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Post by alancalverd on Oct 27, 2018 0:20:11 GMT 1
Inheritance is not an issue. I am in favor of voluntary euthanasia, not bumping off relatives to boost your inheritance - that is the historic prerogative of royalty. The ethical conundrum is that attempted suicide is no longer a crime, so you can kill yourself as long as you are fit and able to do so, but the moment you become physically disabled and reliant on others, to the extent that you want to die, you can't, even if you have willed your estate to the cats' home and the taxman.
The answer must lie in the first instance in a contract to be made with a date of execution (literally) which can only be extended or set aside, not shortened. My chosen date of death is my 84th birthday. I review it every year and have not changed my mind for the last 50 years, so why should the law punish anyone helping me achieve it? The next phase of legislation must allow for voluntary shortening where (a) the initial contract is valid and (b) the customer has acquired an incurable disease or disability.
But none of this will have a significant effect on population numbers - most people will die before their chosen date anyway. We need to reduce reproduction, and my scheme has the merit of saving money from 9 months after it begins.
I really didn't expect you to preach for an equitable distribution of wealth. But obviously a strict control of immigration is essential if your children are to inherit a greater proportion of the nation's assets. And of course a gift of £1000 per year to every woman will disproportionately benefit the poorest, so it will have some levelling effect.
I don't recall ever offering authoritarian diktats. Indeed my objection to the European Union has been precisely because it tells people what to do, which is anathema. Voltaire observed that "the English have very few laws,and they obey them all"; because our celtic and norse statutory heritage up to Magna Carta is based on the categorisation of wrongs against individuals, not duties to government.
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Post by jonjel on Oct 28, 2018 16:56:41 GMT 1
The flaw in your argument of £1000 per year for remaining childless is that the benefits a person will receive for their children as things stand is more than £1000 per year.
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Post by alancalverd on Oct 29, 2018 1:11:50 GMT 1
But the law does require you to feed, clothe and educate your children, for which the present benefits are barely adequate, and the bit my chancellor may have forgotten to mention in his speech is that there will be no cash child benefits when my scheme comes into effect. We might chuck in free school dinners and uniforms, but there's no way anyone could become a benefit scrounger by breeding.
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Post by fascinating on Oct 29, 2018 8:27:43 GMT 1
Alan, am I right in saying you have 4 children? Would such a payment have discouraged you from having that many?
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Post by jonjel on Oct 29, 2018 11:43:03 GMT 1
I don't think that inducement will make much difference and family sizes have been shrinking for quite some time. I have two children, each of whom have two children. I am one of three. My mother was one of five, four of whom survived infancy. My grandmother was one of ten, 8 surviving infancy. But they were farming stock and probably thought they needed to breed more help on the farm. They had a problem there as of the 10 only one was a boy!
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Post by alancalverd on Oct 30, 2018 23:31:22 GMT 1
The choice would not have been mine anyway - the money is paid to women, not men. But as we were in a fairly comfortable quartile, and started late, I doubt that it would have had a great impact. The scheme is intentionally elitist.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 9, 2018 18:56:52 GMT 1
Inheritance is not an issue. Oh, I'm afraid it is. I was involved in two legal cases over this very issue, defending vulnerable old people from their scheming relatives eager to get their hands on what they presumed was their rightful inheritance, that together ran for over six years. In that time I became very familiar with how common and widespread this problem is, and how very very difficult it is to protect people whose own family have become their grasping enemies. Not really. If you can do it in secrecy, of course - there's no one left to punish. Otherwise the full weight of the State comes down on you - nowadays in the guise of the "Mental Health" establishment. This is a legally mandatory requirement. If you try to resist, you'll be sectioned. If you resist your sectioning, you'll be swallowed up into the State detainment system, very possibly for the rest of your life. It's actually very simple and easy and painless to kill yourself, if you really want to. Ten minutes on the internet will tell anyone how. If you're totally disabled and wholly reliant, you have a problem, I agree. A tiny number of cases, vastly outnumbered by those not in that position, but rather the one I've outlined above. Arrange it yourself. I'll send you a pm outlining how to do so if you're unsure how. No need to implicate anyone else. I'm not. I have no interest in such a notion. What I am interested in is equitable opportunity to prosper. I wasn't talking about that either. A "nation" shouldn't have assets. People have assets. Frankly, it's difficult knowing what you offer and believe, Alan. You call yourself a "communist". Then you claim you're an extreme ironist: which makes sense, given your other views - that you'd leave the country if income tax were raised, for example. The possibility remains that you're one of those communists - I've met quite a few, in my Militant observing days - who imagine "communism" as some sort of pastoral heaven, like the Eloi in Wells' The Time Machine enjoy, gambolling about in togas amongst the flowers all day. Is this you being ironic now; or your real views, Comrade? I suspect that deep down you're really a true libertarian, like me.
