This was written after punkfolkrocker's post of 01:48. Apologies to subsequent posts.

It's a constant source of wonder to me as to how people who are otherwise intelligent and capable of intellectual discrimination can continue to fall for the hypocracy and dishonesty that is at the heart of today's Labour party.

Maybe it's the original idealism that is essentially 'fair shares' that keeps people locked to a party who's indisputable legacy is a history of constant betrayal of the people it claims to represent.

Here's a bit of history. Up to almost halfway through the 20th century Britain had an Empire. With the Empire Britain had a large captive market for it's industries. You'll see the names of British manufacturers all over Indian railways even today.

Ignoring for the moment which party was idealogically opposed to the whole concept of Empire, once it was gone Britain's industries were over producing, outdated, war weary and unsustainable. Some one should have managed the shrinking and reforming of our industrial base right after the war. Instead of that Labour nationalised it all and the trade unions forbade any reduction.

Every Labour government that has lasted long enough, that is a full term or more, left the country bankrupt so when the Tories got in their efforts were always in repairing the economy, rather than tackling the Unions and restructuring Industry. Maggie at least had the time and courage to take the unions on and thank goodness she won. She de-nationalised a range of industries and let the market place wield it's own axe. Brutal, I admit, but badly needed.

Of course a lot of people hate her for that but you have to be an idiot not to see that it had to be done by somebody and the later it was left the worse it got to be.

It's by no means all over. Labour still denies any overspending, still expouses the ludicrous belief that you can create wealth by spending it and still wants to pay for today by taxing the future. The Roman equivalent was 'bread and circues', but Rome only paid for that by conquest and the expansion of it's empire. In todays world we don't have that option. We have to live within our means and right now we are not even doing that.