Borderline Socialist
Once upon a Weekend...
I found that I needed to write to my local political party branch to state my views on the upcoming leadership elections and I needed to get my thoughts down so I though I might as well write them here and get them straight before I did so.
I've been a member of the Labour party in the UK since I was old enough to vote and old enough to join a political party movement. There have been a few gaps along the years where I just became too exasperated with the party direction and/or I needed to save money, not least as during that period interest rates on mortgages reached the crazy heights of 14+%. I forget how high it actually reached, I think I just stopped looking at 14% and considering I was in a pretty well paid job, had no dependants and few expensive habits apart from drinking, it was a pretty bad time where I even had to stop driving as I could not afford the insurance for a few months.
Anyway, that's trivia and long in the past but worth bearing in mind that sometimes, interest rates and inflation can go crazy, even in countries that seem pretty stable. I suspect this is something completely lost on anybody under 50, maybe even under 40 lol. And should it ever happen again, and it could, I suspect the same shockwaves will hot those people just as it did my generation. Just imagine, if you suddenly find you have a mortgage against your home which is greater than the value of your home and anyway, there would be no buyers apart from speculators offering pittances.
But I digress, again, and anyway, that's not relevant to where I started.
My problem is, for the uninitiated, that my views have shifted just a little over the decades but the party itself seems to have shifted itself in quite dramatic terms beneath my feet. It is not the first time. When I first joined the Labour Party it was far left and I, with no commitments, no great experience of life, no responsibilities, was more than happy to be succored by the views of the more extreme left wing fringes of the party such as the Socialist Workers Party and indeed the whole party, it appeared, was moving in that Marxist/Trotskyist direction. Such views are very easy to think good when you have nothing and have grand ideals about the country but no understanding of how the world actually works in the latter parts of the 20th Century.
But I said my views had shifted only a little. And they have, the important thing to me is to have a state that has some key principles. Not necessarily in the definitive order these might be; universal healthcare paid for through taxation to treat everyone equally regardless of position or status or wealth, free education for life because without education a society is doomed, Social housing to ensure everybody that wants a roof over their head is able to get one. Those are the basics, although I have some things to add, but also, a party that need to understand global interconnectedness and global commerce are here to stay and they are to be embraced and nurtured not treated as something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of the shoes.
Without business and commerce a society will, again, stagnate and die. As far as I am concerned, the problem is not and never has been commerce it has always been the distribution of wealth. Even putting that to one side it would be impossible for anyone to argue that standards of living have not improved almost across the board in the UK. It would be possible to point to pockets where things have stood still and it would be easy to point to poverty in the UK, but it also has to be remembered this is relative poverty for the fifth richest country in the world. The fact that we are the fifth wealthiest and yet have homelessness, fuel poverty, food poverty is, I think, a disgrace brought about by the distribution of wealth and not wealth itself. Destroying wealth will not make things better, it simply drags everybody down to a lower level. But moving on...
Housing is also somewhere I might not be greeted with adoring hugs at my local branch. I believe in property ownership (that's the end of my Marxist membership then...) and I even support the Thatcherite policy of allowing council house tenants to buy their own home at a discounted rate determined by the number of years they have paid into the home. And they can sell it whenever they want. Where I differ from Thatcherite policy (my party will be relieved to know, just a little) is that any money earned from the sale must be put back into replacing the social housing stock that has been sold. Trust me, this admission alone is enough to have some of the current Labour party membership point at me and scream insults if not physically assault me lol, and I'm not kidding!)
I also believe, as I have stated before, that the UK needs to retain its independent nuclear deterrent. Again, the mere suggestion could get me thrown out of the party! It is fine to take a high moral position on such things as nuclear weapons but until such time as they are all gone, and until such time as all the autocrats and dictators have succumbed to free elections by the people, we would be stupid to give them up. Just remember, if Nationalist Germany had reached the goal of developing nuclear weaponry before the Americans I would be speaking German right now, that's if I even existed which is unlikely for a variety of reasons, I doubt whether London would exist and this blog would be as heavily censored and monitored as your average Chinese blog (and Russia is not so far behind, they are just a tad more subtle...and some western governments do not exactly have clean hands they just keep getting caught out by what's left of the free and independent investigative journalism).
Crikey, at this rate I'll be thrown out.
On safer ground. We need to restore the legal system from the police, through the courts to the prison and probation services. Just (ab)using statistics and cutting back on police numbers, legal aid, local courts and throwing people into overcrowded Victorian era prisons is not an answer. We must spend more on education to deter crime before it even happens, we must ensure that everyone has access to legal aid to help them defend themselves when arrested and charged simply for fairness and to ensure the police do their jobs of evidence gathering correctly and completely. And then we should not throw people into overcrowded inhumane under staffed prisons but instead spend more on probation services such that minor offenders are released with conditions and are suitably monitored but that takes time, people and money. Money, money, money. Well, with rates of of interest so low, we need to borrow to invest!
