UK Local Election Propaganda: “Significant Losses for Both Sides”
The local elections have been a complete disaster for the Tories. They have lost over 1100 seats (as of 7pm today). They have lost nearly forty councils. They have been destroyed. It’s a humiliation.
However, if you just read the headlines, you might not get this impression.
The BBC has gone with this:
The Financial Times went with:
Pressure Mounts on May and Corbyn over Brexit deal: Tories and Labour suffer losses
The Guardian likewise is misrepresenting the situation, with an even stronger focus on Labour: Their headline points out Labour’s “heavy losses”, there’s a Freedland opinion piece criticising Labour and even a special write-up about Labour losing control of Bolsover council.
Just for a quick reality check, here are the actual results:
Have Labour gained a whole bunch of seats? No. But the media effort to conflate Labour’s minor losses with the complete trouncing the Conservatives have taken is totally dishonest.
Especially bearing in mind the disparity in press coverage – Labour routinely have smear campaigns run against their members and their leadership, including fresh (preposterous) allegations of “antisemitism” the DAY BEFORE the polling for these seats.
This is nothing new. Last year the local elections were portrayed as total defeat for Labour, despite making gains and winning 80% of the mayoral elections. The gains “were not big enough” and Corbyn was “humiliated”. If this was a humiliation for Corbyn….what on Earth is today for Theresa May?
The propaganda on this issue is two-fold, it’s not just minimizing the Tory losses to attack Corbyn’s labour, it’s also attempting to turn the UK into a one-issue nation. Every vote cast, the media tell us, was cast by people thinking about Brexit. Labour’s “heavy losses” are allegedly because of remain voters flocking to the Lib Dems or Green party.
This doesn’t even hold water in the media’s own narrative – Bolsover council, which the Guardian choses to focus on, has slipped from Labour control into a stalemate. Bolsover voted 70% for Leave.
The Tory government, and the craven local councillors, have increased poverty, increased homelessness, cut social care, cut unemployment, cut the NHS, cut everything. Police are down, crime is up. The rich and mega corporations refuse to pay their taxes without censure, whilst 10% of the country is being hit with council tax bills they literally cannot afford to pay.
Have some people voted against the Tory’s because they want to remain? Of course. But more than that, the Tories are the party of brutal austerity, declining living standards, desperation, poverty and a return to a quasi-Victorian social divide.
The people hate them, and if the press would do their duty and hold power to account, then this electoral embarrassment could have been even greater.
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You’ve all forgotten dear Vince – he’s won the cup don’t ya know and has qualified for next season’s Champions League!!
Have you guys watched this? Two years old
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn ‘What Was Done’ *HQ Official*
Haven’t got much to say but did notice that the Greens, who under Bennett especially were very anti Israel and Zionism, have in fact made the greatest gains. Just an observation which I concluded was a strong message to the establishment that many voters are “against” Israel and “for” the planet. Also I am a remainer and voted Labour, so don’t quite understand how certain individuals might claim the Labour losses are due to Brexit. Whilst I might despise the EU I loathe the Washington regime even more and as previously I will protest any TPA the US userers want to mire us in.
“The Tory government, and the craven local councillors, have increased poverty, increased homelessness, cut social care, cut unemployment, cut the NHS, cut everything. Police are down, crime is up. The rich and mega corporations refuse to pay their taxes without censure, whilst 10% of the country is being hit with council tax bills they literally cannot afford to pay.” – true, but surely all of this pales into insignificance when compared to the horrors of media invented antisemitism, or the fact Labour is over run with extremists wanting to reassert the post-war settlement, or who fail to embrace all aspects of Blairism, especially the bits about killing people in the Middle East while claiming it is for their own good?
By the way was there an election in Tory Northampton in the end, or have they had to sell off municiple offices in order to pay various out-sourcing debts, meaning there is effectively no longer a local authority in place?
Poisoned chalice, local authorities – services teetering on the brink, and no money to address the deep rooted structural problems that caused failings in the first place.
The Greens and Liberals may be cashing in on Lab/tory dissafection but it will almost certainly prove to be a pyrrhic victory.
The Tories won 3,564 seast to Labour’s 2,021 last Thursday, and the projected national vote share was 28% each. Labour losts eats they managed to win on the day they disastrously lost the Ed Miliband general election in 2015.
Brexit is unravelling both of the main parties and I wouldn’t even bet a fiver on JC being leader of the largest party after the next GE.
The parallels between politics in the UK and in the US, the spins, the parties, the mealymouthed prevarication of the press and the affiliations of the main players becomes more and more striking.
Absolutely, and a key dilemma at the heart of the Brexit convulsions, as I see it.
A: Brexit – although this choice theoretically offers greater scope for democracy, in reality it delivers what’s left of our infra structure to US corporations and their right wing allies in Albion, who, like hyenas, will feast on whatever scraps are left by the US lions.
B: Remain – although this choice theoretically offers short term economic, and logistical stability in reality it cede what’s left of national self-determination to banking fiat or the whim of unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels.
“…although this choice theoretically offers greater scope for democracy, in reality it delivers what’s left of our infra structure to US corporations and their right wing allies in Albion”
A very good definition of the meaning of the term ‘defeatism.’
From the outside, the shameful invasion and rendering poodling to the Americans does not shed soft flattering light on any national self-determination. Invasion monkeying seems a low aspiration bar. As was widely reported, the American military envies the GCHQ which does things they “could never get away with”. Why tie your wagons to a decaying amoral Empire? Leaving will indeed force you further into the tentacles of a country which will not have your best interests at heart and will use and abuse you as long as you give them the respect they cannot get from anyone else.
Of course the annoying way the French and Germans, and the EU, do things is unpalatable but this Hobson’s choice is not even close to being balanced, imo. The notion that somehow the Commonwealth will step up for you ignores the sea changes in some of those.
-1027 -72 +556 -32 +151 +210 = -214
Shouldn’t the number of seats gained and lost add up to zero?
Local Elections : MSM Nonsense – and the real message for politicians
https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/local-elections-msm-nonsense-and-the-real-message-for-politicians/
A lot of those local councillors are officials that the Labour Party could do without. Many of them represent everything that Labour is fighting against, from austerity to imperialist sympathies.
Take Glasgow, for example.
The centre-left, which includes the Labour Party, SPD, PSOE, PS, PASOK as well as the US Democrats have sold the pass. The ideology of this group of piecemeal reform from within has been swept aside by the neo-liberal counter-revolution. It’s time has gone. It is now in thrall to the neoliberal/neoconservative ascendancy. It is part of the problem, not the solution. Social-democracy in the advanced economies after the crash of 2008 had long been neutered; erstwhile social-democratic parties had become cheerleaders for financial deregulation. Rump lefts had failed to grow in thirty years; late-90s alter-globo movements seemed to have been wrong-footed by the harsher international climate of the war on terror as well as the phony war on terror and cheerleaders for NATO – NATO being little more than an army of occupation in Europe. The civil war in Greece – under a Labour government – and Korea saw the loyal Social-democrat elites on the wrong side, as usual.
It seems to me a rather strange political fact that time after time their supporters invest their time and commitment, knowing in their hearts that Labour is not going to give them what they promise. Yet they come back for more. The Labour party is a deeply conservative organization. In sociological terms the party, and like organizations in general, suffers from ‘goal displacement’: from being a means to an end, presumably socialism, the party and its permanence and continuity, becomes an end in itself.
