d-d-d-dAz

With the greatest of respects to the spirit of dissent for which I hold such fondness, the protests do seem to have been a bit much considering the not-that-radical changes to the fee system...

I know that's grand heresy, but higher fees met with a higher threshold with which you start to pay back seems reasonable enough. Especially considering that there is a

I've had a funny, somewhat distasteful, feeling all week that Harrison is going to get lucky and catch Haye on the chin. I think I may have a bet, cause I ignored such instincts last week over Liverpool/Chelsea and am still bitter now...

I'm confused as to what you mean; That'd really only work in a directly comparable way; say John earns 10,000 a year and pays 1,000 in a tax, then Ted who earns 200,000 would pay 20,000. The problem is considering tax is more often worked out as pence in the pound, i.e percentages, and not as a per annum flat rate, your way would suggest that John pays 10p in the pound, and Ted pays

To give some balance to the Chris Huhne thing, he has said that he believes that as Green Taxes go up, personal taxes should go down by a similar proportion...

I'm sorry, but the 'they're all the same' is the biggest load of populist, ignorant tosh i've ever, ever heard.

I mean Iraq; income tax; NHS; macroeconomics; ID cards; control orders; criminal justice policy (note - positives and negatives listed). There's such a massive, massive ideological gulf between the coalition and the last government that the 'they're all the same' argument has no purchase beyond 'they all wear suits' and 'they're all well educated'.

First preference; Andy Burnham. Ideology, sort of, trumped expediency and I went for the person that I thought best spoke for normal working people, and who's idea of a National Care Service I am particularly passionate about.

Second preference; David Miliband. Third Way progressivism, kind of, went against him. Though, having read Giddens' work recently, it's actual manifestation in contemporary politics is much distorted from what I've read. Blair and Clinton's 'third way' politics is quite far removed from the actual literature. Ideas on 'time dollar' schemes and social capital are all quite favourable, and besides that, expediently speaking, he's probably the most likely to win an election.

Third preference; Ed Miliband. Initially my preferred pick, though increasingly shown to be hollow and quite vindictive. Not convincing, and seems to lack substance.

Fourth preference; Ed Balls. Another I liked to begin with, but became more and more disenchanted with him, and actually don't think he could ever win an election.

Didn't rank Diane Abbott, abhor the disingenuous, self-righteous git of a woman...

What Union are you in? ...Definitely Labour affiliated?

If so, you should have had your ballot paper already..

David Miliband.

He might be one of the furthest away from my personal ideology, but the whole point of party politics is getting in power and, form his ability to communicate and control a room suggests to me he's the only one who could win an election. Ed Miliband, though I do like him, couldn't win a raffle if he had the only ticket.

Andy Burnham usually does well in these things, but he seemed to not understand the shows format, and have a tantrum when he couldn't answer every question.

Is anyone watching the live Labour leadership debate on Sky News?

Strangely, Andy Burnham and David Miliband, the candidates who i'd have put at 3rd and 4th before this debate, are absolutely owning it. In terms of presentation, oratory skills and general conviction they're so far ahead of the other three it is untrue. Burnham's social views are clearly closer to my own than David's (who is probably the closest to the right of the three), but I fear Andy would continue the 'top down' centralism of the past, whereas i've always stressed my belief in the potential compatibility of liberalism/liberty and social justice, and I think David's willingness to focus on decentralisation is particularly attractive.

Colour me confused.

'Funny People' is rubbish. Just rubbish.

They abandon the central premise about halfway in, and then the film just wanders aimlessly. Shite.

And, whilst we're on the shite train, I've recently turned the following films off midway through; 'Adventureland' and 'Observe and Report'.

Has anyone mentioned Dawn Porter? ...She creates havoc in my underpants.

I didn't even finish Watchmen, I thought it was genuinely the most boring film i've ever, ever seen. Just awful.

I notice a tendency towards The Socialist Party on that site, as opposed the SWP. Which is strange, as the SWP seems to be more prominent round these parts.

