Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Alex, I did not say Yemen was not a poor country. I said (18 months ago):
"Algeria and Yemen have huge tracts of fertile land on which they grow enough food to feed themselves and export the surplus."
I find your post # 1218 quite offensive. You need to be taught some manners.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
alex what a prudish and negative post that is [#1218],i have read peters post and no mention of yemean or any other arab country.as for the eu being comminist well i like to know where and witch contry/s you are talking about,and where are these comminist polacys you talk about.and futher more the nearist coutry to us is russia,which is NOT in the eu yet.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
brian
alex was not refering to that post but comments made a while back.
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
ok howard,but i would like to know where he [alex] gets his ideas from.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Brian, the dispute arose because my belief in localism was compared to the communist policies of the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba.
In reality, that which I believe in is compatible with the Government's intentions to decentralise our administration, and with what I believe is the long-term goal the Government wishes to reach.
It has nothing to do with nationalising companies. In fact, I have never advocated nationalising a company. It has to do with re-introducing productive sectors that used to be in our Country, but have been meanwhile largely transferred abroad, mainly to China. For example, the textile industry, and even the electronics industry.
Another example is the Argos-style furniture industry made in Java.
So, if we were to reintroduce these spheres of economy at home, at least to cover national demand to some extent (doesn't have to be 100%), there might have to be a form of Government-owned factory, for the simple reason that the old producers have largely packed up or transferred the production to Indonesia (see Wedgewood) and India (Pears soap) and China (just about everything!).
This has nothing at all to do with nationalising companies that have remained here and kept up local production. So there is no form of communism in my ideas.
However, once a State-backed textile industry (and various other spheres of lost industry) were up and running in Britain, some workers in these factories - having meanwhile garnered some experience in their trade - might want to open their own small businesses, which would be great.
But as it stands now, I think almost no-one in Britain KNOWS how to produce clothes anymore, or furniture, or many other things that once we were famous for.
In 20 years time, we could well be a Paleolithic country where no-one has any skills anymore, and almost everyone eats fast-food, and possibly where people don't even know how to cook any more.
And my point is, that local Government, at County and District level, would have a role in implementing an economic revival, by determining how many people need a job, what kind of production is available, and what other production could be introduced to reduce imports and give work to local people.
All this would be coordinated at national level, to assure a fair distribution of production nationwide, so as to prevent an over-concentration of production in some areas while others remain without employment.
And quite clearly, we cannot afford to go on giving the minimum-wage jobs mainly to non-British people, as each country has to satisfy first and foremost their own people.
Hence, local administrators in a district area would be able to make sure that factories are abiding to these rules, and not employing out of principle non-British workers.
Local administrations (economic boards) would have the power to introduce training courses for local people to work, for example, in our local salad factories, or as seasonal crop pickers, as carers and nurses etc., and as builders.
I do not mind if people do not agree with all this, but it is NOT based on North Korean, Cuban and Soviet ideas.
It is my idea of localism on an economic and administrative scale here in Britain.
I also detest the idea of EU interference, using tax-payers money to pay private owners to close their factories and open up elsewhere.
They probably don't do it so much now, as the damage has been done.
What we are seeing is a collapse of our society, where people are giving up a healthy life and degenerating into anxiety and poverty-related sub-conditions.
Where one is either on the dole, or could be on the dole any time soon.
And believe me, if this continues, the Government will end up cutting pensions too, and child benefit, and even JSA.
I am sincerely concerned that people in Britain may soon be eating junk food simply because they can't afford anything better, and giving up going to the swimming pool and the sports centre because they can't afford it.
And all we ever get in the shops is clothes "made in China"!
Personally I believe the Government will decide to do the right thing and push ahead with making guidelines for more responsibility at the level of local Government, with law and order being asserted into the economy.
This is one reason I don't campaign to bring down the Government, because I believe they have chosen the right way with the Localism idea, and want to bring it into fruition, and need encouragement.
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,706
Alexander or is it Dimitri, do you really believe the stuff you clearly spend some considerable time composing and committing to this forum and/or your blogs or is it some sort of elaborate spoof?
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Ross, on this Forum, there are threads where members can express their views.
The "elite greedy pigs" thread is dedicated to a variety of themes, and so the tide of the topic drifts to whichever theme is the vogue of the latest news.
The latest drift took its form from Howard's reference to an article about UK companies saying they can not hold on for long to all their employers unless the economy gets better within about a year.
If it does not improve, they'll have to send home some of their skilled workers.