This is not going to change, we can see already the adaption to the norms of late capitalist society, the pattern will repeat itself as it always has.
A new type of opposition possibly Parliamentary, extra-Parliamentary or both must emerge with a Will to Power if there is to be any hope for the future.
The teleology of a truly socialist party would be to absorb its own power superstructure, transversalising power to be distributed equally among the autonomous unity of a self-sovereign people …not its own perpetuation, as you say. No matter how long this takes. Which, coming from the four hundred year colonisation and capitalisation of consciousness – may well be a mighty long time.
It is precisely the Nietzschian will to power that must be overcome. This leads to the immediate despotism of an Ubermensch and and Untermensch – the Master/Slave dialectic. And yes, this is a misreading of Nietzsche – but you don’t expect the power-knowledge regime to correctly interpret anything. It is their vocation to misunderstand, to interpret for power, to act as sole intercessors for interpretative rationales, and to impose their manipulated meaning on us. For the spoon-fed authoritarian massif to bleat: Nietzsche – didn’t he play for Arsenal?
The will to power is the desire to be more, to acquire more, to valorise ones status and wealth, to become a supra-agency wielding more and more captured autonomy as power. It is an insatiable, but not inevitable, will in humankind. It is the radical root of all hierarchical power regimes. Regimes that keep the majority dumbed-down and infantalised wards of illegitimate authoritarian power regimes of manipulated truths. This is the split humanity of a cognitive elitism: and the cognitive repression of the majoritarian consciousness.
This inversion and subversion is exactly why humanity is consciously depressed. Capitalism itself is a split consciousness materialism which has developed, through the incessant of the will to power – into a monomania …monomaniacal materialism …entailing monomaniacal status, wealth and power.
It is not inevitable because the will to power is spurious conception, a culturally contrived linguistic fiction, and a statist constructivism in the service of its own statist power regime. It is not a natural or organic part of the processual consciousness …actively engaged in the continuum of living experiential. It is a post hoc invention that needs constant reaffirmation. Without incessant rectification, it is literally nothing. Why be ruled by a metaphysical mystification, a nothingness – a hypostasised confection of language and culture?
The will to power is a postulate of a temporally extended, fixed, substantive Being – which does not exist. Humanity cannot seem to come to terms with this absolute truth. So we keep on postulating. And we keep on reifying the will to power, until, as Nietzsche said – the will to power is everything. Everything we have built on a faulty postulate. Humanity would do well to nihilate the will to power, the pseudo-Beingness of control, the transhuman Ubermensch, the eternal return of the transcendental ego. In favour of life, life systems, and life cognisant of life …reading the ever changing harmonic patterns of nature (Li). Nature is not fixed, and nor are we. We have no will to power – we are the greatest wealth in the universe …if and when we take our place and part in life – the shifting dynamic pattern language of nature. We cannot be more than we already are. The will to power takes us away from our original wealth. It can never return us to it.
Errata: that’s reification, not rectification. And that was the keyboard, not me!
I mean ‘Will to power’ (wille zur macht) in the sense that a radical or revolutionary movement which means business; a movement that perforce is going to upset the apple-cart and not play by the rules set by the class enemy. A movement with a fundamentally different world-view from the status quo. Unfortunately our HM’s loyal opposition exhibits a Will to Surrender; a craving for respectability and acceptance by the PTB.
Nietzsche puts it well.
”Is not the true questioner/inquirer totally indifferent to what the results of his enquirer may be? For when we inquirer are we seeking for peace, rest, happiness? No, only for the truth, even though it may be in the highest degree ugly and repellent? Here the way of men divide: if you wish to strive for peace of the soul and happiness, then believe. If you wish to be a disciple of truth, then inquire.” (letter 1865)
What is N saying? If you want a peace and quiet life you must conform and prostrate yourself to the status quo. If you want to change the world you must seek and expose hidden truths and heresies and expect retribution from the same PTB: Julian Assange anyone? The choice is politics as an imposed and internalised system of thought, behaviour and legitimation, or a will to transcend this increasingly ossified corpse? New knowledge is based upon a critique of existing knowledge. This is in part due to objective material conditions, but also to human will and volition. I would have thought this was all common sense.
Like RT says. Question More.
The very essence of Zen is to question more …to question more until the very process of questioning is exhausted. This is the problem of common sense – we desperately need uncommon sense. Every element and hidden truth parameter of the culturally acquired knowledge system is a heresy, and its linguistic reification needs to be questioned …until it disappears. Reality is nondual and cannot be interrogated via dualism. This is the basis of the Cartesian Error Protocols. There are no answers: it is the answering itself that is the problem. Especially when the answers become cherished beliefs. To answer is not to answer. All conceptual answers are ultimately false anyway. Nagarjuna showed this. To be free of the need to answer is to be free of the need to question …which is to be free of the need to inquire further. Which is to be ultimately free.
Then nature becomes the ultimate pattern language that we can ‘read’. Not impose our dreadful anthropocentric carnivore cultural oppressions on …reflecting back the justification – rooted in reductive, mechanical, scientific materialism …which is self-alienatingly neoliberal.
Rationality is solidly control and determinism …and ontotheological dominion. Over nature and over an ersatz-animalism – that is only rationalities shadow. It is an invented and habituated false patterning repressing consciousness. One that is culturally received and inter-subjectively reified as our cultural ossification. That is why we are stuck with deeply ingrained cultural patterns of belief and behaviour that are cannibalising culture and economy. Recognising and harmonising with the natural patterns of change is the age old perrenialism …as old as the Dao itself. Which is ageless, untouched by time.
The Western mind is the whole of the problem. Anything that comes from it is already split ..culture apart from nature. And N himself was as Cartesian as the rest of them. The Western mind is a closed dynamic of dialectical materialism. Materialism itself is an unnecessary bifurcation of consciousness. We are chasing rainbows, trying to make them fixed and static …which is to destroy them. When we stop the process of inquiry, when we stop the process of questioning, when we stop the process of answering …the rainbow reappears.
The world we want deep in our hearts, the holism we crave that materialism will always deny, the sense of belonging, the inter-communion and interbeing of humanity and nature, the deep sense of grace and beauty, the humility and minimalism of an authentic self-sufficient economy, and the wisdom of a true to life politique – are already manifest in our current inter-relation with an organic and natural reality.
No government or hierarchical power, wealth and status tributary system will ever make this apparent. We are being lead away from our future with ever more autocratic intent. When will we stop and realise we have more here, now, in ourselves …than we can have in an uncertain future?
The answers to the worlds problems are already manifest and really rather simple. Over-reliance on oil – stop using oil. AGW – stop using oil (the carbon giant top tier emitters are the 8 largest oil companies [Heede]). Entropy – stop using oil. Debt – you guessed it.
We end imperialism, war, materialism, racism, sexism …you name it, when we transition away from oil. To do that, we have to disengage from the materialist dialectic oil affords. To do that we have to re-engage our senses into the patterns of nature …by fully engaging with the present. No need for materialism, no need for militarism, no need for imperialism, no need for racism …no need to question ever again. Voting won’t make it so.
Thanks. I enjoyed reading this.
People are hypnotised and indoctrinated by forces of evil who know exactly what they are doing and how to manipulate the masses. Bill Hicks made the point that our institutions are no longer relevant. They are preventing our evolution. First step is to expose religion for what it is……fraudulent, man made, out dated systems of control which are still brainwashing children and ruining society to this day
Or, as Ken Wilber described it: the ‘Holographic Paradigm’
(Every tiny piece contains the All).
