Posts Tagged ‘New Labour’
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
What doesn’t seem to be mentioned in most analysis of this disastrous election aftermath is that the current mess is related to Nick Clegg not being in control of his party. You don’t have to read very carefully between the lines to realise that Clegg and his negotiating team put together a deal and it was rejected by the Lib Dem parliamentary party.
It’s obvious that for all Clegg’s high-blown talk of putting the country’s interests first, his MPs are a bunch of self-serving, deluded opportunists who are such a disgrace to democracy that they fail to appreciate the startling concessions on PR that they have already extracted from both main parties. Their dogmatism makes even Gordon Brown look a model of enlightened flexibility. They should have made it clear before the election that, in the case of a hung parliament, the likes of Paddy Ashdown would go round spreading poison designed to sabotage any deal with the Tories. Had they been honest about being so willing to enter a coalition with Labour even in the face of such dubious parliamentary arithmetic then they would surely never have won seats in places like Burnley — or Redcar where disgust at Labour’s lack of action in preserving local steel manufacturing jobs saw a massive swing to the Lib Dems.
It can now be seen that Clegg positioning himself as the new, honest face of politics was a cynical joke. In retrospect it seems obvious that he can’t deliver the support of his own party for one of the options he refused to rule out and, as the extract from my blog post two days before the election shows, he was absolutely disingenuous by implying he could deliver an agreement either way (or, as he implied, to the party with most seats and a larger share of the vote) . What Charlie said two days before the election:
Charlie Mackle just had two tweets featured on the listener reaction page to Jeremy Vine’s interview this lunchtime with Nick Clegg: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/jeremy-vine/election-debates-2010/liberal-democrats/ (one is at 1203, the other at 1242).
Both are about Clegg’s failure to spell out what he would do in the event of a hung parliament…I think he’s making a huge rod for his back by effectively deceiving some people into voting for him…One thing that the Liberal Democrats trade on is that they tend to be all things to all people — and even more so this election…campaigning in some seats as the anti-Tory party and in others as the anti-Labour party depending on the incumbents…If Clegg does not explicitly say which party he’d support in a hung parliament then his only plausible course of action would be to support the party with the largest number of seats — that’s the only real democratic outcome…Virtually any scenario is such a complete mess that it makes the case for electoral reform where the parties would have to be far more explicit about working with opposing parties once elected.
I still think it’s potentially as likely as not that Clegg will form a coalition with the Tories as Labour but the point is still valid that he is a weak leader who has failed to take his party with him — there would certainly be dissent from both Lib Dems and far-right Tories to such a coalition. However, the reasonably comfortable majority they would achieve would mean this was tolerable. Clegg is having to balance splitting his party against acting in the national interest. Cynical, tribal politicians like Brown would have no trouble deciding which way they would move but Clegg put himself on a moral pedestal which would make him look a supreme hypocrite if he put party over the needs of a stable government.
If the Tories were acting out of pure self-interest in the long-term they ought not to regret their actions if the Liberal Democrats and Labour put together this desperate coalition. After all, whoever is in government is going to have to impose some monumentally unpopular decisions or risk the country being trashed by the markets Greek style. It would be more justified if Labour carried the consequences for its own ineptitude and the Lid Dems suffered for their contempt of the electorate’s decision. When the ramshackle coalition collapsed then the Tories would likely obliterate both of these unprincipled parties — and rightly so. The problem is that we’d all suffer economically in the fall out.
I don’t particularly welcome the prospect of a Tory minority government or Tory-Lib Dem coalition either BUT any other outcome is so violently contrary to a sense of democracy and natural justice.
And it wouldn’t help the Labour party in the long term as the likes of David Blunkett have argued (Lib Dems ‘acting like every harlot in history’). I really don’t understand what motivates them apart from the naked desire for power for its own sake and the privilege and patronage that filters down to the activist and crony levels. That may explain the deeply depressing, anti-democratic attitude of Labour and Liberal activists whose tweets and comments on phone-ins seem to revel in glee that they think this gives them an opportunity to show the electorate they were wrong. I heard one on Radio Five last night. To the question, ‘didn’t Labour lose the largest number of seats since 1931 and get the lowest share of the vote since 1983) the activist said ‘Yes. But look at the NHS and how much money they’ve spent on that — and made it better as well.’
The point about a progressive coalition that consists of anti-Tory votes is risible and contemptible — fair enough if all those parties had stood at the election on a ‘progressive coalition ticket’ BUT THEY DIDN’T.
I’m encouraged that Caroline Lucas has indicated she wouldn’t sign up to a coalition and would support other parties’ policies on a case-by-case basis. I would have voted Green in my constituency had they fielded a candidate but would be exceptionally disappointed if she ended up being the one MP who perpetuated this financially and morally bankrupt regime.
Tags: anti-democratic, election, Gordon Brown, government, hypocrisy, idiocy, immorality, New Labour, Nick Clegg, politicians, progressive coalition, stupidity
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 1 Comment »
Monday, May 10th, 2010
I thought about posting a blog about the machinations in Westminster by the defeated coalition of losers but I thought better of it as it might risk blowing my blood pressure if I said what I really thought.
