The 'Take it Outside' thread This thread will no longer be moderated *** Showing 451-500 of 5,982

[R.M.F.]

Scotland to stop funding the Royal family. The SNP have decided the 2 million a year can be spent on better stuff. Buckingham palace not happy. Good! :)

The Queen is a very wealthy woman, she can pay for her own upkeep.

[Jim]

R.M.F wrote: "Scotland to stop funding the Royal family. The SNP have decided the 2 million a year can be spent on better stuff. Buckingham palace not happy. Good! :)

The Queen is a very wealthy woman, she can ..."

The funding is 15% of the income from the crown estate. She's already paying 85% tax :-)

[R.M.F.]

Jim wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "Scotland to stop funding the Royal family. The SNP have decided the 2 million a year can be spent on better stuff. Buckingham palace not happy. Good! :)

The Queen is a very wealthy w..."

Since when did the Queen pay tax? I thought she was the only person in the country excempt. After all, she'd be paying tax to her self, technically.

[Marc]

Will wrote: "It also should be pointed out that whilst Will gives a peon of praise to austerity and cutting welfare spending, under the official definition that has been in place for many, many years, Child Pov..."

not only that but now the Tories are talking about changing how child poverty is measured and defined, so you know it's bad. Just like when they used to constantly change how unemployment was defined for the figures under Thatcher

[Marc]

Will wrote: "Will wrote: "It also should be pointed out that whilst Will gives a peon of praise to austerity and cutting welfare spending, under the official definition that has been in place for many, many yea..."

you haven't addressed my point re the historical structural causes behind the debt that you are only talking about addressing the symptoms of. It really is deck chairs on the Titanic, only in this case we're not even rearranging them, but cutting the fabric off so no one can sit in them

[Will]

R.M.F wrote: "Scotland to stop funding the Royal family. The SNP have decided the 2 million a year can be spent on better stuff. Buckingham palace not happy. Good! :)

The Queen is a very wealthy woman, she can ..."

To put this in perspective, the two million quid is actually the amount of Revenue she's been able to put into savings this year. If her people are going to have to cope with savage cuts, she could at least give up her surplus.

And stop Prince Andrew & Prince Charles jet setting round the world on chartered flights at stupid amounts of money. They can borrow one of the RAF's private jets ( bought for their Chief of Staff) instead.

[Marc]

actually just stop Andrew moving about full stop. Couldn't we immure him like in the good old days? or lock him up in the Tower like the Young Princes & give the tourists a bit extra?

[R.M.F.]

Marc wrote: "actually just stop Andrew moving about full stop. Couldn't we immure him like in the good old days? or lock him up in the Tower like the Young Princes & give the tourists a bit extra?"

In the days of the British Empire, we could have appointed him to look after the stationary cupboard of some plantation in the middle of Burma!

[Marc]

he'd nick all the pens

[Will]

Bit like Osborne then.

Interesting piece in The Spectator today on Debt Accumulation, following the introduction of Osborne's Austerity program.

Rough figures : Increase in Net Debt : 1997 - 2008 £ 100 billion.

During the Financial crisis, this increased by 300 billion, largely from Quantative Easing, and recapitalising the banks.

Debt Increase under 'Mr Cutbacks': £ 417 Billion. That's an actual increase. In total, tens of billions more than Gordon Brown borrowed in the whole 13 years, including the financial crisis!

I offer that as more evidence for my argument that Austerity is a failed concept, and should be abandoned immediately to go for growth in the economy instead..

[R.M.F.]

Osborne's got the media and the business world on board.

I swear to God, it's like 1984 (the novel)

Borrowing is cutting and austerity is growth.

[Will]

For those who like Christine 'Starve the greek pensioners' Lagrande, Chair of the IMF...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world...

Clearly austerity is only for others.

[Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)]

It's good to see that the UK doesn't have the monopoly on sleazy politicians.

[Patti (baconater)]

Tough to beat Toronto's last mayor, Geoff.

[Will]

Will - actually we agree on a lot more than you realise. In ordinary times I would not support austerity. Growth ought to be a better answer. And having lived through the pain of austerity cuts, I can certainly agree that they hurt.

But these aren't ordinary times, unfortunately. We face several different pressures which make growth difficult. We have the competition from countries with very cheap labour, the spiraling cost of looking after an increasingly ageing population, the damage to the environment of uncontrolled growth, increasing technology to take jobs away from humans.

