ALB
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It seems that Brown and Starmer are making the same mistake as the Scots, Welsh and Irish nationalists — that the problem is where decisions are made (London not Edinburgh, Cardiff or Dublin) rather than what decisions capitalism’s political administrators (what Zeitgeist has described as capitalism’s middle management) are obliged to make (not undermining profit-making).
But changing who makes these decisions, and where, won’t make any difference to the way capitalism operates. Which means that their proposals are utterly irrelevant and not worth the paper they are printed on. Those who say that there are more important problems to be dealt with are right.
It remains to be seen if a future Labour government really will abolish the House of Lords. They’ve been promising to do that since 1910 but despite numerous terms in office have somehow never got round to it. The chances are they won’t.
It is not so much telling “the government to look after the needs of the British(!) people” that is pathetic (even if it is naive) as imagining that the government will or can do this.
That’s not the way capitalism — the so-called only game in town — could work. Its priority is making profits to accumulate as capital. That comes before meeting people’s needs. In fact meeting people’s needs doesn’t even come second as preparing for war (so-called “defence” comes before it.
People’s needs are met to some extent of course but far from adequately while those without an income of their own that is not enough to keep them alive have to rely on meagre government handouts or food banks, warm spaces and other forms of charity.
The fact that so many simply cannot afford to pay for heat and light is an indictment of capitalism and one of the reasons socialists are socialists and why we want to see it replaced by a system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the productive resources on which society survives. Then there can be production directly to satisfy people’s needs and everybody’s needs will be met.
That’s the weakness of your position. You reject, and even deride, this as the way-out. And so end up seeing food banks and warm spaces as the best we can hope for or at least great victories.
This is about coming together to tell the government to look after the needs of British people, and not the needs of wealthy oil and gas companies.
Oh dear. So this is what playing the only game in town comes down to. Telling the government to look after people’s needs. Pathetic.
I don’t think Don’t Pay can claim all those as “strikers”. The vast majority will be people who simply cannot afford to pay.
On their website they say;
“No individual, no organisation and no political party is coming to save us – it’s up to us to defend our communities and take back power from the profiteers fuelling this crisis.”
Another articles says what they did in 3 December.
But my local council — run by the LibDems also runs such warm spaces:
https://www.richmond.gov.uk/services/cost_of_living_hub/warm_spaces/warm_spaces_charter
After food banks, warm spaces. What an indictment of capitalism, supposedly the only game in town. But it also looks as if “community activism” is not a game in town either. If socialism is impossible, as you claim, the only game would seem to be common or garden reformist politics.
Incidentally, what did you do on 1 December? Cancel your DD or what?
I am still not clear what “striking” was supposed to be. I didn’t pay on 1 December for the simple reason that I hadn’t been sent a bill to pay (I expect it will arrive in January). I suppose it could mean cancelling any direct debit (if you were foolish enough to sign one for your energy company). The consequence of that will be that you, too, will receive in January a paper bill to pay.
So we will need to wait till January to see how many people burn their bill for the last quarter of 2022.
I think all the posts here refuting the propaganda from our resident Voice of Moscow may give the impression that we are anti-Russia in particular whereas we are against both states.
They are both as bad as each other. I suspect there is less freedom of speech in Ukraine than in Russia. In Russia you can’t call the war a war but in Ukraine you must call it a war and it’s a criminal offence to call it anything else, eg an inter-ethnic conflict, and also to call for peace talks. There are dozens of elected MPs in jail there for this.
Now they have started persecuting priests who don’t toe the line as well as discriminating against Russian speakers under their “de-Russification” policies.
Imagine the outcry if Russia pursued a policy of religious persecution and discrimination against a linguistic minority. But they are “our bastards”.
I note that the Arch Witch Doctor of Canterbury was in Kiev recently. I am not sure whether or not he blessed the bombs Britain has sent Ukraine but might as well have gone. They tend to do this sort of thing in war.
I see the Labour Party is adopting the Blair government’s policy of going for irrelevant constitutional reforms recognising that they can’t do much to tame the way the capitalist economy works.
What else can they offer since they fully accept private enterprises seeking to make the biggest profit they can as the driving force of the economy?
Whatever they do won’t make any difference, except a few more troughs for career politicians to get their snouts into while the profit system continues unchanged.
Here, for what their worth, are the details of what they are proposing or at least considering:
That reminds me. Not seen anything in the papers about how many people didn’t pay their energy bill on 1 December. I seem to recall the figure of a quarter of a million being bandied about at one point by the organisers of the “strike”.
What an idiot. That’s a dangerous line of argument (for them) for the government to pursue. The unions and their members might put 2 and 2 together and realise that the government’s sanctions against Russia have added considerably to the cost of living crisis. This hasn’t happened here yet as it has in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and even Czechia.
Hopefully they will and so undermine the government stoking the war there by pouring arms into Ukraine.
I don’t if this is confirmed or not, but it seems that the Iran regime has been forced by the protests into making concessions:
Actually I have been out in the real world and soccer fans are joking at all the virtue signalling that is going on. It was a soccer fan that told me the one about them doing so many gestures that they might fall over. That’s what they are saying down at the pub.
I think the word we are looking for here is “sanctimonious”. Such people have always been fair game. Nobody likes them and tend to take the piss out of them.
I concede that thou might be holier than me.
Virtual signalling as “a powerful force for social change” even if “there is no guarantee the people who are sending the signals are particularly virtuous or committed to the cause.” That’s a new one.
But, while we are discussing virtue signalling in relation to the World Cup, I wonder what the English team will do before the match this evening against Senegal.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Senegal
I’ll be watching to see if can they take the knee and cover their mouths and make some hand signal without falling over.
Unlike the Iranian team whose protest put them and their families at risk, the German team’s action was a textbook case of “virtue signalling” (and could well be cited in dictionaries for years to come as a typical case):
the action or practice of publicly expressing opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.”
It didn’t work. They made a spectacle of themselves. They got accused of Islamophobia. They were kicked out of the competition at the first stage. And they didn’t prevent the German government signing the same week a deal to import gas from Qatar for 15 years.
More politics and soccer. Here’s Arab commentators taking the piss out of the German team’s virtue signalling. What idiot told their team to do that?
