Actually I did miss that. I was under the impression this all came out as a result of Barclays coming clean to the FSA about it (presumably in the hope of getting a lesser fine than those who didn't own up).

If this is the result of an investigation [iseveral years ago[/i why weren't they fined [iseveral years ago[/i?

That's what Ed Miliband was criticised for doing at the weekend.

I missed that, although I did see umpteen years of a Labour government handing out cash and contracts willy-nilly without protecting the public's interests. Just like I am witnessing again with the incompetent Home Secretary and all those ministers who hand out infra-structure contracts to overseas businesses. Where's the sense in handing the profit element of public money to foreign owned businesses? Surely, it's better to pay a little more to UK contractors who retain the profits here? Our politicians are mad. NHS contracts to US healthcare providers next, I'll bet. Our politicians should take a leaf out of the US's book and extract cash from overseas companies not give it to them!

The government wheeled out Baroness Warsi to claim it was a return to communism.



As I have repeatedly said, there were very many ways in which the government under Tony Blair continued the same basic economic philosophy begun by Margaret Thatcher. It may not suit you to see the continuation of a philosophy, but it was there.

We are now seeing very general complaints about rail contracts, infrastructure spending and the subsidy of rail companies' profits by the taxpayer, let us not forget precisely when this situation was put in place to start with.

The same can be applied to the utility companies that are now ripping off ordinary people.



Haven't you heard about the market and globalisation and competition etc?

It's the natural order of things and the only proper way for us to be free.

And you mention the US, but as just one example, the behaviour of Wal-Mart over the years has been eroding US jobs with it's price cutting, year on year.

Minty, did you read the Waldegrave article? I thought it was good until he spolit it by adding at the end that's what Cameron and his Big Society was all about! If you ignore that bit, it was difficult to find much to disagree with.

No. I don't have access to the [iTimes[/i website, and I haven't had the chance to go and find a copy anywhere else in the building yet.

I would agree that there has been a definite change in the Conservative Party – but that change is not new: in essence, it happened before the 1979 election, and William Waldegrave was part of the governments that put those changes in place, so it would be more than a tad disingenuous if he were to be claiming now that the changes were rather more recent.

We have merely been following the same basic path since.