University College Dublin Economics professor Karl Whelan knows nationalised infrastructure of national importance is normal – and his respondents point out where else it is, too
A Dublin university economics professor has reacted with bewilderment at the attempts by the Tories, their media allies and Conservative think-tanks to paint Labour’s plans to renationalise vital indsutries as outlandish and unrealistic.
Professor Karl Whelan tweeted in response that those things are nationalised in Ireland – and nobody thinks Ireland is ‘some kind of radical socialist republic’:
Prof Whelan’s respondents in the thread agreed – and some pointed out others among the UK’s neighbours whose crucial infrastructure is also nationalised:
Some added that much of the UK’s infrastructure is owned by government – just not the UK’s:
Another economics professor pointed out how disingenuous the think-tanks and commentators are being in their comments – and just how small an impact the supposedly vast amounts in Labour’s plan would have on its place in the OECD’s league table of government spending relative to GDP:
Two things are clear. The Establishment’s response is seriously misleading the UK public – and it is able to do so only because the media have been complicit for decades in allowing privatisation and cuts to be presented as normal.
In fact it is the UK’s privatisation, cuts and austerity that have been extreme – and Labour is only trying to correct that twisted situation.
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They might have added that proposed water charges and possible privatisation in Ireland has been a major issue for mobilisation against the government, an issue on which they were finally forced into a climbdown.
https://www.thejournal.ie/water-referendum-4350801-Nov2018/.
They are trying to re-introduce it by the back door however.Varadkar and the FG/FF rabble he “leads” are totally wedded to the neoliberal ,the market will provide” economic model,in spite of it being obvious to all but the most stupid the system is collapsing.
The nationalisation issue tends to dominate another critical fact thjat is of immense importance- namely that Tory policy has been to flog off the country’s assets in general to foreign ownership.
Thus the total bollocks of ‘Taking Back Control’, that fooled a lot of suckers, since the whole thrust of the Brexit initiative comes from supercharging the financialisation of the economy that lies behind this fact, and the consequent gifting of yet more opportunities to the Funny Money brigade who have grown from Thatcher’s rib. Thus Rees Mogg and chums.
Perhaps it’s a theme that needs more emphasis – the desperate need to rebalance a foreign-owned economy through real investment. Turn the ‘Control’ meme back on the Tories.
The only problem with Lab manifesto is tax increases will hit professionals in law, local Gov, nhs, civil service etc where they are on fat cat pay and pensions. These wine bar socialists need compulsory re education. We should have kept quiet especially as top 1% of tax payers pay over a third of all income tax. If they’re off we’re fucked. Need to limit (cancel?) foreign travel unless approved by party and immediately impose exchange controls. The glorious fight for socialism as exemplified by Comrade Stalin and in East Germany by Comrade Honecker etc must be continued and appropriate measures taken.
A decent troll,6 out of 10 and 1 for effort Plain citizen.
Socialism cannot work without exchange controls to stop capital flight and travel controls or all senior docs and technical experts will be off. We cannot implement socialism in the EU because of the ‘4 freedoms’ which include free movement of capital and people. Therefore we need to leave.
As much as 6/10???
Well,perhaps 6 was a little generous.
john Thatcher……You are spot on leo varadakar is the clone of johsons TORY party and is struggling like Macron(little Napoleon)with a public that do not trust them or their neo liberal policys..And plain citizan…well can only assume that the lads trapped in a blairight timewarp and doesn’t realise that the Labour party have had a socialist revival,and wine bar socialists went out of fashion with our “Tony” .
Well spotted john thatcher. And, where will the greedy, selfish, infestation, the unpatriotic, scoff everything, turd encrusted paedophilic, Prince Andrew worshipping, grouse killing, pheasant wringing 1% Thatcherite scum go?
Where will they find well educated healthy people, hard working people to exploit?? To whom will they trade their proven failed Ponzi schemes??? Exactly where will self-serving GROSSLY STATE SUBSIDISED 1% crawl to continue their take take take and GIVE NOTHING BACK. WHERE?
Where will the 1% find the multi-faceted quality life and living they enjoy here in GB??? The concrete slum of brass PO BOXED degenerate filled Monaco??? With Phillip Green??? Who DESTROYED BHS and left decent long serving employees to pick up the pieces??? We need to debunk the myths of their business acumen. Look around! We must highlight catalogue of failures of the ONE PERSENT.
