The Political Thread

[House of Usher]

I do smile at the notion that Labour wouldn't be making massive cuts now, just because they didn't make them before the election

I'm fairly certain Labour wouldn't be scrapping council housing if they had been elected instead of the other Tories. Labour were most definitely not going to cut the schools renovation budget.

The last one was rubbish and about as far removed from its origins as it could get without actually saying, "hey! We're the slightly more groovy Conservative party!" This Government is equally rubbish and whatever replaces them will, no doubt, be on a par- whatever side of the fence they claim to sit. You may disagree- and that's fine.

No disagreement here. Whoever gets elected from now on they will still be the Conservatives. The difference is one lot of conservatives likes to spend money, the other likes to make cuts. The reason Labour now follows Thatcherite economic policies is that they don't know how they could get away with doing anything else. Redistributing wealth and giving people anything that resembles job security tends to be unpopular with naturally conservative voters who tend to be self-employed, or higher earners, and like to think of themselves as doing quite well without the assistance of the state.

[Old Tankie]

Nothing wrong with high earners, we'd be even more in the crap without them when you bear in mind that the highest paid 15% of the work force pay 70% of the income tax that the Government gets.  Nothing wrong with being self-employed either, working your bollocks off, with very little holiday, and no job security whatsoever.  It's a shame more of the population aren't self-sufficient.

Of course, we need the State to provide for the sick and disabled and the genuine unemployed, but there's got to be a limit.  Never could work out a few years ago with one and a half million people on the dole, upwards of a million Eastern Europeans came over and found work.  Perhaps they brought the jobs with them in their rucksacks!!

[Peter Wolf]

Labour stopped being Labour when John Smith died.That was a shame as i liked John Smith.I liked Robin Cook as well and he died.

*

Everyone should familiarise themselves with Communitarianism as we now live under a Communitarian system.This is the ideology that hardly anyone talks about.Communitarianism is the ideology of the Post-Democratic era which is Collectivism on a global scale with a centralised autocratic power structure that is unelected but at the same it also allows for the private sector in terms of business instead of businesses being owned and controlled by the state but the private sector is owned and controlled by corporate monopolies as competition is a sin.

So its a mix of Left and Right wing ideology that is Collectivist in terms of Governace and Capitalist in terms of business as business will be owned and controlled by corporate/financial Oligarchs.

The NWO/Global Governace* is Communitarian.

"Global Citizenship" is Communitarian.

Communitarianism is the same in some ways as a Kleptocracy and the present system we live under is a Kleptocracy.


*There is a gig difference between Governance and government.

Google pay 2.5 percent tax per year on their earnings.

PAYE taxpayers pay the majority of taxes in the UK in terms of direct taxation.

[House of Usher]

Nothing wrong with high earners

I was merely pointing out that a lot of them vote Tory. That makes them bad people. I've nothing against high earners who realize that it would be impossible for them to make huge amounts of money were it not for the low-paid workers who keep things running smoothly - the bus drivers, the cleaners, the road menders, the hospital porters, etc. and therefore don't mind chipping in to pay for government, schools, hospitals, libraries and other services that make life more tolerable for people who are never going to earn more than just a basic wage.

I don't resent the wealth of high earners; I resent the resentment a lot of them feel about about having to pay their taxes to provide services they themselves don't use, but which make life more comfortable for the society that makes their high earnings possible in the first place.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Politics is administering the possible while promising the impossible. Read Machiavelli's The Prince for leaders, peoples and political alignments constantly shift but POWER always remains the same. The power we speak of is the ability to arrange society to suit your own or your followers self interests.

Observe the Tories ideological instinct to cut everything except Mr Cameron's photographer,etc etc.

The age of belief is over. None of their ideologies work whether Free Market scum or socialist bullshitter. All that is left is cynical indifference to the political system. I am one of those cynically, indifferent people and the sad truth is I'm  allowing them to get away with it since I'm too apathetic to do anything about it. I think some Greek philosopher said that Apathy and tolerance are signs of a dying society. Well find out if he was right soon enough.      

[The Legendary Shark]

"...Apathy and tolerance are signs of a dying society."

Some of us are fighting for you.

[House of Usher]

I'm not!

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Ironically this forum has helped restore my usually jaundiced view of humanity. So keep at it!

[Peter Wolf]

"...Apathy and tolerance are signs of a dying society."

Some of us are fighting for you.

"The age of belief is over"

The system wants everyone to be apathetic and tolerant and cynical and it wants you to feel like you have no power and it wants to grind everyone down so they roll over and submit to the system.The system wants everyone to give up on politics because they are sick and tired of it.The system wants everyone to think that nothing ever changes and everything stays the same but in this system the progress and changes happen to keep everything the same as it ever was as the C*** are still running the world.

Its important to understand the psychology involved here.

Its easy to take over when everyone is cynical and lazy and indifferent and complacent.

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

There I said keep at it-and you have! 

[vzzbux]

Labour stopped being Labour when John Smith died.That was a shame as i liked John Smith.I liked Robin Cook as well and he died.

*

Please say you don't like me.





V

[JayzusB.Christ]

As long as Grant Morrison doesn't write you dying in a story.

Don't worry about Mark Millar though, he killed Tony Blair, then forgot and brought him back.

[Peter Wolf]

GOP Establishment Republicans/Neocons in da house.

Bomb bomb bomb Iran !

It will be Hillary Clinton/Sarah Palin for POTUS in 2012.

This is the next election Dog and Pony show coming up !

This is how the establishment will sell the next US election.Stick a woman in the White House for more change you cant believe in.Its funny and tragic at the same time watching all the Tea Party dupes cheering Sarah Palin.

And so the cycle continues..........

Its a shame that so many adults have low intelligence and learning difficulties.

How is the Change promised by the Conservative Coalition govt going ?

[House of Usher]

Iain Duncan Smith again: unemployed people should be made to do 4 weeks' community service for 30 hours a week to remind them what work is like. Except they're not going to be called unemployed, they are going to be labelled 'workshy' so that when you see people out doing their work for benefits, you will know that they are being punished. That's why benefit claimants are going to be forced to do the kind of unpaid work currently done by shoplifters, burglars and vandals: because benefit claimants are no better than criminals.

Now here's a funny thing: how come there aren't lots of 30 hours a week minimum wage jobs advertised improving the neighbourhoods of local communities? If there were, I would apply for one of them. I could do with a guaranteed 30 hours' paid work each week. Maybe the reason no-one's advertising jobs like these at the moment is that they don't need doing. This is make-work to keep people busy, rather than there being anything that needs to be done that isn't getting done currently.

Another thing: as the Financial Times points out, no-one has yet looked into the cost of implementing Iain Duncan Smith's scheme. There's paperwork, interviews, training, surveillance and time sheets, insurance, boots, high visibility vests and all-weather clothing to be issued, transport, and certificates of compliance to return to the Job Centre at the end.

So, at a time when the Conservatives are cutting useful public services to save money, they are planning to spend more of our money to pester, cajole and humiliate unemployed people because it plays well to core Tory voters, i.e. people who are doing alright for themselves - in this I include a lot of baby boomers whose own working lives were characterized by economic growth and full employment.

[Old Tankie]

Alternatively, we could just continue paying people for doing nothing!!  Oh, silly me, we're doing that already!!