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Donald Trump. Leg End or Bell End?

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  • #76
    Going back to Thatcher - because I know you'd all love to - this is from an article that absolutely epitomises my objections to privatisation and Thatcherism. It's about the massive sell off of publicly owned land that started under her tenure, and has a direct impact on the lack of housing today, and so much more:

    Read it and weep, fellow British citizens:


    Over the past 12 months, the issue of privatisation has surged back into the news and the public consciousness in Britain. Driven by mounting concerns about profiteering and mismanagement at privatised enterprises, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has made the renationalisation of key utilities and the railways a central plank of its agenda for a future Labour administration. And then, of course, there is Carillion, a stark, rotting symbol of everything that has gone wrong with the privatisation of local public services, and which has prompted Corbyn’s recent call for a rebirth of municipal socialism.

    Yet in all the proliferating discussion about the rights and wrongs of the history of privatisation in Britain – both from those determined to row back against the neoliberal tide and those convinced that renationalisation is the wrong answer – Britain’s biggest privatisation of all never merits a mention. This is partly because so few people are aware that it has even taken place, and partly because it has never been properly studied. What is this mega-privatisation? The privatisation of land.

    Some activists have hinted at it. Last October, for instance, the New Economics Foundation (NEF), a progressive thinktank, called in this newspaper for the government to stop selling public land. But the NEF’s is solely a present-day story, picturing land privatisation as a new phenomenon. It gives no sense of the fact that this has been occurring on a massive scale for fully 39 years, since the day that Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street. During that period, all types of public land have been targeted, held by local and central government alike. And while disposals have generally been heaviest under Tory and Tory-led administrations, they definitely did not abate under New Labour; indeed the NHS estate, in particular, was ravaged during the Blair years.
    All told, around 2 million hectares of public land have been privatised during the past four decades. This amounts to an eye-watering 10% of the entire British land mass, and about half of all the land that was owned by public bodies when Thatcher assumed power. How much is the land that has been privatised in Britain worth? It is impossible to say for sure. But my conservative estimate, explained in my forthcoming book on this historic privatisation, called The New Enclosure, is somewhere in the region of £400bn in today’s prices. This dwarfs the value of all of Britain’s other, better known, and often bitterly contested, privatisations.

    The article goes on to say:

    It is difficult to overstate the significance of this colossal land privatisation, and the manifold damages to the social and economic fabric of the nation that have been caused. Those damages are apparent especially in relation to the other issue currently on everyone’s minds in Britain alongside privatisation – housing, and the nation’s acute housing crisis. Selling public land to private-sector developers, who have long been the biggest buyers of government land, was supposed to have helped alleviate Britain’s housing problems, but it has done nothing of the sort.

    Full article:
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/08/biggest-privatisation-land-margaret-thatcher-britain-housing-crisis?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other


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    • #77
      Originally posted by Hove Ranger
      Backed mogg a while ago at 10s to be next PM. The perfect caricature of a British PM. Similar to trump in US. Indicative of what politics is
      Hes the bookies favourite now mucker.,

      Comment


      • #78
        Originally posted by Hove Ranger
        Backed mogg a while ago at 10s to be next PM. The perfect caricature of a British PM. Similar to trump in US. Indicative of what politics is
        The same Mogg who's company Somerset Capital is due to profit to the tune of 10's of millions from Brexit? Call me a cynic, but I can't think for a second why he is so pro Brexit. But I suppose that is what Conservative politics are about these days. The elite ensuring that they stay elite!

        Also a guy that lets his religious ideology interfere with his political standpoint. Something which I'm fundamentally opposed to. Religion has absolutely no place in politics.

        Wasting my breath here I suspect though.

        Comment


        • #79
          Fragg, to you and any of other ex pats believing its all doom and gloom here. It really isnt.
          Thats just Project Tarbie. Sorry i mean Project Fear.

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by Kevin Mcleod View Post
            Fragg, to you and any of other ex pats believing its all doom and gloom here. It really isnt.
            Thats just Project Tarbie. Sorry i mean Project Fear.

            https://twitter.com/LeaveEUOfficial/...0%7Ctwterm%5E2
            No fear Kev, no matter what I will always love England and will always be English.
            In reference to the doom and gloom threads, fortunately, if it is not football related, I tend to glaze over reading threads that are more than one paragraph
            Minds Are Like Parachutes.
            Work Best When Open...
            @Nowt2SeeHere

            Comment


            • #81
              #Pray for Hubble

              Comment


              • #82
                Originally posted by brightonr View Post
                "If they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher

                Comment


                • #83
                  Well, I could have posted the response from Kean Birch, but thought it would bore the pants of those wanting to read a football forum.

                  Still, have a read if you want:

                  A response to Brett Christophers’ Monopolizing Neoliberalism Away by Kean Birch, Department of Social Science, York University, kean@yorku.ca ***A pdf version of this essay is available here*** Critique, rejection, failure … of these wonderful things academia is made.[1] Or something to that effect. It’s always gratifying to know that someone is reading your work, even […]


                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Hove Ranger
                    My opinion of Mogg is pretty clear in my previous quote. The use of the word caricature is the most poignant
                    Sorry mate, missed the satire in your post!

