http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8523004.stm

Don't worry about it Gordon, you beat them to it by a long shot

Oh, and who was it that was saying weeks ago the Tories would kill off any recovery with their proposals?

You took the words right our of my mouth

well lets see, who was in charge of the economy, who decided to regulate with such a soft touch that nobody felt it. Who owns large portions of the UK banks and yet can not say to them "oi no effing bonuses to you bastids as you caused all this [LIFTED] and yet you still want a pigs trough of money!"
That would be the government then.

I would blame the banks, they asked for this regulation, or lack of and lobbied heavily for such an environment. The labour party wanted to be seen as business friendly so caved in, so you could blame businesses in general. The Tories would probably have done little different. They have an aversion to big government and regulation even more rabid than new labour. Then add in the media who are anti nationalisation so hamstrung the governments options when it came to what to do with failing banks, forcing the government into a expensive bail out and guarantee system. In this respect the tories would be no different.

Thatcher. Seriously - the regulation of the financial markets were made very light during the 1980’s as Thatcher applied a new economic model to our economy.

Two decades have passed since Thatcher was in office. That is 20 years in which things could have been changed by subsequent government.

£175 billion a year. We bloody well should be scared. That's almost £3k per person per year being spent above what they're getting in tax.

Yes but society has been brainwashed into thinking anything public was bad and anything done by private business was good regardless of the cost. That was why allowing the banks to collapse and then nationalise them for a £1 was not acceptable, you had to bail out the poor shareholders. If Labour had tried regulating the banks or anything else for that matter the Tories would have been up in arms and the business lobby would have switched sides. This has corrupted politics and left us with this Thatcher/Tory mess.

and its going to get much much worse, we just all have to get used to it …

Yes I think it will get much worse. We are at that stage where the deficit hawks want us to cut the spending which will put us into a depression. The claims by politicians that we have avoided a second depression will be proved to be false, though I think that they will falsely get blamed for it. It will be the bankers and economists that will have been responsible, for pushing governments to withdraw any stimulus from the economy.