Should have been clearer. What I meant by lasers was their application into everyday use for technology. The Hughes Research Lab may or may not have invented them. Either way, the people working in that lab, the theories and the equipment were most likely provided by the state. The myriad uses for lasers we see today would not have been possible had their uses not been revolutionised by the defence industry, also state owned.

My made-up bollocks comes from Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate) and Noam Chomsky (kind of a big deal). How's Monckton doing these days?



Absolutely no need for strikes whatsoever then.



Not really sure what this means. You don't like trains?



Agree, though probably for very different reasons to you. I rekon a lot of the anger from those asking for a fairer system than the one we currently have comes from the fact that currently, the state is only responsible for bailing out the banks when they fail. All the risk is taken by the state and the private sector takes all the profit. Furthermore, there is no indication of lessons being learnt or remorse, and people are starting to see the current system as not broken, but working as designed. Plutonomy, in other words.



Apart from the fact that I don't think you even believe that, where does this fit into your belief that the state shouldn't have control over the market when neo-liberal policies have led to obvious failure? It's all well and good saying "I think the current system isn't working, and fascist conglomerates aren't lovely", takes minimum effort or conviction. What would you do if you got elected?

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

The thing is you label that the Public Sector don't deliver any meaningful service but I'm sure we can produce woeful private sector service.

I'll give it a go

Swalec
BT
Cross Country
First Bus

First Great Western
Ryanair

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

Crapita
Southern Cross
The "Big 6" energy suppliers

Not to mention the countless situations where the private sector cheerfully gives the finger to established law, see Vodafone, BAE Systems etc. etc.

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"Common Sense is the collection of prejudices aquired by age eighteen" - Albert Einstein

Group 4

Inumerable private care homes

Associated Newspapers

Channel 5

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Mailwatch. Love us or leave us.
http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/

The famous Jenner "backing up your opinion with facts and doing research when disagreeing with someone is for losers, so I'll just say something and hope for the best" gambit in play again here I see.

Tesco

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"Even when you're a super-computer with an IQ of 2000 it's brown trousers time."

Reclaiming "methinks" for the nation

Latest blog post - 2011 - a review (updated 07/10)

HMRC

I've been freelance for 6 years and I have never once had an issue with HMRC. In fact, they have always been courteous, efficient, and when things have gone wrong have done their best to remedy it quickly keeping me fully informed in the process.

I was with a friend of mine who is the MD of a middle-sized company. We came to the drunken conclusion that we'd finally reconciled ourselves with this century's capitalism and that while Marx still represented the best way to analyse society the old beardy had seriously miscalculated surplus value and benevolent capitalism, amongst other things we could only dimly remember from our banner-waving youth: no-one with a top-hat was busy grinding the faces of our well-paid and happy work-force into the ground or snatching crusts from widows' hands. Or at least we weren't. So over 20/30 years we had gradually cast away any doubts and embraced modern capitalism as being ok and not what 19th century philosophers had accused it of being, as long as it didn't get too far up its own arse.

(I think that tacitly many people on the left had done their own dropping of Clause IV)

Anyway, just when things were looking fairly hunky-dory along came the very people who were supposed to understand the damn thing and screwed it up royally for everybody else, except themselves, and especially for us. That of course is not true, but you do feel sorry for yourself when you're pissed.

As you can see, I'm no economist. But the financial institutions, private and state, are supposed to know how the frigging thing works even if I don't and it turns out that they are venal, corrupt wankers all along.

So I've gone right off capitalism again, but I'm not rushing into the comforting arms of whatever number International they're now on, nor embracing Stalinism.

It's not either/or.

It's neither/nor.

Well the lack of regulation on Wall Street and the excesses of the US financial industry, as a whole, is a huge part of the shit we see ourselves in on a global level..

If you don't think that is the case then you are an ignorant fuck




Nope.......

Unless you think sub-prime mortgage lending is a sign of sensible market regulations




Why would you think that?

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

Of course investment banks are still intertwined with commercial banks so if you think your money is safe ("Save our savers!!!!" yep that's gonna solve the liquidity problem).....

Modern capitalism is heading us towards a new form if totalitarianism. A significant proportion of rich people/organizations don't want 'competition' or 'free markets'. They want the odds stacked in their favor. Of course they can still slave drive their employees with threats because it has been made so easy for them to fire their staff. What we are heading towards is plutocratic totalitarianism and mail readers are making the plutocrats' job easy for them.

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You may say I'm a dreamer.... but I'm not the only one....

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My blog: https://stevenplrose.wordpress.com/

Or in the words of my favourite T-Shirt circa 1985, "Neither Washington or Moscow".

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That subtle admixture of the absurd and the surreally plausible...

Right on, brother