Immigrant workers are scab workers?

[durruti02]

Nope.

But it's all we have.



Woof

VP please note these posts .. jessie is not anti capitalist ..

 

[durruti02]

Agree with unionistion - but note how difficult it is to unionise people in Britain full stop. If we can't even do that, how do you inagine you'll unionise the immigrants?

but part of the difficulty has been as the unions are seen to be weak etc etc .. my whole interest in this debate is to get the left / unions to adopt policies that WILL make them more attractive again ..

 

[tbaldwin]

Militancy during the 70's brought down a tory government ffs. Anyway, what makes you an expert on the militancy of French workers compared to British workers?

An Expert eh....So only an expert can have an opinion? Shit arguement as Einstein said "Imagination is more important than Knowledge"....

 

[Streathamite]

but no-one said 'only an expert can have an opinion'
MC5-surprised you didn't also mention the poll tax movement effectively doing for thatcher, in that it
a) killed the tax
b) brought home to Tory MPs the danger of losing their seats

 

[ViolentPanda]

VP please note these posts .. jessie is not anti capitalist ..

Durruti, please note this post.

I hadn't claimed that he was an anti-capitalist, you muppet.

 

[ViolentPanda]

An Expert eh....So only an expert can have an opinion? Shit arguement as Einstein said "Imagination is more important than Knowledge"....

Which would be aposite if MC5 had said that only an expert could have an opinion, but seeing as he didn't...

BTW, I hope you realise that when Einstein said "imagination", he didn't mean the ability to fantasise about being a socialist in the way you do.

 

[tbaldwin]

Which would be aposite if MC5 had said that only an expert could have an opinion, but seeing as he didn't...

BTW, I hope you realise that when Einstein said "imagination", he didn't mean the ability to fantasise about being a socialist in the way you do.

Are you completely sure about that? I mean do you have proof that he was asked the question or are you just making it up.....Not that i would knock you for that VP....Its great when you use your imagination....

 

[ViolentPanda]

but no-one said 'only an expert can have an opinion'

That sort of thing doesn't have to matter in baldyworld.

MC5-surprised you didn't also mention the poll tax movement effectively doing for thatcher, in that it
a) killed the tax

Eventually. The tories were stupid enough to consider "amending" the poll tax, at first, until they started listening to their constituency parties, who...

b) brought home to Tory MPs the danger of losing their seats

Exactly.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Are you completely sure about that? I mean do you have proof that he was asked the question or are you just making it up.....Not that i would knock you for that VP....Its great when you use your imagination....

You really shouldn't measure everyone by your own standards, balders.

Just because you're prone to bullshitting doesn't mean that everyone else is.

Oh, and the context of the Einstein quote is that knowledge only extends to codified fact whereas imagination gives us access to more than just codified fact, it allows us to theorise, to extrapolate beyond fact, and to formulate and codify new facts.

The entire quote being "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

 

[tbaldwin]

You really shouldn't measure everyone by your own standards, balders.

Just because you're prone to bullshitting doesn't mean that everyone else is.

Oh, and the context of the Einstein quote is that knowledge only extends to codified fact whereas imagination gives us access to more than just codified fact, it allows us to theorise, to extrapolate beyond fact, and to formulate and codify new facts.

The entire quote being "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

You could learn a lot from einstein but i really dont think youve got the imagination.....

 

[audiotech]

but no-one said 'only an expert can have an opinion'
MC5-surprised you didn't also mention the poll tax movement effectively doing for thatcher, in that it
a) killed the tax
b) brought home to Tory MPs the danger of losing their seats

Tis true, you you bloody "expert" .

 

[Streathamite]

That sort of thing doesn't have to matter in baldyworld.

Eventually. The tories were stupid enough to consider "amending" the poll tax, at first, until they started listening to their constituency parties, who...

Exactly.

classily done that - bravo!
I remember the campaign cos I'd just moved to streatham - then still a tory constituency (as it had always been till 92), but with the majority falling all the time. the sitting MP was sir william shelton, then a bovinely loyal backbencher but once la Thatch's PPS and the man who'd run her tory party leadership campaign in '75.
we bombarded his office every surgery, blitzed the manor with posters, petitioned everywhere and generally whipped up a storm.
every time I saw his nibs he looked more and more miserable and shitscared of the imminent departure of a seat the tories had never ever lost, the one chur chill's own son-in-law had held.
he voted for maggie to go and told her she should quit 'for the good of the party'

 

[rekil]

Ireland as you might just have noticed has seen a huge rise in its economic fortunes since the EU started giving them money.....Which does seem a bit similar in some respects to reparations which ive argued for for developing countries....Years and years of economic migration for Irish people created misery for many Irish people.

