23 October 2008

George Papadofragakis – The Financial Crisis and the Left wing solution

The Issue:

Due to the current economic situation, we need a radical overhaul of how we operate our economies. We need a gradually increasing public ownership of all the major institutions within the banking industry, whether healthy or unhealthy. We need more transparent and effective regulation of the remaining private sector that will shield it permanently against instability, abuse and the emergence of monopolies. The central artery of our economy should be publicly owned and independently organised, much like schools, universities and hospitals, not dictatorially run by a ruling elite.
(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 15^th May 2008 - Tim Hastie-Smith

.

(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 8^th May 2008 - Lily Eastood

With the rise of Internet journalism the media is freer than ever – but how far should journalism move on to the web? Are we ready to see the end of the newspaper?
And what are the ethical consequences of such a free media?

(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 14^th February 2008 - John Halstead

The common perception of sweatshops as evil institutions, is totally wrong, and further, that sweatshops are both economically and ethically a good thing. Sweatshop labour is not ‘exploitation’ by any reasonable definition because the workers voluntarily agree to work there. As a consequence of the voluntary nature of sweatshop labour, the labour is likely to be the best deal available to the worker. The empirical evidence illustrating this point is overwhelming, and sweatshops tend to be more and offer better conditions than other alternatives. Good examples of this are maligned firms like Nike and Fruit of the Loom. I then looked at the effect of boycotting sweatshop-made products. Following from sweatshops being the best available alternative, it seems that when they are removed by consumer -pressure, the consequences for the workers are far worse than if the sweatshop were there. The only thing worse than being exploited, is not being exploited. I related this to York Student Union policy of boycotting sweatshop-made produce, and whether we as individuals and members of a union should be supporting this policy.

(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 7^th February 2008 - James Townsend

First, to take religion out of society would be to lose the myriad of positive benefits religion brings. In a world of conflict, it is surely helpful to have institutions preaching love, tolerance and sharing? All major religions provide this, as well as bringing a community together to do ‘good’ work - think of the many religious charities providing unqualified aid to people around the globe.

(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 24^th January 2008 - Tomas Ruta

In order to properly have a true meritocracy in the UK, education remains the last obstacle to creating a truly fair society, where people get jobs based only on their merit and not on limited due to any prejudice or discrimination.

The proposal is to bring back an exam similar to the eleven-plus, whereby students will take an exam and it will decide which school they attend. There will be tiers of schools, at local, regional and national levels. The top scoring students in the exam will go onto their top local school. The top at those schools will go onto the best regional schools. And the top of the top students will go onto three or so national boarding schools.

(more…)

York ‘Thinking and Drinking’, 17^th January 2008

Argument: The fundamental basis for the 21st Century modern feminist is that, quite simply, it no longer focuses primarily on equal pay and exasperating the physical and emotional differences between men and women. Rather, it would be more viable to claim that feminists are now challenging the traditional social labels of “masculinity” and “femininity”, so that, in essence, a woman could easily be a good firefighter if she has the necessary skills and physical strength required for that particular line of work, and a man could be quite successful as a nursery nurse or cleaner. The main premise is that social stereotyping needs to be overturned; that we accept feminists are a part of our social fabric, even if they are unhelpfully represented by the media as “bra burning lesbians”.

(more…)