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I suppose we should record that the Tory government has done a U-turn on this, whatever the reason.Another thing Osborne has done is to allow local councils to increase council tax to pay for social care for the elderly — which is precisely what the Green Party in Brighton floated the idea of a local referendum on to get round the central government ban on councils increasing the rates by more than 2%.It seems that even the Tories have come to realise that there are limits to bashing the poor and the vulnerable, if only for fear of losing public support.

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

They don't appear to have spoke in the debate:

The Ecologiste Isabelle Attard has explained her vote on her website/blog headed "For an effective anti-terrorist struggle, I will not sign a blank cheque to the government":

Quote:

Je voterai donc contre la poursuite des bombardements en Syrie, dans l’attente d’éléments sérieux démontrant l’avantage de cette solution sur toutes les autres. Ce vote contre ne signifie pas que je défends l’inaction face au  terrorisme. Bien au contraire. Je suis pour une lutte anti-terroriste efficace, pour protéger tous les Français de futurs attentats.

Rough translation:[

Quote:

I will therefore vote against the bombings in Syria while awaiting serious elements demonstrating the advantage of this solution over all others. This vote does not mean that I am defending inaction in the face of terrorism. Quite the opposite. I am for an effective anti-terrorist struggle, to protect all French people from future attacks.

The deputies who abstained were members of "Gauche démocrate et républicaine" (Democratic and Republican Left ) which is composed of members of the French Communist Party, of the Left Party and diverse other leftwingers. That makes sense. I wouldn't have expected them (the equivalent of Corbyn and McDonnell here) to have voted for.

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Breaking News wrote:

France's parliament has voted overwhelmingly to extend airstrikes in Syria, according to the AFP news agency.A prolonged debate had taken place on whether the campaign should be stepped up in the wake of recent terror attacks in Paris.Lawmakers in the National Assembly approved a motion to prolong the operation by 515 votes to four, and 10 people abstained.

I wonder who the 4 were and why.

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The President seems to have backed down or maybe he's banking on the leftwing parties not being able to get their act together (as does seem difficult):https://uk.news.yahoo.com/portugal-president-meet-socialist-leader-costa-amid-government-102032049.html#T2ie3EtFor any new people looking in on this forum, the Portugese Socialist Party isn't socialist of course. It's only the equivalent of the Labour Party in Britain.

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Nor has there been any Western condemnation of the shooting at helpless pilots by "moderate" resistance fighters parachuting from the stricken aircraft which is akin to shooting at life-rafts from a sunk ship – a war-crime. Another double standard of which there are, of course, many more we can cite.

And dancing around his body shouting "Allah Akhbar". Very moderate. No wonder most people in Syria are either putting up with the government or getting out of the place.

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We've actually got (or had) a leaflet on this very subject:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1990s/1995/no-1090-june-1995/levellers-or-diggersThere might still be some lying around somewhere (certainlt a couple of dozen).

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Young Master Smeet wrote:

The simple question is, why does the UK need to be able to project it's force into the ME?  IS is not an existential threat to Britain, and we can ask many questions about the value of the number of lives that will be saved by bombing IS rather than spending the same sum a different way.

I've been asking that question myself and the only answer I can come up with is to project an image of being a world power (mightier is rightier) and/or to suck up to the US. There is no military necessity (there are enough bombers there already, 3 or 4 from Britain won't make much difference), nor economic (what's happened to austerity?) nor the security of ordinary people in Britain (quite the opposite — it will increase the chances of a Paris here). So it appears that the UK government is prepared to take the risk of a Paris-style massacre here for reasons of power politics and prestige. Which shows that, whatever the reason, is not for our security as people.But the government and the lickspittle media are determined to bomb Syria. Poor Jeremy. He's doing his best to be a voice of sanity but he's attacked relentlessly and stabbed in the back by some of his own MPs.

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Sounds like a complete spectrum of the possible votes: Yes, No, Don't Vote and Cast a Write-In Vote (for Socialism). But what is the "Republican Socialist Alliance" ? A one-man show?

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News from the other Islamic State in this weekend's i paper:

Quote:

Saudi ArabiaPoet sentenced to death for apostasyA Palestinian poet has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam.

But that's presumably ok as it's being done by "our bastards".

