Sorry for not responding earlier Clive, but have been doing 101 other things and just been passing through TH in the last week.
The first point you raise regarding the UK apeing the USA I find a little bit naive to be honest. It's a trend that (imo) started in the 1950's and permeates many areas of UK life now. It's part of a wider drift, and first took root in things such as popular culture, through music, films and fashion etc Increasingly it's crept into our language, even to the point where the traditionally stuffy Cambridge examination board will accept American English as being correct. I'm sure we could all think of 100's of such examples, but I'll just offer up one to try an illustrate the thing that I'm refering to. 10 years ago, I'm not sure I'd heard anyone describing something in its entirity or finality sign off by using the word "period" for instance? These type of things are largely tantamount to a creeping influence I believe. It's difficult to identify any single point of entry, but taken as a sum of its components it amounts to what I was refering to in terms of apeing the USA. More pertinant has been the socio/ economic transformation. You could argue that capitalist societies have always produced 'haves' and 'have nots' and in many respects its a necessary function of the system. Successive studies keep alighting on the same findings though, namely that this gap (as it is in the USA) is growing ever wider. A couple of areas where it manifests itself quite markedly imo, would include things such as the dumbing down of the education system, and the emergence of a significant dispossed rump of poorly educated youngsters. Other areas that come to mind, would include the explosion in drug culture and gun crime. I'm not sure therefore that as we increasingly aspire (or inadvertantly) mimick America that our political system won't evolve in due course to reflect this aspiration and changing sense of values?
Regarding your second point. Unlike some European countries I'm sure you're well aware that the UK has never had a socialist tradition, though it has periodically returned the odd Labour government, which lets not forget is a capitalist party anyway.
Personally, I've never had any problem with subsidising state industries within reason, and wasn't entirely sure what you meant on a previous post somewhere, when you seemed to suggest that the energy industry or rail industry weren't industries at all, when I pointed out the failures of privatisation to deliver a better service. You seemed to be saying that these were utilities? I suspect you were differentiating between service and manufacturing? The link is tenuous though imo. A service industry frequently needs a manufacturing sector to serve. Both are significant employers and providers of infrastructure, and manufacturing does at least have the greater capacity to generate export earnings in the national interest, a lot of service sector activity doesn't.
It's ironic that tomorrow the capitalist new labour party is scheduled to announce the withdrawl of subsidy for loss making Post Offices, which we're led to believe will result in the closure of about half the network. This is likely to hit hardest in rural Britain, but since these people don't tend to vote Labour, this won't worry them too much, which is another example of how a ruling party discriminates in its decision making process, in much the same way as the Tories would trade Scotland and the Northern England.
I assume you wholeheartedly support and applaud this move?
