I purposely steered away from PP and so have only just seen this.
Sid, your accusations are misplaced. I have made every effort to restrain my language in the last year or so. You haven’t. I didn’t call you a cunt the other day; I said you were being one. And you were. You weren’t trying to engage or persuade but misrepresent and libel. (It reminded my of that Anthony Browne argument from before — some guy I still don’t even know or give a shit about. But that’s irrelevent because the disagreement was about tactics of misinformation and lies that I objected to).

Now you either be man enough to recognise when you are wrong, or even just MIGHT be wrong, or we take this off site and stop bothering the rest of PP world. And then you can abuse me to my face.

I have a lot I could contribute to this site. I am the son of a first-generation immigrant and single mother, a product of the British welfare state and of a multicultual inner city upbringing. And a successful man to boot. My life experiences are not be sniffed at or dismissed willy nilly. Who the fuck do you think you are with your private education and intolerant and self-righteous manner? You think an argument can be won by shouting people down? You think my children have less rights than your children because they are white? Do you think we have to suffer because of the sins of our fathers and that no modern racial taboo can ever be questioned?

Do you think Obama thinks that way? You’re so yesterday man.

I feel that way about those who run my local hospitals and PCT’s who have been in deficit long before the credit crunch and are always being bailed out.

Likewise. Too many unnecessary management positions, when what NHS staff need is more autonomy (at least that’s what those I know have told me).

My, my, you deduced my mindset all from an old quote. Now that was a piece of linear thinking.

OK, sorry about that. Glad that’s not what you think then!

Agree…..but we will need to finance being more eco friendly

Not necessarily. We just need to untie people’s hands to get on and do it. For example, my partner and I would like to become more-or-less self sufficient and live off the land as much as possible.

You would think a desire for such a simple life would be quite easy to achieve, but it is not. Not because of prohibitive expense, but just because pretty much everything in this country is set up to trap us into work and the money economy. It is *VERY* hard to significantly live outside of that, even if you want to do it without breaking any laws.

(I can go into more detail about this another time, if folks are interested.)

Does that mean more unrestricted travelling? Yippee .. er.. except is that not at odds with your aim of ecology being paramount – what about all those uncontrolled carbon footprints?

With less focus on employment, we would be free to take as long as we wanted over our travels. Cycling, walking, horse and cart, sailing boat, airship – all pretty low impact methods of travel that could well make a comeback in a different kind of economy where we have more time to get from A to B.

In all honesty, I would like to spend 10 years of my life walking, cycling and sailing around the world. I think a lot of people would like to do that – and why shouldn’t we be able to?

Of course. I suppose the NHS, welfare state could be said to be examples of this (which may I add some of those horrible capitalists fund & bail out to ensure they are still in business even when millions in deficit & even when the senior management are not competent tsk tsk)

If it wasn’t for capitalists, we wouldn’t need the welfare state. Those who needed to would be able to spend time looking after each other instead of having to work to get money to look after each other.

Healthcare can also be provided autonomously, just as the Zapatistas are already doing.

You do not see sustainability being a much needed new profession in & of itself?

Sustainability is as fundamental a requirement of being alive as breathing or eating. So no, I don’t see it as a profession. I see it as a bodily function.

Easy peasy then. But with less tax what is going to fund & bail our welfare state etc? How will we pay for our other infrastructures?

Local welfare provided from within communities who are liberated and empowered to take care of themselves.

Other infrastructure created by people who are empowered to do so.

(I probably need to explain a lot of this more, but I’m away for a few days now so have got to get ready, sorry!)

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We exist in spite of capitalism, not because of it, and we can do away with it any time enough people want to. (Which hasn’t happened yet, but I believe is likely to become a more and more mainstream viewpoint over the coming decade.)

Weren’t only Asians supposed to do that kind of thing?

I’m suspect they now put all their suitcases on top of their wardrobes! I blame it on all that eating curry.

