Sandro Raniere

Say for a second we take the moral high ground and close tax loopholes do you think the CEO of Goldman Sachs for example is going to just sit there and say 'oh well, shit happens'? not a hope in hell, he would do what any businessman in his position would do and move the European operations to another country, with thousands of job losses, then the other bank CEO's would do the same I am all in favour of loopholes being closed but only on a global basis collectively so that we don't get screwed over

It is still legal though, until other countries crack down on loopholes there is no point us doing or companies will move to countries with less taxation

Bankers bonuses and salaries are taxed at the maximum rate

I don't think it is rigged, that would be voting fraud, a criminal offence but they certainly know who they want to win or who their faves are and pull every trick in the book The one who was most stitched up was Mary, they changed the whole plans for the semi final just so Cher would be in the final and cast Mary aside like a piece of rubbish, introducing a sing off at the last moment because they knew Mary had wiped the floor with the chav in the public vote

1) Labour had decades to outlaw banking practices and didn't, I don't know the answer but am guessing Maggie or Major but that is not an excuse, Blair and Brown had between 1997 and 2010 to legislate and didn't 2) You didn't but the word banker almost has a Godwin's Law mentality among the left, they throw banker/google/starbucks into every argument almost as a throwaway punchline 3) We are in a global market with Dubai, Frankfurt, New York and Singapore when it comes to banks, we have to encourage banks to trade here and not frighten them away, the City pays what it is legally expected to in tax

One song in the history of X Factor stands out more than any other, Ruth Lorenzo - Purple Rain, it would not have taken more than a phone call to get Ruth into the studio to record Purple Rain for this 'album'

Responsible bankers are a great asset to this country, the demonisation of bankers in general as opposed to just Goodwin etc was awful to see. I read a few weeks ago in The Spectator i think it was, that the 'Square Mile' if it was its own country, would be the 7th most powerful country in the world, amazing for such a small area of land, so responsible bankers do a lot of good for this country and generate phenomenal revenues for it The banking system needs watching for abuses and those abuses rooted out sharply and ruthlessly but banking is vital to the UK

Pathetic list bar the songs from Olly Murs, strange they left out Please Don't Let Me Go too as thats probably his best song after Troublemaker

We made the banks seperate their retail operations from their investment operations which should in theory help minimise the risk of these things happening again, we also made it clear there would be no future bailouts

The important thing for the nation right now, is the re election of a majority tory government in 2015, the alternative is too terrifying to imagine Labour will just spend spend spend borrow borrow borrow and within 3 years we will be another Greece I would rather the current government takes the risk on creating a mini boom if it ensures a majority in 2015, the future of the nation is at stake, so while there are risks involved in 95% loans it is a risk worth taking, home owners voted overwhelmingly tory in 2010 so more and more homeowners equals more and more votes for us. If it all goes pear shaped the damage will be a lot less than the damage caused by labour turning a blind eye to the banks for years and selling off our gold for a fraction of its worth House price boom, more and more new buyers who most likely will vote tory, plus hopefully pre election tax cuts should see us win comfortably in 2015, we are only 1% behind now according to You Gov

If anyone else other than Tamera wins this year it will be an absolute farce She is so far ahead of anyone else, absolutely nailed her song tonight

Of course those businesses will still exist :mellow: I am not literally talking about 30m eBay traders :mellow: And most of the gas, electricity and life assurance companies are foreign owned anyways

Ive is a great man, and engineering is one of the courses I did list as vital to this country and I would class industrial design under engineering Ive certainly did his bit but Apple was already incredibly successful 2 decades before Ive joined them, Apple were doing amazing till Steve made the mistake of employing the head of Pepsi as CEO and this made Apple too corporate and obsessed with the bottom line as this guy knew nothing else, Steve was a products and user experience guy, the guy from Pepsi was a textbook bean counter and he put the brakes on a lot of Steve's innovation as it was too expensive, Innovation suffered and Apple suffered because of one guy being obsessed with the bottom line and nothing else. The same guy forced Steve out When Steve came back he reimposed his innovation and user experience culture and Apple thrived Steve was a think outside the box innovator, the guy from Pepsi was an MBA corporatist with a successful uni education ;)

