rodshaw
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I think “higher level” football in a socialist society would maybe be played at the level of whatever administrative regions were set up, with players from their own locality. I do somehow envisage these as being more at county level than current national level.
But if some existing nations were more or less kept as is for administrative purposes, there’d be nothing to stop people from still having a “national” footie team.
“Welcome to the first World Cup final of the socialist era, where the team formerly known as England take on the team formerly known as Brazil…”
Maybe not. Anyway I wouldn’t be sure of the wisdom of teams in any sport travelling halfway round the world to play one another.“She said: “There’s nothing wrong with the values of the Conservative party, which is to create more wealth … ”
Ho-hum, that shows the limits of her politics. As if a level playing field would ever be reached, for black, white or anywhere in between, by any party creating more wealth, assuming they were capable of that.
“But, surely, just as we don’t campaign for reforms even if they do improve things for workers so we don’t campaign against reforms that make things worse — especially as in both the above cases this would involve campaigning and voting for a status quo which is far from satisfactory.
So, basically, we campaign only for socialism and neither for nor against particular reforms, while denouncing some proposed reforms as counter-productive and/or anti- working-class.”
Actually, ALB, I was thinking in terms not of campaigning as such, which of course the WSM wouldn’t do, but of individual members voting, in much the same way as a future socialist MP might be instructed to vote for or against a specific reform without compromising their anti-reformist stance. It’s all water under the bridge now, but when things get made worse and nobody seems to benefit it’s a bit hard trying to tell people to see the bigger picture and that remaining in the EU would have been no big deal.
But that’s the story of our political lives, I suppose.
From a working-class point of view, was leave/remain the non-issue we said it would be? In terms of the WSM’s core aim of abolishing capitalism, obviously it was, but there are so many ways things are going to be more awkward for a lot of people. Even the problems for business and trade are going to cascade down to the workers – more general frustration all round.
Also, if many of the British working class as a whole will be worse off, to balance that out is there any section of the working class anywhere in the world that will be better off?
In other words, with hindsight could we have regarded voting remain as a ‘beneficial reform’, or at least an attempt to not make things worse?
Problem with this ‘rational attitude’ is, if it’s rational for you to wait and see what happens to other people, it’s also rational for them to wait and see what happens to you, ergo, it’s a quasi-antivaxxer argument.
I disagree. As we are seeing by people’s different attitudes here, some think it’s rational for them to wait, some think it’s rational to take the plunge. It may depend on your circumstances. If you have a fairly healthy diet and lifestyle, live in a relatively low-risk area and are obeying the social distancing rules, it may be more rational to wait if you’re afraid of potential long-term side effects. If you have bad health and/or diet, live in a more high-risk area or do a high-risk job, it’s probably more rational to have the vaccine.
I think far more people will consider it reasonble to have the vaccine than to wait.
Whether to be a guinea pig, or be one of the first in line for a new treatment, I’m sure would be one of the issues faced by people in a socialist society. It would be interesting to see how that played out. I daresay much like today, with some willing and some not, but without the financial and political complications. If only.
Can anyone give me some info on the history of long-term adverse effects from vaccines. One of my neighbours, though not anti-vax per se, isn’t going to have a Covid vaccine because it’s unproven and there’s no way of knowing of adverse effects in the longer term. He would (quite sensibly) rather remain healthy than have tens of thousands of pounds of compensation lobbed at him years hence (assuming liability could be proved).
Frankly I think he’s got a point.
Fair enough. It’s maybe unfortunate that the word ‘medieval’ as a derogatory term is pretty much in common usage. But I suspect many people who use the word casually don’t really think the Middle Ages were all bad, it’s just one of those expressions whose meanings have become skewed and is maybe not to be taken too literally.
“NOTTHATWEWOULDBEALLTHATCOMFORTABLEREADINGINTHECLASSICALROMANWAYNORHANDLINGINTERMINABLYLONGSCROLLSBECAUSETHESPINEDBOOKWEALSOOWETOTHEMIDDLEAGES
Just demonstrating that reading as the Romans were used to would not be so easy.”
Well, yes, quite. Nobody would write like that now. But that misses the obvious distinction between the capital letter forms themselves, unsurpassed for over two millennia, and the way in which they’re presented.
But I’m not particularly bigging up the Romans over the Middle Ages, and I agree they’re a fascinating period.
Quite how relevant this is to socialism I’m not sure, apart from the Morris connection and the fact that in a socialist society we’d have more time to appreciate the good things of the past (if we were interested in looking back).
“The letters you are now typing in are one of the Middle Ages’ many legacies to our humanity.”
Yes indeed, more or less. Lower case is derived from the Carolingian minuscule, circa 9th century. Italics came into use in the 15th and 16th centuries.
But our upper-case letters were perfected in the Roman era.
Good idea. Do you suggest we use some method in addition to our usual outlets, and go for wider distribution?
Looks like there is now going to be a deal in case of no deal:
“The word Vaccine is wrong, the original virus came from horses instead of cow, it was horsepox instead of cowpox”
Someone, somewhere is probably setting up a campaign right now to have the word changed, on the ground that it’s unfair to horses.
I don’t know whether it’s because the pandemic has made people more health-conscious, or just because a few ex-footballers have recently been diagnosed with dementia, but it looks as if heading may be on the way out. Health-wise, that can’t be a bad thing.
I often wonder what football would be like in a socialist society. Would it just be a runabout in the local park, or would there still be organised matches with proper rules? How about one village against another, in a sort of pre-industrial free-for-all?
