Bijou Drains
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ALB – “He fancies himself as a latter-day Churchill. He may well turn out to be because the current Ukrainian offensive seems to have a similarity with Churchill’s disastrous Gallipoli campaign during the first world slaughter.”
From the Eighteenth Brumaire – “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.
Churchill had large elements of tragedy, Bojo has all the elements of farce.
The historical fact is that all language (like culture) is in a process of continual change. Definitions, meanings, spelling, pronunciations, grammar, usage have continually changed and have done throughout human history. Old English (itself an amalgam of the language of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc|) is unrecognisable to modern English speakers.
For example a change in usage I did not know about in usage I did not know about until recently is the use of the word terrific in its current usage. Originally the use of terrific was linked to terror and terrify in the same way as horrific is linked to horror and horrify, it changed around the mid 19th century to its current usage of something that was good or exciting.
There is no such thing as proper English, any more than there is a proper version of chilli con carne.
The French Academie Francaise have tried (in vain) to regulate the way in which the people make use of their language, being especially upset about the way in which English is changing the use of French. Ironically they do not have same concern for other languages used in France. The Académie Française intervened in June 2008 to oppose the French Government’s proposal to constitutionally offer recognition and protection to regional languages (Flemish, Alsatian, Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan, Gascon, Arpitan, etc.)
In my view, the whole idea of there being “proper language” is a bourgeois fantasy and is another attempt of attempting to divide and conquer. The idea that there is a uniform language that fits in to the national boundary is part of the nationalist fantasy of there being a group of “people” that can be defined by their language group.
I was told for years that my dialect was “wrong” was “slang” or was a sign of lack of education or culture, because my dialect didn’t fit in to the idea of “proper English”, the irony being that it was closer to Old English than most other English regional dialects and was less impacted by the great vowel shift. I still look a house a hoose, a mouse a moose, wear byuts not boots, drink beor not beer and call a table a chebble, just like Chaucer.
To be fair they have put forward the following proposals, thought Loony at the time:
Passports for pets
Abolishing dog licences
Getting rid of the 11+
24 hour drinking
Legalising commercial radio
Voting at 18Their latest manifesto says
26m tonnes of waste plastic bottles are discarded every year in the UK of which only 45% are recycled. The Loony Party has the answer.. Stop making them..
Before you ask…We have found an alternative. Its called glass.
Seemed more switched on than the other contenders at Oxbridge
A suggestion, perhaps we show a little bit of comradely support for Paula as a new moderator.
Could we all just try and attempt to keep it civil at least for a few weeks until Paula and others get a handle on things.
Petty point scoring (and I am guilty of this as much as others) doesn’t really do us any good.
I also often think that the bickering that occurs in the forums would be forgotten and dismissed, if they had occurred on a Saturday night over a few pints (or cappachino’s to include the hipster element).
Perhaps realising that we all say stupid things and giving people a bit of leeway to allow them to withdraw, apologise or forgiving them for making stupid contributions (especially me when the pubs have just shut)
I think those who thought of Prigozhin and his soldiers as a replay of Lenin and the Bolsheviks or even Kornilov and the White Russians are a bit mistaken.
If there is any precedent at all then it is Ernst Röhm and the brown shirts.
If I was Prigizhin and his mates I would keep an eye out for long knives (and also avoid drinking tea in restaurants)
“ I recall the late comrade Pieter Lawrence was a strong advocate of the idea that there would indeed be “law” in a socialist society”
And I remember completely agreeing with him at a couple of conference debates. He made the very sensible contribution that if in a socialist society he developed a severe mental illness he would much rather be supported by regulated and qualified professionals given a choice of that or having his care needs decided upon by the local tennis club or “the village moot”.
I agreed with what he said then and I agree with him now.
I also have the view that a Socialist society would need to use the knowledge gained about health ans safety, food regulation, moving and handling, etc. to regulate areas of our lives. I don’t want to eat contaminated or unsafe foods or to take medicines that have not been investigated or researched.
Mongomery once said: “The first rule of war is don’t march on Moscow”. I have a feeling the Wagner group may face the same fate.