Tags: election, Gordon Brown, hypocrisy, idiocy, New Labour, Nick Clegg, politicians, stupidity
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
…or you just might get it’ could be applied to Nick Clegg and anyone who voted for him out of an anti- motive rather than any love of the Lib Dems.
At the time of writing (12.45pm) the Tories have 294 seats, Labour 252, Lib Dem 52 and The Others 27, including the admirable Caroline Lucas’s win for the Greens in Brighton. This means that a joint Labour-Lib Dem coalition is still 22 short of a majority and is only 10 ahead of the Tories as a whole (with 25 mostly large rural seats yet to declare).
This means Clegg can only deliver a majority to the Tories. It’s fairly likely that any Labour-Lib Dem deal would need to get the support of some of the smaller parties. They might be able to get some support from the Greens on an ad hoc basis but they’d still have to go to the self-interest of the nationalists.
Should Cameron and Clegg come to some agreement then this would be undoubtedly the most stable outcome — even allowing for some dissent within both parties. A joint Tory-Lib Dem cabinet might also have the happy result of perhaps sidelining a liability like George Osborne and replacing him with Vince Cable.
Yet Clegg and Cameron will probably engage in some brinksmanship. The Tories will be extremely reluctant to endorse proportional representation — but Clegg should probably treat his new putative best friends Milliband, Balls, Harman and Brown’s sudden conversion to the cause with the contempt and suspicion it deserves. He’d be a fool unworthy of holding the balance of power if he trusted politicians whose main motivation seems to be to stab their leader in the back in order to succeed him. The Tories will reject the more leftish policies that Clegg stood on — quite a lot of them, such as the immigration amnesty and Trident.
I guess Cameron will reject most of Clegg’s demands and he could justify this by the poor showing overall for the Lib Dems, which seeing as Clegg was apparently still popular must have been influenced by their policies. He will probably see if Clegg has the nerve to make the so-called ‘coalition of the defeated’ with Brown.
This might please many of Clegg’s casual and tactical supporters but would be an insult to his party activists and loyal voters — who must already be demoralised, having fought against Labour and, in most cases, have not succeeded in removing many Labour MPs themselves. Brown is also likely to have to make disproportionate concessions to the nationalists as the Lib Dem support seems unlikely to produce a majority in itself. It would also be political suicide if there was an election in the near future as those who voted tactically anti-Tory would probably return to Labour if they had been seen to be able to not lose this election.
If Cameron was quite cynical, he’d probably not be too disappointed to rebuff Clegg and see what kind of ramshackle coalition Brown (or those who seek to dispose of him in his own party) could put together. Remember this government is going to have to finally face up to dire economic reality and institute massive public spending cuts as well as raise taxes. The Tories might think it cuter to let Brown face his own music and bank on his Commons arithmetic falling to pieces (think of the rebels on the Labour benches if the hatchet is taken to public spending) and expect there to be another election within a year or two.
Of course, Clegg may also take the same view and realise that it would be electoral suicide for the Lib Dems to prop up an inevitably unpopular government — perhaps getting proportional representation would then be their only chance of avoiding obliteration.
Overall, Cameron’s best strategy is probably to offer Clegg very little and try and call his bluff into propping up Brown. If the Lib Dems either have to support him or be complicit in helping Brown try and dig himself out of his huge hole — either propping up someone who’s currently pulled in 29% of the popular vote or replacing him with someone too gutless to have tried to replace him before the election.
This is all in the context of Cameron’s undoubtedly disastrous campaign — sabotaged last year by Osborne’s ‘Age of Austerity’ and more recently by his baffling ‘Big Society’. Brown got away with outrageously negative campaigning — effectively ‘vote for us or you’re more likely to die of cancer’ — and he was the incumbent of thirteen years. Cameron was stiff, aloof and complacent and hardly tested the massive own goal presented by Brown’s and New Labour’s monumental incompetence.
If this posting is marginally less lucid and more discursive than normal it’s because I watched the 11.5 hour BBC coverage of the election night non-stop with Sky and ITV streamed on laptops and making frequent reference to the BBC website (which seemed to lack information in favour of clever animations) and, more frequently, to the Guardian’s web pages on each constituency.
Tags: BBC, Caroline Lucas, cynicism, David Cameron, election, Gordon Brown, Green Party, gutless backstabbers, hung parliament, New Labour, Nick Clegg, politicians, The Guardian
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Charlie Mackle just had two tweets featured on the listener reaction page to Jeremy Vine’s interview this lunchtime with Nick Clegg: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/jeremy-vine/election-debates-2010/liberal-democrats/ (one is at 1203, the other at 1242).
Both are about Clegg’s failure to spell out what he would do in the event of a hung parliament. In some ways I can understand why he doesn’t want to properly answer the question — he can’t presume he’ll be in that position and he doesn’t know yet exactly how much power he’ll be able to wield or which of the two main parties will be the largest. However, I think he’s making a huge rod for his back by effectively deceiving some people into voting for him.
