FFS! The first major piece of evidence that Osborne is useless is that he 'has made an unfunded spending commitment of £8bn'. The Government have just made an unfunded spending commitment of £150bn! Motes, beams much?

How on earth can Labour expect to be taken seriously on unfunded spending commitments, when they have effectively signed a blank cheque?

Well, I suppose the "dossier" will go down well with the already converted, but it won't change anybody else's mind about (amongst other things) who carries the blame for the current mess.

It's interesting that you don't seem to blink an eye at the claim that it costs £211,000 to create a single room in a hospital. That much money would comfortably build 2 (or maybe 3) houses the size of mine, including the land costs.

As for Northern Rock and B & B, we had a perfectly good system for dealing with such problems before Gordon got "clever" with the regulatory and supervisory system for banks. It didn't involve nationalisation.

You've mocked my views about less but better regulation before, but never dealt with why the system devised by your "hero" (I'm being ironic) failed so miserably. The splitting of oversight responsibilities between the BoE and the FSA was a disaster. Abolishing the FSA (or at least moving its banking responsibilities back to the BoE) would be less regulation (fewer regulators, see) but better regulation, as, amongst other things, there'd be no confusion over regulatory and supervisory responsibilities, and the BoE would have overview of the entire system.

Fergus, I think you'll find I have been critical of the way Brown and Blair carried on with a whole raft of Thatcherite nonsense.

Those few who were aware of Osborne thought him a lightweight, those many who were not aware of Osborne and now are, agree.

Hence the "ironic" comment. I don't know that I'd describe most of what that pair did as "Thatcherite".

I've always described New Labour's attempts to be "Thatcherite" as being like the chorus who sing "Carmina Burana" by Carl Orff. It's written in Mediaeval (sp?) German and Latin. The chorus can sound out the words brilliantly, and with apparent conviction, but none of them understand a word of what they're singing.

Still, on this one, we can agree that we are both critical, if for spectacularly different reasons!

Overall this publication seems like a waste of time and money - nobody in the real world will bother to read it.

Also I can't see the point of, what appears to be a concerted effort, of trying to rubbish poor Mr Osborne. It could lead to him being replaced by somebody with a bit of credibility - which is hardly to Labour's advantage.

By the way, does this "dossier" exist anywhere apart from on the Guardian website?

And the fact that the PM has just said that Britain is well placed to increase borrowing to fund increased spending? Isn't that just more unfunded spending committments, or is it OK because Gordon didn't go on anyone's yacht?

Look Bob, I understand that Labour really hates wee Georgie Osborne, but this dossier is really *really* lame.

Fergus, building a single room in a hospital isn't the same as building a house. A bed in a single room takes up more space overall than a bed in an open ward, so if you want to convert open wards into 50% single rooms then you need more space for the same amount of accommodation - in some cases, this will involve buying more land next to existing hospital sites. That's expensive. And, unless you want the overall capacity of the NHS to drop, you also need to provide temporary alternative NHS-standard beds, along with staff and admin space, while building work is going on. That's expensive. Also, most houses aren't kitted out with state of the art medical equipment (maybe yours is, though). The Tories didn't think of this, which is all pretty basic stuff. Neither did you, apparently.

Tim J.... hate Osborne? You must be kidding! We are desperate for him to stay just exactly where he is, discredited, thank you.

I love his stockings. No Sans-culotte, that one.

We are attacking personalities again not the policies because both sides do not have any.

Robert, in the case of the government, they must have policies. In fact, they have far too many of them. They have introduced more legislation than almost any government in history, much of which people like your good self are forever whinging about.

So, by all means say you don't like their policies, but it is ridiculous to say they have none. Now, the opposition are an entirely different kettle of fish. They don't need policies... they just need to oppose.

And no comment on the Government's £150bn unfunded spending commitments?

CC - that's exactly why I compared a single room (including land prices) with my house, which has 6 rooms, plus a hall and a landing (including land). I think you'll find that land prices are already falling off a cliff, and the chances are that many hospitals already own the land around their buildings.

Oh, and surely the state-of-the art medical equipment is already there, unless you're saying that there's a shortage of such equipment currently?

Trying to blind me with double-counting just won't work, but you can always keep on trying!