Views from Frank Adam in Sedgley:
Bury South Labour Party
- Frank's Column, August 2007
For the moment we have local good and not so good news. The builders have at last entered the George site opposite Sedgley post office, so the less dereliction the better. At Area Board - now Prestwich Local Partnership the very annoyed residents of the Parksway cul de sac complained of the misuses of the ginnel to Sedgley Park Rd. So much for Lib Dem pavement politics and breaking the politcal mould. They merely make it difficult to pursue long term policies. Please look around your streets and let me know of potholes lights that do not etc. and book into Prestwich Local Partnership on 2 Oct in the Longfield Suite.
On a point of Socialism - with capital S! After two decades being allegedly out for the count, the kibbutz movement surfaced in a press article by Amnon Rubenstein in the Jewish Telegraph. Having at last grappled with the problems of: dethronement of the Israeli Labour Party, industrialisation, the arrival of high bio- tech and globalisation; besides the Begin inflation legacy of debt... and you thought that 's all? They have cleared their debts; sorted ideological baggage; and are back in prosperous business.
They have done it by broadly separating: earning a living according to the latest tech and financial professionalism from living the good and just life with proper support and care for the children, the aged and sick, and jobs for the the not so able. This has resulted in a sort of Scandinavian model. Further details and figures have been written for. The proof of the revamp is that a lot of adult children who left for city prospects paved with gold have been returning to their roots- in both senses.
The Bush presidency should have proven to even the Tory tabloids that however prized or unavoidable our alliance with the USA, we do not have to jump first and regret later. Harold Wilson did keep us out of the Viet Nam imbroglio even if he did tell the cabinet, "We can not kick our creditors in the wedding kit," and refused to speak against Nam in consequence.
More importantly the dollar has sunk against the pound and €uro which have stayed level with each other: the results of Iraq, oil and the Bush $400 billion deficit financing. This will cause ripples across the World which the Tories will try to narrowly blame on Gordon Brown's Labour chancellorship and Labour government - what else do Tory tabloids do given they do not think?
In the 70's the Tories successfully blamed our Labour unions for inflation flowing from Viet Nam which also caused the petro-sheikhs to recover their inflation losses by raising the oil price not only in 73 but under the Shah in 79-80. Unfortunately the Labour unions did not have so much leverage as OPEC and the wobblers in "Middle England" cheered as Margaret smashed everything till it was clear they would be next to suffer as the economy collapsed under Major stresses. The proof is that under the same pressures and in the same circumstances the French and Germans still have a big sector of everything that used to be "Made in England:" ships, locos, cars planes... and we have the odd spectacle of a television documentary of a liner named Queen Mary II made in France for a Cunard company now owned by the Americans....
Can Prince Charles' Arcadia really kiss British economics awake? Oh for some positive invention?
- FDA
