ALB
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Now free electricity:http://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/news/2014/03/17/british-gas-to-offer-free-energy-on-saturdays/Note that British Gas doesn't think people will grab more than they need :
Quote:“Ninety nine per cent of customers would use this responsibly for the right reasons. There may be 2 to 3% of people out there who do have a very strange use or extreme behaviour. I will go for the greater good.”Positive Money are trumpeting a claim that a couple of articles in the latest issue of the Bank of England's Quarterly Bulletin back up their theory, in particular the second, which argues:
Quote:banks do not act simply as intermediaries, lending out deposits that savers place with themThey seem to have ignored the word "simply" as well as this passage in the article which explains that banks must have or get the funds to back up their lending, even if these don't all come from deposits that savers place with them:
Quote:Figure 1 showed how, for the aggregate banking sector, loans are initially created with matching deposits. But that does not mean that any given individual bank can freely lend and create money without limit. That is because banks have to be able to lend profitably in a competitive market, and ensure that they adequately manage the risks associated with making loans. Banks receive interest payments on their assets, such as loans, but they also generally have to pay interest on their liabilities, such as savings accounts. A bank’s business model relies on receiving a higher interest rate on the loans (or other assets) than the rate it pays out on its deposits (or other liabilities). (…) The commercial bank uses the difference, or spread, between the expected return on their assets and liabilities to cover its operating costs and to make profits In order to make extra loans, an individual bank will typically have to lower its loan rates relative to its competitors to induce households and companies to borrow more. And once it has made the loan it may well ‘lose’ the deposits it has created to those competing banks. Both of these factors affect the profitability of making a loan for an individual bank and influence how much borrowing takes place. (…) Banks therefore try to attract or retain additional liabilities to accompany their new loans. In practice other banks would also be making new loans and creating new deposits, so one way they can do this is to try and attract some of those newly created deposits. In a competitive banking sector, that may involve increasing the rate they offer to households on their savings accounts. By attracting new deposits, the bank can increase its lending without running down its reserves, as shown in the third row of Figure 2Alternatively, a bank can borrow from other banks or attract other forms of liabilities, at least temporarily. But whether through deposits or other liabilities, the bank would need to make sure it was attracting and retaining some kind of funds in order to keep expanding lending.(emphasis added)This is a good enough description of how modern banks work, though it is not clear that "attract" is the right word to describe how the "other liabilities" are acquired since these will be what the bank itself borrows, "liabilities" being what the bank owes others (as opposed to what others owe them, or "assets"). So, from this angle, banks are "intermediaries" between those who lend them money and those they lend money to, even if it is not as "simple" as that.
Maybe, but there's more (from the blogger not the PhD):
Quote:The argument proceeds to the exposition of grid and group, both as a 'polythetic' system of classification and as one based on a matrix rather than a hierarchy. This provides us with a potentially dynamic classificatory approach. (…) Utopianism is discussed in the framework of the relationship posited by grid and group, between spatial and temporal aspects of the cosmology and the social structure.What is "polythetic" and what's cosmology got to do with?
Quote:Their roots lie in an 'essentialist' tradition of static hierarchical classifications of dynamic phenomena.The rest of it reads like a spoof too.
Ozymandias wrote:Actually, he wasn't at his worst in this particular interview. That's when he's addressing scientists and technologists and uses technobabble to try to flatter and impress them. He's much better in this kind of short 10-minute interview, though this wasn't his best. The viewer will still have got the idea that he was advocating a non-monetary system in which there will be production directly to satisfy needs. And I see he has moved on to attacking "capitalism" by name without apologising (though he still apologises here for using "exploitation" for fear of being taken for a Marxist).
Nine of the 17 NE Branch members on the books voted to adopt the Form C and so to reconstitute the branch as the North East Regional Branch. Unfortunately, most of these are not on the branch online forum. Finding a way round this should not be impossible, even if postal ballots are not ideal.
I see what you mean:http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2730577&postcount=75Should be interesting to compare the two nationalisms with us in the middle opposing both.
slothjabber wrote:the Internationalist Communists-Klasbatalo group from Montreal.Does that mean they're into Esperanto? If so, they might be interested in our stuff in that language: http://www.worldsocialism.org/othlang.php#eo
The difference between a democratic reformist (Social Democrat) and a group of vanguardis reformists (Leninists), I suppose.While I'm writing, what's with this RIP stuff? It's Catholic theology as the Protestants preach that when you die you stay dead till Judgement Day when your body is resurrected, i.e there is no soul to rest in peace. As Benn was a Protestant Christian this might even be what he expected to happen to him. Both theologies are bollocks of course. When you die you're dead and that's it. All that survives is other people's memories of you.
