General Election - 4th July 2024

Who will you be voting for in the General Election?

  • Labour

    Votes: 266 56.8%

  • Conservative

    Votes: 12 2.6%

  • Liberal Democrat

    Votes: 40 8.5%

  • Reform

    Votes: 71 15.2%

  • Green Party

    Votes: 28 6.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 51 10.9%
  • Total voters
    468
mosssideblue said:
Wish Labour would respond to the Tories childish spat about Starmer being a Part Time PM reminding them about all Cobra meetings Johnson didn’t attend and Sunak himself going AWOL at Normandy
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Johnson is without doubt the most bone-idle **** to ever hold that office.
 
Rascal said:
Sort of correct,that Socialism demands participation from everyone, here is an explanation that i have cobbled together thanks to Jacobin and The Socialist Workers Party.

Every hour worked is an hour that can never be retrieved. It’s also an hour from which economic elites profit, and they are not sharing those profits. The ideology that places a premium on “work ethic” helps keep this unequal system in place. It shames workers for being lazy if they register an objection to how hard or long they’re expected to work, and it also rewards workers with a sense of pride if they spend their days making profits for somebody else without grumbling (think of that pride as a sort of consolation prize). It therefore benefits a tiny wealthy minority at the expense of the vast majority of people.

We should dispense with “work ethic” as it’s currently understood, and we should replace it with something way better: taking pride in and deriving meaning from the nature of our work itself, not from the mere ability to perform it without complaining.


Under capitalism, lots of workers hate their jobs, but they have to perform them anyway in order to afford the basic necessities of life. Karl Marx was concerned about the way that capitalism "alienates" labour or turns the worker into a drone detached from the goods they’re producing or services they’re rendering, with no control over how they spend the majority of their waking hours and no clear sense of purpose. Marx concluded that alienation of labor is a natural consequence of a system where work is allocated not based on what society needs but on what’s profitable for a few. Under capitalism, everything firms do is to make money — and that’s it. The result is a proliferation of jobs that are as socially useless as they are demanding, and billions of people around the world performing those jobs with no input or sense of connection to the work itself.

Socialists propose to completely change the nature of work. In a truly democratic socialist society, no longer would anyone be allowed to make a profit without lifting a finger themselves and to use their wealth and power to set the terms and conditions of everybody else’s workday. Instead, people would come together democratically to decide what kind of society they want to see — what needs should be met, what problems ought to be solved — and would work backward from that to identify what kind of work needs to be done to make our collective dreams a reality.

This society would then empower democratically accountable planning agencies to figure out how to go about training and attracting people to these jobs. Once hired, workers would have the ability to make decisions collectively about how firms operate, including how much they internally compensate for what type of work. This would be much less chaotic and more logical than the current arrangement, where the vast majority of decisions about the economy and production are made by people with wealth who are driven by the sole ambition of acquiring more wealth. It would also be much more empowering to workers themselves, who would truly operate like a team — a feeling that corporations today try hard to mimic management cliche.


Of course there will be work under socialism — though surely less of it — and we want people to feel motivated to perform it and to take pride in it. But rather than guilting workers into breaking their backs for somebody else’s profit and castigating them for not finding that particularly fulfilling, we should endeavor to deliberately create an economic and political system that motivates workers by empowering them as decision-makers, both in the civic sphere and in the workplace.

Our goal should be to foster a whole new type of “work ethic,” one that doesn’t just translate to grin-and-bear-it stamina, but instead to a hunger for active participation and avenues to exercise agency. Under democratic socialism, workers would not only be able to explain how their work contributes to society, but also endeavor to make change if they find the rationales insufficient — pathways that are completely blocked for most workers today.

Considerations about people’s relationship to work need not turn people off socialism. On the contrary, they ought to excite people about socialism’s potential. Under capitalism, too many people are simply biding their time, watching the clock, working for the weekend. We can have a new type of society, one in which people work not just to survive while the bosses live in luxury, but in which we work to meet our collective needs instead — and find much greater fulfillment in the process.

A socialist society would be one where items are produced because they are needed, rather than because they are profitable.

It would mean an end to a system where millions of people struggle to make ends meet while the rich sit on piles on money.

Ordinary people would collectively own big industries, services and banks—and decide democratically how to use the Earth’s resources.

The Labour party isn’t a vehicle for bringing about socialism. Its strategy is focused on reforming capitalism through parliament, rather than overthrowing the system entirely. Real power doesn’t lie in parliament. It lies with unelected bankers and big businesses, who use it to pressure governments.

Above is the kind of politics that those with Capital seek to hide from society as it will affect their individual wealth and that protection stops us all developing as human beings and enjoying life in a more fruitful manner.
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So how do we decide what is needed? Do we vote on it? What if the vote is perfectly split? Who decides?

What if I have what so think is a great idea for a new product that nobody has asked for because it doesn’t exist yet? Who decides if I should make my new product?

What makes the planning agencies any more qualified to do this job than the current bosses in our capitalist world today? How do individuals attract our vote to democratically become elected to the planning agencies? Is this our government? How do they get paid if they don’t produce anything?

