Tony - read this link, and then tell me which is more important - free trade or democracy or paying for political parties?
http://mondediplo.com/1998/09/11negri

Happy New Year

Dave

Modern double glazing definitely stops one rather large pigeon, as I discovered when we came home from work to a rather feathery imprint on our window. As there was no carcass the pigeon in question must have flown off, so repeated attempts may have more impact as might a massed …

Personally, I think that agreeeing to agree on State funding is cop out - ie one doesn't have to worry any more about the elephant in the room.
The elephant in the room is the stranglehold corporations, mainly US have on all democratic governments.
Lets talk about that.
After all, it …

Well regardless of how bad it is, can we agree to state funding of political parties? We can't do much about the US, but we can and should reform the UK / EU.

Also, I'm in favour of the EU dropping its protectionist policies unilaterally. I wouldn't try and force other …

Tony - you say there is a danger of governments being bought> where have you been the last 35 years? Have you not noticed that in the US which is the benchmark democracy and which is pushing its dogmatic fee trade policy on the rest of us, is governed entirely by …

It's true that you'll never get totally free markets, but the freer they are the better.

You are right to attack EU protectionism. Let's scrap the Common Agricultural Policy!

You raise the problem of countries exporting food during a famine. This is why governments should redistribute the wealth generated by …

May I say I totally agree with your previous correspondent.

A further point is that in free markets the people who hold all the capital will basically manipulate investments to make them ever wealthier, including buying government policies as per US.

Free market advocates tend to use the imaginary non …

The point is that there arent free markets anywhere - people who advocate them ignore the fact that they never will be.

The EU still prevents poor African countires form exporting produce to us by using tarrfs - ditto the americans who hugely subsidiase grain.

As I understand it, Ireland exported food …

I've already read books 10, 11 and 12 (in that order) of A Dance to the Music of Time and I've just finished book 9, The Military Philosophers. The order is unusual, but that's the thing with being disorganized.

Here are the things that struck me:

1. The Powell dude is …

Sarah from work (knowing that I'm an advocate of free markets) photocopied some pages from Star of the Sea which contained a newspaper article that said that the free market was to blame for the Irish Potato Famine. I've thought about it on-and-off for several months and I've decided I …