The 1% LONG to be here or they would have been elsewhere. There are a trillions reasons why. Why was Abramovich here? Epstein with all his wealth, properties in New York, Florida, Mexico, Paris… why does he also crave to be here? The tax evading Monaco swamp-snakes the Greens? They all flock here. Their pilfered money is laundered here. Eg Laundered in abandoned multi-million properties in Bishop’s Avenue and the like. They amass their state subsidised plunder here. These facts MUST be highlighted DAILY.
Dare the selfish 1% to GO‼️ GO NOW‼️‼️ Your pathetic threats are tiresome. Go!!! Parasitic UNPATRIOTIC FILTH‼️‼️‼️ Spare the rest of us who value a decent country that prioritises the needs of the most needy, the most vulnerable, the vital members of our country, the ones who from the little they have, are the first to offer a sizeable PROPORTION to those less well off than themselves. While you gluttonous moaning whining ninnies squirt empty silly threats of deserting our country because the only decent potential Prime Minster, the soon to be PRIME MINSTER JEREMY CORBYN, politely request that you make a fair contribution to maintain the infrastructure you 1% depend on for your state subsidised plunder.
You 1% cannot bear to let go from your scaly slimy claws, the products of the Labour of others… even though you and your spawn could never consume 1/100th of it in many lifetimes. You are gluttonous, heartless, narrow minded parasites.
I say JC should raise the threshold to the 1% Not 2. Not 3 Not 4 Not even 5% , THE ONE PERCENT‼️ If the selfish crawling state suffocating serpents cannot see that they have already filched more than enough, squeezed more than enough from the rest of us, then Go‼️
In the name of all that is good for our country GO‼️‼️ Close our door behind you‼️‼️‼️
Repellant whinging selfish greedy child molesting bastard filth.
The 1% own half the country and only pay 33% of the income tax?
And pay next-to-no corporation tax?
And hide $$$$$$ trillions in US tax havens?
And claim back the 20% VAT the rest of us pay?
Shit, I had no idea they were stealing so much, thanks for the heads-up, Plank citizen!
Shut the airports and the internet and the banks to prevent capital flight?
No, that won’t be necessary – rich Tories bang on and fucking on about patriotism so much they’d never desert the England they love just to save a paltry few £billion – unless they were lying about the patriotism thing?
Yes I can see the 1percent living in tents at Dover,desperate to flee fortress Britain under the jackboot of comrade Corbyn and his supporters..I can see a newer slimer Boris the pretender hiding in the dystopian ravaged Chelsea slums waiting for a Trump Armada to free us from the tyreny of Socialist government.Will the heroic 1percent make it in there rubber dinghy across the channel.. ….Tune in to radio free Europe for more news after D day 12th of December 2019and see if Boris the(pretender)has liberated Britain from Comrade Corbyn…Thanking our correspondent of the BBC and radio station for the free and fearless reporting in the bunkers of WC1….solidarity comrades.!
It shows how far to the right the country has veered when our manifesto which would be pretty middle of the road in most western democracies is viewed as extreme.
In relation to taxation, a person on £90,000 a year will pay an extra £500 per year in tax – less than £10 per week,about the price of 2 cups of coffee and a biscuit . No decent person on 3 times the national average wage would object to this when they see the plight of the NHS, the poor sick and disabled etc and know the good use that will be made of their modest increased contribution.
In relation to the mega rich- they make their money here and should pay their taxes here not in the Caymen Islands or some similar tax haven. I can see no good reason for allowing this type of tax evasion to continue – can you?
Your comment about Stalin amused me- Stalin was a Communist,a dictator and as mass murderer, never a Socialist. As you equate the two you clearly don’t know what you are talking about and have just come on this site to make nasty and unsustainable comments about our party. Please move on to Guido – you’ll be happier there and might even find people who agree with you.
The above reply was in response to Plain Citizens 11.24 am post
“It shows how far to the right the country has veered when our manifesto which would be pretty middle of the road in most western democracies is viewed as extreme.”
You are absolutely right, smartboy. The ‘extremity’ of ordinary moderation has become absolutely factored into the narrative.
How often do you hear the hard fact of the unexceptional level of Labour’s proposed debt levels in the European context? The totally flawed Thatcherite ‘housewife’s purse’ model of the national economy is still accepted without much question.
… and any shit-for-brains parotting this sort of nonsense is seized upon as the wisdom of the street.