The corporate tax rate was slashed to 10%, undercutting everyone else in the EU by a long way, and this along with a fairly well educated workforce (due in part to EU funds) attracted a lot of foreign direct investment and with it, jobs. I paid no college fees and I received an EU grant which covered living expenses, just as well since there was little or no work available to supplement income unless you went to work in Germany, the US or the UK for summers as many did. Without migration there was no way to complete your education or keep your sanity. Living at home on the dole with mammy til you joined the cops or the civil service or hanged yourself weren't attractive options.

 

[Jessiedog]

so capitalism is fine to you jessie then

Nope.

But it's all we have.

VP please note these posts .. jessie is not anti capitalist ..

This is getting rather Kafkaesque!

What in my response could possibly lead you to that conclusion?



Have you somehow divined the degree to which I am anti-cap' through these words?

Do you understand where I live?

I might lament the difficulties of living in a society that the Heritage Foundation has just labelled "the free-est economy in the world" for the 13th straight year. I may even have become rather resigned to it - worn down through exhaustion, as in.........


...."It's all we have"




But, how the fuck you can extrapolate this as you have tried is, frankly, beyond me.

Oh, I forgot, you can't. It's bollocks!

The fact is that I am just another worker here to be exploited by those who control the capital. I will soon, no doubt, be consigned, once again, to the scrap heap, to slide into festering popverty and eventual, lonely, old-aged, deprivation.


And how you can construe my support for the (working) poor of East Asia as being "not anti capitalist" is again unfathomable.

I also happen to have a strong and very personal interest in the Philippines, its people, its economy and the welfare of its poor. And the policies you advocate would have a devestating impact on this country.

So fuck you!



Woof

 

[poster342002]

Militancy during the 70's brought down a tory government ffs. Anyway, what makes you an expert on the militancy of French workers compared to British workers?

The 1970s was over thirty years ago. No government in Britan has been brougth down by militancy since - in fact, no industrial battle of any sort has been won since then either. French militancy has won numerous industrial battles since the 1970s.

I don't claim to be an "expert" on French militancy, but I can go by experience and what I see around me.

And look at what you see when you see a Fench demonstration on the TV: actual workers. What do you see on a Britsh demo? Middleclass students, crusties and toe-curlingly embarrasing chants.

 

[Streathamite]

The 1970s was over thirty years ago. No government in Britan has been brougth down by militancy since - . .

poll tax protest fucked Thatcher

in fact, no industrial battle of any sort has been won since then either

Gate Gourmet boys & girls reckon they won

 

[poster342002]

poll tax protest fucked Thatcher

Which is why she clung on to office and then the tories were returned to power at the next election. If that's the toppling a government...

 

[ViolentPanda]

You could learn a lot from einstein but i really dont think youve got the imagination.....

Almost right, Balders. You don't think, do you?

Here's another selective quotation for you.

"...an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"

Which, as a selectively edited bite from a famous quote, describes you rather well, IMHO (although the actual quote, from Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, is about life rather than about a halfwitted soi-disant "socialist").

 

[Streathamite]

Which is why she clung on to office ...

well she was told to go by all those tory MPs who could see she might cost them her job

and then the tories were returned to power at the next election.

sure, they threw the switch and it just worked (1992 was a huge deal closer than most realised), due to the gullibility of the electorate

If that's the toppling a government

In that it got rid of the dominant political figure of that era, yes. she WAS her govt

 

[poster342002]

well she was told to go by all those tory MPs who could see she might cost them her job

sure, they threw the switch and it just worked (1992 was a huge deal closer than most realised), due to the gullibility of the electorate


In that it got rid of the dominant political figure of that era, yes. she WAS her govt

When the East German government tried that trick in 1989 by swapping Erich Honecker with Egon Krenz, East Germans saw through it and demonstrated in the streets with banners that read: "Egon? Who asked us?". Here in Britain, people just swallowed the shit and asked for second helpings.

 

[Streathamite]

yes, but people tend not to like murderous dictatorships, and by then every eastern european one was being laughed at...

 

[Streathamite]

When the East German government tried that trick in 1989 by swapping Erich Honecker with Egon Krenz, East Germans saw through it and demonstrated in the streets with banners that read: "Egon? Who asked us?". Here in Britain, people just swallowed the shit and asked for second helpings.

