Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

He is asking you, so how about you actually answer the question instead of constantly trying to side step it. :)

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Because the answers are in the article and I'm not going to type it all out again because someone is too lazy to read it.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

In other words, you have no answer, That's what I thought.

Its not up to people to find and read links (there is no article in your first post).
The only person being lazy is you, you post something then fail completely to back it up.

The post has been edited since you refuse to answer the question.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

I am without words....:rolleyes:

I provided a link. I'm not the one being lazy.

Corbyn and McDonnell are avowed Marxists. This is sufficient evidence on its own.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

It's not sufficient to then say the Labour Party manifesto is a Marxist policy platform. Which is where your argument fell down.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

No, it didn't fall down at all. The nationalising of industry, devaluation of our currency, the inheritence tax, the garden tax, etc, are all the first stages of pushing the Marxist agenda. It won't stop there.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Another well known policy has devalued our currency. Taxation is a legitimate source of Government income, the question is what services you want to pay for with it and who should pay. Nationalising industry can give better value where privatisation fails to provide genuine consumer choice and competition. Train operators etc.The only difference is there isn't anyone creaming profits into offshore holding companies.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

No, the difference is that there is no investment and the service is poorly run. Obviously, you are not old enough to appreciate just how bad our national rail service was, and the remarkable transformation that took place when it was nationalised.

You may think it's not well run now, but you should take a look at the problems we had in the past!

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Going a bit far. Nationalised rail is hardly Marxist.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

It is one of the first steps of Corbyn's Marxist agenda.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Remarkable transformation? Where?

Underinvestment is the first play of the privatisation handbook. It's hardly surprising that the Conservatives let it rot before saying the best option was to sell it. Same goes for the NHS now.

The alternative is to make people pay via the tax system. Pay over the counter, pay through tax, either way you pay. There's no philanthropic medical insurance providers out there, just as there aren't with train operators.

---------- Post added at 19:42 ---------- Previous post was at 19:40 ----------

You've been asked to evidence that it's a Marxist agenda and had your original post amended for failing to do so.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Now now ... the rail network suffered underinvestment consistently under both main parties for its entire period of national ownership. This wasn’t a nefarious Thatcherite plot to justify selling it off. The civil service managed the network like an outpost of empire, destined to fade to nothing. ‘Managed decline’, they called it.

The government has indeed thrown buckets of cash at the network since it was privatised, but the addition of TOCs and ROSCOs to the dynamic has brought in private investment on top of that, that would not otherwise have been available to the railway.

The model under which the railway network is now operated is far from perfect but I don’t believe profit is an inherently dirty word. You give someone an incentive to work for and they do a better job. That’s just human nature. We might as well live with it.

(Written from my seat on a Virgin Trains Pendolino, which brought tilting trains to the west coast main line with private investment where state funding tried, and failed). ;)

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

What do you mean as Marxist though? As far as I ever understood it (I've never actually read any Marx) Marxism itself isn't an end-goal but a particular branch of Socialist/Communist philosophy. I get how someone can be a Marxist, but not really how a specific policy can be.

Beyond on all that I think it's quite hard to work out specifically where someone falls within the million different off-shoots the socialist left falls unless they're really clear about it.

I guess you think Corbyn is a communist and are using Marxist as a short-hand for that.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

Strictly speaking it is.

Marxism is basically where the government control all of the national resources.

Back in the day

If "British" Steel (gov owned) made the rails, that "British" Rail trains ran on, fuelled by coal from pits run by the "national" coal board etc - that's Marxism in a nutshell.

McDonnell has made it no secret he would nationalise a whole string of sectors again.

Re: Liberal Democrat conference/manifesto
 

With the trade unions given the legal right to bring the economy to its knees, again. Three day week and frequent major power cuts, here we come....! What a way to run a country.