I think plain citizens was a wind up or a Tory plant thinking he could exploit a left wing site.My reply was to exploit the absurd lodgic of the average tory that we are all a bunch of tooting popular front or life of Brian debating society for the judean popular front…..well spotted john Thatcher,they’ve probably sacked the fawker.
Farage just said he wants referenda on anything if enough citizens ask for it – it’s often said that we’d see a return to hanging if the people were polled after a grisly murder.
Found a forgotten Mirror piece from just before the referendum where he said a 52/48 in favour of remain would be ‘unfinished business’.
Apparently even the brexit king doesn’t think challenging a referendum is an affront to democracy.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-wants-second-referendum-7985017
“Farage”. You mean ‘Trump’s haemorroid’?
Exactly !!
JC needs to stick it to the other parties now most of them have publicised their manifestos ( apart from the cowardly Cons).
Conservatives promise the glorious microwave Brexit deal of paradise but offer us ‘MORE OF THE SAME’
BP offer the same; nothing but BREXIT
LD offer to rescue us from Brexit but offer us ‘MORE OF THE SAME BUT ON STEROIDS’
Only Labour are offering the radical change needed for our families, public services, environment and society to be safe and prosper.
Listening to the ‘World at One’ – unusually for me.
They used Wakefield as the basis of an item on the election – a constituency I know well.
What was interesting was not the inherent bias of the coverage, but the way in which predictable utterances about Labour and Tories and leaders were left unchallenged. Mostly, the views were simply the passing on of chip paper images.
Worse, however, were the snippets contributed by a lecturer in politics from Leeds University – and clips from a couple of students. Here, you would have expected – given its salience – some mention of the role of the media in shaping the political scene. The political academic fraternity seemed to have no concept of the way in which narratives are formed, and seemed as oblivious as the punters as to where and how the taken-for-granted messages are formed.
Beam me up, Scottie.
RH IT says more about Leeds university and their teaching of politics for a degree.My Nephew has just transferred from Cambridge were he found the atmosphere alarming to Liverpool university.Hes studying politics and I can only say I am relieved that he didnt choose Leeds now
I’ve no idea about the general quality of the Leeds department, Joseph. I’ve had no contact with it. But the lack of basic academic literacy in discussing the public’s perceptions of party leaders was surprising.
I would have thought that the disciplines of discourse analysis and media analytics etc. would be absolutely key to the study of politics, but I think more attention is devoted generally to the miasma political theory rather than its real world application and history.
Certainly, PPE courses seem to produce a high output of mediocrity (see Cameron etc.)
Under EU law you cannot seal off markets in the utilities covered by the EU liberalisation directives (rail, postal, gas, electricity, telecommunications) from competition. Public undertakings are perfectly permissible in these sectors provided they are part of a market and provided the State treats them as if they were a private company.
EU marketization has a different effect in different Member States depending on the political history and culture of that Member State. Where as in Britain privatisation predates the EU directives there is scant tradition of customer loyalty to the original publicly owned company since it was itself privatised as part of the original denationalisation of the sector.
Conversely where the publicly owned company remained in public hands and there remains a tradition of loyalty towards it, the effect of EU marketization is merely to allow other companies into the market where they will have to battle against that consumer tradition.
Either way, the effect of EU liberalisation directives is to “ratchet up” the private sector role. The ratchet can only work one way – in favour of the private sector.
….and this is why the liberalisation directives are impossible in practice to repeal.
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/nationalisation
It really is a severe handicap seeing everything through one short-sighted eye.
…and looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope 🙂
with an Indian blanket over the lens
So within FIVE minutes of Danny posting his comment RH is on to it! As I keep saying, please ask yourself how it is that there are a number of people/personas who have been posting comments on skwawkbox every day, all day long for the past year or two. No normal ordinary person does that.
And it seems to me that just about EVERY time Danny – or someone else posts a comment critical to the Remain argument – RH is on their backs putting them down and ridiculing them within ten/fifteem minutes. Go figure!
Allan – How’s your detailed analysis of the last 5 days comments coming along?
Over the last few days you have repeatedly tried to undermine others on the flakiest of evidence that in reality amounts to nothing more than your conjecture.
Allan, your lack of self awareness is staggering.
ps: You still haven’t addressed the points I made about CW
It has been a long time getting there but AT LAST
Jeremy Corbin clearly states that if there is a Labour government he will adopt a neutral stance on the referendum (aka the Wilson Doctrine).