| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.197 |
Does this mean we're going to be treated with dodgems, carousels, helter-skelters, sideshows, freak shows...? If so, my vote is theirs!  | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Oh dear, Des - I think I might be reading too many of your stories and I'm starting to think like you. That was my thought too when they unveiled their new slogan. Hubby and I both looked at each other and said "That should be fun - we can play like children again"!  (for those of you not in the UK, our Labour government have jut unveiled this as their election slogan  ) | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.231.1 |
Labour like children again?  | ||
| Ian Alexander Martin (Iam) Username: Iam Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 64.180.64.74 |
The real question might be "who is 'all', exactly?" | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.167.138 |
...all the bankers, all the fatcats, all the media barons. You know, all the people the Tories lick the arse of too. The only difference is that 'New' Labour try to convince the rest of us they care about us while buggering us royally. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Simon, you old cynic. Every word you say is true though.  Am I the only one, I wonder, who's already getting really fed up with this election campaign - and the damn thing's hardly started?! | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.70 |
I'm hoping for a hung parliament. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.167.138 |
Preferably from the lampposts, with piano wire. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.197 |
A hung parliament - seems apt regarding the fair's puppet shows. Seriously, this ambiguity of a 'future fair for all' would be avoided if they had used 'a future fair to all'? Meanwhile, many envision loud slowly spinning merry-gordons ... and strung or stilted clowns stalking our nightmares. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.73 |
'Future fair for all' sounds like something Brown would say. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.119.136 |
They've been in power for 13 consequtive years now. Aren't you guys already living in a future designed by them in 1997? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
And the Tories' latest brainwave: let the common man buy bank shares at a reduced price. Brilliant, David. Cos when someone's on his way to the dole office, they're gonna read the Daily Mail's finance pages to check the latest SP. It's right next to the vacancies section. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.151.103 |
All three major parties are telling us, in marginally different terms, that we have to face the greatest public service cuts in living memory in order to compensate for the £1.2 trillion (yes, trillion: that's a million million) of tax money handed over to the banks. And while the bankers have just awarded themselves record bonuses with our money and declared the recession over, in terms of jobs, housing and public services the recession is only just beginning. On a global scale, international debt juggling and a 'race to the bottom' in terms of wages and employment conditions are masking the fact that economic depression is spreading rapidly across the world and is here for a generation. The capitalist system has failed – economically, politically, socially, environmentally and morally. Millions of people are turning to fascism because the capitalist media show them no other alternative to the bankrupt consensus. The British media love the BNP because they can use it to scare readers into voting Tory: "The BNP are terrible but they have a point about immigration and multiculturalism, so let's put a stop to all that!" What you're not hearing about, and won't be hearing about, from the national media is the level of protest against exploitation that is building within the trade union movement. The level of public opposition to vicious cuts in healthcare and other public services will continue to grow. And despite media neglect and/or condemnation, it will organise and challenge the prevailing lies about the inevitability of the 'market'. The only positive sign for the General Election is the emergence of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, the beginning of a broad-based mass party that will address the concerns of the millions of ex-Labour voters who otherwise may never vote again, and will put the case for a future that really is 'fair for all' rather than offering grudging concessions for the people and an endless, irresponsible, socially destructive profit-fest for the millionaires. TUSC will put forward forty or so candidates in the election. They absolutely deserve your support. Only by building this alternative can we move on from the ruins of capitalism and the ugly threat of fascism to a political future worthy of human potential. Without that, we face a prospect of political alienation, economic absurdity, environmental horror and the slow death of hope. A different future is possible. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Brilliantly said, Joel! It looks increasingly likely that we'll sleepwalk into a Tory government with the massive public service cuts that will mean (over and above what's already going to happen)... precisely because ex-Labour voters just won't turn out on polling day. I despise Gordon Brown but better the devil you know rather than the nightmare of a return to conservatism. Then again, whoever wins the next election will be getting a poison chalice and be out again in one term. In my own civil service job we've already been warned to brace ourselves for 33% cuts in staff and funding this year, next year and the year after with an equally long pay freeze on top of that - IF LABOUR WIN! If the Tories win ALL BETS ARE OFF... we're all royally f****d!! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.197 |
Some serious points there. All worth considering. I didn't mean to trivilaise this issue at the start - maybe it's a horror fair beyond even the imagination of even horror writers? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Joel, as ever, you've summed it up perfectly. Stephen, I've got a foot in the public sector too - albeit as a freelancer working in higher education. Things are grim in HE with huge funding cuts, much unrest amongst workers with a threat of redundancy hanging over them (the first of several days of industrial action is planned for Leeds Uni this Thursday). The line from the politicians is that funding cuts in HE needn't affect quality in education - what bullshit!!! If you multiply what's happening in HE to the rest of the public sector - schools, health service, police, fire, etc - things are going to get very, very messy indeed.  | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.231.1 |
