My guests this week, Eva Comrie, Michelle Ferns, Phil Boswell, and Gareth the Grousebeater.
Webcom Radio is Now Playing: Levellers - 100 Years Of Solitude Webcom Radio is Now Playing: Levellers - 100 Years Of SolitudeMy guests this week, Eva Comrie, Michelle Ferns, Phil Boswell, and Gareth the Grousebeater.
In relation to poverty, UBI could, potentially, provide an almost immediate counter to the national shame of having ANY percentage of folk in extreme hardship, such as poverty.
This needs a counter infrastructure that will restrain the obvious greed of those who rent homes, provide food outlets, services, etc, by setting out a clear table of limitations in percentage of allowable claim on UBI. A simple example is no more than 20% of UBI can be claimed for rent, by property owners. And those property owners must have a scottish registered business, from which they pay tax. No more subsidizing those with off-shore tax havens.
Nationalize energy, water, transport, internet, and government services like the postal service. Create a national savings bank where citizens can safely store their cash, and can pay any services and utilities, as well as retrieve their UBI and pensions.
Capitalism is a disease when left unchecked. Nationalize the above mentioned, then regulate the rest. Including Media. (No foreign or offshore funded media outlets. Scottish owned, regulated, and taxable.)
Given how “poverty” as usually referred to is defined – relative inequality; less that 60% of the middle (median) income – it is unlikely to be eliminated by many measures, including UBI. Eliminating that form of “poverty” requires a significant leveling of incomes across the lower and middle spread (where most people are) of the income ranges.
As to nationalising stuff, OK – but what do you mean by doing that to the Internet? Absent something like the Great Firewall of China, all you’ll do is encourage use of VPNs, as people work around the ‘broken internet’ within Scotland. Or are you suggesting some form of basic connectivity provided by a nationalised telecoms company (the latter being a pre-requisite)?
There are limitations to a nationalised postal service, if we wish to be in the EU (or even EFTA/EEA), you may wish to look in to the EU postal services directive.
Do you recall what telephone service was like in the days of the GPO, before BT was sold off?
I do not think giving GPO as, an example is, actually a, fair comparison. As with all the well ofs in UK as, we are seeing today with NHS the spivs and profiteers, starve the public utities of proper investment and then suggest privatisation is the only alternative. The worst case of this was, with Water companies in England. Look arkt the state of them now and the cost of this basic human commodity.
My point is that ‘nationalise the Internet’ is a nonsense aspiration, is isn’t a ‘national utility’, it is an international thing. It is a bit like saying ‘nationalise the air’.
Nationalising access providers (i.e. BT, Virgin Media, etc) insofar as they offer Internet access would be the closest one could achieve, but would you (or Alex) forbid competing private company access providers? If so, then one has essentially cut the country off from the Internet (or severely constrained it) , and hence why I mentioned the GFC; if not then in what sense has it been nationalised?
The internet itself is nothing like a national telephone network, little like the international telephone network, and just to make things more amusing the traditional phone network here is moving to running over the Internet. BT have a plan to turn off POTS (plain old telephone service) and replace it with e.g. ADSL to homes, and a box in each site converting VoIP back to POTS.
So wrt to the Internet and ‘nationalising it’, what is the actual intended improvement that people would see? i.e. what is the aim, rather than the means suggested to achieve that aim?
Cop26 is when we should be letting the world know Scotland has had enough.
Cop26 is when we should be letting the world know Scotland has had enough.
Tess must be welcome we her cons! Nic invited them to stay with her SNP2..
Excellent discussion.
You are right Michelle and Eva, oor ain braw language is absolutely pivotal to any peoples’ liberation and is the first thing a newly liberated people will grasp. Oor ain Scots langage is oor verra saul, as Billy Kay would nae doot say. Language is what gies us oor naitional consciousness, the motivation for independence, and is also what largely divides the Yes/No vote. Which reflects our real and overriding problem – that colonialism is always racism, which reveals itself in mony weys not least an ethnic and cultural division of labour – and in a meritocratic elite in charge which is mostly fundamentally opposed to Scottish independence. Independence and decolonisation are therefore one and the same thing, much as the UN tell us.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/08/29/determinants-of-independence-synopsis-and-strategies/
You and Gareth, Phil and Roddy and Iain and others are all the intellectual wing of the independence movement an mair pouer tae aw yer elbaes. Meanwhile there is only noise and mystification from the SNP, which offers only scheming and deceit and contempt for the independence movement, and collaboration with the oppressor.
Postcolonial literature tells is that fascism will come out of what we now see – the collaboration of the dominant National Party with the colonial power – as Gareth so eloquently explains here: https://grousebeater.wordpress.com/2021/09/04/snp-and-fascism/
The deeper reality of colonialism is that it fully explains our exploitation and inequality in oor ain laund and the deep malaise, and the ethnic/cultural divide and mediocre meritocracy which serves to oppress us an aye maks us aw doun-hauden. Our colonialism therefore needs to be understood and acknowledged, failing which our rationale for independence and hence decolonisation cannot really be properly comprehended nor delivered.
As Gareth implies and Memmi, Fanon and many more confirm: ‘colonialism is a disease of the mind’. Our challenge is to overcome it.
Roddy ANOTHER great prism with great guests , the women in particular were very good , although not a member of ANY political party I do hope they are elected by the ALBA members to their respective positions
I took delight in their passion and determination and I hope that passion ,integrity , honesty and determination will not wither or be replaced by entitlement when they become the government of Scotland , unlike the current SNP SG whose representatives are treating their voters as lepers or idiots by the contempt shown to them , or the previous and current LIEBOUR reps who weighed their votes and thought themselves unbeatable and carried on with the lies and corruption and were inconsolable when people REJECTED THEM for their lies and corruption
I thoroughly applaud them for their highlighting and exposure of the despicable situation of child poverty in Scotland where the SNP SG are FAILING MISERABLY to address and control this SHAMEFUL situation , a shameful situation that she/her has had 7 years to sort through and is still FAILING , BUT Sturgeon is more interested in prioritising deviant perverted sexual policies that only benefit a MINISCULE proportion of Scotland’s population
In conjunction with ignoring Scotland’s starving poverty ridden children living in squalid conditions she presides over a housing crisis that necessitates many families facing homelessness and fuel poverty over the coming winter , but ever the one to take advantage of an opportunity of self promotion and self aggrandisement she has set out to compete publicly and vociferously with BOZO the clown and his incompetent circus by insisting that Scotland can take in more Afghani refugees than england allocates , and Scotland can feed them , house them and give them money and facilities . If she can do all that for Afghani’s immediately why in the 7 years she has been in power has she not done it for Scottish families and their children
Hi Roddy I submitted a comment earlier which as always indicates that it was subject to moderation , unfortunately I don’t see the comment or any responses to it , can I ask if it has been blocked and if so the reason for doing so Thanks
Sorry Robert I look after this, site myself and from late afternoon till evening here in Dubai I got tied up in family things, and was, unable to approve the comments.
No problem Roddy I was just concerned that I had infringed some civic nationalist rule that certain commenters are upset when you put the safety , security and welfare of Scottish citizens and children first and foremost , Have a great time with your family as they are paramount and realise that people are grateful for your and others continued efforts in exposing the lies and duplicity of people who we trusted and WHO FAILED with our dreams
Neo fascism for dummies – or the real thing? How the Tories are planning to attack the UK people, with a little help from ex-Trotskyists. And only Scottish indy can save us!
https://stageleft.blog/2021/09/07/boris-trots-out-a-plan/