Socialism and Ryanair!!

Now what does socialism have to do with Michael O'Leary (above) of Ryanair? Absolutely nothing.

Michael O'Leary is a genius of an entrepreneur and gets his airline into the news all the time; a few months ago he was on news items all over the world because it got out that he was proposing to charge for the use of the lavatories on his flights; and what did that do? It got everybody asking who Ryanair was and when people looked into it they found that the airline was offering incredibly cheap flights between various places in Europe; but maybe not for those with a weak bladder.

The flights are mostly from Dublin and last year I went from London (Stanstead) to Dublin and back for very little money. The first time, last March, it cost me less that £10 ($15) for a round trip; the second time a little bit more.

So what am I getting at?

Socialism has been banned in America since the 1950s and the red scare, red channels, reds under the bed, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and all the other paranoia clap trap. Nobody who has lived here consistently for the past fifty odd years has ever lived under Socialism or probably knows the first thing about it.

Which is why when Republicans and members of the so called Tea Party call the policies of a very soft left President Obama Socialist, they prove they know nothing about Socialism or even politics.

If Obama was a Socialist he would have nationalised the means of power, transport, the health service and the post office. Not necessarily the banks, I might add, as the Labour and Socialist Party which governed Britain in the sixties didn't nationalise the banks then; they did, however, nationalise The Bank of England which, for American readers, is kind of equivalent to the Federal Reserve.

To save you looking on Wikipedia the Bank of England is (despite its name) the central bank of the whole of the United Kingdom and is the model on which most modern, large central banks have been based. It was established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and to this day it still acts as the banker for Her Majesties Government. The Bank was privately owned and operated from its foundation in 1694 until it was nationalised in 1946 by the Labour Party which was a Socialist government.

In 1997, under the very UN-Socialist government of Tony Blair, it became an independent public organisation, wholly-owned by Government, with independence in setting monetary policy.


Since nationalisation in 1946, the country has been ruled for a majority of the time by the Conservative Party including the right wing Thatcher debacle and not once did they de-nationionalise the bank – ask yourself why.

The UK didn't have extreme Socialist policies like the USSR (The United Soviet of Socialist Republics) it established the National Health Service and to this day – even though the present Tory Government will try and change it somehow – nobody in Britain is without free health service. I wrote about that recently and don't need to go into it again so what is my point?

Nobody in America has even talked about Socialism since the 1950s until the opponents of President Obama started calling him a Socialist; now people are looking up Socialist in their dictionaries and Wikipedia and finding something they like – or dislike of course - just as the people who were disgusted with the fact that Ryanair were going to charge people for using the lavatory on their flights looked into the company which drew attention to them and increased their business.

Name recognition!!!

There is a lot of talk about the Republicans taking over the Senate well I think they shot themselves in the foot – I don't think they will; they have let the Tea Part influence them too much; thank you Sarah Palin.

By the way Michael O'Leary went to the same college as James Joyce!