The potential dilemma he finds himself in makes quite a good case for the electoral reform that he’s arguing for, although, paradoxically this might weaken his potential power after Thursday.
One thing that the Liberal Democrats trade on is that they tend to be all things to all people — and even more so this election. They like to position themselves as the centre party and, in some respects, such as economic policy under Vince Cable, this is probably true. However, many of their other policies are well to the left of Brown’s labour party (e.g. immigration, Trident, Iraq). The fact that the Guardian has transferred its support to Clegg bears out that they are now the party that reflects the views best of the metropolitan, intellectual liberal left. Quite where this leaves Brown, whose policies seem to ignore the interests of his core working-class urban voters (like Gillian Duffy) is an interesting question — whose interests does he represent? The bankers, perhaps?
Yet the Liberal Democrats are campaigning in some seats as the anti-Tory party and in others as the anti-Labour party depending on the incumbents. This might be plausible if they really were a party with views equidistant from the other two but they’re not. Standing as the anti-Tories is, perhaps, less problematic although many centre-leaning voters might feel that their policies on Trident might be too far to the left. Presenting themselves as anti-Labour is, however, very disingenuous.
Many on the left, including it seems desperate ministers like Ed Balls and Tessa Jowell, plus Peter Hain, seem to believe that their best outcome is a scenario where a second-placed (in seats) Labour Party is propped up by Nick Clegg but I fail to see how this can ever be a justifiable scenario for the following reasons:
- Under this scenario the Labour party will have won a very small percentage of the popular vote: the overwhelming majority of voters will have voted against Brown continuing.
- If the Labour Party was to do what Clegg has hinted he’d demand and nominate a new leader, perhaps as Johnson or Harman hope, then the country would end up with a Prime Minister who hadn’t fought a general election for the second time in succession and only days after an election: completely ludicrous.
- Clegg might want to lead a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. This might please those who like his shiny Blairisms but would he insist on electoral reform, non-replacement of Trident and so on — major policy changes that would have been endorsed by a small percentage of the electorate. It would also be ridiculous to have a Prime Minister from a much smaller party justified on the basis that he looked good on TV (but perhaps quite appropriate for our X-Factor politics).
The only way that Clegg could go into a coalition with Labour is to support Brown — none of the other options are remotely feasible. That would be a nightmare even for those on the left as it would perpetuate their biggest electoral liability and keeping in Brown would damage the Liberal Democrats who supposedly campaigned for a ‘new politics’.
Many on the left seem to think a Lib Dem-Labour coalition might be justified by arguing that over 50% of the electorate would have voted for the two parties and not the Tories. This is an incredibly flimsy stance as it could equally be argued that more voters had voted against Labour — probably over 60%.
If Clegg does not explicitly say which party he’d support in a hung parliament then his only plausible course of action would be to support the party with the largest number of seats — that’s the only real democratic outcome. This may be a problem if Labour had the largest number of seats but not the largest aggregate vote but this looks unlikely. It also risks alienating anyone who votes Lib Dem from a left perspective.
Virtually any scenario is such a complete mess that it makes the case for electoral reform where the parties would have to be far more explicit about working with opposing parties once elected.
Tags: election, electoral reform, Gordon Brown, government, Jeremy Vine, Liberal Democrats, New Labour, Nick Clegg, politicians
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 5 Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
As someone brought up in the borough of Rochdale, I never thought I’d see a Times headline like this.
The Times 29th April 2009
The incident with Gillian Duffy, who’s so typical of a Rochdale woman of that age it’s untrue, bears out the comments made in this blog about Brown’s personality (‘Vote Dalek‘): ‘Brown’s big weakness [is] that he has the arrogance to think that he knows better than anyone else about how they and others should live their lives but he also fatally compounds that arrogance by not having… the humility to realise that he’s often (usually?) wrong… he’s an anointed Prime Minister whose bullying supporters prevented even a leadership contest in the Labour party.’
Brown’s lack of self-knowledge and the thin skin that has led him to avoid criticism and opposition was shown in his misunderstanding of how his conversation went with Mrs Duffy. He came over ok — she raised lots of issues and he was (for him) reasonably charming and patient. If anything, it helped him — he looked more genuine than either Cameron or Clegg.
His comments afterwards were, therefore, quite stunning. He obviously didn’t enjoy even this mild confrontation and firstly looked for someone to blame (his tone of voice on ‘who’s idea was that?‘ was frighteningly menacing) and then insulting any perceived opponent with knee-jerk insults. In the politically correct circles where Brown has cultivated his cronies and in which his spin doctors move to insinuate that someone might possibly be racist (even if they’re not) is the trump card that shuts down all other argument. It’s reminiscent of remarks that I think were attributed to Clive Solely years ago (though I can’t track them down) along the lines of old people’s views should be dismissed on the grounds that many of them might be racists. In fact, it’s quite a prized debating skill to try to twist and misrepresent an opponent’s views to try and then brand them as racist — something the likes of Mandelson like to do. This sort of sophistry is exactly what fuels the disconnection between the political classes (and liberal broadsheet readers) and the mass of voters — and this incident has turned the spotlight on it.
