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I was in Toxteth during the riots, and whatever anyone else says, I hold that police racism - not the economic situation - was the cause.

Of course, it is easier to set up public enquiries and fund the odd "community project" than to tackle the can of worms that is racism.

I now live in Oldham, and if anything the racism is even more deep-rooted. What's worse is that local authority attempts to impose multiculturalism have exacerbated the situation. Whites and asians continue to believe what they want to believe regardless of the truth.

As for the economic situation, arguing about Labour or Tory policies is a complete waste of time. When the body politic is riddled with parasites, we should let it die.

Then we might just notice that BOTH parties have conspired to hide the fact that real authority now rests with the European Union - a supra-national, thoroughly undemocratic, bureaucracy.

Between the EU and the bankers, Britain has had its sovereignty and power destroyed. There's a word for those who are over-fascinated by a corpse - necrophiliacs!

See where you get arguing about politics? Nowhere. It's all globalised capitalism - which creates a polarised social culture by its very nature.

Now, why did I move from Amsterdam to Oldham? Surely a more subtle question than "Is Britain Broke and Who Is responsible?".

Truth is, I moved to Amsterdam deliberately, whereas I "ended up" in Oldham. When I left Amsterdam to come back to Britain, I almost immediately met a wise and loving woman who lived on a canal boat, and I gave up everything else to live with her. Love, Reggie, love.

When the relationship ended - as everything we try to hold onto does - someone offered to rent a house to me in Oldham.

I still go back to Amsterdam now and then. It's fair to say that one can get too close to the Dutch for one's own good. Before I moved to Holland, I thought the Dutch were a most enlightened people, but when you live with them day to day, sooner or later it dawns on you that they are the most irritating collection of narcissists on the planet - good friends excepted, of course.

It doesn't matter where you live, only whether you are happy in yourself. Isn't that so?

Gordon Brown has been unbelievably profliagte with "our" money.

He has spent it, given it away, and wasted it, at an alarming rate since he and Blair came into power.

The money spent on welfare, and all sorts of benefits, has risen dramatically.

It is now very easy to live your live on benefits and contribute nothing to society.

His Tax Credit system is riddled with fraud that costs over a BILLION (in fraud) a year.



Organized gangs are taking millions out the tax credit system



This woman claimed for FIFTEEN children she did not have, and nobody checked



What sort of idiot brings in a system that is so easy to fiddle.

Gordon Brown has bankrupt the UK and we may never recover.

Jobs and companies that have gone will never start up again here, they will open in Poland or other Eastern EU countries, or the far east.

VOTE LABOUR - BANKRUPT THE UK.

Thatcher certainly inherited a mess in 1979 and major reform was needed. What she did to the Trade Unions was brilliant and I applaud her for it. The things the Unions did to Britain in the 1970's would never be allowed to happen again and that was a very good thing she did when she brought in strong disciplinary legislation against them. The worse thing Thatcher did was create mass unemployment, the total devastation of regions of the country by this, and a feeling of despair and hopelessness felt by untold numbers of families across the nation. I disagree when people say she was very popular - sucessful yes, but not popular. Her mid-term poll ratings were the lowest in history but she would go on to win the subsequent election by making loads of promises - and she would break every one of them within 3 or 4 months of winning - and because the Labour Party was in disarray. I never understood why she was so keen to stop subsidies to failing industries when the cost of stopping the subsidy - in terms of vast amounts of Social Security and a huge reduction in tax receipts - was even greater. When the recession started in late-1987 we started to see things we had never seen before, like teenagers and twenty-somethings homeless on the streets of London. Prior to then homeless people were always tramps (old guys with beards, long coats and no shoes). Also that recession was the longest one since World War 2.

muffinman, you seem quite clued-up on this. Some interesting stuff there. I remember one of the first things Brown did as Chancellor in 1997 was to make the Bank Of England independant and when all these current problems started people in Whitehall were scratching their heads feeling powerless to a degree as they couldn't control what BoE was doing - so it looks like it was a mistake for Gordo to give it such automony.