@Monastro - No, they're both capitalist entities but of course, they are closer to socialism than the US, which has decided to go the other way.

@Monastro - What we have in the UK is a government supportive of and controlled by big business. Words are cheap. One thing it is not, is socialist. My taxes are going to profit mongers not to the needs of the people. I am in rebellion against a puppet regime of corporations.

Socialism is where the people run government an dcontrol expenditure and taxation. The government is not the ultimate power but the servant of the people. The means of production, distribution and exchange, basically, heavy industries, the infrastructure, essential services and finance are no longer owned privately but nationally.

You merely have the typical American conservative middle-class Christian fear of socialism. You probabky think it godless, Maybe you thinkthey will force your daughters into free love associations with strangers; take possession of yuo rhouse and use it as a government officals Dacha, and burn down your church Now of thse is advocated by socialism. All it is is an alternative system of social organisation. The first organized socialists in near modern Europe were bible believing Christians. For example, see Gerald Winstanley and the Levellers of the Stuart revolutionary period. They got all their views on the dignity and total equality of human worth from the bible. Neither are socialist of necessity anti-religion. Christian socialism thrived in the UK during the 20th century. That  Mardist-Lenism went off the rails under Stalin does not mean the principles of socialism are false. That would be like dismissing Christianity because of the lunatic Calvinist fringe today or the Inqusition and the WitchFinder Generals.

I'm tired of exchanging views on socialism with American ChristianS; On a whole, they tend to equate captialism and national pride with their religion. One hardly ever see that amongst European Christians any more, except amongst the literalist lunatic fringes. My two passions, Christian spirituality and socialism are to such as you, a dichotomy that never the twain can meet. You're wrong, as they have met in me. So return to the puppet Obama that Americans are wetting their knickers over at the moment like adolescent girly fans. Let's see in this four years just how much Obapma changes. Nothing of note I'll warrAnt and the corporatins will still own you. Yours is a system of no change except the figurehead party. Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee. Well, it seems that Dum had just departed to a corporation directorship for Daddy. Dee has more charisma which meansnothing outside the personality obsessed backwoods America often appears to be.

Nothing personal, Campbell. I just took the opportunity to spleen my vent.

@Monastro - The people have individual hearts and individual concerns which are deliberately kept from realizing common concerns. Divide and rule. People need a free and wide expanse of education to make head or tail of what "experts" tell them. The result otherwise as is the general case everywhere, is that governance is handed over to a governing class who then control who joines them. As Matx stressed, educaton is the key to a successful social revolution.