alanjjohnstone
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Surely if we have the right strategy, and just what that is has to be clear to all members, so i am sure there is no harm in defining and re-affirming it, there is still an urgent case for discussing and debating how we put into practice a campaign, and in particular when and where we can be more successful using our existing 111 year old experience.The task to overcome is as you say "we constantly have to battle not only against the misinformation which workers are fed from cradle to grave but against Leninists and other distorters of socialism." and the truth is that they have more weapons in their armoury than we do ourselves…so the importance of propaganda tactics and how we deploy our limited resources is even more important. Wasn't this a lesson we learned from the election…that Brighton and Oxford were places we should concentrate our message…now is the time to decide exactly what the priority of the message should be.In defence of NERB, they did succeed in becoming a branch after many years of inactivity and stood a candidate in the general election. I'm sure there are other branches more rightly deserving of your critiicism. In regards to your criticism of Robbo, i don't think you really appreciate the difficulty of forming a socialist group where there does not nor has existed a tradition that in the UK helped to establish the SPGB. And the companion parties i do not believe were home-grown (except maybe for the SPC) but imports by our socialist "missionaries". I think you would have been on stronger ground with Robbo if you referred to the stagnant growth of World In Common.Robbo does a very fine job on the internet on our behalf and it is to be appreciated not spurned so as to discourage it.
Northern Ireland follows Scotland in banning GM.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34316778The NI Agricultural minister offers an almost identical case as Scotland…brand image and marketing
Quote:"We are perceived internationally to have a clean and green image. I am concerned that the growing of GM crops, which I acknowledge is controversial, could potentially damage that image."Eighteen million farmers in 28 countries grow GM crops on 181 million hectares, which is 13% of the world's arable land. The main producers are the USA, Brazil and Argentina, and the leading GM crops are soya and maize.
Beards and anti-semitism. http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/145516/anger-gary-lineker-posts-anti-israel-blog
International sporting events are perhaps the finest example of nationalism being expressed after war-patriotism. Wish you best of luck with your venture and that it produces some fruit. Look through the Standard archives, i'm sure you will find a few articles on sport that you can print out and give to anybody showing interest. Our blog recently drew attention to this report on health and safety of rugby players, something to mention if you get into any conversationshttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-34249189
Hmmm??….Just how will they cope with the AGM and election of branch officials….How will they turn paper members into active members?But certainly they surely must be now thinking about reviving the traditional Labour Club for the bevvyingBut on a serious note , can we see all these moribund Trades Councils being resurrected into a power base again?
I should add there was the other side of capitalism…employer/employee relations but that is a completely different story
I sometimes argued that the Post Office existed to make money for the rest of the economy, much the same as other infrastructure such as roads and freight rail and that is why it should be funded by general taxation. But the powers to be chose to deconstruct the post office into stand-alone separate businesses, ending an integrated and cross-subsidising organisation and impose a requirement that they all make individual profit which meant the social services they offered capitalism was weakened and will eventually disappear. At one time i knew numerous posties who brought basic groceries to the old folk on his walk and sat having a cuppa with the lonely old dears. We were truly part of the community as Postman Pat and his Cat . Now, who knows who pops those letters through the door. I once had a message pinned on the door…"let yourself in and wake me up i got a job interview this morning"…Little did the customer, know i was just the relief covering for the regular one who had gone sick. I lost count of the number of naked people, male and female, who came to the door to sign a recorded or register…"oh its only the postman"…as if we were the same as doctors. Nor was it email and the internet that killed of the mail…Post Office created the model of internet banking with Girobank, it had sorting machinery to do what Amazon now does and it had the road rail and air connections to supply goods as well as mail which the internet shopping get cheaper access with special discount contracts than other business The Post Office was killed off to ensure that capitalism generally didn't make money but just the handful of capitalists to make money like a parasite from all the other capitalists. Thats my defence of Clause 4 i once used to argue for socialised ownership.
And in case there is any confusion, those sceptical of GM foods have a different and more relaxed approach to GM medicine
Quote:1. Medicine is contained use of GMOs, targeted at the sick person. GMOs in contained and medical use are genetically crippled so that it is extremely difficult or impossible for them to replicate. This is in stark contrast to agricultural GMOs, which do replicate and spread.2. Medicine is administered on the basis of informed consent. The patient considers the potential benefits and risks of taking the medicine and compares them with the risk of allowing the disease to remain untreated. In contrast, people in North America cannot exercise choice as to whether they eat GM foods, as they are unlabelled there. Globally, choice is also undermined by GMO contamination of organic and non-GM crops and withdrawal of non-GMO seeds from the marketplace. 3. Medicines are tested far more thoroughly than GM foods. Medicines have to go through long-term toxicity testing in rodents before proceeding to controlled trials in healthy people and then in sick people. In contrast, no regulatory authority anywhere in the world requires long-term safety testing of GMO foods prior to release into the food system.4. Post-release monitoring of medicines is relatively simple because there are records of what people take and they are under the supervision of a medical professional. But post-release monitoring of GM food consumption is non-existent.Personally, i think i will always try to differentiate between the advances in medicine such as organ transplants and the profits and business such as the trade in organs built on those scientific achievments. Maybe my attitude would change if i required a kidney and had the money to buy one on the black market rather than linger on a waiting list.SOYMB and organ trade http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/12/capitalism-and-body-snatching-ghouls.htmlhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2011/06/flesh-market.htmlAnd many many more posts on our blog.
