It is quite clear to me that Cameron and Clegg have absolutely no idea what the hijacked (from American television in particular Faux fox News)phrase 'Big Government' actually means!

more near Chester, and talent, unlike Dave/Clegg,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNOAWd__Qdw

"As a consequence of the financial crisis, the market-based globalisation of the past couple of decades is giving way to a model in which states are the principal actors."

This would be interesting if it weren't for the inconvenient fact that it's wrong. The main reason China is booming is because it was held back so much by past communist governments. It's silly to say that China is a "state-led" government because it is nothing of the sort - private businesses generate the vast majority of the wealth in china.

Its a dead certainty. In order to establish 'fairness' and ensure it is observed, you need the mechanisms ie the bureacracy the administration, otherwise it just won't work.
But having said that, I still believe its a necessary step and unavoidble step to take, even if we wanted to.
How many times have we had to see Tory Govt introduce measures that we are stuck with and cannot repeal when Lbour gets into power.

False Dawn was an interesting book with some interesting insights into the failure of laisseez faire regimes wround the world ("the delusions of global Capitalism" if you will, especially coming from a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher's regime.

But the conclusion Gray comes to that Cameron and Clegg have shown an impressive ability to break with the past is bizarre and is left unexplained and to the reader's interpretation.

They are currently surpassing anything Thatcher would have even dared propose in the 1980's when Thatcher's Napalm approach to social cohesion left unemployment high and communities reeling, the devastating repurcussions of which are still being felt today. Cameron and Clegg are following a similarly tribalistic path reliant on decimating, scapegoating and stigmitising the "big bad State" and if we look at current propaganda in America where the minimal social provision offered there such as food stamps is also becoming demonised and
sliced back we can see that butchering the State doesn't protect future generations but actually puts them under greater threat of further retrenchment to what little welfare provision survived the last economic meltdown.

But did having no NHS and less investmnt in public services shield the American economy any better from the current economic crisis? No, because most of it was inherently self-inflicted. The less money is re-invested in society the less balanced an economy is and the more resources are drained and assets stripped down to subsidise only increasing disparity and a monopolisation of wage growth that sees profits evaporate into the arms of plundering shareholders whose appetite for profits at all cost has left eeconomies both side of the pond dangerously malnourished.

Far from showing a willingness to break from the past, Clegg and Cameron have only shown a desire not only to repeat past mistakes, but to exacerbate its impact by acaccelerating the demise of all the structual foundations that have held together social cohesion in the UK and that have contributed to social mobility in the post-war years.

Clegg has no past and the Liberal Democrats have always been a party Liberal only in terms of fluffy lightweight social policies that don't intefere with the aggressive market mechanisms that have gradually stripped the UK of its resources and assets and we're now left exposed and vulnerable and with a skeletal framework to instil economic growth as a consequence.

And if the youtube state fall, which I hope won't be too soon, it is a attitude adjuster in the streets while it lasteds(!), Dave,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3cToJxub3c

Expanding the role of the state - I wonder? Having listened to the Today programme this morning reporting how the cuts will hurt the most vulnerable and then the wizard ruse of making the BBC fund free licences for the over 75s, (another opportunity for Gideon to bash the BBC?) this lot seem more like George Bush's revolutionary neo-cons. A shaky mandate from the electorate appears to be no restraint on the implementation of ideologically driven cuts that are likely to wreck our country. I can see a Dick Cheney look alike, but I'm still trying to spot Donald Rumsfeld!