ALB
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I see Starmer is making wild and extravagant promises as to what a future Labour government under him is going to achieve, the best being this one:
“Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 by the end of a Labour first term.”
This assumes that his government can control the way the capitalist economic system works – that it can bring about not only “growth” but “sustained growth” for a period of 5 years, ie, that the graph of Britain’s GDP will be a straight upward line with no ups and downs.
But no government can “secure” that. And of course his government will have no control either over how the economies of the other 6 members of the G7 will perform.
Everything will depend on world market conditions and no government can control or even predict what these will be over the next 5 years.
Only a fool — or someone who takes the rest of us for fools — would claim that they could. We know he’s just making another empty, politician’s promise. He probably does too.
Putin doesn’t half talk crap as well when he departs from the real reasons behind the war, as when he depicts it as a conflict between Traditional Religion Russia v. The Decadent West:
“They distort historical facts and constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country,” Putin said of Western nations supporting Ukraine.
“As it became known, the Anglican Church plans to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God … Millions of people in the West understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe.
“Look at what they do to their own people: the destruction of families, of cultural and national identities and the perversion that is child abuse all the way up to paedophilia, are advertised as the norm … and priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages.“Those two were grandstanding too but, to be honest, Putin sounded more plausible (in capitalist terms of course) when he spoke of Russia defending itself against the US and EU’s attempt to deprive his state of its “historic lands” than Biden’s crap about the war being between “Democracy v. Autocracy”.
Ukraninian “democracy” at work. Opposition party banned and its assets seized:
Looks, then, as if Labour is not going to have too much trouble winning back its traditional Catholic vote !
Revealing interview in today’s Times with Beata Javorcik, the chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She said that:
“Ukraine was ‘not a model of governance prior to the war’ and would need to carry out deep-rooted reforms to weed out corruption and create independent democratic institutions”.
So all that propaganda we were told about the need to support Ukraine as part of the democratic world from attack by an authoritarian regime was just a lie. She is admitting that even today Ukraine isn’t that, but the US and the EU are still pouring in weapons to help this corrupt and undemocratic regime, weapons which will be used to bomb the civilian population of the Donbass and Crimea. They don’t care because what they want to is to anchor Ukraine into their sphere of influence as opposed to Russia’s.
Well, well. It’s all over. Sturgeon has resigned, apparently under pressure from her MPs who feared for their seats if the SNP made the next general election a referendum on independence.They know this is a loser as so-called “independence” is not what most workers in Scotland can be persuaded to vote for.
So hopefully that’s the last we will hear of the completely irrelevant – in fact crackpot — idea of Scottish separatism. It’s not going to happen and workers there are not going to be led to argue against other over the issue. It’s dead. Good.
The Fire Brigades Union has won an improved offer through the threat of strike action. Which confirms the view that the best strikes are the ones that don’t take need to take place.
https://www.fbu.org.uk/news/2023/02/10/fbu-leadership-recommends-acceptance-revised-pay-offer
Strikes are a trial of strength to test what the market for a particular kind of labour-power will bear. In this instance both sides have worked out what this is without the need to test it.
I suspect that the RMT are holding out for the employers to drop the strings attached before they accept the pay part of the deal on offer.
The government is obviously going to have to back down over the nurses. Fancy the “Royal” College of Nursing being forced into industrial action. This could be what their patron, King Charles, is hinting at their weekly meetings that his Prime Minister does.
The Ukrainian secret police clamps down on draft dodgers — yes, they exist there as well as in Russia. Good luck to them.
https://ssu.gov.ua/en/novyny/sbu-likviduvala-6-novykh-kanaliv-vtechi-ukhyliantiv-za-kordon
Here is the reformists’ anthem with its chorus (it’s an insult to the poets of Ancient Greece to call it lyrics).
(Now!) Now is the time to set things right (Now!)
Now is the time we should unite
We don’t need revolution
We just need to open our eyes
Revolution is no solution we ought to realise (Now!)
Now is the time to set things right(Now!)
Now is the time to see the light
Looking back to see the future
And to rid the age of nuclear
[or whatever reform you are campaigning for]Assorted reformists are still singing it today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now_Is_the_Time_(Jimmy_James_song)
YMS, the link you gave doesn’t work. Is this what you were referring to:
https://www.taxpolicy.org.uk/2023/02/09/ebooks/
That cutting VAT did not lead to a fall in price would mean that it was being paid by the profit-seeking companies selling e-books.
