alanjjohnstone
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
"proactive pacifism." Militarisation – As used by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, wants Japan's armed forces to join in military activities abroad and defend allies under attack—principally the United States
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/17/chinas-biggest-banks-loan-stock-market-chinese-securities-finances-margin-lendingChina’s biggest banks have lent 1.3tn yuan (£134bn) in an attempt to halt a meltdown in Chinese shares… CSF had 2.5tn yuan to 3tn yuan of funding available as of this week to shore up the stock market if needed…
Quote:“It doesn’t have to use up all the money, as long as it can make the rest of the market believe that it has enough ammunition,” Hao Hong, a China strategist at Bocom International in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. “It is a game of chicken. For now, it seems to be working.”So capitalism is now described as a game of chicken
Quack economics and quack health policies, too, it seems. Corbyn supports homeopathy and its financing by the NHShttp://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2015/07/16/belief-in-homeopathy-is-a-moral-test
Quote:The main contradiction today is between the possibility of free, abundant goods and information; and a system of monopolies, banks and governments trying to keep things private, scarce and commercial. Everything comes down to the struggle between the network and the hierarchy: between old forms of society moulded around capitalism and new forms of society that prefigure what comes next. Is it utopian to believe we’re on the verge of an evolution beyond capitalism? We live in a world in which gay men and women can marry, and in which contraception has, within the space of 50 years, made the average working-class woman freer than the craziest libertine of the Bloomsbury era. Why do we, then, find it so hard to imagine economic freedom?A much grander topic than Syriza, methinks
And while i am at it, what about all those people who have been made criminals by non-payment of the TV licence and. 150,000 convictions and i think 70 have actually went to jail for the offence. Cuddly Attenborough and Michael Palin can be rolled out endorsing the BBC but they can afford to pay being over-paid by the BBC. At one point in my life i couldn't and genuinely feared being detected and fined money i couldn't afford…if i did have the money then paying the licence wouldn't have been a problem Catch 22. The TV detector vans, when they used to use them, parked at my work, so i always knew they were in the area. Screw them
I hate the fucking BBC and, despite some people defending it , i'll be glad if its news service is decimated. It is, IMHO, simply the government propaganda machine, cleverly disguised as supposedly unbias and impartial. Glasgow Media Group (and others) has done several demolition jobs on its supposed objectivity. He who pays the piper, calls the tune and has been since Donald Reith's time. Its governing body are 12 government-appointed people chosen by the prime minister and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport from a short-list of suitable applicants, composed of present and former representatives of state, corporate and institutional power. And we are expected to pay a tax to support it, (which in theory is a price for information)Now we are presented with a version of lesser evilism…if the BBC goes then our media will be controlled by Murdoch. The Fear Factor.But does it matter since Sky, Times and Sun determinemuch of the political debates, anyways. Even the SNP went cap in hand to Rupert the Bear. Personally, I couldn't care less what they do to the BBC.
Quote:You were wrong about the trellis and now you're wrong about "a pricey dirt collecting door-mat and special computer room carpetting (sic)…and was a relatively inexpensive feature included when the old sky-light needed replacing."I have no desire to trawl through through years of EC minutes to confirm these (you can, of course) but it was near on a hundred pounds for the front door mat and as for the special computer room mats i hazard a guess few members had ever heard of such mats until they were bought (but like lucky charms, i have no idea if they proved efficious in avoiding crashes) On my last visit a long time ago but not long after it was installed the sky-light function was not working. I am glad it is now fixed and is regularly used for the comfort of those working in HO. But don't get me going with the new nice comfy chairs we bought, all well-padded for sore bums. Mea culpa on the trellis but since there is something else behind the purchase than mere garden furniture and i am not telepathic in knowing what. So the observations and advice of the treasurer is irrelevant and unnecessary. I say no more about that and let the treasurer reply if he so chooses. But like any other officer of the party it is the members who decide to act or not act on reports. You can if you wish ignore his recommendations to cut back in costs. Of course, we have plenty of funds, currently…Dead members' money but the stark fact is that we will run out of those unless we start recruiting. That is not conjecture but a fact of life (or death, in this case)To recruit we need to up the gear in activity and publicity. Membership dues and the present levels of voluntary contributions simply does not afford us the luxury of a Clapham HO and pay for the promotion of socialism. Keeping funds tied up in some sort of high interest account to pay HO bills is holding back money that should be spent on propagating the case for socialism. Speculate to accumulate members. I have more than once expressed appreciation of your branch efforts in recruiting but sadly other branches are failing to achieve similar fruitful results and it saddens me when i read of inquorate meetings of LONDON branches. As you yourself often indicate we are hampered from viable campaigning for socialism due to lack of people to participate with more and more of the onus resting upon the shoulders of fewer and fewer. The reality we face is frequently expressed by yourself. If it takes, at some point, in the future, a choice of premises or propaganda, i know where my vote goes. i have no desire to see HO being kept as a museum for a non-functioning socialist party because there is funds reserved in the bank to pay for its upkeep as an empty shell rather than being a centre for a thriving socialist party. I'm no doubt the Private Frazer of the party, full of doom and gloom, but the optimists are very much noticable in their absence in that nobody has so far said we will inevitably have to buy or rent newer and larger and more appropriate premises to accommodate the office-space of a host of full-time party workers when we have out-grown HO…a situation we would all welcome but who wants to put a wager on it?
