Indeed, billie - I watched it too and of course Howard's brave new industrial world came to mind. How depressing. It was like 'The Full Monty' without the humour and hope.

Good point about these Thatcherite fanatics who migrate to Australia and preach their antisocial doctrines that are incompatible with 'Aussie values'. They remind me of a certain other demographic, except they don't have the redeeming features of an interesting cuisine, exotic music etc with which to enrich our culture.

And of course we won't talk about the cricket...

No billie, I did not see “the Navigators”, It seems an ironic name for a show which presents anything about railways (not much need for navigators when running on fixed rails).

I could anticipate what the programme would have been like.

It probably had a lot about how the loyalty of generations was cast aside by ruthless politicians intent on crushing workers (yawn).

I doubt it showed any interviews with rail passengers and tax payers who were, for decades held to ransom by a moribund state monopoly.

Sheffield was famous for metalwork, cutlery and all sorts of things. Its problems were not because the railways were privatized but because of a whole range of things including resurgent competition (where is cutlery made today?). The spirit of competition, on which the great UK manufacturing marques were founded, is the first thing to disappear in a monopolistic or oligopolistic environment (be it private or government owned).

Railway people were whining about the impact on the security of their livelihood from the day Beeching was appointed. I know, I was brought up in such a household and determined that I would never allow my future to be dominated by any particular employment dependency.

Regarding me and UK, I was born and raised in Southampton, I studied my accountancy course near Birmingham, I moved to London, for the right sort of work, around 1977/78 and Australia in 1983. My intention was originally to move to Australia around 1975 (before Maggie became PM) but accountants were not in demand in Australia so had to wait until they were. Still have family and friends in UK and went back once, 1989.

I have better things to do with my life than stay anywhere simply because of the politicians, although avoiding the wrong sort of politicians did deter me from going some places.

The whole point with privatization and ex-nationalised industries is, no ones job should be underwritten by government. If a company and its employees cannot stand on their own commercial merit, they do not deserve to be allowed to perpetually leach off the tax payer.

CJMorgan, “Those Thatcherite fanatics who migrate to Australia … incompatible with Aussie values”

I guess suggesting you try and deploy subtlety would be wasted.

My “Thatcherite fanaticism” is the sort of values which say, you are free to make all the mistakes and errors in your life instead of allowing a bunch of know-all socialist politicians tell you which ones they are going to make for you, ensuring they deliver the minimal standards for the maximum price and the maximum loss of choice.

My “Thatcherite fanaticism” is to deploy the sort of values which saw me, last Saturday, training nine sales staff to go out and sell the products / services of the company I founded. What are you doing to help sustain record low unemployment levels and generate trade and business from which wealth is created and incomes and taxes paid?

As for “red neck” I thought I made it clear, it is no coincidence, I deliberately chose “Col Rouge” as a nom-de-plume for my own amusement. Is it petty jealousy which drives you to repeat it at nearly every opportunity you get? I could understand that, envy has been one of the primary motivators of luddites throughout history.

Col,

You flatter yourself if you think that anyone envies you.

You said: “They do not impose collective responsibility on me, forcing me to subsidise the lifestyle of stupid girls who get themselves banged-up or the comforts of the indolent who cannot be bothered to get a job.”

Kartiya jim makes a good point about the three trillion dollars spent on the US colonial adventure. The millions/billions spent by this government on an illegal, mass-murdering invasion and occupation is nothing short of an imposition on me and everyone else who opposed the war. Average working people are ‘subsidising’ an imperialist grab for oil with their living standards and their lives. Working people are subsidising the lifestyles of the executives of Halliburton et al.

You talk about “collective responsibility” - average people are forced to be collectively responsible while those who perpetrated this colossal crime against humanity duck for cover. Even if one did agree with it, now that its execution has been shown to be so obviously incompetent, none of its senior prosecutors take responsibility – except for Rummy the fall guy.

So 655,000 and counting Iraqis take responsibility, 3000 odd and counting dead working class Americans and 25,000 and counting injured working class Americans take responsibility, dead and injured working class troops of other countries, working people of all participating countries facing cuts to social services to pay for the war take responsibility. Who doesn’t take responsibility? The rich – they get tax cuts and amass more and more obscene amounts of wealth, and their children don’t die.

Yes Col, as usual your logic is flawed. Not that you will admit it. You have learnt from your heroes - deny, deny, deny and lie, lie, lie.

Yebiga,string theory and the 11 other universes sound very sexy,but we live in the reality of this universe,which doesn't tolerate fools or people who don't pay attention to the laws of survival.

John Howard produced the goods even before the resources boom of recent years,yet a Labor State Govt has NSW on the brink of recession while the rest of Aust prospers?

Now it takes a lot of talent the bring the most powerful economy in Aust to it's knees in times of plenty.Imagine what the Iemma Labor Govt could do in a really depressed economy.

Steve Madden, GST, Wharf and Employment reform, that is not “doing nothing”. Arjay has made similar observation which I will not repeat.

As for tax collectors, plenty of businesses were dealing with far more complex sales tax regimes before GST and if you want “complex” we could talk about FBT, the horror to end all horrors for complexity and pointlessness, a hang over of Hawke / Keatings twisted envy and on the table to be dumped.

To compensate the GST the states were supposed to remove a whole raft of taxes but they drag their feet, Bracks even invented his own new “car-parking space tax”.

As for cost of government, tax as a % or GDP is lower than under Keating. The “tax take” is higher from an economy which is booming because quality of federal management is better.

I wrote on another thread, had labor been in power the past 10 years, we would have experienced another recession in 2000 (as a fallout of the “dotcom” bust), burgeoning double digit inflation, from a tax revenue shortfall versus profligate infrastructure spending and union bribes to be followed by going to the IMF with the begging bowl.

In terms of government, “not running the economy like a chook raffle” is “doing plenty”.

YEBIGA “narrow range of perception.” you have insufficient data concerning me to make any such assumption.

String theory, “if string thoery proves to be correct”.

Are you suggesting running the national economy and the offices of government based on an unproven theory?

“In a two-dimensional universe, you and Howard are probably right about everything.”

That makes me ahead on “predictable quality” than socialists who, on a one, two, three or four dimensions are right about nothing.

If you want a debate about arraysdimensions, I suggest we do it somewhere other than a political forum. I have always found it difficult to represent those 11 dimensions to any audience. If you try it with your average socialist, you will carry them through the scalars but lose them in the vectors and scare them s**tless beyond that.