As in David Bohm’s ‘Wholeness and Implicate Order’
My apologies, BigB for trying to “summarize you”:
“the will to power is spurious conception, a culturally contrived linguistic fiction, and a statist constructivism in the service of its own statist power regime. It is not a natural or organic part of the processual consciousness …actively engaged in the continuum of living experiential. It is a post hoc invention that needs constant reaffirmation. Without incessant reification, it is literally nothing.”….
I could only add that not just that conception but in fact all concepts are essentially spurious…all of them are unnatural
Exactly: got it one. You cut the cultural Gordian Knot not be thinking about it…
…and not by not thinking about it.
As I mention in my reply to Big B below you miss the point. The Labour Party that you so enjoy talking about is in the process of transformation into a democracy. In its previous incarnations Labour has always been dominated by an almost feudal leadership. In this New Labour differed only superficially, and for the worse, from the old Labour of MacDonald, Attlee and Wilson, all of them ‘top down’ parties dominated by bosses.
For the first time in its history Labour is now becoming democratic.
And, for its pains, it is chastised as being unchanging: its doom long predicted in Arthur Henderson’s conservatism and Jimmy Thomas’s greed, in Snowden’s narrow mindedness and Ramsay Mac’s snobbery.
Oh and another interesting aspect of the situation, this largely arose because Ed Miliband ran out of Blairite ideas and had to consider those that he’d rejected around the family breakfast table. Funny the way that these accidents occur.
AS I mention in my reply to Bevin below: the Labour party represent the antithesis of democracy …as well as the depoliticised end of democracy. Not least over Brexit: which is post-democratic and Constitutionally High Treason.
How did Labour’s democratic justice and universalism serve Julian Assange – when was deliberately depersoned on world press freedom day? Without press freedom – what is democracy?
And, for reasons I go into, but can only really scratch the surface, until we all get up to speed on the risks to humanity …I am standing by my claim that, since the national climate emergency psyop – declared and led by Corbyn – Labour is now a clear and present danger to the future, and the continuance of all life on earth. If you think that is overwrought and melodramatic, I suggest you get up to speed – fast. Support for Labour costs the earth. Uncritical blind-faith legitimation of the climate emergency – and Labours energy policies (which will likely come from the CCC paper published on Thursday – which I have begun to expose as an energy sink scam below) will, at the very least, ruin our economy …at worst, ruin a lot more.
Taking away any say from the Unborn future generations – so we can have champagne socialism and neoliberal globalism now …under the depoliticised suzerainty of EU/NATO occupation – where is the democracy in that?
And, to be clear: we are facing a broad church Human Impact crisis. One which does require urgent, belated, and fully focused attention. Only, the policy guidance outlined in the CCC will only catalyse the problems. Creating the mass hynotic hysteria that the problem is being dealt with – no more worries. This deliberately falsified sense of complacency will lead to far greater problems down the line. When some of the Unborn will be born – only to inherit the desolation that Labour policies, amongst others, will bequeath them. Where is the democracy in that?
If you think I have lost the plot, you may well have a case. But that would be because some are claiming the inversion that anti-democracy is, in fact, democracy.
If you haven’t already, you can at least read the backstory to the XR Rebellion, Great Thunberg’s climate strikers, and Cobyn’s neoliberalised science fiction climate emergency astroturfing for some of the darkest forces on the planet. Some of that $100tn is your welfare, healthcare, or pension they intend to steal, if that makes it real. Get on board. If we want a future, it is going to take all of us rejecting tout court Labours simulated democracy. And forging Universal Humanist policies, for the future our leaders won’t give us. That is democracy in action.
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
A new type of opposition possibly Parliamentary, extra-Parliamentary or both must emerge with a Will to Power
No thanks, I’d rather work on fixing social democracy than opening to the doors to another Stalin or Hitler.
There really is no other way, human history is littered with the corpses caused by extreme politics.
“If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.” Gutle Schnaper. – Mayer Amschel Rothschild’s wife.
That’s what happens when you have a two-party-system.
After power toggling backwards and forwards a couple of times – no delivery for the people displeases the people. Conditions keep deteriorating.
People’s reactions are rejection of that power structure which does not do the trick, either by electing outsiders, TV stars, or fresh looking newcomers because they haven’t been coopted by the powers and moneys which rule from behind the curtain. They simply need to elect someone from outside that system.
When the Wall fell in my hometown in 1989 we thought the world would improve. Instead we got more polarization, poor people/rich people, peace seeking people/war engineers.
Wilmers31, what you say is true. However, we have, as the opposition in this country, a Leader in Jeremy Corbyn who has a clear vision and focus and yes, a costed Manifesto, on how to end Austerity, the housing shortage, the poverty etc. At the root of these policies is an equal distribution of wealth so the rich will be taxed as they should be not the paltry amount they pay today. The Labour Party currently pose a threat to the establishment because they have a Manifesto that will ring the badly needed changes in this country, will challenge US new world order politics in breaking away from the alleged ‘special relationship’ and other economic policies which would have a serious impact on the status quo – i.e. the establishment. Corbyn has been subjected to the most sustained vicious, malicious, slanderous, poisonous campaign in UK Political History, even though he is a Privy Councillor and the Leader of the Opposition. This campaign by the MSM is in order to smear him to the point that the public do not see him as either a viable PM or a dangerous one. I commend Corbyn for sticking to task and focus, for running a brilliant General Election Campaign back in 2017 amidst this malice and for slashing the Tory’s parliamentary majority. God has given Corbyn the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior. I sincerely hopes he becomes the next Prime Minister of the UK.
The problem with elections is that politicians get elected.
Politics is the sly game of expedience.
It’s a lose-lose situation for the proles.
Politicians are useless. In my country, gardeners are drafted into government for a three-year stretch.
Chauncey Gardeners?
“if the press would do their duty and hold power to account”
Lol, well, there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.
I can’t speak for others but I voted Lib Dem as in my locality they campaigned to save our few green fields. And Labour have been bragging about putting those hump on all of the streets in my city. A major turn off.
Apparently the turnout was low, so I expect people are fed up with politicians: perhaps the sheeple are beginning to wake up to the fact that they are routinely lied to by that rabble.
Lol, well, there’s a first time for everything, I suppose.
Since 2014, no-one has been caught speeding in my country. Every vehicle has a speed limiter.
“Anti Semitism” smears helpfully thrown in as a distraction.
That nauseating little turd Robinson quitting the Labour Party because of yes, you guessed it, “anti semitism.”
Another “anti Semitism” scandal because of a single reference to Rothschild in a book written years ago.
Professor Sassons response to Freedland’s smear exposes the fascile nature of Freedlands logic.
“The campaign about antisemitism in Corbyn’s Labour party is getting absurd (Corbyn urged to explain his praise for antisemitic book, 2 May). Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study has been taught for years in universities up and down the country (I taught it myself). No one has ever felt the need to highlight the 10 lines or so, in a book of 400 pages, which are antisemitic, but Corbyn was expected to do so.
Anyone who had not heard of this text would be forgiven for thinking this is antisemitic text. It is not. It was an extremely influential study of imperialism (it even influenced Lenin) and has always been read as such. I do not remember any article in scholarly journals making a point about that paragraph on the Rothschilds and the “race” which, Hobson claims, was so influential. The paragraph is completely marginal to the text. Far less marginal are Hobson’s comments about the “lower races” (ie black Africans) and what to do with them – also very common at the time (Part 2, Chapter 4). So why expect Corbyn (did he really read the entire book, it’s heavy going, believe me) to even mention that passage?
