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There was a revealing front page headline in yesterday's Times:

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95% OF NEW WORKERS ARE FOREIGNERS.

Commenting that "Employment levels in Britain are at an all-time high", the article went on:

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The number of people in work increased by 454,000 between July and September last year and the same period this year. Workers born overseas made up nearly 95 per cent of the increase — just over 430,000.

This underlines that Capital needs Labour to expand, that no new new useful things can be made or new services provided without people working. If the workers to expand capitalist production can't be found in Britain then they will have to be drawn in from outside. To restrict this would slow down  this expansion (which is what capitalism is all about) down. As Jonathan Portes, a fellow of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research was quoted as saying:

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The figures once again illustrate that with unemployment at very low levels most of the growth in the labour force — and hence of the economy as a whole — relies on foreign-born workers. Of course, the implication of this is that substantial reductions in immigration, resulting from Brexit or from the government's efforts to cut immigration, will hit growth and tax receipts.

Will the government insist on restricting the immigration of workers at the cost of slowing capitalist growth? Will they listen the xenophobic populists or will they put the interests of UK capitalism first?

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Tim Kilgallon wrote:

Can I suggest a way forward would be for the Mods to reinstate Vin, as soon the EC minutes are published. For the Mods to issue a warning to Vin re the use of duel accounts. For Vin to accept this warning and undertake not to use a duel account again. For the "Machiavelli" account to be closed. For  Vin to publicly withdraw the comments made on the Machiavelli account. For Vin to abide by the rules as they currently stand and thus we free up the Mods time to get on with amending the rules.

As a majority of delegates voted, rightly or wrongly, to give Vin a third chance, this seems a way forward. Going back to the EC would just prolong the disruption of this forum. I take it that "duel" is a (perhaps deliberate) misprint for "dual" and that it means that Vin's second account which he has been allowed to use since his suspension will be closed and that Vin understands this.

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gnome wrote:

the alleged sock-puppet account was not opened until 9 November, no doubt foolishly,

It wasn't just foolish. It was framed as a nasty attack on the party as if it had come from an opponent:

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I'm afraid the SPGB doesn't know the 'truth' even when it is democratically decided! An 'elite' decides the 'truth' even today never mind in socialism!

In fact it is unbelievable that such a thing could have been written by a party member. Party procedures may be slow and cumbersome but they are still democratic. ADM floor resolutions are not self-enforcing but recommendations to the EC which decides if and how they are to be implemented, so the moderators could not simply act on the one in question but had to wait for what the EC decided and instructed them to do. For all they know (and we know) there might be conditions attached to lifting the suspension.And it wasn't an "alleged" sock-puppet but an open and shut case of one, a textbook example.

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In the review of the book by Micah White on The End of Protest we said we would say how he did in his bid to become Mayor of Nehalem in rural Oregan. Here it is:http://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=770He got 36 votes (20%). The election was won by his Republican Party rival with 138 votes. His election programme was revolutionary but parish pump stuff.More on the election here.

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Theresa May has just said that a post-Brexit Britain will be the "global champion of free trade":http://news.sky.com/story/theresa-may-uk-is-global-champion-of-free-trade-10656863i.e. of more globalisation, but isn't the effects of this on some being said to be one reason for the Brexit vote and the election of Trump?  I don't think she understands that Britain on its own will be a minor player on the world market compared with the US, the EU (and its single market), China and Japan. The tendency is towards big, regional customs unions which do trade deals with each other. The sort of hard Brexist she and some of her ministers want would be a move in the opposite direction. A Britain outside one of these unions may be able to do deals with Canada and Australia but these are countries with small populations and so small markets.

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Here's the take of the "Freeworlder" (who stand for a money-free world) on this proposal:http://freeworlder.com/2016/11/06/universal-basic-serfdom/I'm not sure that the motive behind the proposal is to head off any moves towards getting rid of money (as opposed to streamlining and saving costs on the so-called welfare system). But he does make a valid point against those who, on the contrary, see it as a move in this direction:

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As my good friend Rafi succinctly put it; “how does more money get you to no money?”

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twc wrote:

Can anyone supply a link to just the plain non-annotated statement of our Object and Declaration of Principles?As the  banner we fight under, it is far superior.

It's here, for instance:http://www.worldsocialism.org/english/object-and-declaration-principles

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We practise what we preach. The 2007 SPGB Conference passed the following revolution:

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Be it resolved that all material created and published by the Party shall be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs copyright licence.

This means that anybody can freely use what we publish as long as they attribute it to us and don't change it.More on this type of copyright here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license

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I think you must mean this article accessible from the website of our companion party in Canada:https://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/imagine.200505.may.pdfHere's another article from us on the same subject:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2006/no-1217-january-2006/intellectual-property-further-restriction-persona

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The both of them had the same protectionist policy as a way of supposedly reviving employment in the rust belt. Trump won because he got the vote for this as well as those of traditional Republicans (and also because of the undemocratic US presidential election system). We'll see how protectionist Trump will be be and if he really will provoke trade wars with China and Japan.

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This is the best anti-anarchist (and anti-insurrectionists in general) song of all time (just as Rovics's is the best against the vanguardists — we play his all the time at our Head Office in Claphm High St)::https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPXnoLAEUSQThey fight  the state and the state wins …

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We now know the date and candidates. It's Thursday 1 December and there are 8 candidates, which is low for a by-election. There's the outgoing MP (Goldsmith), the Liberals, Labour. Since the Greens and UKIP are not contesting (calling for a vote, respectively for the LibDems and Goldsmith) the popular saying of yesteryear lives again :

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Labour, Liberal, TorySame old fucking story

Only Goldsmith is not standing as a Tory but as a Nimby. The other candidates are: the nasty Christian Peoples Alliance (which wants to ban abortion, gay marriage, and sex that's not for procreation), the Monster Raving Loony Party, two independents and a rich eccentric with more money than sense.The LibDems fancy they can win and are pouring resources and people into the campaign. I've already had two of their canvassers knock on my door and had six leaflets from them. They are trying to turn it into a referendum against "hard Brexit". Goldsmith, like his dad nororious asset-stripper Sir James Goldsmith who founded and financed the Referendum Party in the 1997 general election (and who Private Eye dubbed "golden balls" because he was always suing them), is a Brexiteer.We shan't be contesting but we will be doing something, eg holding a lterature stall, to be decided at West London branch meeting on Tuesday.

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I have to confess that I started reading your post but then gave it up as a waste of time.

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Just ordered his book on the Open Economy. Previously ordered Peter Joseph's new book  The New Human Rights Movement due out next March. We'll review both in the Socialist Standard.

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Actually, I remember contacting him in 2011 or 2012 when  his Free World Charter video first came out. He's from Ireland as is rather obvious from "the strong regional accent" of the commentary.

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