I think it's got something to do with the role of the vanguard party. You've got the Bordigists, as super-Leninists, at one end of the party spectrum (like this lot who have just emailed this to us) and the Pannekoekians, who reject the whole concept of the party, at the other. This lot seem to be near the Bordigist end more so, perhaps surprisingly, than the ICC.I think that arguments about the precise day that the Bolshevik revolution degenerated also come into it.
Just looked at this. I think you're exaggerating a bit, Brian, but he says one thing that's very true:
Quote:The biggest obstacle to Revolution is your belief that it's impossible.http://russellbrand.com/revolution/youtube/Anyway, we shouldn't put down someone who's playing a role in re-introducing the word "revolution" into political discussion, especially as he's taking it away from the view that it's an armed insurrection led by an elite vanguard.I've signed up to his mailing list to see what sort of other stuff he'll be putting out. Maybe just publicity for his coming book (which should also be interesting).
Surely, Ozy, this kind of scenario for present times is refuted by the other one on the same sort of subject you posted the other day:http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/06/not-even-climate-change-will-kill-off-capitalismIt seems to be another example of Zizek's saying that the end of civilisation is seen as more conceivable than the end of capitalism.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Is his interview with the Socialist Standard from the 1970s online?No (not yet) but here's the front cover of that interview in the Januaet 1980 issue:The introduction to the interview reads:
Quote:Tony Benn may be the next Labour Prime Minister of Great Britain. Almost alone among the Labour leaders, sunk in a gloom as they are after their party's defeat last May, he offers a plan for Labour's future, with an optimism that they will one day once again get power over British capitalism.So we were surprised when he agreed to be interviewed by the Socialist Standard about his policies and attitudes as he expresses them in his recent book Arguments for Socialism. Defenders of capitalism are notoriously difficult to persuade to match their case against ours. The interview (which Tony Benn preferred to call a debate) lasted an hour and our published account of it has needed to be abridged.In truth, Benn's plan for Labour's revival is little more than a paper thin assumption that, with a few constitutional changes, his party will be able basically to alter its nature. It will, he hopes, be able to throw off its past as a party which has run capitalism firmly in the interests of the capitalist class and begin to run society in the interests of the majority. There is no evidence to support this assumption; indeed after every electoral failure Labour tries to bolster its confidence by telling itself, and us, that it can and will change.Benn's political ideas are basically that if there are enough small reforms imposed upon capitalism the system will, in a way which has yet to be explained, suddenly stop being capitalism and become socialism. In the case of Benn, even this shaky argument might have been a little stronger if he had been able to give any idea of what socialism is or even to know whether the Labour Party stood for socialism.He claims that reforming capitalism is "doing something", as opposed to socialists who are "pure" and "impotent". This is a familiar, not to say exhausted, argument – one which continues to exist only because those. like Benn, who put it forward do so by ignoring reality and experience.The working class have had plenty of time to become familiar with Labour governments and with Labour politicians who – no matter what the effect of their anti-working class policies, no matter how obvious their failures to eliminate capitalism 's problems tirelessly assure us that a vote for Labour is a vote for a better society. This, again, flies in the face of reality.One final point. Benn, as we have said, is a leading politician But his justifications for capitalism, and his objections to the principles of revolutionary socialism which are uncompromisingly put forward by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, were exactly the same as those we confront all the time, wherever we are and whenever we state the case for the new society of common ownership.Naturally, there will be an assessment of Tony Benn's political life and positions in the April issue (by, as it happens, one of those who interviewed him 34 years ago).
That reminds me. Following an EC decision last year we sent the following declaration to the Electoral Commission on 10 January:
Quote:DeclarationWith regard to the Scottish Referendum of 18 September 2014 and with a view to being designated a “permitted participant” in it, the Socialist Party of Great Britain hereby declares that it will campaign for the outcome to be “Neither YES Nor NO” on the grounds that whether or not Scotland is an independent country is a non-issue for the majority as whether they are governed — and austerity imposed — from Edinburgh or London is irrelevant.They replied:
Quote:In your letter you declared for neither Yes or No. The legislation requires that a permitted participant identifies the outcome for which you are campaigning. In the referendum there are two outcomes Yes or No.In a further email they explained that if we registered to campaign for, for instance, No we could then campaign for what we wanted. In fact, it appears that you can register for No and campaign for Yes and vice versa:
Quote:Any campaigner registering as a permitted participant in the referendum has to identify the outcome for which they are campaigning. You will see that the form has a Yes or a No option and PEF online has the same. Clearly it will be up to you which outcome you identify with. There is no requirement in the legislation that you then have to campaign for the outcome you have identified.We haven't taken the matter any further yet. It's due to be discussed at our Conference over Easter in AprilThere is no requirement to register as a "permitted participant" unless you plan to spend over £10,000. Which I don't suppose we will be. So in any event we will still be able to distribute leaflets putting over the socialist position on the referendum, whether vote NO and write WORLD SOCIALISM across the ballot paper or just write WORLD SOCIALISM across it.
