You believe this nonsense? How old are you?

I doubt there is anyone who doesn't think (even if it is only in the privacy of his own home) he or she bears some semblance of responsibility for some portion of the world's ills. After all - there's PLENTY of blame to go around.

But the notion that a hundred, or a thousand, or a hundred-thousand "ordinary" people are MORE CULPABLE than Kenneth Lay (ENRON), Basil Jackson (Anglo-Iranian Oil), Allen W./ John F. Dulles (United Fruit), Warren Anderson (Union Carbide), Bernie Madoff, Jordan Belfort, Allen Stanford, Ivan Boesky, Howard Hughes (Hughes Tool & Die, TWA), Fritz Thyssen, Paul Warburg, George Herbert Walker Bush, Clint Murchison, D. H. Bird, Martha Stewart, Thaksin Shinawatra, Alisher Usmanov, Roman Abramovic - and all the other Russian oligarchs, the Wall Street bankers who financed Hitler's Third Reich, the chairmen and fellow board members of all the major cigarette manufacturers who demonstrably LIED about the effects of tobacco smoke on the human respiratory system, the senior staff of ITT who played a key role in overthrowing the Allende government in Chile (plus the thousands of deaths at the hands of Pinochet, the car-bombing of Orlando Letelier), the chairmen of BP who have worked hard to install repressive dictatorships in the former Soviet southern states in exchange for oil rights (as well as the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe), the war profiteers of Halliburton, KBR, the Carlisle Group, Blackwater (now "Xe"icon_wink.gif, BAE Systems, Lockheed, Boeing, Bechtel, Aegis Defence Services, General Dynamics, Nour, Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, L-3 Communications, EADS, Raytheon, Environmental Chemical, International American Products, Custer Battles, Monsanto, Krupp, Syngenta, Grupo Mexico, Smith & Wesson, I.G. Farben etc. etc. etc. etc.?

I'm sure if you looked hard enough and far enough down the chain of causality you could find some means by which I have profited from the actions of BAE Systems or Lockheed - but this DOES NOT mean I gave my permission for the former to irradiate a patch of Iraq with depleted uranium shells or the latter to slam hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Hellfire missiles into Palestinian apartment blocks or that I am "equally guilty" or "jealous" of them.

I'm sure my grandfather at some point in his life purchased products made by one of I.G. Farben's international subsidiaries. This DOES NOT mean he gave his permission for them to develop Zyklon B for the role of exterminating the Jews or that he is "equally guilty" or "jealous" of them.

I'm sure a good proportion of the world's population have eaten Chiquita bananas, or filled their cars with BP's oil, or made phone calls through ITT's telecomms infrastructure, or purchased goods or services from ENRON - this DOES NOT mean any of them approved of overthrowing the democratically elected governments of Guatemala or Chile or Iran - or ripping off the pension funds of tens of thousands of hard-working employees or that they are "equally guilty" or "jealous" of them.

I'm certain YOU have wittingly or unwittingly eaten produce which was grown with the aid of Monsanto's fertilizers. Does this mean you are EQUALLY CULPABLE for the hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of acres of not just unusable but highly toxic Vietnamese land which was sprayed with Agent Orange during the war and forty years later is still causing birth defects, stillborn babies etc. - or that you are "equally guilty" or "jealous" of them?

Explain to me - IN PLAIN ENGLISH - how you arrive at this PERVERSE idea that anyone you know is equally culpable to the above - or the myriad number of other examples I could produce from memory alone?

Or are you just going to carry on spewing out this RIDICULOUS and OFFENSIVE mantra that anyone who takes issue with the gross economic imbalances we see all around us is just "JEALOUS"?

Marvellous post.

I don't understand why people don't understand that the world is more skewed than the people who run it would have us believe.

Clearly what you still "don't get" is the fact that I have absolutely no problem with anyone making money - the only caveats being how they made that money and what they then do with that money once they have made it. I applaud any entrepreneur who uses his/her talents to make money and if in doing so, they also employ others, then that too is to be lauded.

My caveats exclude those who simply make money from money: by doing nothing other than gambling on markets, shorting etc. they are unlikely to be employing anyone, apart from a Philipina cleaner or nanny. Once they've "made" that money, if they then seek to avoid paying tax by employing someone to show them "tax efficiencies", then they'll be subject to my derision. I seriously struggle to understand why anyone who has previously enjoyed all the benefits of a tax-payer provided infrastructure and welfare system, should then think it is equitable to do whatever in their power to avoid making any such contributions to the present economy.

As for my own situation, it is my choice and I'm far happier than I was 20 years ago. I probably wear better clothes than I did then, 20 years ago I'd never dream of wearing Savile Row bespoke, Pal Zileri Abito Privato suits or Turnbull & Asser shirts, Nudie jeans, Trickers shoes etc. Back then I was spending up to £800 on Armani suits, £50 on Thomas Pink shirts and £120 on Loake shoes. Now I buy my clothes (socks & underwear excepted) from car boot sales, charity shops and ebay.

The reason you don't understand say far more about you than it does about me

Graeme & I haven't seen each other in ten years and during that period, I can count the number of electronic conversations we've had on one hand.

Please don't let your psychosis run away with you

LOL indeed and you can count the number of political conversations on the fingers of one foot!
It's just a nice handy label to chuck around to avoid answering questions.

If you think that you are an even bigger idiot than I had you down as. No one who works hard and earns their money is the enemy, as long as they pay their fair share of taxes while doing so then bloody good luck to them. I for one have a lifestyle I am happy with and am in no way jealous of anyone who earns more.

It's Sal: the thinking man's gift that simply keeps on giving

I see Iain Duncan Smith has successfully ended child poverty in the UK within a month of the new government coming into office

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33347511 Seems the Tories now want to end sickness benefit.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33347511 Seems the Tories now want to end sickness benefit.

The problem with welfare is that it creates a class of people that are dependent on the state. So, essentially it's the states way of bribing voters.
When the welfare state was set up, only people over the age of 70 were given a weekly payment. This made the welfare system very cheap, because the life expectancy in Britain at the time was 48.
However, although cutting benefits will decrease government spending it doesn't address the real issue of private debt (mortgage payments, credit cards, student loans, bank loans etc). If the public is paying down debt it's inevitable sovereign debt will increase as the government tries to circulate the money into the economy that isn't being circulated as the public is saving in order to pay their debt.

We're the most indebted nation in the developed world, our total debt is 900% of GDP, and most of that is private debt-not government debt. Debts that can't be repaid, won't be repaid, and either we have to default and go bankrupt, or a significant proportion of the debt will have to be written off.
IMO, the initial bailout that was given to the banks, should have gone to the public in order to pay down their own debt, thus giving the money to the banks in the form of debt repayments, and giving the public more disposable income, to save, or spend within the economy.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of our political system, no Politian is willing to stand up to the Ponzi scheme running-oligarchs in the financial sector. They're just happy to keep the bubble inflated long enough so the 5hit doesn't hit the fan while they're in office.

Edit:

Just to add, the UK's current (trade account) is also far more concerning than is portrayed by the government and the media. Our economy will never be able to recover if we don't start producing more than we consume, there needs to be a reindustrialisation of Britain.

I'd be thoroughly embarassed, as a government, to talk about more welfare cuts when the current situation has already led to a neccessity for foodbanks.

Shame on them.

They're more interested in getting dividends for shareholders, than sorting out the root cause of any social problems.