ALB
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Interesting to see that deliberately spoiled ballot papers, which we used to get mocked for for advocating when faced with a choice of pro-capitalist candidates only, is gaining some legitimacy as a political tactic when you don’t agree with the options on offer:
Since everybody seems to be doing it I think I’ll take a photo of my write-in vote for socialism on 23 May (if the election takes place).
I’ve worked it out. 1,411 people voted. Of these 59 cast one of their two votes for the Socialist candidate. That’s 4.2%.
We always do better in local than in general elections but this is better than usual even in local elections and no doubt reflects the electoral and other activity put in in Folkestone over a number of years. It will also reflect that last time four years ago, when we got 35 votes, TUSC was also standing. This time the weren’t but one of the Labour candidates elected had stood for them in 2014.
A Brexit Party leaflet has just dropped through my letter box. They are quick off the mark. I suppose they want to get their stuff out before the government cancels the elections (as they intent if they can get a deal with Labour). Among those on the leaflet calling for a Brexit Party vote is ex “Revolutionary Communist Party” Trot, billed as a “writer”, Clare Fox who says: “Left-wing democrats should vote to deliver the referendum result”. Presumably she still regards herself as “left-wing”.
Here is the result of the election in the ward in Folkestone and Hythe District Council that we contested. Not worked out what it is in percentage terms (difficult anyway, as electors had 2 votes). Incidentally, the result was a Labour gain (from Tory and ex-UKIP).
We also stood a candidate for Folkestone Town Council. Result not yet published.
It’s a bit surprising that no mention has yet been made here of the report of the Committee on Climate Change published the other day. At least this report shows that capitalist governments realise that global warming is a problem and that they are going to try to do something about it. The proposal is that the UK should aim to go “carbon neutral”, i.e that emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere should be balanced by counter-measures to take an equivalent amount out , by 2050 (the XR people want the government to aim for this by 2025) and sets out measures that should be taken to achieve this.
Of course it remains to be seen how successful implementing such a policy will be, as in the face of resistance from vested interests and of loss of competitiveness if the governments of other countries don’t follow suit and, of course, doing this just in Britain won’t have much effect on its own.
No doubt something will be done, and it will have some effect, which will mean that the worst case scenarios, based on the assumption that nothing will be done, won’t take place. What happens might be bad, but it won’t be that bad. We shouldn’t base what we say about global warming on the assumption that capitalist governments will do nothing about it. It should be that under capitalism the problem can’t be dealt with adequately.
I am always suspicious of talk about “debt-based” money or economies as it suggests that the user thinks bank loans are somehow created out of thin air by a keyboard stroke. Capitalism is not based on interest and debt-slavery but on profit and wage-slavery.
Anyway, since bank loans are not created out of thin air but come from money the banks have (from deposits and what they themselves borrow), cancelling all debts would cause chaos to the capitalist economy (would indeed “up end” it) as, at the personal level, the banks would have no income to pay interest on people’s savings. In fact, they’d collapse and people lose their savings. Not going to work. Or not going to provoke the intended response. XR would get a different reaction to just causing traffic chaos for a few days.
I hadn’t heard of them either till yesterday. They had a stall in Trafalgar Square with some publications. I must confess I didn’t look at them because the hammer-and-sickle logos put me off. I think they are more a magazine. Following the various trotskyist sects is complicated enough without having to add the maoist ones. But I imagine there are 57 varieties of them too.
Just read through some of the leaflets I picked up at the May Day rally in London yesterday. This one headed “In or Out of the EU – The Rich Will Still Rule!” is really quite good. But for a reference to future “socialist countries” it could almost have come from us. No idea who they are but they appear to be Maoists.
(My browser says the link is insecure but you can get round this, but if anyone can’t and wants to read the text I can post it here; it’s not very long).
Three of us were at Trafalgar Square for the trade union event there. We listened to John McDonnell promising the reforms a Labour government would bring in , but there was worse, this banner of some Turkish Maoist group.
“As I understand it that is all derived from , like communism , from the Greek word ‘communicate’ which is similar but begins with a K. And sort of had ‘double’ meaning of to ‘talk etc’ and to share; as in share knowledge and information or whatever.”
I think the word you are referring to will begin “koin”. “Koine” is in fact a word used in linguistics to describe a type of language.:
“Koine, also spelled koiné, originally, a contact variety of the Greek language that was spoken throughout the eastern Mediterranean region during the Hellenic and Roman empires. The term comes from the Greek koine (“common” or “shared”), ( …). In linguistics, the term koine is now applied to any modified language variety that has developed from contact between dialects of the same language or, in some cases, between languages that are genetically or typologically related.”
The christians’ “new testament” was in fact written in koine Greek.
Greek had and has no letter C but then it serves no purpose in English as it’s pronounced either as a K or as an S. On the other hand, Latin didn’t really have a K because that’s how C was pronounced.
Yes Milton Keynes is within the South East Election Region. In fact, in the last Euroelections in 2014, we had Royal Mail distribute our leaflet to every household in the Milton Keynes North constituency. At the moment there is no activity planned there this time. So far what is planned in the northern part of the election region is to attend the meeting in Oxford on Thursday 9 May and the event in Burford on Saturday 11 May. Still contacting a comrade in Banbury about activity there.
One of the candidates on our list, Stephen Harper, will do the one on the IOW, He just needs to get the ferry from Portsmouth.
We’ve had invitation to three meetings:
Wednesday 8 May from 7pm: MEP Hustings, Anthony Mingella Theatre, Quay Arts, NEWPORT, Isle of Wight. Organised by Islnders4Europe.
Thursday 9 May 7.30pm to 9pm: Our choices in the European elections. Wesley Memorial Church, New Inn Hall St, OXFORD. Organised by Oxford Communist Corresponding Society.
Wednesday 15 May 7pm to 9pm. CHESHAM (Bucks). Details to follow.
Mike Foster will do the one in Oxford. Ideally, Dave Chesham ought to return to what must have been the town of his fathers. We are still looking for a candidate to cross over from the mainland to the Island (and back).
The opening shots of our campaign were fired on Saturday with the distribution of our “We’re Standing Here” at this International Workers’ Day event in Oxford.
Alan mentioned somewhere (but I can’t find where) that the Extinction Rebellion people were standing candidates in the European Parliament elections. That explains why there are so many independent non-party candidates standing in London, 11 in fact. Nine of these are XR people.
Their being prepared to put their views to the test of public support is to be commended but what they are doing does not make sense. First, there is no way of telling which of the 11 independents are theirs. Second, they are not standing as a list (independents cannot), so you can’t validly vote for all of them, i.e. they are competing against each other. Third, each of the 9 has had to be pay a deposit of £5000, that’s a total of £45,000, which they won’t get back since none of them will get past the 2% bar for getting it back especially as they are competing against each other.
Presumably, it’s some short of publicity stunt, a rather expensive one I would have thought.
But it does mean that the number of vaguely radical groups standing anywhere is not made up just of the Animal Rights Party and the Women’s Equality Party. We are the only list that others would qualify as “left of Labour”, i.e. none of the other parties claiming to be socialist are standing.
It looks then as if these elections will be a proxy referendum. The Daily Express is claiming that over 90% of electors say they will vote. I’ll believe that when I see it, not that anything published in that rag is to be taken seriously. Even so, the turn-out could be the highest ever in elections to the European Parliament. It could even break through the 505 barrier for the first time ever. If they take place, that is.
