Welcome to Fortress Brighton

Dom,

Thanks for your reply and I appreciate your explanation. I don't doubt your feelings about Blair at all - personally I find him pretty nauseating myself; I just think that, in my own very humble opinion, a statement about wanting to 'blow' someone 'up', or even just to 'see' it happening, even if it's someone like our own beloved prime minister (insert smiley as appropriate) looks pretty ugly on a public forum and is not the sort of talk I personally would want to encourage in any way.

Regards,

JonR

quote:

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Originally posted by Roy T:
I trust that you have done your civic duty and passed this information to https://www.mi5.gov.uk/output/Page133.html?

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Orsis For Corsis Guvnor

Orsis For Corsis Guvnor[/QUOTE]
Unfortunatly Graham,
Thats exactly what we ended up with today. It would seem that a couple of the PRO FOX HUNTING BRIGADE decided that what Brighton needed to feed the extras in the circus was a dead horse and a couple of dead calfs[one might ask how they managed to get that lot through the Police security curtain that is stretched all around Brighton] so they just dumped them in the middle of town, nice one fellas that would really impress every one down here!!
oldie.

[QUOTE]Extremists thrive on socio-economic instability. [QUOTE]

Like, uh, Mrs Thatcher who was able to drastically reduce the price of labour by tolerating mass unemployment.

Steve -

You're a sexy beast but when it comes to politics you are sadly (as the technical term goes) a feckin eejit.

Tim

quote:

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Originally posted by Tim Jones:
[QUOTE]Extremists thrive on socio-economic instability. [QUOTE]

Steve -

You're a sexy beast but when it comes to politics you are sadly (as the technical term goes) a feckin eejit.

Tim

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But he used such nice long words.

Tim,
Steve and others myself included have discussed Thatcher,her wanton destruction of of the Mining industry and other industrys for that matter in threads before, many times.The one thing that we agreed on was that Steve had very fixed views on this subject, quite rightly to, unfortunatly they are not all founded on what happened in reality, but at least he always sticks to the same line, he may not be totaly accurate in all his statments but at least he is vociferose in their defence.
oldie.

quote:

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Originally posted by JonR:
Dom,

....I just think that, in my own very humble opinion, a statement about wanting to 'blow' someone 'up', or even just to 'see' it happening, even if it's someone like our own beloved prime minister (insert smiley as appropriate) looks pretty ugly on a public forum and is not the sort of talk I personally would want to encourage in any way.

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Point taken. All the same, I'm glad it's not just me who finds him nauseating...

__________________________
Don't wanna be cremated or buried in a grave
Just dump me in a plastic bag and leave me on the pavement
A tribute to your modern world, your great society
I'm just another victim of your highrise fantasy!

Was it worth waiting for?

Labour picks out its priorities for the campaign ahead

Patrick Wintour
Wednesday September 29, 2004
The Guardian

From action against drug abuse to a new legal ban on religious discrimination, Tony Blair yesterday set out his priorities for a third Labour term in power

1. Housing

Special help for first time homebuyers: average price paid by first time buyers is currently £143,000, three times the price in 1997.

The state will co-ordinate the supply of land for new housing, create long term partnerships with developers and offer subsidies to so-called key workers such as teachers to make homes available for as little as £60,000.

2. Training

Only 52% of UK school leavers stay on after 18, the worst participation rate in the developed world. The prime minister is proposing opening new sixth forms in high performing schools.

He is also proposing a new right to free training for all adults who do not already have Level 2 qualification (equivalent to 5 good GCSEs). A pilot is already under way in the north east.

3. Schools

Every parent will be offered a choice of good specialist schools, and a promise of tough measures against disruptive pupils. Plans for specialist schools and 200 extra city academies by 2010 were outlined earlier this year in the five-year plan for education. By 2006, 75% of children will be guaranteed at least two hours of PE and school sport.