When you add it all together you get a problem which isn't easily solved by a single silver bullet. And regrettably some form of austerity is inevitable. If we do nothing, the increasing cost of pensions, welfare and healthcare will swamp every other area of Government spending. We can't grow our economy fast enough to bail us out from this level of spending pressure.

This is what is frightening a lot of people who work in the public sector...

http://www.theguardian.com/society/20...

This is one London Borough (Barnet) working out that if they don't reduce their spending they will eventually reach a point where all their money goes on social care. It has become known as the "graph of doom". And it isn't just Barnet - just about every local authority in the country is facing the same pressure.

It's nobody's fault. We should be glad that we are living longer. But we do have to work out a way to pay for it.

If we keep on borrowing we will find ourselves spending more and more on interest payments. Hopefully we will never get as bad as Greece, but we were heading in that direction.

What we need is a balanced debate. When I say "I agree with some form of austerity" that does not mean that I agree with the Tories. They have one form of austerity, an extreme one, but others are available. All three of the main parties went into the last general election with some form of austerity plan - because they all know that there is no long term alternative. I was hoping for another coalition.

The fastest way to destroy the NHS would be to overborrow now to give the NHS a short term boost. That would be appealing to the electorate but it would be irresponsible long-term suicide, because all that borrowing would have to be paid for and we have already maxed out our credit cards.

[Will]

R.M.F wrote: "Osborne's got the media and the business world on board.

I swear to God, it's like 1984 (the novel)

Borrowing is cutting and austerity is growth."

Unfortunately, yes. I know it sounds perverse and odd, but that is how it is. It is how it has always been.

The more we borrow to support debt, the less we have to spend on growth. The bottom line is that the UK is currently spending more than £50 billion a year on debt repayments and the cost of running the state is rising as we all live longer.

[Will]

It's a nice theory Will, that cutting will led to growth. but it is not supported by evidence in any country that has not seen a substantial devaluation in its currency at the same time. Greece is a perfect example. Austerity has slashed GDP and only created a further drive to reduce incomes, tax medicines FFS, and impact solely on the poorest sections of society.

Sorry, forgot the link

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/yea...

here's a graph on our projected spending for 2016: pensions, as you rightly say are the highest item. Now I agree with raising the pension age, just because we are all able to work for longer than we used to. I had to pass on University because my parents (in their early 60s when i was 18) were not in adequate health to work and support me. That would be unusual now. (More normal is that there are no jobs for people that age!)

There's no easy reductions, although buried in 'Other Spending' is £ 13 billion of accounting errors which suggests Boy George Osborne can add up at all! And co incidentally is the sum he wants to save by reducing the payments to the disabled and the very poor.

[Will]

So with no easy reductions, the key answer is that government revenues need to rise. This means in effect a higher take from taxation. We need a combination of some increases in tax and increased revenues driven by growth: Osborne has dismissed increasing tax at all on idealogical grounds, meaning that he is leaving little option but to reduce essential services.

I for one would happily see no new Trident system - we cannot afford it, and it will not have any military benefit anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX_d_...

It is hilarious - and actually entirely accurate.

[R.M.F.]

Will wrote: "R.M.F wrote: "Osborne's got the media and the business world on board.

I swear to God, it's like 1984 (the novel)

Borrowing is cutting and austerity is growth."

Unfortunately, yes. I know it so..."

And we've got another property bubble ready to burst any time soon. You can almost set your watch by them :(

[Will]

The problem with increasing taxes is that the public react by spending less which means reduced taxation revenue. It's like a shop putting up the price of its goods. It might make more profit on each item, but its overall income could fall.

It's also a bit too sweeping to say that austerity doesn't work. There are many different interventions within the broad definition of austerity. For example a part of Greece's problem is that its pension system is much more generous than many other states. Bringing Greece's public sector pension into line with other countries would be seen in Greece as an austerity measure. But I suspect that those of us on less generous pensions might have a different point of view.

Getting rid of Trident? I'm ambivalent about that one. Not sure - I can see pros and cons. But any cut in Trident would be an austerity measure especially to the thousands of people who would lose their jobs as a result. If you are calling for the scrapping of Trident you are supporting an austerity measure.

It is a very difficult balancing act. If we don't make cuts then our national budget is unaffordable. If we try to do this wholly through tax increases we could harm the fragile economic recovery because people will spend less. If we cut too far and too quickly we will drive some people into poverty.

