Tony Benn dies at 88

[ICTChris]

Everyone was equal*

*apart from the slaves

[Fotbawmad]

Congratulations, that's up there with the most magnificent pieces of bullshit ever seen on this forum.

A patently false and ludicrous claim.

Proof please, blanket denials don't count as debunking arguments.

Edited March 15, 2014 by Fotbawmad

[invergowrie arab]

Proof please, blanket denials don't count as debunking arguments.

You haven't made an argument. You have made an assertion. What are you basing it on? What is your source?

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Lack of knowledge over the society enjoyed by many Romans aside, the most ridiculous assertion made on this thread is that Blair and Brown ever represented a Labour Party. Ever since it became the norm to pursue politics as a career, rather than bring one's life experience to the job, we have lost sight of what Democracy should mean.

Those elected to represent us, with few exceptions, are self-serving drones who see each term of Parliament as four years of self-advancement followed by one of lying like a cheap watch in order to keep their snouts in the trough.

[ayrmad]

That's pretty much my philosophy. Helping the worse off in society is more important than reducing inequality.

Whilst I would never claim that the Labour governments under Brown and Blair were perfect, in my opinion they were considerably better than under Thatcher or Major, or the government we have now. For Labour supporters/people on the left, from a pragmatic point of view the choice is between modernisers like Brown, Blair, Miliband (despite the way he is portrayed in the media he is New Labour) etc who accept realities and try to make the best of it with a realistic chance of government, or people trying to fight battles long since finished like Benn and allow the Tories a free reign.

Please stop waving the Blairite flag, Blair and Brown were a disaster, if you believe otherwise fill a post with lots of proof please.

[vikingTON]

Proof please, blanket denials don't count as debunking arguments.

The onus of proof is on the poster making the cretinous assertion. We know that it is a cretinous assertion because of extensive historiography on the nature of the Roman social class system and the basic fact of institutionalised slavery.

More Reynard-lite drivel from yourself.

[Fotbawmad]

You haven't made an argument. You have made an assertion. What are you basing it on? What is your source?

There was certainly many things that made Rome great in the early era. If you're going to say it was all bad, then I'd advise you look into the tally stick system England had for 7 centuries. Rome borrowed, adopted and improved on ideas which were better than their own culture. Rome developed a free society which allowed the most talented and capable people to rise to the top of society. Rome had a money system where they spent money into the system which was in the form of copper and brass. Rome learned that it didn't matter what backed the money. Only who was controlling the quantity within the system.

However, that all changed when Rome engaged in too many wars. Julius Caesar changing money system to gold which always benefits the rich, due to it's scarcity. Caesar then declared himself emperor for life. By abusing state of emergency powers, which still happens to this very day. All of this focused wealth in the hands of the richest Romans, and forced your average citizen to become dependent of the state.

[welshbairn]

There was certainly many things that made Rome great in the early era. If you're going to say it was all bad, then I'd advise you look into the tally stick system England had for 7 centuries. Rome borrowed, adopted and improved on ideas which were better than their own culture. Rome developed a free society which allowed the most talented and capable people to rise to the top of society. Rome had a money system where they spent money into the system which was in the form of copper and brass. Rome learned that it didn't matter what backed the money. Only who was controlling the quantity within the system.

However, that all changed when Rome engaged in too many wars. Julius Caesar changing money system to gold which always benefits the rich, due to it's scarcity. Caesar then declared himself emperor for life. By abusing state of emergency powers, which still happens to this very day. All of this focused wealth in the hands of the richest Romans, and forced your average citizen to become dependent of the state.

It helped having slaves to do all the work.

[WhiteRoseKillie]

There was certainly many things that made Rome great in the early era. If you're going to say it was all bad, then I'd advise you look into the tally stick system England had for 7 centuries. Rome borrowed, adopted and improved on ideas which were better than their own culture. Rome developed a free society which allowed the most talented and capable people to rise to the top of society. Rome had a money system where they spent money into the system which was in the form of copper and brass. Rome learned that it didn't matter what backed the money. Only who was controlling the quantity within the system.

