Brexit: Boris' Big Belgian Bangers - The Bear and Badger

Brooks

Like, I don't believe Alex Jones or Steve Bannon are formally identifying as Conservatives either but I sure as fuck know what they're about morally.

LivDiv

I'm talking flags flown yes, plenty of sheep in wolves clothing and plenty of well meaning folk that will unfortunately protect them.

Looking close to home it isn't hard to find left aligned MPs and peers caught up in the metoo and expenses scandals.

Like you say, Bannon and co are easy to identify, plus they are already morally detestable so if they are lying about being conservative or not makes little difference to me.

Our job is to keep an eye out on our side of the fence. The cunts make the rules and the new cunts follow, the alignment of said cunts is just the path they see most palatable.

hunk

Totalitarianism and dictatorships can be done under different flags, either left or right, religious or otherwise. They're opportunistic in nature and depend on the political climate and what rule the public will accept as mandate at that point in time.

Net result is the same though, a dictatorship by one or a small group of people who benefit while the rest of the population suffers. This is why extreme left and right converge at either end of the political spectrum. Full circle.

This is why we must be cautious when it comes to authoritarian rule. It's the first sign on a sliding scale you're going down.

JonB

WorKid wrote:

For me, governments need to be flexible and situationalist. That's what centrism is for me, the ability to choose solutions from anywhere.

The moment dogma and ideology comes into it, whether that's that governments need to be small, taxes should be high/low, infrastructure should be in public ownership, whatever, you're inevitably fucked sooner or later.

The left and right give the same answers every time no matter what the problem actually is.

It's a myth that the centre is somehow more flexible and doesn't have clear agenda to fulfil. It likes to present itself as the medium ground between two extremes, but it's really more like the third corner on the triangle. We've seen how so-called pragmatism leads to technocracy, where policies are calculated and triangulated and no one appears to be accountable. Claiming that everything can be taken on its merits is dangerous because it pretends there's no ideology motivating the decisions, when of course there always is (otherwise why make any specific decision at all?).

WorKid

Aye people still make decisions at the end of the day.

But right now the two extremes are just shouting louder and louder that their hammer is the only hammer and oh look more nails.

Brooks

I think it really depends where you're sticking your ears. My Twitter feed is full of annoyed (and hilarious) small left-wing people but I don't think they constitute much of the mainstream hollering, which is chiefly neolibs tutting for the loss of politesse vs. Trumpian/Brexiteer nationalist hysteria with a side-order of ohnoesTHEM SJWS!!!!11!

JonB

WorKid wrote:

Aye people still make decisions at the end of the day. But right now the two extremes are just shouting louder and louder that their hammer is the only hammer and oh look more nails.

As I say, the whole notion of the 'centre' as a middle ground between 2 extremes is misleading. Plus the centre's shouting that there is no alternative is still by far the loudest.

monkey

There's a few points I want to respond to so this might turn into a fustercluck.

JonB wrote:

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with centrism in and of itself. But it does seem fucked at the moment. The creeping reverence to capital and bending over for the whims of the market, based on the thinking of a well-to-do clique over the past forty years has screwed it up. Centrism is really balancing left and right to get the advantages of both while aiming to cancel out the disadvantages of a single approach. If you’ve got a well-tuned economy, it doesn’t need anything else.

Centrism is simply becoming increasingly irrelevant. The idea that you just balance the economy or whatever is meaningless when you have massive economic disparity and large scale social change is required. How do you balance the interests of neoliberal elites whow demand everything to be privatised and deregulated with the interests of a growing impoverished class who would benefit from a major state intervention into services and economic functions? What's the balanced approach to environmental degradation? Or automation and lack of jobs in the future?

If you want balance and you're a centrist, you should be going left at this point in time. So you don't engage with a failed neoloiberalism or vacuous arguments. We're too far right, so you go left. You don't arrive at some third way between killing the planet and not killing it. Killing the planet isn't even right-wing. They either think they aren't killing it or they're selling out future generations. There isn't some right-wing argument for doing it.
But the fact is there isn't any consensus to be had with the right or the left at the moment anyway. So a centrist is on a hiding to nothing with that approach.

The response to the left getting in a mess in the 70s shouldn't have been Thatcher. Not anymore than the response to today's ultra-Thatcherism should be Corbyn. Swinging wildly one way then the other doesn't allow for long-term consensus on eg housing as one group gets in and tears up what the other was doing. Concentrations of power corrupt the things they touch, just as the over-powerful trade unions caused it's own worker's living standards to drop in the 70s, the over-powerful megacorps do the same now.

