A particularly ignorant thing to say when you recall in the 2019 election Corbyn was subject to a grilling from Andrew Neil (another Thatcherite Tory on the payroll for years) and Boris Johnson wasn't, but its the systematic lies and smear campaign against the left I'm referring too

This the correct line. The License Fee is a tax that takes no account of ability to pay, and is just the same for a millionaire as it is for a person on the dole.

If we need a state broadcaster (big if...) then it should be funded out of general (progressive) taxation.

My hatred of the BBC is justified on its own merits. I will enjoy watching it burn as much as I will enjoy seeing you crying when the exit poll drops at the next election.

Don't be expecting any solidarity from the left. The BBC spent 2015-19 engaged in a hysterical right-wing smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn and those who supported him. I will be happy to watch those chickens come home to roost for you. Fuck the BBC.

Not true.

Oh yeah?

Only narcissistic weirdos use their real name on the Internet. Grown-ups value information hygiene and privacy.

Corbyn

By all means keep in shape, exercise isnt the issue, but unless you're actually a performance athletes paying to go a gym is throwing money away.

The same phenomenon happens with strikes - capitalists regularly lose money during strikes, but it's a loss worth making rather than concede even a tiny degree of political control in their workplaces to workers.

To remain in charge - to be the ruling class, for politics and the state to exist to serve their interests. Money is how they accomplish that, but it's in service of one class having dominance over another.

It depends what ideological flavour the government is - many boldholders would turn down a short-term 4% rate if the price they had to pay for it was the normalisation and success of a left-wing political, as that has long term ramifications that are existential for them.

This isn't true, it's not just about making money, it's about political control. Money is the means to an end, but it's not an end in itself. "They" that you refer to in this sentence are a class, they follow class interests, they aren't apolitical actors just hoping to find revenue.

And any excuse to see Peter Sellers play an incompetent officer class Brit is worth taking also

I think it's perfect in that he's the voice of reason, but utterly inept, can't even get out of a locked room and asks permission from the guy holding him hostage for a key, that's way funnier than him just being a dupe

Although Kinnock's own politics certain much closer to social democracy, as his debate with Dennis Skinner and his invoking of Eric Hobsbawm "the Forward March of Labour Halted" shows, which was analytically in the same category as Fabian-style Marxist Social Democracy

... of parliamentary faction) of being Marxist-Leninists and therefore not within the Labour party tradition. Gaitskell was a right-winger and wanted the left of the Labour party crushed. Neil Kinnock used to use the same rhetorical games when describing Militant iirc

Yeah absolutely, plus there's lots of history involved here. With Cousins wasn't he consciously harking back to the days of the old Social Democratic Party? And the campaign for Democratic Socialism was named that purely to imply his opponents (the Bevanites, with Harold Wilson being in that sort...

So, to conclude, if you want a more practical guide, Harold Wilson = social democracy Tony Benn = Democratic Socialism, that's not a bad rule of thumb.