I have not forgotten about climate change either. Basically, we need to invest here too. Invest in technologies and companies to bring about a carbon negative country. It's possible. A change in agricultural subsidies encouraging more natural green wildlife habitats will help too. Plus a massive investment in either charging points or hydrogen cell production so that we can actually do what every party claims they want to do and that's, respectfully, banish the combustion engine to history and museums, in this country at least.
What else is there, oh, I know, (re)nationalisation of core industries. I have a nasty feeling I might be about to step away from current Labour Party thinking here as well. In fact I might be stepping away even from Liberal views. There seems to be a mode of thinking where one party wants core industries like Electricity, Gas, Water, Rail, Power Generation and Distribution in public hands and the other wants it in Private hands. I am not convinced that either of these works any better than the other. I don't think it is something I would be dogmatic about.
Whichever route you go down you have the same issues. You have customers who need to be served, you must not impoverish them unfairly, you have a workforce that need to be paid fairly and motivated and you need a management team that is similarly empowered and motivated. The argument goes that under private ownership the management and shareholders expolit the customers and workers whereas the money earned should be ploughed back into the system under public ownership.
But at the end of the day, any excess that gets paid to the government is simply another form of shareholding except the government gets the dividend and then purportedly spends the money raised for the betterment of society. Only I have watched both systems and both fail. I'd leave private companies in charge but then continually change the framework in which they operate to work for the betterment of the country, the customer and the workforce. That can all be done with legislation to minimum wages, union representation, worker participation, end user councils, capping of charges etc.
Think about it, why would an MP sitting in London have any better idea about how a huge national company should be run than a widely respected professional manager. Give the manager the framework and targets they have to hit and conditions they must meet and let them go. There are ways and means to these ends.
What's next...
...isms...
Any ism must be dealt with. Anti-semitism is a key item that has to be dealt with individually simply because of what has been allowed to happen. But all isms must be addressed and stamped out, and the easiest way to do that must be education and integrated multiculturalism (as opposed to ghettoism) . However hard the problem is, it can be addressed and dealt with. But the first step is to accept the problem and then deal with it transparently, which has not been done to this point.
I'm sure there must be lots more, but I'm bored now and the more I write the more I wonder whether I'm actually still welcome in the modern Labour Party. None of what I have written would be controversial during the Blair/Brown years but then we, as a party, seem to want to regard that period of Labour Party control and power as not really Labour. And if it is the case that the Blair/Brown period was not really Labour then maybe I am no longer really Labour and should stop paying them any money... oh, so difficult. Anway... enjoy my dilemma!
I found that I needed to write to my local political party branch to state my views on the upcoming leadership elections and I needed to get my thoughts down so I though I might as well write them here and get them straight before I did so.
I've been a member of the Labour party in the UK since I was old enough to vote and old enough to join a political party movement. There have been a few gaps along the years where I just became too exasperated with the party direction and/or I needed to save money, not least as during that period interest rates on mortgages reached the crazy heights of 14+%. I forget how high it actually reached, I think I just stopped looking at 14% and considering I was in a pretty well paid job, had no dependants and few expensive habits apart from drinking, it was a pretty bad time where I even had to stop driving as I could not afford the insurance for a few months.
Anyway, that's trivia and long in the past but worth bearing in mind that sometimes, interest rates and inflation can go crazy, even in countries that seem pretty stable. I suspect this is something completely lost on anybody under 50, maybe even under 40 lol. And should it ever happen again, and it could, I suspect the same shockwaves will hot those people just as it did my generation. Just imagine, if you suddenly find you have a mortgage against your home which is greater than the value of your home and anyway, there would be no buyers apart from speculators offering pittances.
But I digress, again, and anyway, that's not relevant to where I started.
My problem is, for the uninitiated, that my views have shifted just a little over the decades but the party itself seems to have shifted itself in quite dramatic terms beneath my feet. It is not the first time. When I first joined the Labour Party it was far left and I, with no commitments, no great experience of life, no responsibilities, was more than happy to be succored by the views of the more extreme left wing fringes of the party such as the Socialist Workers Party and indeed the whole party, it appeared, was moving in that Marxist/Trotskyist direction. Such views are very easy to think good when you have nothing and have grand ideals about the country but no understanding of how the world actually works in the latter parts of the 20th Century.
But I said my views had shifted only a little. And they have, the important thing to me is to have a state that has some key principles. Not necessarily in the definitive order these might be; universal healthcare paid for through taxation to treat everyone equally regardless of position or status or wealth, free education for life because without education a society is doomed, Social housing to ensure everybody that wants a roof over their head is able to get one. Those are the basics, although I have some things to add, but also, a party that need to understand global interconnectedness and global commerce are here to stay and they are to be embraced and nurtured not treated as something unpleasant stuck to the bottom of the shoes.
