Gervase, firstly sorry for "smarmy". You just hit one of my many nerve ends...

Re housing benefit, I am well aware of the problems and my parents bailed me out a couple of times when I was renting a flat in N Wales. One of the times was caused by an error on the part of the DSS which resulted in my claim for benifits being stopped. Again an amazing system. The DSS recognised their error and re-instated my claim but the council who had managed to close my housing benifit claim instantly on notification from the DSS could not accept this so I had to go through the full claim procedure again and yes, had to wait a month... Mind you, I think most of it was sheer inefieciency and incompetence on the part of the council - I have gone in to the offices with paperwork, had it agreed as OK by the person on the counter to later receive a letter saying "not OK" - as for letters, their postal system was quite incredible - on more than one occasion, there were changes in the ammount I was paid which I discovered by the payment cheque - the letter explaining why although dated earlier, arrived later - guess they must set a rule, payments are batched and go out on a Monday, explainitory letters are batched and go out on a Friday...

As for better of, I'm not convinced although I think there can be no doubt that we would have been worse off under the Tory's.

What I can't see is why Blair took the party the way he did. It was not because the party was not electable, the party regained popularity under John Smith who I think many people expected to become the next prime minister. The popularity of the Conservative party decreased further during the period between his death and the next election.

Fiolar, what has happened to the NHS now - has there been any real improvement? My mother was a phyisiotherapist for 30+ years and, like yourself, watched with sadness as the service she loved was destroyed by trusts, where bed occupancy became more important than patient welfare to keep the statistics looking good for the (financial) managers... she too was glad to get out.

Jon