31

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by seankenny on Yesterday at 02:22:34 pm »

My impression is that the key meaningful choice for societies to grapple with is whether the divide of proceeds from GNP should be say 70%:30% between workers versus capital/owners/finance or 30%:70% and then how to arrange things accordingly.

Stone, here are the figures for the labour share of GDP which is: “the total compensation of employees given as a percent of GDP, which is a measure of total output. It provides information about the relative share of output which is paid as compensation to employees as compared with the share paid to capital in the production process…”

https://w3.unece.org/SDG/en/Indicator?id=30

Year is 2020. These are the stats Our World in Data uses, tho I also found some 2024 ILO figures that are very similar.

As you see, for the U.K. it’s 60.4%, as compared to 58% in Denmark, 55.8% in Sweden and 54.8% in Norway. Even Moldova is doing better than those laggardly Nordics!

32

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by Oldmanmatt on Yesterday at 02:20:07 pm »

I was very interested in how the Nordic countries actually got to have the politics/economic-system they have had since the early 20thC. It wasn't subtle manoeuvring at al. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85dalen_shootings

Again, marshalling a small population versus (now) 70M or so. Surely you can see the difference? We have cities with similar populations to entire Nordic nations and some of those cities have, in the past, been bastions of socialism (let alone left leaning), but converting the entire population has been elusive.

33

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by stone on Yesterday at 01:58:11 pm »

I was very interested in how the Nordic countries actually got to have the politics/economic-system they have had since the early 20thC. It wasn't subtle manoeuvring at al. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85dalen_shootings

34

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by Oldmanmatt on Yesterday at 01:53:40 pm »

Oh and even if we were to accept the “elite” shite (there are of course powerful vested interests with deep pockets, but they don’t really “rule the world “).
What’s more likely to subvert/defeat them? Loud bluster from a position of weakness? Or careful, subtle, manoeuvring and nuanced politics?
It’s either the latter or outright revolution and that seems highly unlikely.

35

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by ToxicBilberry on Yesterday at 01:51:52 pm »

My impression is that the key meaningful choice for societies to grapple with is whether the divide of proceeds from GNP should be say 70%:30% between workers versus capital/owners/finance or 30%:70% and then how to arrange things accordingly.

My impression is that there is an extraordinary ever-present effort to keep politics away from any such consideration. The vilification and media pile-on on Corbyn was largely because he dared to pull politics around to such a debate. Starmer is feted because he has ended that.

My impression is that the tolerance shown to extremely nasty, divisive "alt-right", culture war grot is because it distracts from that potential economic debate. Divide and rule.

Watered down Marxism, sounds like it needs an authoritarian leader to vest the power of the people in himself.

Culture wars have 2 or more sides Stone, identity politics has been used by the politicians for a fair while now. Your position is puritanical and I’m guessing would lead to doxxing, shaming, imprisoning and eventually hope to destroy anyone who dissents.

36

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by stone on Yesterday at 01:51:27 pm »

Do you mean the policies were wrong or their presentation?

Like I've said, to me the biggest mistake was a failure to widen Labour Party membership into demographics and places where it was under-represented. I think doing that is crucial for getting the breadth of support that would be needed to meaningfully reset that economic situation I mentioned.

37

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by Oldmanmatt on Yesterday at 01:47:23 pm »

Stone, most political scandals are a heap of BS, storms in tea cups (not all, obviously). Image management is the heart and soul of politics. Politics get you elected, good politics get you a substantial majority. Getting elected gives you power to enact policies. The refusal to accept that the politics was wrong last time, is the most likely thing to prevent you ever seeing any of the policies you would like to see enacted, ever reaching even debate in parliament. 🤷🏻‍♂️

38

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by stone on Yesterday at 01:41:23 pm »

Dave, Starmer's bid for Labour leadership was basically to do what you are saying you want ie to competently present and deliver a toned down version of what Labour had been offering.

If he gave any indication of intending to do that, I'd be delighted.

I'm still crossing my fingers and hoping he might do something in that direction.

I'm disapointed because I've seen nothing to sustain any such hope. All I've seen is Wes Streeting with his embedded lobbyists as special advisors probably going to privatise the NHS and laden it up with yet more crippling PFI debt. Reeves with a point blank refusal to increase taxes on the best off and a stymying of energy transition plans etc etc.

I hope I'm wrong.

Regarding the "Antisemitism Crisis" -I really struggle to see that as anything other than a heap of BS. Perhaps that makes me antisemitic myself or whatever.

I'm not claiming Corbyn was a media savvy, skilled political operator or anything. I think it is a tremendous shame that we don't have a wider pool of politicians of his persuasion to draw from. That's why I'm so gutted by Starmer's purge of Faiza Shaheen etc.

39

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by Davo on Yesterday at 01:22:20 pm »

My impression is that the key meaningful choice for societies to grapple with is whether the divide of proceeds from GNP should be say 70%:30% between workers versus capital/owners/finance or 30%:70% and then how to arrange things accordingly.

My impression is that there is an extraordinary ever-present effort to keep politics away from any such consideration. The vilification and media pile-on on Corbyn was largely because he dared to pull politics around to such a debate. Starmer is feted because he has ended that.

My impression is that the tolerance shown to extremely nasty, divisive "alt-right", culture war grot is because it distracts from that potential economic debate. Divide and rule.

In terms of economics here I don’t disagree with you and I do think we need to address this in the UK.

However in terms of Corbyn I wholeheartedly disagree. He was at heart a really poor leader and representative of the Labour Party. He couldn’t do interviews well and allowed himself to get ambushed by interviewers on a huge number of occasions. I heard him interviewed many times on the BBC and other outlets and he just came across poorly and quite tetchy. Blaming the poor performance of Corbyn and the Labour Party under him on the media is just making excuses for his inability to cut through and explain the case for his policies. He also managed to create an enormous issue about antisemitism in the party almost out of nowhere and let it become a massive distraction to the job he was out there to do. I have no problem with most of the policies but in my opinion the communication of these policies was extremely poor. Also there were almost certainly too many quite radical and ambitious policies in one manifesto for most of the public to accept. Furthermore this just gave the tories a huge amount of ammunition to attack Corbyn and portray him as a communist. I know many people who are basically in the centre if not a fair bit left who couldn’t stomach the idea of a Corbyn government. Quite a few of these deliberately voted Tory to keep him out. I view him in the same way I view Theresa May. Probably at heart a decent hardworking honest person and politician but a terrible leader of a party. I have heard him interviewed a few times and I have not really heard him really go through the reasons why he performed poorly and in fact he tends to blame everything around him and not his own poor leadership.

I really think anyone on the left (myself included) needs to accept that although we might prefer the policies of Corbyn, he was completely unelectable and to bring the British Public to a point where they can accept such radical change takes time and a much better leader and political operator. Which is why I have no problems with Starmer and am utterly baffled at the anger from the left of the Labour party towards him. It’s as if the left just don’t want to win and have power

Dave

40

shootin' the shit / Re: UK General Election 2024

« Last post by stone on Yesterday at 12:26:16 pm »

My impression is that the key meaningful choice for societies to grapple with is whether the divide of proceeds from GNP should be say 70%:30% between workers versus capital/owners/finance or 30%:70% and then how to arrange things accordingly.

My impression is that there is an extraordinary ever-present effort to keep politics away from any such consideration. The vilification and media pile-on on Corbyn was largely because he dared to pull politics around to such a debate. Starmer is feted because he has ended that.

My impression is that the tolerance shown to extremely nasty, divisive "alt-right", culture war grot is because it distracts from that potential economic debate. Divide and rule.