ALB
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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.
I didn’t know that there was a village in Ukraine named after the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti who were murdered by the US state in 1927. Apparently it has just been captured by Russian forces:
How much the Ukrainian nationalists think of this name and tradition can be seen by their renaming of a street in one of the cities — changing it from Vanzetti St to the name of the notorious Azov Battalion:
Ironically, with its new name it is indeed “a street for murderers”.
Ukraine has a fairly impressive record of worker self organisation and political activism.
What’s the evidence for that except perhaps for Makhno over a hundred years ago (and that was peasants rather than wage-workers)?
How could Putin be overthrown and replaced by Prigozhin? Russia is far from being a democratic state but it still has procedures that would not allow this. Putin was elected president and the Russian parliament was elected too. The elections weren’t fair but there is no reason to suppose that the result represented what most people wanted.
If Prigozhin attempted to use his private army to stage a military coup he would come up against the much more powerful
and disciplined regular armed forces. In fact they are the only force that could overthrow him. As long as they remain loyal to him he is safe.The only way he would go would be if he resigns or is forced to resign. There would then have to be another presidential election which I doubt would Prigozhin would win.
The possibility of Prigizhin staging a coup is just NATO propaganda or psychops.
Russia could no more be ruled by armed force alone than could Britain or the USA.
