Beardy Charity Bloke

andy

Ah. It was me that read Young Stalin. I was sitting at the wrong computer. It certainly painted young Stalin as a raffish thug.

ADGS

I have SSM's other Stalin book, which is pretty good, but I'm always suspicious of prequels.

sincers

I have a beard.

Lucy

Didn't think that I'd read that! Hitler&Stalin, Parallel Lives byBullock is good though.(could tell that other post wasn't measstill haven't figured out markdownyet or would have posted amazon linktoo!)

taff bach

Stalin started his eduction at a seminar. Was he a Benedictine, or is that another thread

Billy Bookcase

Seminar or seminary?

taff bach

Sorry, I'm slidestic

commissar17

Hello. everyone. I'm the 'beardy charity bloke' (or, at least, one of two) who seems to have caused such a local online flap. I'm Steve, from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) but I appear to have been conflated with Wilf (the 'poetry' guy) from the Workers' Revolutionary Party -- a nice enough bloke, but I have significant political disagreements with him. About me -- 1. I'm not, nor do I represent, a charity -- instead, I represent a registered political party; 2. My only local pitches are outside Stroud Green Tesco and at the Wells Terrace exit to Finsbury Park tube; 3. Every penny of the funds I collect goes to my party (and any suggestions to the contrary are, indeed, libellous); 4. I'm not 'independently wealthy'; I work teaching evening language classes (English, French, Spanish and German). I've enjoyed the online discussion thus far and I hope it continues -- no publicity is bad publicity.

andy

Hello Steve, *I'm not, nor do I represent, a charity -- instead, I represent a registered political party* I believe I've seen you making this point (reasonably but firmly) to a couple of PCSO's outside Tescos. You may also (firmly but reasonably) have been informing them that they didn't have powers of arrest, or even powers of anything. You may have gone as far as calling them 'plastic coppers' or maybe I just imagined that bit. Was this you?

David

In Romford, we always called Specials "plastic coppers". Hi Steve, glad you're not Wilf, I fucking hate poetry.

commissar17

Hi, Andy.
You're pretty much spot on -- except I think I called them 'kiddie cops'. More recently, I've been summonsed for stubbing out a fag butt on the pavement within the hallowed precincts of the London Borough of Islington (while handing out leaflets, of course). I've yet to see how much the fine I won't be paying is going to be.

Hi, David. That's a tiny bit harsh on Wilf. I'm not a great poetry fan either (except Shelley and W B Yeats) but, actually, Wilf's epic poem on the history of life, the universe and everything is surprisingly good.

markwhitehead

It seems to me that Stalin is a good excuse for free-marketeers, apologists for US imperialism and extreme right-wingers to rubbish the entire communist idea.
Communism (in the modern sense) is a young philosophy in the history of the world and so far there have been some awful things done in its name... but that doesn't make it a bad thing. I think it has the potential to tackle the world's problems in a way that free-market capitalism won't.
We recently saw the world financial system teetering on the edge of collapse and we are now facing an era of public spending cuts, attacks on public sector pay and a general onslaught on public services - agreed by all three major UK political parties - which may have truly horrific political outcomes (ie rise of the extreme right).
There's got to be a better way!

Whaddya say?

twinspark

@markwhitehead You're right we must stick together and stop the far right from taking all the seats on the bus or tube.

graeme

Which one problem will communism solve Mark? And could it invent the internal combustion engine to power the bus?

andy

*Whaddya say?* I don't like queuing for bread.

ADGS

If Stalin is an excuse for anything, he's an excuse for communists to exculpate Lenin who, while he may look good by comparison (anyone would - except Mao), was by any other standards a total bastard.

underscore_cue

@commisar17 was it you that got on the bus to escape the council enforcement officers and then they forced the driver to wait at the stand while the popo turned up so they could get on the bus and 'take you down' over the cigarette end thing?

commissar17

Hi, underscore_cue.

It was indeed my humble self on the bus. It wasn't exactly 'escape', though. I had told them exactly which bus I intended to get on when I refused to recognise their authority, so they just followed me.

Ian

@commisar17 so let me get this straight. Come the communist revolution everyone is going to be allowed to drop litter everywhere and nobody will be allowed to be responsible for stopping people doing it? Count me out.

commissar17

Ian,
I would take your point were it not for the fact that I have always -- without exception -- diligently kept my litter in my pocket and disposed of it the first available bin. Fag butts are different; they have adorned the pavements of London since smoking began. If that centuries-old instinct is to change, we need public ashtrays every three or four yards!
Steve (commissar17)

tosscat

I do hope you're joking Steve (commissar17) Also it puts your moniker at the top of your posts already.

Ian

@commmissar. Ah well, that's OK then - as long as there has always been litter ... Here's a thought though - are the bins on every street able to have multiple purpose or do they not cater for fag butts?

taff bach

Yo commissar 17, we should get Anarchist John on this blog and start mixing the dialectical stew, but then we might get the Trots!

commissar17

Hiya, taff bach! Anything but the Trots (or the revisionists, or the social-democrats, or the...).
The dialectics sounds good, though. Lead on, MacTaff.
Steve

Lucy

Not the judean people's front? Splitters!

rainbow_carnage

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7802485.stm">Stalin voted third-best Russian</a>

50 million people voted. That's one moron for every one of Stalin's victims. Glad to see that ignorance and hatred are still alive in the motherland.

andy

Britain voted Princess Diana 3rd greatest ever Britain. But we also voted Michael Crawford 17th greatest Britain, one place ahead of Queen Victoria. David Beckham (33) was one place ahead of Thomas Paine (34) and Boy George (46) was a whole five places ahead of King Arthur (51). James Maxwell, despite being the first to prove that electricity, magnetism and light are manifestations of the same thing, was placed 14 places below Robbie Williams, who did Angels. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Greatest_Britons>;

andy

Here's the French list: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Plus_Grand_Français&gt; I guess Napoleon would have had to have hoped for better than 16th. And the German list seems to have been "pre-vetted". Can you see who's missing? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsere_Besten>;

andy

and it's true what they say about Belgium <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Grootste_Belg>;

poxy

Missing from the German list...

Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos?

Jürgen Klinsmann?