There are two things in this which are pretty stupid. First, given how complicated it all is, how could the electorate possibly know enough to make sensible decisions at the General Election.

And secondly, how can anyone possibly think we can get out of this pickle without some form of austerity? I know that the treasury have looked long and hard at a recovery based only on economic growth. And it simply does not work given the position we are in right now. Some austerity is inevitable.

[Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)]

RMF, I would suggest that you watch the movie Margin call. Not only is it worth watching to see how the 2008 bubble played out in one (fictional) brokerage, but if you skip to the end and listen to Jeremy Iron's speech over breakfast, you'll hear him list the crashes since the 1600's.

If you increase growth by artificially stimulating the market you will not prevent the property bubble bursting, only delay it.

Increasing taxes for higher earners will further stifle growth and increase personal debt, which already so high that the Bank of England and the government are scared to raise interest rates. Mind you, raising interest rates will solve the property bubble very quickly. How you will solve the homelessness problem after that is another matter.

Anyone want to buy some tulip bulbs?

[Will]

Personally I fail to see the logic that increasing taxation rates will stifle growth, whilst cutting welfare spending to the poorest stimulates growth.

The idea that higher top end taxation inhibits GDP is a canard: most higher rated earners are able to save money, Liz2 managed to put away two million quid into savings last year, I hear - and hence it does not impact on their spending. Actually, levels of personal debt have been falling as a lot of people are simply terrified of having loans when their job security is poor - or they are on zero hours contracts and unable to get a loan or a mortgage as a result.

However, the lowest echelons do not receive or earn enough money to save - they are already pretty much on subsistence levels of income. Reducing their income impacts immediately on the economy in a bad way, as what they haven't got an more they don't spend...

[Will]

Will the big issue with the Greek pensions is this: because austerity has wrecked the economy, causing a devastatingly high level of unemployment, particularly in the younger part of the population at 49.7%, that the state pensioners are in practice the only household income for many families.

It happens here too, but it isn't as widespread. yet.

So if you cut a pension, already at a rate of 450 - 750 euros a month (not exactly as generous as some like to maintain), then the impact is far ranging. And catastophic.

[Jim]

The problem with Greece at the moment is that the proportion of the population allowed to retire on good pensions at 55 was ludicrous.
But as Will says, at the moment these pensions are often supporting three generations of the family.

That's an awfully difficult circle to square

[Geoff (G. Robbins) (merda constat variat altitudo)]

I think you'll find that the figures on personal endebtedness are huge still and have hardly moved.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/ne...

Based on BoE figures.

Taxation on higher earners will always affect growth. They have more disposable income, therefore reducing that will always impact. Cutting welfare spending will always have a lesser effect as those receiving it will always have less disposable income and therefore will always spend on essentials. It may sound callous, but it doesn't make it any less true.

Pouring money into growth in a world market that is cutting back is folly. You can spend all the money you like on industry, if no one is buying, you might as well burn it.

There is an old joke where a man buys shares in a company, the following day he calls his broker and says buy some more as he has realised a profit on his first purchase.

Each day the share price rises, and each day he calls his broker and buys more stock.

After two weeks he phones the broker and tells him he wants to cash in his stock and take the profit. "Sell it all" he says. "Who to?" says the broker.

[Will]

Both Reagan and Thatcher were big proponents of the idea that cutting back taxes for the higher earners would promote growth and cause wealth to trickle down the scale.

In practice, as any intelligent person would have foreseen, that did not happen. All that actually happened was that public revenues declined, growth was unaffected and the disparity in wealth that ultimately leads to a breakdown in social order started to rise. As it continues to rise under the present administration: how long before it reaches a level where it is dangerous to society's cohesion?

[Marc]

as I said several posts earlier, neither the economists nor the government really have a Scooby on how to resolve these issues.

Will's point about the electorate not having sufficient grasp of the issues to make an informed decision makes me titter. Neither do the people we're asked to choose between to sort it out.

[Will]

Will - the big problem with the Greek economy is that they didn't start austerity measures soon enough. They accumulated immense debts to support problems like an over-generous pension system and rampant tax avoidance. They have been borrowing money to pay back money that had previously borrowed. And unfortunately they have had to borrow at poor rates because investors don't have much faith in their ability to pay back the loans.

There is a downwards spiral that countries get into when their deficits get out of hand. They find themselves either needing to make massive austerity cuts or to borrow more - and neither course of action is brilliant for economic growth.