The immigration issue is a sideshow. She hardly mentioned it and it wasn’t in a racist context — Brown’s ‘British jobs for British people’ panders to a more xenophobic agenda. What Brown’s dismissive insult of ‘bigot’ showed was the Labour party’s apparent contempt for its ancestral core vote — the working class (it’s somewhat fatuous to label them ‘white’ as historically they couldn’t be anything else). Brown should listen to those like John Cruddas in his party who warn that the perceived disenfranchisement of the working class risks stoking support for far right parties.
Gutless ministers like Jack Straw, David Milliband and Alan Johnson now deserve to reap the consequences of supporting such a spectacularly flawed politician as Brown purely out of personal ambition. Mandelson must also now realise his support of Brown has been political suicide. What a shame. The image of the 66 year old everywoman so totally humiliating the prime minister is such an apt epitaph for New Labour and its self-interested tolerance of sleaze. It’s so apt rather proud that someone so unassuming from a place Rochdale dealt this blow and it make me rather proud of where I come from.
Tags: Gordon Brown, hypocrisy, idiocy, John Cruddas, New Labour, Rochdale, stupidity, The Times
Posted in Life's Frustrations, Media | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 7th, 2010
Generally, I take a view about the impending election to be pretty consistent with that of the Economist– that Labour deserves to lose the election but the Tories haven’t done enough to win it.
On balance this really should be an argument for change but the perverted, risk-averse, ‘better the devil you know’ side of human nature may swing it unfairly in Labour’s favour.
Tags: Gordon Brown, government, idiocy, New Labour, politicians, stupidity
Posted in Life's Frustrations | No Comments »
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Interesting article from Charlie Brooker on his attitude to drugs and their reporting. It’s quite a good example of his style, which I saw critiqued a little unfairly in the Radio Times recently which said he tended to go after obvious targets and then pull his punches but that, sadly, he was about the best around at what he did.
What tends to be disappointing about Brooker is that while he sometimes seems to be on the brink of concluding something very idiosyncratic, his conclusions always seem to return to re-inforce the type of liberal orthodoxy that has atrophied in the values of his audience of Guardian readers for about the last 30 years (the big irony is they still see themselves as daring and progressive when, in fact, they now really represent the forces of inertia and conservatism). Maybe Brooker really shares these views — exemplified, for example, in the flawed logic that sees alcohol equated as an inherently more dangerous drug than many prohibited substances. (Of course it can be but most people don’t misuse it.) Yet even if he has leanings this way then his points would still be better made if he didn’t back so timidly away from questioning so many sacred cows — it’s almost like he has a little Ben Elton of the nauseous 80s sparking suit vintage (not the current sell-out Queen musical writer) barking inside his conscience.
Brooker seems pathologically scared of making general points that might offend these ingrained prejudices even when his real strength — his surreal self-deprecation — demolishes brutally many pompous,New Labour sensibilities. In this article he humorously describes his less-than-satisfactory experiences taking banned drugs and makes some very good points about the questionable motivations of the many people who still glorify a completely irrelevant and anachronistic 60s counter-culture (if it ever existed): ‘I don’t want to get out of my head: that’s where I live’.
All great stuff but then he diverts into safer territory by making an analogy about delusion peddled in newspapers which seems calculated to play to the Guardian reader gallery. Of course then his predictable targets are the tabloids who print pictures of Lady Ga Ga (though plenty supposed quality papers do too). It would be nice for a change if he took on the sort of mood-altering newspapers that print a diet of self-mythologising cant which re-inforces the moral smugness of their readership — fulfilling similar fundamental psychological needs in the same sort of manner as those who are just satisfied by seeing whether Lady Ga Ga’s managed to keep her knockers from falling out of her dress today.
Tags: alcohol, Ben Elton, Charlie Brooker, drugs, hypocrisy, New Labour, The Guardian
Posted in Media | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 14th, 2010
According to the Sunday Telegraph, New Labour, in the hopefully unlikely eventuality that their pernicious blight be cast over the country again from May, is to abolish the House of Lords. One good thing about this is that they will presumably have to get rid from elected office their unelected legions of cronies, faceless bureaucrats and, of course, that barely human specimen of meretricious mendacity — Mandelson. (Maybe they will create a loophole by allowing the undead to continue to serve in unelected office?).
After this week I will be extremely happy to see the back of Lord Adonis — the unelected Transport Secretary whose background from Oxford university onwards is even more privileged and cloistered than that of Cameron and Osborne — he followed teaching at Oxford with journalism on the FT and the Observer and, unsurprisingly according to Wikipedia, hides away from the hoi-polloi in the New Labour ghetto of Islington. This technocrat academic has maybe been handed the transport brief as no politician who wanted a hope in hell of getting themselves elected would want to be an apologist for this government’s lamentable lack of delivery in this area — belatedly getting Crossrail started and finishing the St.Pancras Channel Tunnel link that was started by the Tories and very little else except the ultimate cheapskate innovation of getting us to drive on motorway hard shoulders.
