recommend the following reading list for them to digest over the summer break – Galbraith’s New Industrial State (4th edition with Forward by James

K., his son) followed by Economics and the Public Purpose followed by James K. Galbraith’s The Predator State. If they feel up to it, perhaps they

might have a look at Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, the first of the trilogy.

Looking at Glover’s chart, one despairs. I feel like I

did before the second and third Thatcher elections – a sense of impending doom. Living through Thatcherism was like being tortured, over an

extended period a little bit at a time until the nervous system began to rebel.

I am meeting my LibDem MP this Friday – he is giving me 10

minutes of his time. Thank you for your “spiritual” support with this timely piece.

That may have sounded good in the industrial

economy of the first half of the last century, but what about now, in this post-industrial globalised economy? If you build industries with the aim

of reducing unemployment, the additional costs put them at a competitive disadvantage w.r.t. economies that make no such concessions, such as

China.

I expect that the world will become “flat” eventually – in the economic sense, not just in Friedman’s information sense – with a

single world government. I’m not looking forward to it, if I live to see it, but maybe then we can see an end to economic imbalances between

countries, and look to build a truly sustainable world economy, without exploitation of some countries by others. However, I suspect that that

would also highlight the effects of overpopulation in sustaining the current economic imbalances.

people who got us into the mess in the first place. Their policies allowed the markets to lend recklessly in pursuit of immorally large financial

gains for themselves, and now the very same people are expecting us to believe that they have OUR best interests at heart. The saddest part of this

is that the vast majority of people believe them! Those at the bottom of the pile have very little impact in the discussion, mainly because they do

not understand what is going on (nor do they even try because they are totally immersed in keeping their heads above water), whilst those further

up the financial ladder are so intent on preserving their own position that they don’t want to believe it could all go wrong. It really does need

people like Ann to keep on prodding away until the greater mass of the population realises what is happening and revolts against the perceived

wisdom of the financial establishment!