Am feeling a lot better this morning, evidenced by the fact that I have not remains in bed until past 10.30am and am happily awake. Mind you I'm not sure how long that is going to last now that I have read some of the headlines and see that there are now plans to bail-out the UK based car industry. Talk about heading back to the past and the failed policies of the 1970s, they'll propose calling the companies British Leyland next!I must admit I'm getting completely sick of hearing about bail-outs for this sector and the next, with a complete disregard for the market reality of the companies. So the car manufacturing industry is in trouble, it doesn't take a genius to understand that the cause is no one wants to, or can afford to buy the cars.
So tell me, how does bailing the company out and propping it up help exactly? It doesn't. Of course it is unfashionable, and tantamount to being evil if you say you think the companies should be allowed to go to the wall. If you think that then you are uncaring about the people that lose their jobs.
This is a bogus argument when you consider what is proposed though. After all, all we're doing with each of these bail outs is pumping taxpayer money into non-viable operations in the blind hope that just maybe things will turn around. That requires you however to take the Government predictions about the recession on face value, and lets be fair, their economic projections over the past ten years have not exactly been on the money.
What we're actually witnessing right now is the gradual securing for the "workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."*
Of course, it's not being done under that pretext though. It's all about "saving the world". It's all about "doing something" to "help hard working families". At the same time we have to be subjected to comments like "same old Tories" or "unreconstructed Thatcherites who would do nothing". Yet the elephant in the room is the fact that New Labour is truly dead.
Blair had his Clause IV moment. Brown has had his now. It has returned via the back door. It's unspoken of course, it exists in the code of "doing something" but it is there and is plain to see, yet few seem to comment on it.
Commentators, analysts, and undergraduates will tell you that Blair's scrapping of Clause IV was the turning point for Labour. Blair did it openly for everyone to see. Now we have Brown doing a svengali routine and bringing it back under a bogus pretext and many just sit back and don't spot it.
They will eventually of course. 2007-08 was Brown's own Clause IV moment. It was the moment that unreconstructed, 1970s style Labour returned and it will end in only one way, the decline of Britain into being the very sick man of Europe once more. What a wonderful prospect!
* Text of the "scrapped" Clause IV
10 comments:
You'll be even more pleased to hear that it's all based on a lie, too.
Britain will soon be the "Austin Allegro" Economy, hard to maintain, bits keep dropping off, shoddy unreliable working parts, and going nowhere slowly......I remember.
Great minds, eh?
Taken you rather longer than usual to cotton to this one. I said before this all happened that Brown wanted an 'event' to save his skin and he has found it - he thinks - in this credit thingy. And boy will he make the most of it. But as you say we are doomed by his actions.
How far do think he'll turn the clock back then?
So those of us who wont or cant buy a new car will be forced to pay for the construction of vehicles we will never receive with menaces?
I'm sure this all makes sense to gordoom.
I would imagine that people on min wage whos tax is being given to people on £15 an hour will be very impressed.
Allegros were noted for the wheels dropping off.
I posted this on Piper' site, but he probably won't let it through.
Bob
spent much time in the west midlands?
BLMC was created in 1967 when Tony Benn and Harold Wilson invited Reg Stokes (boss of Leyland Truck and Bus, Triumph and Rover) to dinner with the boss of BMH (Jaguar, Austin-Morris) and 'encouraged' them to merge to form British Leyland. BLMC was made up of 42 factories and 250,000 direct employees.
BLMC collapsed in late 1974 and was bailed out by Labour. The massive handouts continued into the early 1980s, when boss Michael Edwardes managed to get Maggie to hand over £900m.
Rover was also sold off by BMW under Labour's watch and collapsed (as MG Rover) under a Labour government.
By stark contrast, the decision by the Tories to save Rolls Royce and hive off the car division to help the aero engines arm survive has been a resounding success. RR PLC (aero engines) is alive and very well.
There's a difference between meddling and intelligent intervention.
Surely the object is to get the workers (in certain industries) more than their share of the fruits of their labours- at the expense of the workers of other industries.
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