No offence but that doesn't remotely answer the question I asked.
Your question should have been clearer then . Or are you not interested in the conditions people people live under?
There has been "poverty, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness" for decades, both prior to and after the PWSC so clearly the presence of these cannot be the determining factor in the setting up (by who BTW?) of the PWSC?
What? The PWSC address those five things quite successfully for 30 years. You seem to suggest that the PWSC contract made no difference to peoples' lives. That's a gross distortion. Of course it didn't eliminate them, nobody is suggesting it did. Set up by the Attlee government in 1945 under pressure from the working class as butchers has pointed out?
We currently have "full employment.
You think casual work with no pension and sick pay, along with zero hours contracts and taking people off benefits to fiddle the figures equate to full employment with pension and sick pay? I've seen you make good political points but I'll remind you of this when you tell people they're falling for tory propaganda.
And the 2017 Labour Party manifesto did not argue for nationalisation but for "state involvement". You cannot see the conflict that would arise between an independent BoE and a Labour government intent on re-introducing some of the basis for the PWSC? How do you think the BoE would react to the nationalisation (without payment) of industries, to the legalisation of secondary picketing or closed shops?
The BoE seems quite happy with quantitative easing - £375 billion of it since 2008. I don't know, though, what *would* it do about legislation of secondary picketing and closed shops?
Labour councils are currently implementing cuts and attacking workers. What are striking workers in Birmingham currently being attached by a Labour council to do?
Yes I hate to see that. But again the cuts are being forced on them by the government. Where does the money come from? If they set an illegal budget the government will just take over the running of the council. That's not going to help improve conditions for peoples' lives.
All you seem to have is vote Labour in a GE (the same position you had two years ago). I find it genuinely amazing that someone who counts themselves part of the labour movement is so unaware of the past triumphs of the movement. You can't see any lessons from
Poplar?
No, I'm not saying "just vote Labour". I have great respect for the work people are doing in resisting austerity. It's not "either/or" it's "both/and". I hate seeing Labour councils impose austerity but as you say, "conditions have changed"
. I can understand why Labour counciles don't set illegal budgets. It needs money for investment, where does that come from? It can't come from the rates or business rates because those are set. It can't come from building new houses because the government won't allow that. Set an illegal budget and the government will take over administration. There's no benefit in that to people.
This is as weak as your comments on the PWSC. I don't have to offer an alternative to point out that your argument for a return to the PWSC, rests on a significant misunderstanding of such.
Well yes I recall Dr. Johnson saying that you don’t need to be a shoe repairer to know that your boots don’t fit. But if you’ve got someone standing watching the shoe repairer saying You don’t want to do it that way that’s never going to fit, then it’s fair to ask how *they* would do it.