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South Wales comrades are holding a street stall tomorrow, Saturday 1 May, in Cardiff outside the Capitol Shopping Centre, Queen Street (Newport Road end)from 1pm-3pm.
It seems that decentralisation has gone to heads of the local politicians. Not only have they changed the name of their assembly to Senate but there’s also a Capitol. Next they’ll be calling the First Minister a President.
But it’s only a glorified County Council financed almost entirely by the central government in London.
Still, our declaration of principles, commits us to urging the working class to “organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local.”
No politician, no matter how demagogic or potent or capable they are, is going to be able to change what the market is doing.
This is what Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, is reported to have told the virtual climate change conference that Biden summoned last week.
He was talking about it becoming profitable to invest in technologies that reduced CO2 emissions like green hydrogen, carbon capture, more efficient batteries, cheaper renewables.
He may or may not be right about what “the market” is doing, but in any event becoming profitable to invest in such technologies is the only thing that is going to get capitalism to do something about global over-warming.
But what he said is also true outside the context of climate change. Isn’t that what we say about the limitations of what governments can do, given capitalism?
Came across this article from 1926 on sport showing we have been consistent if nothing else:
Postal votes have already been cast in this election.
Copies of the sticker are available on request from spgb[at]worldsocialism.org
Joke candidates like him are presumably trying to make some serious point: I don’t know, but that politics is a farce or that political promises are meaningless or that elections don’t change anything or something like that . It’s on that basis that they get votes from who agree with their point.
But what about this stunt by the Monster Raving Looney Party? Putting up 13 candidates for one seat in this council by-election in Kingston on 6 May.
Is this beyond a joke as they are no longer seeking protest votes but turning an election into a farce?
So that will get him expelled from the Labour Party or have the “Socialist Appeal” trots decided to bore from within anti-lockdown groups? Or maybe he thought Piers was his brother.
Just checked. She is XR.
I also looked up what we said at the time of the referendum on whether or not there should be a directly-elected mayor of London. This is what we said in the editorial of the April 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard which was also printed as a leaflet entitled “Who needs a City Boss?”
Particularly relevant in the context of her proposal to replace the present structure of local regional government in London by citizens’ assemblies is this passage:
“We in the Socialist Party are well aware that in the end whatever arrangements are adopted for local government in London won’t make much difference. This is because such arrangements are to be implemented within the context of the profit system, whose economic mechanisms require all levels of government, however structured, to trim their spending so as not to endanger profit levels whatever people may want–or vote for.”
In other words, citizens’ assemblies might be more participative but that won’t make much difference under capitalism.
She does seem to be only one of 16 candidates standing to talk of “class” and “revolution”. But I think she has some link with XR.
But otherwise what a bunch of self-publicists who have up to £20,000 to spend (£10,000 deposit and up to another £10,000 to pay for the election booklet delivered free to all households).
Then there’s Piers Corbyn. I wonder if he will pick up votes intended for his brother. As a one-time member of the IMG he may be the only ex-Trot standing.
Imposs1904 has just put this item from 2001 on his blog.
It’s taken those in charge of capitalist states twenty years to realise this and begin to try to do something about.
Whatever we think of what they are doing we can no longer say that they are not doing anything at all about it. The “worst case” scenarios that are given such publicity are not going to happen.
It wasn’t even a nine-day wonder and we’ve arranged for this to be the theme of next month’s editorial in the Standard.
Maybe because they calculate that this is a way of retaining the votes they got in the red wall constituencies as they think everybody Oop North is a football fan.
Or maybe it’s because the super league reflects monopoly capitalism while the other clubs reflect competitive capitalism.
Actually I can’t see anything wrong in principle with a league without relegation. That was the situation with rugby in South Wales before it went or was preparing to go professional. The top 16 clubs played against other clubs as well as against each other. There wasn’t really a league table with points. They were just obliged to play each other twice, once at home and once away. All games were friendlies and all that counted was whether a club won or lost that particular game.
It is the league system with points and promotion and relegation that is part of the problem as in the end it’s a question of more money if you get promoted and less if you get relegated. It’s a reflection of competition between businesses in the market place where there are also winners and losers. In fact it is a competition for money between businesses for that’s what football clubs are.
Of course the proposed super league is also about money, a means of stabilising the income stream of the clubs involved by eliminating the risk of it being reduced through being relegated to a less money-making league. But that wasn’t the case with pre-professional rugby in South Wales.
Since then rugby has, sadly but I suppose inevitably given capitalism, gone the way of soccer
That fans don’t count for much and can be dispensed with was demonstrated by matches continuing during the pandemic without the crowd. The businesses that are football clubs continued playing for the income they got from television and advertising.
Professional sport is completely corrupted by money but what do you expect under capitalism?
Interesting that the recall procedure seems to be alive and kicking in some parts of the US, though this one seems to be harassment.
I can’t see how she (or us) can object to the principle and, if she has the support of those who elected her, she should be able to get them to vote down the recall. If not, that would mean she had lost their confidence and was no longer representative of their views.
The same thing could happen in socialism, where the right of recall is likely to be a feature of the democratic electoral system, if a delegate loses the confidence of a certain number of those who delegated them.
