The Question

Should the tax payers be providing loans and bailouts for companies that for all intents and purposes have failed?

The fact is that we live in a capitalist system and we should therefore abide by the rules of the game. Its shouldn't be a case of proclaiming the system as the obvious way forward when things are going well and then making excuses with words such as "unprecedented" and "extraordinary" when its shown to be the sham that it really is.

One big advantage of a capitalist method of production over a planned economy is that its fairly easy to tell if a product is being overproduced. The selling price falls and falls quickly and then company goes bye bye. Well correct me if I'm wrong but the sea of cars and flat screen T.V's in production yards all over the country (and the world!) are screaming "I'm being over produced and the world doesn't need me!". The onus has been placed on the consumer to buy buy buy! Surely it should be on the producers to make that which is required. That is what is supposed to be good about the capitalist system.

Maybe people are starting to realise the difference between what they need and what they want. My car is ten years old and is owned outright by me. Its done 96K and provided I look after it it will do another 96K. Why the hell would I want to buy a brand new car for £10K or more??!! Should I buy a new one so I can be the youngish to middle age suave professional with an attractive wife, two kids and a Labrador in the adverts? Should I buy one so I can be the young kid with all his mates + blond piece in the back arriving at the party?? Its all fucking nonsense. I know people with a beautiful house and car but have an empty fridge and are constantly juggling bills. So much for the lifestyle promised in the advert. They would never admit it but what would they give to "downsize" the house and get a banger of a car. I would imagine they would give up their house and car. Pity about the falling house prices and car depreciation. They are now stuck. Same story for hundreds of thousands in this country.

The reason that these goods were produced was because people could "afford" them via cheap credit. Now the credit is not available, people cant afford them. Further to that, people wanted them because they thought it would make them look more successful but, and more importantly, it made them FEEL successful. What they were buying was not a 42"flat screen but an idea, a lifestyle, a myth.

So what about a possible planned economy or at least a majority nationalised manufacturing industry. This is happening to a degree at the minute. "Loans" to car companies, bank bailouts and greater regulation.

It is possible for all those who want a job to have one. It all goes back to my earlier post (means of production) about men being paid the true value of their labour and also producing goods which society needs and not wants. True needs are absolute. One needs the goods/service or they don't. Wants can be generated, manipulated and abused.

The hard part is deciding what is a need and what is a want because in truth needs and wants are different for different people. An example of what I would call "true" needs are food and water. Death occurs without them. "Wants" are T.Vs, computers, designer sofa's etc. Arr but things like computers lead to the advancement of mankind you may say. Well it leads to the "advancement" of the minority of mankind and leaves the rest drinking disease ridden water and fighting for bags of rice thrown from UN trucks.

It must surely be dawning on our nation that for the last 25 years we have been taken for one ride after another following Thatchers disastrous "reforms". Deregulation in the money markets and the destruction of industry has made this country ripe for ruin.

Apparently we were supposed to lose the smokey dirty industries and become an exporter of financial services. How the hell can a country export financial services? Countries export goods. Things you can touch and use. The smug bastards sat at the top of their trees spewing nonsense about how their "wages" were justified by magical performance on the markets ad infinitum. Well now we can see just how "magical" they really were. They were magical in the true sense of the word, with sleight of hand and puff of smoke they were criminally defrauding banks, governments, individuals and anyone intoxicated enough to be blinded by the promise of easy money.

The current crisis could have even more devastating impacts on our society than even the Iron Bitch.

Another Reply From Councillor Waudby

Here it is copied and pasted exactly as I received it.

"if you want these answers come to the forums and I will give you the answers I am not up for 4 years if you were in my ward you would have known what I have been doing for the last 20 years sheila"

Here is my response.

"Thanks for the reply Sheila. I do live in the marfleet ward (parthian) and I have no idea what you have been doing for the last 20 years. Neither does anybody else that I know. This may explain why the turnout at your election victory was a meagre 17.8 percent.

I would have thought it would be easier for you to e-mail me the answers rather than discuss it at forum.

Anyway as you have promised to answer my questions I am more than happy to come to your 4th Friday meeting at Marfleet Village Hall or a Saturday at 430 holderness road if you could tell me when your next saturday attendance will be. No appointment necessary I presume.

Kind Regards."

I felt her response was at best haughty and at worst evasive. Her election was probably based on the old adage that East Hullers would vote for a monkey so long as it was wearing a red rosette.

I am, however, happy to play her game for now. I am interested to see if she will give answers to my questions or will try to fob me off.

UPDATE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I received this response 2 hours later.

"well you where wrong there my vote went up and we have only been looking after your area for about 2 years"

First things first. I am no English teacher and am known to make spelling and grammar errors. But the shocking English skills being displayed by Councillor Waudby and Councillor Petch are beyond the pale.

Here is my response.

"As you can see from this link http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/portal/page?_pageid=221,588255&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL the turnout was indeed 17.8 percent. Poor by any ones standards. These are official council figures from the HCC website.

Do you know which Saturday you will be available at 430 Holderness road to answer my questions as promised?

Kind regards

Rob D."

Update-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She still hasn't answered any of my questions but she may be about to. Anyway this is the latest that she sent.

I never break promises I said I would send them and I will but if you are realy interested you could go into the back issues of the daily mail around 1976 80 you will see what I did in the n u p e union A was in the press a lot fighting for the school meals"

My reply

"Please dont misunderstand me. I'm not trying to critisise you or undermine any of your accomplishments in anyway. I am only interested in your answers to the questions that I asked. The reason for this is that I feel that many of them are relevent to the the labour party and I want to know more about my local councillors.

