Taxi Driver Online

Not just nationalists.



Would you and every right minded person still agree if the figure was £30k per couple, instead of £100k per individual? And who decides where the line gets drawn?
Whether we agree or not with this easy-to-identify-with analogy, is not the issue. It is the abandonment of the principles upon which the labour party was founded. This may be Blair-ism or even Thatcher-ism, but it's certainly not socialism.

Now just because Lamont got into bed with the Tories for their bitter together campaign, didn't mean she had to swap clothes in the morning.

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But doing it to give the Tories a few extra votes is ok?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... -rich-poor

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Of course all this brings the Scottish Labour party into line with whose thinking?
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehous ... ting-them/

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Camerons magnificent..God bless David Letterman for giving him the chance to prove it to America.

Well I'm not surprised that the demise of socialism within the Scottish Labour Party hasn't exactly reduced you to tears.
If they get any more right wing, you might even vote for them

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Not one of my favorite publications but I did like this article

Austerity could cost Lamont dearly
Joyce McMillan
The Scotsman
Friday 28 September 2012

LABOUR leader’s ill-judged decision to deride free services and join the doom-mongers, is a gift to Salmond, writes Joyce McMillan.

Thursday lunchtime: and on The World At One, three jovial men – two experts in business and finance, and one standard-issue BBC presenter – are discussing the eurozone crisis. The experts are, to judge by their utterances, exactly the kind of men who completely failed to predict the financial collapse of 2008, and who in some cases helped to hasten it, by taking part in dubious and unsustainable business practices.

Yet here they are, unopposed by any dissenting voice, and unchallenged by the interviewer, being invited to sneer unchecked, for several minutes, at what they see as the rank incompetence of the eurozone in managing its currency, and the foolishness of assorted European nations – Spain is the latest whipping-boy – that have failed to cut public spending with the speed and savagery they deem appropriate. Oddly, these experts seem unaware of the feedback mechanisms – now evident in the UK’s flatlining economy – by which excessively sharp cuts in public spending actually make deficits worse.

Even more striking than this large financial blind spot, though, is their extraordinarily patronising tone of voice, directed towards the whole of continental Europe. It’s a tone of voice that we in the UK now hear all the time from our own ruling elite, as they lecture us about the virtues of public spending cuts, about the desirability of market-style “reforms”, and about the need for a “robust” response whenever foolish people pour on to the streets in protest.

It’s a tone that is condescending, exasperated, elitist, overwhelmingly negative, and – if you analyse the assumptions behind it – quite possibly based on one of the big lies of the age; it’s also a tone that is out of time, associated with the age of market triumphalism that ended in 2008, rather than with any politically sustainable future.

It’s therefore profoundly sad to note, this week, the Scottish Labour leader’s monumentally ill-judged decision to join in this oppressive chorus of boss-class miserabilism, orchestrated by people who care nothing for the lives of ordinary citizens, in Scotland or elsewhere.

It’s not that Johann Lamont is wrong to raise questions about some of the anomalies thrown up by the Scottish Government’s commitment to free provision; the council tax freeze, in particular, is a nonsense for any government that says it is committed to localism.

The point for any Labour leader, though, should be to set that discussion in a clearly progressive context, and in the framework of a plan – a kind of New Deal, if you like – designed to restore confidence and hope to the lives of ordinary families in this country. It’s not that everyone needs to maintain the levels of affluence many enjoyed during the economic boom of the 1990s and early 2000s; almost all of us could easily tolerate some decline in private material consumption, provided the essential social 
quid pro quo was there.

The tragedy is, though, that it’s exactly that necessary, societal support – the promise of greater income security in return for a pay freeze, or employment for our children leaving education, or affordable housing in our area, or a reliable continuation of the public services and benefits on which we depend – that the grim ideology of the austerity-mongers forbids, dismissing those key social goods – in Johann Lamont’s truly shocking phrase this week – as an unaffordable “something for nothing”.

For, of course, none of the services mentioned in her speech are “something for nothing”. They are the public goods we pay for with our taxes, the lifeblood of a functioning and compassionate society; and in joining the ranks of those who simply assume that our taxes can no longer pay for the services we want, Johann Lamont effectively sidesteps a crucial debate about exactly how our resources are being distributed, in this 21st century economy, and risks putting herself irretrievably on the wrong side of history.

Last week at this time, after all, the UK’s entertainment of choice on social media was the musical version of Nick Clegg’s “sorry” speech, a satire on his supine acceptance that “there just wasn’t the money” to pay for free university tuition in England. It was soon replaced, though, with something even sharper; a film of some posh young student protestors invading the gala dinner of a corporate “tax planning” conference in Oxford, and awarding the outgoing head of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs a mock trophy, for his notorious services to massive corporate tax avoidance, alleged to cost the British exchequer more than £20 billion a year.