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Post by alancalverd on Nov 10, 2018 1:04:47 GMT 1
I don't recall threatening (offering?) to leave the country if income tax were raised. I might have had other motives (Norway and New Zealand are just nicer) but Brexit seems to be a simpler solution to my objections to life in the UK.
It is absurd to suggest that a nation with no national assets would be a desirable place in which to live. Even our backward American cousins appreciate the value of publicly owned roads, equal access to and national control of rail and air traffic, what remains of a publicly accountable police force (though your access to justice and choice of prison is limited by your personal assets), and military defence is based on where you live, not how much you earn. Like us, they have national parks and significant areas of public coastline (even if the best bits of California and Florida are privately owned). There is a lot to be said for toll roads, but their routes are still subject to public consultation and nobody can be denied access to them.
The attraction of the Marxist ideal is in the soviet concept of government by popular mandate, which sadly seems never to have been adopted in any communist state, possibly because they have all grown out of revolution against an unelected dictatorship, so people have accepted elected dictatorship in its place. The UK would be a better place to introduce government by continuous and evolving mandate because it is the natural successor to a mature democracy.
Not sure about the toga. I don't think it is a practical garment for any of the work I do (except possibly lecturing and presenting to government - it lends itself to grand gestures) but rather like the kilt, it's very adaptable for walking in long wet grass or wrapping yourself up with a good book.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 10, 2018 9:55:17 GMT 1
I don't recall threatening (offering?) to leave the country if income tax were raised. Perhaps you were being ironic again? Your threat was that if Corbyn got in you'd join your rich friends and move abroad. Maybe it's something you and the wealthy have got against Jezzer himself rather than a matter of political principle? Some liberal-lefty yobbo in the audience is shouting out "racist!", but ignore her, she doesn't have the microphone. The suggestion is that the absurdity is to consider these as "assets", that can be "owned". If they are you by legal sleight-of-hand arrive at a situation where the recognised "owner" of these "assets" - property that can be sold - is the State, rather than the people. Unlike us, their national parks were simply appropriated - this bit of land belongs to the US government, and no one can say nay. Why do you call that "the Marxist ideal"? Most of us simply call it democracy; and most os us understand all too well that this is the opposite of "communism", as it's always actually practised - you apparently think that little drawback is a puzzling though admittedly "sad" unfortunate contingency, rather than what it obviously is to anyone with even a casual acquaintance with human nature, an inevitable consequence of these fatuous "ideals". People will "accept" a lot when they're looking down the barrel of a gun, or if they object they know they'll spend the next thirty years in a gulag, if they're lucky. So, according to the latest poll, we'd be scrapping Brexit this week. Next week we might be leaving again? What would happen about our nuclear capacity? The death penalty? HS2 or piddly little projects like Twyford Down or fracking? We'd have gone to war in Iraq one week, then had to withdraw the next. How would the popular vote about the rate of taxes go, do you think? Nor am I. You always forget to ask: who are the Moorlocks? You also forget to ask: who does all the work?
