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Corb Blimey!

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    My last experience of a Labour meeting was a feeling that they didn't want new people disturbing what was a comfortable evening amongst friends.

    The next meeting was trying to find a way to email/post a motion on a local issue almost everyone felt very strongly about to the main CLP committee (controlled by Progress) in a form which would not allow them to ignore it or pretend it hadn't been received on time.

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      Fortunately - after a lot of shenanigans, and moving the Progress lot away from complete control - we've got a much better Chair, and not nearly so much politicking in Brighton now. There's some good tie-ins to more direct action. Ther can be a balance struck between proper discussions of motions and 'enthusing' stuff, but it's hard...

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        it's strange because as far as I've seen there is a huge commitment from the left to do whatever it takes to get a Labour government, including not attacking the right . The prospect of a Labour government seems to put the wind up the Progress gang though.

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          Why are council by-election results not better? With the low turnouts, and all these new members, it should be possible to be reasonably competitive in most places.

          No losses last night, to be fair, and a couple of big vote shares in safe wards. But the Tories are still doing better than you might expect.

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            From E10's backyard. More questionable London council property development. I take the inevitable "deselection" talk with a pinch of salt.

            https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...rivate-finance

            McDonnell did put a vague commitment to give local government more money into the manifesto, which was pretty poor given his GLC background. I'm sure he wanted more than that from Michael Foot in 1983. So, as we said before, it's understandable councils look to this sort of thing. But it sounds a bit drastic for Canary Wharf, let alone Walthamstow.

            Sadiq will likely have to rule on the scheme. He's got a problem at the moment, with a shortfall in tube passengers putting investment in doubt. A big part of him will be dreaming of all these extra people jumping on the tube (or London Overground) every day.

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              isn't the biggest problem for the Tube the withdrawal of all government subsidy? so by 2018 London will be the only city in Europe where there is no day-to-day transport subsidy

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                That's a problem but was known about when Sadiq worked his plans out. Passengers have fallen unexpectedly.

                The boroughs and mayor ought to be capable of raising that money locally in the longer term.

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                  Aren't they still getting an investment grant? And money from the GLA?

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                    Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
                    This bollocks is getting some mileage on Twitter. The Czech spy guy seems to be a fantasist who claims credit for Live Aid, although maybe that would explain the cruel injustice that saw Adam Ant only get to perform one song.

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                      Originally posted by pebblethefish View Post
                      Aren't they still getting an investment grant? And money from the GLA?
                      Osborne started phasing the central government grant in 2015. Funnily enough just as his mate left office

                      I don't know how much they get now from the Treasury, but it's hard to fill it short term.

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                        That report on Walthamstow, though reasonably fair, gives the impression that McDonnell was invited to a meeting purely to back a campaign against the housing development. He wasn't. It was a Waltham Forest Trades Council meeting on PFIs. The trades council, though a mixed and lively blend of local trade unionists, has a voluble Socialist Party presence due to the involvement of the Taafe family.

                        It also gives vent again to the evidence-free contention that there have been moves to deselect Stella Creasy. There haven't, and not a shred of evidence has ever been produced to back this claim up. There are some who want mandatory reselection on principle, but there's not even any sort of campaign around that. The more mundane truth is that some people are aggrieved that there have been left slates of candidates standing for local party positions, including, mostly unsuccessfully, posts that have been held by the MP's Dad and Mum for a long time. But a story around who's the CLP fund-raiser in one east London suburb isn't going to get many hits.

                        More significantly, there's a lot of opposition to the tower development among the 'mainstream' Labour membership and among local people generally. Because it meets none of the area's housing needs. And it bulldozes another children's playground (temporarily), not long after another estate "regeneration" scheme had done the same to another kids' park (and at a time we've lost a much-loved soft play area to developers as well).

                        So you can stick your fucking "awesomestow" up your arse.

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                          Cheers. I'm glad I saw through the deselection bullshit.

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                            Not that there many Tory voters in Walthamstow nowadays, but I expect lots of them would be against big towers going up.

                            Anyway, one for Sadiq.

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                              The Tories are trying to make hay with it, as you'd imagine. Though those towers are going up in wards with practically no Tory voters, and they apparently acted the proper cunt in Chingford yesterday, turning up to heckle Sadiq and generally get in his face when he paid a campaign visit. They were joined in this by the Socialist Party, in a heartwarming show of Trot-Tory unity.

                              As my other half is standing for Labour in a winnable Tory ward in Chingford in a couple of months, this is all obviously quite close to home.

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                                Wow, good luck to her.

                                Sadiq is an international scumbag hate figure these days. He thinks terrorism is all part of the vibe, He gets up every day thinking he'll play games with Trump, and tells the police to leave his ethnic knife brothers alone.

                                Weird that the bloke they'd go for is a Muslim, isn't it?

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                                  This is fairminded on water nationalization.

                                  https://www.ft.com/content/d3b3ecfc-...6-4a6390addb44

                                  Jonathan Ford 5 HOURS AGO 13
                                  As the political debate about the future of Britain’s privatised utilities heats up, battle lines have been drawn over what it might cost to nationalise the water industry.