There are no easy answers when a country gets to this point. Every option hurts. The trick is not to get into that position. That's why austerity is important. Some borrowing can be a good thing. But the level of debt we are carrying and the pressures we are facing mean that now is not a time to borrow.

Reagan and Thatcher both believed in the concept of a small state - low tax and low spend. The idea is that we have more money in our pockets because of the low tax and that we use that money to buy goods and services, which supports others. The problem they saw with a large state model (high tax, high spend) is that the public sector is inherently less efficient than the private sector. The public sector tends to be more wasteful, less innovative and slower to react.

History has largely proved them right ... up to a point. Giving more freedom to the private sector is generally the best way to stimulate an economy. That is largely how the UK got its empire and why the industrial revolution mostly happened in England and not in state-dominated countries like France or Spain.

The downside of the small state is that individuals can get hurt more because there is less of a safety net. And because the private sector is dominated by profits it can be less interested in things like fair pay, pensions, working conditions, competition, and the environment.

The UK doesn't know what it wants to be - small state, big state or something in between. But we do need to stop that debt from spiraling out of control because that messes up everything.

Marc - the economists at Treasury and the main political parties have a much better grasp of all this than you might think. We are just not good at listening to them or believing them

[Will]

I am finalising a great short story about the triumph of Osborne's economic plan. All services, including benefits and the provision of utilities and food are in the hands of the single biggest company in the immediate area.

Suddenly it has become vital to your survival to live near the Premier League Football Club you support, and for them to do well...

so Man U fans are all stuffed because hardly any of them live near Manchester, and Liverpool's fans are suffering a near permanent economic disaster...

[Marc]

Will, your analysis on the Thatcherite era is a little thin. 1) It was built up on cheap and easy credit for people 2) it was erected on a few growth industries here The City, private health insurance, fast food (I kid you not)computing plus the volatile housing market as people were encouraged to buy their council homes, while developers broke up homes into flats and sold them off.

Which of those are sustainable? We could lose the City's centrality as Paris & Frankfurt lobby hard to replace us as the European hub, while we could yet elect a government keen to bring high finance to heel which will chase the multi-coprs like HSBC off abroad. Also what happens if we vote to leave the EU? by bye city of London's importance. Private health insurance, well it's conceivable that these may sustain as the NHS is more and more run down, but once people have bought their medical insurance, they're not going to go out and buy it again. Computing? While we retain primacy at the top end of the market with some highly specialised firms, it is not a mass producer or employer and we don't manufacture the hardware which of course gets made out East. And the housing market? well we hear the everyday complaints of not enough new houses being built to meet the demand.

I won't even start on the ideological thinking behind much of Thatcherite economic policies which were accompanied by an equally significant social policy aspect. Osborne is proving to be just as ideologically motivated by social & political ideas as he is economic.

[Marc]

I once wrote a flash story called "Quantitative Easing" about a knife attack on the Chancellor to make him feel like we were indeed in it all together. Not one of my best to be honest and never published beyond my blog, but it expressed a certain pique I was feeling...

[R.M.F.]

Journalism continues its downward spiral in this nation. Yesterday, I raised the point that Scotland could stop paying £2 million a year to fund her maj.

Turns it it wasn't true. Even if Scotland keeps the crown estate cash, funding comes from general taxation, which isn't devolded to Edinburgh.

Despite the Treasury telling this to The Times, Daily Mail and Telegraph, they still ran with this story.

They ignore child abuse in Parliament, but attack the SNP for something they said they wouldn't do. Very strange.

It's sad to see how cosy the media are with big business in this country.

[Marc]

Devolded?

well the media are big business interests themselves...

When digital TV was starting out, Murdoch got very cosy with the politicians to make sure he got the type of playing field he wanted for the industry

[R.M.F.]

Marc wrote: "Devolded?

well the media are big business interests themselves...

When digital TV was starting out, Murdoch got very cosy with the politicians to make sure he got the type of playing field he w..."

Should have been devolved!!

But yeah, the recent whitewash over HSBC at the Telegraph, was shocking, and don't get me started about the Daily Mail. Hell, don't get anybody started about that rag.

[Will]

Marc - that's a mightily pessimistic outlook on life. All these things that Thatcher achieved might fail, possibly, if something changes. Maybe.

