Two Special Measures

In a time of great public confusion, of mindless media nattering and pathetic political gesturing, people need a single, strong voice to rise above the crowds and lift them to enlightenment. Well that’s me. I will outline two special measures which are needed now, with regards to economic policy.

A financial incentive for the living wage

When discussing the living wage, it is important to remember that the objections of most middle class debaters are centred around this: that our beloved small businesses will be swamped.

Well that fact is that it doesn’t have to be that way, I’m not proposing any kind of swamping, I merely wish to give the workers their due, and to ensure that people can fend for themselves in financial security. Not only will it be economically sensible, by increasing spending among ordinary people, but it will decrease government spending by lifting thousands out of welfare.

Why not give a tax incentives to businesses which want to provide the Living Wage, it will affectively be taking money out of the government’s coffers and putting it into the workers’ pockets. I would only let this apply to small businesses, corporations will pay it anyway.

A Tobin Tax

Ideas for a new FTT (Financial Transaction Tax), Tobin Tax or Robin Hood Tax, have been played around with for quite a while now. As a nation we are in debt, why not balance the budgets by taking money from those who caused the crisis rather from those who had nothing to do with it? Through taxing Derivative trading, it will also help to stabilise the city, and to discourage the sort of reckless behaviour which caused the crash. Such a slight amount, (0.05%) will hardly cause Armageddon, and so right-wing scaremongering is simply pointless.

 

These are two sensible proposals which will take us closer to a fair and just society, and there is no tiny detail which right-wing commentators can pick at.

 

MarxistMax

I’ve slain the beast

The Lord of the Rings has been a wild ride, both intellectually and spiritually. After almost 7 weeks of reading I finally finished the story whilst in a car, and I must say that it really ruined the ending.

Those final lines: ‘I’m home’ by Samwise, really tang a cord. After such a long time in reading, the book has become a friend, not just an acquaintance. I must say that the humdrum chit-chat of Radio 2 rather spoiled the mood, and so the ending was not quite as nostalgic as I had been hoping for.

The idea of a former civilisation from which the culture of the subject realm has come from is really interesting, and has been mirrored in other works. I mean of course, the provenance of Gondor from the former realm of Numenor.

I plan to mirror this in the epic fantasy that I myself am currently writing, all will become clear in thirty years or so.

In the movies, Frodo is portrayed as a frightful wet. ‘Oh it’s such a burden’ is often to be heard in Frodo’s vocabulary.

But in the book he isn’t portrayed as such a needy weakling, and so I personally don’t find him as repulsive there as in the films. Samwise is brilliant wherever you go, but the books better describe his devotion to Frodo, his master. The connection between master and servant is never explained in the films as well.

Besides which, many details about the plot are neglected in the films, such as ‘The Scouring of the Shire’, in which a disgraced Saruman takes control of the Shire and turns it into a communist dystopia, which the fantastic four have to destroy upon returning from their journey.

Evidently Tolkien, like all great men, has an ingrained fear of dirty commies like me. He talks of thugs who steal from the population for ‘fair distribution’. None of this is given in the films, Saruman dies upon Theoden’s journey to Isengard, whereas in the books he is killed at great lengths by his servant Wormtale when his plan for control of The Shire has failed.

All of this being said, it has been a great read and I would recommend the book to everyone.

MarxistMax

Constant growth is impossible in a finite world

The world is walking blindly forwards into disaster, a disaster based on resource depravation, water stress and starvation.

“At its present rate of growth, by 2059 the global economy will be ten times its 2000 size. But Earth cannot sustainably support a global economy the size it was in 2000.” – Michael Bond

GDP is directly tied to mineral extraction and consumption, therefore growth of that going on into infinity is obviously unsustainable. The services industries run off money that was produced by the profits by extracted materials. There has to be added capital from somewhere, a surplus is produced somewhere down the line.

Western civilisation needs to stop its addiction to cheap, nonsense consumer goods. They are produced by abused workers, they are greedily consumed by westerners who are buying them to make up for the fact that they live in a system which is essentially exploitative to them.

The economic guidelines which are really called for are:

• A reduction in inequality and the diminishment of the ‘get-rich-quick’ culture through the introduction of the living wage and maximum wage. Either that or a ratio system by which the distance between top-earners and bottom earners is lessened. This will redistribute capital down to working class and middle class people without the dreaded ‘big government’. If you really believe in the Thatcherite dream of a property owning democracy then you enrich the workers, then they will buy shares, then they will shop with a more ethical mind-set. Many people wish they could choose a Fair trade option but find that their wages simply don’t stretch far enough.
• Government must lend a helping hand to those enterprise structures which are most beneficial to society. This includes tax breaks for small businesses and co-operatives. Businesses must be encouraged to redistribute shares to their workers. Equally, tax breaks must be given to small businesses that voluntarily pay the living wage. I would personally prefer this to the strict enforcement of the living wage, as it may swamp small enterprise, (which I think is the main concern of most middle class voters). I would give incentivising tax breaks to small enterprises, but I would strictly enforce it upon all corporations.
• I would introduce the Tobin Tax, experts say this would tame the staggering drunkard that are the financial markets and lessen the chances of another crash. Government needs more revenue, this is an idea which will hardly dent the profits of the banks, but will destroy the deficit which this government is hurting so many people to slightly reduce. Those inside the finance industry all say that (off record of course) in the face of a Tobin Tax they wouldn’t actually leave the country, they would ever take such drastic action as their middle class unlooked for champions claim.
• I would like to see heavier government investment in green-technology manufacturing. Renewables are better sold to the public when they are accompanied by a string of well paid, meaningful manufacturing jobs. Why not build the wind turbines, and solar panels here?
• Besides all of this, I would like to see the implementation of my previously mentioned:  Hunter Initiative. I would like to see a redistribution of land to small food producers which use low impact methods and actually supply more food more ethically and sustainably. We need to bring food production back to Britain.

