Back to basics, Minimum wage

Let’s get back on track, I have not had a good argument in too long, it has been nothing but the rather pointless philosophical point scoring of a class full of people that get confused between the search for truth and meaningless arguments in which the only objective is to win, no matter how wrong [...]

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Heartening, the resolve of the many and the power of the few

I wanted to write a post about the protests that have taken place around the world as the olympic torch has been carried from nation to nation in a badly judged public relations exercise by the Chinese Administration. When I got plane to return to the UK I saw the scenes that greeted the Olympic [...]

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Polarisation, a time honoured tale.

According to a recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, an organisation committed to tackling social issues in a constructive manner, the wealth gap between rich and poor is at it’s highest level in 40 years. Amongst the findings are the widespread acceptance of the fact that some occupations should be paid at a higher [...]

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So much for Anarchy

According to Yahoo Music news that great purveyor of fascinating truth and certainty, 60% of Radiohead fans paid bugger all to download their latest album ‘In Rainbows’ The idea of letting fans pay for a product or in a more general sense letting a customer pay what they think the product is worth is not [...]

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Royal Mail, a lesson in Byzantine politics

As me and my fellow rats are blowing up our waterwings and viewing the horizon for a passing ship the lumbering liner that is Royal Mail steaming full speed ahead begins to dig itself into its watery grave. A slightly rhetorical description but not so far from the truth. The situation is getting increasingly nasty [...]

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Renationalisation and Elected Chiefs.

I am and always have been firmly against the privatisation of state owned industries, this position does not blind me however to the faults of nationalised industries nor to the benefits of privatisation. I’ve been thinking about restructuring existing goverment industries and doing the same with present private sector industries and services after first renationalising [...]

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Question?

How would we go about applying libertarianism to Socialism, given that due to history many people seem to labour under some major misconceptions about both. I’m thinking now back to the idea that was popularized by John Major, the interim primeminister in the void between Thatcherism and Blairism. He wanted to create a classless society, [...]

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State capitilism

The examples of the USSR, China and Cuba have been widely upheld as the failure of Socialism and all its precepts, as a result most modern ‘socialist’ parties have abandoned their plans for social reform and taken a more Laissez-Faire attitude toward managing Capitalist society as best they can, without ever seriously challenging the status [...]

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Remarkable, how easily we fool ourselves

It struck me today whilst conversing with a colleauge about the nature of the current industrial dispute that the fashionable fervour for a free market ignores one very interesting fact. The idea behind the free market is that by introducing competition to previously state owned monopolies you will initiate a sudden rush to become more [...]

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