On a positive side, the racists were only defeated when people came together in solidarity. It was people like Don, the left, anti-nazi league, anti-fascist movement, rock against racism, indian workers, pakistanis, jamaicans, jews, the labour party, liberals (lets not forget peter hain’s greatest moments), who turned it around. As Peter Hain has said the country was on a knife-edge. Its just as well the good guys won.

I know of one sikh boy, at the time (late 60s) the only asian lad at that school being racially abused and physically attacked by one of the teachers who was built like brick ****house. The result was one of the white lads stood up and dragged the teacher away – making it known that he would never ever do that again. The schoolkids subsequently went on strike in support of the asian boy.

Peculiarly enough, I got to meet this teacher later in his life by which time he was spending a lot of his time working and supporting asian kids.

Trying to point out to him that as soon as his mates were done with the black people, he’d be next, never seemed to sink in…

I grew up in the era mentioned and don’t recognise the description of England,

Messrs J. Davidson and B. Manning (deceased) would disagree, particularly as those “comedians” were amongst the ringleaders perpetuating racist attitudes in the popular media. The character of Alf Garnett was another example embodying the bigotry which was endemic at the time, except of course that his depiction was supposed to be satirical (unfortunately the rednecks amongst the viewing audience didn’t see it that way).

As for examples from real life — too many to list. I wouldn’t know where to begin; I find the very question (particularly the supposed unfamiliarity with the atmosphere in many quarters of British society at the time) to be staggering. However, several other commenters on this thread have neatly summarised the situation, especially Dave S, Billy and Don.

I agree. As you say a return to your personal ‘old fashioned’ bank manager who really knew you over time (and sometimes said no to borrowing) rather than the current succession of relationship managers who never stay there long enough anyway for any continuity & whose only relationship is with their commission.

“So what’s this recent bankers bail-out all about then? Socialisation of risk…. Or in this case, we’re long past the risk and have skipped directly to the losses.”

I feel that way about those who run my local hospitals and PCT’s who have been in deficit long before the credit crunch and are always being bailed out.

“You also seem to mistakenly believe that politics is a straight line between capitalism and socialism”

My, my, you deduced my mindset all from an old quote. Now that was a piece of linear thinking.

“Ecology before economy ”

Agree…..but we will need to finance being more eco friendly

” ..no pressure to conform to any one particular agenda… move about freely when you feel like it. When corporate domination of the world comes to an end and global equality ensues, we will willingly abolish the national borders … A much fairer distribution of access to the global commons, including land access.”

Does that mean more unrestricted travelling? Yippee .. er.. except is that not at odds with your aim of ecology being paramount – what about all those uncontrolled carbon footprints?

“People before profit.”

Of course. I suppose the NHS, welfare state could be said to be examples of this (which may I add some of those horrible capitalists fund & bail out to ensure they are still in business even when millions in deficit & even when the senior management are not competent tsk tsk)

” A lot less focus on employment… more focus on local sustainability”

You do not see sustainability being a much needed new profession in & of itself?

“A lot less tax.”

Easy peasy then. But with less tax what is going to fund & bail our welfare state etc? How will we pay for our other infrastructures?

Examples? It was endemic, it was ingrained, it was bloody everywhere. If you don’t recognise the description you must have been even more stoned than I was.

I re-read the beginning of your post .. apologies for my skim reading. First time I have ‘met’ a romantic anarchist. As to:

“Neither your points of view nor mine will matter much at the next General Election…It will be the folk that can silence us, make us irrelevant, that will wear the sharp suits”

Is not the solution to become the sharp suit & change it from the inside?

Examples please. I grew up in the era mentioned and don’t recognise the description of England, nor does my mixed race wife

I echo DaveS’s post above. Speak to most Asian and Black people growing up in England in the 1970’s and 1980’s and they will tell you that their lives were greatly defined by racist intimidation, bullying and violence. Racism of both a casual and endemic type. Paki bashing, an atmosphere of hatred and marginalisation. That was the mood of the era. If your mixed race wife didn’t experience it that’s because she was one of the few that didn’t. To suggest that her experience is representative is just wilful blindness about that recent past.

