O/T Its surprising how people vote

[KerrAvon]

@animal

It’s suggested above that I like to bait Socialists. That’s not true. I first came to this board in response to somewhat non-Socialist posts by your own Gunterry on Millers Mad. I’m happy for people to believe whatever they want - that the earth is flat, that the moon is made of green cheese, that Socialism has at some point achieved anything but misery for the people it is supposed to help or any other brand of nonsense. What is likely to prompt me to post is people posting ideological guff and presenting it as fact. The re-writing of history is particularly likely to draw a response.

We’ve done the miner’s strike to death, but I can’t let your comments about a national ballot go.

The membership of the NUM didn’t get national ballot even though the constitution of the union guaranteed them one.

When you refer to the NUM executive vetoing a national ballot, it isn’t clear to me whether you are trying to exonerate Scargill or seeking to justify the decision? If it’s the former then that doesn’t hold water as Scargill was opposed to a national ballot (according to Ken Livingstone in his memoirs, he was scared of losing). If it’s the latter it’s an equally leaky argument. The NUM membership were entitled to a vote and it wasn’t for a group of union officials to decide that they couldn’t have one. As for the meeting itself, it must have been so easy for the moderates to speak out when there was a mob outside being whipped up by Scargill:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/d...00/2843003.stm

Of course, some areas held ballots that rejected strike action: Cumberland, Midlands, North Derbyshire, South Derbyshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and North Wales. The attitude of the NUM to ballots was clearly demonstrated by what followed with the workers in those areas facing mass intimidation by NUM organised pickets.

As for Orgreave, a multi thousand strong mob turned up to try to intimidate people and stop them going into work. Of course there was a response from the police. Why you think the mob should receive an apology is beyond me.

It’s a strange one. Working people denied their rights and intimidated at work – as a union man you should incensed by that, but no, you seek to excuse it because you approve of it and participated in it. Socialist hypocrisy at its best.

A few weeks ago ,in the context of the Catalan separatist crisis, you said that democracy should never be denied. In this thread at post 87 you were talking about democracy, but when it comes to a lack of it in the context of the miners strike, you seem to think that’s fine.

I think you are right, we are approaching a time when a new generation of voters will give Labour a chance. It’s a cyclical thing. They were given one from 1945 to 1951 and were then out of power until 1964 after the electorate saw the result. They then had 1964 to 1979 (save for four years of a weak Tory government) and so wrecked the economy that we had to take what was at the time the largest ever bail out from the IMF. If you discount the Blair/Brown governments, as you do, the effect of that period of Labour government was to have made the party unelectable for 43 years (by 2022). It’s only a pity that the whole country will have to suffer whilst the new generation of Labour voters learn the lesson.

On student loans, the Labour Policy is a bribe to middle class voters. The provision of university education in this country has exploded in the last couple of decades and this country has some of the best universities in the world. That costs money and the current policy is that people who benefit from it pay a contribution when they earn enough. Labour’s policy will cost £7 -11bn per year (money that could have gone to the NHS – assuming that Labour will find someone to provide it). In reality, Labour’s policy will either mean a return to the 70s where the universities are so underfunded that places are rationed and become the preserve of a privileged few, or it will mean that every taxpayer – including the low paid – will be required to subsidise higher education for people who go on to become Consultant Surgeons, lawyers, accountants, architects, merchant bankers etc.

On Zero Hours Contracts, what becomes of people who want to be on them, perhaps because it suits their life style’s? Will they get a choice or will their views not count, just like the views of the miners who didn’t want to strike?