Now these are proposals which are both sensible and recommended, not just by me but the experts. The only reason to not to immediately implement them is fear of the capitalists, who in the current craze of liberalisation have more power than ever on the world stage.

MarxistMax

Reviewing Thatcher’s Legacy

Some left wing good-for-nothings like myself, would blame Thatcher for almost all of the country’s problems, and, contrary to The Telegraph, The Times, The Sunday Times, The Spectator, The Daily Mail and The Sun, they would be right.

Her total misinterpretation of human nature caused her to show dedication and reverence to an economic following which is not only ethically flawed but factually flawed.

I am of course, referring to Free Market Capitalism, the saviour of the West. She placed naive trust in the individual, and this led to the break down of British society.

She thought that government had no role in the market place, and this lead her to shut down the ‘unprofitable’ heavy industries and shove thousands of working class men into unemployment. If you look closely, their descendants have become the ‘benefit scroungers’ that are so loathed by the Tories. She singlehandedly destroyed an entire generation of the working class. She deprived them of meaningful, well paid work and pushed them onto state reliance.

If she was miffed about propping up industries which weren’t profitable then she should have at least have given the sacked miners other skills, trained them so that they could find work again. Instead she doomed them to poverty.

Not only did she destroy the workplaces of the working class, to do that she had to go through the Unions, which stood in her way.

I’ll concede that the Unions had too much power, although I reject the assertion that it was undemocratic. That was the closest democratic solution to the Marxist dream of workers’ control.

However the way that they held the country to ransom was impractical and had to change, I can understand that. I think that we need to find the line between over imposed union power and insecure workers.

The de-regulation of finance led directly to the crash of 2008, you have to be a simpleton not to see that. The get-rich quick culture in which greed was the only virtue led to the break down of society and a de-stable nation, both economically and morally.

During her government, working people were introduced to levels of insecurity, insignificance and  impoverishment unprecedented since the thirties.

Economic inequality soared and now the gap between rich and poor is ridiculously high, far more than is necessary for the ‘incentive to work hard’.

I agree with her decision to re take the Falklands, that’s pretty much it.

Under her oversight, the post-war consensus was stabbed ruthlessly to death, and the triumph of the elite was final. We will never forget her as a woman who wounded our society, the scars of which will be felt for a long time.

MarxistMax

Parliament to be privatised in Thatcher’s memory

Pride's Purge

(satire – probably)

MPs and peers will return to Westminster from the Easter recess on Wednesday as parliament is recalled to debate the planned privatisation of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in honour of the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

However, in a blow to Ed Miliband – who has instructed his MPs to follow his lead in responding to the privatisation in a respectful manner – David Winnick Labour MP for Walsall North said it would be “absolutely hypocritical” if parliament did not hear all sides of the argument to sell themselves off in memory of Baroness Thatcher’s legacy.

Inside sources say Russian oligarch Anton Zingarevich is particularly interested in buying up the House of Commons including all of its MPs as a package (with the exception of Nadine Dorries who is expected to be sold off to an Australian Kangaroo reserve for use as a toilet roll holder)…

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Witches outraged at being compared to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher

Although the street parties were in bad taste, I think this is funny and hits the mark.

Pride's Purge

(satire – probably)

Witches across the country are expressing their outrage after left-wing critics of Baroness Thatcher – who died of a stroke on Monday at the age of 87 – have tried to compare them to the former prime minister.

One prominent witch explained the reasons why they have taken such offence at the comparison:

Under her premiership Margaret Thatcher was responsible for the break-up of communities right across the country, the loss of millions of jobs, three recessions, the sell-off of public utilities resulting in higher prices for gas, electricity and water, the criminalisation of homosexuality, higher rates of crime, the creation of a huge gap between the rich and the poor, outsourcing of health and education to the detriment of both, a massive polarisation of society, deregulation of the banks leading to the present economic crisis, the sinking of the Argentinian ship the General Belgrano while it was…

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Pride's Purge

(not satire)

Facebook likes to make out it’s non-political, and most of the time it’s successfully managed to be.

Until now.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has finally decided to reveal which side of the political divide he’s on.

By funding the right-wing US Republican Party.

Now I know most Facebook users couldn’t give a monkeys about politics, but an awful lot of us do.

I wouldn’t have ever used Menschn – solely because it was the product of a rather annoying Tory MP and an ex-Labour turncoat who liked to post pictures of his willy on Brazilian dating sites.

So I’m not very happy now about using Facebook.

The problem is that there are few alternatives to it.

There’s Google+ of course and the Russian Facebook clone VK (with 100 million users, the most popular social network in Europe).

But neither are likely to challenge Facebook’s dominance…

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