Young Master Smeet
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http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/tax-credit-cuts-hit-north-9514175
Quote:It is reportedly being considered that they will be cut back to the 2003 level, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated would reduce entitlements for about 3.7m low-income families with children by an average of £1,400 a year, reducing spending by about £5bn.Labour says that 148,000 North East families – or 56% of the total – benefit from tax credits.ADVERTISING House of Commons figures also show that 70% per cent of those claiming them in the region are in work.[…]Figures reveal that 62% of children in poverty live in homes where at least one adult works in a part-time or insecure job with low pay rates that are boosted by these tax credits.Obviously, part of the idea of tax credits was to target child poverty, and the costs of raising a new generation of workers directly, and avoid giving money to childless workers unnecessarily. This could well cause a rise in general wages, but to the benefit of the childless.
Really not sure about this:
Quote:Here we should also take into account the gendered aspect of the conceptions of work that is being used. What is being focused on is the abolition of work in terms of privileged ‘male’ forms of industrial and ‘productive’ work, whilst the female dominated ‘private’ work of care and social reproduction which is harder to eliminate is largely overlooked insofar as it is even acknowledged as work at all. Thus in taking its technological underpinnings directly from the late capitalist present luxury communism seems in danger of also continuing its basis in gender oppression.Labour saving devices in the home have been a big part of the story of automation, robots and virtual people would be able to take on a great many "care" functions. Automation in hospitals is in full swing. When nanotech clothes clean themselves, monitor our health signs and talk to expert diagnostic systems (and even talk to us) it will save social reproduction labour.
Herein Corbyn's sotto voce warning about ill intentioned joiners:A siren call to rag and tag trotkyites of the world to unite in Labour. As one commentator notes, vetting by branches gives the possibility of som branches vetting known local lefties out…
Interestignly, our pamphlet on religion was an exhibit in that expulsion from the assembly, and all the SPA representetives disavowed it…
Those small farmers won't be in favour of common ownership, nor the benefits of applying technology to agriculture. They're not on our side.
I'm faintly bewildered that there isn't even the beginnings of a solidarity mvoement with Greece, surely the left, if it were any force at all to put its money where its mouth is, should be organising across Europe in the defence of Greece in the light of the likely effects of default.Varoufakis remains a confident communicator, this peice:http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/06/18/greeces-proposals-to-end-the-crisis-my-intervention-at-todays-eurogroup/Is a stark reminder of what the 'small numbers' being discussed by commentators here mean in practice:
Quote:Our alleged backtracking on ‘pension reforms’ is that we have suspended the further reduction in pensions that have already lost 40% of their value when the prices of the goods and services that pensioners need, e.g. pharmaceuticals, have hardly moved. Consider this relatively unknown fact: Around 1 million families survive today on the meagre pension of a grandfather or a grandmother as the rest of the family members are unemployed in a country where only 9% of the unemployed receive any unemployment benefit. Cutting that one, solitary pension is tantamount to turning a family into the streets.Apparently Topby young, the prime instigator, has already been informed he won't be allowed a vote: nor a refund of his £3. Fnar…
Yes, and he also finds time to defend anti-abotionism, oppose anthropocentrism, and side with small farmers, still there is a neet line:
Quote:The natural environment is a collective good, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone. If we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all. If we do not, we burden our consciences with the weight of having denied the existence of others. That is why the New Zealand bishops asked what the commandment “Thou shall not kill” means when “twenty percent of the world’s population consumes resources at a rate that robs the poor nations and future generations of what they need to survive”.Good question.
And many of them play the game of Blame the Bankers, tax the rich, anti-imperialism, national liberation: I think the balance sheet is they do more harm than good.
But Vin, that doesn't sound much more reasonable, and the former statement has the added element of clarity (whilst its propositions are reasonable rextrapolations of the latter). Now, I wouldn't say that either of them was better or worse than the other, and I am a big believer in giving speakers and writers a good degree of lattituude in how they express the case: we need to fit in with our personal styles and how we personally relate to the party case. That's why I object to the complaints about Howard's telly appearance, despite the fact that I would, personally, have answered those questions very differently (the only one, though, where I do take big issue is the idea that the left are raising questions and ideas along the right line, rather than culpably spreading confusion).
Oh, well, he's dead, so he doesn't get a vote. Anyway, that phrase has been much disputed, it doesn't necessarily refer to the bureaucratic form or structure of an association, but to the general interests of the class in the class struggle, communists do not form a distinct interest/party but are part and parcel of the interest of the working class. In any case, whatever Charlie's theoretical contributions, tactical matters remain open to us alone and not ghosts.
Unfortunately, some workers behave lamentably, whether they are socialists or not: but we're discussing communication here. The point is you can voice disagreement, with calm dignity, and refuse to sugar the pill. The point of our communications strategy, I'd suggest, was defined by Pope:
Pope wrote:True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, What oft was Thought, but ne'er so well Exprest, Something, whose Truth convinc'd at Sight we find, That gives us back the Image of our Mind: As Shades more sweetly recommend the Light, So modest Plainness sets off sprightly Wit:gnome wrote:Exactly. And what was it somebody once said about the party turning into a cult?Exactly, this is about un-cult-like behaviour. Cults wheedle, weasel, cajole and love bomb their victims, use every trick and trap to ensare them and get them into the cult: being clear anmd honest about where we stand and even driving away the occasional potential joiner is part and parcel of avoiding cultiness.
jondwhite wrote:Socialists have no interests separate and apart from those of the working-class and this means open primaries.That dosn't follow. Open elections do the same job, if any group of workers have a different policy idea, they can have their own party: much clearer and much more democratic.
Yes, a mass movement will have serious disagrements within it: and those figures for membership in the SU and China hardly represent any sort of majority in the class (and also occurred under mobilisde dictatorships). A free movement of freely associating workrs is the goal, and that means rival parties, rather than the empty democracy of open primaries.
