THERE MAY YET BE HOPE....

[Lat-Literal]

The Lib Dem caller - courteous, meek and male : Soubry had already told every male caller who disagreed with her that she didn't need men telling her what she thought, much as Emily Thornberry devoted much of her three hours on Tuesday to "us girls" because only 40% of callers had been female - pointed out that the Lib Dems had extensive organisation which would be helpful as the Independents had not. He was cut off on the grounds that the Independents wouldn't be wanting to get into a "complex" SDP-Liberal situation as that was what had led to failure. So basically I sense, yes, they are striving for a one party state. That's the three Tories who, whatever the media says, have not actually joined Umunna's Group. One of the interesting things is that Wollaston was, unusually, selected as a candidate via open primary. I doubt the Tories will be repeating that sort of process again in a hurry.

I don't have anything to do with economists
I do know lots of musicians with international careers who are having serious problems already
My "financial backing" from the EU isn't massive (nor is it personal) and is largely connected to projects like this which many artists and organisations work on all the time

http://www.interfacesnetwork.eu

OK - Thank you.

Given that we are in the EU, the funding should not have yet stopped.

To have stopped it would have been unlawful under EU law.

I should write to your MP and ask how you obtain compensation.

[Richard Barrett]

It's tedious to have to keep repeating the same things over and over again

Don't do it then!

Meanwhile... Chris Leslie confirms Independent Group will be pro-privatisation, pro-tuition fees, and won’t tax the rich more Hurrah!

[eighthobstruction]

Don't do it then!

Meanwhile... Chris Leslie confirms Independent Group will be pro-privatisation, pro-tuition fees, and won’t tax the rich more Hurrah!

....that's trash....from trash....equals trash RB....

[Lat-Literal]

Don't do it then!

Meanwhile... Chris Leslie confirms Independent Group will be pro-privatisation, pro-tuition fees, and won’t tax the rich more Hurrah!

Yes - because this is Blairism and not an updated form of Gaitskellism or Butskellism which is closer to what voters want. It is all completely crackers. Diane Abbott was on BBC Radio 4 at lunchtime. She just happened to slip in, unchallenged, a reference to Mr Corbyn's Labour party as a party for Social Democracy. There was a time when anyone from that wing wouldn't be seen dead using that phrase although they might just have brought themselves to talk about Democratic Socialism. That is, as an entirely different, more left wing, concept.

I'm not keen on their policies but I could almost be convinced that they are closer to Social Democracy than those who have just left it, just. There will be fun when Ian Austin seeks to join the Umunna Group. As Blairite as they come and loathed by Corbynistas, he is also for Brexit so will they let him in? Surely they can't do but the scrutiny then will be intense.

Meanwhile, on the Conservative side, Michael Fabricant points out that he is for Brexit and as socially liberal as it is possible to be. The way in which he and his colleagues have been described as all Jacob Rees-Moggs is blatantly false. Presenter Iain Dale is in much the same category. There, a gay liberal conservative who supports Brexit. It's all going to fall apart.

[MrGongGong]

....that's trash....from trash....equals trash RB....

I don't know
It convinces me that a Corbyn / JRM Brexit is going to be really wonderful for us all.

(just off to check i've got enough chain oil for the chainsaw, when the oil runs out it's into the woods)

[eighthobstruction]

I don't know
It convinces me that a Corbyn / JRM Brexit is going to be really wonderful for us all.

(just off to check i've got enough chain oil for the chainsaw, when the oil runs out it's into the woods)

....I'm convinced RB is on holiday and someone else has control of his laptop....

[Richard Barrett]

Obviously it's time I left this discussion for a bit.

[Dave2002]

Is it possible that actually this will be seen in a few months as unimportant as the Y2K bug?

[MrGongGong]

Is it possible that actually this will be seen in a few months as unimportant as the Y2K bug?

Depends on whether you work in Europe or not
to many people they will be happy that they can still go on holiday to Spain (unless they work for Honda or even down the road from me at the whoopie cushion factory)

(https://www.lincolnshirelive.co.uk/n...smiffys-103657)

[LMcD]

I shall actually do quite nicely if we do crash out of the EU and the pound falls - the other day I found 33 euros and 50 cents, which I'd forgotten about, in a little box at the top of the wardrobe. I shall sit and listen to my new set of Mozart String Quartet CDs, safe in the knowledge that the value of my little currency horde is increasing steadily, thereby adding greatly to my enjoyment.

[Conchis]

Re: Corbyn

(apologies in advance for language used)

Go to a high street in any place outside the M25 and ask a randomly chosen member of the public what they think of the Labour leader (you may want to ensure that said randomly chosen member looks refreshingly normal - ie, tattoos on flesh, if exposed, casually dressed, a couple of stone overweight) and I'm pretty certain you'd get the following reply:

''e's a twat. I 'ate 'im.'

If you go for the supplementary question and ask the randomly chosen person why they ''ate' Corbyn, odds are you'll be given no comprehensive answer, though you might get some vague explanation that it's because he supports the IRA.

It's a fact that socialism can only be soldi in certain parts of Britain if it's dressed up in suitably masculine attire and associated with pints, pub singalongs, and football. Certain successful Labour leaders, like Sir Harold Wilson, understood this.

The average British provincial, who doesn't concern him or herself too much with politics, senses something effeminate, if not transgressive, about the kind of metropolitan socialism that is associated with Jeremy Corbyn.

