Feminist policies

[aliceliddell]

I started a previous thread on this asking what your priorities would be. Thanks for your replies. From what you all said, I'm thinking - Caring responsibilities (parental leave, affordable childcare, caring for elders/disabled); violence (domestic, sexual); sex industry (strippers, lapdancing, prostitution) are three two main areas. The meeting to set the agenda for the conference is on 13th June. Can you let me know your thoughts by then? The bulk of the conference will be about campaigning for council elections and cuts. Any info re funding for eg refuges etc will be useful. We know most jobs lost in the public sector are women's jobs, that work will be done by women for free at home. So these issues should be central to the campaign imo. Let me know what you think.

Ireland gives a good example of the triumphant progress of the free market. Let's do that.

If your aim is to build a campaign to defend the public sector and welfare state, then you wouldn't see running the existing status quo as being your main area of responsibility.
Still not an ounce of substance. How do you propose to "defend" the public sector? I don't want to defend the status quo as it's plainly untenable. £150billion deficit per annum is testament to that.

So the Tories (and Labour if they were in power) would have made cuts. We see the substance of what they say. What is your alternative?

You cannot defend something with no plan and it's just crazy to expect more than a token protest vote when you cannot articulate a single policy. What is your plan? I eagerly await any plan at all. I don't care if it's tax the rich til the pips squeak or cut pensions to £1.50 per week and invest the difference in better public services. Just what is the grand plan to save our beloved public sector?

b niceguy-

And once again, the deficit crisis was not caused by public sector spending, but the financial crisis and recession. The deficit in the UK was around 3% before the financial crisis.

Secondly, I just provided a post full of links to alternative to public sector cuts - which are actually harming the economy. If you don't want to listen, don't pretend that you're interested.

I actually can't be arsed any more. NiceGuy believes the ConDems or Labour's slower cuts are a good idea to rid us of the deficit-under-the-stairs, I don't believe it. Not a penny, not a job to save those bastards necks.

Ttosca. I have no problems with people proposing alternatives. For example, on the first link of yours, there's blurb about how we should be raising taxes on the rich. 40% to 60%. Now that's something we can debate. That's something if a party adopted, the electorate can vote upon.

But my point to Alice is that the TUSC don't appear to have a single policy on their website so you cannot debate it. We know they don't like the cuts but yet we have no idea what they would do should they be in power.

Even on the BNP's website, within a couple of mouseclicks you can clearly see what THEY would do if heaven forbid they ever got into power.

It's alright saying "I don't like this" but if you want to be a serious party then you need a thing called erm...."substance".

I also didn't say the public sector caused it. Again, the cause is subject to another debate but like it or not, we are where we are. Crying "It's not my fault" isn't going to change a thing.

If as a parent you go out tomorrow and blow all your cash, borrow money up to your eyeballs then when you run out, will your kids suffer? Hell yes. Them sobbing "It's not my fault! Give me my xbox back!" just ain't going to matter a jot.

The only way to get this country back on its feet is to live within our means once again. Whether you want to do this via raising taxes or slashing spending, again...we can debate that. But to me the TUSC just sound like a bunch of toddlers crying and spitting their dummies out with no real clue what they would do if they were in power.

niceguy

As far as I could tell, the discussion wasn't about the merits of the TUSC or their policies. A representative from the TUSC simply politely asked for input on what should be discussed, instead posters took it upon themselves to attack the TUSC itself, rather than offer any suggestions to the question.

As I said before, it doesn't matter if it were an 8 year old girl asking for input for her school essay on feminist policies. Instead of shitting on the 8 year old girl for having no power to change things, why not offer some constructive criticism instead?

In this case, instead of shitting on the TUSC, you could instead, offer some positive contribution on things that matter to you or to women regarding the cuts. Maybe if they had a better understanding of people's concerns, they could more clearly articulate their policies.

