Q "what has happened between 1988 and now?" A. How about 25 years of compulsory diversity training and 11 years of Labour misrule so that no one can distinguish between reality and fantasy any more? To take Herr Flick of the gestapo as an example. The reality of the gestapo was evil, but Herr Flick was a figure of ridicule. Laughing at Herr Flick by no means indicated approval of the gestapo's crimes - exactly the opposite. It's just that the younger commentariat are too stupid to realise that. Having said all that, this incident does not sound the same as your innocent party in 1988. It doesn't seem that the party-goers were mocking the Third Reich but rather revelling in it. It was, to say the least, the height of bad taste, even if nothing more sinister was intended. It was also insensitve, given that France suffered under the occupation. As for Aiden Burley, how on earth can his constituents ever trust his judgement again? Even if he personally would think this was "harmless fun", surely he should have known that this was not suitable behaviour for somebody holding a public office?

Except that there are mistakes in some of Ms Greening's guidance. The construction "It is essential that..." is not a passive construction. It is impersonal and in the third person but it is not a passive. Similarly the example given next to the exhortation not to use too many adverbs is a bit odd. "Strongly opposed" consists of an adverb qualifying an adjective, not two adverbs. Every minister issues these notes as a guide to those who draft letters for his/her signature. The guides don't say that other usages etc are necessarily wrong, simply that some constructions etc fit the minister's style and others are out of character.

Oh Patsy thank you. I've always enjoyed your posts so I knew you would be a "good egg" (that dates me). My parents were part of the occupation forces in the British Zone and I was born there. Even though the horrors of war were still fresh, my parents could still show some humanity to the former enemy. It amazes me that some people who weren't even there try to stoke up the fires of hatred rather than seeking reconciliation. As Churchill said: "In Victory,Magnanimity." Would that some posters here followed his precept.

But Patsy, what is upsetting me is not criticism of the German government, which people are perfectly entitled to do, but the many posts mentioning "Huns"; "it's in their blood"; "they're reverting to type".It really is quite ignorant and even hateful. I don't quite make the category. I was born just after the war. But I don't believe that we ourselves are always perfect either. We were fortunate, at least, to be fighting for right. That is or should be some consolation when we remember our war dead. Imagine now that you came instead from a country, Germany, which lost millions fighting for an evil government. Your feeling of sorrow for lost relatives would be just as great, but you would have no consolation if you father or brother had died fighting for Hitler.

Well said! It's often those who have experienced war that are prepared to start afresh with their former enemies. I'm of the same generation and my parents gradually came to forgive. Some of the hate-filled comments here are like Goebbels in reverse.

Elaine I'm glad that you don't subscribe to the anti-German bile that many here are spouting. It's hard to see exactly what crime they have committed in the current Euro crisis. Believing in sound money and a balanced budget? Refusing to write open-ended cheques to profligate countries with bloated public sectors, retirement at 55 etc etc? How wicked! What "huns", as some have so delightfully called them. If anything, Merkel has been criticised in other countries for lack of leadership not too much. As you can imagine "leadership" is, for historical reasons, a dirty word there.

I was trying (tongue in cheek) to imagine how opponents would present this move. It may be a distortion, but that is how the BBC, Guardian and various lobby groups will present it. But thanks for the laugh calling me a "post-hippy fantasist". Nothing could be further from the truth - most people would criticise me for being too conservative and stuck in the past.

The short answer to your question Tim, is "unfortunately, no." I've never read so much racist bile on this website as I have on this page. The word "hun" is as full of racial hatred for Germans as the notorious N word is to black people. Yes, people used it in the two world wars and no doubt it was useful then for building up the fighting spirit but that was then and this is 66 years later. Did people still hate the French in the 1880s because of what Napoleon did to Europe? Then we are told by many people that "it's all in their blood"! Since when has it been acceptable to stereotype whole peoples, black, brown or white according to "their blood". Sounds a bit like a Nazi-style racial theory to me. If any poster had met any modern-day Germans they would know that (apart from the lunatic fringe) few Germans are nationalistic, many young people don't identify themselves as Germans but as Europeans. Personally I would rather that we left the EU, but at least I can recognise that the EU was a creation intended to submerge Germany into a widr whole and link its future with that of its historical arch rival France.

