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Here’s one for a new edition of The Good Soldier Schweik:
“Ukrainian pilot whose plane crashed in Russia facing charges
The charge is based on Article 322.1 of the Russian Criminal Code (crossing the Russian border without valid documents for entry or exit)
MOSCOW, April 7. /TASS/. A Ukrainian pilot who was detained after his plane crashed in Russia’s Bryansk Region has been charged with illegally crossing the border, an official at the Bryansk Regional Court told TASS on Friday.”Well, well. The Tartan reformists have been corrupt too. That ought to mean the end of their completely irrelevant and divisive campaign for a separate Scottish capitalist state. It looks like Scottish workers are going to avoid being led up that particular garden path.
This from that link is useful:
“Government statistics suggest that few outside the top percentage of earners derive a significant income from investments.”
Deriving a significant income from investments could be a definition of a capitalist. But of course they should not be classified as “earners” as income from investment is an “unearned income” as one you don’t have to do any work to get. It’s a property not a work income.
Latest news (and joke): Britain has joined the Trans Pacific Partnership:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/03/31/business/uk-joins-cptpp-trade-agreement-intl-hnk/index.html
I suppose the mad Brexiteer idea is to get a trade agreement with an area as far away as possible from the EU, British capitalism’s nearest and biggest market. No wonder most of the British capitalist class are pissed off with Brexit.
Britain only has one colony left in the area — Pitcairn island (population 47) where the descendants of the mutiny on the Bounty live.
Not sure Brexiteers will be too pleased with what this involves in terms of “sovereignty”:
“The TPP also gives global corporations an international tribunal of private attorneys, outside any nation’s legal system, who can order compensation for any “unjust expropriation” of foreign assets. The tribunal can order compensation for any lost profits found to result from a nation’s regulations.”
I don’t think even the European Court of Justice could order that. In any event, joining the TPP means that the UK has signed up to the Brexiteers’ nightmare of being subject the jurisdiction of an outside legal body.
Interesting. tell us more about the BDS when you’ve time.
Incidentally, you are not suggesting that that wasn’t the real, legal name of our candidate, are you? Why would we waste our time inventing a silly name? We leave that sort of thing to Screaming Lord Sutch.
Anyway, a seemingly suspicious contrived set of prenames such as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel doesn’t seem to have put people off.
Of course, as far as we are concerned the name of our candidates is not important – electoral law compels us to propose a named person not a political proposition. And we can’t do anything about that, except urge people not to vote for us on the basis of the person or their name but only if they want socialism as a society based on the common ownership of land and industry, with production directly for use not profit, and distribution in accordance with the principle of “ from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
As we have always put it, it’s the case not the face, the claim not the name.
Some people think — apparently — that the wages-prices-profits system is the best way of producing and distributing the things people need to live.
Under it, people have to have money to buy what they need. Most people get this by doing paid work or getting some hand-out from the government (a tiny minority get enough to live well on as unearned income such as profits and dividends). Wages are intended to keep the person in working order; hand-outs to ensure that they don’t fall below some arbitrary poverty line.
But look what happens when the cost of living suddenly rises dramatically, as described by Professor Engin Kara of Cardiff University in this weekend’s i paper:
“In times of cost of living crisis, households can reduce luxury spending but not the demand for basic necessities. In fact, such a crisis would switch spending towards basic necessities and increase demand for such goods even more. Strong demand enables producers to pass the increase in costs to consumers.”
So, the effect of a sudden rise in the cost of living is to increase yet further the price of basic necessities. So not only are people forced economically to buy crappier stuff but they have to pay the same price as the less crappy stuff they bought before.
If a bank’s business model was to create money out of thin air and then lend it at interest, this being their income, then banks would be a more profitable line of business than other capitalist businesses. Only they are not. They don’t make more profits per capital invested than do other capitalist enterprises.
In fact, in some respects they are more risky since, by borrowing short-term and lending long-term, they are open to being put in financial difficulty if too many of those they have borrowed money from (their depositors) withdraw it at the same time.
