| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 8:35 | |
| even richer rich bastads | |
It's official: Tony Blair will leave office, having overseen the rise of the richest rich bastads that have ever raked it in on UK soil. The wealthiest 1,000 people in the UK have seen their wealth grow by 20% in the last year. Since these people are multi-millionaires and multi-billionaires (65 of the top 1,000 are billionaires), a growth at that rate involves the transfer of millions and billions of pounds to them. Unsurprisingly, many of these people (Mittal, Branson, the Hinduja brothers) have been close to New Labour. The Telegraph reports today that: "The top one tenth of the top one per cent of earners now take home the same slice of total national income as they did in 1937. The gap between the super-high earners and the rest has widened to pre-war levels after decades of convergence." Much of the annual growth in the wealth of the very rich is accounted for by massive corporate bonuses for the top CEOs, particularly in the financial zone. At the same time there is a wave of sackings going on in the square mile. This news emerges not long after the UN report suggesting that Britain was one of the worst places to grow up in, and shortly after it was revealed that 200,000 more children live in poverty this year. Only a few months ago, figures revealed that the cost of living is shooting up for ordinary people, while the government and the Bank of England have set out to restrain wage growth, despite the fact that most people's wages fall behind inflation growth. | |
| Boro_Owl Posted on 30/4 8:38 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Capitalism sucks, don't it? | |
| MarlonD Posted on 30/4 8:50 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Yeah right on comrade. I'd much rather be in a queue for a loaf. | |
| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 8:53 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Are you forelock tuggers not concerned that all your stealth taxes are being poured into the vacuum left by their tax breaks. | |
| MarlonD Posted on 30/4 8:57 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Does it really matter. All political parties are only just left/right of centre now and they are all in it for one thing. Themselves. Once you accept this and realise that at least we live in a country where, with hard work, you are able to make a decent life for yourself, then you can rest easy and stop trying to impose your Ikea Communism/Socialism on other people. | |
| Boro_Owl Posted on 30/4 9:00 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Yeah I agree with Marlon. Its not right, but you just have to accept it. Its been like this for years and it isnt going to change any time soon. | |
| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 9:21 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
"Its not right, but you just have to accept it" | |
| GtBB Posted on 30/4 9:26 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
That's what a sense of powerlessness does for you r_r, complete apathy. Even if you organise and fight back all you will feel is a copper's truncheon on your neck. Welcome to corporate fascism, comrade. | |
| MarlonD Posted on 30/4 9:28 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
I suspect, and always have, that R_R actually sits in his house in somewhere like Ingleby Barwick with his 2 cars on the drive and his nice garden. Gtbb - for apathy read realism. | |
| GtBB Posted on 30/4 9:30 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
For realism read moral cowardice. | |
| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 9:38 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
But if things can't be changed then any notion of democracy is dead. Yet when you highlight the problems of an unaccountable elite making policy decisions that benefit them and not the people, the forelock tuggers and unthinking patriots say "shut up you commie, at least we live in a democracy." I don't think it is me riddled with contradiction. | |
| Ickes_disciple Posted on 30/4 9:41 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Very true Rebel but how are the begonias coming along? | |
| MarlonD Posted on 30/4 9:49 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
But why spout your armchair Socialist bile on here when it was probably your generation that dreamed of a Left Wing government coming to power. I vote because I have the right but at the moment the voter has the least choice I have seen in my adult life. So what can we do to change things. Vote for the extreme like B_N_P ? Not likely, therefore we are left with 2 parties who are be_nt as 9 bob notes and for them to actually claim they are either left or right is the first of many lies they tell us. I am as disillusioned as you are but where do we turm from here ? | |
| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 9:57 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Begonias are bourgoise flowers representing notions of beauty and success defined by the existing cultural and economic elite and that use disproportionate quanities of nutrients in the soil. For me gardening is about utilitarian best use of the land for the masses, cultivating spuds, carrotts and tomatoes on a collective basis with friends and family and distributing the surplus to the old and poor. We are the Linthorpe Levellers and also operate a tools collective so one comrade gets a strimmer, another a hedgetrimmer, annother a pressure hose for the patio etc. We do not play capitals game and toss ourselves off over a bigger and better mower than the neighbour. *thinks: I should get an allotment* --- Post edited by red_rebel2 on 30/4 10:00 --- | |
| The_Commisar Posted on 30/4 10:09 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
I don't mind paying tax if it's for a good purpose, having worked in local gov and the NHS I can say withou a shadow of a doubt the cash goes down the drain. I worked on an e-government project to improve services, they wanted to put in electronic systems to automate and speed up the delivery of services. The electronic systems that counted as improving services included the use of a calculator and e-mail. Hardly massive leaps forward. The unions objected to the introduction of new technology and had a freeze on all changes. The people who lost out, the punters who needed the services. However, the council got a tick in the box and were graded as "excellent". | |
| BoroMutt Posted on 30/4 10:13 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Perhaps you could prepare a list of functioning social nirvanas that we could remodel our society upon, RR? I won't hold my breath. | |
| red_rebel2 Posted on 30/4 10:35 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
"Those capitalist are utopian dreamers wasting their time, they will never replace feudalism with fanciful notions of factory based mass production and landless workers paid a wage. I might be covered in shitt but at least serfing is secure and I get all the turnips I can eat." | |
| BoroMutt Posted on 30/4 10:41 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
So that's a "no" then? | |
| Kilburn Posted on 30/4 10:42 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Sweden, Norway, Holland, even Germany would be an improvement. | |
| zaphod Posted on 30/4 10:49 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
This thread demonstrates the same useless left-wing attitudes that screwed Britain up in the 1970s. The same determination to bash the rich as an end in itself shines bravely through. Most of us learnt in the 1970s that bashing the rich doesn't benefit the poor; it just makes lefties feel better. The way to help the poor is to adopt policies that address the problems of poverty and to fund them in ways that don't discourage investors and entrepreneurs. Forget about bashing the rich; it's a destructive red herring. | |
| moxzin87 Posted on 30/4 12:32 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
"But if things can't be changed then any notion of democracy is dead. Yet when you highlight the problems of an unaccountable elite making policy decisions that benefit them and not the people, the forelock tuggers and unthinking patriots say "shut up you commie, at least we live in a democracy." I don't think it is me riddled with contradiction." We do live in a democracy though. Maybe just barely, but its a 100% improvement on many other countries around the world. And, yes, we could, I have absolutely no doubt, vote in Communism or Socialism if thats how the majority of the nation voted. But as you know, in the 2005 election, if you discount Respect which is no kind of Socialism, didn't almost every Socialist and Communist party get literally 0% of the vote? Thats democracy. All this having a go at the rich and calling policemen fascists is so much bitterness at having policies which are totally and utterly unelectable. But if you're right, and you're policies are unelectable, it can't be a real democracy right? Or, at least, come the revolution, it won't be... | |
| Huan_Kerr Posted on 30/4 12:40 | |
| re: even richer rich bastads | |
Holding your breath will kill you before you get a straight answer to a straight question Boromutt. I've asked the same question before, albeit not as eloquently as you. This particular lecturer never answers questions at the end of the class. | |