Welfare was designed as a safety net, and that is what it should be but to too many it has become a career, a way of life, a large minority of unemployed are happy to just sit there on the dole year after year and breed and then their kids see the dad lazing around doing nothing so will grow up with the same mentality where long term unemployment carries no shame, we need a safety net for those in the most dire of needs like the elderly and disabled and people who are temporarily out of work but we are being dragged down by the bulkhead by a lazy minority of serial breeders and career scroungers Tell people their benefits will cease after a certain time and they have 2 choices, work or starve

Like it or not our 'rivals' in the next 20 years are going to be India. China, Brazil, Russia, Singapore, Thailand etc They have their problems and at the moment are unequal socities but they are all emerging markets and if Britain doesn't lead the way in enterprise we risk being overtaken by those countries and slipping further and further back

The future of this country is eBay We need to create a nation of eBay traders, costs to trade are next to nothing, tens of millions of users in the UK, the government and teachers should be drilling it into people to become eBay traders, same with DWP staff, they should be telling the unemployed to start an eBay business - buy a bit of stock, much as can afford even if its £100 worth, sell that, reinvest, sell that reinvest again, rinse and repeat.

It is an 'emerging nation' It will take time for wealth to trickle down to the poorest but give it 15-20 years... Indians that come to this country make a massive contribution too

The people I admire most are the Indians, probably my fave people on this planet They believe strongly in enterprise, hard work, family and families looking after the rest of the family without reliance on the state I would like to see this country become another India, families looking after each other instead of state handouts, a nation of traders and entrepreneurs, a nation that mucks in and works all hours

What Steve Jobs said, he has been through the higher education system, he would know Other famous uni dropouts include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg, Roman Abramovich, all multi billionaires

Uni discourages enterprise and setting up of businesses which is what we need this generation of youth doing 1) Leaving uni with 27k of debt is going to discourage people from setting up businesses 2) Uni discourages the 'think outside the box' mentality that this country needs, everything is so structured and textbook based and research based instead of thinking on feet, Steve Jobs once said if he hadn't quit higher education he would have ended up as a middle to senior manager at Hewlett Packard because higher education stifled the think outside the box culture as everything had to be done this way and that way and by this time etc By sending too many to uni we risk stifling enterprise

Anyone can become a blogger or journalist, all it needs is a bit of practice, fine tuning, building up an online reputation You don't need a degree to become a journalist, but you do to become a doctor or scientist or dentist or aerodynamicist In sport particularly it is hard to find a journalist who is accredited who did media studies, but if i went for an operation i would certainly hope my surgeon has one The way people become journos these days is through a Wordpress blog, getting discovered online or by starting off as a runner for a media company

Offering free tuition and scrapping student loans etc for every student is financial suicide for any government simply because of the sheer vast numbers of people going to uni compared to my era where only the 'elite' went to uni and everyone who did got free education at uni I would like to see free uni education bought back in, burdening teenagers and 20 somethings with 20k+ of debt in an era where most who leave uni are going to get jobs in shops and call centres is absurd so in my opinion uni education should be free The only way to make that practical and affordable is to reduce heavily the numbers going to uni and also to reduce the number of courses 10% or so of the youth population going to uni for free and studying 'A list' subjects is far more beneficial to UK than 50% going and getting £27k in debt for the privilege many of them studying 'soft options' like sociology or media studies

I have never said it is a waste of time ;) Just that an employer sees a degree on a cv now it is 'oh right, another one' whereas in my day 'omg i want that person and i want them now'

We are pretty much the same age give or take a few years, so you will remember what uni was like in our era, only the academic elite went to uni and the entry benchmarks were ruthless, but coming out of uni with a degree meant you could write your own pay cheque virtually, it meant something, probably 5-10% of people left school and went to uni, that is what i want to go back to With 50% going on to uni the stardust a uni degree had in our day has been totally eroded because degrees are two a penny, 5-10% going to uni will restore the value of a degree to what it was

Should have been SWINE Best song she has ever done