                                  On the one hand, the Labour party’s soi-disant Marxist shadow chancellor John McDonnell maintains it would be “cost-free” to revive the old regional water authorities. On the other, some think-tanks say that this would crowd out other spending and even dynamite the public finances.

                                  So which of them, if either, is right? Hard as it may be to credit, the politician is closer to the mark than his antagonists.

                                  True, a Labour government would have to issue lots of debt to buy back the water companies. The think-tanks in question — the Social Market Foundation and Centre for Policy Studies — estimate the enterprise value of the sector to be about £80bn-£90bn.

                                  In return, the state would get assets with an income that exceeded the financing cost. The English water companies had combined operating profits of about £3.5bn in 2016. At current 10-year gilt rates of 1.65 per cent, the interest cost on £90bn would be about £1.5bn annually. Even doubled, that would only rise to £3bn.

                                  That, of course, assumes the state would really have to cough up the whole £90bn, which is itself a little questionable.

                                  As the economist Dieter Helm points out in a new paper, comparing the present with the pre-IT world of the 1970s and 1980s is meaningless

                                  The whole aim of the exercise would presumably be to stop private companies from making excessive returns from the public. Why then would the government start by paying a market premium based on those same excessive returns?

                                  As for the claim that nationalisation would be the straw that broke Britain’s fiscal back, that too looks suspect. The national debt stands at about 85 per cent of gross domestic product and nationalisation would add about 5 percentage points. It is hard to believe that would break the bank. When Clement Attlee’s government undertook the great postwar nationalisations, the national debt stood at 245 per cent of GDP.

                                  The real issue is not whether Das Kapital could supplant private capital, but rather whether it would make sense. It is about what might work better for the public as both consumer and taxpayer.

                                  Could a state-owned industry deliver a product of comparable quality as efficiently as the private sector, thus avoiding the need for elevated private sector returns?

                                  The private companies claim it could not, citing investment numbers and productivity gains since privatisation as if those clinched the argument.

                                  They do not, of course. As the economist Dieter Helm points out in a new paper, comparing the present with the pre-IT world of the 1970s and 1980s is meaningless.

                                  “It is the old counterfactual problem — comparing what is with what would have happened,” he writes.

                                  What we do know is that much post-privatisation investment was mandated by EU standards and would have happened anyway. State-owned entities put in those investments on the continent, just as private corporations did in the UK.

                                  Meaningful comparisons of efficiency are harder to come by. The water companies point to the fact that English consumers pay less than some Europeans, citing for instance that water costs twice as much in municipally-run Berlin as it does in Birmingham. However, that could reflect different policy costs or less abundant catchment systems.

                                  Meanwhile, water costs are similar in France, which has mixed provision, while state-owned Scottish Water’s prices are 10 per cent below what the average English customer pays.

                                  State ownership is hardly a panacea. As Mr Helm points out, its backers base their faith on the easy-to-question idea that the governance issues posed by private capital dissolve if you replace self-interested financiers with public spirited bureaucrats. This ignores old problems such as union capture and the politicisation of pricing.

                                  Nor is the cost of capital in state-owned groups as low as is sometimes contended. Capital expenditure still involves equity risk that needs to be funded, either by state-owned companies forking out for private-sector contractors, or doing it themselves.

                                  Yet for all these difficulties, private companies cannot simply dismiss nationalisation as impracticable. Nor is it enough to argue that ownership changes solve nothing.

                                  They must look again at their own overcomplicated regulatory model and make it function more tolerably. Duck that, and they could lose the argument by default.

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                                    Does McDonnell call himself a Marxist?

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                                      He probably has a bit of fun with the FT.

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                                        He’s no more a Marxist than fly in the air. This country.
                                        Last edited by Lang Spoon; 18-02-2018, 23:58.

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                                          I know he isn't a Marxist. But that article claims he styles himself thus.

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                                            Yeah I was meaning the FT copy. If Nick and Iain and Chris and Jason and Alex and Jolyon and Tom and Kenny and Euan all woke the fuck up for a second they’d realize McDonnell is 80’s non Militant Left Labour and not a danger to The Fabric Of Society cos he once had a few pictures with Marty and Gerry. He’s shite on Europe I’ll give the Sensibles that. But McDonnell they hated viscerally even when they thought Sensible Triangles and John Harris Haircuts would win the Euro ref for remain no bother.

                                            EDIT: I forgot Hugo.
                                            Last edited by Lang Spoon; 19-02-2018, 02:00.

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                                              the "Corbyn as traitor" meme seems to be being cranked up enormously. IS there an election in the offing?

                                              Even the Guardian is at it

                                              Tory MP Ben Bradley has just said on twitter "Corbyn sold British secrets to Communist spies.." which seems libellous.

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                                                More on the Corbyn spy non-story

                                                t’s hard to tell if the increasingly wild spy stories are hurting Labour. But they are certainly damaging the press.

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                                                  I’m not normally one to counsel strangers on bringing libel actions under English law, but Corbin really should sue these clowns.

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                                                    They are doing enough to stay inside the law. They are not reporting the stories, they are reporting that someone is saying the stories.

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