Bort

Great explanation, worth its weight in high-quality amber. Thank you.

Careful what you wish for!

Bit too high-octane for me, to be honest.

Apologies as it's probably a bit of a cliche for me to pedantically point this out, but assuming Sargent is 80kg, that only comes to about £5m by my calculation. Assuming we want £20m, "worth his weight in high-quality amber" could be an approximately correct alternative, but admittedly it doesn't sound as snappy.

I suggest you read this. https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/ The situation for the Rohingya is terrible from what I've seen. What are your thoughts? Are you going to try and draw tenuous comparisons between them and the Uyghurs?

Anti-communist propaganda, my friend! Find any recent story on a specific person executed in China and I can almost guarantee they'll be convicted of murder, drug smuggling or a corrupt billionaire. Capitalism is predicated on private control of the means of production, not just "ownership" which allows for profit but little influence over regulation or central policy. China has the latter. Engels believed that state ownership was the necessary precursor to the implementation of a socialist system, so the strategy of the CPC is consistent with Marxist analysis. If you need any evidence that they're working in the interests of the Chinese population - their life expectancy recently surpassed that of the USA. Imagine predicting that in 1950, when they were living 25 years shorter than Americans!

Your first point illustrates perfectly why socialist policy can't be sustainably applied "in moderation" i.e. without liberating the democratic process from corporate interests (or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in Marxist terms). The monarchy compromised in the aftermath of the civil war and aligned their interests with those of the bourgeoisie, which is why the royal family has been allowed to exist as a mostly-symbolic institution since Charles II.

Sounds like you also want a socialist government which won't privatise public assets? Good to have you on board, comrade!

I agree with some of that analysis, but saying you need an unelected cult of personality to protect against an elected cult of personality is... interesting. A far better solution is arming the public with critical thinking skills and empowering them through democracy to hold their leadership to account, both in government and the workplace.

The royal family are a vestigial product of belief in the divine right of kings. They represent a culture of deference by the masses to individual will, and the triumph of hereditary power over meritocracy. As long as they remain in place, that culture can never truly be overcome. Our country would be more worthy of respect on the world stage if we had a democratically elected head of state, rather than the novelty of an anachronistic royal "brand". That's intuitive. What "good causes" have they "raised awareness" of? Are you talking about Charles' Malthusian environmentalism? They reflect the bare minimum expectations of what society defines as acceptable, rather than acting as a progressive force. Charity, but not addressing the systemic issues that make charity necessary. Do you know what could provide even more revenue to the treasury? Bringing the Crown Estate into public ownership and scrapping the Sovereign Grant. How about that? You say that "the majority are okay with the status quo", but again that's only because people have been conditioned to mentally separate the existence of the royal family from the wider state of society. The public are angry with the latter, but it's produced by the same culture and economic structure which maintains the former.

This sentiment is what most pro-monarchy arguments seem to boil down to, at their core. "I like it. It's interesting. It's popular." The reason it's popular is because royalist sentiment is woven throughout our society. The Queen's face is on our money. Her initials are on our letterboxes. She delivered a televised address to millions of people every Christmas. She enjoyed near-constant positive press in the media (which bizarrely seemed to be more endangered by her reaction to Diana's death than her paying off Prince Andrew's victims). Our country is not "otherwise dull". Normal life might seem dull in comparison to the royals, because normal life isn't as thoroughly curated and propagandised and held aloft from society. Our focus should be on enhancing normal life - bolstering democracy to improve working conditions, education, healthcare, housing etc. - rather than protecting this pantomime which makes the current state of affairs seem more bearable. It's "small-minded" to resist progress because of a misguided sense of comfort.

Sorry to pipe up again after our run-in the other day TVB (no hard feelings I hope) - I blame you for bringing up topics which I find interesting! Just wanted to say it's nice to see such strong critique of billionaires in your first point, though being a raging lefty I'd of course argue that our society does overlook exploitation of the working class, hence accrual of obscene wealth still being a possibility. So, regarding the "are these women being exploited?" question, my answer would be "yes, along with anyone else who has to work for a wage in order to survive". The debate on here seems to revolve around the fact that we all have our own tolerance in terms of the degree/type of exploitation we apparently consider acceptable.

Even if your huge generalisation about marriage were true, I'd say it's healthier for a child to grow up in a loving single-parent family than be stuck in the middle of a dysfunctional relationship which is only sustained to honour an "institution". Besides, I think you'll find that socialist policies aim to lift children out of poverty, along with everyone else. Who's saying that a separate home needs to be built for every single individual in the UK? Strange comment. Just stop capitalists buying up houses they don't use, and that'll go a long way to helping the situation. Puberty blockers delay puberty, not stop it entirely, meaning their effects are reversible - before they were recognised as useful for children who may be trans, they had other applications, e.g. children who had complications with menstruation. I don't remember the uproar then. Plenty of criticisms of the Labour party which I can agree with there - I'm allied to my principles, not any political party, and Tony Blair's / Keir Starmer's Labour are definitely not socialist, despite what you may think.

Righto. Well, as a socialist I'd argue that it's important to acknowledge how xenophobia (for example) has been used as a tool to maintain wealth and power structures, and prop up the capitalist system. I don't see any issue with self-identification of gender/sexuality if it means that people can live a happier and more fulfilling life. Note that this doesn't extend to race, mythical animals or attack helicopters, despite the many many witty "anti-woke" comments on the subject. Something we can agree on, at least, is that the Guardian is a flawed publication. You can attack it from the right while I attack it from the left, Buendia (ouch) & Cantwell style - there, I've steered it back to NCFC!

Sorry for taking this further off-topic on the football side of the forum, but what do you mean by cultural marxists? The definition seems to range from "a secret cabal of globalists" to "people who think discrimination exists", so it's a bit ambiguous.