The Dictatorship of the Etonariat

[MrGongGong]

You keep saying that but what does it actually mean?

He is quite happy for the UK to leave the EU thus removing massive amounts of funding and protection from the most vulnerable in society.
The idea that somehow a Labour government with the UK outside the EU will somehow make things better for those people really is a delusionist fantasy.
No one suggests that the EU is perfect.
Corbyn has only ever worked for the Labour party, he is a lifelong opponent of the EU and all it stands for. He seems more concerned with keeping the Labour party together, which means appeasing those delusional "Labour Leave" folks who are quite happy to hand power to the likes of JRM, Farrage and the rest of the effluent end of the "right" to prove their point about the nasty capitalist conspiracy.

[Barbirollians]

Nationalisation doesn't mean that we the people own the trains! - it simply means that the government appoints their own set of managers to run the trains, takes more of your money for the privilege and then tells you 'This is yours! But you still have to buy a ticket.' And workers in nationalised industries fared no better than those who work in these privatised industries now: you will find proof if you care to research the endless strikes over pay and conditions that occurred under both Labour and Tory governments in the coal industry, the railways, British Leyland back in the day. We may also care to remember how awful British Rail actually was - rotten food, smelly trains, uncomfortable seats and absolutely abysmal stations. It is now quite pleasant to while away an hour on a station waiting for a train, browsing the shops, sitting in a cafe; whereas in the past the experience was horrible. I remember my mother once taking me to the Ladies at Kings Cross station in the 60s: a vile visit. My elder brothers loved trainspotting though, and even I can become wistful at sight of a steam train. When the crumbling ruin that claims to be our Labour party now speak of a return to nationalisation, I sense that they are ironically playing on a conservative nostalgia for a past golden era that never was.

Aaargh - if British Rail had had half the subsidy the privatised railways have had ....

[ahinton]

Nationalisation doesn't mean that we the people own the trains! - it simply means that the government appoints their own set of managers to run the trains, takes more of your money for the privilege and then tells you 'This is yours! But you still have to buy a ticket.'

Quite! - and yet so many of those who advocate renationalisation of the rail network and train services would refer to that process as taking them back into "public ownership (and operation)" when, as you say, "government ownership (and operation)" is meant. There's a fundamental difference, however, between the rail industry and the water supply industry in this context, though, in that the former is only ever used by businesses taking advantage of its freight services and customers wishing to travel on its passenger services, whereas everyone uses the water supply services.

[Richard Barrett]

He seems more concerned with keeping the Labour party together

I think many people would say this is the least of his concerns!

There was a referendum in which more people voted Leave than Remain. This is a fact which needs negotiating somehow. If you're the leader of a political party which aims to improve the lives of the people in society who most need it, you aren't going to do that by ignoring those who voted Leave even if you're aware that many of them voted against their own interests (if that didn't happen there would never be Tory governments). As for delusional - "quite happy to hand power to the likes of JRM, Farrage and the rest of the effluent end of the "right" to prove their point about the nasty capitalist conspiracy"? That really doesn't make any sense at all.

Nationalisation means that an operation doesn't need to have maximising the divided for shareholders as its prime motivation, rather than actually providing a service that people need. Of course plenty of the UK's infrastructure is nationalised, it's just owned by nationalised companies in other countries, like Deutsche Bahn. Does anyone think that British Rail would have been any less "awful" if it had been a private company in the 1960s? (Have you ever taken a train in the USA?) It's running these things for profit that should be a thing of the past. Surely it's clear from all we see around us that the ongoing degradation of the environment is not going to be reversed or even mitigated without moving towards a more planned economy than exists now, and a significant part of that could be contributed by transport policy.

[MrGongGong]

I think many people would say this is the least of his concerns!

There was a referendum in which more people voted Leave than Remain. This is a fact which needs negotiating somehow. If you're the leader of a political party which aims to improve the lives of the people in society who most need it, you aren't going to do that by ignoring those who voted Leave even if you're aware that many of them voted against their own interests (if that didn't happen there would never be Tory governments). As for delusional - "quite happy to hand power to the likes of JRM, Farrage and the rest of the effluent end of the "right" to prove their point about the nasty capitalist conspiracy"? That really doesn't make any sense at all.

