Politics

[Rayvin 5131]

Unite! Unite! Because if you don't we'll fucking deselect you.

 

You reckon keeping it divisive is the way to go then? I'm not actively hostile to the Labour MPs that won't get on message but you have to question what the point in them remaining within the party is if they don't get with the program.

 

I don't give a shit what happens to them as long as they don't get in the way (which they spent the entire previous calendar year doing).

[Christmas Tree 4543]

The average of the results was just 39.4% in favour of renewing Trident and 44.4% opposed

 

http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/809-does-the-british-public-support-trident

 

68% of the public say the energy companies should be run in the public sector

 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

 

66% support nationalising the railway companies

 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/11/04/nationalise-energy-and-rail-companies-say-public/

 

84% of all voters, and 77% of Tory voters, want the NHS run by the public sector

 

http://nhap.org/what-you-can-do/facts-fingertips/public-and-professional-opinion-of-nhs-privatisation/

 

61% support increasing the top rate of tax to 50p

 

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/01/28/majority-support-50p-tax/

 

81% would support a governmental policy to build 250,000 affordable homes a year for the next four years.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/30/housing-crisis-poll-city-country-split-blame

 

Only 11% of people thought that all students should pay toward their tuition fees

 

http://wonkhe.com/blogs/british-social-attitudes-survey-3-in-4-people-support-tuition-fees/

 

 

 

 

The majority seem pretty left wing to me. The problem is how motivated they are to vote by the options they have...

 

 

The general election result can be summarised in a nutshell: the Conservatives did well with voters that turn out. Labour did well with voters who don’t vote.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/22/election-2015-who-voted-for-whom-labour-conservatives-turnout

 

But parties that want to get elected don't promise all of the above as a goody bag at an election because the reality of paying for it all is pie in the sky.

 

Taking all the private sector out of the NHS and social care sounds lovely. The problem will arise when Mr McDonnell has to put the sums on a bit of paper.

 

Lovely slogan / full of holes.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

Great post, thanks HF.

 

I was just going to add - the Daily Mail published more than 20 anti-Corbyn articles yesterday That has to be fear. Surely. If they just thought he was dismal, he'd not get more than a couple.

It's called entertainment

[Rayvin 5131]

But parties that want to get elected don't promise all of the above as a goody bag at an election because the reality of paying for it all is pie in the sky.

 

Taking all the private sector out of the NHS and social care sounds lovely. The problem will arise when Mr McDonnell has to put the sums on a bit of paper.

 

Lovely slogan / full of holes.

 

CT - you're impossible to argue with properly on this because you don't actually look at what people are saying. If you have a suggestion that debunks Keynesian economic theory (and they do exist) then I'm all ears, but until then, you've got nothing other than the fact that most people are as ill informed as you are on economics. Sorry, I don't want this to sound harsh, but I've tried putting it over gently. It is imperative that we spend our way back to growth. The country is crying out for it.

 

 

It's called entertainment

 

Fair enough. Not fear, just entertainment. We'll see how it develops I guess.

[ewerk 29819]

You reckon keeping it divisive is the way to go then? I'm not actively hostile to the Labour MPs that won't get on message but you have to question what the point in them remaining within the party is if they don't get with the program.

 

I don't give a shit what happens to them as long as they don't get in the way (which they spent the entire previous calendar year doing).

Nah it's absolutely the time to draw a line under this and come together but it was only last week that the same

bellend was demanding that MPs be held to account.

[Rayvin 5131]

Well I don't think they should be and the mood in the party leadership doesn't *seem* to be for that either. Reconciliation is needed now.

 

I only quoted him because it is quite a stirring speech which I think puts over what this is all about. Power without Principles (an exaggeration certainly) got us to the widespread disillusionment and ultimate defeat that he mentions.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

I'd happily pay more. That said, it's not me that should be paying, it's the wealthy. They're on 45% aren't they? I'm sure that 50% is achievable without capital flight.

 

And yeah, I'm going with fear. It's about building a narrative. The narrative has to be that Corbyn is dangerous while also being incompetent. The more they put out there, the more will stick. Basic tabloid journalism, surely? Which is why this campaign has to be fought through social media, so that the Daily Heil can be outgunned.

you're obsessed with the Daily Mail.