Firm but as yet unstated steps will be taken to deal with ill-disciplined children.

4. Choice in health

By 2008 every patient referred to a GP for specialist treatment will be able to choose which hospital they want to be treated. By then, the government has promised that no one will wait for longer than 18 weeks for the "whole patient journey" from GP referral to hospital admission, the first time a commitment to the actual length of time people wait has been made: 200 new hospitals will be built.

5. Childcare

By the end of a third term, all parents of school-aged children will be able to access affordable childcare round their local schools from 8am to 6pm all year round. The middle class will be given only limited financial help.

This resolves an internal debate on whether the state childcare funds should only be aimed at low-income parents. For children aged three and four, there will be greater flexibility to meet parents' childcare needs.

6. Pensions/benefits

Mr Blair signalled that he wanted the planned savings from reducing numbers on incapacity benefit to be put into improving the basic state pension.

With the Turner commission on pensions not due to report for a year, some analysts claimed Mr Blair's remarks must signal that he plans to restore the link between earnings and basic pensions, since this will be the only way to prevent the value of the basic pension withering.

His reference to saving incentives suggests he may want to reverse the emphasis on means testing in the current pension system.

7. Science

Investment in science includes plans for ensuring broadband is available in every home by 2008, with Patricia Hewitt, industry secretary, targeting the 3m households most likely to receive state support. At present, 4m of the 25m homes have broadband, but Ms Hewitt said the fall in price would see a rapid spread, allowing more homework to be carried out on computers.

8. Crime

To fight drugs, the Department of Health announced an additional £219m a year to fund drug abuse treatment by 2007-8, to double the amount spent on the 50,000 problematic drug dealers. New powers will be given to drug test all those arrested for a crime with a possible drug link.

Passport embarkation controls will be restored and religious discrimination outlawed.

9. Fairness at work

A right not to work longer than 48 hours and an entitlement for the first time for people to have four weeks of paid holiday will be introduced. The social partnership commission on women and work will produce an interim report in time for the manifesto. Also a promise to agree an EU agency directive, designed to protect agency workers from abuse.

10. Foreign policy

Promises to make the Middle East peace process a "personal priority" after the US elections and to seek consensus on a new plan for Africa, looking at conflict resolution, fighting corruption, disease and disputes over water. Mr Blair also vowed to see through elections in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tim Jones,

My political reasoning may on the surface appear to be flawed and ill-informed. If you disagree with me it is very easy to reach that conclusion.

However, only a total fuckwit would resort to insulting the individual expressing such views in clear absence of their ability to deliver any coherent counter-argument.



Regards,

Steve.

Steve,
Your starting to sound like "Mick", and it's not nice
oldie.

Oldie

If Steve is begining to sound like me, it is because he is growing up.

You belong to the seventies and frankly, old chap, you are as dead as a Dodo.

Young people determine how we shape our future and most of them have the work ethic, dislike the unions (the baggage handlers showed what the 70's were like) and recognise that companies need to make a profit.

Most importantly, they are not fixiated by the jobs for life dogma, so losing their job is seen as a new start and hardly worth fighting over.

I feel with your lot out of the way, we are entering a new era of wealth and prosperity for all.

Regards

Mick

quote:

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Originally posted by Mick Parry:
... I feel with your lot out of the way, we are entering a new era of wealth and prosperity for all.

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If only...

Trouble is, they've replaced his lot with the other lot, while what we really need is a new lot. My biggest fear is that we're going to need a lot of them, that there aren't enough of them and that we're going to end up with a lot of his lot and, what's a lot worse, a lot of your lot.

Lots of luck mate.

Steve

Perhaps we should draw lots then....