I think my mum was perhaps an exception. My (perfectly nice middle class) aunt did this once, and afterwards I vaguely remember my mum talking to me about how it was wrong to think or talk like that. Probably my first memory of the idea that racism is wrong.

Besides, the shop owners were Indian not Pakistani! (Mr and Mrs Patel – they were great to me when I was a kid. I do wonder what happened to them.)

I also remember at primary school the kind of excitement at the first Indian boy in the whole school. Sure, people liked him, but there was a definite “freak show” aspect to it. Because he had an “unusual” name that the teachers couldn’t spell, because he joined the school several years in, because he came from somewhere “different” and “exotic”.

He was literally the only non-white person in our entire school. Maybe not exactly hardcore racism, but quite alienating behaviour nonetheless.

I remember exactly the same at my secondary school in the early 90s. There were a lot of Sudanese (asylum seekers I think) and also a small number of Polish kids. As I recall, the racism wasn’t out and out nasty, but there was certainly an element of it there, and they were made to feel somehow “different” to the rest of us.

Even in my next secondary school after that (we moved to the Midlands) – literally only one or two non-white faces in the whole year group. The racism at that place was off the scale compared to anything I’d ever seen before.

Unfortunately I didn’t have much fight in me when I was in my early teens, or I’d have probably tried to do something about it.

I remember a time where some poor Sikh kid was endlessly given shit on the school bus, simply because he wore a turban. As far as I know, he didn’t rise to it, but I always felt sorry for him, and I don’t think anybody ever did anything to help him.

So while it wasn’t exactly a National Front cell, racism was still very prevalent there, with quite a nasty undertone to it.

I wonder how much it has improved in those schools since I left? I’m sad to say probably not that much, but you never know.

By the way, this is my favourite poster on the subject of racism.

I think a lot of others do. It wasn’t pleasant. In fact it was quite a vicious time.

Examples please. I grew up in the era mentioned and don’t recognise the description of England, nor does my mixed race wife.

On one level geography is important. There are habitable zones on this planet, which we tend to take for granted, because most of us live in them rather than, say, Antartica. My point may have been better made had I talked about territory.

On the one hand, there are the urban gangs of LA who view anyone, of their age group, who crosses an invisible line, to be ‘dead meat’. And this is not hyperbola, this is real. It is even raising it’s head in the urban sprawl that is London. Gang territory, if you will.

Define your importance, probably largely to yourself and/or your immediate gang members, on the basis of geography, which I’d expect they all failed at Standard Grade, and you set up a systemic failure, which leads to that sort of aggressive behaviour.

All to protect an idea that failed a long time ago.

So, ‘as above, so below’.

Above the gang fights, there are nation states that want you, yes you, to go out and die for them. That want to expand their territory by eliminating the opposition. Whether that be Iraqi nationalists, or South Ossetians or any other, opposing, gang.

It is a lot easier to see humanity as a single species, we can after all breed with each other, and put our relatively small differences behind us, than it is to support the frankly xenophobic or economic rage that you appear to be indulging in.

Not quite what I was thinking.

Fear of others in our territory probably stems from a behaviour formed through evolution. Many animal groups protect their individual terriorities because they rely on the resources in them to survive. So to suddenly go against millions of years of behavioural evolution is asking quite a bit. Our resources now manifest themselves as public ammenties and services, jobs, transport, house prices etc. Also, immigration doesn’t eveningly distribute itself across the land, it may localise in hotspots, multiplying its effect of impact on local resources in a city before a smooth transition is possible. I think careful measurement is important, least we find ourselves in a situation where we have tried to change too quickly and have not had time to adapt.

@Refresh (67)
Lead me to the a bit of a tangent thought:
“How much money would you borrow if it was interest free?”
All of it!

Capitalism disappears into the ether when usury is abolished.

Some people who are worried about Jewish bankers stealing their money, but have enough self-awareness not to want to be seen as Nazis, are very likely to repeat those things. If there were more such people than those honestly concerned, then a good, if fallible, rule of thumb would be someone who opposed deregulation was likely a closet Nazi.

You can replace the word ‘finance’ with ‘labour’ without changing all that much.