Should everyone who discusses Virginia Woolf point out that in a letter she notes how perturbed she was at sitting next to Sir Philip Sassoon, described as an “underbred Whitechapel Jew” and reflecting “How I hated marrying a Jew – how I hated their nasal voices and their oriental jewellery, and their noses…” (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. IV 1929-1931, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York 1979, pp.47, 195). Beware Woolf scholars who fail to mention that: the anti-antisemitic police may be after you. And how about Sidney Webb, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, when secretary of state for the colonies in the 1929 Labour government, explaining that he was pleased that there were “no Jews in the British Labour party” and that while “French, German, Russian Socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free”, adding that was probably the case because there was “no money in it”.(Paul Kelemen, The British Left and Zionism: The History of a Divorce, Manchester University Press 2012, p.20). And even Theodor Herzl, the “father” of Zionism, when describing an elegant soiree at the Berlin home of a wealthy businessman in 1885, lamented the presence of “Some thirty or forty ugly little Jews and Jewesses. No consoling sight”. (Amos Elon, Herzl, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1975, p.69)
I could go on but won’t. I only wish people who disagree with Corbyn dealt with his policies and cease this ridiculous hunt for possible antisemitism in everything he does.”
Donald Sassoon
Emeritus professor of comparative European history, Queen Mary University of London
http://web.archive.org/web/20190502183154/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/02/jeremy-corbyn-hobsons-imperialism-and-antisemitism
Yes, there was ONE reference to Rothschild – p.57 – and no reference to Jew, Jews, or Jewish throughout a book of nearly 400 pages. Moreover, J.A.Hobson along with his contemporary L.T.Hobhouse both wrote for the MANCHESTER Guardian. Both were affectionally referred to as ‘The 2 Hobs’ They were well liked by Guardian editor of the time, C.P.Scott.
And CP Scott was very Zionist-friendly.
The spin from BBC began almost as soon as the first results were declared – Tories and Labour “suffer heavy losses”. When I read that first thing this morning I assumed the losses were on a similar scale for both parties. Not so at all, even at that early stage. Now, with all the votes in, I’ve no idea how a total loss of less than a hundred council seats could be described as a “heavy loss”, disappointing as it might be for Labour not to pick up seats.
Clearly this had all been in planning for days or weeks by Downing Street – that Labour would be made to share the humiliation and it would all be portrayed as a revolt against the established parties to keep the heat off the Tories.
What has gone badly wrong with the spin is a) the scale of the Tory losses and b) that the votes went to the Lib Dems and Greens, hence contradicting the twin pro-Brexit narrative.
What a shame our mainstream media appears to be part of the Tories’ PR arm.
I agree, however what I also noticed was:
FIRST practically no news coverage beforehand
AIM low turnout
RESULT turnout 36.3% down from 65% when the same seats were last contested on the same day as the general election
Labour always does far worse on a low turnout
SECOND The latest anti-semitism smear.
Nick Robinson on the Today Programme gave the latest smear away when he asked why Corbin could not be bothered to look up Hobson on Wikipedia.
The view history tab the on John A. Hobson page on Wikipedia shows that it was edited Icewhiz and Philip Cross between 5:05 am and 8:08 am on 1 May to include for the first time the anti-semitism accusation against Hobson. Philip Cross needs no introduction. Icewhiz was awarded The Israeli Barnstar of National Merit.
This “story” had originally been broken on 30 April by Murdoch crony Daniel Finkelstein in The Times
THIRD Labour’s losses in its North East heartland.
Who lost – Blairite local councillors
Who won – Independents who were former members of the Labour party
Evidence of a vote for Brexit – hardly
New independent Middlesbrough Mayor Andy Preston headed the Britain Stronger in Europe the campaign’s business ambassador for the Tees region, but you won’t see that mentioned anywhere in the MSM.
The Labour vote held up remarkably well I thought.
So the BBC’s headlines dissembled.
How very BBC!
Still, a minor indiscretion compared to its beat-up of the “antisemitism crisis” in Labour.
The BBC should be democratised or – if it cannot be – closed down.
Should have said ‘fake “antisemitism crisis”‘.
So we spin the spin? Into champagne socialist hopium?
It is quite clear that the vote was an admonition of the dominant binary globalist war parties. Whether that be purely over Brexit is a matter of contention. Who knows the why, but volitional High Treason – from both parties – is volitional High Treason. Neither is fit to govern, and that seems to me to be the Zeitgeist …not the neoliberal polyarchical apologia.
The government is not working. The government – as detailed in today’s UK Column News – is not the government. Mark Sedwill appears to be the government – usurping deregulatory powers that Tony Blair used to bypass Parliamentary ‘democracy’ – to run the “May Cell” …a tightly controlled cabalistic politburo of neoliberal occupation.
Anyone who thinks a Jeremy Corbyn led government will somehow counteract this tendency, seems to me to have not been paying very much attention. It has been my observation that JC has become part of the neoliberal Nomenklatura over the last two years. It seems that he has played an understated, but significant, part of the negotiations for the Brexit High Treason betrayal. Reports this week that he and the May Cell have been collaborating do nothing to dissuade me.
And we entered a Labour national climate emergency on Wednesday. And it is an emergency, make no bones about it. If the country acquiesces and enacts the energy-sink hidden-debt infrastructure-led measures laid out in yesterday’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) paper – they will be voting for their own self-alienation from nature. And their own enpauperisation. So we can have a debt-deflation simulacra of progress and prosperity under pseudosocialism and neoliberal globalism for a little while longer. I can now put an outside date on that ‘little while’ – 2030-35 (the undecidability is not mine – it is in the paper).
If, by some miracle, we liquidate $100 trillion globally, privatise nature, and enact Labour’s pilot ‘parliamentary’ eco-activism – by the time we reach 2030-35, having built all the hydrogen economy, new nuclear, BECCS, hydrogen CCS, and DACCS infrastructure …invested in 12.5 million electric vehicles, hydrogen HGVs, and 2 million heat pumps – and committed to an unworkable programme that will not even deliver ‘net zero’ (without extra measures) …we will not be able to go, oops, sorry, it’s not working …let’s try something else.
The Labour party is a clear and present danger to all life on earth. It is banking, literally banking (see the backing list of corporate globalists in Cory’s work), on our ignorance, in order to extend the champagne socialist techno-theological imaginal, and the neoliberal globalism of EU/NATO occupation, into the 21st century. Not very far into the 21st century, another decade or so.
They are not fit to govern. If we follow where they lead it will shortly be obvious we are on the neoliberal via dolorosa to debt deflation and heat extinction. Ever wondered what the ‘X’ in the XR Extinction stood for – after their short term XR Business site went live? Exponential.
The X Agenda is leading to extinction, and Labour are leading the way. Do not follow them.
https://winteroak.org.uk/2019/05/02/the-x-agenda-what-does-xr-actually-stand-for/
BIGB
Why do you keep banging on about hydrogen, nuclear and geosequestration?
Hydrogen is an energy sink – check the laws of thermodynamics
Nuclear – what about the waste?
