ALB
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One Tory MP suffers from the backlash, and not the least but Zac Goldsmith, their candidate for Mayor of London: See here.Serve him right.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Principles can be bought and Bernie is happy to sell his.That's a bit harsh, isn't it? It's not our case that all politicians are unprincipled self-seekers. On the contrary, it's our case that even if they're not they still can't make capitalism work for the benefit of the majority
Refuting those who think banks can create money to lend out of nothing is too easy. Here's an item from yesterday's Times:
Quote:Profits surge ahead at college-owned bankA start-up bank half-owned by a Cambridge University college has reported a fourfold rise in annual pretax profits to more than £10 million in its fourth year since opening. Cambridge & Counties Bank, which is 50 per cent owned by Trinity Hall, right, said that it had made a profit of £10.2 million last year as deposits rose by 21 per cent to £472 million.The Leicester-based lender focuses on small and medium-sized companies across Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire, attracting more than 1,600 business customers. At the end of last year, It had total assets of more than £500 million, with its loan book growing 66 per cent year-on-year to £416 million.Just do the maths. It's up to the currency cranks to produce evidence of a bank lending more than it has in deposits from outside and what it's borrowed from the money market.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Our blog has highlighted this issue judging it to be another form of European nationalism to the Little Englander type but seriously are they suggesting that exiting the EU will reverse Cameron's anti-refugee policies or encourage Labour to welcome refugees.That's the fatal weakness in the argument for leaving from groups like the SWP which claim to have the immediate day-to-day interest of migrant workers at heart. Clearly Britain leaving the EU will make their position worse than it even will be under the "reform" Cameron negotiated.One conclusion would be that they don't have the immediate interest of these workers at heart, even that they want their conditions to worsen so that they'll be more discontented and more likely to follow their vanguard.To tell the truth, I can't really believe that they are that cynical. It's more that they haven't thought their position through. If they had, and that the lot of these workers was their main concern, they should be campaigning to stay in. But maybe having the sovereign ability to introduce state capitalism in one country is a higher priority for them.
alanjjohnstone wrote:On internet surfs i have come across his name a few times – Henry Wallace, Roosevelt's vice-president, who was dumped by the Democrats for being too "radical" and later accused of being a "communist" when running as a progressive independent , arguing for free universal healthcare, labour reform, and the end of segregation.According to yesterday's London edition of Metro:
Quote:Mr Trump blamed Democrat Bernie Sanders' supporters for trouble at his rallies, calling him "Bernie our communist friend".I don't disagree that there is a statistical correlation between the types of tv programmes men and women like to watch (you won't catch me watching Georgian costume "dramas") or between you getting divorced if you're parents were. That is not at issue. What is is what causes the "personality trait" behind this behaviour. Is it something inherited via the genes? Or is it something formed and largely fixed in the early years of life (may even since conception)? I think the evidence suggests the second is the more plausible, as in the discussion here about attachment theory which starts from this basis. It even applies to other animals.The other view has all sorts of difficulties, not least which genes would be responsible and how they would work to directly influence behaviour since what genes determine is the anatomical and phtsiological development of the individual, not their actual behaviour.Genes do determine anatomical and physiological defects or abnormalities in some individuals which will influence (limit in some cases) what the individual affected can do as well as the attitude of society towards them. In fact it is significant that it is only genes determining such defects and abnormalities that have been identified. None determining behaviour such as "marriage status and television watching" have been and never will be since genes don't determine such obviously culturally-determined social behaviour patterns such as these..And of course the claim that they do is also culturally, even politically, determined. Or is voting Tory also heritable?
Could also have been the word "socialist" of course since the "Left" is assumed to be anti-Common Market as a capitalists' club, etc.
Head Office has been sent this statement asking us to endorse it and circulate it to our members and readers, presumably under the misapprehension that we too are Left British Nationalists.http://votetoleaveeuropeanunion.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/it-is-time-for-voices-to-be-raised-in.htmlWe can't and won't endorse it of course but we can gladly circulate the names of those who have endorsed it . Scroll down to see this roll of dishonour, the usual suspects including the CPB, SWP, SPEW, TUSC, Tariq Ali, John Rees, and a handful of left Labour MPs,
I agree that Fisk's stuff is now good, better than it used to be in fact. I detect in this article a bit of a mea culpa for his own previous position.
But that's the point. Your addiction to watching Coronation St is self-evidently learned and nothing to do with your or your mother's genes. How could it not be learned since Coronation St is a product of culture not biology. But, I agree, mockery is the only way to deal with the prosperous claim that television watching is inherited genetically.
Quote:Once we accept that basically everything—not only schizophrenia and intelligence, but also marital status and television watching—is heritable ,http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2899491/If you accept that marital status and television watching are heritable you'll accept anything.
Not really. We've heard these predictions of growing mass unemployment before but they've not materialised. There was an article in last month's Socialist Standard that touched on this:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1338-february-2016/cooking-books-who-owns-machinesIn particular this passage:
Quote:How likely anyway is the first scenario of growing mass unemployment? This has been predicted many times but has never actually come about. Production and employment have continued to expand over time, even if in fits and starts. The growth in productivity resulting from mechanisation is not as fast as is often thought, only of the order of 1 to 2 percent a year; which is slow enough to allow the labour displaced to be reabsorbed in other activities (including machine building).Also, if increasing mechanisation were to lead to steadily growing unemployment this would have the effect of slowing down the introduction of machines. The mass unemployment would exert a strong downward pressure on wages and make it profitable for the machine-owners to employ workers rather than machines.A minor example was reported in the Times (14 December):‘Garage owners said that the number of car-washing machines has more than halved in the past 15 years because they are struggling to compete with migrants doing the job by hand…. [T]he number of automated “rollover” car washes in Britain has more than halved, from about 9,000 to less than 4,200 in 2015. It is estimated that the number of dedicated handwashing sites has ballooned from 4,000 to at least 20,000 over the same 15-year period.’So, while the effect of mechanisation under capitalism might not be as bad as some predict, the full benefits of it will not be able to be enjoyed until the machines are owned in common by society as a whole. Then, and only, then will they be able to be used to turn out plenty for all, to be distributed in accordance with the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’..
Meel wrote:Do you think such a basic income for all employees would lead to employers lowering the wages they pay?Yes, of course, though this would more probably take the form of wages rising less than inflation, i.e less than they otherwise would, rather than an outright cut in money-wages.There's more on this on the other, long-running thread here on this reformist proposal:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/general-discussion/left-and-right-unite-ubi-fight
alanjjohnstone wrote:An ideal opportunity to write a reply to a letter by a Oliver Healey in this weeks WW on 100% reserve banking and banks creating money http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1096/letters/Scroll down to the letter here headed "It's the System:http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1097/letters/
