The BBC and the SPGB
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ALB wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:a trellis for the backyard
Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous.
It's neither sublime nor ridiculous but the less said about the matter, as with sensitive issues generally, the better. Comrade Rob Cox, the minute taker for the EC meeting in question, struck precisely the right balance.
William Morris said 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.'
Quote:After all, the comrades who regularly attend Head Office are the ones who do the graft.I think you will some out-lying members who will disagree with you, there, comrade. Certainly with a HO its house-keeping tasks are centralised which means excluding many members who may be willing from participating but these members are also engaged in the hard graft of propagating socialism, of keeping branches going, of lay-out of the Standard, of making contributions on the internet. A lot more than just only the London and Home Counties members are involved in the hard graft of Party-work and involved in the task of keeping the Party alive and active. I may well be mistaken in an assumption of a trellis in a back-yard is for climbing plants, a very easy one to make from afar. Over the years i have seen some unnecessary extravagence…a pricey dirt collecting door-mat…special computer room carpetting…a remote control/automatic sky-light.But certainly the main argument is not what the actual improvements are or were but that with less members the high cost of a premises becomes unsustainable and the proper balance for our bank balance or returns from any possible investments is not to pay bills for HO but to invest in activity and campaigns to ensure our wealth is not in money or mortar but in members. I know you agree and have been energetic in conveying the SPGB message but we still have a long way to go to reverse the trend and that might eventually lead to some hard choices being made in the future.Just as the internet has made the need for hard-copy print magazines redundant to communicate ideas, it has also, with Skype, made the need for a permanent office superfluous, other than storage space, which can be had very cheaply.I'm a socialist not a sentimentalist and if certain sacrifices are to be made to assist in achieving socialism, so be it.I'm well experienced at dumping cumbersome baggage and travelling light.
I wasn't criticising the decision to buy a trellis (after all, didn't he write a book we like) but that we have been reduced to discussing this here. And still are.
ALB, If the BBC thinks it is unusual enough for a small political party to possess a million quid property that it requires reporting, then i think it is safe to assume that some of its members may have their own thoughts on the subject, too, and use the thread to express them. As an aside, from this exchange, i gather once more that the online EC minutes are not a full account with certain details purposefully omitted out , nor is it the first time nor the last, and this necessity i fully accept. However, i suggest that when posted to branches there should be inserted a note of explanation of what was left out of the online version and why. Or do some believe because of privilege of location they should be privy to more party information than the rest of us and that those out of the loop cannot be trusted with certain matters?Secrets always create conspiracy theories and paranoia
ALB wrote:I wasn't criticising the decision to buy a trellis (after all, didn't he write a book we like) but that we have been reduced to discussing this here. And still are.Yep, we published Art, Labour and Socialism as an SPGB pamphlet.
ALB wrote:I wasn't criticising the decision to buy a trellis (after all, didn't he write a book we like) but that we have been reduced to discussing this here. And still are.There was also that fictitious character in the radio programme 'I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'; a Mrs Trellis of North Wales:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_a_Clue
Oh I see now. That's what the secret is: Head Office is to be decorated with expensive William Morris wallpaper in keeping with its enhanced value:
alanjjohnstone wrote:ALB, If the BBC thinks it is unusual enough for a small political party to possess a million quid property that it requires reporting, then i think it is safe to assume that some of its members may have their own thoughts on the subject, too, and use the thread to express them.Sure, provided those members don't see fit to imagine what they don't know for certain.You were wrong about the trellis and now you're wrong about "a pricey dirt collecting door-mat and special computer room carpetting (sic)". Extravagant observations and downright inaccuracies do nothing to usefully inform those members "out of the loop". And there was a perfectly sound reason (temperature control) for having an "automatic sky-light" installed (in part undertaken by a member), and was a relatively inexpensive feature included when the old sky-light needed replacing.Party Treasurers have being exercising themselves about the alleged high cost of having and maintaining Head Office for as long as I can remember. We weren't particularly short of funds then and there's very little likelihood of us being short of funds for the foreseeble future.