And so long as those sorts of questions remain – about the real scale of the UK’s deficit, and about the real necessity for the cuts currently being endured – no 
social democratic leader worth the name can afford uncritically to accept the world-view perpetuated by the austerity lobby, never mind to adopt their divisive language in the way Johann Lamont did this week.

Alex Salmond, in other words, may be a bit of a chancer; he may be spending resources he does not have, or cruising for a financial bruising at some future date. What he seems instinctively to understand, though, is that a nation cannot deal with any kind of crisis – economic, climatic, political – if it has deliberately slashed away at every tie that binds the national community together, and has failed to offer its people that promise of a better future which inspires confidence, unleashes creativity, and makes life worth living.

In that sense, his stout defence of the free public goods in which Scotland takes pride makes strong practical sense for the future of Scotland’s society and economy; not because it’s easy to see how they can be paid for, but because their continued existence helps motivate and inspire solutions, where the reactionary mantras of austerity only divide and depress.

Although we may never know what dark whisperings within the Labour Party made Johann Lamont take her fatal step, this week, we can know this: that her misjudgment has left Alex Salmond in a stronger political position than ever, as one of the few western leaders of our time with the courage and gaiety to buck the trend, and to dare to offer a politics of hope, rather than of fear, mean-mindedness, and decline.

http://www.scotsman.com/the-scotsman/op ... lx.twitter

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Labour voters for Scottish Independence · 1,130 like this.
2 hours ago ·

Earlier this week I posted my rebuttal to Johann Lamonts big new policy speech. I have to be the first to admit it wasn't my most eloquent piece of writing and I apologise. I can attribute it to the fact that I was intensely angry, furious even. Never before have I witnessed such a drastic right turn by a Labour party.

The very definition of the Labour party is to help those who really need it. Fight for the working classes from oppression of the bourgeoisie. I was brought up as a young boy learning that this was the party that supported my kind, who helped the poor and the down trodden. For most of my life throughout the good times and bad, the wrong decisions and the inspired. I was proud to support the Labour party. It felt good to know that we were on the side of those who needed us, rather than supporting a party for selfish ends.

Tuesday the 25th of September put an end to that. Johann Lamont finally pulled away the façade of what Scottish Labour is all about. I have heard many inspiring speeches from Labour politicians in my time. From John Smith haranguing a dying Major government, Robin Cooks, Folly of War speech over Iraq, to Donald Dewers impassioned opening of the Scottish Parliament. But this leaders speech lacked vision, hope,character, leadership or any single Labour value.

Make no mistake I am all too aware of the trouble we face economically, but can the leader of the Scottish Labour party honestly say that she is holding true to Labours' principles, when she attacks universal public services rather than bankers, tax evaders, and the upgrading of nuclear weapons?
How much has been lost on making the Labour party electable in Middle England? How much of our traditions and beliefs have been destroyed to promote these Red Tories to lead us and decide how where they want our party to go?

How many good Labour men and women had to be lost, to find places for people like Eric Joyce and Jim Murphy? Who in our Labour party wouldn't wish for a John McCallion, or a Dennis Canavan to be leading us right now?

This is reactionary politics at its worst. The SNP go left, so we go right. They run with principles we have always endorsed, so we turn our backs on them. Not for nothing, Johann. It is never something for nothing... We pay taxes to pay for them!

I started this article with an apology, I seem to, yet again have left any eloquence at the door. I guess I'm still angry. I have a right to be angry, as has anyone who has ever supported our party.

There have been many calls since Tuesday for a formation of a new Independent Scottish Labour Party. I understand your pain and anger. However we must try, try to win back the party that belongs to us. We have a responsibility to the forefathers and the history of this Labour movement to try, one last attempt to breath life into Scottish Labour.

I get why your angry, I'm angry too. We need to use this to unite together to try to win back the party. A party of the people by the people. If you feel the same let's work together. Sign our petition for a vote on Independence. Donate anything you can so we can spread the word of our movement further. Write to your party MSPs/MPs. Write an article for us. Spread the word on Twitter. Join us at the Scottish Labour Conference next spring. These people were elected by us and they can be changed by our words, our voice and by our actions.

Allan Grogan
Labour for Independence.


http://www.labourforindy.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/labourforindependence?fref=ts

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Labour's wretched silence on child poverty
Kevin McKenna
The Observer, Sunday 30 September 2012

To the detriment of the poor, Johann Lamont seems to be aping the worst of the Iron Lady

'Pennies don't fall from heaven," Margaret Thatcher once told us. "They have to be earned here on Earth." No one would have remembered the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions, she averred. "He had money as well." The third of this vile economic triptych was this one: "There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty." These three phrases alone defined Mrs Thatcher's philosophy that only people with money were of any worth. In her Britain, there could be no room for weak values such as compassion, sharing, kindness and helping the poor. Money, and nothing else, mattered and thus the pursuit of it also defined the 1980s and the 1990s.