 

If you honestly think the conservatives are worried about Corbyn you need to lied down in a dark room.

 

80% of his own MP's don't rate him.

 

Pre 2015 Labour Party members prefer the other guy.

 

According to polls, the electorate don't like him.

 

He's got a way to go before conservative central office starts to notice he exists.

[NJS 4283]

The conservatives couldn't wish for an easier opposition, I don't understand how you can't see that from the opinion polls? The daily mail just wants to sell newspaper, and Corbyn is a gift to them regards this. He'll still get an easy ride compared to Blair precisely because he is no threat.

The Mail don't just want to sell papers - they want to protect their owners and the rest of the establishment and they do that by frightening the ignorant. I'd love it if he stood up to them and their readership but according to you he needs them to vote for him which is why Brown pandered to the cunts so much to ultimately no avail.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

The conservatives couldn't wish for an easier opposition, I don't understand how you can't see that from the opinion polls? The daily mail just wants to sell newspaper, and Corbyn is a gift to them regards this. He'll still get an easy ride compared to Blair precisely because he is no threat.

So this.

[NJS 4283]

CT - you're impossible to argue with properly on this because you don't actually look at what people are saying. If you have a suggestion that debunks Keynesian economic theory (and they do exist) then I'm all ears, but until then, you've got nothing other than the fact that most people are as ill informed as you are on economics. Sorry, I don't want this to sound harsh, but I've tried putting it over gently. It is imperative that we spend our way back to growth. The country is crying out for it.

 

 

 

Fair enough. Not fear, just entertainment. We'll see how it develops I guess.

Chez has pointed him in the direction of economic articles repeatedly but he won't read them or try and understand them.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

You reckon keeping it divisive is the way to go then? I'm not actively hostile to the Labour MPs that won't get on message but you have to question what the point in them remaining within the party is if they don't get with the program.

 

I don't give a shit what happens to them as long as they don't get in the way (which they spent the entire previous calendar year doing).

How many times did Corbyn vote against the labour leadership? 500 or something.

[NJS 4283]

How many times did Corbyn vote against the labour leadership? 500 or something.

If you see what he voted against - like Iraq, ID cards, NHS outsourcing etc then it shows him as decent in the face of NL bollocks.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

CT - you're impossible to argue with properly on this because you don't actually look at what people are saying. If you have a suggestion that debunks Keynesian economic theory (and they do exist) then I'm all ears, but until then, you've got nothing other than the fact that most people are as ill informed as you are on economics.

It's less about me being ill informed on Keynesian economics and more about you being ill informed on political history. We had them for years up until the 70's / 80's when they were eventually chased out of town.

 

The days when strong unions sucked the life out of companies leading to a capital flight of the U.K. We were known as "the sick man of Europe".

 

May we never go back.

[NJS 4283]

It's less about me being ill informed on Keynesian economics and more about you being ill informed on political history. We had them for years up until the 70's / 80's when they were eventually chased out of town.

 

The days when strong unions sucked the life out of companies leading to a capital flight of the U.K. We were known as "the sick man of Europe".

 

May we never go back.

You couldn't take capital out of the UK before the bitch eased controls the day after she was elected. History eh?

[Happy Face 29]

But parties that want to get elected don't promise all of the above as a goody bag at an election because the reality of paying for it all is pie in the sky.

 

 

God bless those private companies paying for our trains and energy for no reward. It's over my head why they choose to handle such a costly enterprise for us. Don't worry about explaining to me, I'll bow to your insight without justification.

[Rayvin 5131]

It's less about me being ill informed on Keynesian economics and more about you being ill informed on political history. We had them for years up until the 70's / 80's when they were eventually chased out of town.

 

The days when strong unions sucked the life out of companies leading to a capital flight of the U.K. We were known as "the sick man of Europe".

 

May we never go back.

 

Who is them? New Labour was Keynesian as well. The public seemed to be on board then.

 

I know the political history insofar as you guys have explained it on here, in some considerable detail I might add - but I think the set of circumstances are different. We have a dwindling middle class, young people who can't afford to leave their parent's homes well into their 30s, the highest income inequality gap this country has ever seen, Brexit, no growth to speak of, and of course, the fucking internet. Notable for being a tool by which people can bypass the media.

