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Politics.

There are three things that I will not discuss with people 'in real life', politics is one of them. I have fallen out with people over the years because I am not voting the way they do. My political views are irrelevant to this thread/discussion just as they are 'in real life', what makes me me, is, me! Like me or don't, that's your choice.
Now.
I need to remind everyone reading this thread a couple of things -

1. This is a general election year, so all of our political leaders are spending all of their time discrediting their main rivals. This, naturally, makes us side with our chosen political party and we (the electorate!), in turn, discredit anyone who supports a 'rival' political party. Sad, but true.
2. Have you seen the behaviour of politicians in the House of Commons? It's disgusting. Do you really think they care what you think of them? They're in it for themselves.
3. People have, indeed, fought and died for our right to vote. The thing is, it's a right, not an obligation.
4. In this country (the UK) we don't elect a leader to run our country, we are expected to vote locally and by proportional representation whoever has won the most local elections, runs the country.

The town I live in is dying, walk through town and you will see more closed-down shops than open shops, we have a ridiculous amount of 99p shops, coffee shops and independent mobile phone shops. The reason so many shops are closing down is the extortionate business rates that our local council is charging. Listening to the manifestos of the political parties locally, not one of them is going to address this issue, of the three 'main' parties, two want to tackle parking differently (not an issue), and the other wants to tackle prostitution, again not an issue. Bigger issues are the business rates and the drug abuse and drug deals that you see happening on most street corners. But no, the political parties are going for the low hanging fruit, the easy fixes, the things they think we care about. Nationally the politicians are using the NHS as a political football, most of us on this forum would agree that the NHS is in disarray, have any politicians mentioned test strips? Or BG meters? No, it's not important. Like most things they view the NHS as a business.

Going back to my town, please someone tell me which party to vote for, it will continue to die no matter which party is in power because it isn't important to any of them. Now tell me, if I truly believe that none of them are fit to run my town, is my vote wasted if I don't vote? Because if they're not fit to run my town, how can I believe that someone I haven't necessarily voted for, can run my country?
 
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Sounds a LOT like Australia. Too many rules, too many scared to potentially cause offence, too soft on crime and drugs, too ready to limit your free speech, too many bureaucrats, too much pandering to minorities and WAY too much talking down to a population as if they're children.
 
Good morning.
Nothing naive there.
 
@semiphonic if you don't like what you see from the major parties, stand as an independent on local issues. It will soon tell you whether anyone else cares, as if enough do, you will be elected. If they don't, well at least you tried and you know how the population feels.
 
Lost in the 21st Century

A woman walks into a department store. She takes in the racks and stacks of stuff, the sugared music, the sale signs, the listless customers shuffling through the aisles, and is moved – suddenly and to her own astonishment – to shout. “Is this all there is?!”. An assistant comes round from behind his till. “No madam. There’s more in our catalogue.”

http://www.monbiot.com/2015/02/03/lost-in-the-21st-century/
 
A fortnight ago, Oxfam revealed that the top 1% now possesses 48% of the world’s wealth(2); by next year it will own as much as everybody else put together. On the same day, an Austrian company unveiled its design for a new superyacht. It will be built on the hull of an oil tanker, 918 feet long(3). There will be 11 decks, three helipads, theatres, concert halls and restaurants, electric cars to take the owner and his guests from one end of the ship to the other, and a four-storey ski slope.

The above from the link kind of proves there is no real economic co0llapse.
No real debt problem other than a manged and imaginary one that doesn't need austerity for those at the bottom to suufer so those at the top can have their ludicrous luxury.

Back to the creation of money.
All that money the banks were lending out is created by the bank when you ask for the loan.
The money created out of thin air is then destroyed but the interest remains./
And people wonder how these guys can afford yachts so bif they have cars and roads on them.Ever since this so called and very clever crisis the wealthiest have been coining it in faster than at any other time in history while we lose almost everything.
 
I'm think a UKIP/Conservative coalition could be interesting. I'm of the opinion that a coalition is the best option anyway as no 1 party can dominate.
 
Has anyone read about The Great Money Trick?

Most people, regardless of country or creed, do not read books. Maybe mags in the Sunday papers, but not books. Of the small minority of a given population who do read books, very few will read up on political economy.
Fiction or nonfiction, to read through a book requires concentration. The concentration span of modern society is increasingly shrinking. It is widely accepted that book reader numbers will continue to shrink. Most people i know; friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances do not regularly read books. 3rd level educated or not.
This book explains the political economic system without the need for expert knowledge. It is a novel; fiction.
I read this book many years ago and have since passed it on.