This might be - and probably is - deeply unfair. But it's the way things are.


Edited to add: I completely understand why Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party. The Miliband Project had failed and the other candidates were all either tainted by association with it, or with the equally failed (in Labour eyes) Blair-Brown Project. Corbyn was able to offer succinct and unambiguous answers to questions that had his rivals writhing. But what made sense to the despairing Labour mindset of 2015 probably looks like a horrible mistake in 2019.

[french frank]

Don't do it then!

Meanwhile... Chris Leslie confirms Independent Group will be pro-privatisation, pro-tuition fees, and won’t tax the rich more Hurrah!

This seems like a [wilful] rewriting of what he said, which sounds a little different as described in its source - the New Stateman (that celebrated right-wing organ!):

"Leslie does not dispute that many of the left’s policies are popular with the public: rather he questions their desirability. Of the renationalisation of the privatised utilities …

[ … ]

"He is similarly sceptical of Labour policies such as a 50 per cent top income tax rate (“it depends on the use of that revenue and the economic impact”) and the complete abolition of university tuition fees (“sounds great, the minor problem is: how do you pay for it?”).

"What, other than Brexit, does he disagree on with Theresa May’s Conservatives? “I think there are real problems with their welfare policies, which have had a tin ear to the most vulnerable in society. On housing it’s been lamentable, assuming that the market will purely deliver.”

For the record, I am in favour of the renationalisation of the privatised utilities; higher taxation of the very rich, rich and moderately rich; free higher education; motherhood and apple pie.

[Lat-Literal]

Further news to cast doubt on Mr Gong Gong's faith in economists. Economists were predicting that the latest figures would show that tax takings exceeded spending on services by £10 billion. They've just been produced and the figure is £15 billion. As accuracy goes, that again is woefully inaccurate. My seaweed was closer and my tea leaves were absolutely spot on.

[Serial_Apologist]

I thought that as I wrote it ! I do agree that Corbyn was widely seen as, for the first time since for ever, the potential hope of the left for a new direction in politics in the UK. But I think it was a clutching at straws. Changing the system in the UK, on even minor political issues, seems near impossible. And the idea that Corbyn would be the leader to do it on the grounds that that is what he stated as his aim, seems - cynic that I am - a little naive.

But I probably don't see the major political issues nowadays as the class struggle and the overthrow of capitalism (however much I think that would be a good thing, I don't see the weapons necessary to achieve that at the moment). And other issues - like the rise in nationalism and all that ensues - seem to me to be of more immediate importance.

Nor do Corbyn or McDonnell. No one in this discussion has pointed out that Labour's election manifesto was pretty minimal when it came to socialist radicalism. It retained HS2, the third Heathrow runway - both of which many voters on all sides of the divides would be well to the left of. It retained Trident - and only considered renationalisation once existing franchises ran out. In other words the sort of programme the Attlee government put into operation post WW2. It is not beyond realms of possibility that the ruling classes will do all it can to undermine and ultimately block even so innocuous a programme, starting with the law courts, progressing with the use of the police and secret services, and ending with tanks in Downing Street, cheered on by the right wing press while the pundits at the BBC meekly go along with it all.

If anything is problematic aboout the Corbyn programme, it is not the interest rates incurred from the borrowing necessary to implement it, though they could be a problem - is today's isolationist USA, in contrast to post 1945, prepared to support its once-vaulted nearest ally? - but, as I said many moons ago here, the question of agency. The lessons of history teach us you can't implement democratic socialism (or whatever term you prefer) top-down. It's as true as when Lenin called for "all power to the soviets" and Allende left calling out the masses till it was too late. The Soviet Bloc was the debt the capitalist west paid for the Red Army's "success" in its part in defeating fascism. Where are the occupying skills based workers to be found in robotised modern manufacturing or anything else today, who will come up with the plants of alternative socially necessary ecologically sustainable products, and how to share thie implementation across presenntly inter-competing sectors? THIS is where the weaknesses will be shown to lie.

The other thing is this singular focus on Corbyn as "the wrong person" to bring in socialism, for reasons of supposed incompetence on his part. This of course brushes aside the idea of socialism as a collectively reached set of propositions shaped in accordance with the needs of the time and its implementation by a team, rather than a solitary Blair, Trump or May-type figurehead, which was the main point of building up a large membership to provide a wider choice of talent.

Indeed, I was astonished to read of Gurnemanz's experience of what IMV he rather glibly described as a genuine socialist republic, (the GDR), especially given his idealistic interest in politics 50 years ago as a student. He obviously walked out on the discussion about what socialism really consisted in (Benn: the communists took the democracy out of socialism, and the social democrats took the socialism out of democracy) leaving only the hardline Stalinists' belief in the Soviet Union/E Bloc/China as representing the socialist utopia.

If the otherwise broadminded and knowledgeably-based viewpoints expressed by the likes of Gurney on this forum are representative of the way people one would respect and learn from think about politics today, then God help us all.

[MrGongGong]

Further news to cast doubt on Mr Gong Gong's faith in economists. Economists were predicting that the latest figures would show that tax takings exceeded spending on services by £10 billion. They've just been produced and the figure is £15 billion. As accuracy goes, that again is woefully inaccurate. My seaweed was closer and my tea leaves were absolutely spot on.

Economists ?
Nope ... Violinist, Cellist, Harpist and Percussionist

Stop making stuff up