The Prof's story disappeared from view while I was writing my last response. I mis-remembered his quoted tax rate as 0.005 when it was actually 0.05. And I should not do sums late at night. Somebody else have a go.

John Taylor at #28
I wholeheartedly agree with you about giving help to small businesses. I refer here to the manufacturing side of things, as opposed to financial. In line with the perceived need to move the economy away from financials, and over reliance on them, to more industry/manufacturing.
I fully support your point d-Encouragement of long term investment.
In the current climate I believe that tax incentives alone are unlikely to be adequate, and cash injections for investment to help during the credit squeeze should be considered.
Something on the lines of a Qualifying investment of £5,000 to £10,000 attracts a cash grant of £1,000; £10,000 to £20,000 cash grant of £2,000;£20,000 to £30,000 grant of £3,000 and an investment above £30,000 would attract a grant of £4,000.
Any comments John or anyone?

The Uk is in an an uneviable position - we are not part of the Eurozone, but we are having to contribute to the EU, who have no transparency in how they spend the money from member contributions.

We are also, I believe, heavily connected with the European banks, including Greece - so whether Greece leaves the EU or not the UK investors (banks & individuals) will lose out. What is very clear to me is that none of the EU members have ever given us a helping hand - our politicians are either laughed at or worse, not given any respect from the other European member countries - they are happy to take our contributions, but when it comes to accepting our arguments, we have bent over backwards in trying to come to terms with their decisions.

I am not a fan of Cameron, but I believe he is right to stand up & not give in to Brussels about voting for convicted criminals - custodial sentences mean that you lose your franchise & no voting - why should we be told how to use our common laws?

The EU was created with increasing the power held by the individuals within this area & IMO, they are corrupt as most African politicians - the organisation is now so big, they believe they cannot fail, same as the banks.

We know now that several of the countries who joined the EU cooked their books - this has been accepted as the done thing - how on earth can they then ask the UK to continue to contribute to the EU when it is a failing organisation.

The common fishery policies, is among one of the worst thought out, including the CAP, we have some of the daftest legislation coming from Brussels. I did not vote in the last mayoral or local elections, but come the general election, UKIP will get my vote, because they are the only ones who say they want us out of the EU, but still trading with Europe.

Greece is bankrupt because the politicians wanted to save the banks - let the banks go, default on payment, start with a clean slate, but it is not just their debts that are the problem, they like living in cloud cuckoo land, their attitude to debt is even more of a problem.

Here in the UK all Cameron & his clan can come up with is the large debt they were left by nulabour - if they had been in power, they too would have bailed out the banks, who bank roll them anyway!

Its not only that they are lunatics running the show, it is the lunatics that can convince every one they can do the job - anyone remember Hitler, he was able to convince his followers that he had the solution to end their problem, & millions followed him without asking any questions. Megalomania is a given character trait in people who think they are able to undertake jobs which are out of their league.

Cameron should go join Ms Brooks in her island in the sky or wherever, he does not have the gravitas to deal with the solutions we need to get our young people in work again - his idea of work is to do the nappy changing occasionally - for politics you do not need a multi million trust fund, you need hands on experience in dealing with everything from terrorism to finance.

We know nulab f***ed up, but what the coalition is doing is taking us back to the 70's when there was very little investment in the public sector, job security nil, job satifaction absolutely nil, investment in infrastructure nil.

Will Governments ( of any colour ) not learn from History. We have seen this situation in the late 60's, again in the 70's , 80's' 90s' , but still blunder on. I remember in the mid 70's when mortgage rates topped 15%, lending limited to 2.5 times income, inflation was also close to 15% ( even higher in the late 60's ), but those days I do not remember savers and investors suffering. I may have been young then and let things float over me, but money was short.
In days of "yore" when the FT Index was in the hundreds, the market reacted more to company results, particularly ICI quarterly returns a major indicator of the day. Now the markets seem to be governed by the International political scene. Maybe I will catch up !!!

"If young people do not have jobs or prospects of jobs, can we blame them if they act like they did during the summer of 2011?"

can we blame them?
A: yes

The riots were nothing to do with jobs/prospects. The alleged reason for the riots was the police shooting a person 99.9% of the rioters had never met.

Thieving/rioting, pure and simple.