Fully automated luxury communismhttp://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2015/no-1329-may-2015/pathfinders-keep-it-simple-stupid
Quote:You were wrong about the trellis and now you're wrong about "a pricey dirt collecting door-mat and special computer room carpetting (sic)…and was a relatively inexpensive feature included when the old sky-light needed replacing."I have no desire to trawl through through years of EC minutes to confirm these (you can, of course) but it was near on a hundred pounds for the front door mat and as for the special computer room mats i hazard a guess few members had ever heard of such mats until they were bought (but like lucky charms, i have no idea if they proved efficious in avoiding crashes) On my last visit a long time ago but not long after it was installed the sky-light function was not working. I am glad it is now fixed and is regularly used for the comfort of those working in HO. But don't get me going with the new nice comfy chairs we bought, all well-padded for sore bums. Mea culpa on the trellis but since there is something else behind the purchase than mere garden furniture and i am not telepathic in knowing what. So the observations and advice of the treasurer is irrelevant and unnecessary. I say no more about that and let the treasurer reply if he so chooses. But like any other officer of the party it is the members who decide to act or not act on reports. You can if you wish ignore his recommendations to cut back in costs. Of course, we have plenty of funds, currently…Dead members' money but the stark fact is that we will run out of those unless we start recruiting. That is not conjecture but a fact of life (or death, in this case)To recruit we need to up the gear in activity and publicity. Membership dues and the present levels of voluntary contributions simply does not afford us the luxury of a Clapham HO and pay for the promotion of socialism. Keeping funds tied up in some sort of high interest account to pay HO bills is holding back money that should be spent on propagating the case for socialism. Speculate to accumulate members. I have more than once expressed appreciation of your branch efforts in recruiting but sadly other branches are failing to achieve similar fruitful results and it saddens me when i read of inquorate meetings of LONDON branches. As you yourself often indicate we are hampered from viable campaigning for socialism due to lack of people to participate with more and more of the onus resting upon the shoulders of fewer and fewer. The reality we face is frequently expressed by yourself. If it takes, at some point, in the future, a choice of premises or propaganda, i know where my vote goes. i have no desire to see HO being kept as a museum for a non-functioning socialist party because there is funds reserved in the bank to pay for its upkeep as an empty shell rather than being a centre for a thriving socialist party. I'm no doubt the Private Frazer of the party, full of doom and gloom, but the optimists are very much noticable in their absence in that nobody has so far said we will inevitably have to buy or rent newer and larger and more appropriate premises to accommodate the office-space of a host of full-time party workers when we have out-grown HO…a situation we would all welcome but who wants to put a wager on it?
The monies, were well spent, in my view, on General Election activities. I hope the Party will spend its money tapping into the vehement opposition to this Government!Not sure this months Socialist Standard is in keeping with the doom and gloom, or who it is supposed to be aimed at? Upset members of the Labour Party?How about; "they win, you lose, Fuck the Tories!"
The Communist Party of the US has more assets and physical facilities than the SPGB, they own a big house in downtown Los Angeles, they have a larger membership, and they collect more money from them.The Publishing House known as Pathfinder belongs to the Socialist Party of the US, and they used to have bookstores in different places, and they have claimed copyright over the English works of Leon Trotsky. I think that 1.3 millions is nothing compares to what they have. I wish we had more than 50 millions, a Radio and a TV station, in order to be used for the propagation of socialism, most workers around the world are still investing their money in the political parties of their own class enemies
Here's how the i paper (15 July) reported the story:
Quote:Socialist realists eye capital gainsA socialist party of just 300 members is worth more than £lm, it has emerged. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has cash reserves of £452,250 and property worth £900,000, its accounts state. A spokesman told the BBC: "We live in a capitalist society; you need money to survive. We don't just want to 'abolish money'"Which goes to show that not all scumbag journalists, skilled in the arts of distortion and truncated quotes, work for the Sun, the Daily Mail and the rest of the gutter press. Some work for the self-styled "quality" press.
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