Santa Claus™

Your title has 'lose 50% and you're lucky' in it - I was asking you who said that?

FTSE rose to 5320 on Friday, up over 3%, as tensions softened. Please may I ask which moron said if you lose 50% in the crash and you're lucky Grimly? Sensationalism at its best.

Why don't we all ditch the UK, US, Germany, France, and move to the beautiful prosperous beacons of drug-torn, corrupt Venezuela, poor, poverty-ridden Bolivia, corrupt, censored Cuba?

A big effect - today, the FTSE fell over 3% to 5,007. The Dow in the US fell over 4%. V. disappointing, will be selling my shares now - cash in £4,200 though :)

Please show me your socialist shining success? Of course capitalism increases inequality, but it usually (and almost certainly) increases prosperity - infact in Denmark they have some of the most equal incomes around and they have more free trade than nearly anywhere else - integrated with strong social security.

If you think Obama's leadership is practically like Republican leadership, I suppose you've never been to America during Republican leadership. In 2006, I went to NY and everyone hated Bush, they NEEDED democratic leadership, and in 2010, opinions have not changed, at least in NY. Obama 2012 definitely.

For those that follow or have a passing interest in stock markets, across Europe and especially the USA, stocks have fell the most since the peak of recession in March 2009. The FTSE fell 191 points, to 5,393, this, despite being above 6,000 a few weeks, with the state of the UK financial market dropping over 11% since April! Germany and France's markets have also plunged over 10% since April highs, including massive drops of nearly 4% around Europe today. In Italy, trading was suspended before the close, after dropping over 5%! Stateside, markets are falling back to recession lows. The Dow Industrials market in NYC neared 13,000 as the month of July began, and yet a month later, we stand at 11,383, losing roughly 14% of it's value. It fell a near record 4.31% today as shockwaves hit the markets. The S&P Index fell over 4% also, and the tech-based NASDAQ fell a massive 5% - nearing levels of falls after the dot.com bust. Gold had been rising in recent days to near record levels, but investors were questioning it's safe haven status, and it fell 0.7% today. The big news however, was oil, as Light Crude in NYC fell a dramatic 6% today - falling below $90 a barrel. Only treasuries were on the rise today, with investors continue to support this long-standing safe haven. In short, today was the worst day for prosperity around the world since the recession peaked.

Oh yes, lets hate Obama, so we can we get more marvellous republican leadership!

Errr Grimly mate - 2 Al Qaeda splinter groups took responsibility for the attacks on Friday night, when the tabloids printed their headlines, only Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility - it was only when N.Police cleared it up on Sat morning. You could say they should read and confirm sources before printing, but they wrote what they saw on F.night.

Just to bring this back up - I went to Paris recently for work: £1.50 for Diet Coke Can £6.90 for Big Mac Pretty much everything was expensive, very expensive - so were the smaller towns around N France. Britain is cheaper than you think - you really need to cut down there - £1.80 for a bottle of Sprite :(

Lib Dems were always going to fare unfairly bad, but this Coalition has been a nightmare, despite LD attempts, I don't see them hitting 10% in 2015 bar a miracle. Ed has been strong in the last week against Murdoch and 44% is a good show of this. He hasn't done that well IMO gauging Labour opinion on some issues but definitely spot on here. Conservatives down from 36% in 2010 is a shock to me, very pleased, after just 1 year. Could fall lower if Labour target Law and Order, Murdoch and Public Services - the big issues right now really, Miliband must be stronger on the latter - I agree with him, but most Labour does not - but maybe this makes him different from the rest, an alternative perhaps. Tony Blair to John Major, 1995 PMQ: ''There is a big difference Mr. Speaker, I lead my party, he follows his''

:lol:

Middlehaven in Middlesbrough has a life ex. of 54, 25 years below the UK average - and Easington nearby, highest rate of teenage pregnancies and smoking addicts in the nation. Therefore, England cannot survive, based on a few selected facts about how dire British society is. Okay...

