Every time I read a calculation regarding the budget the answers are different, Even with the "bog standard" sole family earner on the minimum wage I've heard three versions from ministers, "will be better off", "better off by £900 p.a." and "better off by £5,000". We need proper explanations.

A Council Tax is raised for democratically elected people to spend on what they have been elected for. The BBC produces programmes without any reference to the people that pay for it but, like the Council Tax, or VAT, they go to jail if they don't pay. Of course the BBC is a political organization that should be subject to controls by people elected in the same way governments and local authorities are controlled.

The issue relates to public services which, more or less by definition, are monopolies. Hence, workers in a public service are in a monopoly position, there's a whole industry to control and deal with monopolies, given the monopoly position of public sector workers I would have thought it entirely reasonable for there to be control to deal with public sector strikes. If that's a 40% vote then so be it, I'm sure Mr Kinnock Jnr, as a Lefty against monopolies would agree with me. Oh, hang on, which union sponsors him, I'll bet Kinnock Jnr, as a Labour MP, is more interested in that than millions of his fellow citizens struggling to work.

You seem to be digging further and further into your hole Richard. The Geeks voted No against austerity but have been forced to accept austerity, apparently even worse that what they rejected. End of. In this case, like any organization, there are rules and the rules have scuppered Greek democracy and their election and referendum. Some people say it's all the Greek's fault but it could just be a silly Leftwing government that thinks it can avoid the difficult rules of life by claiming to represent what people want.

It seems to me that Islam is the excuse rather than the problem. Think IRA, it gave young men a cover story for killing people and running drug gangs, in the event of the story fading you blow up something British and idiot yanks think heck if they do that the Brits must be doing something nasty to justify all that. ISIL offers an excuse, and religion is the best excuse, to go round blowing people up, much more fun that the workaday grind particularly if you feel inadequate.

A good article, and about time. However, I'm not sure it is simple to talk about morality. The Left tend to win because they are seen as trying their best to help people who need help, hence a Labour government cutting spending is accepted as reluctantly doing it by force of circumstances, on the other hand a Tory government doing it will be doing it because it wants to and any complaints about end products project nastiness. Since the Left's attitude is so much easier to hold and justify so many in the establishment (churches, BBC universities, lawyers) are of the Left and combine to praise spending, attack cutting and ingraining these views in any moral debate. A lot easier than "pragmatism" and encourages a nice self serving view of oneself.

On the other hand it does raise the question of Tory morality when many Tories calling themselves Thatcherites seem more than happy to push "tough" policies even if they get called nasty. In the run up to Osborne's budget, where the main issue is cutting £12bil from welfare, no less than 160 Tory MPs called for the 45% tax rate to be cut, it may be said that Tory MPs are disconnected from most of the country but, of course, they encourage themselves to be called nasty. The trouble is that the attitude of so much of the Tory party seems to be similar to the 160 that voters even if they respect the moral arguements of IDS etc suspect that by voting Tory they get 160 nasty and, hence, by the lights of the establishment, immoral MPs with their potential affect on a Tory government.

At the extreme Malcolm the question is what does a government do trying to solve a housing crisis if a local authority, in its independence, says we don't want any more houses?

Just so, and to just point out that the Lancashire rejection of shale extraction was down to lack of infrastructure for access to the sites. For what it's worth there was no appropriate roads available in the local authority plan, one wonders what would have happened if the local authority was one of those that didn't have a local plan.

All this economic talk wanders dangerously close to a different world to what we are lumbered to live in. Osborne had to slash tax credits which obviously favour the poor, cutting taxes in the hope employers will use their money to make up the difference is a fantasy and in any case Osborne had to be seen to be doing something on the spot. It's like the Irish joke where the American tourist is told "I could give you better directions if you started from somewhere else." This talk about markets taking care of things in this case of unscrambleing Brown's massive benefit splurge is as fanciful as union leaders saying nationalization solves all the problems.

At present I suspect one reason we have a productivity problem is that government subsidies to low pay low skill jobs encourages employers to have more of them.

The problem Phil is you were altogether nearer the truth than many others. The EU is a fantasy land where truth becomes whatever suits "ever more union". I am wondering if the next president of the EU will be the Red Queen.