ALB
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Someone there likes us:http://thebadolddayswillend.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/i-renew-my-acquaintance-with-spgb.htmlThey seem to be restocking old pamphlets since I don't think we send ordinary enquirers copies of the Questions of the Day pamphlet (last published in 1978). After all, it's selling on Amazon for £95. OK, that's the 1942 edition.
We're already on to this. Conference last year passed a resolution calling for:
Quote:A one-day workshop to be held at Head Office as soon as practical for the purpose of exploring strategies to exploit the current dissatisfaction with capitalismThe first workshop took place last October. See here, A second workshop was held on Easter sunday.
Quote:“Engineering is a subject in which individuals with a dislike for ambiguity might feel comfortable,” they wrote. According to a US survey, engineers were “less adept at dealing with the confusing causality of the social and political realms and . . . inclined to think that societies should operate in an orderly way akin to well-functioning machines”.The Zeitgeist Movement has inherited this mindset via Jacque Fresco who was a supporter of the Technology Movement in his younger days in the 1930s. It finds an echo in their call to "redesign society" and underlies their criticism of democracy as mere consultation of the ignorant and their belief that political discussion is unnecessary as there's only one solution to any problem to be left to experts in the field to find.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Join in the partyhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-dead-durham-miners-1820941Will you be going? It would be interesting to have a report on the festivities.
Morrisey is being unfair to her. According to the last letter here, she was opposed to hare coursing.I didn't buy the English papers today but even this Irish one I bought instead had 4 pages on her. But our friends in the North (East) will appreciate this item:http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/thatcher-was-figure-of-hate-for-many-britons-1.1353232Mind you, it was capitalism rather than Thatcher personally who was to blame for this. Her fault was to enjoy so much doing it.
Actually he's a "no description" candidate not an "Independent" (which is generally the designation used by undercover Tories!). That's of course only as far as the ballot paper is concerned.I missed that Steve is also standing for the County Council (where you don't have a choice of putting some description on unless you are nominated by a registered party):http://content.durham.gov.uk/PDFRepository/StatementOfPersonsNominatedCountyDivisions.pdf
Pity, Steve, you didn't avail yourself of the opportunity to put something on the ballot paper as you can for Parish Council elections but it's a still straight Socialist v Labour fight:http://content.durham.gov.uk/PDFRepository/StatementOfPersonsNominatedParish.pdf
Here's Ian Bone's case for anarchists getting involved in this Left Unity project:http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/why-i-support-left-unity/I can't imagine him making any headway amongst them than he would amongst us.It will be interesting to see where this project goes. Nowhere I suspect, if only because of the first-past-the-post election system for elections in England and Wales. And of course there'll be the problem of keeping the Trot groups out.To give him his due, he does have a sense of humour:http://ianbone.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/the-schism-between-marxism-and-anarchism-is-over-historic-accord-signed/
That's a bit unfair, Ozy. The fact that so many people are rejoicing at her death surely indicates some degree of trade-unionist class consciousness which we must be pleased exists.Anyway, she wasn't really born a member of the working class was she though she was a despicable social climber, even changing her religion (from methodism to anglicanism) to get on. Wasn't she Alderman Roberts' daughter from Grantham (the Town That Died of Shame)?I hear that they are considering putting on her grave the epitaph that Byron wrote for Castlereagh's:
Quote:Posterity will ne'er survey a Nobler grave than this: Here lie the bones of Castlereagh: Stop, traveller, and p
!I know we all hate her here but there's this party pooper article:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialism-or-your-money-back/turn-right-eighties/why-left-needs-thatcherActually, on re-reading it I think, Alan, you should republish it on the blog.
That's what he wrote six months ago. I think he was right as to why she is so hated:
Quote:Thatcher is reviled by some not just because she crushed the left, the Labour movement and the post-war social democratic settlement. It is because she did it with such enthusiasm, and showed no regret for the terrible human cost. A war of sorts was fought in the 1980s, and the vanquished – as is often the case – were left with unquenchable bitternessI know she was just doing what capitalist conditions at the time demanded, but she did enjoy doing it and that's not compulsory in a capitalist politician. That's what makes her so hateful and no doubt why millions up and down the country will be rejoicing at her demise.
By co-incidence there's another measure of class differences in today's media, for instance:http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/454603/20130408/uk-household-wealth-lloyds-tsb-private-banking.htm
Quote:Household wealth in Britain passed a net total worth of £7tn for the first time last year, according to research by Lloyds TSB Private Banking, though the ever-bloating headline number hides a precarious reality for family finances in the country's comatose economy.Incomes for the poorest households have been squeezed by a high cost of living, below-inflation wage growth, and welfare cuts under the government's austerity drive as it seeks to erase the Treasury's budget deficit."While wealth has soared, there is a large divide in where it has accumulated," said Nitesh Patel, economist at Lloyds TSB Private Banking, pointing to the fact that the wealthiest 10 percent of households hold 22 times more wealth than those in the bottom half – at an average of £1.82m versus £82,000.Note that this is a figure for all wealth not just ownership of titles to means of production as it includes houses and other household possessions. If these were excluded, so as to get a more accurate measure of the ownership only of means of production, the inequality, the basis of capitalism, would be even greater.
