Cameron’s EU deal
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What? You want us to kick you off for masturbating over it. Keep to the thread.
You see, that last sentence didn't even make sense. A deadly serious issue with world-shaking consequences and already the bewildered are reaching, not for their books, or for dictionaries, but for the forum rule sheet. I pity you but I have more important things to do. If the party ever gets round to serious discussion again, I'll see you then. But for now, you can wave a thankful goodbye and get back to your comforting delusions.
Thank you for your useless contribution. You can let us know who you are following next, you have gone from Galloway to Corbyn.
Matt wrote:Thank you for your useless contribution. You can let us know who you are following next, you have gone from Galloway to Corbyn.Hmmm,http://www.ilivehere.co.uk/statistics-ebbw-vale-blaenau-gwent-12053.html
Quote:The rate of unemployment in Ebbw Vale is both higher than the average for and higher than the national average, suggesting that finding a job in this area maybe hard. The rate of claiming any benefit (which includes in work benefits) is more than 25% higher in Ebbw Vale than the national average, suggesting that many people maybe under employed or on a low salary.(my emphasis)http://www.blaenau-gwent.gov.uk/council/170.asp
Quote:Of the 30,416 households in Blaenau Gwent, 6.8% are comprised of no employed adults and with dependent children; this is the highest level in Wales. A further 36.9% are made up of no adults in employment but without dependent children. [census 2011]Approaching one third (29%) of people in Blaenau Gwent have no access to a car or van (inc. company car available for personal use) – this is 3rd highest in Wales. [census 2011] (my emphasis) • The number of households without access to cars and vans fell in Blaenau Gwent from 35% of all households in 2001 to 29% in 2011. [census 2011]If Ebbw Vale is gettign lots of EU cash, that is because it is already deprived, but if people aren't feeling the benefit, maybe the cash is misdirected. Look at Cardiff, Bristol, Liverpool, Newcastle, they voted to remain, and those areas are doing well.You can, i'm afraid, see the pvoerty in South Wales, when you go beyond the bay. You can see it in teesside (16% unemployment, and months of blaming the EU for Redcar closing). Maybe they understand better than we do that they're not benefitting, certainly, when I talk to folk back north that is the feeling. Blairism lost those workers to UKIP, and it's hard to get them back. Maybe outside the EU, finally free to nationalise, and if he survives, Corbvyn can offer them a better deal, but I doubt it.
stuartw2112 wrote:You have to believe they aren't, but come on, get real. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/25/view-wales-town-showered-eu-cash-votes-leave-ebbw-valeStuart, do you seriously believe the working class in this country are thick for voting for a Brexit?
Can i suggest we get a sense of proportion on this issue.As been said by the party, it was mainly a difference of opinion within the ruling class and so far the only consequence has been for them . The stock market crashed briefly but bounced back to above where it stood at the beginning of the week. SOYMB posted on the effect upon the billionaires and we don't care about them.http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2016/06/brexit-and-deep-pockets.htmlMy exchange rate dropped about 3 baht to the pound. For me, the price of a few beers each visit to the ATM but for industry the fall in the pound is important and the spin being placed on it by Brexit does not impress. And Stuart, i doubt your good self predicted that it would be Jeremy Corbyn being stabbed in the back although we all expected the daggers to be drawn at every opportunity. Some of the threats are being back-tracked such as the shut-down of immigration. Despite Australia's points system, there was an increase in immigration and now Brexit say it was not a campaign to reduce the number of immigrants but about control which could mean increasing the flow The Lexit are the ones who should be regretting their role in bolstering the sovereignty and nationalist case. As i said on another forum, both the EU referendum and the Scottish referendum exposed just how insignificant we are when the working class are indeed engaged in a serious exchange of views and opinions.We have no voice at all in their conversations and no audience for our views. The only saving grace is that the left-wing are equally of no consequence. For all their talk of a Europe against austerity, it's all hot-air. Over the next months what we as a party should do is simply carry on drawing fellow workers attention to the politician's lies and betrayals and explaining the disillusionment and disappointment they now face. For myself, the priority is to address the question of our negligible political campaigning and if there is any possibility that when it comes to certain single issues that possess a class-wide importance, we can bend our hostility clause and co-operate and co-ordinate with those who we do not judge as class-enemies but may not agree 100% with so that we can amplify our voice and get some sort of hearing from fellow workers.
alanjjohnstone wrote:A word of sanity from Ricky GervaisQuote:Joking aside, Brexit won't make any difference. The rich will still be rich, the poor will still be poor, and we'll still blame foreigners.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/ricky-gervais-brexit-eu-referendum-results-a7102451.html
This may be true. But it would also be true if they'd been a Fascist takeover overnight. It's not a case of all or nothing. We are not as bad as the left-communists. Are we?