This will be the case generally with businesses charging what the market will bear irrespective of any tax on what they are selling.
There is a good discussion of indirect taxes as VAT is in an article that appeared in the Socialist Standard in May 1912:
“What Determines Prices
The price of an article is immediately regulated by the demand for it and the supply available. But these ups and downs are but the result of the higgling of the market, and the price always hovers round a certain centre. How is this basic price, this mean of the fluctuations, fixed ?The answer is, by the amount of human energy needed to produce the articles under modern methods. Prices change, they rise and fall without relation to taxation.
We are often met by questions like the following. “Did not the price of sugar rise owing to an increased tax upon it ?”
As a matter of simple fact the rise in prices, and also their fall, are to be explained upon every other ground but that of changing taxes. Questions like the above presuppose that the capitalists can charge what they like, but actually they are governed by economic laws just like any other section of society. The sugar tax is a case in point. In 1908 the tax on sugar was reduced from 4s. 2d. per cwt. to 1s. 10d. Did the price of sugar fall ? It rose as much as ½d. per lb. almost immediately. Even our befogging Liberal Party had to admit this, for Arthur Sherwell, M.P., comments on it in his “Four Years of Liberalism.”
1902 Sir Michael Hicks Beach imposed a tax of 1s. per quarter on wheat, but instead of the price of bread rising generally, a rise was the exception. The Budget of 1909 provided a good instance of the truth of our view. At first the brewers and publicans relied upon the campaign of the Licensed Victuallers Protection Association, who bitterly denounced the taxes. When that failed to achieve their purpose, flaring posters annouroed to the working man that “Your beer will cost you more.” A thinking worker might well ask himself the question : “Why do they fight the proposed tax if it is merely a matter of shifting it on to the working-man consumer by raising the price ?” And as that very agitation showed, they merely use the increased taxation as a pretext for getting an increased price.
With all “indirect” taxation you find the same feature. The brewers and publicans, like all other capitalists, get as much as the market will bear. When additional taxation is levied they use that to test the market. When they found that the working class could not really afford to pay the taxes, or, in other words, the demand for liquor dropped, they went back to the old prices—a practical proof of the Socialist theory. With tobacco the same thing exists. Many firms, such as Wills, announced that despite the Budget tobacco duties, their prices would remain,the same. With some brands of proprietary articles, of course, prices have risen for the Budget happened to afford a fine excuse for raising their prices.“
The full article can be found here:
Yes, that’s right.
Any party can call itself what it likes except on the ballot paper. The only name a party can use on the ballot paper is the name and its variants registered with the Electoral Commission.
We are registered as “The Socialist Party of Great Britain” with the variants:
The Socialist Party (GB)
The Socialist Party (SP-GB)
The Socialist Party GB (World Socialist Movement)Only we can use these on the ballot paper.
SPEW tried to register as the “Socialist Party” but were refused on the grounds that this was too near to that of an already registered party, ie, us.
They were therefore forced to register another name for use on the ballot paper which, as Alan says, is “Socialist Alternative”.
However, that does not prevent them or any one else calling themselves what they like even on their election leaflets. I am not sure if they have ever contested under their registered name as they generally stand as TUSC but on TUSC election leaflets they state that TUSC is supported by the Socialist Party.
They are legally free to do this and to call themselves “the Socialist Party”, one of the names by which we have been known, and called ourselves, since 1904.
They knew this when, in 1991, they changed their name from Militant Labour. So they are making a deliberate attempt to “steal our name”.
Somebody left a copy of “Socialist Appeal” at Head Office so I started to read it.
On page 2 under the heading “Who are we? and What are we fighting for?”, it says:
“The capitalist system is in a complete impasse. It cannot be reformed. It must be overthrown.”
Then follows a list of 18 proposed reforms to capitalism.
These people — Trotskyists — are just louder-mouthed than the common or garden reformists.
You use the term “could have pulled it off”. I assume you mean that she could have remained prime minister and implemented her policy of reducing taxes on businesses in the expectation that they would invest more and so bring about “growth”.
Maybe but there is no evidence that this policy would have led businesses to invest more. As they say, you can bring a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Businesses wouldn’t have drunk unless there was the prospect of making a profit — and that she wouldn’t have been able to pull off.
