Kind of, but not really. It's still in 3rd place as world Reserve Currency, just behind the Euro.....which is failing rapidly. It's also the 4th most traded currency, behind US$, €, and Yen. Not so worthless, and not failing like the €. ;)

We still have a fairly robust steel and manufacturing economy. In fact that's pretty much the only thing that's helping us reduce the £4.5 trillion+interest debt the last government saddled us with. True, it's not as strong as it used to, maybe 1960s and 1970s, but it's a good chunk of our exporting income.
We also make a LOT of cars, plane engines, and power plants, pharmaceuticals, high-end electronics, scientific and optic equipment, and more.
Less important are products like chocolate and clothing industries.

We're slowly building them back up after the recession of a couple years ago, and although that massive debt is hampering efforts somewhat, the outlook is good. As long as we stop "giving" money to Europe to shore up its failing money, economies, and countries :\

*cough* Agriculture *cough* :). We also export a lot of electricity. It's worth noting as well that the only reason the Euro is stronger than the pound is because we keep giving money to Euro economies that are failing (as you've mentioned.) All countries nowadays would probably struggle to stand on their own as global trade has taken the forefront.

There's a bit of needless Xenophobia going on in this topic.

Agriculture isn't really ...relevant. We only produce around 50-60% of our own needs, IIRC, and since Labour practically bent over backwards to the EU in giving back some of the CAP Rebate that Maggie fought years to gain, (with a few provisos that it only went to new members, and not to rich countries, like France and Germany - I'll give them that much) it's even more of a loss-maker :\
Mind you, our Agriculture sector is far more efficient than France's, for example....and they want US to fund THEIRS by removing completely the rebate.

Fishing, too, is a very sore subject where the EU forces us to stop fishing our own waters, and demands we let the Spaniards overfish them instead >.<

I don't know whose agriculture is far more efficient than others, but I doubt it is the reason for the rebate. The rebate afaik is just a special discount once issued to get the UK into the boat. From the point of the view of the ones not getting the rebate kind of an unfair advantage and worth to be fought against.

But apart from that I also don't like this whole big agraric subvention scheme and would like to cut it massively. Also UK doesn't seem to do so badly. The only really surprising thing about UK economy for me: military spendings are extremely high. I would cut there too.

I hope that applies to our own situation Stateside, as well, but the so-called "peace dividend' at the end of the Cold War wasn't nearly as large as it could have been. A proposal to cut our military expenditures by a cool trillion over ten years was poo-pooed by the new Speaker, saying we need that huge outlay for our defense. I'm thinking that if we can't manage to suffice with a ~12% reduction in defense spending when our current conflicts are one step above sticks-and-stones warfare, then this nation is far less powerful then it leads itself to believe.

While I don't agree with Slash calling everyone brainwashed (disagreement does not make the opposing view wrong), he has a point with regards to our manufacturing, as it applies to the trade imbalance. Outsourcing of both our production AND our debt makes for a bad situation that won't end well unless we can eliminate one or both of those deficiencies.



Anyway, if one wants to reduce the power of idiots to make poor decisions, then work to put that power at the lowest possible level where it can do harm to the smallest number of people, and where the individual voice is the loudest. Currently, we're moving in the opposite direction.

First off "kid" Americans went into Iraq and Afghanistan by choice, and the fact that as soon things got tough they wanted to immediately bail is one of the reasons we elect competent people to lead, not random idiots.

Secondly Gore and Bush tied, that's the long and short of it, and the Supreme Court gave it to Bush because someone had to get it. Get the sand out of your vagina about it, it was like 11 fucking years ago. Don't look at me either way anyway, I voted for Nader.

Third, I read your link and it was about a lottery system that chose leaders at random, then evaluations to keep the good ones in office. That's not a hard concept to grasp. My criticism is accurate: you never know when a crisis will erupt and you might have some untested idiot at the helm. How is that responsible? More to the point, how is evaluating a leader's performance and then deciding whether they should stay or go any different from the election every two years system we have now? We already have what you are looking for, it's just most people disagree with you about who should stay and go.

Honestly, and I do not mean this offensively, you sound like the typical spoiled American who doesn't know how good they have it and whines about a flawed system. Like I said, ALL systems are flawed. Every single one of them is. We have the best option available in a world filled with flawed humans.

Military : Cut to the bone and beyond :
*reducing the planned "buy" of F-35s.
*Can't afford to keep our Eurofighters in service - spares, etc.
*Mothballing, (possibly SCRAPPING) one of the two Supercarriers we're building, even BEFORE they're finished.
-Relying on the French to supply planes and aircrew for the one we're (maybe) keeping for actual service.
-Reducing numbers of frigates and destroyers.
-We haven't had cruisers for decades.
*Selling and scrapping our normal carriers (maybe keeping 1 or 2 - again, not decided yet)
*Cutting back on Trident, and the submarines that fire them (effectively taking ourselves out of being a nuclear superpower)
*Harriers have already been "retired"

and that's just off the top of my head from news this last year - dealing with the financial crisis the last government left us with.

CAP and rebate :
The CAP is often explained as the result of a political compromise between France and Germany. (Remember, the ECSC, EC and EEC (forerunners of what became the EU) was sought by France after getting their arses kicked by Germany 3 times in 80 years as a means to stop another arse-kicking, by making Europe dependant upon each other to the extent that no one nation could not attack another without incurring massive financial and political drawbacks and punishments) : -
German industry would have access to the French market; in exchange, Germany would help pay for France's farmers. Germany is still the largest net contributor into the EU budget. However, as of 2005 France is also a net contributor and the more agriculture-focused Spain, Greece and Portugal [coincidently, pretty much the 3 largest failing countries of the EU O_o] are the biggest beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, particularly urbanised member states where agriculture compromises only a very small part of the economy such as the Netherlands and the UK are much smaller beneficiaries and the CAP is often unpopular with the national governments.
France wants the rebate abolished because they gain from it - becoming a recipient of monies instead of a donater, currently.
The UK would have been contributing more money to the EU than any other EU member state, (currently Germany pays the most towards it, IIRC) except that Margaret Thatcher negotiated a special annual UK rebate in 1984. Due to the way the rebate is funded, France pays the largest share of the rebate (31%), followed by Italy (24%) and Spain (14%).

The popular view in the UK - gutter and tabloid press, anyway :P, is that if the UK rebate were reduced with no change to the CAP, then the UK would be paying money to keep an inefficient French farming sector in business – to many people in the UK, this would be seen as "grossly unfair". French motives for generating arguments about "solidarity" and "selfishness" are generally seen as extremely self-serving.

If the rebate were removed without changes to the CAP then the UK would pay a net contribution of 14 times that of the French (In 2005 EU budget terms). The UK would make a net contribution of €8.25 billion compared to the current contribution of €2.75 billion, versus a current French net contribution of €0.59 billion. And France has roughly TWICE the land area of the UK...no wonder we're pissed off about the EU, and very few of us here actually want to belong to it. Not mentioning (which I now will), they're unelected, corrupt, mendacious and worse (EU "Politicians", that is....not sole, or specific countries).

As for the UK "not doing too badly", it may appear that way on a superficial level to outsiders, but there are some mitigating factors -
We have the remnants of the Empire, and The Commonwealth of Nations (which has been very neglected since WW2 in favour of our politicians unilaterally forcing us into closer integration with Europe, despite public opinion).

We also have a £4.5+ TRILLION debt and budget deficit that the last government's policy of "spend, spend, spend, waste on cancelled projects, spend, spend, waste more and spend some more....oh no more money in the treasury? spend more! oh, we're being forced out of office in 2 days? GIVE the EU another £100 billion!" that have forced the new coalition government to make drastic, very unpopular but needed spending cuts of 20% across the board over the course of this parliament (4 years), just to service the interest payments on it :facepalm:

We should have stuck with the EFTA we setup, that places like Switzerland and Norway (? or sweden? one of them) still use to great benefit, instead of jumping into the sinking ship of EU in the 70s. :\

What's your major malfunction?