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Post by alancalverd on Nov 10, 2018 13:26:06 GMT 1
I don't recall threatening (offering?) to leave the country if income tax were raised. Perhaps you were being ironic again? Your threat was that if Corbyn got in you'd join your rich friends and move abroad. Maybe it's something you and the wealthy have got against Jezzer himself rather than a matter of political principle? You have the advantage of me. I know of no rich friends in any country I would like to inhabit, and whilst I have no time for Comrade Corbyn as a person, I would hesitate to leave a country with a labour government. An odd accusation indeed. I can't equate the imposition of human rights, the destruction of agriculture, fishing and manufacturing, crooked accountancy, mandatory privatisation, dangerous product standards, absurd legislation on professional matters, or the lowering of agricultural wages, with anything to do with race, however it is defined. Some people have objected to the free movement of East Europeans whose cost of living is so low that they can afford to undercut UK residents' wages, but as these migrant workers are mostly blondes or celts like the natives, it's difficult to call this racism. The state can only build and maintain what can be afforded from tax revenues, and only (in the long term) on behalf of the taxpayer. I don't have time to explain the soviet concept, nor should I need to. Nothing to do with "popular vote" but prior mandate to represent the interest of a constituency. I suspect Brexit would have been a clean break, many years ago; we'd probably still have Trident but Greenham Common would not have been developed; the death penalty would not have been abolished but replaced by a choice between full life imprisonment and suicide; HS2 would not even be considered, but neither would Beeching; WTF is Iraq? What possible interest do my constituents have in attacking the place on behalf of an idiotic US president and one PhD thesis?; yes, we like the idea of tax-funded health services, so we have to pay taxes but they should be based on turnover, not declared profit. I assume you mean Morlocks. Answer: everybody.
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 10, 2018 17:21:11 GMT 1
I don't recall threatening (offering?) to leave the country if income tax were raised. Okay. Everyone's entitled to change their mind. All of which applies to Norway; and, I believe, NZ is similarly under the thumb of Ausralia. I'm neither blond nor "celt" (no one is, as far as is known - the whole concept was something of a myth), but I'm most definitely a native. Clearly you haven't noticed that people who like to equate controls on immigration with racism or xenophobia are not bothered about such niceties. The point is is that there is no such thing as "the State" - it's a legal fiction, and always has been. What there is are ruling gangs in power, who have monopolised the legal use of force in imposing their will. The long struggle for democracy from the Enlightenment and the Rights of Man onwards was fully recognising this reality, and instituting as many controls as possible in order to limit that power, ensure that it was wielded as harmlessly and in a liberating way to individual citizens as possible, and enshrine a peaceful means by which that gang could be replaced, if those citizens agreed, with another. All of these vital achievements of civilisation are wholly negated by any communist regime that has ever managed to be that ruling gang, and nor are they recognised in the slightest by any so-called "Maxist ideal". You don't need to. It's never existed, or been allowed to exist, ever, anywhere in the world, because it's complete pie-in-the-sky. There will always be a Lenin or a Castro or a Mao or a Pol Pot, with more guns and soldiers, ruthlessly willing to impose their rule on any "soviet". A prior mandate that has nothing to do with popular vote? How is "the mandate" derived, therefore? I don't know what the hell you're talking about. The "prior mandate" was to be in the EU, surely. Thatcher had a clear mandate to station Cruise at Greenham - three times over, in fact. The death penalty would never have been abolished if it was decided by plebiscite - you underestimate the popular thirst for vengeance. I don;t know about HS2 or Beeching - I suspect like most other spending sprees, people are in favour as long as someone else is paying for it, but agin if they have to cover the costs themselves. "Iraq" was a little regime change Tony Blair and one of the Labour governments you like so much was convinced would be a good idea - he still is, he says. There was a clear majority in the country for the idea - even your constituents, I suspect. I'm not sure "we" do like the idea of tax-funded health services, actually. The original idea was a universal (single-payer) insurance scheme, which is what is still I suspect what most people are really in favour of. I don't believe anyone was ever given a choice as to who would administer the "health services" so paid for; or for what such amorphous "services" would cover. As I said: there's always the possibility you're an away-with-the-fairies completely unthinking naif.