That's hardly a faith-restoring, confidence-building rebuttal, ALB, that instils hope and promise for a better future. Some might ungenerously say that it is the defence of someone going into denial modeWe can take the returns of party polls of those who are of sufficient interest to vote in our decision making as a true guage of membership. Can i ask what our paper membership is and our poll return numbers are. Also for deeper analysis as an experiment can we take a total of the monthly attendance figures of all branches (taking into account there are branches that can't meet every month and do so bi-monthly and even including those)Another approach is to count how frequently branches cannot meet their quorum requirments and discover what the percentage is?Even on this forum we know that a few members decline to join it or much less care about participating. All i am saying is that we should look at ourselves with the tools available to see just where we are at so we can determine how to approach the future. Without an accurate picture of ourselves how can we develop publicity and propaganda policies. I'm certainly Private Fraser, my glass being half empty, because i keep seeing that empty bottle sitting there from which i cannot re-fill from. But i have suggested some remedies which i think may counter what i do see as a downward spiral, willingly putting my head above the parapets and accepting being shot down for offering different options. One reason i gave to another comrade for re-joining was that i felt sorry for the Party and joined out of pity for it. That was i think in 2001. I remain a member for much the same reason, doing my best to prove myself wrong on my prognosis and predictions and contributing as much as i can to reversing the trend. Gnome informed us that the youngest member of KSRB is15, and i think it makes him the youngest in the party as a whole …Which of us will assure his or her generation will definitely see a socialist society established…Which of us will even go as far as to claim that the movement was gathering strength towards our objective to give him or her something to look forward to? TWC for all my disputes with him…has expressed a real truth, we have to have strong foundations , especially for those who come after us to build upon, not just a declaration of principles, though, but also a solid organisational structure. I have proposed that we turn ourselves into a genuine World Socialist Party and use the internet and the web as our main medium. Not something to do next week or next year but to be something we work towards in cooperation with the companion parties, who are scarcely in much better condition than we are. I'm not settling back to accept what fate offers. So, i do suggest we can do something, and unlike Cassandra we can decide our own future. I'm not a fatalist…things can change but we have to make them change
I would be interested in the opinions of those who conducted EC meetings via Skype, whether it was a positive or negative result for them. I think its not been widespread use and just the odd occasion. If we are to acquire empirical evidence i would delay Conference/ADM technology until we iron out whatever snags there is with our monthly EC meetings online. I suggest if we are to experiment and trial it should be with those and then become more ambitious later.Again i am with Robbo because many are now aware and probably getting fed up with the repetition i am pushing for some sort of special devoted conference…a re-founding of the Party, so to speak, where all is thrown on the table again and debated and discussed. Many things will be only re-stated, some will be re-formulated. What will be interesting is if anything new will be added. Others will also know i have referredin the past to the demographics of the Party member's ages and the future fate of branches (although one branch seems to have gone against the trend). Without having the simple facts that could be made available of the ages of those who participate in the Party polls i would be more pessimistic than Robbo. I recall we had the Conway Hall for our conferences. Now its in HO. When will it be the upstairs in the kitchen?
Following DJP advice that we should more scientific just a quick correction on his statement
Quote:90% of the hard cheese in the UK is made using chymosin from genetically-modified microbes. Notice that the cheese is NOT made using a GMO, but rather the product of a GMO (the enzyme). Consequently, ALL cheeses on sale are in fact 'GMO free'. Another important point is that the enzyme does not remain in the finished cheese. Like all enzymes it is required only in very small quantities and because it is a relatively unstable protein it breaks down as the cheese matures. Indeed, if the enzyme remained active for too long it would adversely affect the development of the cheese, because it would degrade the milk proteins too much.I think we should add a caveat that although there is no reason to suspect GMO of being a health risk, there are still reasons to argue that for poor small farmers there is evidence that it empowers a huge corporation and endebts the poor, that the application of GMO goes hand in hand with the use of specific pesticides owned by the same corporation advancing the case of GMO, and encourages farm practices more suited for only part of the agriculture such as industrial-sized farms and not the small holders which account for the vast numbers of food producers and also for the source of much of the demand of food for the world's poor. What i am saying that there is technical reasons being offered to be anti-GM by what type of farmer you are. These can be a matter of life and death as much as food-safety within capitalist economics.So even though these concerns do not impact on the decision to use GM in socialism, for those workers in capitalism there can be a detrimental effect which they may well be right in combatting and resisting and argue for an alternative agricultural and farming model to be promoted. People are being dispossessed and land grabbed and the reason is to make farming more profitable and GM industry is part of this. As the song goes…What side are you on? There is also the issue on how private corporations in alliance with NGOs are influencing politics of corruptible and often relatively powerless countries. The anti-GMO actions of the EU, Russia and Scotland (under umbrella of EU) don't quite equate with the lesser nations experiences By accepting GMO health claims, i don't think gives GMO carte blanche as the panacea it sometimes presents itself as.
