Occupy Mumnset - Mumsnet, i know you are P(p)olitical. Seriously, can't you tell your advertisers to fuck off if they are workfaring?

[Tortington]

i got an e-mail telling me i had % of retailers that are involved in the workfare scheme and it occured to me that Mumsnet is usually on the side of good

oh staff of MN you know me well, whilst i was disappointed that the Maccy D advertising question was even asked, i wasn't arsed tbh. i've always shouted 'its a business not a charity' ...

but this is different - It is very very wrong, and you are perpetuating the wrongness by advertising them.

Yes that is partly true, but the average wage in any communist ststem on the planet was always less than in America or West Germany as it was then.
Communism kept people poor and it was done deliberately. The ruling progressive elite wanted it that way. Only when teh curtain was lifted could their authors and sports stars and lucky citizens come to the West and increase their personal, private wealth.

Are there fewer impoverished Russians now than there were under Communism? Is there less corruption? Are its leaders any nicer than they were post-Stalin (or any more removable from power)? Has it produced more innovation since it ceased to be Communist? Have any countries that didn't already have masses of impoverished people ever attempted communism? Has Russia made a better job of capitalism than it did of Communism?

minima, you are right, they are not socialists and they are not progressives and nor were the communists in the Soviet Socialist Republics. They say they are socialists and they say they are progressive, but they are themselves elite millionaires.

Just read Animal Farm to see how they deceive the people on whose side they pretend to be. 'Ignorance is strength', 'freedom is slavery' is the mantra of the elite, and it is capitalism that allows ordinary people to increase their personal property and their personal wealth and to be free.

They are all people with a superiority complex.

Russia is in transition from teh slavery of communism to an eventually free country that provides prosperity for its people. In teh short term, crooks and thieves have plundered privatised state assets and teh people have been robbed, but this won't last forever. Eventually it will enjoy a freedom similar to ours. It won't happen overnight, we didn't build London in day.

We never started out where Russia is.

And I seem to remember that going from our version of "lawlessness" to stability involved over a thousand years of invasions, murders, infighting and generalised nastiness.

Yes we did, we were once all serfs and were hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. Don't believe the doom and gloom and lies, real progress and justice happens and is as inevitable as the sun's rise.

Only if your ancestors were lacking in nouse Claig. Mine set themselves up as double agent spies, made sure the people they wanted to win won a major battle then got the family exempted from the gallows and a huge farm as reward.

Mind they drank it all away somewhat typically but hey it's a damn good example of how society has ALWAYS rewarded those who support the wining side and in this case the winning side is the elitist nouveau riche who make up the Government (and most other parties indeed)

Russia wasn't communist mainly because of Stalin. He was a poorly educated georgian who spent his entire life hysterically weeding out what he considered to be threats to his power.

He brought in one four year economic plan every year! and had no idea how to balance the needs for the consumer comfort of his people with equality for all.

I remember reading that at one stage large shops in Moscow had all the goods and consumables that america enjoyed but Stallin was fearful that too much of a good thing would corrupt the people. So he ordered that the stores black out the window displays.

I don't think it is possible to comprehend communism having any benefits because we don't have any true examples as reference.

That's why we need education, so that we can aspire and demand what is right. It's like that old song 'ain't no stopping us now', we've come too far to be deceived by spin, catastrophic doom and gloom and lies, let the truth and freedom arise.

Claig I'm so glad you mentioned the serfs, after the black death they all rose up to put down their wage masters.

'Moscow had all the goods and consumables that america enjoyed but Stallin was fearful that too much of a good thing would corrupt the people. So he ordered that the stores black out the window displays.'

Exactly. It's about keeping the people down for the benefit of the elite. The means and ways change, once it was denying goods, today it's climate change.

.... the serfs were able to demand increased wages because there was a huge labour shortage due to the effects of the Black Death. Hardly comparable with the situation today.

NO c;laig it wasn't about putting people down and denying them anything. Man is easy to corrupt and tempt with gold and riches.

The hysteria sprang out of the belief that people would be corrupted. It had nothing to do with denying people.

If you look at the system we call capitalism you will find that wage labour actually creates greater inequalities. The sad fact is that both systems create inequality if the elite are not made to justify their actions.

Bardbourne, yes and that is why now with a surplus of labour companies are able to exploit labour. By this I mean the means of production as rising unemployment leads to decreases in the cost of labour.

Incidentally some Torries are calling for a complete change of labour laws and one yesterday called for companies to be able to drop current employment legislation.

minimathsmouse: "wage labour actually creates greater inequalities" ... greater inequalities than what?

'The hysteria sprang out of the belief that people would be corrupted.'

That's what they preach like religious radicals from their progressive pulpits; they say we are all potential sinners, but it is they who have been corrupted by power and a sense of superiority over ordinary people, whom they term the "masses". They have access to all the riches and all the gold and all the yachts and all the fine meals and fine clothes, and they want to prevent the people sharing any of it and they have the front to preach to the people that it is for their own good, that if they listen to them, then they will "save the planet".

Create chaos in the food producing countries and we all starve, but we get angry at the French for trying to maintain their agricultural sector. I think we are still hoping that that lab produced burger will feed us all and that genetically modified crops won't cause unpredictable results in the rest of the ecosystem - even though we don't have a good track record in medicine or science or industry or agriculture at anticipating serious side effects, we just firefight them when they come along.

minimathsmouse ...and your point is?

Bradbourne my point is that exploiting the means of production for ever greater profits by driving down wage costs, create even greater inequalities.

Talk to the person stacking shelves for JSA of £57 a week and then come back and tell me if he feels equal in anyway to Phillip Green.

Infact I'd go further and say not only does he not feel equal in terms of reward but he probably feels unworthy in every way possible.

You see, you don't miss what you haven't had, you don't hanker for what in your minds eye doesn't exist but when we are bombarded with the message "buy this" and we are still denied the means to purchase it, I think that might actually create more social problems. Look at the riots in London.

So you haven't had a response. The thread in AIBU has just been moved to politics, there was a message from MN to say it was being moved.

I like the idea of Occupy MN, I think if they have a Boycott Nestle Logo on here somewhere, then yes they should seriously consider that they are endorsing forced/free labour by allowing these ads to run. I think it is about human rights and not a political affiliation (can't see any bloody politicians actually standing against Workfare schemes???)

• as someone who works in education, you have no idea how wrong you are. Public companies brought in to administer state schools, with he same pupils and budgets, do not do better or produce better results; profit is king and the pupil are just units, numbers to be shunted this way or that to make a profit.

Clearly, if state school pupils were cherry-picked to only include the bright, middle-class ones and the amount per head given to the schools was the same as is given to private schools now in this country, you'd see great results from those schools. That doesn't mean that academies or free schools are a great idea though, or that the US-style privatisation of state education produces better results; research from the US where these companies are rife actually shows how poorly these companies run education.

Gove's ideas are a hodge-podge of random ideas, mostly untested and unproven. They signify his desire to return to a fantasy 1950's style of education. Children sitting in neat rows intoning facts in dull monosyllables.

But his strategy is full of holes. eg Schools are told that they must offer a humanities subject or the child will not have gained an Ebacc. Ie History, Geography, Class Civ are worthwhile, important, essential subjects. Yet once they get to university, these same subjects are pointless and suddenly children should be discouraged from doing 'worthless' subjects like History and only incentivised to do worthwhile subjects like Science instead. No logic at all.