General politics discussion thread

[Bashar]

Indeed, one could argue that it is free-market capitalism that has dried up the dock work that was the lifeblood of the city, the knock-on effect of which is the poverty and unemployment that we see in The Wire.

I don't see how you can seperate the capitalism that took the work away from the capitalism that created the jobs in the first place.

 

Well......although you are probably silly enough to say that capitalism has always existed, there clearly are phases. A lot of people see the neoliberal era beginning with Reagan and Thatcher, with more of a state capitalist viewpoint in the 30 years before that. General prosperity increased much more the USA in the 60s and 70s than in the 80s, 90s and 00s. And given that you have previously stated that you don't really believe in consumer tat driven or indeed debt driven growth, I do not see how you can be particularly sympathetic to the neoliberal era.

[David]

Talking about schooling in the UK;

 

There has only been one moment in his three years at Oxford when Stephen Bush felt uncomfortable about race. That was in a tutorial about the US president Thomas Jefferson, who believed black people were inferior to white.

 

Bush, who is reading history at Balliol college, said: "Every time one of the students quoted from his letter they would look at me really nervously, but I just found it funny. Some people here come from some quite rural places and have to get in the car to buy some milk, let alone see a black person."

 

Oxford's record on diversity is under the spotlight this week after the prime minister described his alma mater's admissions figures as "disgraceful". But for black applicants to Britain's oldest university, the barriers can be as much about class as race

[Van Dammer]

Bush, who is reading history at Balliol college, said: "Every time one of the students quoted from his letter they would look at me really nervously, but I just found it funny. Some people here come from some quite rural places and have to get in the car to buy some milk, let alone see a black person."

 

That guy went to Oxford?

[Happ Hazzard]

What's the forums general opinion on David Cameron's announcements of reducing immigration? IMO he's absolutely right, but I'm far from convinced that the Tories will actually be the ones to do something about it. The party makes far too much from the CBI etc to be able to make any tangible difference. Watching all the Guardianistas tie themselves in knots over the last few days has been fun though. It's become clearer than ever that they have given up the ghost as a British newspaper and are now concentrating on establishing themselves as the website for limousine/latte/cocaine liberals the world over, their original intentions as an organ to represent the urban British working class completely abandoned.

[The King Of Swing]

We get it you mong you hate the Guardian and anyone to the left of Vince McMahon.

[Happ Hazzard]

We get it you mong you hate the Guardian and anyone to the left of Vince McMahon.

Not at all. I've got a lot of time for the genuine left. I hate what the Labour party (and the Guardian) have become. They have completely betrayed the very people they were set up to represent. Here we have former senior advisor Lord Glasman admitting that the party was openly hostile to working class people, who it saw as "resistant to change".

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13...ation-lies.html

 

Visit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/imm...rd-Glasman.html

 

I think Labour are finished in their current form. They will have to have a complete purge and completely remove anyone even remotely connected with New Labour if they want to be electable again.

[Bashar]

(the Guardian's) original intentions as an organ to represent the urban British working class completely abandoned.

 

You've been corrected on this before:

 

The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist businessmen headed by John Edward Taylor,[15] who took advantage of the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, the paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing, "(T)hey have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. 'They do not toil, neither do they spin,' but they live better than those that do.[16] And when the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.[17]

 

The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper.[18]

 

The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures".[19]

 

The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners".[20] The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure."[21] The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators - "... if an accommodation can be effected the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife ..."[22]

 

The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist cause in the American Civil War, writing on the news that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated, "Of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty..."[23]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian

 

I'm not against immigrants learning English or in clearing some of the abuse the student visa system, but as you suggest he's just posturing because there's an election on. Telling immigrants to learn English and then cutting ESOL funding makes very little sense.

[Dynamite Duane]

Now this I find very interesting regards council tax - [url="http://www.tpuc.org/content/wirral-council-

[Happ Hazzard]

I'd imagine the law will be changed very soon. Otherwise where will the money come from for council execs

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Now this I find very interesting regards council tax - [url="http://www.tpuc.org/content/wirral-council-

[JNLister]

Now this I find very interesting regards council tax - [url="http://www.tpuc.org/content/wirral-council-

[David]

The council might be reduced to simply emptying the bins and keeping the streets clean, and as we know, stuff like that isn't what people care about at all.

It will be something they care about once the amount of uplifts per month are reduced.

[Happ Hazzard]

The council might be reduced to simply emptying the bins and keeping the streets clean, and as we know, stuff like that isn't what people care about at all.

It will be something they care about once the amount of uplifts per month are reduced.

Huh?

[Ronnie]

^^ I suspect that David missed your sarcasm.

[Bashar]

Probably yes. But if you cut all the social work and all that 'lefty shite', the chickens come home to roost soon enough and you get higher crime rates; which would lead to more people being put in prison except the Conservatives now believe (not completely without justification) that prison is a waste of money. People will care about that stuff soon enough. The fact of the matter is though that even the southern states in the USA are starting to realise that throwing increasing amounts of people into prison for increasingly long stretches isn't really very economic.

 

And as for LGBT coordinators - people who identify with being 'LGBT' pay taxes as well. In most cases they don't have children, so they are not particularly burdensome on the state and a couple of outreach coordinators is not going to change that.