jeri hurd's Public Library

Maurice Fitzpatrick of Grant Thornton points out that Britain's public debt position, which is better than in any other G7 country, is a big advantage. Even a UK debt to GDP figure of between 40% and 50% of gross domestic product, which Alistair Darling is likely to admit to in his pre-budget report next month, is half the G7 average of 93%. America is on 61%, Germany 63%, France 64%, Canada 68%, Italy 104% and Japan a huge 195%.

arlie Chaplin's final stand against
the synchronized sound film - and it is also his last full-length "silent
film" - although it must be noted that it is a quasi-silent
film. There is no traditional, synchronized voice dialogue in the film - but
voices and sounds do emanate from machines (e.g., the feeding machine), television
screens (i.e., the Big Brother screen - pre-dating George Orwell's book 1984,
written/published in 1949), and Chaplin's actual voice is heard singing
an imaginary, nonsense song of gibberish. Special sound effects and an original
musical score (by composer Chaplin, including various musical themes from
"Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," "Prisoner's Song," "How
Dry I Am," and "In the Evening By the Moonlight") enhance the
pantomime.

Set in the 1930s during the Great Depression era, the film's
main concerns (and those of the oppressed Tramp) echo those of millions of
people at the time - unemployment, poverty, and hunger. It has a number of
wonderfully inventive and memorable routines and scenes that proclaim the
frustrating struggle by proletarian man against the dehumanizing effects of
the machine in the Industrial Age (at the time of Henry Ford's assembly line),
and various social institutions.

The scenes of the Tramp find him alternating between scenes
as an assembly-line factory worker (where he is literally fed by a machine
and then - when the monotony overtakes him - becomes the 'food' in the cogs
and gears of another machine), a shipyard worker, a department store night
watchman, an overstressed singing waiter, or an occupant in jail. The Tramp
also finds himself dealing with various authority figures during his exploits:
a 'Big Brother' factory boss, a minister, juvenile child-care authorities,
a sheriff, a shipyard foreman, a department store manager, etc.