Comments on: Memo to all

By: Hell Is Other People

Hell Is Other People — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:20:00 +0000

Right on, Jim!

As somebody who was forced out of a fatcat job by illness, and now scrapes a living teaching the bright young minds of tomorrow in one of Britain's finest post-1992 universities, widgets and most other forms of consumption are now beyond my meagre budget. And I've realised you don't need 'em.

Like he says in Fight Club, "Advertising has us working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need."

By: Jim Bliss

Jim Bliss — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:20:00 +0000

HIOP, or a little more optimistically… widget production continues only so long as the rest of us permit it to do so. And the day we wake up and realise that the widget producers are bilking us and future generations out of what’s ours in return for a life of obscene luxury is the day we rise up and burn down the widget factories!

By: Hell Is Other People

Hell Is Other People — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 18:04:00 +0000

Well while we’re doing My First Book of Capitalism, widget production grinds to a halt if untrammelled neo-liberalism leaves workers unable to fund the consumption necessary to keep the whole thing moving. And the fact that, without the labour movement, you and I wouldn’t have a vote, the NHS, a living wage, blah blah blah…

By: angua

angua — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 17:31:00 +0000

Jim/Chris

However, unions are MEANT to be there as a "check on the power of the employer". If they deviate from their main purpose, this is a bad thing.

Employers (or as the rest of us call them, businesses) are MEANT to be producing widgets. They certainly can also be "providers of employment and a contributor to the national economy", but this is a pleasant sideline to widget production. This is not an evil capitalist ploy, incidentally. Spending a majority of our time and energy on getting food, as opposed to good citizenship (like "proving employment") is what we've been doing since before we were monkeys.

Not to argue with either of your generalizations, but just to inject a touch of the facts to the discussion.

By: john b

john b — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:14:00 +0000

Matt – you’re absolutely right (we also have a disproportionate number of oilcos and financial services institutions, thanks to our colonial past and that funny place south of Old Street respectively), but I was arguing against the moron who suggested we had fewer.

Jim/Chris – I suspect you’re both right. I’m really rather uncertain on what this entails policy-wise…

By: Jim Bliss

Jim Bliss — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:07:00 +0000

"Trade unions always go beyond being merely a check on the power of the employer to beng self serving, parasitic, organisms on large corporates whose sole purpose seems to get more money for less work for their members and more money and more power for the Union leaders."

Employers always go beyond being merely providers of employment and a contributor to the national economy to being self serving, parasitic, organisms on society at large, whose sole purpose seems to be giving less money for more work from their workers and concentrating more and more capital in the hands of a tiny proportion of the population.

By: Jim Bliss

Jim Bliss — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:07:00 +0000

(y’know… while we’re generalising and all)

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:02:00 +0000

On salaries also I think there’s a distinction between earning £x k a year in a job you don’t expect to be doing for very long, and earning it as your full-time salary in a job you expect to be doing for a long while. Ditto with how ‘liveable’ they are. Things like children and housing make a massive difference.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:59:00 +0000

Someone’s probably mentioned this above, but the reaso Britain has a disproportionate number of companies in the FT Top 100 compared to Europe or Japan is partly because more of Britain’s very large companies are quoted on stock markets than in Europe or Japan.

By: Chris b

Chris b — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:33:00 +0000

Wow, I'm truly amazed that there are so many pro and in some cases active Unionists left in the UK (not of the Paisley sort). Thatcher didn't obviously go quite far enough....

Now I'm not opposed to trade unions on theoretical grounds but am very much opposed on practical grounds. Trade unions always go beyond being merely a check on the power of the employer to beng self serving, parasitic, organisms on large corporates whose sole purpose seems to get more money for less work for their members and more money and more power for the Union leaders.

It's through policies such as closed shops that trade unions destroy corporate competiveness and would have condemned the UK to be an economic back water. Yay for their downfall.

However a true member serving trade union such as for prositutes and sex workers is however a valuable union and one I fully support.

PS Please don't argue with my points you're simply wrong and will make yourself look stupid.