As the majority of companies seem to be in this dilemma, it appears to mean that unemployment here might well reach 4 million .
This also chimes in with what Keith has been writing for some time.
As I too had read that same article, I decided to join in the discussion, and Howard also made a link to another related article which I thought was relevant.
But, Ross, your comment is worthy of a North Korean State intervention against freedom of expression!
Is this how the other forum functions, where you are moderator?
Ross Miller- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,706
A/D it was a simple question are you for real or is this a spoof
Nothing to do with politics, political leanings, moderation or anything else you have just mentioned.
I will fight tooth and nail for your right to express your views (subject of course to them remaining within the bounds of the law).
Of course when one expresses a view or opinion, one must be prepared to have it questioned/challenged and to defend it, if necessary.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Well in which case, Ross, this expressed view of mine is for real.
To defend it, apart from referring to mentioned articles, such as the one Howard linked to, and the previous one about skilled workers that may soon be made redundant on a large scale nationally, it is also worth mentioning the high unemployment rate among young people in Britain: over 22% tendency increasing, with no outlook for things improving in the economy, but rather set to get worse.
Spain, another EU country, has over 50% youth unemployment (16-24 years).
The national debt is going up here and in many an EU country (see also bailouts: Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain + suspected imminent bailouts that no country can afford to finance, such as the looming financial collapse of Italy).
Then we have private debts: Britain had an estimated £3 trillion private debt 2 years ago, but it has steadily gone up, as more people are falling into this vicious circle, out of desperation, and, owing to the banks' refusal to give out loans unless they are sure they will get them back with the interest, so many people are falling into the shark loan scene (37% interest a month or even 4000% interest a year!).
Desperation, Ross! Collapse of a system!
And then there are the spending cuts, and the progressive lay-off of 700.000 public sector workers in Britain that no private sector can absorb.
Now where is the spoof in my well-minded economic ideology?
I'm simply presenting a strategy to create employment.
My point is, local Administration is better placed to find work for local people, who they know personally, who live in the same town or village, and to assess what economic production could be introduced, which training courses are needed, and to make sure that no employer in their designated area is applying unfair methods of discrimination, such as employing almost only non-British workers.
Unless we take this road of law and order in the economy, we shall degenerate even more into a bankrupt society.
Meanwhile, the Central Government needs to put a halt on super-bonuses and reckless banking, such as the Libor scandal to give one example, and start to seriously reign in the bankers and the chief executives in general, such as those of the FTSE 100 too, who simply invent their wages as they go along and become multi-millionaires before a simple Shire peasant (such as myself) can say Jack Robinson.
These chief executives are gobbling up tens of billions of pounds a year in our Country in bonuses alone, notwithstanding the fact that they already have given themselves top wages (£300.000+ a year).
The "elite greedy pigs" thread is an expression of many views of local Dovorians, and some of us tend to have a social(ist) tendency.
Barry states that these views do not belong here, but perhaps Barry has forgotten the fact that its original author crated it so we can read many views.
So where is the spoof?
Ross Miller- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,706
Thank you for taking the time to respond
I personally find that your opinions, whilst clearly well intentioned and considered, untenable. I do not disagree with you that the EU, for example, is a colossal waste of money and seems to have progressively moved ever more towards self serving continuation and lost its original purpose. Having said that one must ask, whose fault is that? Equally, you quote widely reported stories of both prospective unemployment and youth unemployment, which one cannot disagree with, but your solution seems to miss the point that whilst localism has the potential to be a good thing, it is not the universal panacea you envisage as it is reliant on funding from the state either directly or via local authorities neither of which is awash with money at this juncture and whose only source of revenue is some form of taxation.
The regulation of private sector salaries really is not an area government should try to involve itself in, various governments in the UK tried this in the past with disastrous results for the economy. What is required is a change in the moral climate within the private sector, something that cannot be achieved by legislation, but through publicity, government setting the tone and example and education.
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
Brian Dixon- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
is that a conservative estiment ross.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Ross, localism is not necessarily reliant on funding from the State.
To the contrary it would indeed fund the local administration. An adequate tax paid to councils from local productivity would make Government grants for council budgets become obsolete.
So local Government would depend on a functional local economy. This would spur them on to greater efforts to make sure the people living within the administrative boundaries are able to find work. Especially if the Council had to foot the JSA bill.