The problems of US and UK are similiar. High current account deficit and high budget deficit now. Both are related now and i will tell you why. Because both countries have been heavy deindustrialized in the past 30 years and that is why they are now so bankrupt...
So you must build up industry again that will solve a lot and well you must get rid of your arrogant "establishment" which are obvious poison for both countries.

i know people "throw" zeitgeist idea into rubish bin without any thinking of their own but, we definately need new way of changing our lifes.
We need to vote for decisions not for political parties who does whatever they want to do.
We need to change so things go cheaper, people become less slaves from all kinds of slavery(fuel, electricity, debt from banks..etc.)

A Yes vote would have been an even blacker day.

FPTP sucks. AV sucks. The referendum sucked. Nick Clegg sucks.

I'm not sure that you can claim free will when incumbent power acts to shut out third parties completely and gerrymandering is still rampant across the nation.

No, these interests can't stand up to a unified front by the voters, but we haven't had one of those in decades.

lukipela, despite his obnoxious method of talking down to people, remains unanswered. He simply asked why democracy was better/best and no one has responded with anything but appeals to authority, appeals to common wisdom, and deflection (it's a fallacy that any inability he may have to convince you or anyone else that another method of government is better ergo means democracy is best).
I can't speak for other countries but US manufacturing is always claimed to be decreasing, this is untrue, the amount of people employed in manufacturing is shrinking, but output is climbing. I wouldn't be surprised is US exports followed this trend.

Don't get me wrong, we're boned in the US, we needed to be fixing this crap years ago. It may already be too late to fix things without near complete economic collapse, still we should be trying. Instead we'll be arguing about ID vs. evolution and stem cell research until it's too late.

Random selection, so long as it really is random and has a large enough sample size, gives you a representative sample of the opinions of the population. Mass democracy selects for people who can lie convincingly: e.g. psychopaths.

I know which I'd prefer.

I hope you mean "sociopaths" and not "psychopaths." Though, of course, there's definitely a little of both.

The main problem with all of this is that most people don't know much about inner government workings, or foreign policy, or diplomacy. More importantly, most people don't care. The majority of the population is concerned with everyday, mundane events, and only really care about national policy on an ideological level. Most of the actual political "work" happens on the local level for this reason. People usually only get really fired up about stuff when it starts to DIRECTLY affect them, like the draft during Vietnam.

The Electoral College used to elect the President in the US is also the way it is because of this. It was originally created because most people at the time didn't know anything about the candidates, and weren't really able to learn much either. These were days when campaigning for yourself was considered very inappropriate. So instead, you'd vote for a local person you knew and trusted, and let THAT person (the elector) make your decision for you, because in theory he knew best. However, as newspapers and later television allowed people to get to know the candidates personally, this was eventually (sorta) scrapped, and you now (sorta) vote directly for the candidates. However, the various quirks of the old system are still there, but they've never been changed because politicians figured out how to exploit them over a century ago. It was actually a pretty good idea in the beginning, but it's obsolete and detrimental nowadays, and nobody's willing to fix it.

In theory, the best form of government would be some sort of benevolent dictatorship, with a leader that always knew what was best, and acted in the people's interest consistently, and wasn't corrupt. This is, however, functionally impossible, for several reasons, and it's much more prone to getting nasty quickly. The various checks and balances that prevent things from being done quickly also prevent widespread abuse of power... usually.

Also, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned the Churchill quote yet: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." Of course, he also said "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

lol, yeah. Gotta love Winston <3<3<3<3<3.

TBH, with the state of our country here in the last 25 years, I've more and more been forced to the point where I say "Screw the politicians, get rid of them (shoot, kill, DIE! you BASTARDS!) and return the UK to a proper (instead of constitutional/figurehead) Monarchy.

(Oliver) Cromwell was as corrupted by power as the King (Charles II) he accused ... and launched the Civil War that turned us into the mess we have now.

Elizabeth, the current Queen, would have been a fine ruler. Charles, next in line, has never really wanted the position, and is a bit....eccentric.
And while I never liked Diana, their son William would probably be a good monarch too.

Yes, pretty much any system is as bad as another, but something's got to change with our politicians - they're just gonna keep getting worse and worse, and scandals like "Cash for votes", "cash for questions", embezzling funds and expenses and more, will just keep happening, because the 2 main parties KNOW they can't really be kicked out/changed/got rid of.
And they keep asking why there's always been a low voter turn out to elections for decades.