I now see the Swedish state owned power company is joining in the race for British energy. This would seem to be the purest form of another country nationalising our assets, and if the Conservatives believed privatising state companies was a good thing so that they would give a better service and better function in the private sector , they must surely be opposed to this, even if they are silent about sovereign funds buying up our assets?

You will remember the "two men in the cab for safety" railway dispute. Only later we found out that one was in the cab and the other was home in bed and getting paid for it.

That is nationalisation in reality. The unions destroyed the coal industry and the car industry. The same process is still happening today in the NHS and Education and probably Heathrow T5.

Thank you very much for the answer.

OK fair enough.

Just one more question on this matter.

Do you have an opinion as to whether the financial position of UK plc will be by 2010,

very much better, much better, better, about the same, worse, much worse, or very much worse, relative to 78-79?

Please note I am only asking for your own honest personal opinion on this matter. I fully understand there is no possible way of truly knowing.

Thanking you in advance.

Mr A Shrugged

Reply: THE UK WILL BE A MUCH RICHER COUNTRY THAN IN 1978-9 AND MUCH MORE HEAVILY IN DEBT THANKS TO GOVERNMENT AND CONSUMER BORROWING. THE CORPORATE SECTOR WILL BE STRONGER PARTLY THANKS TO SUCCCESSFUL PRIVATISATION OF KEY INDUSTRIES.

On the issue I care about most (the EU) I have noticed many small things about BBC coverage which taken individually could be discounted but when viewed together indicate a pro-EU pattern. Mark Mardell, BBC Europe editor, runs a blog on the BBC website on which both pro-EU and anti-EU commentators tell him he has a pro-EU bias which he does not see in himself. Rather than interpret this as a biased reporter I put it down to a BBC method which attempts to determine a neutral position by triangulating the opinions of politicians from different parties (which are all essentially pro-EU) while ignoring a public opinion that is largely EU-sceptic. Indeed I think it counter-productive to argue that the BBC is biased (even when I believe it to be) because there are plenty of arguments that can be made against the EU without getting distracted into making allegations of BBC bias.

It seems to me that multi-channel and Internet technology are cutting the BBC’s commercial competitors down to size leaving it standing alone as a media Colossus in this country. The BBC is also increasingly successful internationally which I think is a positive thing for the British voice in the world. Its international channels are supported by advertising, but these currently leverage domestic resources funded by UK license payers. The Conservatives have announced some plans to share the license fee revenue with commercial channels, but I fear these proposals are likely to be interpreted as attempts by the party to cut an organisation down to size because of its perceived bias. Even while sharing that perception I feel that a better strategy might be to grow the BBC internationally until the license fee becomes a small part of its revenue and then begin to withdraw it leaving the BBC a global commercial player.

"This is just silly – what about all the times when nationalisation has NOT been mentioned in relation to any struggling industry – is that Tory bias? Do we hear the socialist alternative on every issue? No, clearly not – you lot get the share prices on the news every hour, but we never the poverty and inequality figures."

On the contrary, we never cease hearing about poverty, it is just that after ten years of New Labour, Labour politicians are too shy of drawing attention to poverty in the UK. When Tony Blair said some time in 1977 child poverty would be abolished within ten years, it didn't occur to me he was talking about child poverty in a completely different country!

Ours is the Prime minister and this was the Chancellor that introduced tax credits for the most disadvantaged then, when they realized they had overpaid the poor because of the labyrinthine tax regulations – these are poor folk remember – demanded the money back, making the situation of the poor even worse!

"Share price" Ha, and how many times have the BBC managed to get that simple statistic wrong?

Will you privatise the BBC?

Reply: The future of the BBC is still being considered by the Official Opposition. I would certainly wish to cancel the licence fee and negotiate what grant if any was appropriate for a public broadcast channel – we would want to keep the World Service for example.