Edited by Andy Bairsto on 10/05/2011 at 11:32

This is political but the reason of the weak pound in my opinion is that the powers to be want the euro in through the backdoor .Pound equals euro.

Rail prices are to high in the UK and to many variations if the governement want us of the road build more metro systems and tram transport and create work at the same time.

With the pound this close in value to the euro it is even less likely for us to join the euro. The time for us to have joined was when the euro was 66 or 67p now it would be financial suicide for the UK.

Yes rail prices are far too high you're right, even with a super-duper weeked saver ticket, by the time all of the family have bought one, it is still far cheapre to use the car if you already have one. That is the achilles heel of the old public transport argument, if you have already invested in the running of a car it is cheap to use it afterwards.

Germany cheapest electricity 16cents KWh

Uk cheapest 9pence KWh

If you had generating electrical company where would you invest ,the UK energy policy is an absolute shambles.

You can track ship movements online:

www.marinetraffic.com/ais/

Let us know if you spot anything interesting.

I'll be in Portsmouth on Sunday, reckon there'll be anything to see from there? Nothing surprises me anymore, but it does prove the price is artificially high, if anybody needed reminding.

rogue-trooper i think the point is that the Chancellor could afford his 1p duty cut gimmick because he lumped another 2.5% VAT on it a few months earlier. Any cut is obviously welcome but the fact is the price of the oil made up the difference within a day. Currently fuel duty still raises more than council tax and the last Government said it was to 'get people out of their cars more' well car ownership went up 7million and the other excuse was 'Green measures' when road transport is a minority cause of emissions, why isnt home heating subject to 250% increase via tax like petrol is? Epic fail on both counts.

In fairness i noticed Sainsbury's has gone down 3p here in the last week but if you do the maths, 3p means virtually nothing. I know if it goes up 1p it makes virtually no difference. It needs to come down around 40p to make a proper economic difference. Although every 1p is worth alot to haulage firms, even mid sized ones can have £50million diesel bills annually. Buses get 43% rebate, hauliers dont. Go figure.

So about 60pence (UK) per litre then? Pretty much what ours costs before the Government get their hands on it.

PS: looked at the bus that goes past me......it would be Wilts & Dorset 118.....here is the timetable.....Any one spot a slight problem? http://www.wdbus.co.uk/site/uploads/publications/43.pdf

Damn all politicians as far as im concerned, they've all done both good and bad in equal measure and both Labour and the Tories have taken us to hell in a handbasket at some stage. But financially there can be no question that New Labour's 13 years were an embarassment. Brown pledged to end boom and bust (his words, not mine) so doubled the national debt and drove a false economy of financial musical chairs based on constant borrowing.

At least with all that public wastage, er sorry I mean investment - we have the best railways, roads, hospitals and schools in the world eh?

Dont get me started on public wastage. Labour wasted so much money on useless rubbish made to look important, its even more annoying that the current Government more than a year on still havent shut down anywhere near enough of it, hopefully they'll get round to it before 2015. Theres better places to get the money from than trying to get it all from disabled people and benefit claimants.

Remember the bad old days of 1997? Petrol was an extortionate 57p per litre

To be fair, 57p a litre in 1997 was quite a bit, with oil rolling out at around $20 a barrel compared to a 2011 average of over $100. The escalator began to really bite as prices rose towards the end of the 90s and although Labour 'scrapped' it, we then had Brown upping it whenever he felt like it, as an 'environmental measure' as was listed in the 2007 budget as well.

Damn those nasty Tories.

Things werent perfect with them either, its never perfect with anybody. It went horribly wrong for the Tories towards the end of Major with market crashes, house prices plummeting, sky high unemployment (sound familiar?) and dont forget Labour won a record 418 seats so its fair to say in 1997 people had different opinions than they do now. Hindsight is magnificent. An interesting experiment was Nu Labour, but more negatives to take from it than positive.

I find it hard to support any party, they've all got things i like and things i dont. If i was to write down my own ideals i'll probably be ticking the Tory box more than any of the others (even more reason to not affiliate myself LOL!) even if i did think 'back the devil you know' in the last election but looking back at the last 13 years you have to hope Miliband and his muppets dont get back in, and that the Lib Dems have been dissolved by 2015 which they probably will be.

Edited by jamie745 on 23/09/2011 at 01:32

Seeing the way that the utility companies are taking us to the cleaners, am I alone in thinking that they should not have been privatised in the first place, and that maybe, re-nationalisation should be considered. An election winner with the voters?

I have nothing against competition when it comes to other areas that were privatised, but gas,electric and water, a big fat NO!

Reality was exactly the opposite of what you wrote:

I couldnt care less what wikipedia thinks about John Major to be quite frank. And im not an idiot and can work out that when Labour (a party which lost four elections in a row before it) wipes the floor with you with 418 seats, common consensus among the public was that its about time you were replaced.

Edited by jamie745 on 23/09/2011 at 14:52

How is it rubbish? They lost, by the biggest margin in recent history, dont accuse me of being blind to facts when you're missing the biggest most important fact here! Major took the biggest beating by the electorate in modern history in 1997 so its quite obvious to anybody with a brain that the public had enough of him and his party. They lost three in a row (and didnt even win the election last year, i may remind you). So if Major was so magnificent and perfect with the UK in such terrific magnificent shape then why did they lose so badly? Answer me that. I'd love to know.

Im not saying it was right, but its obvious people had different opinions in 1997 than they do now. I dont have party affiliation but i do object to being accused of 'writing rubbish' when all i did was recite facts. If i was to sit here and say the UK was magnificent in 1997 with no problems at all, in the face of the election results of 97 i'd look a bit foolish wouldnt i?

Edited by jamie745 on 23/09/2011 at 15:08

"Can you imagine what the UK would be like economically IF we didnt have north sea oil/gas! "

The OPEC countries citizens pay pence for gallons of the black stuff. We had our own for a while, but I don't ever remember reaping the cheaper benefits of it. France is no oil producer yet they pay almost the same for fuel as we do. Where was the benefit for us?

We have almost 300 years worth of coal in the ground we could be harvesting for our own goals or exporting at a premium to India and China. No, we'll leave it where it is because of the green bandwagon.

Major was Thatchers fall guy like Broon was for the liar, the sop left holding the baby when the chickens came home.

Oh of course, couldnt agree more. Blair timed his exit perfectly, Browns first week saw the West End bomb incident, Glasgow Airport attack etc, it began badly and only got worse as then the Banks collapsed, Northern Rock fiasco etc all mere months after Blair ran off. Co-incidence? No. Blair didnt see things like this coming? Yeah right.

Blair is one of the most slippery characters ive ever come across, trying to pin anything on him is like trying to nail water to a ceiling.

.the turncoat Sun, murdoch again, backed him

Murdoch backs whoever he thinks will win the next election to try and hold sway over the impending Government to approve his business deals. Allegedly he doesnt care for Cameron at all, he's not his type of person but he backed him because he knew he'd be the next Prime Minister. Murdoch's politics is whatever politics will get him what he wants, cant blame him for that.

Don't for one minute think we've heard the last of the peace envoy, you've got to laugh, he'll lead this country down the toilet again i'm quite sure, from His throne ion the EU.

That was joke of the century, a man who played a key role in two middle eastern wars then becomes Peace Envoy to the middle east. Only Tony Blair could do that. It encapsulates his Government's policy of creating a problem just so as they can invent a job for someone to fix what they created.

By the way for the record i haven't voted for any of the three main parties for more years than i can remember, the crusade against the miners proved to me the tories cannot be trusted to tell the truth, i've never trusted labour, and the libs are liars too...tuition fees?

In my opinion at the General Election any vote which isnt Labour or Conservative is a wasted vote. Like them people who thought voting Lib Dem was 'really a vote for Labour'. Alot of people demonise Thatcher today and some with good reason but you cannot argue that she had balls and did what she said she'd do, stuck to her guns no matter how unpopular a decision (often a right one) may have been. Not like this lot we have now who have an idea, receive negative reaction then backtrack so fast they need a beeping sound. Cameron is too wishy washy to be a 'proper' Tory prime minister, but he's a slimey PR man who (like Blair) can suck you in. The fact is, we got a Hung Parliament, we were told 12 months before we'd have one but instead of do something about it, all the parties blindly went along with it. They all now try to hold the centre ground and all agree with each other, which only helped to enginner a hung Parliament.

On the subject of the Lib Dems they are only there to make up the numbers, the Tories are in charge and have final say. Conservatives wanted to up tuition fees, they want people to pay for their education which is fair enough i suppose but the fact Labour introduced fees and the Lib Dems caved (without much option, frankly) means students now dont have their own party. Lib Dems relied on the student vote which is now gone. In general the Lib Dems are not my cup of tea so im glad they're being kept in their box for the most part. During the riots the Tories took centre stage as Law and Order is one thing they do very well, Clegg got told to p*** off by people he went to meet.

Overall, Labour's time was full of wasting money, endless needless laws, job creation schemes, constant taxes on everything they could find and (notably for this forum) a brutal, unwarranted, unjustified hatrid of the motorist and the motor car, which in itself contributed to the destruction of the economy.

Edited by jamie745 on 23/09/2011 at 19:51

I like cheese. Do you like cheese?