State of the parties as 2015 General Election looms.

[Serial_Apologist]

I tried to open this link and it took my computer into bluescreen mode instantly and it has only just now recovered (I think and hope); I cannot imagine why else this would have happened at this point, so members beware!

Divine intervention, it must have been. {Yikes}

(PS I haven't tried the link)

[jean]

I tried, and it was fine.

[Serial_Apologist]

Most of us are, yes, but that doesn't mean that we "own" these public assets; we may "own" the right to use them, some largely free at the point of use and others (such as the rail network when it was fully nationalised) at our own expense, but that's not the same as "owning" in the sense of having some influence over them as shareholders would do.

Isn't this one of the problems with nationalisation As We Have Known It? - namely the handing over of all decision-making on the running of industries and services to non-elected, unaccountable, overpaid bureaucrats? My belief is that it is this misapplication of the principle of nationalisation, common to Stalinism and Fabianism - that condemned the whole notion of public ownership in the public's mind, and led to the Thatcher government's promulgation of share ownership as a "genuine" means of popular ownership when it wasn't anything of the sort.

[Serial_Apologist]

Not necessarily; there will be instances of that, of course, but it does not necessarily follow that all wealth arises solely from unjustiable expropriation - or theft, to put it more bluntly.

Justified or not, expropriation takes place all the time, with alleged historical roots in the age when a ruling class emerged in tribal societies, self-charged with overseeing the surpluses gained in settlement and the establishment of agriculture, as the latter replaced what had hitherto been primitive hunting and gathering societies. That overseeing role naturally transitioned into one of controlling the wealth when money replaced commodity bartering.

[ahinton]

I tried, and it was fine.

Good. It might just have been a coincidence, but I didn't want to give it a second go.

[ahinton]

Isn't this one of the problems with nationalisation As We Have Known It? - namely the handing over of all decision-making on the running of industries and services to non-elected, unaccountable, overpaid bureaucrats? My belief is that it is this misapplication of the principle of nationalisation, common to Stalinism and Fabianism - that condemned the whole notion of public ownership in the public's mind, and led to the Thatcher government's promulgation of share ownership as a "genuine" means of popular ownership when it wasn't anything of the sort.

Fair comment, although it's rather to one side of what I was referring to, namely what seems to me to be the strange notion that, if an industry is nationalised, all citizens - not even only taxpaying ones - actually somehow "own" it.

[ahinton]

Justified or not, expropriation takes place all the time, with alleged historical roots in the age when a ruling class emerged in tribal societies, self-charged with overseeing the surpluses gained in settlement and the establishment of agriculture, as the latter replaced what had hitherto been primitive hunting and gathering societies. That overseeing role naturally transitioned into one of controlling the wealth when money replaced commodity bartering.

Sure; all that I was seeking to suggest, however, was that not all wealth creation and preservation is by definition dependent wholly upon such expropriation.

[Richard Barrett]

Justified or not, expropriation takes place all the time, with alleged historical roots in the age when a ruling class emerged in tribal societies, self-charged with overseeing the surpluses gained in settlement and the establishment of agriculture, as the latter replaced what had hitherto been primitive hunting and gathering societies. That overseeing role naturally transitioned into one of controlling the wealth when money replaced commodity bartering.

Although, interestingly enough, some of the earliest urbanised agriculture-based societies appear to have been egalitarian. The process by which class systems arose must have been a bit more complex, or different in different situations. But for sure, the existence of a class arrogating to itself the role of "controlling the wealth" has been around for a sufficiently long time (and the hegemony exercised by that class sufficiently ingrained) that it's easy to think it's some kind of law of nature.

[Flosshilde]

Please do not use misogynistic language. You would not call a male prime minister an evil witch, so don't describe the late, great Mrs T like that.

Umm - Margaret Thatcher didn't privatise British Rail, John Major did. As Mr GG didn't name the witch, it's you who are making misogynistic assumptions.

[MrGongGong]

Umm - Margaret Thatcher didn't privatise British Rail, John Major did. As Mr GG didn't name the witch, it's you who are making misogynistic assumptions.

So there.

[Flosshilde]

Isn't this one of the problems with nationalisation As We Have Known It? - namely the handing over of all decision-making on the running of industries and services to non-elected, unaccountable, overpaid bureaucrats?

Are they any worse than non-elected, unaccountable, overpaid Bransons & Souters? At least under the non-elected etc bureaucrats there weren't any shareholders to syphon off the profits (sorry, subsidies) into their own pockets.

[Flosshilde]

As I have said before, if any rich people have stolen from poor people, they should be prosecuted and any property returned to the rightful owners.

A very large part of the aristocracy today are descended from people who gained their land & wealth by force - either from peasants or other, weaker, landowners. And if you think that looking back to the Norman conquest & middle ages is too distant, a more recent land-grab happened with the eighteenth century enclosures, when poor people lost grazing & land rights with the enclosure of common land to form part of the estates of the aristocracy.

[P. G. Tipps]

I agree with you that the railroads should have never left state-ownership. Cheap transport is vital to helping people get a better stake-hold in life (your earlier link makes the point very well) and the only way to do that is to have it state-owned.

It still is!

[Richard Barrett]

Please do not use misogynistic language

It's political correctness gone mad!

[P. G. Tipps]

It's political correctness gone mad!

Oh no it's not.

Any man who is caught calling any lady ... never mind one of the stature of Lady T ... a 'witch' is a misogynistic bounder of the lowest repute.