 

We aren't going back to unions, we're moving forward (hopefully) to greater equality.

[Christmas Tree 4543]

You couldn't take capital out of the UK before the bitch eased controls the day after she was elected. History eh?

 

Capital flight has always happened. You're confusing it with bank regulations I presume. In the 70's lots of entrepreneurs companies had had enough and fucked off.

 

 

History indeed

[Rayvin 5131]

Keynesian economics (/ˈkeɪnziən/ KAYN-zee-ən; orKeynesianism) are the various theories about how in the short run, and especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy).

[Christmas Tree 4543]

God bless those private companies paying for our trains and energy for no reward. It's over my head why they choose to handle such a costly enterprise for us. Don't worry about explaining to me, I'll bow to your insight without justification.

So maybe we should nationalise SKY, all the banks, Aldi.....

 

There was a need for it following WW2, when most of nationalisation took place, but unfortunately (as seen repeatedly with the NHS), governments don't run things all that well.

 

Most of these industries in the 70's were run like shit, performed poorly and had to be subsidised by the tax payer.

 

This is all in the history books btw.

[Dr Gloom 21578]

The government ran the trains a fuckload better than private companies have been able to. I'm old enough to remember that. Remove the profit motive and more attention can be spent on improving services without paying dividends to shareholders.

[Dr Gloom 21578]

That's not to say the free market doesn't have is place. But I don't think private companies and public services is a good mix.

[Renton 20620]

So maybe we should nationalise SKY, all the banks, Aldi.....

 

There was a need for it following WW2, when most of nationalisation took place, but unfortunately (as seen repeatedly with the NHS), governments don't run things all that well.

 

Most of these industries in the 70's were run like shit, performed poorly and had to be subsidised by the tax payer.

 

This is all in the history books btw.

Horse shit. Loads of our European partners, sorry ex-partners, have nationalised infrastructure services, and a few of them own most of ours too. The only one that I think was justified was British Telecom. However, now it's been done I'm not sure how easy it is to undo. Edited September 26, 2016 by Renton

[Happy Face 29]

So maybe we should nationalise SKY, all the banks, Aldi.....

 

There was a need for it following WW2, when most of nationalisation took place, but unfortunately (as seen repeatedly with the NHS), governments don't run things all that well.

 

Most of these industries in the 70's were run like shit, performed poorly and had to be subsidised by the tax payer.

 

This is all in the history books btw.

Which book would you recommend on the success of privatisation in the UK?

[Christmas Tree 4543]

Keynesian economics (/ˈkeɪnziən/ KAYN-zee-ən; orKeynesianism) are the various theories about how in the short run, and especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total spending in the economy).

Ok let's bottom this once and for all with some history rather than rose tinted glasses.

 

 

John Maynard Keynes put it best: 'Madmen in authority who hear voices in the air are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.'

 

He could hardly have suspected that, 70 years later, that academic scribbler would be none other than Keynes himself.

 

For as the global economic crisis continues to unfold, the economist's ideas of borrow-and-spend government have come back into fashion with a vengeance.

 

And yet, in the rush to embrace the new Keynesianism, we are in danger of missing the point about the old version.

 

For Keynesianism did not, as is often imagined, put an end to the Great Depression.

 

Indeed, the record of big-spending governments during hard times is not one to be proud of.

 

John Maynard Keynes was, at first glance, an unlikely candidate to become one of the great icons of Left-wing politics.

 

Born in 1883 to a Cambridge economist and social reformer, he was brought up in an atmosphere of high-minded privilege.

 

Eton and Cambridge, where he got top marks, gave him social gloss and academic distinction.

 

He was no scholarly drudge, though, but a lover of beauty and pleasure. (Asked on his deathbed, in 1946, whether he had any regrets, he was said to have remarked: 'I should have drunk more champagne.')

 

By 1925, Keynes was building a reputation as the most brilliant and controversial economist in the western world.

 

After advising the Government during World War I, he seized attention in 1919 with an attack on the Treaty of Versailles, arguing (correctly, it turned out) that its punitive terms were bound to provoke a terrible German reaction.

 

And during the Twenties he cemented his image with a series of onslaughts on economic orthodoxy, chipping away at the three pillars of the old order - the Treaty, the gold standard (the system whereby bank notes were literally exchangeable for gold) and laissez-faire government, the economic ideology which advocates minimal state intervention.