I'm a supporter of the cuts in general. I'm talking here about the overt link between cutting benefits to favour motorists. That seems politically dangerous to me. It would be better just to pocket the savings. I'm also concerned that having made one change that many pensioners see as a "breach of promise" Osborne is now proposing a second one.

This sounds dangerous to me. The government has alread changed the rules once on pensions changing from RPI to CPI. Now they're changing the rules yet again. How many more reductions is Osborne going to make? This smacks of bad faith. To compound it all, any savings are not being redirected to health or education but to motorists. Rolls Royce drivers, Jeremy Clarkson,two Jags Prescott et al. can all indulge their polluting habits safe in the knowledge that some disabled pensioner has had his/her benefits cut to pay for it. You call that good politics?

Hugh Robertson seems a bit out of his depth. I've just watched him on Sky News asserting that "being a racist is a criminal offence in this country". No Minister, it's not that simple, otherwise you'd have to bang up millions of citizens. Racism has to have a connection to some sort of malicious action before it is a criminal offence. At the extreme is inciting racial hatred. At a lower level, an assault which is aggravated by use of racist venom gets a higher punishment than normal. We don't know whether either of the recent incidents involving Suaraz and John Terry meets the criminal threshold. Saying something rude but nothing worse may not be a crime

The higher allowance for pensioners only apllies to those over 65. There are millions of people under 65 whose main incom is a job-related pension. Wht should they suddenly be penalised? Equally some people have to live off investment income. At the moment that is not liable to NI. They too will suddenly face a higher tax bill.

Whether it is self-funding or not is not so important to me. What is important is the mismatch between the avowed manifesto commitment to reducing immigration to tens of thousands and the idea of making 30% cuts in the border agency. Now, there may well have been some scope for efficiency savings but the idea that these could be more than 5 to 10% in one parliament is incredible. If we really want tighly policed borders, deportation of terrorists, foreign criminals and illegal immigrants generally, then we have to have adequate staffing.

Seems spot on to me. Isn't this just moral hazard on a global scale?

There are two elements here. One I agree with; the other I oppose. By all means align the rules for National Insurance, so that the thresholds are the same, what counts as "earnings" is the same for both imposts. This would be a welcome simplification for businesses both large and small. But I am totally opposed to the abolition of the concept of the "contributory principle" of National Insurance. Beveridge never proposed a "something for nothing" system. At the moment people actually have to earn the right to old age pensions through decades of National Insurance Contribitions ("NICs"). The system is linked to the idea of making contributions during a working life. The concept is quite different from Income Tax which has a much wider remit of taxing all sources of income including interest, dividends and pensions. Why should pensioners suddlenly be saddled with an extra 11% or 12% income tax? Some people have objected that NI is a giant Ponzi scheme. This isn't really true: there is in fact a National Insurance Fund. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Insurance_Fund "The income of the NIF consists of contributions from employees, employers and the self-employed, plus interest on its investments. Each year there is a surplus of the order of £2 billion. The NIF had a surplus of over £34 billion as at 2005/06, £38 billion in 2006/7 and the Government Actuary's Department forecasts that this surplus will grow to over £114.7 billion by 2012.[3] The surplus is loaned to the government through the Debt Management Office ....... and interest on these invested monies is paid to the NIF - £1.3 billion in the 2007/08 year." In addition to the political risk of increasing taxation on pensioners, there is the effect that abolishing the contributory principle would have on immigration.If you remove the requirement to have contributed, it will just add to the already large pull factor for immigration both legal and illegal. I don't think the public would tolerate the idea of people just arriving here and getting a full pension without any substantial contributions.

I welcome this post. I've long argued for the abolition of the CGT exemption for non-residents. The basic principle of taxation is that UK residents pay tax on their worldwide income and gains while non-residents pay tax on what they get here. It's a very strange country that says everybody has to pay tax on gains (subject to well known exemptions)except for foreigners who can profit from land here ad lib. One point is that the exemption does does not just affect mansions it affects the whole spectrum of property. During the last property boom, many flats were being bought up by investors from tax havens like Singapore and Hong Kong. It seems to me that this was in effect "hot money" distorting the market by pushing up prices and crowding out UK first time buyers. Of course the best time to withdraw this concession has long since passed. It's a pity this wasn't done before the property market peaked. The lickely pickings right now may be fairly meagre. On a technical note, the exemption is an Extra Statutory Concession, and doesn't require a Finance Bill measure. I don't know whether negotiations would be needed with other coutries under G7, G20 or OECD.