In the last few days he’s announced (or been reported to be about to announce) three things that would keep me blogging for a month.
1) The route of the High Speed 2 rail line — with its bizarre combination of tunnelling through London up to Amersham and then despoliation of the Chilterns and Aylesbury Vale from there on.
2) His ludicrous and partisan siding with the BA bully boy management in the cabin crew dispute. Someone should whisper to this sheltered egghead that he’s actually in a government that’s supposed to represent organised labour. Maybe the title of the party is a bit too obvious for his large brain to notice. Perhaps someone from Unison should remind him in a traditional working class way of the history of his party.
3) The proposal reported in the Sunday Times to reduce the drink-drive alcohol limit to effectively zero. This proposal sums up the cynicism and headline-grabbing ethos of this rotten administration as it anyone who understands human nature (by definition not most New Labour ministers) could predict that this is likely to lead to more, not less, drunk driving.
My anger about all three of these points goes beyond normal politics. Were this a genuine party of the left, rather than a bunch of self-serving parasites in thrall to global capital, then I might have more patience with them. Yet what really galls me about Brown’s Labour is that they offend something very basic and fundamental about human nature — they are complete hypocrites. They fail in almost every test of competence of their own administration yet they take every opportunity to preach to us plebs about the error of our own ways and are forever trying to interfere and assign blame in the minatae of social life. (It’s no co-incidence that Brown’s character determines that he does the same in government and his disastrously over-complex economic policies.) This wouldn’t be so bad if they had any integrity themselves but they are obsessed with appearance and perception to the detriment of reality — forever passing laws that they fail to implement. In some respects it’s the behaviour of an arrogant, totalitarian elite — even if it is fronted by meek and nerdy Adonis types.
More detail on each point above anon.
Tags: alcohol, BA, cynicism, government, idiocy, Lord Adonis, middle classes, New Labour, Peter Mandelson, stupidity, totalitarianism
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
The poll in the Sunday Times that gave the Tories a lead of only two points is a wake up call for everyone with an interest in politics. It is a very damning verdict on the competence of Cameron and also shows the lasting hostility to the Tories nearly 20 years after their removal of Thatcher’s divisive influence. I have a theory that Thatcher’s worst legacy was to leave an embittered and deeply politicised academic and cultural establishment which became receptive to the abhorrent and cynical use of political correctness (for want of a better description) as a neo-Stalinist tool of power and manipulation that has been the most insidious hallmark of New Labour — something that will wreak far more long-lasting damage to the country (IMHO) than anything Thatcher did.
This fairly superficial embitterdness towards the Tories seems to suggest that there isn’t the sort of popular acclaim for removing this clapped-out disgrace of an administration that there was with Major in 1997 — ironically a government now which seems to have been the most effective of the last 50 years (so much for the threat of hung parliaments). Even so, I think the whole country would want to see Cameron and company ritually disembowelled if they wake up the morning after a general election to see Brown’s psychotic grin as he walks back into Number Ten — no doubt with Alistair Darling, James Purnell, Caroline Flint and the rest on their way to the Gulag as he preaches about a listening government of all the talents.
Almost all Labour MPs seem to realise it’s in their best interests for Brown to lose by a small majority so they can cast him out to howl impotently with his forces of hell (Balls) and that they could look forward to a fairly new election with a leader who’s a member of the human race. Personally I’d consider voting for a Labour Party led by Darling — the only one with any guts shown in the last couple of years.
There are really two words that describe Cameron’s biggest mistake — George Osborne. Bad enough that Cameron is an Eton toff but at least he presents a semblance of humanity. Osborne both looks and acts irredeemably like a complete anachronism and irrelevance to the vast majority of the voting public — an image of the Tory party that goes back to Douglas Home and Eden. He reminds me of that awful upper-class ventriloquists dummy that Ray Alan (remember him) used to turn up with on dire 70s variety shows — mind you the dummy showed more independence of thought and character than most Labour MPs.
I’ll be disenfranchised — voting in Bercow’s constituency so no Labour, Tories or Lib Dem candidates. Should UKIP stand I certainly wouldn’t vote for them but I’m hoping the Greens put someone up. While I disagree strongly with a lot of their practical policies, I have great sympathy with their basic premise — that global capital is a rapacious monster that’s defiling and destroying the world for the benefit of few but the very richest elites — which makes it bizarre that Brown and Blair so worshipped it.
I also like the practical application of green principles — protecting nature, growning your own and so on and I took delivery of a box full of seed potato and onion sets yesterday to prove it. Give a man a potato and you feed him a bag of crisps, give him a seed potato and some soil and (in my case) you get the magic of digging up a few knobbly organic specimens and you give the slugs a feast.
