rodshaw
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I would be well and truly amused to see the Tory party ripped apart over all this hoo-ha.
According to an article in yesterday’s Sunday Times (though I don’t know how people get information like this), Johnson is well and truly pissed off with Cummings but is feeling the strain of the last few months and can’t do without him. They have in common that neither ever apologises.
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but playing with people’s lives.
There is also no point in trying to decide now what attitude a socialist society will take towards meat eating and the slaughtering of animals, especially when different parts of the world may take different attitudes towards it.
As a matter of interest this is the email the party sent them in 2013. Their website had a totally different look then, no paywall, and a far more ‘open’ aspect to it, including a contact email and lots of info about future events. Obviously enough to make us interested at the time in a debate.
But no wonder we didn’t get an answer!
“Dear World Future Society,
Hi there,
I am a member of the Campaigns Committee of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.We are interested in organising some sort of event with the World Future Society. Are you based in London, UK where we are? Would you be interested in this?
Were you to agree to a debate, off the top of my head we could debate a Materialist Conception of the Future, or as Marx put it;
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.”
Kind regards,
Darrell Whitehead
Campaigns Committee
The Socialist Party of Great BritainAs succintly put by Courtauld:
Ok, I’ve joined in. My post is under moderation but should appear as 1060 or thereabouts, naturally under a pseudonym but you’ll no doubt spot it!
I can’t believe what some people choose to write about though, looks like we’re shouting from the bottom of a very deep well.
Pity for them they got pipped by Labour in its actual implementation!
No doubt he has been joining in the weekly state-backed rounds of applause to show just how much he cares for workers who would much rather have a hefty pay rise.
I daresay we’ll be hearing and reading a lot more about how the Tories have been a great friend of the NHS during the pandemic.
Quit iPhone:
My heart sank this morning when I saw the people across the road had put up Union Jack bunting across their driveway. I hope my other neighbours don’t follow suit or else, being at the end of a cul-de-sac, I’ll be well and truly cornered.
There again isolation is nothing new for socialists, we’ve known all about it for decades.
I have an ambivalent attitude towards books. They are great to browse and the comfort in their tangibility is unquestionable. There are books I’ve had for over 50 years that I wouldn’t part with for the world.
Some children’s picture books are superb (though I’m not too sure about the constant diet of monsters, ghosts and goblins).
However, with most books, you read them once, or maybe twice, and then they sit on a shelf for decades gathering dust. And they are heavy – if you have any number of them, they are no joke when you move house.
It’s far too simplistic to say that schools no longer teach longhand. Though I doubt that my grandkids will ever be as fond of calligraphy as I am (how many people, even of my generation, are?), they are learning ‘joined-up writing’ at primary school and, though it may not be as common as it once was, I’m sure many schools still teach it.
As far as spreading the socialist message is concerned, any medium will do, the more effective the better.
I think world governments are basically fumbling around, but on the whole following the best scientific and medical advice available on this one specific issue (which makes a change) to try and do the least harm to capitalism as a whole while also having an eye to their re-election chances. They don’t want to be seen to be messing things up.
I don’t think any of them will shed tears about older people dying off or about stricter population controls, but of course if any politicians can be seen to be ‘saving’ their local health services and causing the least deaths possible they will make political capital out of it later.
Labour are of course whingeing that the Tories aren’t doing enough. As if they would have done any better.
Dave B, could you space your paragraphs more closely together? They are very difficult to read and because they are usually long I often give up half way through.
When I try and introduce the idea of world socialism into conversations I usually end up using a mouthful. There’s really no other way. E.g. ‘I think we need to abolish the entire capitalist system, world-wide, along with governments, money and national boundaries, and replace it with world-wide common ownership of all resources’.
Interestingly I said something similar to a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses who came ringing and asked me if I thought the world was getting better or worse. One of them said, ‘Well, I think we could go along with that’. But when I told them what I thought of religion they scuttled on their way.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the term ‘world socialism’. I think we should always put the two words together. It may well give some the impression that we’re after establishing a world government but it emphasizes the global element of our case, which is crucial.
It would appear that most governments round the world are genuinely trying to save lives now and acting on the best possible medical and scientific advice. Though somehow in the next few weeks and months I expect a fair number of reports about how more could have been done, too little too late, all sorts of cover-ups, etc.
As regards the NHS, of course, the irony is that it wouldn’t be in quite as much of a mess if it hadn’t been starved of cash and resources over the decades by Labour and Tory alike on behalf of the capitalist class. The same is no doubt true of most countries.
And no doubt the government has an eye to the future and will make political capital later out of what it’s doing if it can be seen to be in any way successful.
As has been said before it’s just a pity that a crisis like this doesn’t induce more socialist-minded thinking in people, beyond the creation of self-help groups and suchlike, commendable though these may be. Yes, there are far more people being co-operative and helpful than there are cynically taking advantage of the situation, but if a worldwide crisis like this, causing so much misery and financial hardship, doesn’t switch on the light showing that capitalism and its money-based constraints should be dead and buried, I don’t know what will.