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It should be added that the Report on the failure of HBOS also mentions, in addition to risky funding, ill-judged (with hindsight) lending; which of course is another reason why a bank can fail.In his foreword to the Report Andrew Bailey, who is a Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, writes:

Quote:

Both the strategy and operation of HBOS, and its supervision by the FSA, were creatures of the time. The FCA/PRA Report sets out, against the backdrop of almost uninterrupted economic growth over a long period and the rapid development of financial markets, the story of an institution that became unsustainable through its poor risk management, in respect of the credit risk on the assets side of its balance sheet, and on the liabilities side in respect of the vulnerability of its funding. These are, of course, the fundamental building blocks of banking (emphasis added)

Note his taking for granted that banks need funding to make loans as one of "the fundamental building blocks of banking". No nonsense here about banks being able to lend without funding by creating the money to lend out of thin air.The Report itself has something to say on economic conditions of the time:

Quote:

Halifax and Bank of Scotland merged [in 2001]during a period of heightened corporate activity, in the middle of an economic cycle that had begun in the early 1990s. UK domestic economic growth had been relatively steady since the recession of the early 1990s, resulting in an extraordinarily long period (around 60 quarters) of continuous expansion. The growth in the financial services sector was more than twice as fast as the economy as a whole, averaging 6% per annum in the decade preceding the crisis, and increasing its share of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) to around 10%. Confidence in the future prospects of the economy was reflected in both bank and  non-bank equity prices, which rose steadily from the start of 2003 until 2007. As the benign conditions persisted for longer and longer, many perceived that a new paradigm of economic stability had been established.(emphasis added)

One of the "many" who (mis)perceived this of course was Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer until 2007 and Prime Minister when HBOS failed in October 2008 and now a discredited and broken man. Like him, those in charge of HBOS assumed that the boom/bust cycle had been broken and that the "new economic paradigm" would continue indefinitely and accordingly pursued a policy of expanding their lending and finding funding for this. Andrew Bailey says that

Quote:

The criticism in the Report is not that management failed to predict that there would be a global financial crisis.

and then goes on to make such a criticism with a different form of words:

Quote:

Rather, they should have put in place strategies that could in combination accommodate and respond to, in a timely way, changes in external circumstances.

As if the global financial crisis was not a change in external circumstances.The HBOS management was doing what managers of capitalist firms are supposed to do: trying to maximise profits. They aimed quite high. According to the Report, their stategy included

Quote:

a return on equity goal of around 20%.

In fact they lost everything for the bank. They do seem to have taken too many risks but isn't risk-taking what apologists claim is a justification for profit?

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I see the numbskull President of Portugal is still playing silly buggers, thinking of maintaining the outgoing government in a caretaker capacity until fresh elections within six months. This despite the fact that not all members of the capitalist class in Portugal seem all that worried over the possibility of a leftwing government. As one of them says, quoted in this article: "A few steps to the left, well ok":http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/19/us-portugal-crisis-insight-idUSKCN0T80LH20151119#JuMjq9807wzTSd6T.97

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These extracts bring out, once again, the matter-of-fact assumption by practical bankers (as opposed to armchair banking theorists) that banks need 'funding' to make loans and don't just conjure up out of thin air the money they lend..Banks get the money to fund their  lending from two main sources: deposits (retail) and short-term borrowing from the money market (wholesale). The loan-to-deposit ratio shows how much lending is funded by deposits compared with borrowing. It is not a measure of how much a bank can lend out of thin air over and above its deposits, as currency cranks misunderstand.The higher this ratio is the more a bank is relying on borrowing. For it to be too high is considered bad practice because funding from borrowing is more risky than from deposits. The risk is that the rate of interest a bank has to pay for this will rise unexpectedly (as happened after the crash of 2008) and squeeze the margin between that rate and the rate of interest on the loans the bank itself makes, the source of a bank's income as a bank. This is what happened to Northern Rock and, apparently, to HBOS too, putting them in dire financial difficulty.It does seem rather unfair for the authorities to single out some bank executives for doing what they were all doing before the crash, taking advantage of the boom conditions to make as much profits for their shareholders as they could. It will happen again in the next boom whatever the regulations now being put in place after the horse has bolted. Making as much profits as you can while the sun shines is in the nature of capitalism.

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What a load of bollox but I don't suppose the ordinary, nominal Muslim believes that any more than the ordinary nominal Christian believes that at the end of time their bodies will be resurrected.Meanwhile an Islamic judge gets a taste of his own medicine:http://en.abna24.com/service/middle-east-west-asia/archive/2015/11/19/720528/story.htmlBut then as he died a martyr he might like it.

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It will be interesting to see what they decide this weekend. We know what, logically, they should decide to do, i.e join (or rejoin) Labou runder Corbyn as many of them seem to have already done:http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/nov/19/left-unity-party-ken-loach-to-consider-joining-labour-jeremy-corbynWhether a majority will vote for this remains to be seen. But if they don't another mass exit towards the Labour Party can be expected.

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More on Joe Hill here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2000/no-1154-october-2000/joe-hill-songwriter-working-classAnd here's one of his songs that we all (except Robbo ) used to sing at Party socials:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2000/no-1154-october-2000/preacher-and-slave-joe-hill

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