[Sorry]

Mick,
It's good to know that you have changed little in your absence from the forum and that you are still the one exception to the rule that travel broadens the mind but this apart
I have for the last 17 yrs worked exclusively with young people, and would respecfully suggest that I probably know more about young people, their work ethics, dislike of politics both govermental and trade union and their feelings regarding employers and employment than you will ever understand, young people are a complex lot and generally dont fit into the pigeon holes some of us make for them, But I think you may find that there is quite a high propotion of the unemployed that are young people.
That is not of course to say that I am always correct, Iv'e made many wrong desisions in my time and one of them may and I only say may have been turning down a offer to join Rolls Royce local Managment in stead of sticking with the Trade Unions you see even ROLLS ROYCE managment knew a good thing when they saw it ,the correct desision was made though, as within a couple of years all the managers were ,whats the word ,Ohh yes restructured.For the record in those times all partys carried out bad practices both Employers and Employees and fortunatly I have never been that dogmatic that I didn't believe that I was not also party to that, unlike some I could mention, but I digress, I'm very pleased and priviliged to have taken part in improving the working conditions ,wages, and health of the people I have worked with. Employers have never given up anything they were not forced to give up and a wise man will never forget that. What we and others in the Trade Union movement acheived was a platform in wages, working conditions and holidays that now can be built on in the future and not be removed[ well legally anyway] that others including ,dare I say it ,yourself have enjoyed. The legacy that you and yours are going to leave for the working classes of this country is compared to most of the developed world, Longer working hours[ It seems that Blair is just about to give people the right to refuse "IF THEY DARE,AS THERE ARE NO UNIONS TO BACK THEM" to work more that 48 hr in a week ,this is going back 40 odd years]shorter holidays, lower pay, poorer working conditions. etc etc and this is in the 4th richest country in the world. Since the demise of the Trade Unions the gap between the wealthy and the poor has increased dramatically so as the availability of access to health care and the poor still had less chance of enjoying or reaching retirment.If I wasen't an atheist I would say to you that I would prefer to be in my shoes rather than yours when I meet my maker, but thats one luxury I don't have.
All The Best Comrade
oldie.

Oldie

You are living in the past.

The unions did an excellent job but are now redundant. They get baggage handlers to strike which ruins the holidays of inocent travellers who are not going to be too keen on unions after that.

The standard of living is better today than ever before.

I took early retirement in April and my phone has not stopped ringing with job offers. I am making more money now than ever before. I am playing the market which could never have happened 20 years ago. This is a better time to work than ever before. I work for myself and it is a darn sight better than working for the same place for 20 years.

I used to work for the MOD and spent 4 years in RR at Crewe and most of the workers there hated the place. They hated the management who were tyrants and they hated the union officials who were bullies.

Those days are thankfully gone, we are well rid of the lot of them.

I am working in a Engineering company where the unions are non existant. No one wants them and the wages are well above average and morale is high.

Union membership is low because the demand is low.

Regards

Mick

quote:

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Originally posted by Tom Alves:
There are certain large scale actions that may not always seem justified but there are countless more small everyday acts that are eased by the good offices of union representation. For twenty years I paid my sub and wondered what I got out of it. During that time I was helping support others and at the end they supported me. I'm eternally grateful that I did.

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Absolutely right. There are some jobs that unions do superbly, they're just not always the aspects that the media focus on.

quote:

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Originally posted by oldie:
Longer working hours[ It seems that Blair is just about to give people the right to refuse "IF THEY DARE,AS THERE ARE NO UNIONS TO BACK THEM" to work more that 48 hr in a week ,this is going back 40 odd years]shorter holidays, lower pay, poorer working conditions. etc etc and this is in the 4th richest country in the world. Since the demise of the Trade Unions the gap between the wealthy and the poor has increased dramatically so as the availability of access to health care and the poor still had less chance of enjoying or reaching retirment.

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If I might just swing left to right a little now...

The French unions (and others on the left) believed that shortening the working week would inevitably lead to fuller employment. In practice, exactly the opposite was the case and now unemployment in France is terribly high. The government know this but seem to be prepared to sacrifice the lives of the unemployed to appease the majority (God bless democracy).

