Huguenot

About the only modern parallel with a workers collective is the fishing industry, where both the means of production and the profit are owned by the workers. Strong community ties and harsh working environments make them interdependent. The fishing industry is also notable for their inability to regulate sensibly their activity, destroying the Grand Banks, and turning the North Sea into a desert. When faced with the consequences of their action, they rejected any responsibility and took to robbing each other. When that didn't work they took to race-based propaganda that required military intervention in international waters to prevent bloodshed. These workers collectives, far from a disorganised but well meaning rabble that recommend freedom for all, are in fact a cancerous myopic blight that destroys everything they touch. At the first sign of challenge their first solution is violence. Nothing romantic about anarchism.

Remember AfN, you can't be paranoid if they're really out to get you ;-)

So can we sue Jade?

6... What is the northern end of LL, the top or the bottom?

I'm surprised that homophobia is interpreted as a 'value'. There's plenty of other sick bast@rds out there with offensive 'values', but we don't indulge them

It does seem an extraordinary concession to an anti-democratic, fundamentalist, bigotted, medieval organisation. If there were schools that were refusing to teach reasonable sex education then they should be closed, not pandied to.

I think probably we're confusing whether national borders are important in market based economies, and whether they are 'removed'. There is undoubtedly a change in perception within governments engaged in market economies. They lose even the feeblest veneer of having a monopoly on national destiny. Since you've always suggested that government itself is a corrupt concept, I don't see why you'd be bothered by this. Free markets are a natural development of the anarchosyndicalism you espouse. Something which the movement fails to realise. I'm not personally bothered as I don't regard governments to have an awful lot of power anyway. Even where they do have influence, they tend to follow national consensus, which is influenced heavily by the media, whose agenda is set by members of the Bildeburg consipracy ;-) But then since in Allfornunistan the only media is endless episodes of Deal or No Deal, we'll have to assume you'd prefer a lottery inspired approach to foreign policy?

As in "Pap test, the musical"? I suspect the chorus numbers would be startling.

Women who beat you at your own game. That's very alcoholic, what is the tipple?

Statistics that women make up to justify being inert. Men who believe them. ;-)

Not only is it a simple premise, but it's absolute nonsense. "Globalisation and the removal of borders and boundries is absolutely driven by Capitalism" Tosh. The three largest "countries" in the world in recent history are demonstrably not capitalist: USSR, China and India. All of them have been generated by the removal of internal borders from essentially self-determined autonomous states. The only country in the world that's still asserting its sovereignty over independent nations is China (with Tibet and Taiwan). Greed is not capitalist, neither are territorial disputes. You're quite simply being confused with bad information. ;-) I've not read Saskia's ramblings, but you'll respect my concern when the last two recommendations you tendered recommended burning books and pooing in ATMs. Will Hutton does great books on the subject, that you'll probably agree with, as I do. However, since he doesn't make things up, you may not be familiar.

And a whole bucket of wow.

"Sweden is the third largest music exporter in the world, with over 800 million dollars in 2007 years revenue, surpassed only by the US and the UK" Gosh. Double Gosh.

Surely we're in danger of cutting off our noses etc.? The first internal combustion engines were the size of houses and equally threatening. The current ones are small enough to fit in a remote controlled car. We can't expect to refine the technology if we don't employ it?

And louisiana, what you lack in rectitude, you gain in etymological nose picking.

Unequal contribution from women. 400,000 years, work fewer hours, live longer, less stressed. Still second class humans. ;-) Lazy buggers at the best of times. Edited because they are.

Fact, fact, fact. Chuckle. And how many nations in the now defunct USSR? 15? I can see by your terse and inappropriate FACT stating that you're becoming frustrated by the debate, and snuffling around the corner of irritable. It's not because I'm annoying (although I quite clearly am), it's because the guys who are filling your head with this drivel are both misinformed and misguided. An open mind and an education will get you a darn sight further in life than hanging around nightclubs with morons. It's not as easy though. Mouth agape and swearing at the genius of pillocks is easy to achieve and requires no particular investment than the opportunity for a good shag. Getting it right means more effort than a sh*t in an ATM.

I'm with Marmora Man on this one; I prefer modern nuclear technologies to the older ones, they're a vast improvement. As MM says, modern technologies mean that Three Mile Island or Chernobyl won't be repeated again, as the systems have built-in redundancies. Whilst there are no 100% risk free enterprises, nuclear presents a better option than fossil fuels for the next 50 years. I think there's a list of energy sources in increasing appeal: coal, oil, gas, nuclear, wind, tide, solar. I don't see solutions coming quickly enough in the last three, and don't see power reductions coming quickly enough to reduce demand for the first four. Hence the balance of judgment sits with nuclear.

Good point.

You're getting it AfN! In impersonal terms prostitution is a service that has a higher value and lower supply in one country than another. Hence the workers migrate. Trade isn't exclusive to capitalism, both the USSR and China are supported politically by the fact that they allow easy exchange of goods across an under-resourced area. The trade may be bartered or forced, but it still requires travel to take place. The service may be intrinsically less appealing than other available work, so only those who have fewer options are likely to take it up. If the workers have substantial expenditure in other areas, then they're under more pressure to take the risk. The economic and social factors that persuade people to undertake this expenditure and risk are well documented, but I can assure you that they're not associated uniquely with capitalism - China probably sustains the largest mobile prostitution workforce in the world, the millions that support the 200m strong migrant labour pool. Cultural exchange is essentially 'getting to know you', and has widespread benefits. PR, sorry for my lack of clarity! On the Tomlinson episode I was referring to a particular policemen who lived by his own rules. I wholeheartedly support peaceful demonstration, although I tend to think there are more effective ways of getting one's point across.

To be fair, a lot of the additional money was to pay for the damage caused by a lack of maintenance during the Tory years. The Tories saved cash by running the health service and education into the ground. Like any similar scenario, in the long term the bill for the lack of maintenance far exceeded the costs if they'd maintained the systems well. The tragic thing is that some of the damage was irreversible. My old man had to sell his school's sports pitches in the early nineties to keep his school heating bills paid and stop the roof from leaking.

Travel isn't associated with capitalism, but with trade and cultural exchange. Trade and cultural exchange are derived from the uneven distribution of resources around the world, a consistent problem whatever the political arrangement you choose. None of which has anything to do with the Tomlinson tragedy, which is about people believing that they're not subject to the same set of rules as the rest of us live by.

Absolutely right, and on one side of the money/profit equation is demand (driven by population). ;-)

Louisiana, do you really believe that UK agriculture is reflection of the world? You're just about to go to China, where people used to get shot for falling short of their quotas. It houses 25% of the world's population, the UK barely 0.5%. The pesticides etc. that you discuss are the product of big pharma and capitalism. There surely cannot be any doubt that the world's population could not be sustained without modern farming methods developed in capitalist societies.

Of course the Tomlinson case is a law and order issue. The police were dealing injudiciously and inappropriately with a perceived threat. The fact that they assaulted someone that resulted in their death doesn't mean it wasn't about law and order. Policing is a question of how we enforce the laws that are democratically established to keep our society stable. Clearly not the way they did in this case. On your other subject, the Independent doesn't claim that capitalism created swine flu, it highlights the rather obvious point that if you travel a lot, disease is going to spread more quickly.