Tags: David Cameron, election, global capital, Gordon Brown, government, Green Party, New Labour, opinion polls, political correctness, politicians, stupidity, Thatcher
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
There’s a new edition of this book by Jonathan Rose being published in April — and I will pre-order it. It has superb reviews — both online and published, including this one from the Independent.
How apt it will be published just before the hopeful demise of the regime that has been on an apparent mission to destroy the culture of aspiration and dignity of the working class. Over the past 12 years, New Labour, especially Brown, has tried, whether by design or blundering accident, to eradicate the working class as it has been known for over a century. Their aim has been to destroy the working class and separate it into aspirant middle class (smug ex-students like most New Labour MP) or to consign people to be the helpless, infantile, hopeless, feral clients of Brown – his underclass.
The review from the Independent notes how the book mourns the “demise of the British working-class intellectual, [and is] a noble elegy over the greatest days and highest hopes of what was always the most solid, settled, self- confident and unrevolutionary working class in industrial history.”
There’s a nice review from The Guardian online which self-reflexively pokes fun at its own: ‘It has become an axiom of cultural studies that the dominant class defines and maintains the value of high culture – live white males choosing dead white males for the rest of us to admire. Rose suggests that, given a choice, the working classes in fact chose exactly the same Great Books to canonise, from the Odyssey to Dickens. Indeed, on the evidence of the borrowing records from Welsh miners’ libraries, the only books that no one wants to read are the works of the literary modernists. One does still occasionally come across people who seem to assume that the words “working class” are a synonym for “stupid” or “wicked” or “lazy” or “dumb”. The people who make such assumptions would do well to read The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes , but most of them are probably too busy working in TV, or on newspaper colour supplements, or writing fancy books that nobody wants to read.’
New Labour, their apologists and allies in the media are marked by their ingrained urge to to simplify and patronise culture — afraid that ‘the kids on the housing estates’ won’t ‘get it’. (Note the wearisome recurrence of grim housing estates and suburbia in Russell T. Davies’ Doctor Who episodes — maybe the BBC told him there had to be an equal number of inner-city ‘kids’ to aliens or Daleks to maintain balance?) However, the traditional, dignified working class has never required to be talked down to, as Fred Inglis says in the Independent: ‘This is an incomparable book: scholarly to a scruple; majestic in its 100-year reach; ardent in its reaffirmation of faith in what good books, splendid music and fine art may do to turn a people’s history into a long revolution on behalf of liberty, equality and truth.’
Tags: culture, Doctor Who, education, Gordon Brown, New Labour, stupidity, Working Class
Posted in Life's Frustrations, Writing | No Comments »
Saturday, December 26th, 2009
The working classes built the Labour Party through their struggle to seek representation through the union movement and to stand up to the amorality of global capital. Gordon Brown is in the ironic, and shameful, position of leading an incarnation of the party that has taken this working class vote disgracefully for granted. Intelligent MPs such as Frank Field and John Cruddas appreciate that much of the micro-engineering of the benefits system, so beloved of Brown, has wrecked the moral values of a strong working-class culture. The cabinet is now full of arrogant, condescending privileged, middle-class meddlers who have no inking of the self-reliance that used to be the foundation of working-class communities. To them, it is inconceivable that anyone would want to stay working class. The vanity of the New Labour elite is such that they believe everybody should aspire to be just like them. They erroneously conflate poverty with class and seem to believe that the country will thank them for destroying the working class. In its place everyone would either be middle-class or part of the underclass. Such is their unshakeable conceit that they don’t realise the political flaw of this strategy — the new middle-classes will tend to vote Tory and the underclasses will display the same apathy to the democratic process as they have to their own lives (preferring to become Brown’s clients as he dispenses skewed benefits) and not vote. The overall effect is that Labour has set on an unwittingly self-destructive mission to eliminate its own core vote.
However, Labour has always been able to rely on the vote of one significant part of the electorate — students. Even the spoon-fed, waited-upon offspring of the indulged middle-classes often realise its in their own self-interest to vote for a party of the left when living their pretend impoverished student existence for a year or two. That’s not counting all the crap spouted by politically correct university lecturer ideologues (again out of self-interest, conscious or subliminal) that probably sways a few impressionable student voters.
Yet following its success in destroying its working class core vote, Labour (if Mandelson still fits that description) sneakily chose the run up to Christmas, when they no doubt thought all students would be pissed, to declare war on this loyal part of their vote.
The scale of the cuts proposed is quite shocking and promises to demean higher education even further in this country. I had experience of the rubbish that undergraduates had to put up with in this country about 10 years ago — hundreds of students in a lecture theatre, negligible contact time with lecturers, widespread use of group work that allows skivers to be carried, large-scale plagiarism and so on. This was in a university that had a decent reputation for certain subjects (such as business). When I was an undergraduate I used to go for weekly tutorials with a lecturer and three or four other students. Even so, by international standards, universities in this country are relatively good — see how many international students are attracted to them (a good job as they have kept the sector solvent up to now).
Unfortunately the New Labour philistines have now made the cynical calculation that higher education funding is something that can be cut now but the resulting decline in quality won’t be immediately apparent.