Thatcher got some things wrong and some things right. But we can only say that with the benefit of hindsight. That's how we learn. We try new ideas - some work, some don't. We keep the ideas that work and build on them. We drop the ideas that don't work.

Some of Thatcher's ideas worked. Promoting the private sector and getting rid of red tape - that's now accepted by all parties.

Blunting the power of the unions to hold the nation to ransom? Hell, yes. I remember the winter of discontent, and certainly don't want to go back to that.

Promoting more home ownership? Yup, I'll vote for that too. I know many people who own their own homes now but who wouldn't have done without Thatcher.

Not everything that Thatcher did worked. The poll tax was politically motivated and poorly thought out, for example. But on the whole this country needed her when she came along, and we need to move on from her policies in a different set of circumstances.

[Jim]

Will wrote: "Will - the big problem with the Greek economy is that they didn't start austerity measures soon enough. They accumulated immense debts to support problems like an over-generous pension system and r..."

The traditional way (or the way we've always done it) is not to default, but to do a sort of 'running default.' Devalue the currency, or let inflation rip which is much the same thing.
This actually has the political advantage that people with no cash but capital tied up in houses or similar love you because you make them wealthy in the local currency.
People who depend upon the interest on savings on the other hand do badly, which tends to hit the elderly most.

The Greeks core problem was that being in the euro they couldn't do that.

Quantitative easing is just a more genteel way of doing this.

[R.M.F.]

Unfortunately, Thatcher's legacy continues to blight this country to the present day.

Take privatization, we are now in the ludicrous situation of the average French citizen having cheap energy bills, because EON, owned by the French government, overcharges British energy users and passes on the savings to the French...

We have one of the worst rail services in Europe, despite having the highest fairs,

enough has been said about the chronic shortage of affordable housing, and the poll tax?

Don't get me started. I was there, very young at the time, but there, and we suffered hardship because of that.

And for that reason, I will never forgive the Conservatives for as long as I live...

[Marc]

no Will, some of us opposed them at the time because we could see which way they were heading. My first ever demo was against the privatisation of the cleaning services at Addenbrookes Hospital, a trend that led to the virulence of hospital superbugs in time. Selling off public housing without investing to replace it, we could see that as a problem at the time, plus what it did to the property market: in my last year at Uni, I came back down to London at easter to start looking for a home to maybe buy with some friends. Everywhere was behind scaffolding as the conversions to flats was continuing apace. When I graduated, I revisited the area and in 3 months, the prices of flats had gone up by 50K. It's all very well promoting the right to buy and the chance to own shares, but without the education to back it up, so many 1st time buyers fell foul of negative equity when the market collapsed. now they have those ridiculous voice overs at 100mph "the value of investments can go up as well as down..."

I do agree with you that the practises of the Unions needed curbing at the time, but that was only part of a virulent drive towards individualism that ripped up everything collective and community, be it public art, public debate, local government, because they were strongholds of the Left. The Miners' strike was the epitome of this, with the divide and rule tactics of the authorities and whole mining villages torn down the middle by enmities over which side of the divide they were.

That I'm afraid was the decade when britain became broken. When the upper working classes were elevated into the middle class through home & share ownership, ONLY at the expense of those at the bottom of society unemployed, wrangled in failed state schools and crime-ridden communities. They went and rioted and their children and grandchildren in places like Tottenham and Salford did it again 30 years later in 2011 because those communities have been written off and left to their own devices by governments of all stripes. And if you didn't think some of us could see this happening at the time, I was up at the Edinburgh fringe Festival in 1984 with 2 plays of mine about the effects of unemployment, the miner's strike and the decay of the inner cities. I wrote them both in about 3 months. The following year back at Uni I wrote a play in response the the riots. And I don't proclaim myself particularly prescient, just reasonably analytical.

Pessimistic? Cynical? Realistic? Who can say?

[Will]

Well, yes and no. The difficulty with history is that we rarely see how things would have been different if we had made different decisions.

Privatisation generally makes industries more efficient and so reduces costs to the consumer. Okay, so we may lose some profits overseas, but we would have been paying through the nose if those services had stayed in public ownership.

The worst rail service in Europe? Hardly. UK rail punctuality performance figures are comparable with the best in Europe. And please don't tell me that you want to go back to the bad old days of British Rail.

The chronic shortage of affordable housing ... and just how is that the Conservatives' fault? If anything the Tory policies on home ownership helped to increase the level of house building.

Never forgive the Conservatives? I think you don't understand them.