Geosequestration – unfeasible and a corporate ploy to create a legal structure to bury nuclear waste
Why do I keep banging on about them? For exactly the reasons you say. The CCC – which is clearly going to be a policy focus document, to become the basis of the major energy strategy of the UK in the next Parliament. That is, it will be implemented in some form by either of the major parties (no one is expecting the LibDims to win a GE). Its implementation commits us to a neoliberal imperialist energy strategy up to 2050. It commits us the (free) market principles, hidden subsidies, and hidden debt – mainly up front as debt financing infrastructure.
Which makes the CCC, its political implementation, and its probable geopolitical implementation – as the UK seems to be the leading ‘Parliamentarian’ green activists …a threat to all life on earth. It will ruin our economy, at the very least …because it is based on three spurious energy sinks. The energy that will be lost will be greater than the energy generated – which means we will have energy, but no welfare, pensions, healthcare, or education. I’m seriously hoping actual scientists – perhaps even Charles Hall – will destroy the false energy logic – based solely on usage, not life cycle analysis, EROI, or true cost accounting principles.
Which make both of our leading parties, on the basis that they will commit to the CCC ‘zero energy’ strategy, a threat to all life on earth. We won’t even reach the ersatz ‘net zero’ in the core scenario. We will have to commit to “Further Ambition” strategies. Which means that we will be frontloading our economy with debt, with no chance of a return on income. And no return on income means no appreciable standard of living for the many, while the neoliberal plutocracy rake in our future.
This country has followed and legitimated a succession of poor leadership since, when do you want to start? For me, that would be Thatcher, by the time I was politically active. Everything they have done has been legal, and quasi-agreeable – under the terms of a sham democracy – to the people. If we follow the current two party hegemony into Europe, and into implementing these energy policies – we are foreclosing the future for humanity. We will be abdicating our social and environmental responsibility, effectively saying to the children, and grandchildren – sorry, we badly fucked up so we could have short term pseudo-prosperity …handing them an environmental disaster zone of our making and saying – you sort it out.
That is why I keep banging on about it. To counter the POV that if we keep on voting, eventually they will get it right. They have no intention of getting it right. They have every intention of rebranding neoliberalism as green. Which is like putting fair trade, non-animal-tested, eco-lipstick on a pig. If, out of sheer laziness, lack of education, and lack of imagination, we follow the neoliberal polyarchy …we are heading for omnicidal extinction. Instead, we should be looking to capture the anti-political mood of the country with the positive vision of community integration with nature. Which no political party is capable of.
So, expect a lot of banging on about it coming from yours truly. As Howard Zinn said: our problem is not civil disobedience, it is civil obedience. False allegiance to imperialist and militarist leaders and their false visions of techno-theological ersatz prosperity …that will literally cost the earth.
BTW: where do we get all the materials from? Are we going to have hydrogen F-35s over the G5 Sahel? And what of China’s involvement in the same region, competing for the same minerals? There is a major threat of internecine warfare hidden in the CCC. Humanity needs a real vision of an ‘ecological civilisation’. Our leaders, all of them have betrayed us. Yesterday could be the tipping point for humanities independence. It probably won’t be, but it should be. Will we rue the day we went back to legitimating the neoliberal vision of ecological civilisation? Yes, we will. By which time it may be too late. That is why I am shouting. Don’t expect me to stop!
BIGB
My apologies, I misinterpreted your original comment and thank you for such a comprehensive reply.
In my own case I bailed out of dodge over 30 years ago as I witnessed the writing on the wall.
These days I am not up to speed on what is really happening on the ground in the UK other than being a fervent supporter of the good guys down at UK Column.
Cheers
The problem -as I see it – is connected to our capacity for emotional investment. People are emotionally invested in Corbyn’s leadership to such an extent that they have to ignore the contradictions, just as they are invested in the Greta story or the ‘XR’ story as ‘rebels with integrity winning against the odds’. So we see good people mischaracterise or dismiss rather than address the evidence that points to another reality.
Not that I am saying that emotional investment is not a human thing. Maybe it’s the quintessentially human thing.
‘Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.’ – and all that.
However, the sociopaths who shape and steer society use the public’s capacity for emotional investment against us, to manipulate even the most discerning, critical thinkers. The former are, of course of the cold calculating variety.
I’ve not read a way of defending ourselves against this. If we are not led by the heart, then there is no point. Yet the deceivers seem to still be winning out.
‘Keep fighting’, as Lee Camp used to say.
I’ve read nearly 200 pages of the CCC, which is not easy. It is pure fantasy. It is fantastical enough that the committee, the Royal Society, and Imperial College – the main research contributors – can actually think this can work. It is worse than even Robin and Cory could have imagined. They want to take gas – which we do not have – and convert it into hydrogen …to set up a whole hydrogen economy – running our energy, transport, and heating systems. That is fantasy. It becomes double fantasy when we either import the gas as LNG, or make it by the underground gasification of coal. If it wasn’t so damn serious, I’d have tears running down my face in laughter and incredulity. They are assuming 95% capture rate for CCS, And best of all: we are currently paying £60 MWh for energy …in 2050, with all this capital expenditure invested – we will be paying less – £57 MWh. Utter, utter, fantasy and magic unicorn projectionism.
But one ageing eco-activist is not going to stop the nation believing in this pernicious and mendacious neoliberal phantasmagoric pixie dust imaginary. And it has also split the eco world – with various media – such as Resilience – showing their neoliberal credentials. Most of the critique – from Richard Murphy, for instance – has been on really rather obscure websites. And the nations celebrities are lining up to endorse neoliberal imperialism and entropic heat death. Monbiot was on Democracy Now! with a very apt mental image – that capitalism is a loaded gun pointing at the heart of the earth – before going on to endorse XR, Greta, her Climate Strikers, the national climate emergency, etc.
BTW: we are no longer allowed to criticise Greta because of her Aspergers. So they are weaponising a childs disability in order to privatise nature. That is how low we have got to. Using a condition to further neoliberal imperialism, climate racism, and the destruction of nature. That is who we are against. And it looks as though we are few in number. As the new Banksy says: “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”
Tactics: it is the eco-battle of Thermopylae …we may be only the Spartan ‘300’ …but…
I’ve read nearly 200 pages of the CCC
Fuck !
That is honourable and slightly insane, if you don’t mind me saying BigB.
I guess the split in the eco-world has always been there, although less apparent than at this juncture. Although I was too young to really grasp the details, I remember it as seeming obvious 30years back that only a full scale, global revolution stood the chance of averting the worst.
[sarc]
Now we are there!
I am fully behind the revolutionary vanguard of David Attenborough, George Monbiot, Christiana Figueres, Bono, Bill Gates, George Soros and the rest.
Climate capitalism is a ‘revolutionary force’ (said someone who read Marx once).
Here’s to net zero everything !
‘Viva la revolucion’ !
[/sarc]
https://winteroak.org.uk/climate-capitalists/
Well, I’ve been laid up again. I went back to work too soon. The M$M just did a glib analysis: we just do this and this and we meet ‘net zero’. Driving: no problem, Crack on with 2-3 cars per household. Just switch to EVs and FCEVs by 2030. 12.5 million of them. HGVs => hydrogen HGVs. Flying => no worries, synfuel and biofuel. Heathrow gets a new runway. We can still have open cast mining in Northumberland. Just eat a little less meat and maybe cycle a bit more.
That’s it: climate sorted …nothing to see – just carry on with your lives …we’ve got it covered.