Without business and commerce a society will, again, stagnate and die. As far as I am concerned, the problem is not and never has been commerce it has always been the distribution of wealth. Even putting that to one side it would be impossible for anyone to argue that standards of living have not improved almost across the board in the UK. It would be possible to point to pockets where things have stood still and it would be easy to point to poverty in the UK, but it also has to be remembered this is relative poverty for the fifth richest country in the world. The fact that we are the fifth wealthiest and yet have homelessness, fuel poverty, food poverty is, I think, a disgrace brought about by the distribution of wealth and not wealth itself. Destroying wealth will not make things better, it simply drags everybody down to a lower level. But moving on...
Housing is also somewhere I might not be greeted with adoring hugs at my local branch. I believe in property ownership (that's the end of my Marxist membership then...) and I even support the Thatcherite policy of allowing council house tenants to buy their own home at a discounted rate determined by the number of years they have paid into the home. And they can sell it whenever they want. Where I differ from Thatcherite policy (my party will be relieved to know, just a little) is that any money earned from the sale must be put back into replacing the social housing stock that has been sold. Trust me, this admission alone is enough to have some of the current Labour party membership point at me and scream insults if not physically assault me lol, and I'm not kidding!)
I also believe, as I have stated before, that the UK needs to retain its independent nuclear deterrent. Again, the mere suggestion could get me thrown out of the party! It is fine to take a high moral position on such things as nuclear weapons but until such time as they are all gone, and until such time as all the autocrats and dictators have succumbed to free elections by the people, we would be stupid to give them up. Just remember, if Nationalist Germany had reached the goal of developing nuclear weaponry before the Americans I would be speaking German right now, that's if I even existed which is unlikely for a variety of reasons, I doubt whether London would exist and this blog would be as heavily censored and monitored as your average Chinese blog (and Russia is not so far behind, they are just a tad more subtle...and some western governments do not exactly have clean hands they just keep getting caught out by what's left of the free and independent investigative journalism).
Crikey, at this rate I'll be thrown out.
On safer ground. We need to restore the legal system from the police, through the courts to the prison and probation services. Just (ab)using statistics and cutting back on police numbers, legal aid, local courts and throwing people into overcrowded Victorian era prisons is not an answer. We must spend more on education to deter crime before it even happens, we must ensure that everyone has access to legal aid to help them defend themselves when arrested and charged simply for fairness and to ensure the police do their jobs of evidence gathering correctly and completely. And then we should not throw people into overcrowded inhumane under staffed prisons but instead spend more on probation services such that minor offenders are released with conditions and are suitably monitored but that takes time, people and money. Money, money, money. Well, with rates of of interest so low, we need to borrow to invest!
I have not forgotten about climate change either. Basically, we need to invest here too. Invest in technologies and companies to bring about a carbon negative country. It's possible. A change in agricultural subsidies encouraging more natural green wildlife habitats will help too. Plus a massive investment in either charging points or hydrogen cell production so that we can actually do what every party claims they want to do and that's, respectfully, banish the combustion engine to history and museums, in this country at least.
What else is there, oh, I know, (re)nationalisation of core industries. I have a nasty feeling I might be about to step away from current Labour Party thinking here as well. In fact I might be stepping away even from Liberal views. There seems to be a mode of thinking where one party wants core industries like Electricity, Gas, Water, Rail, Power Generation and Distribution in public hands and the other wants it in Private hands. I am not convinced that either of these works any better than the other. I don't think it is something I would be dogmatic about.
Whichever route you go down you have the same issues. You have customers who need to be served, you must not impoverish them unfairly, you have a workforce that need to be paid fairly and motivated and you need a management team that is similarly empowered and motivated. The argument goes that under private ownership the management and shareholders expolit the customers and workers whereas the money earned should be ploughed back into the system under public ownership.
But at the end of the day, any excess that gets paid to the government is simply another form of shareholding except the government gets the dividend and then purportedly spends the money raised for the betterment of society. Only I have watched both systems and both fail. I'd leave private companies in charge but then continually change the framework in which they operate to work for the betterment of the country, the customer and the workforce. That can all be done with legislation to minimum wages, union representation, worker participation, end user councils, capping of charges etc.
Think about it, why would an MP sitting in London have any better idea about how a huge national company should be run than a widely respected professional manager. Give the manager the framework and targets they have to hit and conditions they must meet and let them go. There are ways and means to these ends.
What's next...
...isms...
Any ism must be dealt with. Anti-semitism is a key item that has to be dealt with individually simply because of what has been allowed to happen. But all isms must be addressed and stamped out, and the easiest way to do that must be education and integrated multiculturalism (as opposed to ghettoism) . However hard the problem is, it can be addressed and dealt with. But the first step is to accept the problem and then deal with it transparently, which has not been done to this point.
I'm sure there must be lots more, but I'm bored now and the more I write the more I wonder whether I'm actually still welcome in the modern Labour Party. None of what I have written would be controversial during the Blair/Brown years but then we, as a party, seem to want to regard that period of Labour Party control and power as not really Labour. And if it is the case that the Blair/Brown period was not really Labour then maybe I am no longer really Labour and should stop paying them any money... oh, so difficult. Anway... enjoy my dilemma!
Comments
Post a Comment