usually the most successful has more because he is more productive and proactive than the other.

It's like the story of lazy mouse. How can you endorse such a shit philosophy?

How can a man who doesn't work criticise that system? Bilbo....

People who are more successful are usually so because they have been given all the advantages brought about through inheritence and privilege. There are numerous exceptions, but this is usually how it is. Take away that and what you have is a level playing field. I am all for a level playing field. I was reading an article today that revealed that children at primary schools who recieved free school meals were significantly more likely to be unable to read beyond a basic level than other students. Poverty reduces the ability to compete in society and even a free dinner isn't that much of a help to these kids. I recieved free school dinners and did very well, but I am a bit weird.

Society should be about the equality of opportunity and a level starting platform. Obviously we cannot have communism, so therefore, we need a society that assists those that start off with difficulty, otherwise we are condemning them from birth. In that sense, the model I outlined above is perfectly feasible and is morally just. It helps to make life a little bit more equal and for society to be a little more than those that have it all and those that have nothing.

I am not against things like the health service, public transport and the benefits system. But trying to bring about equality by dragging the successful person down to the level of the unsuccessful is the wrong way to go about it.

It seems to me now that 20 years after Thatcher most of her ideals have been proved right. The EU is a fucking travesty, public opinion is now overwhelmingly leaning towards the right on issues such as welfare benefits and her privatisation of much of the state has proven to have been the right approach.

Look at the mess the health service is in now thanks to labour. They injected billions into it with the net result that productivity decreased! Our educational system is in turmoil as we continue to spiral down the world league tables for performance, I think we are 27th now in the world for mathematics. It's unaccetable.

Cameron and the Tories have the right appraoch. The austerity package will hopefully see some of the bloat and middle management that plagues the health service and all areas of civil service finally removed. The quango's can quite happily be burned, most are a complete waste of money and I love what he is doing to take power away from the state and give it back to local councils.

The centralisation of power is a mistake. It leads to massively inefficient beaurocratic impotence and the Conservative government are right to want to reign it in.

I also love what Ian Duncan Smith is doing in overhauling the welfare state, in fact I think this government will go down in history as the best post war government since Thatcher.

Hopefully they can jettison the fucking useless liberal democrats and end the coalition. Then we can see an end to the ridiculous human rights bill and the other concessions we have had to make to that bunch of incompetants.

No, I disagree. I think Thatcher's politics decimated the UK. It is because of her that your monthly bills are so expensive. It is because of her that getting around the UK on a train costs so much today. In Korea these things are dirt cheap and that is because they are nationalised.

I don't think think that Thatcher has been proven right whatsoever. All that has happened is that Tony Blair decided to bastardise The Labour Party to fit his own narcissistic vision and so you had essentially two versions of The Tories. Sure Labour was more friendly, but the differentiation had been largely watered down. After years of the Tories people were willing to vote for anything and what we got was 'New Labour'. Clause 4 was eradicated and Labour essentially became a party of big business. As can be seen with the wars it had also become totally undemocratic. This was a Labour Party in name only.

I agree that the Labour Party was wasteful. There were too many of those ludicrous quangos and money was obviously wasted on the NHS. But having said that, look at how much money the Americans are wasting on their health service. An awful lot more. The NHS is what it is, but it is being overworked as the nation becomes progressively fatter and more and more unhealthy. All in all though, the NHS is one of the great things about the UK and we have it because of progressive thinking. It is vital that people have a point of use healthcare system.

In terms of education, it is a complicated issue. My own personal opinion of the education system is that it is very good. My teachers were on the whole good people and I was attentive. I learned a lot from school. But as a whole you have to consider the changes in British society. Teachers have less and less power in the classroom. More and more kids are from broken homes or family environments where both parents are needing to work. These societal changes are also having a considerable impact on the educational system. I teach for a living, but I would never consider teaching in an English public school. It looks like hell. So, you can't just say that the Labour party is responsible for changes in the educational system. But I would actually be in favour of giving teachers more power and reigning in problem students.

When it comes to the austerity measures, you have to consider what they are really about and they are basically an unchecked attack on the less well off in society. It is a great excuse to blame it on national debt. I agree that the debt is too high and that Labour was fiscally irresponsible. However, a lot of that debt came from bailing out the financial sector which is guilty of mass fraud. You don't pay that off by going after the more vulnerable in society. Cameron is simply perpetuating what Thatcher did and of course he has a ready made excuse to do it.

I agree with you that you cannot have too much centralised power. You do need to stimulate self responsibilty, but at the same time I genuinely believe that every person should have an equal opportunity to succeed. Otherwise society has failed them. Rampant Friedman style economics only enhances disparities between the rich and the poor and leads to the bulk of the wealth going to a concentrated section of the elite. It doesn't work and America today shows us this. We need to keep away from that and follow other European models.