Off Topic Political Debate

On the subject of the defacing of the war memorial - I'm not intending to condone it in any way, but can I play Devil's Advocate here? The Establishment and the people in general are right to express outrage at what happened, but are those few words and actions by one person on a memorial to the dead really worse than the words and actions being carried out here and now by a government against its own living people?

Just a thought...

 

I see many within the Labour party are now turning on their comrades in the union movement for promoting Miliband with his left /anti inspirational agenda.
It should be interesting watching the internal battle between the left and right rage for a few months. One of the Labour party's main problem would be is how to raise the required finance if they upset the paymasters. Fortunately they have 5 years to save up.

 

There have been several similar incidents in the past few years, it is what they do.

 

...... and is that claim post election then? Being a bit pedantic but it was suggested that this was done by the new lot.
I think it is terrible whenever it was decided. I get a couple of hundred pounds or so for being over 60 in the winter as a fuel allowance. I have never asked for it, do not think it is right so as a result donate it to charity. I am also entitled to a bus pass which I do not apply for as I can afford to travel at my own cost. If the government wants to save welfare costs they need to look at these freebie benefits given to people who neither need nor ask for them. Not to help disabled people into work is short sighted and just plain wrong. I think a few of you know I am not the world's greatest advocate of public sector employment but I would employ every single disabled person who wanted to be employed in state employment doing anything that would give them dignity and respect whilst at the same time strengthening the lasw on large private companies to have a mandatory duty to use a percentage of their workforce with disabled people.

I can think of dozens of areas to save on government spending before I touch those who cannot protect themselves. (Controversial and unpopular but I start with Trident)

 

Of course. We will now have a referendum on Europe which will further isolate us, but will be able to scrap nasty things like the human rights act and keep the 'goodies' like TTIP. The death toll due to welfare cuts will continue. The number of food banks will increase. There will be tax breaks for the rich and cuts for the poor, which will be explained by fear of the rich leaving the country if we don't.....really ! The possibilities of war on the one hand, and refugees drowning on the other, will increase. All of this based on an antiquated non representative voting system and a result based on a solid diet of nationalism (anti Scotland, anti immigrant, anti EU). I understand that Cameron's first actual act (despite all of Britain's problems) will be to repeal the ban on fox hunting so that his Eton friends are happy. What is a piece of graffiti against all this ?

 

Do you think the internal battles in the Labour Party will be greater than the EU inspired warfare that will consume the Tories?

 

no

 

You cannot condone one thing by disliking another. Disrespect to people who have given their lives for their country is abhorrent. What has a stupid return to foxhunting got to do with it? Anyway we were told that the ban on fox hunting was going to cause mass unemployment of hound masters and thousand of deaths of hunting dogs so I am sure there cannot be any people or hounds left can there ? (When we were living in Wales there were regular fox hunts and the score of kills each year was published - not a sport of course but purely a farming measure !!!!!!)

 

So we had our zero hour then and squandered it in 1951? I wonder why? Had Labour messed up the economy - surely not.
I accept an anarchist might not define themself as unemployed but for the rest of us that individual who does not have a paid job is considered unemployed - whether or not they claim benefit - that was not the allegation.
I know dozens of Quakers - they are all in employment. They are all pacifists - like me - and Theo many do not believe in God as many people understand "him" to be.

 

I have not condoned anything Leo - if you had actually read one of my previous posts you would know my reaction to the war memorial thing. But it was just one act done by one person - the actual demo I can happily condone, but not any ensuing violence.

 

I am not going to get side tracked into a stupid definitions game Leo. I simply did not like people being portrayed as Anarchists as a form of insultory term. True anarchism is something different from this. As to classifications of employed, unemployed, self employed, freelance etc. there are people who fit non of your catagories - and a person who is not claiming benefit of any sort and not living from crime has a right not to be catagorized.

 

The policy assessment certainly was written pre-election, but acted upon post-election - hardly surprising really.

I too get the winter fuel allowance - although I do use it to help for fuel costs, which for some inexplicable reason are higher up here. I was given, rather than applied for, a bus pass - but don't use it as public transport is so poor in this part of the country. I agree with you over other welfare costs - I'd be interested to know how many who don't need the State pension actually collect it anyway. As far as I'm aware, it's not means-tested, as it is in Australia.

Scrapping Trident controversial and unpopular? Not up here - come and join us...

 

For Labour to survive as a party they need to finish the reform started by John Smith and Tony Blair. They have got to lose the 'union dominated tag', fortunately they have plenty of time to

The demo in which two policemen needing hospital treatment and 17 arrested for a range of offences.

They did not demonstrate peacefully.

