Over the years, what I had thought was merely my own socialist scepticism and prediliction for ‘masonic’ conspiracy appeared to become an observable reality.

In more recent years – the last four, say – this suspicion has become my firm conviction. So called Western democracy has devolved into a feudalistic, sometimes brutal, hegemony that Dickens would happily be inspired by. Poverty and narcotics everywhere in the real world, narcissist celebrities and holidays permeate the vitual.
Thanks for your succint appraisal.

It would seem that significant unemployment, say 15% as measured or 25% in reality, and unrelenting consumerist culture are here to stay.
It leaves me wholly depressed, we live subjugated within a savage pack, sauve qui peut.
So much for all that optimistic political philosophy I’ve read in the past….

Seems that Paul Mason on Newsnight lifted this EU to US desposit transfer story!!

I noted that Alistair Darling was doing a good job of playing things down, so as to support the strategy outlined by Charlie:

"They've got to keep stringing us along for as long as possible to continue the transfer of wealth to the top few percent."

He spent almost a day reading this blog, I left him with my copy of "Debt Generation" & he is going to get the "Inside Story" dvd. He feels that everything he worked for is slipping away & that the unions, & all the political parties are run by the same sort of people, who are only concerned with their own self interest.

He's still angry but he feels better for knowing the why of it. I would say there are a lot of people out there like him. He must be keeping up to date, he saw my comment about Schrodingers cat & rang me up to tell me to think more before I comment, that's Dads for you.

How funny! Obviously other people think it's a good title too. Thanks for the link.

Bravo! I stand corrected.

A whole generation is growing up with little hope of owning a house, financing university education, retaining healthcare free at the point of use, or receiving even a pittance of a pension before they're 70. Compare that with those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s when home ownership was a rising expectation, university education taken for granted, a 'job for life' wasn't considered fanciful, and a decent retirement, with well-financed social care was taken as a birthright.

The scale of the changes can be seen in these graphs, showing the increasing share of national income taken by the top 1% in the US – http://goo.gl/g6O8H – the UK isn't quite in the same Robin Hood-in-reverse league but is on a similar trajectory.

As long as they can get away with it, they'll continue the trend – bugger the consequences.

Oh yes I forgot, Italy, F****d, at least the Italian language is full of words for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_profanity

Its the euro wotdunit. It cant be its very Conservative banking sector can it?