 

But one of the great myths about Keynes is that when the Wall Street Crash sent shockwaves through the world economy in 1929, politicians seized on his ideas as a solution to the Depression. They did nothing of the sort.

 

For although Keynes' brains were highly regarded, he remained a heretic.

 

His trademark notions - government borrowing and spending on public works to boost demand and alleviate recession - were unpopular on both sides of the political divide.

 

Although Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government brought him on board in 1930, it did not take up his prescriptions.

 

For as a Whitehall joke at the time had it, if you asked five economists for their opinions, you would get six replies - two of them from Keynes.

 

And when a major committee asked his advice on solutions to the Depression, he gave no fewer than seven different answers.

 

In fact, it was only at the margins of British politics than Keynesianism, as it eventually became called, really caught on.

 

Then, the most distinguished champion of government spending in hard times was the former Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George, one of the most dynamic and charismatic speakers in the country.

 

But Lloyd George was a political pariah, his image besmirched by a cash-for-peerages scandal and his private reputation damaged by a string of sexual misdemeanours.

 

Even many Liberals hated and despised him. 'The Goat', as he was called, was far from the ideal person to sell Keynes's radical economics to the political establishment.

 

Yet Keynes's biggest political admirer was even less salubrious. During the Twenties, he had met a dashing young Labour politician, Sir Oswald Mosley, and it was he who made the most determined effort to introduce Keynes' ideas into British economic life.

 

As early as 1925, Mosley was arguing for nationalised banks, an economic council and centralised planning for full employment.

 

And in 1930, Mosley, who was then a minister without portfolio outside the Cabinet, presented his famous Memorandum to the Labour Cabinet, recommending £200 million of public works and social spending to kick- start the economy into recovery.

 

This was Keynesianism pure and simple - and the Cabinet rejected it. To most Labour ministers, borrowing money to throw at public works during tough times smacked of profligate irresponsibility.

 

Mosley promptly flounced out of the Government and ended up founding the British Union of Fascists, horrifying his old friends and colleagues.

 

He remained an admirer of Keynes's ideas, though - as did his great friend and mentor, Adolf Hitler.

 

Indeed, if there was one government that did embrace Keynesianism enthusiastically in the Thirties, it was Hitler's Germany - where borrowing, spending and public works were the foundations of the Nazis' economic appeal in a country ravaged by the Depression.

 

In Britain, meanwhile, Keynes remained a prophet crying in the wilderness.

 

When the Labour government fell from office in 1931, ripped apart by the economic crisis and replaced with a National Government run by MacDonald and Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin, Keynes was not impressed.

 

He thought the Tories' ideas were 'medieval' and despised Baldwin's 'stupidity'.

 

And he was even less impressed when the first thing the National Government did was the exact opposite of what he recommended - slashing spending and ruthlessly pruning unemployment benefits to impress the markets.

 

And yet the common image of the National Government, supposedly a cabal of rich, hard-faced men watching with callous indifference as millions of workers in flat caps trudged through the streets looking vainly for work, is complete nonsense.

 

Indeed, the very idea of the Hungry Thirties is largely a myth. By comparison with most countries, Britain escaped the Depression relatively unscathed.

 

Unemployment did rocket, hitting a terrifying 23 per cent in January 1933, but then it quickly fell back to pre-Crash levels.

 

Wages remained high and, for those people still in work, life was better than ever. And as early as the end of 1933, while Germany and the U.S. were suffering the worst throes of the Depression, Britain was already in recovery.

 

What was the key, then, to Britain's escape? It was certainly not Keynesianism - for Keynes's ideas were never tried.

 

The key economic figure in the National Government, Chancellor Neville Chamberlain, was a strong believer in protectionist tariffs and tight money.

 

Despite this, he was a keen reformer, setting aside cash for unemployment benefits, health and housing, but he drew the line at borrowing millions of pounds to spend on public works.

 

And although he approved a programme of aid to depressed areas, notably the coalfields of South Wales and Tyneside shipyards, it cost a tiny £2 million - a hundred times less than the programmes Keynes and Mosley had envisaged, and nowhere near enough to make a major impact.