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Originally posted by Tarbie View Post
                      The same Mogg who's company Somerset Capital is due to profit to the tune of 10's of millions from Brexit? Call me a cynic, but I can't think for a second why he is so pro Brexit. But I suppose that is what Conservative politics are about these days. The elite ensuring that they stay elite!

                      Also a guy that lets his religious ideology interfere with his political standpoint. Something which I'm fundamentally opposed to. Religion has absolutely no place in politics.

                      Wasting my breath here I suspect though.
                      at least I agree with your last sentence. Down in Cornwall the old bill have raided a farm where migrant workers have been abused by their Eastern European paymasters. Just maybe, Mogg like a lot of us, don't believe in all the hype that comes with being in the EU
                      I must away now, I can no longer tarry
                      This morning's tempest I have to cross
                      I must be guided without a stumble
                      Into the arms I love the most

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        This is good on the Trump, likening the machinations of the previous incumbents in the Whitehouse and what is happening now to Game of Thrones; an excellent analogy.

                        "
                        Like Hercule Poirot, the ace detective in Agatha Christie’s mystery “Death on the Nile,” Donald Trump quickly grasped that the widespread conspiracy against his presidency was far more than random campaign felonies by political hacks.Not lost in the weeds like obstructionists, candidate Trump must have suspected senior elements within the IRS, FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) would fear his candidacy more than any other.

                        Hillary Clinton, for certain, would never unpack the sordid history of scandals missed and covered up back to 1993, or even earlier — she was the “insurance policy” for the swamp.
                        So an investigation into her manifest mishandling of classified information on her private email server was bottled up, the primaries were rigged in her favor, and it was full speed ahead to the White House — until that did not happen, thanks to millions of forgotten men and women who made their votes count.
                        For those expecting an historic first Madam President and second President Clinton, events at polling places on Nov. 8, 2016, ushered in an unthinkable living hell.

                        Stopping the not-so-quiet coup. Early on Nov. 9, 2016, President-elect Trump likely understood that numerous suspects would plot against him, including some individuals he once might have thought were true allies.
                        So, a political “neophyte” (as if!) seems to have laid traps, even nominating Rod Rosenstein to take the powerful position of deputy attorney general, standing down as Rosenstein selected his mentor, Robert Mueller, to serve as special counsel investigating “Russian collusion,” even as Mueller packed his team with openly biased partisans.
                        Fortunately for Trump and unfortunately for his enemies, there are records and now the general public is coming to study these closely, even as Democrats and blinkered media elites refuse to see the obvious.
                        Now that appetizers are served — the Nunes memo and Democratic countermemo are mere morsels — Americans deserve to read as much as possible of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s forthcoming report, so that all who choose to think for themselves can understand just how profoundly America’s justice system has been corrupted since 1992.

                        As Congress and the new digital media now do jobs abandoned by the formerly intrepid investigative journalists with mainstream outfits, Americans and the global audience are about to look behind the curtain into a real-life “Game of Thrones.”

                        Read the full article here:
                        https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/trump-draining-swamp-real-life-game-thrones/

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by lymehoop View Post
                          at least I agree with your last sentence. Down in Cornwall the old bill have raided a farm where migrant workers have been abused by their Eastern European paymasters. Just maybe, Mogg like a lot of us, don't believe in all the hype that comes with being in the EU
                          The thing is Lymes, Brexit doesn't mean that all of the Eastern Europeans are going home. It will stem the flow of new ones coming in for sure. They will have to apply for a visa just like anyone from outside of the EU does now. But even if we end up with a Hard Brexit, it is very unlikely that anyone who is living and working in the country already will be sent home.

                          As for Mogg, and putting personal political persuasions and thoughts on Brexit to one side, do you think it's right that a guy who stands to gain so much financially from exiting the EU should be campaigning for it as a politician? On a broader note, is it right that any person should be allowed to use politics to enhance their own personal business interests, whether it be inadvertent or intentional?

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Originally posted by Tarbie View Post
                            The thing is Lymes, Brexit doesn't mean that all of the Eastern Europeans are going home. It will stem the flow of new ones coming in for sure. They will have to apply for a visa just like anyone from outside of the EU does now. But even if we end up with a Hard Brexit, it is very unlikely that anyone who is living and working in the country already will be sent home.

                            As for Mogg, and putting personal political persuasions and thoughts on Brexit to one side, do you think it's right that a guy who stands to gain so much financially from exiting the EU should be campaigning for it as a politician? On a broader note, is it right that any person should be allowed to use politics to enhance their own personal business interests, whether it be inadvertent or intentional?
                            I think that is more or less, what is expected of people in standard economic theory. For most economists the problems begin to arise, when it turns out that people don´t do what is expected of them all the time.

                            https://twitter.com/1qprdk

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