[Marc]

Mussolini made the trains run on time, but I don't think the ticket prices were as inflationary as ours.

As I said above, the Tory right to buy reduced public housing stock and they did little to replace it, a price for which we are paying now since local councils put their needy in ridiculously overpriced private housing or in B&Bs in the decaying coastal resorts.

[Jim]

The biggest problem with housing varies depending upon where you are in the country.
The South east is a law unto itself, but the big problem is that to build new houses you have to go through the planning process.
Here you get a meeting of vested interests, where those who already have houses and don't want any more built in their back yard with fight like ferrets in a sack to stop new build.
Of course you can build in former industrial areas, where builders don't want to build because getting rid of contamination makes the houses too expensive, and people don't want to live because they're not pleasant areas.

[R.M.F.]

I'm too young to remember the days of British Rail, but my father, hitting mid 70s, laments the loss.

One aspect of Conservative thinking that puzzles me is the complement abandonment of individual liberties. To be fair to the Tories ( and I don't like being fair to them :) ) most governments these past 40 years have let civil liberties go downhill, but you would expect the Tories to take a stand.

We have CCTV everywhere, spying on our online activities, no written constitution, I could go on.

The country seems to be sleepwalking into East Germany...

[R.M.F.]

Marc wrote: "Mussolini made the trains run on time, but I don't think the ticket prices were as inflationary as ours.

As I said above, the Tory right to buy reduced public housing stock and they did little to..."

She was warned, but the market will provide, was the familiar cry.

Do you remember those tell Sid adverts when the utilities were being flogged? My dad was on about them the other day. He wishes he'd put his foot up Sid's arse!!

[Jim]

R.M.F wrote: "We have CCTV everywhere, spying on our online activities, no written constitution, I could go on.

The country seems to be sleepwalking into East Germany... ..."

This seems to have come in under all three parties, I suspect that it's mainly the policy of the underlying bureaucracy

[Marc]

do you remember when Tory MP Keith Best made applications for a share issue (can't remember which publicly owned company it was now, think it was BT) in 6 different names? He was sent down for it.

The Tories don't trust the oiks, they don't trust people of different skin colours, people who didn't go to their utterly reliable public school, so of course they'll keep them under scrutiny. Reds under the beds here as well us the US. Why do you think they're so hopeless about understanding why UK citizens join ISIS? It is completely beyond their ken, but there are reasons for it that can be analysed and understood.

[Will]

CCTV everywhere? Well, yes, because it's a relatively cheap and effective way of maintaining law and order.

Spying on our online activities? In very limited circumstances and at a time when we have a serious terrorist threat. I have nothing to hide so no reason to fear anything.

No written constitution? If you discount the Magna Carta, we've never had one.

Has there been an occasion in the last year, heck in your entire life, when CCTV cameras, police monitoring of emails or the lack of a written constitution has actually caused you any inconvenience or harm? And, no, speed cameras don't count.

[Marc]

Matthew Parris on Snooper's Charter in The Spectator - Matthew is no left wing liberal, but even he says security related surveillance will inevitably filter down into other aspects of life. In the same way kids who carry knives for protection because everyone else is, are likely to whip it out because they can to settle some score or grievance because it empowers them.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists...


Is Angela Merkel a terrorist threat? is that why the NSA bugged her phone?

[Marc]

oh and by the way, regarding CCTV, these cost savings that have meant a reduction in policing, that is a false economy. Who has the resources to watch all these hours of CCTV footage anyway? That relegates it to a deterrent and deterrents don't always work

[Jim]

We always spy on foreign leaders, it's just we don't often get caught. I think you can cheerfully assume that pretty well everybody in the EU is in some way spying on other members. (Except perhaps for the Germans, in that their security services were so riddled by the Soviets and probably still the Russians that Bonn got its reports via Moscow :-)

Remember before the second world war the Americans had military plans to invade Canada in case we turned against them.

[Will]

Marc - um, they watch the CCTV footage after a crime to help catch the naughty people.

And one CCTV operator can look at several screens at once which means they can cover more ground than walking or car patrols. They CCTV teams tend to work in parallel with the police on the ground and in response to 999 calls.

And if a crime is taken to a prosecution, the CCTV provides evidence.

But keep on going. You are determined to find something wrong with it. And even though CCTV is endorsed by all political parties, I am sure you will think up a tenuous link to the Tories. Somehow.