Criticism (The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists)
Writing in the Manchester Evening News in April 1946 George Orwell praised the book's ability to convey without sensationalism "the actual detail of manual work and the tiny things almost unimaginable to any comfortably situated person which make life a misery when one's income drops below a certain level." He considered it "a book that everyone should read" and a piece of social history that left one "with the feeling that a considerable novelist was lost in this young working-man whom society could not bother to keep alive."[2]

The Great Money Trick is described in the book; The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

The book advocates a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all rather than to generate profit for a few. A key chapter is "The Great Money Trick", in which Owen organises a mock-up of capitalism with his workmates, using slices of bread as raw materials and knives as machinery. Owen 'employs' his workmates cutting up the bread to illustrate that the employer — who does not work — generates personal wealth whilst the workers effectively remain no better off than when they began, endlessly swapping coins back and forth for food and wages. This is Tressell's practical way of illustrating the Marxist theory of surplus value, which in the capitalist system is generated by labour.
The house that is under renovation in the book, referred to frequently as the 'job', is known by the workmen as 'The Cave'. Given the author's interest in the philosophy of Plato, it is highly likely that this is a reference to Plato's "Allegory of the Cave". A major recurring theme in Tressell's book highlights the inability and reluctance of the workers to comprehend, or even consider, an alternative economic system [other than free market capitalism]. The author attributes this inability, amongst other things, to the fact that they have never experienced an alternative system, and have been raised as children to unquestioningly accept the status quo, regardless of it being potentially inimical to their own interests. In Plato's work, the underlying narrative suggests that in the absence of an alternative, human beings will accept and submit to their present condition and consider it to be 'normal', no matter how contrived the circumstances.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists
 
When we were born our parents are legally bound to register our birth. Job done we are now contracted to the Government.
 

My vote now, is going to @Mike D , good one (but you will have to move to the UK first lol )

RRB
 
I will vote. I don't want to and would prefer there being a none of the above option on the ballot so I could register my disapproval of all three parties at the same time as exercising my right to participate in this so called democracy. Do I think my vote matters? No. Whatever I may hope to the contrary, no country is governed by its elected government - globalisation has created an interdependent market that means governments and ultimately us are at the mercy of multinational corporations whose only allegiance is to the market. How we peddle back from this I have no idea, but I do fear for the world my son will inherit. Solving the inherent problems of capitalism is not possible within the system but no one seems ready or able to step off the merry go round. I don't think of myself as especially radical or a believer in conspiracy theories, but with the ever increasing consolidation of wealth into fewer hands, I can see a time when the have nots will decide to take matters into their own hands. I know that there's an increasing degree of radicalism amongst many of junior's university peers which I hope leads somewhere as what we have now is not sustainable , ecologically or morally.
 
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There always has been student "revolt" against the establishment. It is nothing new. They have always been communist, green, left wing, whatever happened to be going at the time. Most of them grow out of it.
 
It's been suggested a couple of times that if people are so dissatisfied that they don;t want to vote they should stand themselves and make a change.
If you cast your mind back a couple of decades you will remember that the TV reporter Martin Bell did exactly that after becoming disillusioned with the system. He quit after about 4-5 years because the system is so corrupt that it's not possible to make change happen unless you are prepared to lose all integrity and become corrupt yourself.
Change, real change.............it's never going to happen
 
Lenny3 said:
I'm think a UKIP/Conservative coalition could be interesting. I'm of the opinion that a coalition is the best option anyway as no 1 party can dominate.
Click to expand...
A UKIP Tory coalition would be the most right wing government this country has ever seen.
It's crossed my mind that this may well be being engineered.
 
A revolution is out of the question simply because it isn't possible.
Who would be overthrown for starters?
If you can figure that out then where do you get money from once you have overthrown whoever>
We need money and that's why a revolution is an impossibility.
You cannot overthrow the money lenders.
 
I guess junior and his anarcho communist mates would argue you don't need money. Their way of life would work on a small scale - we're talking a return to an agrarian pre industrial world almost - it is an answer but not one many folk would want. We're not there yet, but as more of the world's resources run out, it may be the answer forced on those lucky. (?) enough to survive the effects of global decline, both economically and environmentally.
 
Bluetit1802 said:
There always has been student "revolt" against the establishment. It is nothing new. They have always been communist, green, left wing, whatever happened to be going at the time. Most of them grow out of it.
Click to expand...

I hope they don't grow out of being green, it's the single most important issue on the planet now and if governments had taken notice back in the 70s we wouldn't have the problems we have now with climate change. But even now parties like the tories and ukip are pushing for fracking, they haven't learnt a thing.
 
The future doesn't look bright that's for sure.
No money would mean no imports from the countries that still used money.
No means to buy American dollars to purchase oil on the world markets.
It would be a seriously barbaric world where the majority of survivors aint got a clue how to grow a spud ... harvest corn ... when where and how to do very much of anything.
How many people on here know how to kill dinner and dress it?
The vast majority haven't got a clue how to do very much of anything if we're honest simply because we have become totally dependant on the machine we have built.
Food money heating water medicines .... we need the system we have built as much as a baby needs it's mothers breast.
We are mostly useless without our technology.
I on the other hand .... I can Kill my dinner can grow stuff etc .... me and my missus have made stuff all manner of stuff so are good with our hands and our creative minds but the bad news is .... we're to old to survive the barbarism and the cold.
 
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