alanjjohnstone
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An ideal opportunity to write a reply to a letter by a Oliver Healey in this weeks WW on 100% reserve banking and banks creating money http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1096/letters/I would answer him but i have already had two letters recently in the WW and think it better if somone else wrote.
The Gulf States have now designated Hezbollah as a terrorist orgnisation. Why now? Again my cynical suspicious mind suggests it now provides an excuse for something in the offing if as i have speculated, ground forces are to soon to be used or those Saudi Arabian aircaft in Turkey will target Hezollah…this will inevitably draw Lebanon into the conflict
China has announced plans to fire around 1.8 million workers. In an apparent bid to restructure the world’s second largest economy, President Xi Jinping’s reforms to the coal and steel industries would see around 15 per cent of the current workforce at risk of losing their jobs. Weimin said in a news conference 1.3 million workers in the coal sector could lose their jobs, plus 500,000 from the steel sector.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-to-lay-off-18-million-workers-from-coal-and-steel-industry-after-slowest-economic-growth-in-25-a6906701.htmlCan we expect an escalation and intensified class struggle and workers resistance? No timeframe has been given as the plans were announced by Yin Weimin, China’s minister for human resources and social security.
Last year Chinese buyers spent a record A$12bn on Australian property, boosting house prices. Between October and December 2015, Sydney house prices dropped by 3%, the biggest fall on record. Investment banks like Macquarie are forecasting a 7% decline in 2016, and say a housing collapse could push Australia into recession. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35601102
Yet another "liberal" demand for UBIhttp://dissidentvoice.org/2016/02/basic-income-a-must-for-the-developed-world/#more-61901His reasoning is one that some on the right would sympathise with
Just a reminder, SOYMB blog,also has a post on the "Free" State that could be described as an addendum to the Connolly articlehttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-free-state.htmlI particularly like the election poster reproduced on the blog
Yet another interesting article on automation and robotics and workers futureshttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/the-guardian-view-on-the-automated-future-fewer-shops-and-fewer-people
Quote:The rich get richer, and their lives get more enjoyable. Poor communities grow poorer and more hollowed out. It’s another example of the way that economic efficiency, narrowly measured, increases inequality. An optimist might say that this kind of change has been constant for the past 200 years. The jobs that automation has replaced have mostly been dirty, dangerous, or disagreeable. There have never been as many people employed in Britain as today, and certainly never as many women. Nonetheless, change has seldom been quicker and more vertiginous than today and we’ll need human intelligence to reach a better future. We can’t trust the computers to get us there on their own.This also might make interesting reading.http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/why-are-there-suddenly-millions-of-socialists-in-america
Quote:Bernie Sanders didn’t push the young toward socialism. They were already there…What’s the substance of the new American socialism? I know of no surveys asking this newly hatched brood to define what they mean when they call themselves socialists, but we can make some educated guesses. First, they don’t counterpose socialism to a militant liberalism. …The United States may suddenly be home to millions of socialists, but it still lacks a socialist movement. …You may be interested in this article http://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/02/29/opinion/time-try-basic-income-all-canadians
Free health treatment in various other countries take different forms. Worth exploring. Some are free front-up, others based on charges that are re-imbursed. While we all talk about NHS as the ideal model, some will say other nation's schemes are better and produce better results.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_coverage_by_countryThe UK ranks 18th in the rankings of countries health services and 26th in per capita expenditurehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000Bill may be again on the right track….The NHS could be a lot better, (but again the elephant in the room is private medicine – the pharmaceutical companies.)Yes, i'm all for advocating socialism by highlighting the short-comings of the health-care provided to people, regardless of method and why millions die needlessly each year of avoidable illnesses and curable diseases, here in the UK, the EU and the rest of the world. We have health inequaities between rich and poor and since 1948 the NHS has failed to solve that. And the changes taken place within the NHS has often exacerbated the probems.(As a personal anecdote, i once had an appointment with a Mr. (a consultant) at a private hospital in India for a cost less than what i pay for parking my car in a UK hospital car-park)
Personally i often use the NHS free service at the users end to explain socialism as free access as a practical possibility.I know in the past speakers often used water supply in similar arguments because the water and sewage charges were mostly hidden in the small print of the old rates. And we could use as much water as we wished. Metered water and privatisation of water companies has changed things a lot and has become a political topic such as with Ireland's water tax I think there is a red-herring on this thread. No-one is suggesting that the NHS workers are vying against one another in dog-eat-dog for its resources in wages and hours. That's the employers position. Over the decades unions have merged and 'moderate' unions have grown in militancy as a reflection of increasing awareness of employee position in the health system. The Junior Doctors strikes had and still have the overwhelming support of their colleagues. Difficult for me to digest is also that NHS administration and control is forever changing with health trusts and GP surgeries turned into businesses and one time local health boards relegated to history but the basic idea of socialised medicine is one i think all socialists understand as examples of rudimentary socialist principles…to each according to medical need and notupon how much you can pay ….and when it comes to staffing , from each according to ability…porters, nurses , technicians, junior doctors and consultants etc. all co-operating as a teamFor sure we still have a stratified career structure…private schools dominating the higher professions If we are to discuss health care as a wider topic then our focus (and it has been in numerous SOYMB posts) is the position of the pharmaceutical industry, still a in the grasp of private multi-national corporations exerting powerful leverage over universities and their research and steering government policy on health – shamelessly still in the name of profit and dividends. If the right wing Republican accusations of death committees existing in the NHS is true i.e. NICE then the executioners is Big Pharma. We can aso discuss the out-sourcing of care for the elderly from local council homes to private business and then understand why standards have fallen and abuse inscreased. This part of Bill Martin's contribution to the 2010 debate is on track.."If you accept the idea of a national health service, why not a national food service, and a national clothing service? And why not worldwide rather than national? "
Under Rule 18, are all expenses, travel, food and lodgings, paid for by the Party?…Oh, and do we possess a "Propaganda Committee" as cited in Rule 18,. If so, where has it been in recent years.
Well done that trio, but no plaudits for the rest of the party. https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a8e02dd26d1e5e8b750146c336d3d2daa774e897/0_74_1632_979/master/1632.jpg?w=620&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=max&s=c170f5da37d372fa14a4c64b90da7d03That could have been us if we made more imaginative use of our own slogans and had banners expressing them."Just as we were turning round the corner of Sauchiehall Street two grim stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Great Britain were standing heralding the march with a huge banner and slogan which read: "This demonstration is useless—You must first destroy capitalism" "http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1983/no-946-june-1983/book-reviews-cnd-story
