Young Master Smeet
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Yeah, I've seen that, and it has amazing legs, despite his green document saying 'carbon should stay in the ground' or words to that effect.
That does show why the Blairites became obsessed with media control and communications strategies, unrelenting hostility and slippery half truths are a bugger, constant clarifications, etc. make a character look slippery.
alanjjohnstone wrote:The group said its 21-carat one dinar coin weighs 4.25 grams,ISIS are bringing back the 10 bob bit! (1 British Sovereign was 7.98g, over 20 gives us 0.39g to the shilling, OK so that divides into the ISIS dinar as 10.65 but, hell!, who's counting?)
Oh, I see Biehl has a biography of Bookchin coming out (OUP no less!)http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ecology-Catastrophe-Life-Murray-Bookchin/dp/0199342482/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441187162&sr=8-1&keywords=Ecology+or+Catastrophe%3A+The+Life+of+Murray
Alan,that's fine, where, generally, there are grey areas in the party's case, that's why I use the term of the relevant conference resolution 'broad party case' but on issues where a policy is clearly not the party's but one's own, I think we need to be clear. I could write letters to the Weakly Wanking on electoral reform (the party has no position on this), but it would be invidious of me to associate the party with Approval Voting or Condorcet voting, not because such things are against the party case (they're not) but because the party has not held a copllective view on such things.Also, that's why I've chosen to have a friendly discussion, directly (and publicly) rather than wite a tart letter to Jon nor send a thundering branch resolution his way. It's not 'Though shalt not' but 'careful now.'
That's not denying going back to the 1970's and government regulation, investment plans, etc. that's one specific policy (which is the 1940's policy, anyway).
Here's how an open primary in the Socialist Party would look:
Candidate 1 wrote:If elected as candidate I will express the agreed party case, and vote and instructed by the EC and my branch.Candidate 2 wrote:If elected as candidate I will express the party case agreed, and vote and instructed by my branch and the EC.Candidate 3 wrote:If elected as candidate I will express the party's agreed case, and vote and instructed by the EC and my branch.Candidate 4 wrote:If elected as candidate I will express the case the party has agreed, and vote and instructed by my branch and the EC.Candidate 5 wrote:If elected as candidate I will say and vote how I want.The result: Candidate 5 was expelled from the party. And rightly so. Oh, no, she wasn't a party member, was she?
I should have linked to this reply to my letter to the Islington Tribune before: http://www.islingtontribune.com/letters/2015/aug/letters%E2%80%88corbyn-and-ghost-harold-wilsonAs I sort of suspected, some people might like the idea of going back to harold Wilson:
Quote:I’m probably one of the youngest in Islington to remember his reference to Harold Wilson, and miss Wilson’s grasp of facts and reality, including decolonisation, and keeping out of foreign wars.Some people support him because he is going back to the 1970's
2000 is pre-electronic records, I may try and find it sometime because it keeps coming up. The simple answer is to always make clear what is your personal opinion and what is the accepted party case, and avoid the two being confused, that's the minimum. Not signing off letters that don't put the party case (or even asking Weakly Wanking not to put your affiliation on this one) would do the trick.Facebook posts, forum debates, etc. are usually done in your own name (and in the past I've gone out of my way to ensure forum participants around the world are aware that I am not speaking for the socialist party, but as a socialist). When you sign off letters with an org name, essentially you are publishing in the name of the party.I think in general, we take a broad approach to "approved by the Executive Committee or the New Pamphlets Committee." taking anything that has been printed in the Standard, or accepted over a long period as being the broad party case. Obviously, common sense has to apply, facebook and online is like an argument down the pub, a letter to a newspaper is a matter of historic record and is usually a more considered affair.
Quote:Rule 11. Branches, Groups and members shall neither publish, sell or distribute any political literature in the name of the Party, excepting handbills and leaflets, which has not been approved by the Executive Committee or the New Pamphlets Committee. Election Statements and Election Manifestos, being Official Party Statements, must be approved by the Executive Committee.It's a simple matter, the EC recognised (I recall a resolution around 2000) members can sign off letters to the press as members of the party, but plenty of resolutions commit all speakers (and thus letter writers) to broadly put the agreed party case. no-one is stopping you putting forward your own views, but gently asking you, when your views aren't the agreed party position, not to associate the party with them. It's simple common sense.
Speaking of which, do you think it's reasonable, Jon, to sign off letters with your party affiliation when advocating something tht isn't the party platform (open primaries)?
Bringing this thread back seems to be a good way of looking at this site:http://www.spliddit.org/about
Quote:When we say that we guarantee a fairness property, we are stating a mathematical fact. In other words, there are formal proofs showing that each of our algorithms provides rigorous fairness guarantees. The surprising possibility of formulating fairness in mathematical terms is the beauty of the scientific field of fair division, and the force behind Spliddit.It seems to be an attempt to use various fairness algorithms for real world applications, although currently some of them are about splitting taxi fairs and rent, there's an interesting toold for splitting up work (I think we may need to find an occasion for using it for party work).So, for splitting up chores:http://www.spliddit.org/apps/tasks/demoThe types of tasks and the number ofoccasions (or I suppose it could be hours) needed in a given time frame are listed.
Quote:For each row, choose which task you'd prefer. Then, enter a multiplier to indicate how many times you'd be willing to complete your preferred task instead of completing the other task once. For example, if you believe that working the night shift is equal to working one and a half day shifts, select day shift and enter a multiplier of 1.5.Each row is taking the most frequent/longest time task and comparing it once with all the other tasks.Now, this sounds complicated, but I suspect in reality it would give a pretty good division of tasks (I suppose it presupposes everyone knows what the experience of each task is like).So, a whole community couldn't do it at the micro level like their example, but you could have broad professions, sectors, types of work? And of course, many iterations across thousands of different groups would begin to give a genuine evaluation of how people feel about different types of work. Unpopular work would be spared, and we could have a practical basis for a decentralised co-eprative economy.
DJP wrote:Inflation does not affect the amount of value in the economy it is only an increase in the amount of tokens representing that value. To talk of inflation as a means of taxation or means of ending a slump is quite wrong.If the government spends the tokens it creates, it takes value from the other holders of tokens, so it is a tax on holding money. Inflation will eventually destroy the real value of debts (and other financial instruments) demoniminated in a currency.
lanz the joiner wrote:Likewise, the SPGB rejects some aspects of Conservative thinking, but agrees with others. And here I'm referring to their shared belief in the necessity and importance of "austerity" policies in a capitalist economy, as the best/only way to deal with an economic slump.And I think the "back to the 1970s" jibes are actually a good example of this convergence of opinion.Actually, we don't think government austerity can end a slump, we simply recognise that as profits fall, revenues from taxes will fall, and raising tax rates will only harm profitability and keep the slump going (and borrowing doesn't work neither, since government spending is unproductive, it's just recycling profits). Slumps only end when the value of unprofitable capital is destroyed, either through bankruptcies or, as they are trying to do at the minute, through a slow heat death of inflation[*] (actually, falling wages could restore profitable investment, but obviously there are limits to that as well). [*] Yes, inflation is a form of taxation, since it is the state leeching value out of the economy, so I suppose we could count increased taxation as a means of destroying the value of capital, but the state would have to squander that tax money, and not spend it.
