Off Topic Political Debate

My point as that I respect someone's right to withhold their labour, but why would you not tell your school of your intention in advance? Surely that is just a reasonable thing to do and shows some respect for the school, the children and their parents.
In fact, this strike is considered a political statement as the NUT are striking to demonstrate against what they see as cuts to education budgets - it's not about pay, T&C's, pensions, holidays etc.

 

Gandhi who practices ahimsa was a great activist though... and led people in defiance of what be believed were unjust British laws.....non-cooperation etc....

Given the levels of oppression of workers in sweat shops in India today, I am sure he would have led workers in their demands for better working conditions which would have included withholding labour... similar to the great reformers and activists in the UK who acted for workers rights.......

 

The strike is against the political and economic control of the education system which has led to state schools being made into academies with tight financial targets and tick box targets... as I said before I have a family member who is head of an academy and he has reiterated to me how difficult the situation has become.... and he has no choice.

There seems to be some legal technicality which means that someone going on strike does not tell their employer. The same thing happened in HE.... when I as head of department was required to inform my boss as to who had registered for work on a strike day.... and because I as a union member was going on strike too and couldn't tell my boss the whole thing became farcical...

 

My car is British made, alas Japanese.
Pizza - home made.
Tea - indeed, Indian
Democracy - what democracy?
My shirt - Scottish
My oil - should be from the north sea, our oil oh hang on some tory bint sold it off.
My numbers - don't look Arabic to me and I've just come back from an Arabic speaking nation.
Letters - granted... what have the Romans ever done for us?
My holiday - see numbers
Second home - yeah, in my dreams.
Religion - atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
My neighbours - rather pleasant fortunately and their place of origin is of no interest to me.

 

Chilcot Inquiry - sponsored by Dulux

 

In my dreams party politics disappears - and instead is replaced by elections for independent candidates who stand for a slate of policies that they set out. A Parliament is formed by those people elected in as small representative constituencies as is possible. You do not then stick to a vote on "party" lines but you support the raft of policies you were elected on - some may come under one banner and others from another - you are not shoe horned into accepting a complete basket of measures. The slate of policies could be described as "party line" policies perhaps nationalisation of certain industries and so forth but they also include people suggesting how much tax they want to take from various sectors of society - both personal and corporate and income or wealth. The total amount that is then able to be raised by taxation (and borrowing if agreed) is then divied up between competing demands - education, defence, foreign aid, health etc. Once a budget is agreed for each sector responsibilty for how it is spent is given to professionals to determine the best use of the resources they are given. You can no longer blame government for underspending on health or education as the total available has been agreed by elected representatives as a whole.
As demand for increased spending on say health grows then at the next election it is up to those putting themselves forward as candidates to decide to what extent they want to push for it against competing demands and an overall increase in the amount to be spent.

 

The only problem with that Leo is that independent candidates would have to pay for their own election campaigns - which places them very much under the influence of sponsors. The American political system is less party political than ours, without the same dedication to party policies etc. and the parties do not pay for individual senators election campaigns - the result is that the relationship between big business and politics is much more entrenched than here. Senators there more or less have to represent the interests of the main sponsors in their area.

 

'In my dreams Party Politics disappears'. The fact of having political parties at all means that they are the source of all political ideas in a society - the rest just vote yay or nay. In my dreams there is no sphere called 'politics', democracy is a way of life - not just a form of politics. Only when all organs of the state are organized according to democratic principles can a country call itself a democracy - this means in industry as well. My next comment is going to raise a few hackles here but - pure democracy is incompatible with the private ownership of the means of production. In my perfect society there would be personal possessions but not private ownership of production ie. the watch on your wrist is your own but the factory which made it is public. I am not an advocate of state socialism - but communism from below, ie. a society where most production is in the form of the workers cooperative, and only the most essential things are under state ownership - all decisions are made at the base of the pyramid and the party (there is only one) has reduced all of its functions to that of only being administrative. We also strive for self sufficiency in as many things as possible. Sort of like an anarcho-communist (from below) society built up around a loose federation of semi autonomous (Kropotkinist) communities. Now, getting back to reality my dream is rain only once per fortnight, mediterranean/or Indian food, temperatues never below 70 in summer - and my neighbours are a group of Italian women all aged between 20 and 35.

