General Discussion
Out of the General election a little ray of sunshine, well done to Martin Wrigley and his team on taking over as M.P. for Newton Abbot. May be the constituency may start to get some life pumped back into it and the councils given a boot up their backsides to start doing a bit of work for a change.
Most countries today operate some form of socialism. The NHS, welfare state and state education are socialist programs. Some, like Argentina, have taken it to extremes and are now trying to dig themselves out and undo the damage. Socialism doesn't create an equal society. It create a society where most people are poor except for a political elite. I'm not saying privatisation has been a ...
The two are related. I assumed you were using the two interchangeably as anything on the left, others have referred to Stalin and Lenin on this thread. It's hardly socialism in the UK; Individuals own personal property unlike communism where nobody owns property or personal assets. But we don't live in a socialist nation where all industrial and production capacity is communally owned and ...
What you are describing is communism rather than socialism, and we haven't reached that stage yet. Socialism is, for example, where the government takes more of your income from you than it needs to for the necessary functioning of government. The claimed purpose is usually to fund social programs or to redistribute wealth, but we all know that it never does this and usually causes more ...
@Steve if you accepted the right were not immune to tyranny and corruption you'd see the Tory PPE scandal for what it is, right wing corruption unrelated to socialism. I'm not defending socialism by the way, but you seem to think any form of government that is 'big' is automatically socialist. Any form of government that attempts to control and exert power over the people as opposed to serving ...
I never said the right are immune to corruption and tyranny. I said government needs to be kept as small as possible so it can be kept in check. There is no such thing as a small socialist government. Socialism means big government and vice versa.
@Knighton . okay I'll take a deeper dive. @Steve Yes I know the UKIP/Reform rationale regarding leaving the EU. Leftists like Corbyn wanted out of the EU because it was seen as a neoliberal project superceding nation states. I just don't believe the UK has the clout to go it alone, not when so much trade is done with our closest geographical neighbours across the Channel, we're stuck ...
What's not to like?
@Teign, I agree about powerful elements seeking to exert further control over nation states. That was why we voted out of the EU. Hopefully, we've won that battle but who knows. The PPE scandal was standard banana republic socialism. Politicians print money and launder it through their mates to buy houses and yachts, etc.
Not sure where you found the article regarding 3 Greens . All the articles mention 20 Greens , 4 immediately stood down and 16 remain under investigation. The Times , Guardian, Spectator , ITV , BBC are the 1st 5 articles . Haven't found a single story mentioning 3. Unless you mean the 3 local councillors kicked out the party for anti semitism, for calling all Jews Nazis.