 

In fact, the real key to Britain's recovery was probably the moment in September 1931 when the pound, battered by speculators, was forced off the gold standard.

 

Until then, the Bank of England had been compelled to keep interest rates high to maintain the ludicrously elevated value of sterling.

 

But as investors lost their faith in the pound at the height of the Depression, the Bank finally gave up the fight and abandoned the gold standard.

 

Now there was no need for the cripplingly high interest rates and by June 1932, bank rates were down to a barely noticeable 2 per cent - the ideal level to stimulate a recovery driven by private enterprise.

 

For while industrial areas, especially in the North, Scotland and South Wales, were suffering from the collapse of international demand in the Depression, the paradox is that many people had never had it so good.

 

As even a socialist like George Orwell was forced to admit, when contemplating the popularity of the cinema, gambling and High Street fashion in Wigan, Britain in the Thirties was an increasingly affluent society.

 

'It is quite likely that fish-and-chips, silk stockings, salmon, cut-price chocolate, the movies, the radio, strong tea and the Football Pools have between them averted revolution,' he grumbled.

 

As a result, as early as 1935, the Depression in Britain was virtually over. By contrast, the U.S., where government intervention - in line with Keynesian thinking - was much more pronounced, did not begin to recover until the outbreak of World War II.

 

While President Franklin D. Roosevelt's innumerable government schemes and unprecedented welfare spending undoubtedly protected Americans against the ravages of poverty and unemployment, they certainly did nothing to bring recovery.

 

In many ways, the New Deal, with its obsession with government control over the economy and money supply, intervention to control prices and agricultural production among myriad social projects, was a terrible advertisement for big government.

 

For when businesses should have been investing for the future, they were defensive and angry, their confidence shattered by Roosevelt's attacks on them.

 

The great myth about Keynesianism, in other words, is that it was tried in the Thirties and proved successful.

 

In fact, Keynes did not publish his landmark General Theory until 1936, and his ideas did not take hold among senior Tory and Labour politicians until the Forties.

 

And in the years after the war his complicated theory of demand management was gradually diluted into a recipe for government spending, with prime ministers such as Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson printing money rather than facing up to the realities of Britain's industrial decline.

 

By the mid-Seventies, the result was rampant inflation, soaring unemployment and a bloated, bureaucratic public sector, prompting Labour's Prime Minister Jim Callaghan to issue a famous repudiation of Keynesianism.

 

'We used to think you could spend your way out of recession by boosting government spending,' he told his party in 1976.

 

'I tell you, in all candour, that option no longer exists.'

 

Callaghan's words marked the end for Keynesianism in Britain - which makes it all the more surprising that it is making a comeback.

 

But while even Keynes's critics, such as the monetarist Milton Friedman, acknowledge that he was a brilliant economist, it would be a dreadful mistake to turn back the clock to the theories of the Twenties and Thirties.

 

In fact, as a die-hard Liberal who hated socialism and supported capitalism, Keynes thought of government intervention only as a last resort.

 

He never envisaged a public sector on the scale we have today and would be horrified by the current regime of welfare entitlements.

 

What is more, he never anticipated the problems of soaring world commodity prices and massive inflation, which is why Keynesianism collapsed in the Seventies.

 

His admirers insist that he would have tackled the problem of inflation had he not died in 1946 at the age of 63 - but this only hammers home the point that, at best, his theories were a work in progress, not the definitive answer to the world's ills.

 

Above all, Keynesianism was the product of a world of national tariffs, protectionism and jealously guarded economic sovereignty.

 

In a globalised world when governments badly need to win the confidence of international exchange markets, the idea of heedlessly borrowing and spending your way out of recession is as outdated as the films of George Formby and Gracie Fields.

 

The crowning irony, though, is that Keynes himself would have been the first to mock his new admirers.

 

A daring nonconformist who loved to poke fun at conventional wisdom, he would have shuddered at the thought of dusting down the orthodoxies of the past instead of thinking up solutions based on changed global realities.

 

In other words, Keynes would have been no Keynesian. For as he rightly put it, politicians are never so ridiculous as when they make themselves 'the slaves of some defunct economist'.

 

Word Bro

[Christmas Tree 4543]

Which book would you recommend on the success of privatisation in the UK?

Book