Where Have All The Workers Gone?

Well, Anthony Giddens, we have exported them.

We have exported jobs to un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops.

And now, we are importing the un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops themselves.

Germany Turns Left

Neil Clark writes:

Germany is certainly a very interesting place to be at present. The unequivocally and unapologetically socialist Die Linke (The Left) party goes from strength to strength - gaining more new members than any other German political grouping. Sales of books by Karl Marx are up by 300%. And a new opinion poll shows that the overwhelming majority of Germans would not only like to see an end to any further privatisation - but the nationalisation of large segments of the economy.

In the survey, carried out by Forsa research group, 77% of Germans said that the state should take large equity stakes in German energy companies, while 64% said that financial institutions should be at least partly nationalised. Furthermore 60% of Germans said that the airline Lufthansa, Deutsche Post and the railway Deutsche Bahn should either come into, or stay under state ownership. And up to 45% of Germans thought nationalisation or partial nationalisation should extend to the telecommunications, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and farming sectors.

The poll shows the depth of opposition to neoliberalism in Europe’s largest economy, but encouraging as it is, important battles still lie ahead. The Financial Times reports that “regardless of the changing sentiment, Berlin continues to work on divesting its residual stakes in the former post and telecom monopolies and is planning to float Deutsche Bahn next year”.

The next few months will tell us just how committed to democracy the German government of Angela Merkel really is. Will it listen to the German people and halt privatisation- and embark on a programme of re-nationalisation? Or will it treat the views of the people with contempt and carry on privatising?

Heads Roll At Haringey

Not before time.

The Speaker Is As Safe As Houses

Labour is bound to win any Speakership election in the next eighteen months, simply on account of there being more Labour MPs than all the others put together.

By the spring of 2010, Michael Martin will be just short of his sixty-fifth birthday, so might very well retire anyway.

Some ghastly New Labour clone might then be imposed on his seat.

But David Cameron's intra-Scottish class war to remove him from the Speaker's Chair (just listen to how Cameron speaks to him at PMQs, as if addressing a waiter at a Bullingdon Club dinner) will have come to nothing.

Nor, I remain convinced, will David Cameron's intra-Scottish class war against Gordon Brown eventually come to anything, either.

Comprehensive schools produce Labour (or, in certain parts of the country, Lib Dem) voters like factories, in the way that private schools now produce Tory voters like factories (although they didn't used to, just as neither grammar schools nor Secondary Moderns had any party-political role as such).

And there are simply far more comprehensive schools than private schools.

"The People Who Matter"

While one of them is Gordon Brown, then we will never join the Euro.

For that matter, if one of them were Vince Cable, then we would never join the Euro.

But if one of them were Michael Heseltine's mini-me, and another were his mini-me, then we would already be in the Euro. And in a far worse mess than we already are.

Don't let it happen.

Jos

Behold, our own future.

At Sixes And Sevens

David Cameron believes that only "six or seven" members of his Shadow Cabinet are capable of being Ministers. But who are those "six or seven"? They certainly don't include Osborne. Or, indeed, Cameron himself.