...or am I misunderstanding him?

Mr Blunkett said: "My presumption is this. That all of us, every one of us who is capable of doing so, should aspire to continue with some meaningful activity to the point of our incapacity overtaking us.

"Preferably work, of course, increasingly part-time, flexible and in many cases, very different to the work undertaken in our earlier lives.

"Perhaps, increasingly, volunteering - within our own family and immediate circle as well as outside. Offering what we can and receiving from others what we cannot."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7599009.stm

He wants us to do charity work, it would seem. 

I do wish Blunkett would shut up - like most politicians, he's an amateur in life, who knows nothing about anything of real relevance.  Charity work (be it staffing a Oxfam shop, looking after the disable/people with learning difficulties) is tremendously exacting and requires a great deal of enthusiasm and commitment - it should only be undertaken by those with a genuine passion for the charity involved.  Fellow travellers and dilletantes will do more harm than good.

One of Blunkett's several homes is up the road from me: maybe I should go round and relay this message to him personally?

Too right.

It really annoys me when Trade Union leaders bang on about how they live in 'council flats'....when the truth usually refers to a grace and favour penthouse in WC2, on which they pay a peppercorn rent. 

I'm a bit surprised at Scargill, though - I would've thought he'd at least have had frosted windows on his Jag, so no one could see who was driving it. 

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Same drivel, different tune.

What's the problem? I haven't read the link, but taken by themselves those comments seem spot on - the hope that people might have aspirations beyond selfishness, with a 'rider clause' acknowledging that charity begins at home and will end there for plenty of people (quite rightfully, if they have old, young or infirm relatives or friends to help). And the last sentence is pure socialism: from each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.

I hope we don't have any Turkish members here. They could find that comment quite offensive, Byron.

But you can't, within the context of a capitalist economy, justify isolated policies on the basis that they conform to the supposed norms of socialism.  In the absence of the other characteristics of socialism - abolition of the wages system, free access to all wealth on the basis of need etc etc - this maxim is meaningless.  Mr Blunkett's latest pronouncements amount to the latest stage of the politicians' ratting on the promises made in my youth.  Firstly we had the Tories telling us we should be making provision for our own pensions - glibly ignoring the fact that that's what many of us thought we were doing when the state took getting on for 40% of our wages in the 1960s/70s.  Now it's retirement itself which is being seen as a luxury.  It may well be that the 'work till you drop and then rely on your neighbour's goodwill' ethos of pre-war capitalism is, indeed, the more realistic one.  But it's most definitely a retreat from the guaranteed enjoyment of a well-earned rest in ones twilight years that was presented as the model of a modern society by Mr Blunkett's party (and most of the others) until quite recently.

I never liked or trusted Mr Scargill but the fact is that he can't be blamed for any of this.  We don't know what would have happened if he and his colleagues had succeeded in reversing the closedown of UK industry and the enfeeblement of the last vestiges of direct working-class power - because they failed.  We are now in the hands of the politicians and, as we can see from the pronouncements of Mr Blunkett and others, their promises are worthless.