Secondly, it's not a matter of crying 'It's not my fault'. We're not talking about dropped ice-cream. We're talking about an economic crisis. Determining how we got in to this crisis, and what were the causes is essential so that we can change things to ensure it doesn't happen again and because, in the interest of justice and fairness, those who both caused the crisis (and are able to pay for it) should be the ones who have to pay to fix it. That is right and just. I don't go over to your house and smash all your windows, and then say "let's just forget who caused this smashing of windows... we're in a jam now... you should pay to get them repaired" and then a) Not pay to have them repaired myself since I broke them and b) Not be arrested for my crime so that I can't do it again.

The only way to get this country back on its feet is to live within our means once again.

You keep repeating yourself like you have some obsession. The crisis was not caused by living outside of our means - at least, not in the sense you're thinking of. People had to borrow credit to keep the Capitalist machine going because their wages have been stagnating for decades. This was the result of neo-liberal policies of pushing down wages and attacking workers rights to recover the rate of profit. The answer to this was to push credit on to consumers - even those who had no chance to pay it back - in order to keep up demand. When the whole house of cards fell down, there was a financial crisis with the banks, so we had to bail them out with public money, costing the public £1.3 Trillion pounds (Bank of England estimate). The crisis also caused a recession and unemployment and hence loss of tax receipts. This is when the deficit shot up from 3% to 11% of GDP.

The crisis most certainly wasnt caused by too much public spending on schools and hospitals. So 'living within our means' in that sense is complete nonsense.

Brilliant ttosca.

ttosca

Be careful about disagreeing with NG2 or he will be posting lies and bullshit about you, he has previous.

I've sent off my proposal to get the collective insight of MN feminists on the agenda. Let's see what happens next. Thanks to all involved. For what it's worth, I think NG's criticisms have some validity if you want to present TUSC as an electoral alternative within the current situation. I think that position is naeive (sp?), can't speak for all TUSC associates.

TUSC conference has now happened (16/07/11). I couldn't go. Haven't seen detailed results yet.

The crisis WAS caused by too much public spending, becuase after every boom, there is a bust, and we were deficit spending even in the boom.

Some people are just too stupid for words. Unfortunately many of them work within the public sector and are terrified of having to compete in the real world.

Labour were spending money like drunken sailors trying to maintain their client base. Eventually, they failed. They will be out of power for a generation as they have no natural voter base anymore, after alienating normal working-class people.

OP good luck, I think you may need it.

Tarty-

You are misinformed. The crisis was not caused by too much public spending. It was caused by the financial meltdown. Almost every government in the past two or three decades has run a deficit. A deficit does not equal a budget crisis.

The UK deficit before the financial crisis (2007) was at 3% - which was about the EU average, or slightly higher. When the financial meltdown hit, this caused a recession and a loss of tax receipts, as well as an increase in social welfare costs from unemployment.

Even if the budget were completely balanced before the crisis, the financial meltdown would still have put the UK in an almost untenable position of 8% deficit per annum (the crisis added 8% to the deficit).

Public spending in the UK is not particularly high when compared with many european countries.

UK nears European average in proportion of GDP spent on health care

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808120/

The idea that we have such a 'bloated state' that we spend a huge amount of layabouts, healthcare, education, public transport, and other public services is a myth - a pernicious myth.

You should try visiting some northern european countries and see what you get when you spend larger amounts of GDP on public services and infrastructure.

Just been to Independent Socialist Network of TUSC. Put forward the 3 areas of top priority for women - Sex Industry, Violence against Women, Childcare & parental leave. Good response, these issues will (hopefully) now be (with continued pressure) be on TUSC campaigning & policy.

Good luck Alice. Some people on this thread - aargh.

Comment re the suffragettes seems apt - though looking at this thread, one begins to wonder slightly why they tried so hard to give women a voice, when some of them seem to desparate not to use it to question anything ever.

You're not wrong bread. But we must go on! (and on and on) This is recognised as a small start, a work in progress, not the finished product. There is a strong thread in the Independents of wanting to broaden things out and be a genuinely inclusive, democratic organisation. To be fair, there's the opposite in the other sections, but still... You are very welcome to join 'our' bit and participate

Good luck!