This is why one investor, writing in the Financial Times (25 March), headed his article “Why I will never invest in bank shares”. Other investors, however, are not so timid, treating banks as just another profit-seeking business.
Incidentally, in his article, the author (Terry Smith), gives a breakdown of the assets and liabilities of the NatWest Group. It shows deposits of £470,759 million and loans of only £373,479 million. If banks really could create from thin air money to lend, you’d expect it to be the other way round — loans to be more than deposits. But they’re not.
Currency cranks richly deserve their name.
That’s in the other papers too. 2044 is a long way off and lots could change in between. But the rise from 66 to 67 is due to begin in 3 years’ time — when there could be a Labour government but you can safely bet they won’t do anything to stop it. Maybe they will be faced by French-style opposition and Starmer will be the British Macron.
There’s a quote in today’s Times from Professor Sir Michael Marmot “an expert on health inequality” pointing out that
“The most deprived two-thirds of the population do not have disability-free life expectancy as long as 68, so if you make the pension age older than that, you’re going to find a huge swath of the more deprived can’t work to 68 and will have less time time to enjoy this pension.”
In other words, they will die before or soon after retiring. In fact this must be happening now to some extent with the retirement age at 66 and to a greater extent when it goes up to 67. How convenient for the finances of the capitalist state. If you can’t work you are no use to capitalism, just an expendable drag on profits.
Is seems a bit of a concocted charge by an Establishment out to get him for the erratic things he did during his presidency (rather than follow the usual line, as Biden is doing).
Surely paying hush money to somebody isn’t a crime or, if it is, would just be a “misdemeanour” to be dealt with at State rather than Federal level?
Since the basic state pension in the UK will amount to just over £10,000 a year from next week, raising the pension age by one year robs workers of that amount and forces them through economic necessity to endure another year of wage-slavery.
Don’t expect a Labour government to act any differently from a Tory government on this issue.
We shouldn’t really be discussing this question of the violation of personal privacy on this thread. One of us should start a new thread on this in the World Socialist Movement section.
Actually, banking reformers (to be polite and not call them currency cranks) do propose to legislate to separate these two functions of a bank. There was even a referendum in Switzerland to do this a few years ago (it was voted down). Here’s what they proposed:
“The proposal is that banks should not be able to re-lend money deposited in current accounts. When it receives such a deposit the bank will be required to re-deposit it with the state’s central bank in return for what Sandhu calls ‘State e-money’. All banks would be able to do with this is transfer it between current accounts.
This would certainly restrict bank lending but it wouldn’t (and is not intended to) stop it altogether. As the Swiss banking reformers explained, after the enactment of their reform:‘The banks can only work with money they have from savers, other banks or (if necessary) funds the central bank has lent them, or else money that they own themselves.’
But this is already, now, the case ! Money deposited in a current account is just as much a loan to the bank as is money deposited in a savings account. Banks can, and do, re-lend most of it too, except that, unlike with a savings account, it keeps all the interest. But if money re-lent from a current account is money created from thin air, why is money re-lent from a savings account not?”
If implemented, this would bugger up the financial system and impede banks from carrying out properly their function under capitalism of channelling idle money to those who want money to invest for profit.
We socialists understand better how capitalism works than some of its supporters.
Something else, Lizzie, for you whoopee about. British Gas have just sent me an email to say they have a charity to help people in difficulty because they can’t keep up with paying their energy bills. You might be eligible since you don’t have to be a British Gas customers. Let us know if they agree to throw you a few coppers.
https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/british-gas-energy-trust.html?cid=dplk_BGET
Incidentally, Movimento, not all those here are Socialists — this forum is mainly to discuss or be read by with those who aren’t yet — and we do have a forum just for Socialist Party members.
So the Tartan reformists have chosen a new Leader. He’ll just be in charge of running the administration in the Scottish region of UK plc. Not even national leaders can make capitalism work in the interest of the majority wage-working class. Regional leaders even less. Setting up a separate Scottish state wouldn’t make any difference either.