How does the government run? Do I pay taxes? Do we all earn the same and pay the same?

I have a lot more questions mate but I’ll start with them…
 
west didsblue said:
It’s true Major was doing ok from 1993-1997 but people hadn’t forgotten about being screwed in their pockets due to the ERM crisis in 1992, and that was 5 years earlier. This time round, Trussonomics is still having a huge effect on most mortgage holders and that was less than 2 years ago. The Tories are rightfully toast.
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Trussonomics only impacted for a short while so it’s not still having an effect on “most mortgage holders”. The rest is inflation driven which we would have worn come what may.
 
The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
Imagine the LD as the opposition. It might actually mean PMQ’s had reasonable questions and proper answers!
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People will soon be complaining that its boring because its just two ageing men asking each other questions about things I can't be bothered to research and nobody shouts any more.

You know like the way its supposed to be.
 
metalblue said:
Trussonomics only impacted for a short while so it’s not still having an effect on “most mortgage holders”. The rest is inflation driven which we would have worn come what may.
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The people who came off their fixed rate are paying hundreds more a month thanks to truss , they will be feeling it for years, take your tory glasses off
 
I've got a dilemma on Thursday. I want this bunch of incompetent, dogma-driven, venal, corrupt, self-serving grifters confined to the history books. In my constituency (Bury South) the best chance of doing that is Labour.

It's very marginal so the Labour candidate should win. However, the problem is that it's Christian Wakeford, who crossed the floor from the Tories two years ago.

He'd disagreed with the party on a key issue, and was allegedly told a school that was promised in Radcliffe (quite a deprived part of Bury South) wouldn't be funded if he voted against the party line on that issue. Yet there's more than a suspicion that he defected because he could see what was coming and wanted to be sure he retained his seat.

He's going to win but I'm struggling to convince myself to put that 'x' against his name.

@BTH - convince me that he's serious about his political beliefs. Otherwise I'll vote Green, Lib Dem or even Communist.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I've got a dilemma on Thursday. I want this bunch of incompetent, dogma-driven, venal, corrupt, self-serving grifters confined to the history books. In my constituency (Bury South) the best chance of doing that is Labour.

It's very marginal so the Labour candidate should win. However, the problem is that it's Christian Wakeford, who crossed the floor from the Tories two years ago.

He'd disagreed with the party on a key issue, and was allegedly told a school that was promised in Radcliffe (quite a deprived part of Bury South) wouldn't be funded if he voted against the party line on that issue. Yet there's more than a suspicion that he defected because he could see what was coming and wanted to be sure he retained his seat.

He's going to win but I'm struggling to convince myself to put that 'x' against his name.

@BTH - convince me that he's serious about his political beliefs. Otherwise I'll vote Green, Lib Dem or even Communist.
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Hold your nose and vote labour please , getting the tories out is the most important thing this time
 
I have to agree with the comments made by Inbetween said.Its incredible how shareholders are criticised so much,they invest in PLC’s and is it so unacceptable to expect a reward,of course they want some financial reward for risking their money,what’s wrong with that.If the company goes bust then they lose all their money that’s the risk they take,conversely if you deposit money in a Building society or Bank your money is protected upto £85K and in reality as was seen in 2008 all your money was covered by the Government.As a shareholder you provide investment for a company,as a Building society customer you are a money lender,simple as,yet your money is safer than a shareholders,you never hear anyone say how greedy a Building society customer is,funny that.Let’s see things for what they are,as sung in The Italian job,this is a self preservation society,that is reality.With regards to the election,I am traditionally a Conservative but my word I hope that they receive a bloody good hiding on Thursday.Let’s be honest this country is on the slippery slope and has been for a long time but the way this lot have run it down in every way in the last fourteen years is an absolute disgrace,let the Socialists have a go,it’s not possible to do a worse job surely
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I've got a dilemma on Thursday. I want this bunch of incompetent, dogma-driven, venal, corrupt, self-serving grifters confined to the history books. In my constituency (Bury South) the best chance of doing that is Labour.

It's very marginal so the Labour candidate should win. However, the problem is that it's Christian Wakeford, who crossed the floor from the Tories two years ago.

He'd disagreed with the party on a key issue, and was allegedly told a school that was promised in Radcliffe (quite a deprived part of Bury South) wouldn't be funded if he voted against the party line on that issue. Yet there's more than a suspicion that he defected because he could see what was coming and wanted to be sure he retained his seat.

He's going to win but I'm struggling to convince myself to put that 'x' against his name.

@BTH - convince me that he's serious about his political beliefs. Otherwise I'll vote Green, Lib Dem or even Communist.
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I'll be voting for him - but campaigning elsewhere.

Absolutely no chance he'll lose - it was one of the most marginal seats in the country - the third smallest majority on Labour's target list of Tory seats.

Did you read the Guardian profile of him after he switched? He let Helen Pidd follow him round for the day, so you'll learn a little more about him: https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ristian-wakeford-crossing-floor-dont-throw-up
 
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