Inevitably, it would fail, as any belief must that is based on such an shallow interpretation of why we exist. The greed, avarice and dishonesty at the root of the western banking system were only allowed to flourish because they had been sanctified by Thatcherism and her false credo. It's just a shame that after the system imploded the worst of the money-changers are still among us while a Tory-led administration punishes the weakest in society.

"Scotland cannot be the only 'something for nothing' country in the world." Mrs Thatcher would have been proud of that one as well. That this was, instead, espoused by the leader of the Scottish Labour party would have tickled the Iron Lady right down to her blue painted toenails. Quite why Johann Lamont allowed her speech writer to include such crass sophistry as this can only be guessed at.

Ms Lamont's use of the phrase "something for nothing", as well as coming straight from the grimoire of Margaret Thatcher is, at best, misleading, at worst, downright false. She used it in her flagship address last week in which she signalled that Labour would turn away from its traditional support for universal free public services. It's difficult to assess which body of Labour supporters will be most insulted and alienated. There are hundreds of thousands of workers in this country who have been paying their national insurance contributions and taxes for decades. These people have already seen one of their own, Gordon Brown, betray them by raiding their pensions. That he did this by fornicating all the while with bankers simply rubbed salt in the wounds. Now they are having to stomach a Scottish Labour leader, apparently sound in mind and body, telling them that the benefit package for which they have paid many times over is "something for nothing". Free bus passes in their old age; free personal care in their dotage; and free university tuition for their children who will similarly make a lifetime of contributions to the state is the least to which they are entitled.

It is unlikely that we will ever witness Ms Lamont metamorphosing into a tartan Thatcher. A joint economic group chaired by Cathy Jamieson and including Labour's finance spokesman, Ken Macintosh, will explore how affordable are Scotland's free public services. Scrapping free tuition fees, removing the council tax freeze and charging for prescriptions may be all that Scottish Labour will feel that they can get away with before the 2015 Holyrood election. Nor is Ms Lamont the first senior Scottish Labour politician to question the cost of free personal care. When Susan Deacon was health minister in the first Holyrood administration, she advised Henry McLeish that such a policy would be difficult to fund.

The most disturbing aspect of this shift in Scottish Labour thinking is that it acquiesces lazily to the notion that only cuts to public services can help us navigate our way through a double-dip recession. This simply highlights the utter poverty of imagination and intellect that characterises Labour's approach to curing the ills of Scottish society since the war. The wretchedly named party of the people has wilfully neglected to address, in any meaningful way, the source of the most ruinous cost to our public purse: child poverty. Instead of loftily brandishing the Christie commission report and its warnings about harsh decisions having to be made on public spending it should be seeking to reverse decades of inertia during which the incidence of child poverty in the UK, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has risen to a level higher than most of the world's other rich countries. This costs the country around £25bn annually.

As the incidence of urban multi-deprivation in some parts of Scotland is the worst in the UK, it is reasonable to conclude that Scotland's share of that £25bn will be disproportionate. The grim outlook for Britain's growth prospects may see Holyrood's grant being slashed way beyond what was initially expected by 2017. The care bill will have to rise to cope with the increase in people living to great old age. If we could save even 5% of the Scots children who are annually choked by deprivation, the economies would allow us to meet our care costs.

Lamont's decision to lean towards the right was described as a brave one, but there was nothing brave about it. Real courage would have been to establish a commission into the causes of child poverty and then to commit her party to act on the findings. Such a commission might also do something that no Scottish education minister has ever done: develop a radical policy to improve our failing urban comprehensive schools. It would also quantify exactly how much our continuing neglect of poor children costs Scotland. I predict that the annual bill will swamp all the free care costs that are so exercising Ms Lamont. If the SNP pledged to establish such a commission and make it a cornerstone of an independent Scotland, then they will see me yet wearing a kilt and brandishing a Saltire on the day of the independence referendum.

In the meantime, you will see unicorns grazing outside John Smith House before you witness a Scottish Labour leader acting for the poor.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ld-poverty?

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Relevance?

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None

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Thought not.




Has your myopia improved yet?

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No better than yours

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

I don't hide my bias, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone up here who sees Lamont as anything other than a complete fool.
What she announced the other day was akin to David Cameron making a speech saying he was going to invest billions into social housing and that he'd tax the ass off the rich to pay for it.

Lamont is now toxic, and the quicker Scottish Labour get shot of her, the better for them. Then they can get back to promising the earth and failing to deliver, as they have been doing for decades.

Personally, I hope she stays.
After all, they might replace her with someone competent - if they have anyone left - and that would not be good for the independence camp.

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