However, that all changed when Rome engaged in too many wars. Julius Caesar changing money system to gold which always benefits the rich, due to it's scarcity. Caesar then declared himself emperor for life. By abusing state of emergency powers, which still happens to this very day. All of this focused wealth in the hands of the richest Romans, and forced your average citizen to become dependent of the state.

The economic system of the Roman Empire, as with the Egyptians, The USA, and the Third Reich's war machine, were based, like many capitalist societies, on reducing production costs. Labour is normally a pretty large component of such costs, unless you allow your moral reluctance to take a back seat. The above took this to the extreme - to try and pretend otherwise exposes you to allegations of poor comprehension or simple ignorance.

[ayrmad]

From Wings Over Scotland with the bolded part being derived from The Telegraph, the great upstanding YES paper.

At this week’s First Minister’s Questions, Johann Lamont banged repeatedly on a drum that the Unionist parties never tire of thrashing like an Orangeman in marching season – the notion that an independent Scotland couldn’t afford to live as it does now and would have to raise taxes or cut public spending.

Over and over again Lamont demanded the First Minister say which he would do if Scotland voted Yes, implying the choice wouldn’t have to be made inside the Union:

“If Scotland were outside the United Kingdom, I ask again: how would the First Minister pay for that loss in revenue—by cutting services or by raising taxes?”

Ms Lamont’s colleague Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is about to embark on a tour of Scotland, flitting from city to town to village like some demonic ghostly apparation out of “Tam O’Shanter”, frightening Scots with blood-chilling tales of “black holes” and, most especially, unaffordable pensions.

Sounds like we better stay in the safety and security of the UK, then.

telegraphpensions

“Britain faces ‘crippling’ tax rises and spending cuts if it is to meet the needs of an ageing population, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs.

The IEA calculated the Government would need to slash spending by more than a quarter or impose significant tax hikes because official calculations had failed to factor in future pension and healthcare liabilities. ‘As populations age, tax bases will grow more slowly while government spending rises faster,’ its report said.

In a stark warning, the think-tank said Britain faced tax rises within just two years equivalent to more than 17pc of GDP – more than £300bn – in order to meet all future spending commitments. This is larger than the entire annual NHS budget and would increase taxes from 38pc to 55pc of national income.

Philip Booth, the IEA’s programme director, said tax increases of this magnitude would be ‘impossible’ to implement ‘without choking off economic growth and actually reducing tax revenues.’

‘The underlying problem is that successive governments have made promises which can simply not be honoured from the existing tax base. The electorate is grazing a fiscal commons at the expense of future generations,’ he said.”

Oops.

Gordon Brown knows all about pensions black holes. He created a massive £100bn one when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first year of Tony Blair’s Labour government, with a “raid” on pension funds that Labour tried to bury in the small print of budget documents and then fought for years to prevent becoming public knowledge.

“In the end, those who would suffer most would be those not in a position to top up their pension contributions - namely, the lower-paid.”

Brown was also, of course, the Chancellor behind Labour’s infamous and insulting 75p pension increase in 1999, alongside his then Social Security Secretary Alistair Darling. It’s typical of the barefaced, contemptuous audacity of the No campaign that they of all people should now be lumbering around warning people over their pensions.

The £4bn gap in the Scottish budget so bemoaned by Johann Lamont on Thursday (a one-off caused by large investment offsetting taxable profits for a single year) is dwarfed by a permanent UK shortfall 75 TIMES BIGGER identified by the IEA. The Institute’s comments reveal the harsh reality of the matter – by far the biggest threat to the pensions and other welfare benefits of Scots is remaining in the UK.

Because Scotland at least has options. One, already sought by the SNP, is that by encouraging skilled immigration it can boost its tax base – immigrants tend to be young, hard-working people who pay taxes and then go back to their countries of origin before retirement, paying far more into the system than they take out.

With the powers of independence, Scotland could also rebalance and regenerate its economy in other ways in order to prevent the “brain drain” of talent which sees many of Scotland’s brightest and best young people head to England (and especially London and the south-east) through lack of opportunity at home, which is why Scotland’s population has grown by just 5% since World War 2 while England’s has soared by 40% in the same period.