The problem is that there isn't a political vehicle to pool the resources of the left.

The individual parties and pressure groups are united in their hatred of the right, but equally united in their mistrust of one another. Electorally, a major shift towards an overriding socialist brand, with which the individual parties could come together and fight elections is the best chance of gaining a foothold. Even a small recognition of the left electorally has the potential to jar the mainstream. For example, if you could form a, for arguments sake, 'DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM' institution that bound together the resources of the many different marginalised parties of the left and democratically elected candidates for national elections, but then allowed the separate parties to act as internal campaign groups within the organization, you wouldn't necessarily have efficiency but you'd not splinter the vote either.

If I may, can I ask where your particular allegiances lie?

Also, I think the problem with the 'left' in this country is that it is so divided that the chance for any real political overhaul is limited. And, as you say, post-clause IV has left the primary vehicle for, albeit watered down, socialist policy in tatters as a large majority of members and MP's have views that are in many ways interchangeable with the modern conservatives. I mean, if you need any clear indication as to the mentality of the men at the top of the tree in the Labour Party, look at Alan Milburn (who before resigning was a 'future Labour leader' in the making) who has returned to government for David Cameron.

*EDIT* Thinking about it, I'm going to label myself a 'longest suicide note in history' socialist. The Labour party of '83, that's what I want.

I'm close to not being, if i'm honest.

I'm very much a McDonnell Labour member, who thought that the best way to bring about change was from inside the mechanism rather than from the outside looking in. It didn't take long for me to become disenfranchised, especially the more I learn about the party.

Though, one thing I would say is that I find it very hard to find a party representative of my views. There doesn't seem to exist a proper, authoritative liberal socialist voice in this country. I flirted with the Liberals under Kennedy, and then decided to give Labour a chance (though, admittedly, I joined for a

Bullshit political prejudices decided not just international reaction but mainstream media coverage of the Pakistan disaster, which has meant less than a tenth of what was raised for Haiti has been raised in aid money.

So, the World Bank has stepped in and 'loaned' Pakistan 900 million US dollars. Which means that as a bi-product of Western government generated apathy, and even hostility, to their country the land that will be cultivated will be used not to feed the starving people of Pakistan, but to act as the catalyst for export-led growth providing already saturated Western markets with even cheaper produce. So, whilst the people of Pakistan are starving, the West gets cheaper products and commodities to dampen the effects of recession/potential deflation and the World Bank gets to keep its grubby hands in the back pockets of Pakistan, robbing them of their resources and equity indefinitely.

It's like consoling a rape victim with a light spanking.

Has anyone watched 'Capitalism; A Love Story'?

I hadn't seen any Moore film before, and from this one I get that he's as equally inclined to bow to populist propaganda as the rightwing idealists he chooses to decry. That said, the piece on 'Dead Peasants Insurance' had me in fucking pieces. That scene with the family who'd lost it's mother, with the husband who'd near bankrupted himself funding a funeral with no help at all, whilst walmart pocketed 81,000 US dollars from her death? ...That's just fucking institutionalised insanity. Seeing his young disabled lad crying for his mum was it for me.

The workers at Republic who'd lost their jobs, and then refused severance packages when the bank refused the parent company credit was harsh. That hispanic man who broke down into tears nearly had me going, too...

The problem he's got, and I sympathise, is that he's got to pander to quasi-politicised minds of people, who in all actuality are sourcing their knowledge from the media. The deficit gets lauded as something that unequivocally needs reducing through public expenditure cuts and suddenly the question is 'How would you cut?' rather than 'should you cut?'. There exists a very real, Keynesian, economic argument that says the worst thing you can do at a time of recession is to start wielding the axe. That you need to increase the relative marginal propensity to consume of the population which comes about through growth and jobs. Mass unemployment and civil unrest actually compounds the problems of recession, and can exacerbate them.

