Without wishing to stereotype ( but doing so anyway !) I think this is indicative of the main differences in the supporters of the main political parties.

On the whole those on the Libertarian, conservative, right of centre ( I dislike left/right as both are meaningless) side of things tend to be for freedom, individual responsibility, questioners of the percieved wisdom and innovators. Those on the Liberal, socialist, NuLabour Left of centre tend to be for centalised control, command and management sytems, orders and targets and social engineering.

It’s one of the reasons that lefties are always slightly taken aback when I argue against privitisation of the public sector as moving from one centralised state beaurocracy to a large megacorporation central beaurocracy achieves nothing. Public or private it’s about local control and delivery to the customer/user

If they cannot answer with the correct answers.
Which are:
Other taxpayers who are not in the Public sector.
Other taxpayers who are not in the Public sector.
Other taxpayers who are not in the Puiblic sector
Other taxpayers who are not in the Public sector.
Nil. I am a cost to the Tax payer in the Private Sector.
Many thousands of pounds a year more than my salary.
Then they should be educated to the above answers.
It may, just may, help to get the Penny to drop.
The cost burden of Public Services is at the Wealth creators expense, no one else.
Yes of course we need some Public service jobs, but a lot less than we have.
Get cutting as soon as possible, we simply cannot afford it any longer.

My impression is that Today is trying desperately to find good economic news. For example, last week or the week before they interviewed someone on the busines section and the interviewer tried to make somthing positive out of a couple of takeovers. The interviewee was having none of it: “if you have cash to hand, it’s a good time to buy”, he said, “but these deals don’t increase the amount of economic activity”. They also come up with lines like “Megabank’s shares rose 20%”, not mentioning that 20% up from 20 pence is not much and that they were £10 2 years ago.

Maybe the answer on cuts is to work out how much of the increase in NHS spending over the last 12 years is not linked to increases in the cost of front line staff and patient care. The figure will be huge. That is then an identifable target for efficiency savings which would leave the actual services intact. The same could be done for other departments.

As an example of a waste of money, the civil service is planning a 3 day jamboree at Olympia in June or July. Up to 3,000 civil servants can attend each day to listen to the likes of Alastair Campbell and various cabinet ministers. Goodness knows what it will cost, but it is just the sort of thing we could do without.

Why should taxpayers pay to prosecute those who choose not to buy a licence ? Let the BBC use civil courts rather than criminal courts – be much cheaper for taxpayers and give the BBC a sense of market accountability.

The Conservatives simply need an amendment to two Acts of Parliament

How right you are.

I had a business dinner with the CEO of a local company ( she is also Chair of Local Labour Party)

She said what did you think of the budget, I said frightening and the level of borrowing predicted is obscene. She said well what about the car scrappage scheme. I said it’s mostly a gimmick. She screamed ( and I mean very loudly so everyone in the restaurant looked around) You are a f*cking imbecile, why don’t you f*ck off and live in Switzerland if you want to keep all your grubby money at the expense of hard working nurses ( I hadn’t mentioned taxes or NHS in any context).

I just turned to everyone else in the restaurant and said it’s ok she’s having a HOON attack.

Needless to say I decided not to buy from her company. Yes I was the client!!!