Originally Posted by BonnieDundee:
Where is the theft? Is this like "taxes are theft"?

Removing peoples hard earned money without direct consent or even knowledge in most cases is what if not theft? How would you describe it?

The Political Levy is not distinguished from the Union subs on the wage slips of the Union members although it is theoretically an optional payment. Most people do not know they are paying it or even what it is. Labour and the Unions have resisted demands that people be told what they are paying for and how for years exactly because they know that if people knew they would not pay it. This amounts to a admission that they money has been obtained dishonestly. Indeed I should imagine there would be a serious possibility of a class action to recover funds withdrawn without consent.

The fact that the Unions have concluded in the robbing of their own members in order to finance a political institution which sold them out lock and barrel to global capitalism is the perfect microcosm of the betrayal of the British working class by the Unions.

Are taxes theft? The thing about social contract theory is that I just don't remember seeing any contract much less signing one.
[Rep]

Originally Posted by :
Removing peoples hard earned money without direct consent or even knowledge in most cases is what if not theft? How would you describe it?

The Political Levy is not distinguished from the Union subs on the wage slips of the Union members although it is theoretically an optional payment. Most people do not know they are paying it or even what it is. Labour and the Unions have resisted demands that people be told what they are paying for and how for years exactly because they know that if people knew they would not pay it. This amounts to a admission that they money has been obtained dishonestly. Indeed I should imagine there would be a serious possibility of a class action to recover funds withdrawn without consent.

The fact that the Unions have concluded in the robbing of their own members in order to finance a political institution which sold them out lock and barrel to global capitalism is the perfect microcosm of the betrayal of the British working class by the Unions.

Are taxes theft? The thing about social contract theory is that I just don't remember seeing any contract much less signing one.

The point is we have entered subjective territory and I find simplistic slogans annoying and unhelpful.
[Rep]

Then ask him to write mini essays for you explaining these simple terms and concepts like I do for you.
[Rep]

Your behaviour is completely trolling now.

Are you so pathetic that the fact we have our political disagreements would drive you to such behaviour? Not a great advert for conservatism really.
[Rep]

What intrigues me about this is, why is the British Labour party broke but the Democratic party in America isn't broke?
After all, Labour is approximately - very approximately - the equivalent of the American Democratic party. They have similar - very similar - aims, to advance the prosperity of working class people.
The italics around `very' are significant, I'm just being polite, I'm aware that in fact the two parties are markedly different.
It seems to me that this difference is mostly based on ideology. Because it is funded by left wing unions, Labour is powered by left wing ideology.
As I understand it, the Democratic party is also funded - at least partly, by the (American) unions. And again as I understand it, I could be wrong about this, their union members don't have any choice either, they also have to support the Democratic party through their union subscriptions.
But the difference is, American unions aren't as left wing as their British counterparts, they aren't as obsessed by left wing ideology. For this reason, American union members have no or few objections to contributing towards the Democratic party.
Another difference is, in the US small business people - often working class people who have started their own businesses, support the Democratic party, often because they prefer to remain faithful to their working class roots.
But in Britain, few if any small businesses which have been started by working class people support the Labour party.
This difference in attitudes might sometimes be due to snobbery, but not entirely so. The working class people who have started their own small businesses that I tend to meet have no qualms about `admitting' their working class roots, on the contrary they are usually proud of them.
Really, the major reason why the British Labour party is broke and the American Democratic party isn't broke is because Labour doesn't have popular support, while the Democrats do have popular support.
[Rep]

It has lost is constituency, it abandoned the working classes with its Nulab sillyness and yet didn't capture many more centrist and rightwing people permanently after the Tories sorted out their problems.
[Rep]