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Superalexmarket said:
Ahhh yess... the human rights issues. Who is without sin cast the first stone.
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What a load of ******** or you wanting to throw shade over that whole aspect?

Maybe I'm biased on this as I know a few Cubans who despise him but how can that be the reply to the whole issue of human rights.
 
The USA, sentinel of the free world and the human rights, but a just a decades before the black people can not attendence to the universities or vote or even use the same bathroom with whites, etc. And that things happen even today in the deep an racist south. Let's see some allies of the free world (USA, UK, France, etc): Saudi Arabia... Is there any country in the world that violates human rights more than Saudi Arabia? Ahhh the oil of course, now it's a nice kingdom.
What I mean, of course is an important thing, but there is a lot of hypocresy on this issue, and countries that call them self "champions of the human rights", turn a blind eye when it suits them.
 
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And who has called them champion of human rights.

In fact all the countries you have mentioned have been rightly condemned for their actions.

Castro did similar to the Afro Cuban community aswell as homosexuals in his time in charge.

But you are seemingly appearing to want to forgive or even forget about all those when talking about Cuba.
 
So tell me. Why the world condemned and blocked South Africa for its apartheid policy and did not do the same with the USA? Why China, Saudi Arabia, Israel are not condemned for their violations of human rights and Cuba, North Korea and Iran are?
Cuba violates human rights? Of course and it is condemnable. But it is not measured with the same rod to all the countries.
 
Cuba is meshareble to China.

As said chine was the only country to have more political prisoners than Cuba and Cuba population is nothing compared to China's.

Segrigation was never an official law or policy of the us government like it was in SA and ended 30 years earlier a lot has changed in terms of enlightenment in that period aswell.


But why you keep bringing up then I don't know they have all been condemned in one of or another but you seem to feel that Cuba is nothing compared to them when in fact it really is. You just have to see the reaction of Cubans abroad to see what they really feel of him.
 
With Tigs Man on this. I don't see how you can look past the human rights abuses. Morality isn't a zero-sum game, where good acts cancel bad acts and vice versa.

I feel the same way about Blair. Did some wonderful things for the UK, but Iraq makes him (IMO) a war criminal.
 
People's thoughts on the recount of several U.S states?
 
Groundhog said:
People's thoughts on the recount of several U.S states?
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I personally feel it is a bit of a money scam by the green party personally or at least to get some extra attention, esp looking at the change in costs for it.

If anything in it i would of thought the Democrats would be the ones leading the charge IMO.
 
It's well written but wrong. The problem with blaming liberalism is that ultimately they haven't been in power....closest we've had are massive compromises like the coalition and Obama was barely a liberal but had a hostile congress.

The language I agree upon to some regard but I still done understand why the other side the argument are allowed a free pass on this one.
 
ncurd said:
It's well written but wrong. The problem with blaming liberalism is that ultimately they haven't been in power....closest we've had are massive compromises like the coalition and Obama was barely a liberal but had a hostile congress.

The language I agree upon to some regard but I still done understand why the other side the argument are allowed a free pass on this one.
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Keep your head buried
 
Nationalists are co-opting leftist/liberal rhetoric (e.g. liberals/leftists have been complaining about income inequality for years), but are purveying it with a vim that leftists/liberals cannot match. That's why they are getting elected. They twist the rhetoric in ways that don't make too much sense to make it seem as if it solves the problems people are facing. It obviously doesn't. For example, tax cuts to the rich precisely highlights the direction Trump is heading in. People vote for nationalists because of their own economic problems, regressive social politics offer no solutions there.

Worse for nationalists is that they will be enforced into failures of coalitions. I don't think nationalism will ever take enough votes to win an election outright. They will need to work with neoconservatives. We're already seeing Trump, one of few nationalists in American politics, having to bend to the Republican party. Likewise, ardent hard Brexiters like Liam Fox and Boris Johnson will have to work within a party with people like Phillip Hammond, Anna Soubry and George Osborne. Internal conflict will tear right wing parties apart.

The left's problem in Britain right now is that it is badly aligned. Labour is equally vexed by being the party of Blair, but also being too left wing under Corbyn. For a lot of liberals, Labour are a party which doesn't care for civil liberties. On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats could represent the centre-left but are too damaged by FPTP (not having many safe seats) and their years in coalition. The only solution is an electoral pact, but Labour appear to be resisting it.
 
j'nuh said:
Nationalists are co-opting leftist/liberal rhetoric (e.g. liberals/leftists have been complaining about income inequality for years), but are purveying it with a vim that leftists/liberals cannot match. That's why they are getting elected. They twist the rhetoric in ways that don't make too much sense to make it seem as if it solves the problems people are facing. It obviously doesn't. For example, tax cuts to the rich precisely highlights the direction Trump is heading in. People vote for nationalists because of their own economic problems, regressive social politics offer no solutions there.

