Posts Tagged ‘Milton Friedman’

Letter from Wales: Understanding the Tory threat in Wales

04/12/2013, 07:08:49 PM

by Julian Ruck

Some might argue that without the Falklands War and internal Labour warfare Margaret Thatcher might never have imposed her ‘revolutions’ upon British society. Politics is always about luck (and of course Machiavellian expediency) and let’s face it, she had plenty of it. The grand irony perhaps being, that she dared to increase state control way beyond the temerity of any of her Labour predecessors, a fact often forgotten or ignored by the 21st Century politeness of please all and even their poodles, political endeavour.

No-one would argue that Thatcher’s sons ie Major, Blair and Brown carried her No 10 torch around the globe in one way or another.

So, how has Welsh Labour, and more particularly the Welsh Labour government, evolved over the years of  modern, innovative and more realistic Labour social democracy vs Tory Mammon worship?

It hasn’t, must be the only sensible answer. Years of complacent take for granted mandate has demolished new thinking and allowed the Welsh Labour political elites to wallow in unchallenged bowers of old Labour bucolic detachment and arrogant disregard for the norms of democratic oversight and scrutiny. Welsh Labour has undoubtedly added a new dimension to de Tocqueville’s ‘… socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.’

Carwyn Jones, his cabal of Ministers (although to be fair as far I know, there isn’t one Nell Gwyn amongst them), his pliant media apparat have managed to build up a reputation of non-engagement with the Welsh media, such as it is, that would shame even Paul Flowers into going straight!

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The Sunday Review: The New Capitalist Manifesto, by Umair Haque

27/02/2011, 12:03:14 PM

by Anthony Painter

Something is going seriously wrong with capitalism.

Yeah, we’ve heard all this before from you green nuts, socialists, idealists. Why don’t you tell us how mean, corrupt, selfish and deluded we all are again? Whatever.

No, really, something is going wrong with capitalism.

I’ve just said, walk on by – do your recycling, save some workers, sell some Marxist newspapers.

No really…

And this time it really is different. It’s no longer just the fringe that says so. It is the mainstream. And not just the political mainstream. The business and academic mainstream. What’s more, politics, even social democratic politics is light years behind. The new radicals are to be found within the temple of capitalism itself.

Take this:

“There is growing concern that if the fundamental issues revealed in the crisis remain unaddressed and the system fails again, the social contract between the capitalist system and the citizenry may truly rupture, with unpredictable but severely damaging results”.

Who is this dangerous revolutionary? Well, it’s none other than Dominic Barton, global managing director of Mckinsey & Co. Yes, McKinsey & Co. (more…)

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