ALB
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We won’t be staying there all the time as we have to go to the opening of this exhibition off Clapham High Street by a local arts group in which we feature.
https://studiovoltaire.org/whats-on/unearthed-collective-where-can-we-be-heard/
Scroll down to the interviews.
This Saturday is “World Car Free Day”. Lambeth Council’s contribution this year is to close Goding Street, which in in ward just behind Vauxhall station, to cars and organise various events there:
This seems worth leafletting so we will be there. I bet the Green candidate will be there on her bike.
Out again today. Over 700 leaflets distributed until rain stopped play (as at the nearby Oval which we could see from the ward though it is outside it where the floodlights indicated that there was a match going on). We managed to get into a number of the blocks of flats this side of the tracks, through luck (following a postman, door open, somebody happened to be coming in or out).
We made sure the New Economics Foundation, the left/green leaning thinktank, whose offices we discovered are in the ward, got a leaflet. The person we gave it to did say that they didn’t like capitalism. Unfortunately they are reformists who are advocating within capitalism a chimeric Green New Deal:
Picked up the LibDem and Green leaflets. They are an object lesson in how to mislead with statistics. Both had bar charts claiming to show that they were best placed to defeat Labour, the LibDems on the basis of the number of seats they got in the council in last year’s elections, the Greens on the basis of the number of votes obtained in those elections. Both irrelevant in the ward since, there last year, it was the Tories who came second in terms of votes, perhaps reflecting the 2000 (out of 6000) electors living in the luxury flats the other side of the railway tracks.
Still some 800 leaflets to be distributed before polling day on 5 October.
Or they could be offered to go on a speed awareness course as an alternative. . .
In fact I don’t see why the whole system of penalty points, etc couple not be retained. No need to re-invent the wheel. Not in other matters too.
After all, we are not designing an ideal new social system from scratch but are proposing a practical solution to the problems generated by society, where it is now at its present stage of technological development, being organised on a capitalist basis (minority ownership and production for sake and profit).
I wouldn’t have thought socialist society would need “men (or women) with clubs” to deal with traffic offences. A simpler solution would be to take away or suspend the offending driver’s licence. As cars would not be owned by individuals but either lent to them or made available to them by a community garage when needed, in both cases on proof of a valid driving licence, a person without a licence would not be able to get a car to drive.
So they have actually gone and done it. It is now illegal to drive at more than 20 mph in a built-up area in Wales. Of course people are not going to respect it but will continue to drive in such areas at a speed between 20 and 30 if there is not too much traffic about and you don’t need a law to tell people not to drive fast pass a school or a hospital.
This hare-brained regulation seems to have been concocted by some desk-bound bureaucrat who has obviously never tried to drive a modern car at 20 mph all the time. Of course it could just be a revenue-raising scheme.
One of the measures that will hopefully be rescinded when we get socialism, if not before.
Full of women like Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi? What a nightmare. As if that would make any difference.
More on this here:
The rise of the ‘Super Distruster’ is a major challenge for communicators
“A diverse population of 16 million people, ‘Super Distrusters’ defy all traditional political and democratic categorisation: Some worry about the enemies of growth, Marxist institutional capture, thought police, cultural erasure and ‘the new elite’. Others worry about a rapacious capitalist class, a reactionary plot against social progress, racist and misogynist police, conservative gatekeepers and ‘the old elite’.”
We will all know people who hold such views but 16 million (29% of adults)? That would be nearly every third person we pass in the streets.
And of course some of the views are true. There is a ruling “elite”. There is a “capitalist class” which is more or less “rapacious” (by economic necessity). We might even be included, in fact probably are.
But this can’t be bad:
“Super Distrusters’ hostility towards the system presents a big challenge for big business and government, which are regarded as the most elite and untrustworthy institutions.”
Could their difficulty be our opportunity?
Most of it but not the western part which at the time (1939) was part of Poland — Lvov for instance was then in Poland. It became part of Russia when under the Ribbentrop Molotov pact of 1939 Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. This part had never been part of Russia and the people there no particular affinity with Russia. Before WW1 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
By coincidence scanning in articles from the January 1939 Socialist Standard this passage from the editorial would seem to have some relevance to the history of Ukranian nationalism:
“The Czechs, who in the last War declared that they were being loyal to Socialism by fighting to dismember Austria and gain Czech independence, have their counterpart to-day in the Ukrainian “Socialists,” who are prepared to back Hitler-Germany in order to secure Ukrainian independence from Poland. One of them told a News Chronicle correspondent (News Chronicle, December 9th, 1938): “Better an alliance with the devil than continued Polish oppression.” Very short-sighted, of course, and incompatible with Socialist principle, but so is all expediency.”
The Greens are resorting to the same underhand tactic that the LibDems are notorious for — distorting the results of previous elections.
In this video their candidate claims that only 500 votes separate the Greens from Labour and that this is “miniscule”.
Actually this is the difference in the results in May last year the 3-member ward between the lowest placed Labour candidate and the highest placed Green candidate. In terms of votes cast for each candidate it was the Tories not them who were second. And 500 votes is not “minuscule”. In the context of a ward where only 1729 voted (less will this time) it’s enormous.
https://moderngov.lambeth.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?XXR=0&ID=226&RPID=67460729
ps. She doesn’t actually live in the ward itself either as she implies right at the start.
It seems the mainstream media are trying to get their revenge on him for his criticism of them, by publicising allegations against him which may or may not be true.
They may have picked a tougher nut than usual to expose (while at the same time increasing their sales and/or advertising revenue) as he has quite a following who agree with him about them. Like his social media followers he is a bit of a conspiracy theorist himself or at least gives these some credence. The media campaign will be seen by them as confirming what he says.
A reconnaissance mission today confirmed that most electors in the ward live in blocs of flats — the rich and super-rich in luxury apartments overlooking the Thames and the rest and the poor literally on the other side of the railway tracks. Not much terraced housing. Which makes the ward difficult for door to door leafletting unless we can get into the blocs on this side of the tracks. We will try on Wednesday. Could well be the most densely populated ward in the country.
We probably won’t bother with the 1500 or so electors living in St. George Wharf and the Tower (a 49-storey skyscraper).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_George_Wharf
Came across Labourite canvassers (two different groups) and exchanged leaflets with their candidate. Distributed about 350 but that wasn’t the main reason for touring the ward. 1600 left for Wednesday abd next weekend.
More online publicity:
https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/elections/SW8%202LJ/
If they are right that Lee Rotherham is this one, the Tory candidate is the die-hard Brexiteer and researcher at the Taxpayers Alliance who has also stood for parliament a number of times.
A typical example might be Steve Reed who was leader of the council from 2006 to 2012 when he quit to contest a by-election in next door Croydon which he won, advancing up the greasy pole. He was one of those who resigned from Corbyn’s shadow cabinet in a bid to topple him. Starmer has just appointed him shadow Secretary of State for the environment and he is surely destined for a cabinet post if Labour wins next year’s general election, another move up the greasy pole.
