alanjjohnstone
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I know there are some golf clubs that are for only the elite who can afford the membership and course fees but I think in Scotland there is much more of a working-class element who play golf. After football, it was the next most popular pastime for my ex-postal worker colleagues. They regularly organised boozy golf outings and were quite strict on standards of behaviour.
Scotland has numerous reasonably priced council-owned golf courses and the home of golf, St Andrews, the Old Course, was declared the common-owned property of the citizens of St Andrew by Parliamentary Act
Surprisingly, I cannot recall the mainstream media having a sit-down with Jeremy Corbyn so he could offer his opinion since the Forde Report emerged. He is indeed the forgotten man
Crocodile tears were shed by the West about the Russian blockade of desperately needed food supplies for Africa’s hungry. Now, that a process is in place what will happen?
Cargoes will go where the money is.
In many countries, it is wheat that is the number one staple food. Despite this several of the subsequent ships that left Ukraine were loaded with corn or sunflower meal.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that these were “commercial transactions” and it was only normal that the ships “go where the contract stipulates that they go.”
https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-no-smooth-sailing-for-grain-via-the-black-sea/a-62799432
Although all the main scientific evidence challenges the lab-leak theory of the coronavirus beginnings, many still hold to it and continue to spread the idea.
Another expert presents the evidence that it was the Wuhan food market that was the origin of Covid.
Repeatedly we are assured that sanctions against Russia are specifically no directly aimed at harming ordinary Russian citizens who cannot be held responsible for the actions of their autocratic government, although they are being affected by restrictions on trade and financial transactions.
But now the Russian population is being made a target.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/13/europe-russians-tourist-visa-ban-ukraine-war
There are now calls to ban travel visas. One knock-on effect will be dissidents fleeing Russian repression will be blocked.
Climate activists in southern France have filled golf course holes with cement to protest against the exemption of golf greens from water bans amid the country’s severe drought.
The group targeted sites near the city of Toulouse, calling golf the “leisure industry of the most privileged”. The activists said the exemption showed that “economic madness takes precedence over ecological reason”.
Biden backed down to Sinema
Sinema single-handedly thwarted her party’s longtime goal of raising taxes on wealthy investors.
She received nearly $1 million over the past year from private equity professionals, hedge fund managers and venture capitalists whose taxes would have increased under the plan.
For years, Democrats have promised to raise taxes on such investors, who pay a significantly lower rate on their earnings than ordinary workers. But just as they closed in on that goal last week, Sinema forced a series of changes to her party’s $740 billion election-year spending package, eliminating a proposed “carried interest” tax increase on private equity earnings while securing a $35 billion exemption that will spare much of the industry from a separate tax increase other huge corporations now have to pay.
If denied the referendum, the SNP will “fight the next general election on the question of independence alone – a “de facto referendum” ”
Isn’t the SNP following our very own political strategy of a vote for the SPGB will be a vote for socialism?
Surely, we will have to challenge Sturgeon to publicly declare that its manifesto cannot contain any reforms other than a constitutional change for Scottish sovereignty she wants and that it urges no-body to vote for it unless in agreement with its one and only demand – independence.
After Covid, it was monkeypox, now there is an ominous threat of a return to polio.
I’m of the generation in the UK which was probably the last to see youngsters with legs in callipers
Liz Truss has set out a plan to “protect British Jewry” from “creeping antisemitism” and “woke culture” in the civil service, while praising Jews for holding values such as protecting the family unit and setting up businesses.
Truss also challenged whether schools were doing enough to educate pupils and teachers about antisemitism and claimed she would rid university campuses of anti-Jewish hatred.
At the same time, she set out her own view of Jewish values, saying: “So many Jewish values are Conservative values and British values too, for example seeing the importance of family and always taking steps to protect the family unit; and the value of hard work and self-starting and setting up your own business.
When Dave Douglass is not promoting coal-mining he can be very effective in defending radical working-class ideas and actions as he is in a letter to Weekly Worker.
In its latest monthly oil report, the International Energy Agency has found Russian oil production has fallen by less than 3% since the invasion of Ukraine.
Russia generated $19bn (£16bn) in oil export revenues last month, and $21bn in June.
When he isn’t writing about co-ops, Wolff can be quite insightful, as in this essay on capitalism and markets
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/11/the-truth-about-markets-pillar-of-capitalist-ideology/
Ukraine’s debts to be cancelled?
The national currency, the hryvnia, was devalued by the central bank in July. Now $1 buys 37 hryvnia, up from 26.50 a year ago. The state’s key energy company, Naftgaz, has already fallen into default. The country’s sovereign debts are trading at a fraction of their face value, as low as 17 cents on the dollar.
Recognising that Ukraine’s debt load is unsustainable, holders of Ukraine’s sovereign bonds on August 10 backed a two-year moratorium interest and principal repayments.
The reality is that Ukraine does not have any money available to service more debt, and is unlikely to for the foreseeable future…This is why Ukraine urgently needs debt cancellation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/8/11/ukraine-needs-a-jubilee