I suppose that in a world where a 30 hour week was the norm, in North America and the Far East for instance, we could adopt it over here, without cost. But it ain't.

I suppose my question is, oldie, how far would you take this issue? If you were made PM tomorrow would you bring in a 35 hour week, 30 hours, 20 hours?

Gosh, it's been some years since I participated in one of these good old left v right debates. What fun.

Steve

quote:

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The French unions (and others on the left) believed that shortening the working week would inevitably lead to fuller employment. In practice, exactly the opposite was the case and now unemployment in France is terribly high. The government know this but seem to be prepared to sacrifice the lives of the unemployed to appease the majority (God bless democracy).

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Fortunately the Germans and French are beginning to see sense on the issue of working hours.

Now that the EU has grown to include some former Soviet Bloc states (their economies once ruined by years of socialism, and now on the mend) French and German workers are being told to accept a 40 hour week or their jobs go to Hungary.

The Union leaders have seen sense and placed the interests of their workforce ahead of their own political ends.

Back in 70s Britain, trades union demagogues would never have backed down. They would instead have called all their members out on strike in protest at jobs being lost to Hungary.

Britain lost much of its manufacturing industry not through Thatcher and monetarism (needed to bring inflation under control after the previous government's policy of spend, borrow, tax and squander) but through poor productivity, uncompetitiveness, and dire industrial relations that were the result of trades unions being dominated by communist revolutionaries whose agenda was to bring the country to its knees, have us leave the EEC and join up with the COMECON states.



Regards,

Steve.

quote:

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Gosh, it's been some years since I participated in one of these good old left v right debates. What fun.

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In the eighties the feasibility of socialism was still moot.

From the beginning of the nineties it became clear beyond all reasonable doubt that the Socialist economic model had completely failed, and without exception.

British trades union leaders wanted Britain to become a communist state and they regarded strike action not as being for better pay/working conditions etc, but as part of the class struggle that would bring about revolution following the collapse of the capitalist system, i.e: bankrupting the country.

They failed in their revolutionary objectives, but in the process they managed to destroy Britain's manufacturing base.

The Eurozone is suffering right now partly due to the 35 hour week, but also due to the fact that Germany's once mighty (and still export-led) economy is having its life-blood sucked out of it by the former East Germany whose outdated and inefficient industries cannot possibly compete in an open market - not to mention East and West Deutschmarks having being exchanged on a 1/1 basis. Naturally this is having an adverse knock-on effect on the rest of Eurozone.

At least in the rest of the former Soviet Bloc, currency devaluations enabled them to compete by gaining a foothold by being cheaper.

Initially this caused socio-economic upheavals that I witnessed first-hand when I went to live and work in Slovakia ten years ago. These included high unemployment - workforce of 12,000 was reduced to 6000 in the town where I worked, and where there was previously zero unemployment. This took the form of everyone turning up for work, not much being done because there were no rewards for hard work or initiative, and as a result there were shortages.

Prices of basic commodities began to rise when wages stood still. This was followed by a few people getting rich, and the economy beginning to grow once again as they became more competitive. Investment began to flow in from the West (for example Tesco bought out the entire chain of Prior state-owned supermarkets), state industries were privatised, they became more efficient, and real jobs began to be created.

In turn, Germany and France are now forced to abandon their 35-hour week in order to prevent more jobs going in that particular direction where labour is cheap and the workforce is skilled. They also have a bloody good selective education system that has existed since the days of communism - a lesson in itself to those pinko leftist eductionalists right now.

It took until 1968 for the economy of Austria to overtake that of Czechoslovakia - the tenth richest nation in the World before the commies took over.

Thus anyone who believes to this day that socialism can or could have worked is definitely a feckin eejit.

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steven Toy on Thu 30 September 2004 at 5:37.]

quote:

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I feel with your lot out of the way, we are entering a new era of wealth and prosperity for all.

