rendelharris

You're being rather silly Loz, any reasonable person reading my question "Yes, so in theory everyone can reach the top...do you really see much sign of that in practice?" would assume that I was talking about the highest levels of wage earners, not literally asking for proof that there are any people from poor backgrounds in the world's top ten billionaires. To quote my own post above: "but there must surely come a cutoff where society says yes, good for you and thank you, and you're entitled to a ?10M a year wage (or wherever the line is drawn)" so no, people being at the top doesn't bother me in the slightest and I recognise the need for incentive. What bothers me is the size of the bottom of the pyramid and the gap between top and bottom. But if you don't want to provide figures as I have to back your argument there's not much point in having the discussion.

But looking at such an extreme example as the top ten richest people in the world isn't an answer to my question, Loz. If you can show me a statistic showing that 30% of people earning between ?100k and ?500k are from poor backgrounds I'll gladly cede the point.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rendel, seems to me that you're arguing for better > social justice, higher taxation for the rich, etc. > So that's what I'd call social democracy - and it > is entirely compatible with a capitalist system. Well, yes that is what I'd argue for, but to me social democracy really means moving towards equality within a capitalist framework - if the resulting fairer/socialist society is still called capitalist, fine. I don't think anywhere above I've said I want capitalism destroyed, have I?

Strange response as I said I didn't disagree with you, Loz. Also taking the richest ten men in the world isn't exactly a representative sample, it'd be more interesting to see how many on really high but not superrich wages - say ?200,000-?500,000 - are from poor backgrounds. On average, they won't be. As miga mentioned above, plenty of statistical studies show this: in America the National Bureau of Economic Research released a study in 2014 showing that, on average, adult children earn 33c on the dollar more than their parents did, i.e. if your parental income was $30,000, you will be most likely to earn just over $40,000, if your parental income is $300,000 you will be most likely to earn around $400,000. That's a statistical fact which I think illustrates how social mobility is/isn't working rather more pertinently that taking the world's ten richest men as a yardstick.

Second those thanks Renata, came down there at 20MPH today and the front end gets thrown around like a pinball, had to slow right down then got traffic behind hooting, definitely needs some remedial work.

I don't disagree that it's possible to make it to the top, Loz (though I can only see three people on that list one would class as from "humble" backgrounds - definitely some middle class but in America with its tuition fees that's a huge advantage), but for every one who makes the top there must, by definition, be thousands if not hundreds of thousands of drones working for low wages in factories making the computers, mobile phones etc. Also many others suffering from poor services, healthcare etc because the companies these people run dodge their tax obligations (Microsoft, $3.5bn in 2013, for example, Amazon paying ?11.4m tax on ?5.3bn sales in UK alone while paying its warehouse workers minimum wage etc). Of course there is a very valid argument that these people create jobs, but there must surely come a cutoff where society says yes, good for you and thank you, and you're entitled to a ?10M a year wage (or wherever the line is drawn), but nobody needs an $84bn fortune, some of that can surely go to paying those lower down a decent wage or providing them with healthcare, good education, decent public transport etc? Then we'd have true social mobility, everyone getting a fair crack of the whip and those with the brains, work ethic and talent getting massively rewarded without others having to go without to pay those rewards.

Yes, so in theory everyone can reach the top...do you really see much sign of that in practice? Capitalism must by definition always be a pyramidal system. Not that I'd have liked communism, Bill Bryson had a good quote around the time of the Berlin wall coming down, something like "Communism was repressive and dreary and soul destroying, but it does seem a shame that the only system humanity can make work for itself is one based on greed, selfishness and inequality." ETA Reply to Jeremy

Mumofone Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > We've had virgin for the last year or so and > whilst significantly better than old broadband, it > is really patchy at times- e.g. Sunday > evenings/most evenings and often not reliable to > work from home. However we're se15- just off > bellenden. Does anyone know if the 'capacity > issue' is the same reason over here? Good to know > before I call and negotiate a discount. We're just off Bellenden too and have had Virgin for the last year, on the Superfibre 50 package which is supposed to give us 50mbps we're actually getting 60mbps and haven't had a fault with the broadband. On the downside the landline has dropped out four times in the year, each time requiring an engineer, and getting hold of help has been frustrating.