Compensating for the lack of funding won’t be possible by bringing in gimmicks like two-year degrees and cutting holidays — an example of hypocritical scum Labour spin doctors going for the gutter vote by pretending students will need to work harder and not drink as much. Dave Prentis of Unison is right in suggesting this will have a long-term effect on the country’s competitiveness of destroying exactly the sort of knowledge based economy that we were meant to be relying on now Thatcher and New Labour have outsourced all manufacturing to China. No-one should really be surprised about this as this government has no conception of the long-term. Long-term thinking to them is the time it takes before the headlines appear in the next day’s papers.
It wouldn’t be so bad except this government encouraged a huge expansion in higher education in the first place — with a target of 50% of 18 year olds going into full-time education. I tend to think this was more motivated by removing a huge demographic group from the unemployment figures than by altruism. (Quite clever making them go into debt to do it as well.) Now, having massively expanded the university sector to cope with the huge influx of students, the government is actually penalising them for taking on too many students.
It’s predicted that whole universities will close or merge and the more expensive courses will disappear (ironically those which tend to teach skills that aren’t available elsewhere like advanced science and engineering). It’s also anticipated that the UK will end up with a two-tier system with a small, elite group of universities funded to carry out research and a large number of chav universities that ‘teach’ large numbers of students in a cheap and nasty way. Of course, access to the two parts of the sector will be entirely unequal — with those from privileged backgrounds playing the system and swanning into the good universities (with maybe a bit of token equal access thrown in for ‘the kids from the inner cities’) whereas the majority of students will be funnelled into the sausage factories. It will be just like the good old days to the large numbers of privately educated cabinet ministers from privileged backgrounds themselves, such as the privately educated Harman and Balls.
Tags: Gordon Brown, government, higher education, idiocy, middle classes, New Labour, politicians, stupidity, universities
Posted in Life's Frustrations | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
The culture of spin or, as it usually turns out to be, downright lying in the face of obvious facts has worked its way down from the heights of New Labour policymaking to infliltrate the more prosaic echelons of the incompetent governmental edifice. Who actually believes a single word that council spokespersons are saying when they say that gritters are working flat out and that all possible is being done to clear the roads? Probably even less people than now believe in the fabled WMD. Yet these PR officers, schooled and practised by their national government role models, blithely issue statements or turn up on the radio and TV to spout forth works of fiction that, if not exactly untrue, are as deliberately contrived to misrepresent the actual facts as possible.
The local government association said a few days ago that it was rumour mongering to say that salt supplies were almost running out but I have heard from my sister, who works for a large local authority in the north, that their salt supplies have now run out. The gritters are still driving round but they’re not spreading anything — just acting as snow ploughs. The Bucks Herald website accuses Buckinghamshire County Council of trying to spin their way out of trouble – and then having to admit a large amount of economy with the truth (e.g. that they tried to generalise about the whole county by citing evidence of gritting in the south of the county and that they left a 12 hour gap during Monday in Aylesbury Vale during which the snow came down but no gritting took place.)
The fact they think they can get away with it shows the way this mendacious culture has infected all levels of government. People can see whether the roads have been cleared or treated – due to the consequent out-of-control and undriveable vehicles. In choosing to spin something that people can dispute with the evidence of their own eyes these idiots show they’re more Ollie Reeder than Malcolm Tucker.
The only other category of civil servant who are currently less contrite about the consequences of their incompetence are the Met Office weather forecasters. With their nauseating cosy chats to the newsreaders, perhaps they’re more interested in auditioning for the next series of ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ than actually deliver an accurate piece of forecasting. Taking their forecast that there would be no more snow after Monday morning at face value (a forecast of which no doubt all evidence has been erased now) I went on a 450 mile round trip to Manchester and, after having had to dig the car out of nearly a foot of snow, had to drive back in a blizzard on the M60 with only two lanes usable (except if you were a mad Lithuanian lorry driver piling down the snowed up fast lane twice as fast as anyone else on the road) then ended up in the untreated Bucks roads at the other end. I think forcefeeding all of the falsifying forecaster some nasty Australian parasites would be appropriate (apart from sweet Laura Tobin, of course). Mind you, the Met Office website has been just as guilty a fabricator of fantasy.
Tags: Bucks County Council, Gordon Brown, government, Laura Tobin, Mad Lithuanian Lorry Drivers, Met Office, New Labour, politicians, stupidity, The Thick of It
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 1 Comment »
Friday, December 4th, 2009
1,700 steel workers to be sacked in Teeside while the board of a 84% state owned bank tries to blackmail the government into paying its bankers £1.5 billion in bonuses! If this sad conjunction had happened at the height of Thatcherism then the Labour party would still be reminding everyone of it 25 years later.
Brown should realise how much contempt the electorate hold for the bankers. He must be about the only person left in the country who believes the New Labour fiction about the City being the new source of wealth for the country — and how we will be fine to offshore all the real work (manufacturing, IT, back office work, etc.) to India and China so our whole economy became a huge casino that just shuffles money around. And this is a LABOUR chancellor and prime minister!