 

The trouble is Cologne that with you I feel most of your arguments DO get involved with definitions. You have a view of what socialism is that is very different to many others I see, you do not seem to see left and right in the same way, you want to define Democracy in tight terms rather than accepting there are many forms of government that fall within democracy's broad umbrella and you espouse the Green cause but when I posted at your request a list of things I had trouble with on them you said Greens were different all over the place and German Greens and English Greens had different policies (correctly I may add) but no help in defining what Greens are, you do not accept the common view of anarchists preferring to give us what "true" anarchism is (if there is such a thing). You now seem to not want us to talk about employed and unemployed, self-employed etc etc without a "proper" understanding of them. Yet you assert that certain people have a right not to be categorised. Has it been my imagination or have you categorised the rich and bankers - do they not also deserve the right not to be categorised.
Most of us on here get by with using terms slightly loosely and without even knowing a strict definition of what they are - you are the prime example here of a person constantly demanding the "stupid definitions game"

 

That's me told then...thought I was being patronised there for a moment. Not sure you have a monopoly on knowing Quakers Leo.

 

Labour are in no danger of failing to survive as a party. They may veer more to the right under the likes of Blair or to the left as under Foot but they know broadly who they are. They are people who believe in a more equal society, one where fairness takes precedence over creating profit and where the state plays an important part in life. They will have no problem surviving. On the other hand the Conservatives do not seem to have such cohesion. They are a mixed bag of people some with a moral conscience who do not want people suffering undeservedly -but equally do not want people who do not need hand outs to have them but at the other end are some who do not seem to care a fig for ordinary people but simply want a society like Harry Enfield's "loads-a-money" where profits and excess are simply good things and the enormous difference in wealth between rich and poor does not matter - they have diametrically opposed views on the likes of Europe and I can see the Tories splitting themselves in two far sooner than I could see Labour having an internal rift.

 

Sorry - I only mentioned it in passing - seems everything I say these days is taken as me being patronising or arrogant. Perhaps it is the style of how I write but I would have thought that after 4 years on here people would recognise my style and be able to dismiss perceived "arrogance" as an unfortunate argument style. I do not do it deliberately but am not sure how I can put my points across in other ways - we each have a style. I took leave of absence from here for 2 months recently precisely due to that. Andy accused me of trying to drive him from the board and then left. I felt responsible and decided perhaps that I should leave rather than upset others. I did a lot of soul searching during that time as I had liked Andy, only disagreed with some of his views but respected that they were his genuine opinions and hated that he felt I had driven him out. I re-read everything I had written that he had complained about and criticised and honestly came to the conclusion that it had not been my fault but that perhaps Andy had his own "demons" at the time. Even now I would gladly quit this board if other posters resent my style too much. It is only a discussion forum for goodness sake.

As for me having a monopoly on knowing Quakers - I never said I had. What I do know is that a number of "practising" Quakers that I know have no belief in god as he/she is generally perceived. I had argued that Quakers derived from a religious sect in centuries past and as such were religious and believed God. I was "told" that I was incorrect. So here I slipped in an aside and got accused of patronising you. What it does do is lessen my enjoyment of this board when people cannot just argue their points - for example tell me that I am wrong and that Quakers do believe in God - but no - it is taken personally. F*cks me off to be honest. I could say more but this has been a rant as it is.

 

I actually had deleted that post which is why it wasn't finished.

I do think Labour is much more diverse than you obviously do. Although they now have the luxury of time they have to sort out their financial reliance on the trade unions. As shown on this forum there are many Labour supporters that would like to drag the party back to the Kinnock /Foot kind of socialism which would make them completely unelectable in modern Britain. Of course after the left /right joust common sense will prevail and the relaunched Labour Party will copy the successes of Blair by moving to the centre ground.

Until they realise that there are 5 million self employed people in the UK, the average voter does not like strikes, state intervention and anti aspirational rhetoric they will not make any progress.

 

I admit to being difficult sometimes Leo. The problem is that the original definitions of left and right were purely economic ones until the second world war where the left had to distance themselves radically from the Nazis. There are 2 ways of defining this - the one where 'left' is reserved only for those ideologies which seek either collective, or state ownership of the means of production. According to this definition any party which accepts capitalism in any way must, by definition, be on the right. Once you accept capitalism then the debate becomes one of Keynesianism vs monetarism - in other words the role of the state within capitalism. I confess to wandering from one definition to the other. Nobody has defined democracy too closely - partly through fear that if they did then they would have to change their systems. Of course every country wants to call itself democratic but the word is not a finished process. Funny how we say that capitalism has to grow or it will wither away but do not say the same about democracy - very convenient. But the minute Democracy stops democratizing it starts to disappear. About the Greens - you didn't actually post a list of points which you disagreed with but rather a whole chunk of their manifesto, part of which I read and answered in another post, but not knowing which parts you particularly objected to I could not respond more than I did. I think it must be clear that an Anarchist searches for autonomy. This is not just playing with words because a person cannot be against the state on one hand and ask for handouts from it on the other. I would have thought that was clear. I admit to being a bit ruffled by your claim that if a person didn't have a paying employer then they must be unemployed but I don't think such a technicality is worth falling out about.

 

There are even differences between Quakers Leo. Their original name 'The society of friends' says everything ie. friends to Jesus (not followers). Quakers look for God within, 'the inner light,' and not on a cloud somewhere. Also it is not necessary for them to believe in Jesus as the son of God in order to call themselves Christians. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as non Christian by other groups. Because some see Jesus only as a prophet they are often more open to, and more accepted by, Islam than other Christians would be. Some Quakers are atheist.