Broadly you're trying to balance individual freedom (right) with social responsibility (left). And if that's unbalanced, you're not getting enough of one and the result is misery.

monkey

Brooks wrote:

LivDiv wrote:

Self serving loop innit. It's not just the right but in the past the far left as well.

I'm gonna need some examples that aren't Russian/Chinese autocrats before I swallow this really, I can't see much like the statistical equivalence otherwise. You can't really call Stalin a lefty what with all the crushing of dissent and disregard for human rights imo.

Stalin is a lefty as much as Hitler is a righty. The further left or right you go, the fewer people there are that want to go along with you, then the more authoritarian you have to become towards your own citizenry.

Brooks

The right being about individual freedom (or rather intense personal responsibility for all your outcomes and fuckyouIgotmine) is a relatively recent and very American mutation - it was strictly about conforming to hierarchical norms, mistrust of outsiders and change 'against nature'. All of those could be called responsibility to a society, while traditional lefty concerns like emancipation from abusive power structures are absolutely about individual liberty and implicitly anti-authoritarian.

Corbyn's barely a mild swing left by historical standards, guy is still demonstrably parochial; the idea that he's more radical suggests how fucked the modern human project has actually become in places.

monkey

JonB wrote:

It doesn't have the imagination for this stuff. I mean, what are the great centrist ideas now? Go back to how things were in the 90s? Leave it to the experts and managers? All I hear is the usual 'there is no alternative' scare tactics. What does this good version of centrism look like?

Sorry missed this out before. The 90s and third way stuff is done. Obviously hindsight has helped discredit a lot of it. And people might not have accepted anything substantially lefter during a period of unprecedented worldwide growth that seemed to be delivering. But there's also something rotten in there (and one of the dangers of centrism) about who you get into bed with.

Monkey's manifesto for a beige, neutral centrist Britain includes.

- All money out of politics. Hedge funds and banks obviously but trade unions too. Not that there's a particular problem with the latter at the moment. Giving money to an MP, or the offer of future employment etc will be a criminal offence. As will the taking of any such offers.

- Mps have one job - being an MP. No board seats, consultancies, paid-for columns in broadsheets, money from state-sponsored propaganda outlets, any other shit. Some exemptions allowed for medical staff and other do-gooders. They're not allowed much of this stuff after leaving parliament either, being barred from any industry in which they may have played a direct legislative role during their time as an MP. They'll get parachute payments and retraining support to account for this.

- House of Lords reform - no direct elections. We don't need more sycophantic arseholes making shit up or causing trouble to be popular. Experts in various fields are appointed on 10 year terms. They'll sit before a panel who have the power to block appointments if it stinks of cronyism, they're unqualified etc.

- Any multinational firm owning a substantial share of its market must be based, for tax purposes, in Britain. They can structure their corporation how they like but they will pay a specific level of corporation tax on their British revenue (instead of on their profits, which can be too easily sequestered away and accounted out of existence). This may require EU co-operation - which will be eventually forthcoming because they're all suffering from this. If such co-operation isn't forthcoming, this can be applied as an ongoing 'windfall tax' which is arbitrary as you like. Should these companies shut up shop and leave (they won't), start-up funding will be made available for British-based replacements.

- Build houses. Lots and lots of houses.

- National Investment Bank targeting small start ups in growing industries. Picking winners in other words.

Frosty

What about the environment?

monkey

Brooks wrote:

The right being about individual freedom (or rather intense personal responsibility for all your outcomes and fuckyouIgotmine) is a relatively recent and very American mutation - it was strictly about conforming to hierarchical norms, mistrust of outsiders and change 'against nature'. All of those could be called responsibility to a society, while traditional lefty concerns like emancipation from abusive power structures are absolutely about individual liberty and implicitly anti-authoritarian. Corbyn's barely a mild swing left by historical standards, guy is still demonstrably parochial; the idea that he's more radical suggests how fucked the modern human project has actually become in places.

Liberty and capitalism is grounded in Adam Smith and all that. So not sure you're right there. I accept the liberty v responsibility stuff of mine is so broad-stroke that it can be torn apart quite easily. Both sides want to free people from the tyranny of the other. The Corbyn stuff is absolutely correct, I just meant a wild swing to left but he's no reverse-Thatcher. My centrist manifesto is mainly stolen Corbyn policies. He advocates them not because he's some Leftie but an outsider and, as such, one of the only people left that can.

monkey

Frosty wrote:

What about the environment?

I'm in favour of it.

monkey

Yeah that's a big omission. Something big though. Full decarbonisation in 10 years or something ridiculous and unachievable like that. A big national effort that will require huge investment, create a load of jobs, a load of hassle but position Britain as the world leader in loads of this tech for the next few decades.

Diluted Dante

monkey wrote:

Yeah that's a big omission. Something big though. Full decarbonisation in 10 years or something ridiculous and unachievable like that. A big national effort that will require huge investment, create a load of jobs, a load of hassle but position Britain as the world leader in loads of this tech for the next few decades.

The environment is pretty simple really. You go all in on renewables. We have the expertise here, so we just create the industry to go with it. Require all the houses we are building to have solar panels fitted.

Invest hugely in public transport outside of London - extend tram networks, build new ones, and most importantly invest in electric buses. Buses arent sexy, but they are a huge part of the transport mix. More and better buses can have a big impact. Also electrify every train route. No diesel engines within 5 years.

Ramp up recycling as well. I'd argue for us to create a national recycling company that can take anything. No more this council takes this but the one over here doesnt. Everyone then knows what can be recycled and what can't. Then you eliminate as much waste as you can in packaging.

Of course no one with a sniff of power has the balls to do this.

WorKid

There are loads of reasons why a tax on revenue is a bad idea, but we’re in danger of derailing this thread even more.

Diluted Dante

If we try this in Parliament can we derail Brexit?

monkey

WorKid wrote:

There are loads of reasons why a tax on revenue is a bad idea, but we’re in danger of derailing this thread even more.

It would be very specifically applied to companies that refused to set themselves up in a way that their British-made profits could be taxed fairly. Although honestly I think it’s simpler to have a system when the Chancellor just decides how much he’s going to windfall tax certain companies and if they don’t like it, fuck them.

WorKid

So the tax system relies on someone picking specific companies to tax differently to other companies, on a completely ad hoc basis. Seems like a great way to run a country. Thankfully once we're out of the EU we can have our own mental tax systems without meddling from the Eurocrats.

monkey

WorKid wrote:

So the tax system relies on someone picking specific companies to tax differently to other companies, on a completely ad hoc basis.

You’re describing a windfall tax which already exists, targeted at companies that can easily afford it. It wouldn’t work long-term but would do until the rest of the world got it’s act together.

LivDiv

There was a Guardian opinion piece Yoss linked to earlier in this thread pulling apart Corbyn's state aid idealism.
One of the key parts is how when not regulated (like in america) big business play states off against each other in return for setting up their head offices etc there. They promise jobs and the taxation that comes with said jobs but don't want to pay their corporate taxes.

The corporate taxes get discounted or flat out dripped and the chosen state does become more wealthy because of the additional employment but in the end the nation (or in the case of the EU group of nations) become less well off than they should have been.
When boiled down the only real winners are the mega Corp and their share holders.

There are examples of this killing small town businesses and eventually whole towns as well.
The like a of Wal-Mart rock up, offer the promise of jobs for small towns then build an out of town hypermarket. All business is lost from the smaller or indipendent outlets in town and they go bust.
With no revenue coming in to the town anymore Wal-Mart's takings drop below acceptable level (Not necessarily below operating costs) and they close the store.
Leaving a ghost town behind in their trail.

JonB

So... good centrism is basically social democracy, which is basically what Corbyn is proposing, but Corbyn is the extreme Left, and we need a centrist politics to oppose him.

monkey

I’ve already said Corbyn isn’t the extreme Left. Or at least he isn’t trying to lead from that position. His problem is incompetence. Although that’s the issue with the centre and the right as well. But yes his policies are closest to what Britain needs.

JonB

monkey wrote:

I’ve already said Corbyn isn’t the extreme Left.

Yeah, was more of a general response than about you specifically. It sums up a lot of what I read these days.

GurtTractor

Apparently hydrogen fuel cell trains will be a thing here in a few years, pretty neat.

The 'nice' thing about the imminent climate catastrophe is that it really makes all this political nonsense seem like it's not really worth worrying about too much. A storm in a teacup I suppose.

Diluted Dante

I can guarantee you that 'here' does not include fucking Northern and their Pacer trains

MattyJ

Loving the thread title change wins

GooberTheHat

Blue Swirl

The Monster Raving Loony Party has a solution to the Brexit Omnishambles: a referendum on whether or not there should be another referendum.

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