 

From humble beginnings eight years ago, this 'party' is starting to gain a foothold in Australian politics - would have got my vote but didn't contest my electorate. I'd like to see something similar here.

https://nxt.org.au/

 

There are many forms of democracy - but I will accept yours under the definition "pure democracy". Party politics must get it's ideas from someone- individuals within that party or the media - that would continue under any form. Also you can have democracy in "politics" with or without it in industry.
Why is private ownership of manufacturing undemocratic? If I make stone jewellry and it sells so well that I employ someone to assist, does that have to be publicly owned? I can own a watch - but presumably not a house as land ownership would not be allowed I suspect in your dream. Ever heard the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth"? - most organisations need someone in control - leadership and management are not for everyone and where a person is good they are worth their weight in gold (not in your dreams of course ) Personally I would not like to live in a world where the only things made were from self sufficiency. I like the modern complicated world, with cars and airplanes, space rockets, computers, media etc - and not least advanced pharmacological companies that develop anti cancer drugs. I would prefer to sacrifice 90% of the population of the Earth to give you a sustainable planet than to live in a stone age world. ( I do not advoate any killing - just enforced birth control for 3 generations

I don't like that idea at all. Could you not have a system whereby the state pays a certain amount towards an election campaign - remember that without a party this need only really be a flyer - and could be conditional on receiving a certain number of or percentage of the vote to keep monster raving loony aliens out?

Saw that in an earlier post of yours. Does Oz have PR - I would think it is needed to allow such growth.

Isn't it refreshing to be able to have an actual friendly political debate? No name calling- no slagging off of anyone - just sharing and debating ideas and ideals

 

Voting for the Senate is on a PR basis - the House of Reps is via preferential voting.

 

No prizes for correctly guessing the owner of this quote from 1997:-

"Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war."

 

Leo, I should say that the problem for democracy is not private property itself, but when it is unrestricted. Once you have monopolies and global players making up more than a certain percentage of their countries GDP then you can kiss democracy goodbye because they, or particular branches of industry, can hold the government to ransom. Also, endless privatization strips the state of the economic resources and materials it needs to ensure that the people's will can be carried out - how much democratic choice does Greece now have since its prize assets have been stripped away ?
My ideal would be a country made up of state ownership (but only as a transition towards worker control whenever possible), of worker cooperatives and of small family firms. In the case of the last 'small is really beautiful', the larger a corporation becomes, the more remote decision makers become from the environmental consequences of their decisions. As a citizen I would prefer to have a firm in my town which is run by people who also live in the area, because that way their decisions are more likely to respect my environment.

I differentiate between private property and private possessions - the first has to do with the means of production in a country, the second doesn't. Land possession is a special case - I prefer to call it land stewardship because I can never really own land. If I own land do I also have the ownership, and control over the destiny of, every earthworm, bee or bird who also calls it his home ? Land ownership carries a special responsibility with it because everything that I do with it has some environmental consequences - do I own the air above it, or the earth a metre deep below the surface ? No, I am looking after it for the next generations - and how many of them have stood on this piece of earth which I call mine ? There are other forms of ownership - does the Queen own Buckingham Palace ? Can she sell it ? Does she rent it ?