Kind regards"

I felt that a conciliatory reply may induce the required answers. We shall see.

A reply from councillor Petch (The top photo on my question or 2 post)

I just recieved this reply from councillor Petch.

"Hello,

Thank you for your questions which you have e-mailed me.

Whilst you have asked for my help in ...(.who to choose to vote for in the next election,)...while I am very flattered that you have asked me,which is very commendable that you care so much

to put in so much time and effort to mail me on such a matter, however ,I am not sure if you aware that in fact I am not standing in the next election, it actually is Councillor Sean Chaytor,

also if I were I would have to follow the Labour Party Manifesto of which I'm bound by as a Labour Party member ,therefore, as you are enquiring specifically for "my thoughts" this would in

fact be as per the manifesto,as I represent the Labour Party.

Kind Regards,

Brenda Petch."

I have copied and pasted it exactly as I recieved it. It is poorly written and I find it very difficult to read (and I also suspect she is trying to be patronising) but I think it basically condenses to this. She is frightened to deviate from any party line and so states that her views and aims are the same as that of the party manifesto. An all too familiar position I feel. No wonder people don't vote.

I wonder if she even knows what clause IV is/was.

The standard of councillors (In my city anyway) needs to seriously improve. We need people with vision and the courage of their convictions.

We don't need people who have no imagination or who just tow the party line. We don't need people like Brenda Petch.

Anyway,this is my e-mailed reply to her.

"Thank you for your reply Councillor Petch.

It would appear from what you are saying that you don't actually represent those that voted for you. You do what the party tells you to. A disturbing and all too familiar position at all levels of politics. I am pleased that you won't be standing next time because this city needs less party lap dogs and more dynamic and intelligent councillors."

I'm sure she isn't bothered. Shes collected her "wages" over the years and off she goes.

A reply from Councillor Waudby

Here is a reply I recieved after pressing councillor Waudby on the questions I sent (A question or 2 post) last week. I would say that its a good enough reason for a delayed answer.

"My husband haas just died I will get back to you soon sheila".

Prescience

I talked about this issue only yesterday "A reply to KB".

Now the BBC are echoing exactly what I was saying about big pharma companies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7754048.stm

Enjoy.

Imagine

Imagine if all work in the world was carried out by machines. The machines made other machines and other machines serviced and operated where necessary all machines. No Human being ever did anything which not could be considered leisure.

I will define a machine as something that only does work and has no conscious needs or wants of its own. A purely inanimate object.

How much would the product of the machines "labour" cost?

The answer must surely be nothing! You are not paying anybody for their labour time. No compensation is needed! The machines are machines. They do not care if they have money in the bank or not. If they did what would they do with it?

Assuming an entrepreneur or businessman or shareholders owned these machines then how do they make any money? They can't!! Money would not exist. Nobody is getting compensated for the time spent toiling away in a factory/office. Nobody gets paid and so nobody can spend money they haven't got. There is no value added to a product by humans and so nothing for the business owners to cream off from the hourly rate(as explained in the means of production post).

Great!

This seems like a good idea.

Problem. Some people always want more than others. Its more than just the material wealth. It's the status and power, they need it for some reason.

Therefore in my alternate reality the "Wealthy" people would be those that controlled the machines and the "working class" not with money but with guns.

Maybe capitalism isn't so bad?

Bonus points if you can name that game.

A reply to KB

The people being greedy point is a good one Kev.

I think your viewing the problem from a capitalist slant which is understandable.

Q .Why do we need more advanced machinery?

A. To make the product cheaper to produce and increase profit.

Q. If we paid all our workers (In a co-operative set up as mentioned in my post) a reasonable wage or simply returned to them the value they add to the product then why do we need to increase profit? There are no shareholders to keep happy, only ourselves.

The R&D question is one of necessity. New innovations would come about from a social perspective rather than a commercial one.

As an example think about your T.V. Over the years the picture has got better, the style has become more appealing the screen has got flatter, new storage devices for recordings have appeared etc etc. The advances would be quite astonishing
to people only 10 years ago. The R&D that goes into these projects exists because the company wants to sell you an item that you are going to throw away in 5 years in order to buy the next one.

Yeah well all that's good stuff you might say.

Well its a shame that the advancements in consumer electricals cannot be matched by advances in cures for cancers, heart disease etc etc.

Ask any man who is going to die tomorrow if he'd swap all of that stylish Sony crap for a cure to his illness.

Yet cancer research, and other disease research relies largely on charity!

The kind of commercial (Big Pharma companies) research that goes into drugs at the minute produces drugs that are very expensive and come with effectiveness studies which have had their figures scuffed in favour of drug effectiveness.

The expense can come from the time taken to bring a drug to market because of lengthy trials which rightly need to be carried out.

Therefore companies are not going to try for the really hard solutions which may become the cure for everything because of the risk of failure and wasted investment. Easier to go for the safe drug which is likely to pass trials.

Also when these drugs are invented they have a 10 year patent. This makes the drugs ridiculously expensive and forces NHS patients to go without. A drugs company I recently worked for were persuing a legal case in india to try and stop them making generics (The same drug manufactured by someone else usually sold for a fraction of the cost of the original). So people die when the drug exists to save them. All in the name of profit.

You may say that the company deserves maximum return for bringing the drug to market. I say that people deserve to live instead of being held to ransom

A planned economy could make a conscious choice to pursue these things at the cost of consumerist garbage. If push came to shove people would bin their i-pod nanos in a milli second in favour of a cure to their illness. Their free market sympathies would be flushed down their designer bog.