I think there was also another reason why the switch worked here; no tory politician could have been so easy to dissociate and entangle from maggie, for two reasons;
1) he'd come from nowhere; entered the cabinet in 1987, but in the ultimate backroom boy role, and people only got to really hear of him from July '89 onwards (became foreign sec)
2) his personal style was as disarmingly different to Thatcher's as it was possible for a tory to get; mr everyman, chelsea fan, disarmingly ordinary.
It also - certainly triggered a seachange in govt that was tantamount to a new govt

 

[poster342002]

I think there was also another reason why the switch worked here; no tory politician could have been so easy to dissociate and entangle from maggie, for two reasons;
1) he'd come from nowhere; entered the cabinet in 1987, but in the ultimate backroom boy role, and people only got to really hear of him from July '89 onwards (became foreign sec)
2) his personal style was as disarmingly different to Thatcher's as it was possible for a tory to get; mr everyman, chelsea fan, disarmingly ordinary.
It also - certainly triggered a seachange in govt that was tantamount to a new govt

Yeah but - come on, it was the same shit in a rebranded wrapper. Is evreyone so thick to fall for this again and again? Of course they are - witness the carefully choreographed "split/feud" between Brown and Blair. Remember before that it was Blair/Prescott? Before that it was Thatcher/Heseltine?

On and on and on it goes. Yet everyone cheerfully swallows it every time like it was the first.

 

[nwnm]

Almost right, Balders. You don't think, do you?
Here's another selective quotation for you.
"...an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
, as a selectively edited bite from a famous quote, describes you rather well, IMHO (although the actual quote, from Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5, is about life rather than about a halfwitted soi-disant "socialist").

Well he's certainly a "Poor player" I just wish he'd 'strutt and frett his hour upon the stage and then be seen no more'

 

[rekil]

Which is why she clung on to office and then the tories were returned to power at the next election. If that's the toppling a government...

But the party has been screwed ever since. Look at the state of them now. Boris Johnson doing his loveable buffoon act and Cameron peddling his 'party of working people' shite.

 

[poster342002]

But the party has been screwed ever since.

No problem - their policies continued reinvigorated with a new lease of life under NuLabour.

 

[audiotech]

The 1970s was over thirty years ago. No government in Britan has been brougth down by militancy since - in fact, no industrial battle of any sort has been won since then either. French militancy has won numerous industrial battles since the 1970s.

I don't claim to be an "expert" on French militancy, but I can go by experience and what I see around me.

And look at what you see when you see a Fench demonstration on the TV: actual workers. What do you see on a Britsh demo? Middleclass students, crusties and toe-curlingly embarrasing chants.

In the 80's there were massive struggles going on: steelworkers, hospital workers, local government workers, civil service workers, print workers, teachers, engineers and a host of other smaller struggles up and down the country. There were also huge demonstrations against nuclear weapons and the apartheid regime in South Africa. The poll tax campaign in the early 90's has already been mentioned and of course we've seen massive anti-war demonstrations in recent times.

However, the miners defeat in the mid 80's had a major impact on the confidence of the working class, which is still felt today, but to a lesser degree than it was, but despite that workers have been still involved in struggle from that time, although at a low level.

It's difficult to predict when the next major struggle involving the working class will break out, but going by historical precedents it appears likely.

 

[audiotech]

oops

 

[poster342002]

In the 80's there were massive struggles going on: steelworkers, hospital workers, local government workers, civil service workers, print workers, teachers, engineers and a host of other smaller struggles up and down the country. There were also huge demonstrations against nuclear weapons and the apartheid regime in South Africa. The poll tax campaign in the early 90's has already been mentioned and of course we've seen massive anti-war demonstrations in recent times.

However, the miners defeat in the mid 80's had a major impact on the confidence of the working class, which is still felt today, but to a lesser degree than it was, but despite that workers have been still involved in struggle from that time, although at a low level.

It's difficult to predict when the next major struggle involving the working class will break out, but going by historical precedents it appears likely.

And just about all the struggles you mention above (with the possible exception of the poll tax) were lost. Our class forces are now decimated and in a very sorry state indeed. Do you seriously think we'll get another "major struggle" and if so, stand even a rat's arse chance of winning it?

 

[iROBOT]

It's difficult to predict when the next major struggle involving the working class will break out, but going by historical precedents it appears likely.

Im not sure if the "honest working classes" exist anymore. Everyone seems to want to make a fast buck and show there wealth off.

Capitalism's won.