

Ed of course has never demonstrated remarkable knowlege of socialism, 
or any other political system come to that.


That leaves Germany, Japan and the UK as examples of a country where the
right wing government is on the verge of collapse. Oh and of course the USA
which just elected a socialist government :-)


Etc, unfortunately you can't pin this on the left or the right, both are
to blame. Both sides are equally deep into the corruption scandal. The only 
untained party is the northern league which is a bunch of nationalist
separatists and the communist party which has collapsed.



Ed should take a look at the budget deficit Regan and Bush created together
before he starts to make claims about europe collapsing based on the budget
deficits here. None of them are serious on the USA scale.

And here in Europe we have zero interest in Ed-Ipser type freed thank you.
We do not want our countries to be run by a narrow elite of rich lawyers
for the benefit of the super wealthy. We are quite happy with social 
democracy and despite the fuss made in Time and Newsweek there is remarkably
little being done to reverse the social welfare reforms brought in by
socialism.

The problem with socialism is that it started with the aims of free education
and health care and provision of the welfare state. This has been achieved
across the whole of Europe, only the USA is struggling to catch up. The
problem for socialism is what to do now it has succeeded.



Ed starts to discus LA, presumably he thinks that it is in Europe. On
the other hand he most probably hasn't heard of a European city.


Rather the opposite. What is happening in Italy is that the communist party
has collapsed. This has meant that the grand coalition between right and
left wing parties to keep out the communists has also collapsed. The 
magistrates have seized this opportunity to crack down hard on fraud and 
corruption and have arrested half the politicians. The fact that the socialists
are in charge this week is incidental, the right is into the corruption just
as baddly.

What looks likely to happen is the fringe parties are going to do much
better in the next election. Most of the parliamentary deputies are going
to get replaced and the parties are going to be forced to look to people
who are free of any hint of corruption. Look out for a parliament of
Pavarotti's and porn stars.