(In fact this trend has reversed to some extent since the advent of devolution - though the figures don’t show key details like whether it might be young people leaving and retirees coming the other way. London’s population is disproportionately young.)

Neither of those steps are available to the UK. Firstly because UKIP drives the political agenda of both main parties, and secondly because there’s no great “brain drain” to reverse. Pretty much everyone who could possibly be in London is there already – the city is groaning at the seams, more crowded than it’s ever been – and as a world financial centre there’s basically nowhere bigger for people to emigrate to, so they don’t. Scotland has significant room for improvement. The UK doesn’t.

So we’ll be watching to see how prominently the IEA’s warning features in the Scottish media. We have the strangest premonition that the answer will be “not very”, and probably not at all in the context of independence.

Scotland’s papers have already studiously blanked one piece of major Yes-positive pensions news this month, and we strongly suspect that this rather inconvenient story will go the same way. Let’s see if they prove us wrong.

[vikingTON]

There was certainly many things that made Rome great in the early era. If you're going to say it was all bad, then I'd advise you look into the tally stick system England had for 7 centuries. Rome borrowed, adopted and improved on ideas which were better than their own culture. Rome developed a free society which allowed the most talented and capable people to rise to the top of society. Rome had a money system where they spent money into the system which was in the form of copper and brass. Rome learned that it didn't matter what backed the money. Only who was controlling the quantity within the system.

However, that all changed when Rome engaged in too many wars. Julius Caesar changing money system to gold which always benefits the rich, due to it's scarcity. Caesar then declared himself emperor for life. By abusing state of emergency powers, which still happens to this very day. All of this focused wealth in the hands of the richest Romans, and forced your average citizen to become dependent of the state.

Cite your credible historical sources for the above tinfoil-hat worthy drivel.

[invergowrie arab]

The early Roman republic was built upon an army of conscripted pesantry from around Rome itself and from other italic cities where Roman citizenship had been granted. The army had no control over the wars it fought nor shares in the spoils of victory.

The early republics constitution consolidated power in a heriditary elite of patrician families. In 100 BC there were 2 million slaves - mostly adults, serving a population of 3.25 million Romans including children.

In what way was Rome an equal society?

[ayrmad]

The early Roman republic was built upon an army of conscripted pesantry from around Rome itself and from other italic cities where Roman citizenship had been granted. The army had no control over the wars it fought nor shares in the spoils of victory.

The early republics constitution consolidated power in a heriditary elite of patrician families. In 100 BC there were 2 million slaves - mostly adults, serving a population of 3.25 million Romans including children.

In what way was Rome an equal society?

Because they treated the vast majority of slaves equally as badly.

[Fotbawmad]

I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with this debate. If you lot are just going to shut down debate. Demand exhaustive proof of me, while refusing to provide your own then I'm better not debating with you in the first place.

[vikingTON]

I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with this debate. If you lot are just going to shut down debate. Demand exhaustive proof of me, while refusing to provide your own then I'm better not debating with you in the first place.

^^^ verge of tears

[pandarilla]

I don't think I'm going to get anywhere with this debate. If you lot are just going to shut down debate. Demand exhaustive proof of me, while refusing to provide your own then I'm better not debating with you in the first place.

It was a strange debate to bring into a thread about the death of Tony Benn - that's for sure.

[H_B]

Please stop waving the Blairite flag, Blair and Brown were a disaster, if you believe otherwise fill a post with lots of proof please.

Actually, perhaps you need to provide some proof relating to your frankly crazy hatred of Labour under Blair and Brown.

Blair won 3 elections. Are you saying the public was duped for 10 years? There's a reason Labour won those latter two elections (particularly the latter two - the first one wasn't really in doubt) - the public were satisfied with their spell in charge.

[ayrmad]

^^^voted for them 3 times

[H_B]

Twice actually... but let's have your litany of complaints about the Blair/Brown years.

[H_B]

Oh, and with specific reasons why they were "bad things".

Not just "Uhh... Family Tax Credits are evil".