” socialism would be a society without laws, police or prisons, I knew then that it would never become a reality.”
Socialism means the common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
I think a socialist society will have to have rules and they will need to be democratically enforceable if a minority do not wish to comply with these rules and if that leads to difficulty for others. You could call them laws if you want to, I have no objection to that.
For instance if someone insists on driving their car at speeds that put others in danger, then I see nothing unsocialist taking the car off the anti social person and stopping them from driving if they persist on doing it. It would be undemocratic not to.
In a similar way I am pretty sure that in a Socialist society the behaviour of some people would require that to protect the health and well being of others it would be necessary for them to have constraints, for instance children would still need to be protected from those who wish to abuse them. If the only way of ensuring that protection was to separate the perpertrators of this abuse physically from the rest of society in some way, again I would say this wouldn’t be unsocialist, as long as there were safeguards to ensure that system operated in an accountable and open way.
The advent of a socialist society would not instantly mean that parnoid schizophrenia would cease to exist (the adverse experiences that are sometimes linked to schizophrenic breakdown for instance may be reduced, but things like death of a loved one, relationship breakdown, etc. will still occur). It will be necessary to protect people with these difficulties as well as protecting the population from their actions.
I would also hope that these, and other decisions like this would be made by caring and professionally knowledgeable people. Without the resource constraints that they currently are made, I see no reason why the current arrangements to support people could not be adapted to create a compassionate and therapeutic system of support with appropriate safeguards to ensure their is no abuse of the system.
I do think, however, that the idea that punishing people through prison as a way of changing their anti social behaviour would hopefully be recognised as being pretty counter productive.
I do not think that my view is one that others in the party have expressed over the years.
I do think though that in a socialist society the need for these kinds of measures would be massively reduced in comparison to capitalism.
“Just shows you how utterly hopeless things are. Socialism is a beautiful dream. That’s all it’ll ever be.”
If the history of change teaches us anything, it is that change usually takes place when you least expect it.
During the reign of Louis XIV and for most of the reign of Louis XV, France was probably the strongest Absolute Monarchy in the world, but the French Revolution followed in 1789.
The Tsarist system had endured through the 1905 revolution and looked to be in its strongest ever postion in 1913.
If you had predicted during the 1980 Olympics that the Soviet system would begin to collapse within a decade you would have been locked up.
In theory Britain was the Leading World superpower at the end of WW1, 30 years later the British Empire was starting to be broken up.
In 1916 the captured members of the Irish Volunteers and The Irish Citizens Army were jeered as they were marched through Dublin, Sinn Fein won a massive vote in the 1918 Irish General Election.
When Newcastle won the cup in 1955 they were the most successful club side in England and then …………..
(such as our late scotch friend)
Scotch Eggs, Scotch Whisky, Scotch Ale, Scotch Bonnet Peppers and Scotch pies are acceptable, but friends are always Scottish
If Banks can create money from thin air at a stroke of a pen, then presumably Credit Unions would be able to do exactly the same. If that was possible, we could all become credit union members could then create our own money and everyone could stop working, which demonstrates what a lot of baloney this moonshine economics is.
Without trying to claim that there is a way out of the crazy economics of capitalism, the fact that the “Policy and Economics Advisors” in the big political parties actually think they can solve these issues shows just how lamentable academic education actually is.
These feckers have higher degrees and more, but they don’t know their arses from the elbows.
For example, to get a 1st class honours degree you need to get an average of 70%. This means you might have got as much as 30% wrong or missing. You wouldn’t trust an airline pilot that got 30% wrong and if you do a vocational qualification to be a plumber or a sparky, etc. you need to get 100%.
It actually shows who are really the important people in our society, as if we didn’t already know.
“Serious question. If I join the SPGB now would I qualify for a share in its assets (sale of No 52 and its not inconsiderable other monies) when it folds?”
If the Socialist Party is in its death throws, as you suggest, is your ongoing interest in our terminal decline some kind of Harold Shipmanesque like interest in death. If so, “serious question”, does your necrophilia display itself in other areas. Just want to keep an eye out for you if you end up working in whatever nursing home I end up in.