Well I read the proposals, they aren’t even coherent. Like the 2050 projection of where the economy will be. What science fiction fantasy did they pluck that from? The way they sell it, this isn’t really going to cost much – because we have to build new infrastructure anyway. So they offset the costs of unmitigated gas generation against against CCS, or BECCS …look, it’s all free! Nearly. A lot of the costs of the initial capitalisation – which they do admit will be expensive – will only be reclaimed when everything is up and running …from 2035. That is when the shit will hit the fan. When they find out the initial capitalisation is not recoverable. By which time it will be too late. As I said below, the strategy is to offset the early increased carbonisation with negative emissions …mainly from fucking BECCS, which does not work.
I wouldn’t have known this from the M$M. The plan is imaginary. They have dreamt up a science fantasy agenda to pacify us whilst they rob the future. That is the kind assessment. Worse, they might actually believe it will work. Which, quite frankly is hilarious.
If it lasts, neoliberalism that is, until 2050 – which is highly doubtful – I will be 88. I shall take great pleasure saying I told you so! In the meantime, it would be nice to raise awareness as to how incompetent the CCC is. I’m planning on contacting Robin when I’ve finished …only 70 or so pages to go. If it wasn’t the squandered future of the UK – I would treat it as a comic! Tragi-comic perhaps?
I favour open-minded skepticism that remains optimistic, that is not vulnerable to cynicism. We can train ourselves to identify then shed our beliefs, to learn only from the consequences of our decisions and responses to the world. To be scientific, in other words, but truly unattached to any particular outcome, while recognising the endeavour is for organic life, for the crazy richness and wildness of it all, and expressly not towards some mechanical-utopian ‘perfection’.
Keep fighting, but with love guiding our choices and improving our wisdom as we go.
Wise words. Wise words I would do well to emulate. Unfortunately, I have become attached to a particular outcome – survival. In no spurious way, I see that threatened by the dead-end narcissism of our leaders, and as the majoritarian ethos that is internalised by the led. We are reaching a tipping point whereby that uncritical and blinded acceptance on faith of, well, one man really. Because no other politician is trusted. The entire faith in the political establishment is in one man. Who would support a Tom Watson, or Jess Phillips led Labour party? No one, I hope. Then why support a Corbyn led Labour party. Apart from the political figurehead, they are exactly the same.
Optimism can’t be blind: the concerns I have raised are real, not only for me. The enaction of the CCC is a blind alley that Corbyn seems to have been chosen to lead humanity down. As others have pointed out, he only ever paid lipservice to the climate before. Now he is a full-on eco-warrior leading the world into oblivion. Blind faith optimism and uncritical acceptance of this will get us all killed.
Love: it is the love of humanity that informs me, but how radicalised that seems. I often reflect on how abnormalised peace has become. It literally no place in politics at all. Nor is it wanted. It seems we are so normalised to neoliberal imperialism that peace is marginalised: perhaps permanently. There is literally no policy in any of the major political manifestos a true person of peace could support. None whatsoever. Our entire economy is based on militarised imperialism and bad faith bloodmoney: who could support that?
Well, quite a few seem to reserve the right to legitimate violence …so long as it is out of sight. And environmental degradation …so long as it is exported. There is so much hidden hatred and fear in either party manifesto it is incredible to me. The only game in town is to compare the two to each other: which in itself is a dialectic of hidden hatred and exported racism …in a dialectical materialist race to the bottom. Trying to save Labour’s reputation seems a very misguided form of blinded-faith optimism to me. One that is blinded to so much distributed hatred it is hard to believe.
I cannot remain overtly optimistic if the consensus is that Labour is a genuine authentic political force for, well, anything really. If people actually legitimate our accession to neoliberal EU/NATO militaristic imperialism …or consent to the national climate emergency enaction of a neoliberalised CCC energy policy …optimism will quickly become a thing of the past. What hidden hatred is Trident totemic of? But this is normalised by the one party who might end austerity. For who?
It is crux time: at some time we have to draw a line in the sand and say: this far and not further. They shall not pass. If we go down: I’m going down fighting. There is no room for manoeuvre: the consequences of the continued support for Labour curtail any optimism about the future prosperity of humanity. You only have to look at who is on board with the Extinction Rebellion …Mark Carney for one!
Which is an overlong apology, in order to say that I probably won’t be following your very good advice. A lot more people are going to have to stand up for what they believe. I always wanted to build a nice coalition of understanding, aligned for peace. That ain’t gonna happen. We are up against some of the most cynical people ever. Corbyn has crossed the Rubicon to join them. I have no idea why. Anyone uncritically following is crossing to the wrong side of humanities future. People need to wake up very fast as to what that means. Very fast. Hope and optimism are fading fast.
I don’t see what you wrote as being in disagreement with what I wrote. To me it reads like an agreement.
Sort of, my patience is wearing thin. I’ve essentially been saying the same thing for forty years. As, I’m sure you have. I’m running of of ways to say it nicely. The next few years will determine humanities fate. I’m not alone on that one. I do not feel that is unnecessarily melodramatic to say so.
As we are talking, it looks from what Davidson said earlier that Corbyn and May are close to a collaborated Brexit deal – which is what I have suspected since he met Barnier and Verhofstadt a few months back. I see a few are still trying to claim a moral victory for Labour on Thursday. A propaganda victory for Labour: a massive loss for humanity. I do wish we actually wanted freedom, rather than just celebrate our false consciousness subjugation quite so loudly.
From your earlier response: Which is an overlong apology, in order to say that I probably won’t be following your very good advice. A lot more people are going to have to stand up for what they believe. I always wanted to build a nice coalition of understanding, aligned for peace. That ain’t gonna happen. We are up against some of the most cynical people ever. Corbyn has crossed the Rubicon to join them. I have no idea why. Anyone uncritically following is crossing to the wrong side of humanities future. People need to wake up very fast as to what that means. Very fast. Hope and optimism are fading fast.
They say, don’t fight fire with fire. Nor should we fight cynicism with cynicism. No way would you advocate either. Hope and optimism are fading fast, you say. I’m sure that’s true, and I’m sure the notion of enjoying hope and optimism is a luxury the vast majority of humans cannot afford, can barely dare to dream of. But if we are to be engaged in the process of transcending the rampant narcissism we both identify as perhaps the root progenitor of humanity’s modern madness, and especially if our engagement is to be effective, hope and optimism are necessary ingredients to the degree that hopelessness and cynicism are obvious poisons to sustaining that engagement. I say this knowing that hope and optimism have rightly earned a bad reputation due to their front-and-centre role in too many people’s naive attitude to the world.
The next few years will determine humanities fate. I’m not alone on that one. I do not feel that is unnecessarily melodramatic to say so.
Humanity’s fate is always being determined by its actions. Anything else is an impossibility. If we wipe ourselves out, it will be because we were not up to the task of not wiping ourselves out; in some way we will have earned it, it will be the appropriate outcome, the natural consequence. Speaking for myself, I strongly doubt total wipeout. Life is very resilient, consciousness is almost endlessly creative. Again, I’m 100% certain you agree with this, and that you know full well it’s not up to you, the individual, or up to me, or anyone else, to lift everyone up out of X and into Y so that this catastrophe does not happen. All we get to do is try our best, not because the outcome of doing so is assured, or because our preferences are paramount, but because it is better/healthier for our evolution as individuals, and as consciousness more broadly, to try.
A propaganda victory for Labour: a massive loss for humanity.