I suggest that you subdivide the category for income taxes into one subgroup for earnings i.e. salaries, wages and profits of self-employed; another group for pensions; and third group for investment income i.e. dividends, interest etc. Nobody wants to see the ordinary wage- or salary- earner penalised. The last thing we want to do is to penalise hard work, or in the case of small businesses, enterprise. Similarly as most pensions are the fruit of a lifetime's hard work we should not penalise this category of income. There could however be a case for having a higher rate of tax for investment income - in the old days it used to classifed for tax as "unearned income". Not totally fair perhaps but not unreasonable. So my recommendation would be to abolish the 50p rate for all earnings and pensions however high. But where the the income exceeds say 100,000 pounds and some at least consists of investment income, tax that element at 50%.

Superb article. "and their poor mums lost control when their sons outgrew them." This is one point that came out clearly in the various debates that I have heard over the last few days. We have created a society where parents are afraid to exercise discipline. One single mother said that she was afraid of getting into trouble with social workers if she tried to exert any discipline. Needless to say the children "know thei rights" and threaten their mothers with prosecution etc. What a topsy turvy world the cultural marxists have created. And what a disgrace that the Conservative Party has simply acquiesced in this for thirty years, instead of challenging this undermining of the family and of authority in general.

Peter Hitchens was good on Any Questions this evening. He pointed out that it was contrary to the principles of English law to punish somebody for the actions of others. I would add that the places where this was regularly done were communist or fascist dictatorships. Secondly, a lot of social commentators have pointed out that years of left wing sociology have robbed parents of their right to discipline and control their children. This makes this "guilt by association" doubly unfair. This is just a nasty populist gimmick. By all means evict the tenant if he/she has personally rioted. But not if the culprit is a child over whom they have no control thanks to all the PC meddling of recent years.

I would certainly welcome a move against the culture of ACPO. But sorry, call me old fashioned and conservative, I do think a chief constable (which is a very senoir office under the Crown) has to be a fellow subject of the Crown. So please -no gimmicks, no American sheriffs. There must be plenty of senior people in the UK, say in the top echelons of the armed forces, who could bring in the fresh thinking required.

Patsy, I know that you are glued to the Andrew Marr programme on TV every Sunday, but the World at One in a radio programme;-) More seriously, you might like this article by Leo McKinstry in yesterday's Daily Express: "Sickening violence nothing to do with poverty or racism." http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/263582

One issue that I'd like the government to consider is the question of insurance and compensation. I've just heard a poor woman on the One O'clock news. Her business in Hackney has been destroyed. Her life has been devasted. I don't know her circumstances, but I'm sure that many small business owners and many of the people whose flats have been destroyed will not have had adequate insurance, if at all. Most of the areas affected are poor. As I understand it, it's just tough luck, unless the government classifies the violence as riots. In the latter case, the government can pay compenstation for uninsured losses. I do hope the government will help all the innocent victims even if it means paying out for uninsured losses. If we can afford billions in overseas aid, we can afford some emergency aid at home.

What a radical idea! It'll never work.

Spot on. Cameron has to realise that the public is looking for a robust response. No more handwringing with "community leaders", no more "listening",no more "understanding". It's quite simple: this was simply lust either for violence or for stolen goods. COBRA will have to look at the threat not from Islamists,nor from the far right but from the far left. I've heard reports of left wingers and anarchists egging on the rioters to further their political ends. The far left have been salivating at the prospect of a return to "class war".

Another point about media responsibility. Only a few weeks ago the BBC was "celebrating" the anniversary of the Brixton riots. I was disgusted to listen to "The Reunion" on Radio 4. There were all the usual lefty suspects on the show talking about "uprisings" and "liberation", but not one person pointing out the rampant criminality that was going on at the time. A few weeks after all this pro-rioting propaganda from the BBC what do we get? More riots.