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Unfortunately we are possibly entering a new era of socialism that may yet derail our prosperous progress.

The "New" prefix to the Labour badge existed only to gain office and then consolidate its power base. Old habits die hard with the old, hard socialists in power right now.

Three posts in a row - I'm sounding more like Stallion than Mick, and btw Mick, I'm not really "growing up," as I've held these views for years.

We differ only in that you believe that Blair is like Maggie.



Regards,

Steve.

What berlin Steve?

Ooooooooooops Bu--ered that up
oldie.

Mick,
As I was stating before I Bu--ered up my post.
It takes a minumum of two partys to cause a arguement and it has always been my experance that it is imposible to make a group of people do something they didn't wish to do, so if the baggage handlers or for that matter any body else takes industrial action there is always a bl--dy good reason for it, nobody forfits money
unless they feel very strongly about their circumstances .You quote the standard of living is better today etc. please re read my post, the gap between the haves and the have not's is wider now than ever before in living memory
Steve T
if you were to remove those blinkers and stop believing every thing you read in the Mail you might have a good case to argue ,but as usual you spoil your position by so many inaccuracys,
our Trade Union Leaders, I'm ashamed to admit were far to involved in ensuring they obtained their Knight Hoods To allow any such fantasy as turning Britian into a Communist state to have happend, but keep it up you may even convince yourself one day
Steve,
If I was in a position to change things ,yes a 30 hr week immediatly, it has been shown many times that a rested work force is a more productive work force and with Work shareing the latest buzz word it would benifit all concerned[ some years ago the White collar workers and Managment all enjoyed a 37 hr week whilst the blue coller workers had to stick to 40hr's, so what's good for the goose, etc It also does not seem right to me that people who have worked all their lives should be forced to work past their now expected retirment age whilst there are still a considerable number of young people unemployed with no hope of improving their lot so turning to anti social behavior.
oldie.

As I have a little time on my hands, I thought I would clear up a little misunderstanding iirc the incorrectly named Union of Democratic Mineworkers was originaly conceived by Branches in I think South Yorkshire who enjoyed the luxury of highly mechinised pits with a high output per man, compared with the other pits of the North East Coast, Welsh and most/some Midland pits, where because of narrow seams coal was still hewd by hand as well as by M/c output did not compere so favourably. Although the York Shire Pits having taken part in a democratic method of enabling delagates to vote on their behalf at the Mine Workers Conferance, when vote was taken and duly declared for strike action to protect all miners jobs.They saw fit when it was leaked to them by McGregor that because of the high output of their pits[ not that York Shire Miners worked harder than other Miners just a better geological position] their jobs would be safe if they returned to work and did not support the Strike so falling for the old and tried trick of "divide and rule".The "few" did then return to work on a promise that was soon also to be broken, thus breaking the solidarity of the mine workers and leading to some of the most horrific scenes of not just village against village but family against family. All carefully and systematically conceived not by Scargill, but by in the first instance Thatcher and implemented by her import McGregor. Sadly the same sort of tactics were then used on all of the other industrys that followed in there wake.
oldie.

"The standard of living is better today than ever before.

I took early retirement in April and my phone has not stopped ringing with job offers. I am making more money now than ever before. I am playing the market which could never have happened 20 years ago. This is a better time to work than ever before. I work for myself and it is a darn sight better than working for the same place for 20 years."

Mick, your own position appears very rosy but to translate that to the rest of the country is highly misleading. The fact is that there are millions of people subsisting at or below the poverty line earning the minimum wage or less.

The weakening of the trades unions has led to the rise of the low-skill, low-wage economy. Society is more polarised between haves and have-nots than it at any time since the Second World War.

The income of the poorest fifth of wage-earners is taxed more highly than the richest fifth. According to the Inland Revenue the wealthiest earners avoid paying between £25-£50 billion per year in taxes.

The weak get crushed as the strong grow stronger.

Paul