rodshaw
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rodshawParticipant
I found out about this through one of my daughters, who knows someone in this organisation. She was pleased to have found someone among her friends she can actually talk to about politics.
But – she knows his brand isn’t the real thing, and to my total surprise one day she started to ask me why people didn’t get the point about socialism. It was the first time she’d mentioned it and it turns out she’s fully convinced about it all, so some of my ramblings over the years have obviously rubbed off on her.
I certainly hope her generation manages to get it sorted.rodshawParticipantI’ve posted a comment on this month’s SS front page. I think it’s most heartening that the two reviewed books have been published and that others are seemingly catching on to socialism (even though they don’t call it that – maybe a positive thing?) Will they succeed in getting the message across better than we do?
rodshawParticipantFootball decided to pay its respects to the Queen by cancelling all fixtures over the entire weekend, right down to school level. Apparently it was thought that fans might run riot and cause a policing problem. This attracted much criticism, if not disdain, from other sports and many football pundits. The football authorities have been accused of not trusting their own fans to behave themselves.
But of course, the opponents of the decision to cancel fixtures based their view not on any disregard for the monarchy, but because they thought there were more appropriate ways for people to pay their respects.
Ho-hum.August 10, 2022 at 8:00 pm in reply to: Who’ll speak up for the new oppressed working-class boys? #232099rodshawParticipantAt least they are realising what we’ve been saying all along. But it still doesn’t occur to them to differentiate (or they take great care not to differentiate) between “classes” based on some sort of sliding monetary scale and political classes, i.e. capitalist and worker. That would be too near the uncomfortable truth.
rodshawParticipantFair enough, but he’s implying that all that’s needed for meaningful change is for the Labour Party to be in the right hands and presumably follow some kind of left-wing agenda again. Previous decades of Labour leadership have shown how wishful this is.
rodshawParticipantAnd most people just tut and say well, that’s life, you can’t beat the system. No, but you can get rid of it.
rodshawParticipantIf the arms industry doesn’t dictate foreign policy, they certainly can heavily influence it. At least if we are to believe our own journal:
‘The eastward expansion of NATO, especially when it extends to the ‘near abroad’ and right up to Russia’s borders, is a bitter grievance of Russia’s power elite. That is because it violates the security requirement of a ‘friendly neighbourhood’ deeply embedded in their psyche. It is also because it violates the verbal promises made by Western politicians to Gorbachev that if he allowed Germany to unite and united Germany to remain in NATO then NATO would not expand ‘an inch to the east’. These promises were ‘forgotten’ under pressure from American arms manufacturers, whose sales were flagging due to improved relations with Russia and who sought new markets in Eastern Europe.’
From the article on Ukraine in the SS March issue.
rodshawParticipant‘However, one concern was why NATO was pressing this belligerent position?’
Because it’s good trade for the arms dealers?rodshawParticipantAcccording to a BBC report Abramovich once swindled the Russian Government out of $2.7bn in an oil deal and they considered charging him with fraud:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60736185
Rather than sanctioning him, you’d think the UK would want to reward him.rodshawParticipantExactly so – it’s a monthly dose of sanity.
rodshawParticipantHow careless of him.
rodshawParticipantDoesn’t the purchase and sale of non-existent assets (or should I say, assets that exist only as ideas) happen daily on the Stock Exchange?
rodshawParticipantAs a half-Neapolitan Yorkshireman I’ll always feel in chains as long as Yorkshire is part of the UK and Naples is part of Italy.
rodshawParticipantA newly formed socialist society is bound to inherit many nasty problems which will require some form of regulation. But I’m not sure they will take generations to fix. A society that is no longer sick at its roots won’t be breeding as many sick people, and I imagine the first generation to be born into that society will have a totally different outlook on life.
Just think how quickly attitudes and behaviour can change even in capitalism.
I daresay one big issue will be how the majority keeps a difficult minority in line, when that minority for whatever reason is determined to cause trouble.rodshawParticipantIt’s interesting to see what is considered to be high inflation at different times. In the 1970s it was never below 7% and in 1975 it was over 24%. In the last few decades or so it’s been much lower.
Interest rates were also higher in the 70s and 80s. But I’m not clear whether consumer price inflation, as listed in the link above, would take interest rates into account.
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