I'm offering no defence of Hedges or Sawant's own politics merely agreeing with his criticism of Sanders' politics. As i said on one website before Hedges did:[Sanders] "has said that if he is not nominated he will be a 100% behind whoever is…(Hillary Clinton)…and 100% in support of the Democratic Party, in other words endorsing the duopoly of power. Where is the grass-roots organising of an independent working class movement that he talks about in his speeches? He should be promoting a political party entirely under the control of working people, representing their interests and their interest alone not cheer-leading a party that fully embraces capitalism. He stands, whether he is willing to admit or not, on the other side of the class line dividing the workers from the bosses. There is no thought given to constructing a real working-class movement but simply to encourage the unions and working people to remain an appendage to the pro-capitalist Democratic Party. It is deeds we judge upon, not words. His actions is that of a reformist, not a socialist."
ALB, If the BBC thinks it is unusual enough for a small political party to possess a million quid property that it requires reporting, then i think it is safe to assume that some of its members may have their own thoughts on the subject, too, and use the thread to express them. As an aside, from this exchange, i gather once more that the online EC minutes are not a full account with certain details purposefully omitted out , nor is it the first time nor the last, and this necessity i fully accept. However, i suggest that when posted to branches there should be inserted a note of explanation of what was left out of the online version and why. Or do some believe because of privilege of location they should be privy to more party information than the rest of us and that those out of the loop cannot be trusted with certain matters?Secrets always create conspiracy theories and paranoia
Chris Hedges states some home truths about Sanders and all hit home.http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/15/chris-hedges-on-bernie-sanders-and-the-corporate-democrats/Hedges said. “Bernie’s decision to play the game within the Democratic Party and in essence lend credibility to the party and lend credibility to Hillary Clinton is very destructive…"
Quote:After all, the comrades who regularly attend Head Office are the ones who do the graft.I think you will some out-lying members who will disagree with you, there, comrade. Certainly with a HO its house-keeping tasks are centralised which means excluding many members who may be willing from participating but these members are also engaged in the hard graft of propagating socialism, of keeping branches going, of lay-out of the Standard, of making contributions on the internet. A lot more than just only the London and Home Counties members are involved in the hard graft of Party-work and involved in the task of keeping the Party alive and active. I may well be mistaken in an assumption of a trellis in a back-yard is for climbing plants, a very easy one to make from afar. Over the years i have seen some unnecessary extravagence…a pricey dirt collecting door-mat…special computer room carpetting…a remote control/automatic sky-light.But certainly the main argument is not what the actual improvements are or were but that with less members the high cost of a premises becomes unsustainable and the proper balance for our bank balance or returns from any possible investments is not to pay bills for HO but to invest in activity and campaigns to ensure our wealth is not in money or mortar but in members. I know you agree and have been energetic in conveying the SPGB message but we still have a long way to go to reverse the trend and that might eventually lead to some hard choices being made in the future.Just as the internet has made the need for hard-copy print magazines redundant to communicate ideas, it has also, with Skype, made the need for a permanent office superfluous, other than storage space, which can be had very cheaply.I'm a socialist not a sentimentalist and if certain sacrifices are to be made to assist in achieving socialism, so be it.I'm well experienced at dumping cumbersome baggage and travelling light.
Annual building rates, insurance premiums and utility bills are not conjecture and they are not one-offs but a continual expense. I recall Cde Thomas frequently warning us of our outlays against our regular income Each year we also have unexpected household expenses eg June EC "Cde Shodeke reported to the EC that that work was in hand to both resolve a leaking pipe causing water damage to the Ground Floor and obtain a quote for a trellis for garden/yard."Of course, we must repair and fix faults. We had the sad experience of the neighbours leak spoiling large numbers of books. But a trellis for the backyard to beautify our outdoor sitting area. Scarcely a necessity nor a luxury that will be enjoyed by the majority of our members. I well know the history of improving our HO. Stair when HO Organiser regularly complained of its shabbiness and succeeded in obtaining the funds to make improvements. As a visitor i could only welcome the installation of a shower as a much needed facility for us poor provincial members attending conference, obliged to sleep on the floor, which too benefitted from re-furbishment and re-newal Proposals about renting out the street -level floors and only using the upstairs have been discussed, as well as re-location, entirely. The way the membership is going there will soon be more in Brighton and environs (thanks to your own branches campaigning and activity) than in London itself if the trend coninues so perhaps a move may well be in order in the future to where our members are actually concentrated.i also wished to emphasise that our priority is bringing new members to the party and not waiting for existing ones to die off and leave us legacies.We cannot rest upon our laurels or what we are bequested and if our membership continues its overall decline then the cost of No. 52 has to be constantly returned to and debated. And i shall add, so will the print-run of the Socialist Standard require a re-appraisal if my doom and gloom has some substance to it. Nothing remains the same and we are in the business of change, so to speak. Who knows, a few years from now and we may have an increased membership that justifies larger premises but, of course, i pessimistically would not take too many bets on that prediction.
This article makes what seems to be a balanced view and suggests some sort of future for Greecehttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Greece-and-the-Union-of-Bullies-20150714-0017.html
Let us not forget that the SLPUS also had substantial property holdings in the past but with the disappearance of members, the impossibility of maintaining the financial upkeep led to their offices disappearing too.Too much money spent on premises and not enough on activity and campaigns has occasionally led to the discussion and debate that is referred to in the report and no doubt will arise again sometime in the future.
Labour may not meet the same melt down in the Sottish Paliament election that they met in the General election but they are still on the back-foot according to the Green Party who expect 10 seats from them next year. Perhaps we can piggy-back on this publicity when the time comes…http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/green-party-set-to-take-10-seats-from-labour-in-next-years-scottish-parliament-election-10386915.html