Nationalisation means that an operation doesn't need to have maximising the divided for shareholders as its prime motivation, rather than actually providing a service that people need. Of course plenty of the UK's infrastructure is nationalised, it's just owned by nationalised companies in other countries, like Deutsche Bahn. Does anyone think that British Rail would have been any less "awful" if it had been a private company in the 1960s? (Have you ever taken a train in the USA?) It's running these things for profit that should be a thing of the past. Surely it's clear from all we see around us that the ongoing degradation of the environment is not going to be reversed or even mitigated without moving towards a more planned economy than exists now, and a significant part of that could be contributed by transport policy.

I think the point is that

If you're the leader of a political party which aims to improve the lives of the people in society who most need it,

you don't take actions that will make this much much harder in order to appease the results of a rather dodgy opinion poll.

My gripe with it, is that Labour went along with the whole thing from the start. Those who voted to leave on the "left" regardless of their issues with neoliberalism DID vote to put the likes of JRM and Co in charge.

The Labour party could (but it wont) say that we vote for representatives who represent our best interests rather than folks to do our bidding. I know several "Lexiter" folks who are all nicely retired and comfortable with their teachers pensions etc who like nothing more than a bit of Marxist discourse. Miles away from the people who will actually suffer as a result.

The referendum isn't complex to explain if our leaders were honest about it.
Barry Truax spoke about it a bit last weekend saying he thought it it was complicated rather than complex.


I don't see any objection to us owning our railways or even taking utilities into public ownership etc (which as you say doesn't mean that we actually RUN them, when the East Coast railways change ownership the people doing the work don't change....

[CGR]

But for pity's sake, I do not want to own any trains - still less be forced to do so - not least because I have less than no clue as to how to maintain and run them or how to run rail networks or how to market trains, trains service, rail networks or any of that stuff. Please. NO! That said, I cannot disagree with you about Mr Corbyn; indeed, given what might well be taken for his apparent predilection for vacillation on at least that one topic, might that make him Mr Swingbyn?

The UK rail system is 80% owned by the State already.

Network Rail owns the physical assets such as the permanent way, signalling infrastructure, stations, etc., and is state owned. The rolling stock is owned by private companies.

[John Locke]

I agree with you that disinformation and lack of information were rife from both sides in 2016. Many people who voted Leave were indeed misguided. But that's all the more reason to give them a chance to be guided this time around. I would have thought that "let's just step back and rethink" would imply that everyone gets a chance to rethink.

So perhaps, to avoid the risk of a crash on Oct 31st, revoke, rethink, work out solutions to the now apparent problems at leisure, and then trigger Art. 50 in a year or so when it seems clear that the UK and its people will be better off leaving the EU 'in an orderly fashion'. Some people might think that this might have been done before holding a public vote. A strong instinct not to go down this path might be the panic that 'this is our best chance, we'll never have such a good opportunity again.' Which is a motive to be pondered on, and assessed.

[Richard Barrett]

I know several "Lexiter" folks who are all nicely retired and comfortable with their teachers pensions etc who like nothing more than a bit of Marxist discourse.

I'm sure there are such people, and no doubt we all have anecdotes about people we know that we can evoke to "prove" anything at all, but even you wouldn't claim that the ones you mention represent more than a tiny minority of the people who voted Leave. We are at cross purposes here. You are constantly restating that any kind of Brexit is very bad for most people. This may or may not be the case, but even if it is, telling everyone who voted Leave they were wrong and their opinions are going to be ignored doesn't get anyone anywhere.

So you get your advice on UK politics from Barry Truax now?

I think the last thing that's needed now is blinkered and petrified opinion. Before the referendum I was torn between remain and leave, and ended up spoiling my ballot because I couldn't agree with being forced to help the Tories sort out their internal problems. Until earlier this year I did think the best thing to do was to revoke Article 50 and start all over again. I used to argue against a second referendum but now I think it's the best way to move on and begin to address for example all the catastrophes which flowed from the austerity programme pursued by successive governments over the past ten years (and which EU membership did nothing to hold back, quite the opposite in fact). One of the factors which has changed is that at the time of the referendum the US president made it clear that he wouldn't be giving priority to a trade deal with a post-Brexit UK, while subsequently Trump, together with an increasingly craven UK government, has seen the opportunity for what would amount to a hostile takeover, from which Johnson, Mogg and their chums will profit handsomely. In the end I don't demand that Jeremy Corbyn has exactly the same views on Brexit as I do. What matters to me is that the present appalling government is replaced by one which explicitly places social justice as well as environmental responsibility at the top of its priorities.

