As a slight aside.... wtf 17.5% VAT tax, on top of already high income tax. [...]Unless somehow Britain is somehow SUCH a more wonderful steward of tax revenue than I have been lead to believe
I could write reams about my view of the UK tax system, but I'll spare you that

In short, no, the UK is most certainly not a wonderful steward of tax revenue. The end tax rate is 40% (which is actually ok). VAT is 17.5% (mostly). National Insurance is 12.8%. And if you're "lucky" enough to run your own business, you get to pay the employer's contribution of ~10% as well.

Motor fuel duty is... erm... I don't remember, actually, but it's obscene, especially for a country that doesn't have a public transport system on which one can rely unless you happen to be going to/from London.

As you say, the National Health Service - for the most part - simply cannot be relied upon, so those of us that can afford to end up paying private health insurance as well, for which we get no tax deductions in the UK (though, ironically, here in Germany I do actually get a tax allowance for paying health insurance to a UK company).

I'll curtail my rant there...

>What we are prepared for is $100 oil and $850 gold.

I'm not entirely sure what that relates to, but going to war over resources isn't the same as globalisation

What we should by now be prepared for is to not still be dependant on oil and other critical resources that we can't produce ourselves, and you can read "we" as whichever country you reside.

But of course, we're not, and therein lies another good discussion to be had over a few beers / bottles of wine rather than here 8)