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ToughDiamond
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20 Dec 2022, 12:03 pm

Rossall wrote:
Free broadband would be great but it's not free is it.. It's paid for by higher taxes.

I'm happy with free broadband and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

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Nuclear disarmament would be great if everyone in the world including Putin and that idiot in North Korea agreed to it.

I suppose one of the main worries about unilateral nuclear disarmament is that it leaves us defenceless. Probably some merit in that concern, but many countries have no nuclear weapons yet they haven't been invaded.

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Corbyn's policies could never have won an election imo. Look at what happened last time: 80 seat Tory majority. As you say, a centerist party led by Starmer is better than the right wing Tories.

An interesting question would be, how many people would vote for a truly socialist Labour Party if the wealthy press barons stopped interfering with public opinion? Another interesting question would be, which is better, a two-party system where there was a significant difference between those parties, or one where there was not? Starmer is essentially "New Labour," which is barely any different from the Tories.

But I'm not putting these ideas forward as a particularly strong case for Corbynism. Just saying that it's not a foregone conclusion that Corbyn (and voting for him) was any less sane than the Tories (and voting for them).

I think what will probably happen at the next election is that we'll get a Labour government, but that the label won't be a very accurate description of the contents.



Rossall
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20 Dec 2022, 1:03 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
I'm happy with free broadband and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

What happens if they decide to move abroad to avoid them?

I suppose one of the main worries about unilateral nuclear disarmament is that it leaves us defenceless. Probably some merit in that concern, but many countries have no nuclear weapons yet they haven't been invaded.

Putin's already threatened Finland and Ireland.

An interesting question would be, how many people would vote for a truly socialist Labour Party if the wealthy press barons stopped interfering with public opinion? Another interesting question would be, which is better, a two-party system where there was a significant difference between those parties, or one where there was not? Starmer is essentially "New Labour," which is barely any different from the Tories.

The press barons aren't going away are they?

But I'm not putting these ideas forward as a particularly strong case for Corbynism. Just saying that it's not a foregone conclusion that Corbyn (and voting for him) was any less sane than the Tories (and voting for them).

But at the end of the day it's up to the voters and last time they rejected Corbyn.

I think what will probably happen at the next election is that we'll get a Labour government, but that the label won't be a very accurate description of the contents.


Better than the Tories though.


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ToughDiamond
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20 Dec 2022, 1:39 pm

Rossall wrote:

What happens if they decide to move abroad to avoid them?

Depends on whether or not the rich are wealth creators or parasites. We could always confiscate their money before they left, in theory at least.

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Putin's already threatened Finland and Ireland.

But he hasn't actually invaded them.

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The press barons aren't going away are they?

They might if we taxed them enough. Newspapers are in decline, sadly not as rapidly as I'd like.

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But at the end of the day it's up to the voters and last time they rejected Corbyn.

32% of the vote in 2019, and in 2017 the same man all but wiped out May's majority. Given that the Tories are now more hated than they used to be, he might have won next time if he'd still been the Labour leader. He's always been potentially electable, which is why the press worked to hard to get rid of him.

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Better than the Tories though.

I think you'd need a powerful microscope to see any difference.
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/2 ... e-debates/
Starmer will very likely win the next election, but I don't expect anything will change.



Rossall
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20 Dec 2022, 1:44 pm

ToughDiamond wrote:
I think you'd need a powerful microscope to see any difference.
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/2 ... e-debates/
Starmer will very likely win the next election, but I don't expect anything will change.


Let's see what's in their 2024 manifesto..


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firemonkey
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20 Dec 2022, 7:45 pm

Where_am_I wrote:
Rossall wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
What do you think was nutty about Corbyn?
Free broadband for all. Unilateral nuclear disarmament to name but two. If he's stayed on Labour would have been wiped out at the next election imo.

There's nothing nutty about free broadband for all.

Corbyn was the only good thing about Labour in decades.

Kier Starmer is a dickhead. I'd still vote Labour, as I'd rather have Tory lite over Tory.



Corbyn's behaviour since losing the whip has shown how much of an attention seeking narcissist he is. Some of his supporters are vile, and yet not not once has he asked them to stop. That's the true, nasty and sordid,measure of the man.



ToughDiamond
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20 Dec 2022, 9:50 pm

^
I'd have to see some examples. Since he ceased to be the Labour leader I've not seen much about him.



blitzkrieg
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20 Dec 2022, 11:41 pm

Where_am_I wrote:
Rossall wrote:
ToughDiamond wrote:
What do you think was nutty about Corbyn?
Free broadband for all. Unilateral nuclear disarmament to name but two. If he's stayed on Labour would have been wiped out at the next election imo.

