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Would you vote for me?

Under the following program:

  • Against the Tory policies of New Labour.
  • For nationalisation, of rail, health, post and all sectors of the economy under workers' democratic control with no compensation to their former owners.
  • For trade union freedoms, ending of Thatcherite anti-union laws.
  • No to private pensions, a state pension for all, linked to earnings.
  • Minimum wage of £9.60 per hour.
  • For a 32 hour working week without loss of pay.
  • End student tuition fees, state subsidised housing to ensure students do not get into debt.
  • Abolition of the un-democratic House of Lords and the monarchy. For an elected Head of State.
  • Members of parliament to be instantly recallable by their constituents.
  • No MP's pay to be higher than that of an average worker.

What do you think?

16 comments »

The Estonian regime moved the statue

An utter disgrace, after protests about the Estonian government's plans to remove a Red Army war memorial in Tallinn, they went ahead and moved it to a secret location last night.

Red Army war memorial in Tallinn

One of the comments on the BBC News website was from Maria from Tartu.

The Eestonians wouldn`t have anything against the statue, if it wouldn´t have been altered into a place where to wave red flags and chant "the landlords have returned"! but that is the exact thing that russians did there!

Your attempts to turn this into a nationalist issue are noted. Estonians also participate in the political events that centre upon the statue. Estonians were part of the Red Army, you are destroying their history too, but then you know this, you know this is a class issue. Your attempts to divide the working class with nationalistic nonsense will ultimately fail.

tell me why should we tolerate that kind of behaviour in the Republic of Estonia?

Because I thought Estonia claimed to be a democratic nation. Demonstrating is a democratic right. But then you're not a democratic nation, if you were democratic you wouldn't go and jail people for three years who show a hammer and sickle.

Tell me why we should tolerate landlords in the Republic of Estonia?

Tanel from Tallinn writes:

Ironically none of these problems would exist if EU would manage to ban both the nazi and soviet symbols and flags.

Right, force the stupid nationalists' anti-democratic laws on everybody else, no thanks. It's bad enough Germany and Austria and probably a few others have banned Nazi symbols, and holocaust denial. Completely unnecessary.

The European Union is right to ignore the call of the fascists to curtail our freedoms.

Calling for a ban of a swastika makes you sound just like a Nazi, who guess what, also banned symbols. Childish nationalistic nonsense.

If somebody wants to wave any symbol around let 'em do it. I have the freedom to ridicule that person if I deem it necessary. Problem solved without any anti-democratic laws.

This event shows the amount of power the nationalists in Estonia have. Dmitri, Tallinn writes:

It was the symbol of sorrow, symbol of memory of ones who died in the 2-nd world war. People came to this statue to pay the tribute to the victims of the war.

Then the nationalists came and started defacing the statue, the workers of Estonia clean it up, the nationalists deface it again, the workers setup a patrol to guard the statue, they're then attacked by the nationalists, today the nationalists have won this battle, and the Estonian regime have shown their true colours.

The nationalists spun it into Estonia vs. Russia. When the statue is about remembering those who died fighting the against Nazis and against nationalism, the Estonians who fought and died together with soldiers from dozens of other nations under the banner of the Red Army.

The Estonian nationalists turned it into an attack on the Estonian worker; I guess they just couldn't bare looking at the statue, it reminding them of the defeat of their Nazi friends at the hands of the working class of Europe.

This whole episode is thoroughly disappointing, and it shows the direction much of Eastern Europe is taking - descent into nationalistic barbarism, at the expense of the Eastern European working class.

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Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3 ships

Microsoft has shipped Beta 3 of Windows Server "Longhorn". I haven't been following this release at all, so I've just decided to check it out; it's a huge leap beyond Server 2003. I can't wait to see what they're going to do with Small Business Server on it, it might stand a chance of getting virtualised on my Windows Home Server.

Windows Server "Longhorn" Beta 3

Get it here, or if you're an MSDN subscriber here, it's available on TechNet too. There's a Channel 9 video too, and a really weird little marketing video here.

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John McDonnell - Britain's first socialist Prime Minister?

Below is a 16 minute interview with John McDonnell, who is standing for the leadership of the Labour Party.

John McDonnell has huge support with rank and file Labour Party and Trade Union members, however, he requires 44 nominations from Labour Party MPs to be put on the ballot paper. As you can imagine a lot of Labour Party MPs do feel intimidated by the existing Labour Party leadership to not nominate John McDonnell.

I am therefore asking those people who live in Labour constituencies to write to your MP and ask them to nominate John McDonnell, a template for a petition is also available for download.

As you can imagine a socialist program will never get much attention in the media, at least in anything but a negative way, the Guardian, and the Mirror have at least mentioned John McDonnell a few times, which is more than the media blackout everywhere else, nevertheless, if John McDonnell can get on the ballot paper it will seriously shake up New Labour, and hopefully bring about the end of Blairism and the New Labour project within the Labour Party, allowing it once again to represent its members, the working class as a whole, and no longer the interests of capital.

A brief overview of some of the policies that John McDonnell supports follows:

A real living minimum wage of at least £7 an hour.
The end to privatisation of public services, re-nationalise rail and postal services.
An increase in the Basic State Pension from £84.25 to £114 a week.
Defence of comprehensive education and the abolition of student tuition fees.
The withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
A green energy policy based on renewable power sources.
The restoration of trade union rights and civil liberties.

For more policies download the Programme for a Real Labour Government produced by the Labour Representation Committee.

4 comments »

Wal-Mart about to end the format war in favour of HD DVD?

It has emerged that the US retail giant Wal-Mart have brought some two million HD DVD cores, at $50 a piece, assuming they go on sale for $199, or even $299 this hugely undercuts the cheapest HD DVD players and even more so Blu-ray players at the moment.

HD DVD

With 20th Century Fox cutting back it's Blu-ray releases, and European film studios all rallying around HD DVD, with over three times as many HD DVD titles available in Europe compared with Blu-ray, as well as sales figures released 3 days ago in the United States showing standalone HD DVD players have outsold Blu-ray players four to one, will Wal-Mart's move to flood the US market with cheap HD DVD players finally resolve the format war?

Let's hope so.

1 comment »

Where I would of lived

If some guy wasn't a leeching petty-bourgeois leech type person. But thanks to private ownership of housing Catherine and me will have to find some other place later, another reason to use nationalisation of housing to bring the market down to Earth.

Image from local.live.com who now have really good resolution stuff of Caerleon and Bristol Zoo, I couldn't find Catherine and me walking around in any of the images though. :(

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