Spare a Few Million in Loose Change for the People Who Work Here
If he has any hope of redeeming himself with the country then he should take his attention off the Eton Toffs on the front bench and train it on the pinstriped pigs in the trough — the Hooray Henrys who are threatening to go abroad if they don’t get their £1.5m bonus. Well, why not call their bluff and let the greedy parasites go abroad — although they won’t be quite as well received in Dubai as they may have been a few weeks ago. And if all the bankers leave then why doesn’t their protector and defender, Gordon Brown, follow them and not darken our shores any longer. I’m sure there are plenty up in Teesside who’d be glad to see the back of them all.
Tags: economics, Gordon Brown, government, greed, New Labour, politicians, RBS, stupidity
Posted in Life's Frustrations | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Drinkers face an unhappy New Year in 2010 thanks to the government who have at least two tax rises on alcohol in the pipeline.
The temporary reduction in VAT to 15% will be reversed on New Year’s Day. This will affect all VAT-able goods so expect your Christmas television viewing to be spoiled by even irritating ‘Sale starts at 9am on Boxing Day!’ advertisements than usual as the January sales are telescoped into the fag end of December.
Keen followers of this government’s extortionate approach to pubs and the brewing industry may remember that alcohol never benefited in the first place from the VAT cut as the Treasury immediately raised beer duty to compensate for the reduction in VAT. This hasn’t, of course, stopped the government including alcohol in the 2.5% increase planned for January 1st.
This administration’s schizophrenic attitude to the licensed trade has again been shown by the rather pathetic decision to delay in the increase in duty by a full six hours. The government’s seemingly favourite group of drinkers – those who binge 24 hours a day – will be able to drink themselves stupid right up to six in the morning on New Year’s Day at the lower rate of VAT.
Any delay in the onset of the tax is likely to be welcomed by pubs but if there’s any evening in the year when pubs don’t need help in generating custom it’s probably New Year’s Eve. This delay is likely to be welcomed most by Hogmanay revellers north of the border – a remarkable co-incidence that the Prime Minister and Chancellor are both Scotsmen isn’t it?
With the price of ale at or approaching £3 a pint in most pubs in the area a 2.5% rise in VAT is likely to translate to about 5p on a pint. Alcohol duty is also due to rise in April by another 2% and it’s possible that the pre-Budget report will increase that further.
Stuart MacFarlane, the head of mega-brewer AB InBev UK (makers of Budweiser, Stella Artois and Beck’s) predicted that alcohol prices would rise by 10% next year mainly due to ‘government meddling’.
In comments that many CAMRA members will endorse he said ‘The government’s thinking is not joined up? Are we policing underage drinking on the streets enough? No. It should better enforce laws already in place.’
CAMRA recently called on members to sign an on-line petition on the 10 Downing Street website to call on the Prime Minister to support responsible drinkers in the face of the neo-prohibitionist hysteria whipped up in the press.
In fact total alcohol consumption in the UK is actually falling. According to a report by wine magazine Decanter, the British Beer and Pub Association used the Treasury’s own figures to show that the rate of decrease is the fastest in over 60 years – with overall consumption down 8% in the first half of 2009. Such figures support CAMRA’s argument that problem drinkers are a small minority and targeted measures would be more effective than penalising the sensible majority.
However, the government’s eagerness to raise beer duty suggests that the arguments about restricting consumption by increasing prices across the board makes a very convenient cover for the Treasury. You might think it a very cynical ruse to soak beer drinkers yet again but I couldn’t possibly comment.
Tags: Beer, bma, Gordon Brown, government, New Labour, pubs, tax
Posted in Beer | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
As someone else with appalling handwriting, I have a very tiny amount of sympathy with Gordon Brown over ‘Lettergate’ (although I don’t use childish black marker pen). Even those who regard him as an arrogant control freak with a disastrous lack of self-knowledge realise that he’s going to be a busy one and to handwrite a letter is a substantial allocation of his time. (It’s unforgivable to get names wrong, however, and it probably shows that his minions daren’t send him work back to correct — which is very worrying if it comes to policy matters but probably explains a lot.)
There’s no doubt that The Sun is now doing its best to stick the knife into Brown but he makes it pretty easy for them. A read of the transcript with the soldier’s mother shows how he is completely unable to empathise with ordinary people and to communicate outside a narrow, political context — all things that Blair was an expert at. The transcript looks very like the famous confrontation with Thatcher on Nationwide over the Belgrano and perhaps the Sun have engineered it that way.
However, it is nauseating hypocrisy of the worst kind for the likes of Mandelson to come out and complain about Murdoch’s anti-Labour agenda. New Labour benefited from the support of the gutter for over ten years and didn’t complain about it then. Those that live by the gutter should be prepared to die by it.
Tags: Gordon Brown, hypocrisy, New Labour, politicians, the Sun
Posted in Life's Frustrations | No Comments »