There's nothing nutty about free broadband for all.

Corbyn was the only good thing about Labour in decades.

Kier Starmer is a dickhead. I'd still vote Labour, as I'd rather have Tory lite over Tory.


I liked the Corbynista, also.



blitzkrieg
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20 Dec 2022, 11:44 pm

Radish wrote:
Rossall wrote:
Radish wrote:
You've only got to watch prime ministers question time. It's worse than a school playground; just name calling and willy waving on all sides.


"Willy waving!" Points for the best post in the thread. :lol:



blitzkrieg
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20 Dec 2022, 11:45 pm

Joe90 wrote:
I hope so! I'm a huge labour supporter. Save the NHS!


It's too late to save the NHS. It has already been privatized by stealth.

I agree with the notion, however.



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21 Dec 2022, 4:23 am

blitzkrieg wrote:
It's too late to save the NHS


disagree



The_Walrus
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21 Dec 2022, 4:49 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Rossall wrote:
Free broadband would be great but it's not free is it.. It's paid for by higher taxes.

I'm happy with free broadband and higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

The problem there is that eventually you run out of other people's money.

Corbyn would have run into very similar issues to Truss. People and institutions would have lost faith in the UK and taken their money out. It wasn't just "free broadband", after all - they wanted to seize 10% of all large companies (to be given to workers), and 100% of energy, water, transport, and broadband companies (to be owned by the state). Even Labour's own plans for what to do in the event they actually won involved imposing capital controls.
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An interesting question would be, how many people would vote for a truly socialist Labour Party if the wealthy press barons stopped interfering with public opinion?

Ah, the old "people who disagree with me are just brainwashed" argument.

Fortunately, in this country the most popular source of news is the BBC, which isn't owned by a wealthy press baron. Most people in this country don't regularly read a newspaper. When they do, they tend to choose papers that align with what they already think, not the other way around (choose a paper and then start believing what it says). Of course there can sometimes be elements of that, but people who choose to read the Daily Mail are already hostile towards socialism.

People don't dislike socialism because they're drooling morons who think whatever Rupert Murdoch tells them to think. People dislike socialism for a variety of reasons ranging from personal prejudice and self-interest on one end, to being aware of the consistent failure of socialism on the other end.
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Another interesting question would be, which is better, a two-party system where there was a significant difference between those parties, or one where there was not? Starmer is essentially "New Labour," which is barely any different from the Tories.

If your measure of "barely any different" is "how much of the economy is publicly owned?", sure, moderate Labour is barely any different from the Tories. But outside of a few fringe ideologues, most people don't really care about that. They care about GPs, ambulances, hospital waiting times, police responsiveness, train strikes, schools, and the economy. Some people care about their benefits, or whether they're going to be deported. They care about whether they're going to be able to afford food and heating. If you're rich enough that you can live in your own bubble where none of these things matter to you, good for you. Most of us aren't that lucky.

We have one political party that is deporting immigrants to Rwanda, refusing to end strikes which are shutting down the country, and chronically underfunding our essential public services, and another party that doesn't want to do those things. Anyone with a good understanding of politics should be able to immediately grasp the differences between them, even those who aren't old enough to remember 2005.



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21 Dec 2022, 5:01 am

ToughDiamond wrote:
Starmer is essentially "New Labour," which is barely any different from the Tories


The words don't exist for me to express enough just how utterly mad I think that statement is



kraftiekortie
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21 Dec 2022, 7:09 am

I wonder if you folks pine for the days of Tony Blair like we pine for the days of Barack Obama.



Radish
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21 Dec 2022, 7:27 am

The_Walrus wrote:
The problem there is that eventually you run out of other people's money.


That's what frightened me and probably thousands of others with Labour's manifesto at the last election. It was like "free money for everyone!" while reaching around to pick pocket your back pocket for your wallet. It was in the same territory as Liz Truss's magic money tree fairy land.


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21 Dec 2022, 7:55 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
I wonder if you folks pine for the days of Tony Blair like we pine for the days of Barack Obama.

I can tell you I f*****g don't. He should be in prison. The sick bastard.


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21 Dec 2022, 7:58 am

I'm glad to see the election will not be won by a left wing nut job. (not saying that all left wing people are nut jobs, only the holodomor denying, stalin apologist tankies).


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