In my plans, the Job Centre staff would transfer to the local economic board. Their job would be to say: "there are (for example) 100 jobs going at the Salad factory in September, 40 at the box factory and 25 in various other places. Choose the one more suitable for you and be there at 9 am 1st September"
To then say "No!" would not automatically entitle one to sign on for another week. It would take some good explaining and justification to simply "sign on". But in the knowledge that, the following week, a "yes" is expected.
But there would be training opportunities for people in need of experience and encouragement, and this training would take place to an extent within the work-place.
All local businesses would by law be required to offer their jobs through the local economic board.
Only, and only, if no-one local is available or capable of a job that has been offered, would the job be offered in the neighbouring districts, and if then no-one is available there either, it'd be offered county-wide, then nationwide, and only as a last resort to other countries.
Because Local Government would be responsible for paying JSA, they'd soon be making sure that unemployed people get encouraged into work, and wouldn't take any nonsense from local employers employing "only people from other countries", as this attitude not only would come under discrimination, but would also cost the local Government, and ultimately the local tax-payer, a lot of money to pay JSA to their own unemployed people.
Within a year, we'd have possibly 2.7 million unemployed people working, even if only part-time, but working. Only straight-forward discipline can bring our Country on the right track, and the knowledge that the local administrative area is accountable for their own unemployed, and not "the bank of England" printing every so often £50 billion of digital money called Quantitative Easing.
But let it be said, there would need be an introductory phase, and a period of training courses to actually acquaint people with work that, for the last 15 years at least, has been considered a no-go area for anyone speaking English.
This EU nonsense of "mi casa es tu casa" has to stop! We can't afford it! We can't afford to give millions of jobs, and the relevant wages, and the ensuing benefits and - later on - pensions, to everyone and all their family members who come over here "to get a job", while taking full advantage of our education and health system, and contributing peanuts by way of tax on their "minimum wage".
Once a town Community becomes accountable and financially responsible for their own unemployed, only then will this nonsense come to an end. Clearly we'll be leaving the EU in order to achieve this.
And until this comes about, we'll just all have to suffer the financial burden of an impossible system that is kept going only through Quantitative Easing money-printing, which, however, risks imploding our economy overnight, as the money will eventually become worthless.
When that happens, it usually happens all over a sudden. It just needs the share-markets to collapse! A chain reaction would ensue. It's happened before, such as in 1929, and it has been theorised that that event was what led to the Second World War.
Guest 705- Registered: 23 Sep 2010
- Posts: 661
Well further to your final point Alexander, I guess that many bloggers have speculated on the snooty posturing and patronising dogma eminating from the Western European leaders directed at some of the weaker powers and poorer nations of the European 'community'. All sounds a bit nineteen thirty something.
In any case community? what community?
Never give up...
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Quite right, Richard. A fiscal union of the eurozone would see the final end of national sovereignty in most of Europe.
People would remember the old days when British soldiers crossed the Channel in tin boats and defended European nations from becoming one empire.
Our soldiers fought for the national sovereignty of many a nation in Europe, over hundreds of years, and now almost all the sovereign states yonder the Channel seem on the verge of being gobbled up into one European empire: the EU.
And all because they fell into the debt trap.
Let's give it Dave that he managed to stave off the Blitzing of the City by the EU, who wanted to impose a transaction tax.
If he'd have got us out of the EU there and then, in November last year, we'd have hailed him as Churchill.
He could have held a General Election then, and been swept back to power.
I could never understand why Barry objected to it and pleaded we should stay in the EU for a further 15 years.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Ross - Alexander's views 'well intentioned but untenable' - what a polite way of putting it..... I am not so sure about well intentioned with his advocation, among other things, of the legalised theft of private assets to pay off the debts accrued by an irresponsible government. Crazed ideas that would lead to an economic disaster and a total financial collapse.
Alexander - once again you misrepresent my views. I have said it before, if you use my name at least have the courtesy to accurately represent what I say. But I then you do not seem to understand what is patiently explained to you anyway time after time.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Barry, a total financial collapse is coming any way, the paper assets worth billions will become worthless, so the super-rich will lose their paper wealth any way.
Keith Sansum1
- Location: london
- Registered: 25 Aug 2010
- Posts: 23,942
i think the children are not playing politely
ALL POSTS ARE MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
These chief executives are helping themselves to whatever they can lay their greedy hands on. They have driven the economy into ruin, and are still detracting the finances from the share companies to satisfy an unquenchable greed.
The State is failing us by not putting an end to this! The Government must intervene.
These people should be made to pay up a heavy tax on their personal assets: 99%.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Yeah, whatever......
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson