Spot on Laurie. However I would say your comment "It was Labour that began the privatisation and withdrawal of public services in this country" is misleading - it was new Labour's continuation of Thatcherite doctrine that has made our woes so much worse, has increased the gap between the rich and poor. We all know Mandelson would have slotted seamlessly into any Tory cabinet. It was the left of the labour Party that failed to raise it's voice enough and demand the progressive taxation that would have averted so much, and it's the weaker unions fault for not being serious about turning the money supply off unless they got an agenda that protected their members. Watching the witless response to these murderous cuts, watching Burnham rolling on the ropes on TV last night, is mightily disheartening. Hope your friend was ok.

Left is forward, Sir, you certainly are not the bulk of the population, that is probably your greatest self delusion. In my long working life I have almost certainly done far more hard physical work than you have. I have no desire to 'run you down' what advantage would there be to me in that? I had two grandfathers' one a farm labourer,the other a docker, both left school aged 10!
What you cannot seem to understand is that your future is mostly in your own hands. Whilst other young 11 year old boys were wasting their energy chasing a football up and down a field at weekends, I was earning money working in a field. You choose to be a consumerist slave,I choose not to be. The poor generally marry too young,watch too much crap TV, it is a choice. Plan your family, plan your education, I did all my required exams at night school in order to go to university. I tell you, you will learn a lot more in your FREE library than the local pub.Indeed I have played no part in stopping your children going to school, I encourage education, it is the greatest civilising influence for most folk.
It is changes in technology that brings about most job redundancy, and will continue to do so,being blind to world changes will not keep you in a job that can be done by machine, twas ever thus! Have you seen the size of the 120 tonne Caterpillar earth moving trucks, 40 years ago they would need 12 lorries!
What would you do? Women drive them in Australia, hauling coal out of a mountainside, at half the price we could have mined it.
Some folk are brilliant at art, others can understand numbers at levels that mystify most. You must encourage your family to set their sights high, why not a doctor,I know one did his first degree at the 'Open
University'. Provocation is in your imagination.

@Mr. Divine

The question of how we make real social progress, especially with the global poor, doesn't seem to have a strong left-wing answer at the moment.

Lots of social movements such as the unions and left-wing political parties, are ultimately aligned to the interests of the local workers, who may "need protecting" from international competition. We CAN make things more equal in our own country, by renationalisation, progressive taxation, wealth taxes, encouraging co-operatives and communes, asset seizure etc - the kinds of thing happening in Venezuela at the moment. But I think they can only be handled on a national or local basis - if the poor of India or Africa rise up, they can only overthrow the Indian or African elites, but they can't get hold of and redistribute the massively larger amount of money held by the European and American elites.

Tighter integration of the international economy might ease global inequalities by allowing larger transfers of capital, but (1) this tends to be hijacked by large, capitalist corporations (which not only take the bulk of the money, but also cause political instability and indeed degradation, by encouraging governments to engage in a "race to the bottom" for workers' rights etc in an effort to lure investment) and (2) the traditional left-wing views that the best economic unit is the Big State, or the local commune or co-operative, are anti-global in nature, and would hinder international asset movement.

Of course, the "shock capitalism" doctrines of the right are even more toxic and harmful. But I'd love to hear a better left-wing answer.

I don't think you can just take capital and forcibly redistribute it. It wont work firstly because capital is liquid and easily moved. Secondly, once you start trying to take this capital either by very high taxation, regulation or renationalisation you get a flight of capital, and this can have a big knock on negative effect. In Britain's case to put it in simple terms a lot of wealth would be lost if you tried your measures.

Venezuela isn't he answer, cracks are appearing right left and centre. The Venezuelan hope is on the ropes and looking like a dope. There is too much central government involvement. When you try to grab wealth some it will slip through and away from your grasping hands. And in the future a lot of wont go anywhere near you... Venezuela is not attractive to the holders of capital. A country will suffer from a clumsy Robin Hood impersonation.

You're another a bull in china shop.

I do think a big part of the solution too global inequality would be to homogenise the global population by allowing liberal immigration: anyone born on Planet Earth has the right to live anywhere they choose on Planet Earth; national boundaries are artificial and (by definition) divisive.

Unfortunately, particularly in the wealthier countries, there doesn't seem to be much stomach for this.

PS: and I still want 75% of the hilarity award.

@David Vintner
If your future in 'in your hands' why is 69% of the land in this counrty owned by 0.6% of the population. Why do ex public school and ex Oxbridge people (mostly men) dominant the highest paid and most powerful jobs in the country? Are they the cleverest and most able? Only in their opinion.

Wake-up we do not live in a meritocracy, your deference does not become you.

I'm with you Left Forward.

Mr Divine - was there a mass exodus of capital from the country under the last Labour government? If not, isn't that a bit of a straw man argument? We had 13 years during which if there'd been such an exodus, surely it would have been noticed.

Sorry to hear about your friend, Laurie - will she be ok?

You're right. Bizarrely, despite many good speeches from Labour & many good articles from Labour-affiliated & left-leaning thinktanks, AJ utterly failed to deliver yesterday. We need to fight back against this easily swallowed lie that Labour are entirely to blame for the economic crisis. They weren't doing brilliantly, but they were doing a hell of a better job at the helm economically than this current shower. The trouble is, Johnson isn't an economist. He's not well-schooled enough in the arguments or in the principles involved. I'm sure he'd do ok as a Chancellor but unless he can win the economic arguments with quick undeniable rebuttals & incisive ripostes, he'll never get that chance. Maybe he *should* spend the next 4 years doing an economics degree, as he said he wouldn't.

"Not just the Labour party but the left has no answers apart from trying to grab wealth off the rich" ... isn't that a damned good answer?

In an ideal world NOBODY would be rich, and NOBODY would be poor. Everybody would have just enough money to be happy, and anybody who attempted to gain an advantage in money and power over their fellow equal citizens would be ostracised and hopefully imprisoned or even executed.

Nobody, and I repeat, NOBODY has a right to have a million pounds in the bank, or to be earning above about £50k a year. If you are making £55k a year, or have £1.2 million in the bank (or in "bricks and mortar"), then you have too much money, money that isn't making you happy, money that isn't being productive - and you could spend it saving the poor from starvation or disease or from inadequate heating in the depths of winter. Indeed, saving the poor from despair and suicide. Effectively anybody earning over £50k is a mass-murderer: they are happily playing a role in a system that is mass-murdering, and unless they are giving their "surplus" all to the poor and needy, they are just playing along with it.

In my book they therefore deserve to have their pay withdrawn to normal levels, so they don't speed ahead of the poor and just increase the divide, and lack of hope. Just because you have a fancy piece of paper for a degree, or a "rare skill", or have a "responsible" job, there's no justification for being a mass-murdered. Folk earning above £50k (and there are plenty in the public sector - where savings could be made by pay cuts rather than benefit slashing) probably deserve to be severely punished for their pro-capitalist complicity to date. But at the very least, their pay MUST be taken from them - and their mansions, if necessary. Equality is hard-won, and has to be enforced. It can't just happen by supporting the poor, ultimately we can only achieve it if we destroy the rich. Permanently. And I will partake in that, with great pleasure.

Sciamachy, I have no problem with 'worthy' aid. Niger as you say, is mostly just sand. Clearly unless some 'rare earth' or other valuable deposits ar discovered will have little future. I object to those leaders keeping their citizens poor, and stuffing money in Switzerland.

Mr Divine is nothing like me.

the sad fact is the suicide and murder rate will rocket sky high in the coming years with marrieges breaking up,social disorder,family breakdown,lost hope in all communitys,young people with no future,middle aged and old people with no future.the 1980s are truly back and that is what you get when you vote in a conservative goverment who are just carrying on thatchers legacy,the time for talking is over.we must take to the streets and show them we aint having it mate.

Firstly Alistair darling had a good ecenomic cut plan and his second stage that would be later introduced would have been less brutal than whats expected, as for Laobur not haivng any ideaology, look at the Tory cuts in prsions and Police,this will surely lead to crime rising, yet labour had ideas about law and order for a fourth term, unlike the tories elelcted commisioners, which would have added more beurocracy, Its easy to criticise labour saying it whould swing to a different direction that was the idea after 1979 and those who proposed it were stunned labour were massacred in 83

A large percentage of the population are crammed into urban areas whether that is by choice is another matter. UK cities especially in the SE are becoming more and more overcrowded as every available piece of land is built on - mostly boxy little flats and houses. They are kennels that contain the masses. £250/300k for a little box to live in, it may cost a lot but its still a little box.

There is land but vested interests prevent it from being used for decent housing.

Funnily enough there are no aristocrats where I live either. They don't live in the kennels.

Stuart - yeah, when they started banging on about cuts a few weeks back I got the Specials' "Ghost Town" stuck in my head. It's going to be like 1981 again - riots on the streets, mags like Class War becoming popular once more. I'm hoping it won't last more than 1 term of government, but it might provide my kids with an object lesson so that they'll never ever vote Tory no matter how well they might do.

Labours a waste of time, money and energy.

Labours completely sold out to the wealthy, crawling to Murdoch and the Bankers

On the day of the cuts Labours silence is defeaning because their cuts would be as bad or worse.

Look at Alistair Darling the tame,wealthy, public school boy, Neo Liberal, Pro Market,Pro Privatisation, anti union, pro cuts. A Chancellor that any Con Dem Cabinet would recognise
Interchangeable with Osbourne, Brown,Clarke, Lamont,Lawson and Howe

Labours privatisations and sell out to the market are the foundations for the ConDems defenestration of the NHS and Welfare.

Anti Union to the last one of Browns last act in parliament was to attack the BA Cabin Strike

Last week Labour refused to support a Trade Union Solidarity and Freedom Bill again

Why the Unions bosses continue to pay for these Thatcherites is anyones guess.

But the Union members now know Labour is just as fond as attacking their jobs, pensions, wages and condoitions as any Conservative or Lib Dem

Most in Labours shadow cabinet could move seamlessly into the Con Dem Govt not just Mandelson

Blairs destruction of Labour internal democracy leaves a hollow Party full of Sky Wannabes, Marketing wankers and Neo Liberal apparatchiks who could just as easily appear in a Con Dem Party

Then there is the bleeding corpse of Iraq, on the day of the WikiLeaks exposure of more deaths, torture and War Crimes where is Labour. No doubt David Milliband will appear to defend the Iraqi bloodbath again with Blair,Brown and Burnham.

Where is the Labour PartyInvestigation into the Iraq War?

Labour gutless members sit on their hands and do nothing.No campaign against the war, no motion,leaflet, whelk stall or demonstration.Just silence and pretence its not that bad

Get over Labour
Its dead,
sans democracy, sans socialism,sans fighting spirit, sans anything

Build a fighting, democratic, socialist alternative that wont rat on the workers and the poor

Sorry - forget to mention, only one suceeded - you can't argue with a floor when you jump off the top of a multi-story car park.

The Poll Tax protests got a result. Despite the tuts of the elite, they really don't like it up 'em and it is time this anger found some focus. With Thinkov on this.

ang

Thanks for the breaking news. I`ve just had a look at the Guardian, what a disgrace from the coalition.

Ed Milliband, are you listening, WE NEED ED BALLS, BRING HIM ON.

David Vinter
But by most world standards everyone in the UK is above your standards.
----------

It doesn't matter how well we are doing compared to Africa or India - best of wishes to their development, but it is the rape of the poorest and most vulnerable in this country by their wealthy elite masters that concerns me.

We either destroy the rich or let them destroy us. There can be no more laying down in the face of their provocations. This is a battle for the destruction of the class system - the fight for the final levelling and equality of society - or it is an acceptance of our status as slaves. I know which I would prefer.

Don't let the rich make you think that you're a special, unusually wealthy slave because you're doing better than an African shepherd. They are stealing your money, destroying your public services, wiping out your pension, crushing the hopes of your children or grandchildren for a good education and decent, green future. We can't let them do that to us anymore. Not again. Not after 21 years of Thatcher and her New Labour followers. It's time to take Britain back for who it belongs - the great masses of the British people.

Whilst I resent the (I must conclude deliberate) juxtaposition of your friend's plight and political argument, please pass on my best wishes. I hope she is well, or at least, better.

Great article. I think Labour is caught between what it knows is right and a Brown-style caution about saying what it knows to be right for fear of seeming too far out of line with 'mainstream' opinion. It doesn't know how to give leadership.

Implication? We have to build the anti-cuts movement. This is the only thing at the moment which potentially has the reach and ambition we need to shift public opinion. If the anti-cuts movement grows and starts to shape the public conversation, maybe Labour will recover some of the courage of its convictions.

"Apart from a shoeless shouting drunk growling at the nurses to give him back his confiscated footgear, the waiting room is quiet, strewn with ill, beaten-looking people patiently waiting to be seen".

You mean the way waiting rooms have been for the past 50 years, you mean? Apart from the deluge on Friday and Saturday nights of girls who've had a quarrel with the boyfriend and "attempted suicide" (scratched a wrist, taken 10 paracetamol. Sorry cock, if you want to kill yourself you stand in front of a train, jump off a high building or hang yourself. If you want to look reasonable afterwards, best to cut your jugular with a surgical blade. Now that's suicide.

@Equality Person:

Ring ring.
"Hello President of the Long Eaton Swingers Club"
Mr. Divine: "Yes,you have given me a joint award for hilarity"
" Yes that's right. You and that far left fellow."
"Well I don't want to have only 50% of it I want more than that. I want at least 75% of that award, and he only gets 25%. I would give the other 5% to the non-existent five per cent charity"
Equitable Person, "That doesn't seem equal to me. You can't join the swinger's club if you don't have an equal partner. I mean you can't come here just you and your pet red squirrel"
Me: By why should it be equal partners, and to who are we going to be equal partner's to?

EquitablePerson, " Listen I've got no idea about anything else apart the norms of the Swinger's Club that I'm the president of, aint I. I have to go now. We're expecting a lovely couple from near Nottingham and I hear the knock on the door now."

Knock knock, knock knock.