Enough is enough, Tao.

I was puzzled why, on some threads but not on others, I was having to scroll right to read full sentences.

Then I realised that it is your habit of using hyphens to cheat the word count.

This extends the right hand boundary of the browser window, and following posts extend their paragraphs accordingly.

In one earlier post on this thread you used 471 of them to create a document that would otherwise be 751 words long.

I wouldn't mind quite so much if you actually had something interesting or constructive to say.

Please. Stop.

Sorry Pericles,

Sometimes I can't help myself - particularly when responding to simplistic statements which require a lot more elaboration than the word limit allows. I do try to only use them when I am quoting someone else.

Anyway, I think I am just about finished with this thread.

After reducing Col's hero-worship of Margaret Thatcher to the equivalent of sleeping with military dictators, my job here is done.

Well Tao, clearly your job was to make yourself feel good, as
you havent achieved much else :)

Luckily for us normal people, supporters of Trotzky, Lenin
etc are rarer then hens teeth, so their ideas will stay
no more then a fantasy in the minds of extremely few
and really don't matter a bit.

The Economist has published alot of stuff on happiness
in its last edition. Clearly envy is a huge problem,
people are often more concerned that somebody else has
more, rather then focus on how good they really do have it.

So be envious Tao, for that sums up what your politics
seems to be about.

Meantime the rest of us can get on with enjoying heaven,
which is here and now :)

Tao “Anyway, I think I am just about finished with this thread.”

Sneaking away with your tail between your legs (rhetorically speaking)?

”After reducing Col's hero-worship of Margaret Thatcher to the equivalent of sleeping with military dictators, my job here is done.”

I have several “heros”, Mozart, Canaletto, Celini to name three more. Doubtless tao would suggest they are all petite-bourgeoisie dilitantes (especially Celini) and I would say who cares. The small minded ramblings of the petite-envious matter nothing and if someone thinks that “my job here is done”

You call this a job? You have a funny or pretty light on perception of what a job is.
If you think this is a “job” then you would not last 10 minutes in the working world I inhabit

This is to a job as foreplay is to sex.

This is a pure diversion to mess with the likes of tao and see how far they can be pushed into declaring the complete inadequacy of their leftist views.

Take all your theories of Marx, Engle’s, Lenin and Trotsky, pile them one on top the other -

Then watch as the success of capitalism basks in the glow of the flames coming form that pile of theories, the fire lit by the excess of Stalin and Pol Pot.

The observed and recorded facts are these,

every socialist state has fallen because

A it cannot and never has delivered the quality government to the people it is supposed to represent or has produced the “human satisfaction” levels delivered by the “Capitalist system” and

B it ends up the oppressive tool of dictators of the vilest form imaginable (include Castro and KIM Jong Il, the remaining legacy, with all the dead tyrants)

If we are talking about “finishing the job”; certainly I am prepared to take credit for having “done a job” on tao (and I didn’t even break into a sweat).

Pericles says "If you are uncompetitive in the market"..... which market ?

Mate... if the market has loaded dice it won't matter how 'competitive you get UNLESS you also use LOADED dice !

So, I repeat "BLAME CHINA".

What is their loaded dice ? Well of course we all know that already, its labor rates which are sustained not by market forces or worker advocacy but by a regime which resists any change which could make them less competitive.

Ok.. I'll add "BLAME AUSTRALIA". Part of China's loaded dice is our reluctance to use our resource abundance and value add. We have a government filled to overflowing with Hezekiah's (remember that bloke who showed the Babylonian envoys all the treasures of the Jewish temple) who take the view "Disaster ? but not in my lifetime ? oh.. cool" and the short term "Dig it up and SELL it quick" mentality will surely rebound in the future after all our treasure has been sacked,sold off and squandered and we are left with an empty national temple, and blank, mindless stares on our faces.

Taiwan DID it.
Korea DID it.

Did what ? They, with populations similar to ours but WITHOUT natural resources, tooled up their countries for growth and competitiveness and now..... we go from 3rd world Australia to 1st World Korea and Taiwan.

BLAME UNIONS. Yep..I'll add that one too, but not all unions, just those who have deliberately and maliciously targeted 'where the money is' and had infiltrated every level of the IR spectrum including the arbitration side to basically enable them to run this country.
The activities were nothing but ORGANIZED CRIME in everything but name.
When I discovered just how pernicious the CFMEU/(BLF in drag) and others have been, one could be forgiven for wanting to spit on them.