So we’re agreed there.

Those people – the exploitative MD and the grasping business owner – are also the people who will use every possible nuance of the law to give their employees the very minimum concessions they can get away with. If you allow them laissez-faire, they will treat their people more badly. If you impose regulations, they will reluctantly comply.

Export of jobs to the Far East is an enormous problem for our economies, but that’s not new either. Slavery in the New World kept wages down in Europe. The solution is to ensure that all workers are treated with respect, not allow ourselves to be lowered to the Taiwanese denominator. We have globalised rules on capital but not globalised rules on labour – that is a serious problem. It’s not easy but we must slowly bring China’s labour laws up to the same standard as ours, not reduce ours to the level of theirs.

As to the small businessman – it’s easy to say that our hypothetical woman would miss out on that job, but consider the woman who is already working for that sexist bastard. At least she can now afford to form a relationship with her child. And although those hiring decisions may be made on some occasions, those businesses will be in a minority.

History shows us that all workers’ rights have been introduced to a flurry of employers’ objections, and then a short period of disruption. Within five years, the new reality will have settled in, and we are all working under better conditions. When the ten hour day came in, factory owners said that they would simply stop employing women and children and that men’s wages would be driven down to fill those job. It didn’t happen.

Sorry you didn’t understand. I tried the bullet point thing and everything.

So I guess my point is that you hold these arguments up to ridicule but fail to address the very real concerns behind them. What’s the solution?

I think that both Anglicans and Catholics are deluded, but I don’t have a problem with that – it’s pretty harmless. I do have a problem with Anglican Bishops sitting in ther legislature of my country – it’s anachronistic and regressive. But I have a much bigger problem with the head of the Catholic Church forcing his dangerous agenda on his millions of adherents. His teachings are responsible for thousands of deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

On a personal level, his covering up of child abuse within the church allowed perpetrators to continue abusing long after they could have been stopped. If you want to believe in god, knock yourself out. But don’t blindly follow a man whose actions have led to the rape of countless children. At least question him. You owe that to your church.

Under “Manifesto”

(Sorry this is tricky for you”

http://www.voteenglish.org/manifesto/

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Toque (Gareth Young) is a well know Racist and bed wetter.

As for the EDP, they were set up to promote the cause of an English parliament. Sadly they’re a disgrace to England and have set back that perfectly reasonable call, by being perfectly unreasonable. And it’s mainly down to one individual, who unfortunately owns the EDP and calls the shots, party strategist Steve Uncles. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wrote the manifesto, because as you say it’s laughable.

Peter Davis is a prat but let’s be fair, you cannot really blame him for Doncaster Council being dysfunctional. It was dysfunctional for years and years before he arrived on the scene, the dysfunction is the Labour Party’s doing (though admittedly Davis was never going to be the man to put it right).