The Labour Party

Lazigirl nor was my remark intended as a rebuke, just as a sort of moment! Pax.

I am fairly new to GN and live in a safe parliamentary seat where my vote doesn't count so it's a real delight to follow these political threads where so many intelligent and stimulating views are aired. I do now realise tho that you have to be quite thick skinned to post. Re my comment at 12.23 yesterday I didn't intend to patronise, or meant discussion too simplistic but just to introduce a different angle to discussion

No they're not! Tell that to the farmers though!

The trouble is that people will always go for low price. That is a rational decision when you are on a tight budget. Not everyone of course - I always go for organic f/r but I can afford to, that isn't true of most families in this country.

Supermarkets are not allowed to act as cartels though.

Perhaps we would, if farmers were to stand outside supermarkets handing out leaflets, if the leaflet had a tick box, yes to pay more and no for keeping the price as it is, which was then dropped into a large postbox and given to the manager.
Actually, farmers take note, not a bad idea! Inertia on the part of the customer is keeping prices low, it must be made easy to show our feelings ( or nothing will happen.)

This is where I think the argument for a free market abjectly fails. It simply doesn't take account of cartels and the power of wealth to get what it wants.

Am off out to Evesham for the day, so will have to leave this for now.

I'd agree the customer holds the power roses - so why don't we, collectively, choose to exercise it?

Believe me this is relevant to the discussion and politics.

This has been going on for about the last 12 years at least , supermarkets not paying farmers enough for the milk.Where I lived (in Devon) support was overwhelming for the farmers in surveys, because we all lived surrounded by farms and had just got over the foot and mouth disease disaster.We would all have paid a few pence more for a pint of milk.However, if the same survey had been conducted in the city, who knows what the results would have been.IMHO the supermarkets could afford to make milk a loss leader, and pay farmers a decent price, or pass on the price to the public, either would be acceptable.I don't know if farmers are getting more money now than they did, because it all went quiet after a while.Perhaps, in the end, we,as the customers hold the power.

One potent example of marketing which shows who holds the power is that of milk.

Many small dairy farmers are struggling to make a living (and many have gone out of business). Supermarkets are holding them to ransom with contracts to bulk buy but not at a living wage type of payment. Customers seem unwilling to pay a few pennies more to redress the situation.

This is just one small example of the power of the free market. To give the workers (the farmers) a fair share of the profit the supermarkets (the profit makers) should be paying a fair price which is then passed on us (the customer)

So should the government subsidise milk, or should the supermarkets pay more and take a loss or should the customer pay more?

This isn't as trivial as it may sound but it does raise the question of who actually holds the power ultimately?

I should have added 'I wish'

Bloody hell - time to go and have a soothing bath.

fat finger syndrome.
speak for yourself, mine are slender and lovely with beautifully manicured nails

Andy?
IPads do it all the time, fat finger syndrome.

fare share sounds reasonable to me

Fair - God what with the iPad Andy useless spelling!!!!!

Yes but what the government did was apart from controlling food production introduced the ration system. So in theory and probably in practice both rich and poor could only buy their fare share of food. Without this good shortages and market rules would have meant that the poor would have starved as the rich would have bought more than their fair share.

It cannot be left to the market, as there is a recognition that it would not answer the populations needs, the wealthy have sufficient resources to buy what is necessary but the poor would starve.

Interesting, that; I suppose it depends on what someone's definition of 'starving' is. DM told me that many a time tea would be bread and home-made jam (no butter or marge) during the war, and that the evacuee next door would pop over and share this with DM because the family she was billeted on did not give her even that!
Today that would be considered starvation.

And, of course, there was always the 'black market' which supplied those who could afford it, and spivs who always seemed to find elusive items that they sold for a profit.

A bit of thread drift perhaps, but it interests me that the American view of socialism is so different from ours, they're so terrified of commies. Even democrats like Obama are more like our Tories. And there's a lot of support for the KKK.
In Australia they have the Liberals and the Labour, but the Liberals are not like the UK LibDems as far as I can tell.
Of course, they have a habit over there of getting rid of Prime Ministers and replacing them at the drop of a hat.

Thanks Jamila too kind, will I be up to the intellectual excercise of it though?

There are myriad examples of free market excess and I am sure I don't need to outline them here. I think also that it is getting more and more difficult for the nation state to mitigate these excesses.

I wouldn't use terms like evil in my description jalima In fact at the moment we are talking about two different things.

Yes we need risk takers and entrepreneurs indeed they are essential to our economic system.
However my argument is that unless controls are in place to mitigate its worse excesses than those without the wealth suffer.

And do you think that shareholders hold no power at all?

The problem comes when we look at who holds the power. I would argue that it is entirely in the hands of the wealth holder. It uses this power in a number of ways, and the most recent manifestation of it, although it has always been there, is the realisation that the wealthy have in fact opted out of society, by putting the wealth beyond the reach of society. It pays nothing back to society, although I would guess it would expect society to support them by giving their lives in times of war etc.

This may have been answered, I have only just got in.

It does sound from that, though, whitewave, as though all capitalists, wealth holders, risk takers, are evil. Surely not all are? The worst, I would say, are asset strippers, some foreign companies who make promises they do not keep (eg Kraft) but not all are like that surely?

knitting, what's that about, I certainly can't do it.
roses next time I am down your way I could come and teach you; it can be very absorbing and sometimes even intellectually stimulating (all those intricate patterns - if you need to convert some it is quite a test of mathematical skills)
Very satisfying and a great way to pass the time when you want to get away from GN don't want to be on the internet