stuartw2112 wrote:As for this party, well I was right about that too. You've played a very minor role of course, but you have aspirations to play a bigger one and that makes you dangerous. Your anti-intellectualism and abstention from practical politics puts you very much in the same bracket as the thick working class (as one of your own members told me recently). You need to up your game and get serious.I rolled over my bet and have gambled that the outcome will be that we won't actually leave the EU at all because it is too dangerous and risky, as the political class are starting to realise. The democratic thing to do would be to ignore this plebiscite, for parliament to take control via our elected representatives, and take us out of this self-created hell.Hi Stuart Have you come across this – a talk by Paolo Barnard , an italian economic journalist, THE TRUTH ABOUT #BREXIThttps://www.facebook.com/DemocraziaVerde/Not saying Im sympathetic but its raises some interesting points and I would be interested in your comments. I notice this line of thinking coming to the fore amongst those on the Left who voted leave. My gripe with it is that it takes a nationalist – whats best for Britain – rather that a class perspective but then the same could be said of many who voted remain
Quote:Cameron was right to resign – make the lame-brained aristos who whipped up the plebeian mob take ownership of the mess they've created. The thick working class will bear the costs of course – let's hope they don't start crying out for a strong leader to help them.I did not vote in the referendum but if I had voted, I would have voted to remain. I was shocked and disappointed at the result.My first reaction was similar to Stuart’s – this was racist, intellectually challenged white van man voting against his own interests. Why can they not see that the people screwing them over are not foreigners, but the very people they all too readily include in the “we”, “us” and “our” used in sweeping sentences such as: ’”We” must take “our” country back’, “They (the Germans, say) will still want to buy “our” goods.”’The “we” in the first sentence includes everyone with a British citizenship, from the Duke of Westminster and David Cameron to you, me and the homeless, the workless and those dependent on food banks. The first kind of “we” do not need to take their country back, as they already own and control most of it. The people benefiting most from the transaction in the second sentence are not “us”, but the owners of the factories or offices where the goods are produced.Then I realised; not everyone who voted leave was a racist bigot. This referendum result was above all a howl of protest, from the vast swaths of the country left behind after mining and traditional industries disintegrated.For example:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/27/liverpool-london-brexit-leave-eu-referendumThe kind of poverty in parts of the UK is like nothing we experience on a daily basis in and around London – if we have a secure job, that is, a roof over our heads and food on the table. Most of us who contribute on this forum have had access to a reasonable education, education that has trained us, to some extent, to think critically, to evaluate. Having the luxury to be able to do this, means you have to grow up in a reasonably stable environment. Sure, we are still workers, our existence is still precarious, there is no job security anymore; homes, either for rent or to buy, are increasingly out of reach for most young people.Still.Most of us debating here are a long way from the grinding poverty and the basic battle for survival every day of their lives that people are subjected to in places such us Blackpool, Middlesborough and Jaywick. Has anyone watched the “poverty porn” on TV about the communities at Jaywick? We are all workers, but these people are so ground down and destitute that they probably view us, the more “secure” section of the working class, in the same way as we regard the capitalist class.Grinding poverty like they experience addles your brain, seeps into your pores. They are on their knees from they are born till they die (at an average age much lower than the more privileged areas of the country). They are continually knocked down, whatever they try. If they try to get some education (some do) they often find there are still no jobs for them at the end of it. All they have succeeded in doing is saddle themselves with more debt, having wasted valuable time.They cannot leave to seek work in the big city centres either, because they have no way of affording accommodation there. So they are trapped. And they self-medicate with drugs and drink – further damaging their brains, no doubt, which probably did not have the best start in life in their mothers’ wombs anyway.With rubbish schools, no incentives to stay on and “do well” they end up barely literate, through no fault of their own.The NHS is run down, so with their multiple environmentally induced complaints, they are done a disservice all over again.I don’t know if you have read J K Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy”. She describes people in this predicament with compassion. The young teenager character Krystal in it has been kicked around from pillar to post from an early age; she is foul mouthed, disruptive, “easy” – and desperately unhappy. Her fight to “do the right thing” by her little brother in the face of a negligent, drug and alcohol addicted mother is endearing and, in the end, sad.People who voted for Brexit to a large extent came from this background. Maybe they were aware of some of the consequences it might have, most probably not.In any case, if you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. What other chance have they had so far, will they ever have, of giving the people at Westminster a bloody nose?
The anarchist post-mortem. Lots of data to chew upon. http://libcom.org/news/making-sense-brexit-tide-reaction-reality-racist-vote-andrew-flood-27062016But its conclusions and solutions seriously wanting.Again from my own perceptive What we socialists fail to do is convey a positive vision of the future while the Leave nationalists communicated with their lies and misinformation a mythical rose-bed UK, where we took our country back and took control again….but real control was left in the hands of the same elite who are bein blamed for being out of touch with ordinary folk…as if there was a time they were ever a connection between the ruling class and the exploited and workers control was never raised as an alternative route.Where was the lead of the French protests being promoted and applauded but rather used as an indication of the decay of the EU. Why were not the UK unions mobilising education and publicity for fellow workers in Europe, proclaiming that we have to resist austerity and cuts?But i'm only whining about things beyond my individual influence as we all are on this thread and forum.The debate now for ourselves is how we as a socialist party, where i and yourselves do possess some sort of capacity to shape, and an organisation that is claiming to be class conscious workers are going to respond by looking at our message and our activities to try and punch above our weight in communicating and educating fellow workers. Let's get to work analysing where we are weak, endeavouring to remedy that, and also identifying our strengths, whatever they are.When fellow workers in their droves walk away from us, surely we should wonder if there is something about ourselves that does not have appeal …perhaps our after-shave…so we change our outward smell, but not our inner essence.
Meel, I don't think the people you are describing would have made up most or even (m)any of those who voted Leave. Most of them probably didn't vote — some 28% of the electorate didn't. Statistically too it's not possible. The really poor and destitute only make up between 10 and 15% of the population and 37% of the electorate (52% of 72% turnout) voted Leave. Most of these will have been workers in employment or retired from employment (quite a lot of these) who owned their own car and went on overseas holidays, i.e not the poorest of the poor. The evidence, unfortunately, is that what swayed most of them was "immigration", aka xenophobia. The only good news is that nearly half the working class who voted rejected this.PS I can't understand YMS's map. What is it supposed to be showing?
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