The problem the Labour candidates have is that people now think that the only answer is cutting, so when you say 'Well, actually outside of shedding waste what we really need to resort to is fiscal stimulus' everyone gets up in arms and uses everyones new buzz phrase; 'DEFICIT DENIER'

Of course, were the candidates (who are all economically gifted) to resort to complicated, macroeconomic explanations they'd get lampooned as snobbish; as seen by the Brown, and later Balls, derision that came about from 'post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory'.

My views on the subject are clear, a lot of the governments national schemes and social provisions were too tightly bound by the decisions of central government. For example, Building Schools for the Future was a noble programme, yet the National Union of Teachers, before the election, criticised it for handing over millions of pounds to consultants. So, in those instances, where waste can be shed yes we should seek to make those savings; we need to hand certain levels of autonomy over to the people 'on the shopfloor', who know what they need, and what they can do without. Beyond that, it serves no great economic purpose to go deeper and faster, other than to displace much more labour than the private sector could ever hope to pick up. Our economy is currently following the economic model of the US in the late 90's, where by we've falling off the back of the 'Balance of Payments' stages;

i.e., you start as a developing economy with a trade deficit and a current account deficit. You take on FDI (foreign direct investment) and loans from developed nations, and you create low skilled jobs to increase your exports relative to imports, which is possible because of the wide scope for return on capital investment and the low labour costs.

As time moves on, you move into a visible trade surplus as your exports increase relative to your imports, but you maintain a current account deficit as you start to pay back your loans and meet the terms of investment.

Thirdly, you move into both a visible trade surplus and a current account surplus as you pay off your debts, but your low-skilled labour market remains strong and your exports remain attractive.

This third stage, invariably, leads to a strengthening of currency which weakens your exports. You therefore use your excess capital to increase imports, which moves you into the state of a post-industrialised economy, whereby you run a visible trade deficit but maintain a strong current account. Low-skilled labour moves to the next developing nation and the cycle continues ad nauseum.

However, as with the volatility of the housing market in the US in the late 90's, the banking crisis dropped us off the edge of this into a relatively economic unknown. With the only discernible solution being that we need to, rather than arbitrarily swinging an axe through the public sector, focus again on the manufacturing sector of our economy. We need to embark on the most radical labour market reforms of a generation to ensure that capital investors once again see the UK as a place to invest, we need to revisit restrictive regulations on labour and we quite simply need to redress the balance between exports and imports. It's basic Say's law economics that the process of producing a product or commodity and putting it on the market, itself, creates demand. Which, in turn, brings wealth, pays taxes, cuts the benefits bill and reduces the deficit in a sustainable and humane way.

Why is it when you stick a bunch of well educated, experienced politicians in a room with morons do the politicians end up looking like the morons...?

I know no one cares, but the folkloric way in which people are viewing James Purnell these days is a bit ridiculous. He was always seen as a more ambitious, slimier, snippier, even more trenchantly Blairite minister than the ambitious, slimy, snippy and Blairite David Miliband.

Now he's gone people are claiming that he could have really been the one to save the Labour party from electoral Siberia, yet he was the minister who everyone despised when he proposed charging 26.8% interest on crisis loans to pensioners and the unemployed. Christ.

If they ever make a movie of 'Deception Point', she should play Gabrielle Ashe. I don't know why.

Anyone got any interest in the Labour leadership contest?!

As a party member, nowadays, I get to exercise my vote in September. I've been to a few meetings with some candidates, including David Miliband and Ed Balls. Going to one next week with Ed Miliband, and will try and make the other two if I can. Though, i've discounted Burnham because he lacks authority, presence and lacks a clear stance. Abott didn't even come onto my radar, I don't think a shift to the hard left (especially as she lacks consistency within her own beliefs) is for the best of the party.

So far, I'm backing Balls.

I'm in no position for paragraphs of superlatives, that'll come, but that was a) not what I expected and b) absolutely genius.

I want both a Fez, and a Moffatt...