England would easily survive, please show me some facts that Scotland wouldn't? because all I know is Scotland would be as or more developed without us. And to Suedehead on his Tory Scots majorities in the 50's - yep, LONGGGGGGG GONE! :D

But didn't Labour get 42 seats in Scotland, which means it's much harder for Labour to get a majority. I've always thought of it as weird for Labour to benefit from Scottish Independence - they have such a red core in Glasgow/West Scotland/Central Belt. I believe in Scottish Independence and of course they can rely by themselves, and that's without massive oil revenues. NI could unify with Ireland (complicated, I know) and Wales become the natural UK after England splits off. :lol:

The deficit is an entirely different matter to debt, many nations in N Europe have no deficit, but have a surplus.

Deficit (-) / Surplus (+) of major EU nations (nations with 1 trillion plus GDP) - 2010: United Kingdom 151,001,000 GBP (-10.4% of GDP) Spain 98,227,000 EUR (-9.2% of GDP) France 136,525,000 EUR (-7% of GDP) Italy 71,211,000 EUR (-4.6% of GDP) Germany 81,630,000 EUR (-3.1% of GDP) So, out of the 5 1 trillion plus economies, Britain does have the highest deficit, but notice how all nations have a deficit here. Now, let's go onto debt: Debt of major EU nations (nations with 1 trillion plus GDP) - 2010: Italy 1,843,015,000 EUR (119.0% of GDP) Germany 2,079,629,000 EUR (83.2% of GDP) France 1,591,169,000 EUR (81.7% of GDP) United Kingdom 1,162,365,000 GBP (80.0% of GDP) Spain 638,767,000 EUR (60.1% of GDP) However, the UK has debt comparable with Germany and France, and Italy is out of it's depth, with debt over GDP levels, that is a country in real difficulty. As Grimly said, most of our debt is in fact owed by internal factions (banks, tax evaders etc.) - Here we see that insurance companies are the ones that will need to cough back the most of it.

To be fair - since he began the coalition with Cameron, he has got a load of policies through - he got a referendum, and he did try to gain some credibility (of which he has kept most of which in Southern areas). Would you rather a minority Tory government going through with their 'true blue' right-wing politics, un-interrupted by a mediation, or a coalition, of which the Lib Dems have IMO done brilliantly moderating the Tories influence, and it's became a more centrist coalition. There is a point of Nick Clegg - stop the Tories hitting full power.

YouGov 5 May: CON 37 LAB 42 LD 10

R.I.P Liberalism in the UK: 1859-2011.

iTunes PopUpdate™ 1. Party Rock Anthem (feat. Lauren Bennet & Goonrock) :: LMFAO 100.0% 2. Where Them Girls At :: David Guetta, Flo Rida & Nicki Minaj 99.0% 3. The Lazy Song :: Bruno Mars 93.6% 4. Beautiful People (feat. Benny Benassi)* :: Chris Brown 69.8% 5. Sweat :: David Guetta vs. Snoop Dogg 57.4% 6. On The Floor* :: Jennifer Lopez 54.5% 7. E.T. (feat. Kanye West)* :: Katy Perry 43.8% 8. Unorthodox (feat. Example) :: Wretch 32 42.8% 9. Fast Car :: Tracy Chapman 42.4% 10. Buzzin (feat. 50 Cent) :: Mann 41.7% All data is measured using un-combined popularity; *indicates that there is more than one version of that song in the top 100. Updated at 19:45

iTunes popularity bars™ update soon.

Woah - I've lived through a lot!

That Yes To AV ad made me want to dance and dance again!

BOYZ BOYZ BOYZ TRAWLS CHUCKIN OUT DER TOYS TOYS TOYS AND DERZ ONE SIMPULE SOLUUTSHUN CHECK DER IP ADREZ CHECK DER IP ADREZ F***** CHECK DER IP ADREZ SO DEN DER IN THE MESS