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Post by alancalverd on Nov 10, 2018 17:28:20 GMT 1
Is this you being ironic now; or your real views, Comrade? I suspect that deep down you're really a true libertarian, like me. Libertarian, yes. Like you? I hope not. The question of government appears to me to be how best to organise what economists call "common goods" like roads and defence. Some (like roads and defence) obviously require central planning and execution. Experience in many countries has shown that some level of tax-funded health care is a desideratum, and few people (except the very rich) would argue that policing and criminal justice should be in private hands. That said, I think most people would agree that statute law itself should reflect general public taste, say with regard to theft, murder, bear baiting and child prostitution, so we need some means of centrally determining the law and raising taxes to organise and pay for common goods. The question then is how to determine the public interest, and how to distribute the tax burden. My argument is that party politics is at best inefficient and at worst counterproductive. The current Brexit idiocies are a fine example: a governing party of MPs who are mostly Eurosceptic but supported by Europhilic businesses, is led by a woman who campaigned against the very policy she inherited; across the house, a ragbag of Europhiles, elected by mostly Eurosceptic voters, is led by a man who, despite a lifelong loathing of the EU, is constitutionally bound to oppose the legislation required to leave it. In my time as a trade union officer I experienced a more constructive and efficient method of policymaking on a national scale. Grumbles and initiatives from the shop floor were debated at shop level to mandate a representative to Company or District level, where he presented his members' agreed interest to others representing much the same size of constituency, and thus policy evolved up a pyramid to the point where the national executive held a mandate to do something. If, at any level, the members considered that their delgate was not representing them properly, he was recalled and replaced. Nobody voted according to personal conscience or future electoral appeal, but solely to advance the mandate given by his constituents. I commend such "no party" government to the House.
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Post by alancalverd on Nov 10, 2018 17:35:54 GMT 1
1. I resigned from life membership of the Labour Party when Blair became Prime Minister. Shit stinks, and I didn't want it on my hands.
2. Blair said Iraq was not about regime change. A few months later, Jack Straw said it was all about regime change. The one question Chilcott should have asked was "which one of you was lying?"
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Post by mrsonde on Nov 10, 2018 17:59:23 GMT 1
Is this you being ironic now; or your real views, Comrade? I suspect that deep down you're really a true libertarian, like me. Libertarian, yes. Like you? I hope not. No, I doubt it too. There are people who value liberty, and there are people who don't. Clearly, no soi-disant communist could possibly be anything but the latter - unless they're totally and wilfully ignorant of 20th Century history, I suppose. Defence, certainly. Roads - not so much. Law and order and defence is fine - no one as far as I know has ever questioned the provision of these "goods" is the legitimate role of government. The problem is everything else it's strongly inclined to draw into its purview. As I said - Marxists or any other variety of totalitarian simply don't get it. "Democracy" is wholly useless if there's no other "gang" to vote for. Nor is it much use if the alternative gangs are all determined to run things in virtually identical ways. He bound himself, not any constitution. The job of the Opposition is not always to oppose. Only within your specific union. Nor was such a mandate ever binding or enforcable on individual shops. I assume you mean "delegate"? All very sweet and noble in theory. In reality few unions actually operated this way - not after about 1965, at any rate. In reality the way Scargill operated was the norm. The executive - one man, in practice, with a little cabal of loyal comrades - issued his orders, and if individual chapters disagreed they's be laballed scabs, vilified, and in one way or another punished. We evolved out of such authoritarian rule several centuries ago, after a bloody civil war and two revolutions in which hundreds of thousands died. The British people will never be persuaded of the appeal of your totalitarian rule-by-elite - we have fought too hard for what precious liberty we have managed to win and still miraculously maintain, despite constant threat, including from fantasists like you.
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Post by alancalverd on Nov 11, 2018 16:00:16 GMT 1
If you can't see the difference between "delegated representative" and "elite", there's no point in arguing with you.
Scargill was a dangerous idiot. If he had held a strike ballot, he would have won handsomely, the strike would have been legal, and our police force would not have been politicised. I wonder how much Thatcher paid him?
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