That’s unnecessarily melodramatic. One of the beliefs that needs shedding is that it’s all about humanity. We the ‘civilised’ are almost hopelessly anthropocentric. We ought to address the many negatives of our collective solipsism (narcissism) as the core process of growing up as a species, in my opinion. I suspect you would agree with that too. But actually doing so refers us back to the appeal I made yesterday to take this process back down to basic principles and acting on them, iteratively. There is too much debate, too much discussion, too much noise by far. That’s one of the main reasons I stopped blogging, and started restructuring my life to be ready, as I almost am now, for action. And I think that’s what you want, more or less. But, realistically, any actions we undertake to build and develop the foundational elements of some new way of doing society are the merest beginnings of a centuries-long process of highly uncertain ‘ends’.
This is not The End. All hope is not lost because Brexit dies, or an EU Army is built, or our constitution is shredded, or whatever. It’s same as it’s always been to the degree that we try to do what’s right with no right or ability to control all the outcomes of our efforts. Free will is sacred, vital. Without it there is nothing at all we could call valuable. To close now and by way of compliment and gratitude, I have learned and benefited from your efforts, your generosity of spirit, the bigness of your heart, and I know many others feel the same way. It’s not possible to know exactly how we are effective and successful. That’s another quality of The Struggle, of Being. And it’s not that you don’t know this, it’s just that we all need reminding when things get wobbly.
Wobbly: I’m into my fourth week of a bronchitis, that is the worst I have had in my life. And that is not melodrama! So, I totally agree …but I am not quite feeling it at the moment.
The events of this week have been a cold, hard, reality check. I’m sure you are up to speed on the XR ‘exponential’ rebellion, etc. Hope and optimism were collectively rekindled this week …at last, we are doing something about the climate. Not enough, some say …but at least we are doing something. There has been little but blanket endorsement …finally, we get some action. How many people have said, as I do, if we follow this course of action …we ruin our chances of survival? As a percentage of populations – not even close to a single percentile.
Not only that, perhaps the most vocal and focus of a small group of dissenters, is Cory Morningstar. Who was attacked as a child abuser …or at least that was the very strong suggestion. And Greta Thunberg’s Aspergers has been weaponised as a defence mechanism for perhaps an extinction level threat from neoliberalism. You mention cynicism, how do we counter such cynical dark forces …when dissent is child abuse? These are the harsh realities of the current world situation.
Grant me at least that I am ahead of the curve on this. I have read much of the proposals, which will become either Tory or Labour policy. That will inspire widespread relief and optimism from the bourgeois liberal ‘free-trade-organic’ conscience. And best of all, we don’t have to do anything (eat less meat and cycle more – which the illiberal climate bourgeoisie already embrace). We can drive, fly and have all the ersatz-prosperity we want. Everyone will have green jobs. Whole new world leading industries will be created. The climate will be saved. Whales won’t have to eat plastic. And the economy will boom …hurrah!
The business community and the banks are cock-a-hoop. Drax and the nuclear industry love it (not least because Drax will continue to get £2mn – thats £2mn – a day …a day! …to continue to clearfell the planet and rape biodiversity …and they want to convert two more power stations – that’s £6mn a day in hidden subsidies …plus what they get for the development of CCS. That’s right: a major pillar of the proposals is not even developed yet. There is a reason for that – the hidden cost).
I do not know how deep your environmental knowledge base is. You probably know that a Hydrogen economy is not a primary energy source. You need a primary energy source to make the hydrogen (syngas or electrolysis). The infrastructure is capital intensive, and the energy lost in creating hydrogen is not available for other purposes (using natural gas to make hydrogen is a waste of natural gas). Which is exacerbated by us not having any real reserves of gas. So we have to make the gas to make the hydrogen – which is a massive energy sink (all conversions are entropic). This, after offshore wind, is the major pilar of the CCC. Science fiction.
So, not the end. Brexit is not the end. EU Military Unification is not the end. A Labour or Tory government is not the end. The CCC is not the end. The climate emergency, XR Rebellion, and Climate Strikers are not the end. The champagne bourgeois socialist hopium is not the end. The implementation of a science fiction hydrogen economy is not the end …but it is all adding up to something that is starting to look very much like the endgame: if not the end.
As already pointed out, the end will be deferred and displaced to circa 2035. That is when the energy policies not yet made will mature. That, my friend, may well precipitate the end – when there is no time to alter course (as stated: the early part of the CCC proposals will increase carbonisation – to be offset by negative emissions and a 95% rate of CCS capture – both techno-hopium for the moment – from 2035-50). If that plan fails – and we will not know until too late – we will be in a serious predicament …if not the end.
I totally agree with your list: but I have just sketched the techno-theological imaginal that will keep the majoritarian dream-desire production alive …for at least another 15 years. And those, like you and I, Crank, and a few others …are pretty scant on the ground. And it is now we need to act: if only as an alternative source of information. If we managed an anti-capitalist, anti-statist, anti-neoliberal, anti-pseudo-progress, anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear, anti-war occupation of central London …do you think we would be on the Ten O’clock news, invited into Parliament, be accommodated by the Met, have our tactics endorsed by the media, and have our demands enacted by MPs …after a couple of weeks of protest?
Or do you think we will be labelled child abusers, be pepper sprayed, and have our skulls caved in with batons and CS gas? You know the answer. That, taking stock this week, is where we stand. You, me, and the ‘300’ …a small but significant number who can see through the cynicism to the peaceful world, the one we know in our hearts is possible. The world that would destroy any last cynicism with its beauty. A world that is here today. But one that too few see through their displaced dream-desires of a techno-theological science fiction imaginary.
Perhaps, on reflection, the cynicism is not mine at all …it just rubbed off on me due to the magnitude of dark forces, dark money, and dark tactics, aligned against the future. You may disagree, but Labour is definitely on the dark side for me. And they have no intention of coming back …the serve the neoliberal Mammon. Some call this democracy, I call it the beginning of the end.
It is going to take an awful lot of light to illuminate our future now. I do believe it is possible. It’s just that I’m not feeling it right now.
I’ll start with your closing comments: I’m not a party-political animal. I thoroughly distrust the system as it stands but do understand that any system that dominates, let’s say, a planetary-ish culture generates a lot of ‘value’ that attracts a lot of ‘bad’ people towards it. It also has massive momentum and power to influence, seeing as we are social animals. It can’t be any other way. Corruption is an ever-present and corrosive reality that does not care about left-right differences.
Hopping back to earlier in your reply: I expect to be treated with whatever it takes to end me as a threat, should I raise my head far enough above the parapet to be a threat. Accusations of child-abuse, anti-semitism, etc., are to be expected. It’s a We See You As A Threat award. Because effective opposition must be annihilated, becoming an effective opposition to the insanity necessarily entails the threat of annihilation. And that is very tough indeed. If we fight, I mean truly fight, we risk death and ruin having ‘accomplished little’. Except for, of course, doing what our hearts tell us is the right thing to do. So if I become cynical – understandably in light of all the things you rightly list – I’d hope one of the 300 folks you mention will correct me on that, or at least try, in the name of doing that right thing.