Worse for nationalists is that they will be enforced into failures of coalitions. I don't think nationalism will ever take enough votes to win an election outright. They will need to work with neoconservatives. We're already seeing Trump, one of few nationalists in American politics, having to bend to the Republican party. Likewise, ardent hard Brexiters like Liam Fox and Boris Johnson will have to work within a party with people like Phillip Hammond, Anna Soubry and George Osborne. Internal conflict will tear right wing parties apart.

The left's problem in Britain right now is that it is badly aligned. Labour is equally vexed by being the party of Blair, but also being too left wing under Corbyn. For a lot of liberals, Labour are a party which doesn't care for civil liberties. On the other hand, the Liberal Democrats could represent the centre-left but are too damaged by FPTP (not having many safe seats) and their years in coalition. The only solution is an electoral pact, but Labour appear to be resisting it.
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What you forget is traditionally labour voters in industrial areas were very right wing on things like immigration, crime they also tended to be very patriotic. With globalisation the industry went. The liberal left didn't seem to bothered about that, they also didn't seem to bothered when mass immigration came in and forced wages down in areas already suffering in a post industrial world. They were told what they are allowed to say in terms of political correctness and generally patronized by uni graduates who seemed to think they knew better. They were also told by the new liberal left that staying in the EU and globalisation was a good thing even though they never saw much benefit from it and being told what to do by a bunch of Europeans isn't going to go down well in the local miners welfare.

Michael Portillo said on the politics show recently that the left moved away from the electorate not the other way round. If the left want to engage again with the great unwashed they need to understand they have have to be humble not high-minded. Listen to people's concerns not just dismiss them and above all they need some proper working class candidate. The old labour boys of the 70's and 80's were proper trade union men who understood the working class and how they thought. Since the end of the last labour government such candidates seem few and far between.
 
I think you touch on some very good points, but I think you mischaracterise the liberal left when you say that they don't care about the left behind and the effects of globalisation. I was born and lived 19 years in Bradford. In a decade of boom, the 2000s, I saw how forgotten Bradford was. It made me so angry to see Labour pour money into London for the World Cup (then Tories and the Olympics), whilst regeneration projects in Bradford were continually postponed. Labour made no effort to deal with postcode inequity, and deserve a lot of flack for it.

I will, however, defend leftist liberalism: I just don't see the 1997-2010 Labour government as being particularly liberal or particularly left-wing. They pursued privatisation, they didn't support vocational work, their record on civil liberties is terrible, they didn't build enough homes and let house and rent prices get out of hand, and they made no effort to deal with wage inequality. I see 1997-2010 Labour as continuing to work in the interests of the rich, much like the Tory governments before and after. You call that liberalism, I call it crony capitalism.

Most of the liberal left do want significant changes in the country. Immigrants aren't the problem: they have been routinely used as a scapegoat throughout history and there's no convincing argument that they are the problem. They have a very marginal effect on wages; for the most part the economy adapts to their presence.

IMO the key problems are:
  • Unemployment. Not just because of the cost of benefits, but because when there are people queueing up to do a job, there are people ready to replace workers, pushing down wages. The closer to full employment we get, the more indispensable that workers become, and the more wages will increase. We need a work programme, mostly centred around house building.
  • The increasing cost of living, mostly pushed by the cost of housing. People are being squeezed because cost of living increases whilst wages do not. We need to stop house prices getting out of hand. First of all, I think we should stop people owning properties that are empty for 80% of the year. Likewise, we should force people to sell land which is not being used. Free up space for more houses. We should subsidise house-building further and get unemployed people working in the housing sector. We should have rent controls (which will also reduce the Housing Benefit burden).
  • Wage inequality. There are several ways to go about it, but I think controls on wages which links the lowest and highest earners in an organisation is the right way to go. If the CEO gets a bonus, then the lowest paid worker should as well: an organisation's success depends on the contribution of people right through the wage chain, so why shouldn't the lowest earners share in its success?
  • Productivity (GDP per hour of labour). UK's productivity is ridiculously low compared to other G7 nations. The less productive our workers, the more workers needed by a company to meet its output requirements. This depresses wages. Government suggests matching the US productivity rate would increase GDP by 31% (i.e. increase household income by £21k). I don't really have any ideas for the solutions to this, but we badly need a large-scale review of the productivity problem. To their credit, the Tories do appear to be looking into this.

These ideas are far more revolutionary and will benefit the left behind far more than simple controls on migration.
 
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