Not sure what makes you think it was aimed at Stan. It wasn't.
I don't like May either and have been hugely disappointed by her since she became PM. She clearly isn't up to it.
I too see some merit in most political viewpoints, but I do worry about the way people and especially the young have been completely brainwashed by the far left version of socialism.
It has never worked imo and has ruined many Countries in the process Eg: Greece/Venezuela. However, the young in particular seem to think that Corbynism is the answer to everything. What a mess we're in!!
The question we have to answer Col is why so many young people buy into Corbyn and the militant tendency version of socialism? Which I agree would be an unmitigated disaster, the ideology never added up, as Ubes points out would demand a totally unrealistic level of not only agreement but enthusiasm from the vast majority of the population to work without violence, and is even further from the mark in a globalised world.
But many of the things which, for me, are a mark of a civilised society, are socialist in inspiration - state provided healthcare and education for all, welfare for the needy, state pensions, all sorts of stuff like free libraries and museums. These have been part of the fabric of society since 1945, longer in some cases. A lot of it has been under implicit and explicit attack since 1979. I think it's this kind of stuff which inspires kids, not the ownership of the means of production stuff and wholesale nationalisation. Until 1979 Tory governments bought into the mixed economy, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they realised a healthy, well housed, decently educated workforce is good for capitalists. Just like in the nineteenth century capitalists read Marx, understood that his analysis of economics and class was compelling, and rather brilliantly wiped out his predictions by offering just enough in terms of better working conditions, better living conditions and votes to stave off the revolution. The balance got out of kilter in the seventies when the workers got above themselves, hence the backlash since then.
Now we are in a really new situation, which neither Thatcher style cult of the individual Toryism or old style class based democratic socialism can cope with. Increasingly, over the next couple of decades, with automisation, technology and access to cheap labour abroad, we won't need a healthy, well housed, well educated workforce. We will not even need taxi drivers, bus drivers or our own cars in the not too distant future. We'll need a much smaller workforce. We'll have to pay everyone else not to work, and enough to make sure that they keep consuming, otherwise capitalism collapses. A few clever places like Finland are already experimenting with universal incomes. It will demand a whole new way of thinking about tax, the purpose of the state, the relationship between money, companies and consumers.
Hey, we might end up with a type of non ideological socialism which just happens organically. From what I've seen none of our current politicians are asking themselves these types of questions. But if we don't address these changes, caused by the mix of capitalism and technology, we really will face violence and attempted revolution, because so many will be excluded from the benefits.
For me it's very exciting, though hugely risky. With climate change the big things we need to tackle, everything else - Brexit, terrorism, the aging population - as immediately critical as they are, are ultimately distractions.