[Bryn]

I'm sure there are such people, and no doubt we all have anecdotes about people we know that we can evoke to "prove" anything at all, but even you wouldn't claim that the ones you mention represent more than a tiny minority of the people who voted Leave. We are at cross purposes here. You are constantly restating that any kind of Brexit is very bad for most people. This may or may not be the case, but even if it is, telling everyone who voted Leave they were wrong and their opinions are going to be ignored doesn't get anyone anywhere.

So you get your advice on UK politics from Barry Truax now?

I think the last thing that's needed now is blinkered and petrified opinion. Before the referendum I was torn between remain and leave, and ended up spoiling my ballot because I couldn't agree with being forced to help the Tories sort out their internal problems. Until earlier this year I did think the best thing to do was to revoke Article 50 and start all over again. I used to argue against a second referendum but now I think it's the best way to move on and begin to address for example all the catastrophes which flowed from the austerity programme pursued by successive governments over the past ten years (and which EU membership did nothing to hold back, quite the opposite in fact). One of the factors which has changed is that at the time of the referendum the US president made it clear that he wouldn't be giving priority to a trade deal with a post-Brexit UK, while subsequently Trump, together with an increasingly craven UK government, has seen the opportunity for what would amount to a hostile takeover, from which Johnson, Mogg and their chums will profit handsomely. In the end I don't demand that Jeremy Corbyn has exactly the same views on Brexit as I do. What matters to me is that the present appalling government is replaced by one which explicitly places social justice as well as environmental responsibility at the top of its priorities.

Fair enough, but the chances of the Green Party getting into government are slim indeed. I take it you do not put you faith in either the Labour Party or LibDems to genuinely put environmental responsibility at the top of its priorities.

[Joseph K]

Fair enough, but the chances of the Green Party getting into government are slim indeed. I take it you do not put you faith in either the Labour Party or LibDems to genuinely put environmental responsibility at the top of its priorities.

https://theecologist.org/2019/sep/18/green-new-deal-tops-labour-agenda

[Richard Barrett]

https://theecologist.org/2019/sep/18...-labour-agenda

Quite so. The thing is that, once more, inequality and the climate crisis are closely related issues which capitalism by definition is going to exacerbate. What is required is indeed a more "revolutionary" approach than any of the political parties currently stand for, but, failing that, the opportunity that will exist at the next general election (as it did in the last) to vote for a transformational approach that stands some chance of forming the next government is something that hasn't previously come along in my lifetime and it may not do so again. Do I make myself sufficiently clear now?

[MrGongGong]

Fair enough, but the chances of the Green Party getting into government are slim indeed. I take it you do not put you faith in either the Labour Party or LibDems to genuinely put environmental responsibility at the top of its priorities.

Barry has some interesting things to say and not just about acoustic communication

[Richard Barrett]

Barry has some interesting things to say and not just about acoustic communication

No doubt. But so do thousands of others. Or maybe you were aiming at the Hinton Award for irrelevant namedropping.

[ahinton]

No doubt. But so do thousands of others. Or maybe you were aiming at the Hinton Award for irrelevant namedropping.

Excuse me? Apart from the fact that I offer no such awards (sorry to disappoint you in that), who's name-dropping now, then?!...

[ahinton]

Quite so. The thing is that, once more, inequality and the climate crisis are closely related issues which capitalism by definition is going to exacerbate. What is required is indeed a more "revolutionary" approach than any of the political parties currently stand for, but, failing that, the opportunity that will exist at the next general election (as it did in the last) to vote for a transformational approach that stands some chance of forming the next government is something that hasn't previously come along in my lifetime and it may not do so again. Do I make myself sufficiently clear now?

That's all very well, but how great might you suppose is the chance of any one party or agreed coalition of parties forming the next government in UK?