Marx noted that there wasn't such a difference between feudalism and capitalism, given that both are predicated on a dominant powerful class supported by the labour of a subordinate class. The great difference is that under capitalism the subordinate class are permitted to make demands of the dominant class...whether they ever get listened to is another matter.

Not exactly, the John Lewis partnership is owned by a trust, with all employees being partners. It's run by a board which consists of a director and deputy director, five employee nominees and five members appointed by the director, so the employees can be outvoted on the board.

uncleglen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- ... > > > Hating the tories etc is a deep-seated hang up of > the labour party supporter who thinks that they > are inhumane if they do not love everyone.... > Either that or they are so well off (examples > include celebs and the like) that tax increases, > price increases, heaving public transport and > creaking NHS facilities etc do not affect them... Apart from tax increases (which we only don't have because the alternative, cuts to support for the most vulnerable, has been chosen) we have inflation at a two year high with probably a lot worse to come, public transport is failing badly and the NHS is in possibly its worst crisis in history. And we've had a Tory government for nearly seven years. Bloody Labour.

Hmm...so at present, turning left from Bellenden into Chadwick Road I signal and move across to the right hand side of the road immediately, and hug that all the way down to Holly Grove where I turn right. Using the new cycle lane I'd have to stay left and get across traffic wanting to go straight on up the hill on Chadwick, then again leave the cycle lane and cross the traffic wanting to go straight down Lyndhurst in order to turn into Holly Grove - two new potential accident points where there was none before! I'll definitely stick to my much safer right hand side route - and probably get shouted at by drivers wanting to know why I ain't using the %&*@ing cycle lane...

Try www.streetlink.org.uk as a first port of call, it aims to help homeless people access the best available help in the area.

Fair question Otta: Waitrose have stopped paying extra on Sundays or for overtime for all new employees, Morrisons, Tesco and Wilko have all cut their overtime and Sunday rates, Cafe Nero, John Lewis and Asda have all stopped giving staff a free meal to claw back some of the costs of the minimum wage, a car factory in Wales has stopped paying employees for their thirty minute lunchbreak (something I would have thought was illegal, but apparently not), Carillon, the cleaning company, has cut workers' hours so they earn exactly the same as they did before the living wage...so it's pretty widespread. Osborne said that companies doing this made him angry, and that they should act within the spirit of the law as well as the letter, but he didn't introduce any measures to stop it.

Jeremy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I've never really thought of the Tories as the > party of the rich, in particular. More, the party > of wealth creation (albeit sometimes at too high a > cost).. so I think a rise in minimum wage isn't > out of line with their general ethos. The Tories opposed a minimum wage when it was introduced in 1998. They believe in a very specific type of wealth creation, which is wealth creation for business owners, the theory being that this will trickle down to employees. George Osbourne did, last year, introduce his much vaunted living wage, but many companies (B&Q, for example) have counteracted that by slashing overtime and bank holiday pay rates, so that employees will receive the same wage as before or in some cases even less. Of course I'm just a "self-righteous middle-class left wing hypocrite who also hates capitalism and no doubt the 'tory Scum" too" (it's amazing how many assumptions some people make on no evidence, simply because one happens not to agree with them), so let's let someone else get a word in: "The government?s austerity programme for balancing the books on the backs of the poor and vulnerable is divisive and deeply unfair." Middle class left wing hypocrite, ummm...former Tory leader Ian Duncan Smith.

Here you go - what point are we proving? Anyone interested by the way, I use www.bikehike.co.uk for elevations - very simple.

???? Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > So, basically, and as expected, middle-class > socialists hate the tories more than they like an > improvement in equality - quelle surprise Would you care to, rather than simply throw playground insults, actually address the point I made, which is that a reduction in income inequality is fairly meaningless as a measure of prosperity - after all if the whole country went bankrupt we'd have perfect income equality - especially in this case where, as the same ONS themselves say, the average working family is still significantly worse off than they were pre-crash. ETA: "self-righteous middle-class left wing hypocrites who also hate capitalism and no doubt the 'tory Scum" too . Tedious dogma." Not something you're guilty of yourself, of course, in that very sentence.

mikeb Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rendel - it was Glennie's Corner, named after Dr > Glennie who maintained an academy / school I think > where the Grove Tavern now stands. Sorry yes - misread the 1862 map which has it as Glenny's Corner. I knew about Glennie's school from reading about Byron, but didn't realise it was on that site. Still be interested to any responses to my point above - how can the Handy painting show Court Lane from Lordship Lane when the road in the painting runs uphill and Court Lane runs down?

So, as per mikeb's good spot above, if the painting under discussion is of the Court Lane/Lordship Lane junction, where are the tollgate and the cottage?

mikeb Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I meant where is itvon the picture? Sorry, misunderstood - good point!

ETA answering Loz not RRR... Really? I thought from the last line of Quid's OP that he's trying to say that the Tory party aren't the nasty party and friend of the rich? As per above, I've never thought income equality a valid measure of social wellbeing, the man who owns the factory can make a million a year as far as I'm concerned, provided his employees get a proper living wage. Sadly this is rarely the case.

mikeb Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Where's the "tollbar" building shown here? > http://www.motco.com/map/81006/SeriesSearchPlatesF > ulla.asp?mode=query&artist=390&other=941&x=11&y=11 Assume, and the better informed may be able to confirm or deny, that the top of Court Lane marks the outer boundary of the Dulwich estate, so one had to pay a toll to enter onto its roads, as is still the case on College Road, so the Tollbar building would have been the lodging for the keeper of the tollgate?

Statistics driven by rise in pensioner incomes, which is of course very welcome, but the average working age family is still worse off than they were before the crash. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jan/10/uk-inequality-working-people-pensions-ons In any case, income equality is only one indicator of economic wellbeing and not a particularly good one. If I earn ?50,000 a year and my boss earns ?500,000 a year, if my income drops to ?40,000 and his drops to ?480,000 the inequality between us has lessened by ?10K, but I'm still worse off. ETA: "Typical working households were ?345 a year worse off than before the economic crisis, according to the ONS in 2016 ? the same as the previous year."

I believe there are - one's something that sprays a burglar with a solution which can identify him as having been in a particular premises but which, as noted above, can easily be washed off. The other type, which I believe is what the police are offering, marks one's property with a unique code which can be read by scanners and linked back to a database of owner registration. According to Wiki a trial in Brent in 2013 lead to an 85% reduction in burglary. I'd certainly go for it if the police come knocking, can one ask for it or does one just have to wait until they come round and offer?

kford Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Re: the 1860 print: > > This is looking down Court Lane from Lordship > Lane. > > From here: > > on+SE21+7DR/@51.4461755,-0.0717924,3a,60y,300.1h,8 > 7.87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sOXknaaWyMI9ZrPizaKvmcg!2 > e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x487603ec4e5a2701:0xb > fb4cf990d207b45!8m2!3d51.4483489!4d-0.0783488!6m1! > 1e1?hl=en&authuser=0 > > It's also mentioned here: > > http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-court-lane-and-lo > rdship-lane-dulwich-london-1860-artist-jc-mandy-60 > 105803.html Old Handy must have been a rotten painter then, as s/he clearly shows the road curving down to the right then going slightly uphill into the distance - whereas I know, as it's one of my favourite local take a breather freewheels, that Court Lane runs downhill all the way into Dulwich, 72 feet of descent, 0 ascent!