The real sadness of it all lies in the fact that there is enough food, wealth even, to accommodate everyone. But people are starving while more than enough is being produced; food is being destroyed to maintain certain quota. We haven't learned anything from WW2 and its outcome. With hindsight, those Golden Sixties were nothing but another merry coincidence. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.47.103.170 |
Well said, Joel. I really hope that the TUSC gain votes. Fascism (in all its forms) is rearing its ugly head again and looking for scapegoats. You would have thought that people would know where this could all end by now... | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.184.66 |
The world banking bailout amounts to ~$30 Trillion. That would fund 600 simultaneous manned missions to Mars. Maybe we should have just emigrated there. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>I didn't mean to trivilaise this issue at the start<< You haven't trivialised it at all, Des. It's the politicians who trivialise it by thinking they're going to win us over with a silly slogan designed by a marketing person - and the voters who fall for the silly slogans who trivialise it all still further.  | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.197 |
Thanks, caroline. I think the slogan-makers made a big mistake - in their own terms. Just as a narrow point (unaffecting the bigger points raised here with which I have much sympathy) - does anyone agree with me that 'a future fair to all' makes more unambiguous sense (just as a piece of English) than 'a future fair for all'? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>does anyone agree with me that 'a future fair to all' makes more unambiguous sense (just as a piece of English) than 'a future fair for all'?<< Absolutely. I know it's not a proper survey, but they were asking a few people somewhere (West Midlands, possibly?) on the news last night what they thought about it. The general feeling seemed to be: "What's that supposed to mean?" | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 217.43.29.197 |
I've also noticed that 'a future fair for all' has a resonance, when said quickly, with 'a future free for all'! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
>>'a future free for all'<< That's what the bankers are having, I reckon! | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Every job vacancy has an average 120 applicants. How f***ing lucky was I to get a new job last year when I was made redundant. Sadly that job is an admin role in the NHS... I wonder what'll happen when the tories get in. Whatever you say about the BNP I really do believe that they're going to get seats in parliament this time round. they're the only party actively campaigning in Salford so far. Remember our current MP is Hazel Blears... I think the protest vote for the BNP will be large enough to oust her. I don't want them to get in but we're in the perfect political situation for the extremists to start gaining seats. No one wants labour back in. No sensible person wants the Tories in. The liberals should be capitalising on this but most people don't even know who Nick Clegg is so they're out of the picture. the only other party leader people recognise is prick griffin. I don't think our politics have been so scary while I've been alive. When no one trusts or can tell the difference between the major parties, the extremists slide in through the back door. Voter turnout is running at less than 35% because people have become so apathetic with the state of the major parties. It won't take vast amounts of people to vote in the worst possible candidates. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
>>>Voter turnout is running at less than 35% because people have become so apathetic with the state of the major parties. Or disenfranchised via a dope-diet of crap telly and "enough of their own problems to sort out". | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Perhaps it is time for the Samurai to rise again... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
Bless . . . http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8529063.stm | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 82.38.75.85 |
Yes, I heard that on the news last night - about a top banking boss saying "no" to his bonus. But what I can't understand is that the bank concerned is set to announce a LOSS. So my question is - should he have a bonus at all if the organisation he is running has performed so badly that it's making a loss? I'm quite sure that if any of the rest of us here are on performance-related pay, we don't get a bonus if we haven't performed well. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 86.24.167.138 |
Joel, do you know if TUSC are fielding any candidates out Salford way? From what Weber's saying, we could use an alternative out here. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.222.103 |
A Future Fear for All: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ | ||
| Clive (Clive) Username: Clive Registered: 10-2009 Posted From: 81.104.165.168 |
>>do you know if TUSC are fielding any candidates out Salford way? From what Weber's saying, we could use an alternative out here.<< David Henry is standing in Salford. http://www.tusc.org.uk/candidates.php They have a candidate in my local area, Cardiff Central, who is certainly getting my vote. I agree with pretty much everything Joel says above and really do think it's important for the left to start creating a strong counter point to the extreme right. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
>>>So my question is - should he have a bonus at all if the organisation he is running has performed so badly that it's making a loss? That's RBS, Caroline, and the losses are inevitable. To be fair to Stephen Hester, he's running a far better ship than that wanker Goodwin ever did. Losses last year were £20+ billion; the latest figures are out on Friday and losses are expected to be around £5 billion. Hard though it might be to take, the nation's recovery depends on RBS's success, not least because of the fact that HMG owns 84% of its shares. It wants to sell these at a profit for the taxpayer. RBS wasn't bailed out in the sense of giving it money to survive; it was effectively invested in (yes, when no other investor would touch it, yet invested in all the same). It could make the country about £25 billion in profit if the shares get up to Hester's intended 70p. A tall order, yes, but it's in all our interests that Hester succeeds. (I realise this is a bit like saying it's essential for the man holding a gun to our heads not to pull the trigger, but even so . . . ) | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.30.20 |
>>>I'm quite sure that if any of the rest of us here are on performance-related pay, we don't get a bonus if we haven't performed well. Alas, most of the bonuses go to investment bankers, who have made lots of profits this year. They still don't deserve such money, of course, but if it's performance related, then they can at least legitimately point to their screens and all the numbers crawling thereon and say, "The champagne's on me." |