I have a very large field opposite to my house, which is the best form of ownership of that field - for me ? If it is left to the free market then I could be lucky - who knows, a millionaire environmentalist pop star could buy it - or I could be unlucky. Maybe aristocratic possession ie. it has been passed from one lord to another since one of his ancestors distinguished himself at some mediaeval battle - at least he may care for the environment, and its not the worst possibility. Or it could be under state ownership (someone making decisions who has never seen the place) I might be lucky - they could make it into a national park. Or then again it could be used for fracking or military training. Or there again it could become commons land - owned by the villagers themselves - but have you ever known 20 villagers who all agreed with each other ? Or I could go the Shamanist way and say 'the field belongs to itself' - but then my garden would be full of voles. So, which is the best for me ? All of them depend on the people actually making the decisions, and there is no 'right' way and 'wrong' way. This is the same with politics - some forms of socialism are stifling, dead - others offer an outlet for creativity where the essentials of life are covoured and man can express his creativity in his free time, have you ever been on a Kibbutz ?

 

Having failed in spectacular fashion to win the leadership of the Tory party, I see that Boris is now voting with the opposition to defeat the government. Could he have changed his mind again and decided to try his luck there?

 

Really? Depending on how long I must've broken that. Friends and I used to start the ball rolling with a couple before we got into town on a night out.

 

These days some headteachers are defying the strike by bunging in a TA as I said earlier - without due regard to H&S. Where there is trust, of course all teachers would inform, but it is only when there is a deliberate act of frustrating the strike that this is done.
The strike is about workload, cuts, pensions, the very high leave-rate of new teachers, the list goes on. Gove royally ****ed things up and then his Stepford replacement, Morgan, has continued that.

 

The government proposed a new head of Ofsted who was interviewed by the education committee in Westminster. Their conclusion was that she was not up to the job and should not get it. It is good to see that there are checks in place, and that a cross party committee can tell the executive to think again.

 

I had to laugh when they said on the news this morning that she didn't have the qualities to raise standards. It is the teachers who will do that...and will no doubt get no credit for it. Some minister will say it was all down to him/her and his party.

 

The Academy that two of my boys went to here have been chronically short staffed for years - the head regularly resorts to having one teacher cover five classes at once. And that's without Gove or Morgan meddling... A few years ago the Authority told me - a Primary trained teacher - that I would be spending three months there to cover for staff shortages. I argued that I had neither the skills nor subject knowledge to teach at the level they wanted me to (a bit of a lie as I've taught Maths & Science upto Year 12 in Oz), but they were adamant. Thankfully my Union stepped in...

 

I agree that monopolies are usually bad (which is why I do not like state ownership) and also global corporations are dangerous to most societies. However in a world where they exist you could only avoid them by being an isolationist state. The solution is for governments to get together and collectively set rules for the operation of global companies. I do not see how privatisation strips the state of anything - parliaments and laws are there to ensure the people's will is carried out. The state owning economic resources is the wrong way to go - it creates bureaucracy and inefficiency. Greece made it's own bed by joining the Euro and thereby losing it's ability to devalue the currency to keep it competitive. The problem goes far beyond the boundaries of this particular debate.

State owneship as a bridge to what you want is about as likely as the Soviet Union leading to genuine people's democracy - those in charge of the state simply replace the oligarchs and plutocrats they are intended to overthrow. Worker cooperaties and family firms are lovely - as part of a mixed state. Large corporations can be regulated however you choose - to comply with and carry out whatever conditions "the people" impose. Did the owners of dark satanic mills respect local people. Nothing suggests that "local" automatically produces beneficial environmental effects. You would end up with hundreds or thousands or highly inefficient operations that do not learn from or copy best practice from elsewhere - once you restrict competition you increase the dangers of monopoly. I am also deeply suspicious of small local democracy - much too easily taken control of by bullies and the like.

Not sure your distinction between property and possessions can hold very easily - nor do I see it's merit. Land ownership is pretty well defined and understood and differs around the world as to what you actually possess. It is not difficult to set out the limits. You can own land but that does not give you the unrestricted right to do as you will with it - even building on it is subject to laws. Environmental issues can be addressed as you choose - ownership does not interfere in that. Property of the Crown is another and quite complicated issue - another debate I would hazard.

I assume somebody owns that land - if it is not yours then the best form of ownership in not down to you. All of life involves decisions - and there are very few things which are unarguably "right or wrong"