In another place
posted by Luke Akehurst at 12:14 pm
Friday, January 23, 2009
About Me
- Name: Luke Akehurst
- Location: North Durham, County Durham, United Kingdom
Labour MP for North Durham since 2024. Labour Party activist since 1988 - firmly on the moderate wing of the party. Member of Labour’s NEC 2010-2012 and since 2020. National Secretary of Labour Students 1995-6. Parliamentary candidate for Aldershot (2001) and Castle Point (2005). Hackney Councillor (Chatham Ward) 2002-2014, Labour Group Chief Whip 2002-09, Chair of Health Scrutiny 2010-2014. Dad. Unite and GMB union member. All views expressed in a personal capacity. The rest will become evident from reading the blog.
18 Comments:
I think you're being a little silly again Luke. You don't need to be a Compass member to post a submission in any case - and since when was people getting excited about a political idea, however stupid, a bad thing? (Provided it doesn't get implemented, which it won't, so who cares?) And some of those ideas were very good anyway: is renationalising the utilities really 'nightmarish'? And your opposition to referenda and devolution, though perhaps justified, is hardly a great moral crusade, is it? And wasn't your hero Neil Kinnock a fan of the maximum wage anyway? Time to grow up a little.
12:34 pm, January 23, 2009
No mention of nationalising banks though!
12:39 pm, January 23, 2009
"“England needs powers devolved downwards from Westminster” so that the Tories can wield them presumably!"
Or Hackney Councillors.
Fairly at ease with higher taxes on consumption and lower taxes on production, too. As an economy we're in a complete mess because for decades we've consumed too much and produced too little, so if people won't change that behaviour out of sense, encouraging them out of financial self-interest is wise.
1:08 pm, January 23, 2009
Or nationalising rail.
If you want to back that particular campaign, check out LabourSpace. ;o)
1:37 pm, January 23, 2009
They left out the workers' bomb...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/1980/12/workersbomb.htm
Time for a comeback?
2:48 pm, January 23, 2009
Well, obviously you're politically opposed to all of these but I think in amongst the genuinely mad - “Tax business turnover, not profits" - there's quite a lot that are worth considering in part.
For example this:
“Restrict the pay in public service jobs to 12 times the National Minimum Wage.”
You reckon the result would be: "the public sector loses its entire top staff to the private sector?"
12 times the minimum wage is over £120,000 per year. Maybe there are reasons why public sector managers should get a lot more than this but I think it's a case to government should at least be asked to make.
“Re-Nationalize the utilities Electric, Gas ,and water”
I'm dubious about whether straight nationalisation but there's clearly some big issues regarding regulating the utilities in the interests of people who used them.
There's a very strong case for a publicly owned energy provider, if not one with a monopoly.
5:31 pm, January 23, 2009
Just glancing at LabourSpace, I see the following ‘campaign’
UK to join EU
“This campaign is about what peoples opinions are on joining europe or not is
a great idea to find what peaples opinions are on joining europe but if they oppose it
this country will never get to go forward.”
There are also campaigns to scrap trident, renationalise the railways (which is one of the best supported), introduce direct democracy, indeed many of the ideas you dismiss as balmy when posted on a Compass site. By your logic the whole Labour Party is going soft in the head.
Thank goodness we are learning the lessons of the Obama campaign, one of which is that you have to interact with your supporters and give their views a respectful hearing even when you disagree. If you look at Labour List, you will see that even Peter Mandelson says that the ‘era of command and control’ is over.
Perhaps you’re just bitter that Compass did it first!
5:33 pm, January 23, 2009
Fairly at ease with higher taxes on consumption and lower taxes on production, too
That'll certainly go down well amongst the parasites of the square mile, which appears to be the constituency that the Labour party is most interested in feting. One has become used to the sight of Labour supporters advocating Tory solutions. Ever heard of progressive taxation?
11:06 am, January 24, 2009
12 times the minimum wage is over £120,000 per year. Maybe there are reasons why public sector managers should get a lot more than this but I think it's a case to government should at least be asked to make
Absolutely. There are large management jobs in the public that would certainly command substantially more that £120K if in the private sector. Perhaps the government should make the process by which such salaries are determined more transparent. The public have a right to know why a certain public sector job pays the salary it does. There is a lot of ill-informed criticism of salaries in the public sector. I doubt that transparency would shut up the halfwits who think it is 'immoral' to pay large salaries out of public money but it might reduce criticism from sensible people.
11:13 am, January 24, 2009
From ideas imaginative government grows - which New Labour have, sadly, forgotten. Hence the state they are in at the moment.
Given that a Tory government is now all but certain, at least someone is doing some thinking for the future now that New Labour is essentially finished.
1:35 pm, January 24, 2009
Stephen yes, I have heard of progressive taxation. Ever heard of the fact that essentials are exempt from consumption taxes, or low-rated? Ever looked at LSE research and seen that the rich pay a higher percentage of their income in VAT than the poor?
Cut the basic rate of income tax, increase personal allowances, and raises taxes on Bentleys, Plasma TVs, holiday homes, yachts, items of clothing costing over £500, etc...
See, progressive.
2:53 pm, January 24, 2009
"'Just glancing at LabourSpace, I see the following ‘campaign’
UK to join EU
“This campaign is about what peoples opinions are on joining europe or not"
You know what it's like, you start typing something on a typewriter in the early 1970s, you get distracted then suddenly, 30-odd years later you've finally got it written how you want it and suddenly you've got your own PC and there's this thing called the internet to put it up on, too. Must be quite exciting.
3:16 pm, January 24, 2009
Luke's far better at denouncing others' ideas in his customary sectarian factional fashion than coming up with any of his own.
He may not have noticed that the light touch 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich', fellate-the-City dogma his wing of the Party has championed has kind of hit the wall, but most of the rest of Britain has.
4:06 pm, January 24, 2009
Ever looked at LSE research and seen that the rich pay a higher percentage of their income in VAT than the poor?
Strange how most other studies conclude the opposite. How come you didn't believe the LSE when it told you that your ID Card scheme was pants?
12:08 am, January 25, 2009
"Strange how most other studies conclude the opposite"
Name some. Poor people spend most of their money on rent and food, which aren't subject to VAT.
7:36 pm, January 25, 2009
If you really want to see how disaffected Labour supporters have become then I suggest you see reaction to Jon Cruddas's recent attack on the BNP in the CiF section of the Guardian.
He gets a kicking. There's no working class poster on this site. It's the middle classes beginning to feel swamped by immigration.
Never mind, keep dumping the crap on those poor bastards in Hackney, Luke.
9:43 pm, January 25, 2009
Luke, one of the ideas (on currency convertability) was mine and I happen to believe that it was a sound one.
So, I ask over on my blog, why exactly my idea deserves to be insulted.
I await your reply.
10:01 pm, January 25, 2009
The privatised companies are paying 10x times more for EC's and collecting more than 5.2 in subsidies than the Nationalised companies ever had-Yet these privateers are paying out dividends to shareholders and collecting massive profits! Both Labour and the Tories have stupid policies of political dogma supporting privatisation!
11:54 pm, January 25, 2009
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