As for the biosphere, I am not an expert. But, I do know enough to have thoroughly changed the way I live. My veganism is one part of that continuing process. I blogged all my ‘wisdom’ with all the rhetorical skill I could muster for years and discovered that people don’t want change. And that recalcitrance is as natural as anything else. Not to mention the excellently skilful PRopaganda pumped out 24/7. Again, I don’t choose to fight because I know we are going to win. It’s rather that I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I don’t want to not fight. I want to respect myself, love others, evolve, learn courage, become healthy in the deep sense of that word, and so on. Doing this iteratively, paying mindful attention to all perceivable feedback, I learn that the Self-Other dichotomy is fairly false, or sufficiently false for selfishness-altruism itself to start to dissolve as a dichotomy. In other words, it’s not about me, but it is about me as a part of Other. If one is sick, the other suffers.
What I’m looking to do by way of ‘action’ will be along the lines of ‘legal’ culture jamming that leads to abstention: a don’t-feed-the-beast strategy. I’m looking to begin building local community networks that enable meaningful, rich abstention from the madness that is as far from hair-shirt suffering as is humanly possible. And all of it legal. With small numbers initially – and this is extremely important – so as to learn and grow effective as steadily and robustly as possible. I do not want this to do anything like Go Viral as a fad. And, finally, it must all be towards something positive rather than against something negative.
But that does not mean that what you and others do so well by way of critique and information dissemination is superfluous. Far from it. It is equally needed, but not enough on its own. So we need both a mechanism for encouraging people to think twice, to wake up, as well as a kinda-sorta ‘within the system’ ‘alternative’ that has the practical potential to bed down widely while staying under the radar, unnamed, with no -ism attached to it, no leaders to speak of, operating a thoroughly honest, transparent, open but intelligently skeptical filtering process when it comes to effecting (little, local, practical) ideas and monitoring their effectiveness.
It’s early stages in my head and for others with whom I have been tentatively discussing the project. It has to start small, be self-funding, and rooted in a mature understanding of what it’s going to take, in each of us personally, and as a monumentally difficult task culturally. As for how much time we have, I can’t control that, and no one knows for certain. Again, all we can do is what we can do.
“Who would support a Tom Watson, or Jess Phillips led Labour party? No one, I hope. Then why support a Corbyn led Labour party. Apart from the political figurehead, they are exactly the same.”
You miss the point. The Labour Party has, for the first time in its long history become very close to a democracy.
New Labour (see Phillips and Watson above) was a self perpetuating oligarchy in which the PLP was selected by the leadership and then selected both leadership and policies. The Old Labour from which it evolved was dominated by bosses-Trade Unions with block votes, representing members almost never consulted, and regional Tammany style bosses from the big political/municipal machines, dripping with patronage and based on captive electorates.
This is now changed and changing: if you had joined Mandelson/Blair’s New Labour you would have had no influence until you had shown that you were a mere careerist (see Watson and Phillips above). But now the ideas that you share with OG’s readers could be shared with 500,000 fellow members, you could form resolutions and speak to them etc. And, the more democracy establishes itself-these are early days, McNichol has only recently left the premises, but things are different.
As to being betrayed by leaders-anyone who follows a leader deserves to be betrayed. The exception being those democrats who follow with a cattle prod in one hand and a megaphone in the other, to ensure that the leader is moving in the proper direction.
Bevin, we’ve been over this ground for over a year now. Everyone is responsible for their choices. If you form part of the constituency of consensus for a political organisation, you effectively hand your political autonomy and agency over to the party. Effectively you endorse and legitimate everything they do. No one can be in 100% accord, a bit of Realpolitik is unavoidable. Support of the labour party is support of the white helmets, regime change in Syria, NATO and its jihadis, the drang nacht oesten occupation of Europe …you know my list. I’ve posted it many times before. How can any of this be acceptable in the 21st century? It is not, it never will be, and right now, I have an especially low regard for those who still insist that Labour is an acceptable political force.
Since we last exchanged views, Corbyn has personally shafted Julian Assange. It was world press freedom day the other day. He honoured journalists everywhere – but ignored Julian. This is not the act of a principled man, but of a craven, spineless, coward. I have other words for him, but out of respect, I will at least keep it clean.
How can you even mention democracy, when Labour has betrayed it to neoliberalism and the militarised sub-imperialist EU. Earlier today we were being shafted by both parties, forging a post-democratic Quisling collaborationism with the EU/NATO government of occupation. You must have seen the justification posted (if not, it is still on UK Column) that this is an act of High Treason, forcing the Queen into perjury. This is not democracy. This is the antithesis and end of democracy. Selling us into EU/NATO suzerainty is the act of a treacherous betrayer of democracy …not a democrat.
And most recently, Corbyn has elected, or been chosen, to shill for some of the darkest forces on the planet. If you do not know the backstory to the XR Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s Climate Strikers, I suggest you read Cory Morningstar’s expose. If you do know the backstory, why the hell are you defending Labour? They are not a democracy: they are a neoliberal corporate shell company – representing the very worst capitalism has to offer. This is post- Browder, so that is saying something. There are some of the implications listed above, which I notice you studiously ignored.
On the basis that Labour is committed to enact some sort of combination of measures proposed in the CCC – I stand by my claim that they are now a clear and present danger to all life on earth. If you are not familiar with the proposals such as CCS, BECCS, hydrogen infrastructure, new nuclear …I can tell you what they all are – energy sinks. They are a total waste of dwindling resources in order to extend post-democratic champagne socialism, EU/NATO militarised occupation, and neoliberal globalism for a short while longer. For the few, not the many.
I am deadly serious that these proposals will seriously undermine our chances of survival. Especially if they are rolled out across the EU – and further afield …perhaps globally. Humanity will be putting all its eggs in one basket: something we do not have the moral right to do. If we massively capitalise these energy sink infrastructures, and they fail at scale – which, you can take or leave it from me, that they will – we do not get another chance. We will have squandered much of the natural resources that successive generations will need to survive. How can we even contemplate this? It is the greatest act of self-absorbed theft and greed humanity will know. In no meaningless way, it may be humanities final act …and I do not mean that allegorically or take it lightly. Labour has chosen to lead us on neoliberalisms via dolorosa: and still you want to defend them?
Absent the GFC 2: this will take a decade or more to play out. Plenty of time for everyone to mock that overwrought fool BigB for his inflammatory remarks on the web. Nothing will happen immediately. But once the policies are made, and the infrastructure projects signed off … the commitment is made. When we get to 2035: Corbyn will be long gone from office – but when his policies fail – what then? Perhaps you cannot see that these policies are doomed to fail. You will just have to take that from me, for now.
There will be no conceivable way to reimplement a new set of policies to reach – not ‘net zero’ – we need to reach actual zero. Even a dead stop will not work, because the plan relies on negative emissions in the 2035 to 2050 time period – to recover and offset the increased carbonisation of all the new infrastructure. The reports in the M$M were propaganda, and did not even mention any of the possible shortfalls. What we commit to now is our one shot …with no reprieve and no second chance. You can take it or leave it from me: but support for Labour is support for foreclosing the future. Where is the democracy in that? Do the Unborn children not get a say? Who will speak for them, if not me?
I can verify everything I say in a more detailed analysis. It is a bit early yet, but I am hoping actual peer reviewed papers will be published to substantiate my POV. To be honest, all of the proposals are well known to be unworkable in environmental circles. Support for Labour now costs the earth. There can be no defence of that.
Big B Hell, what are you on? You must live in a different country than me!
Our leaders, all of them have betrayed us. Yesterday could be the tipping point for humanities independence. It probably won’t be, but it should be.
(Above quote from a BigB reply below.)
I doubt we’ll have a tipping point that evolves into a coherent direction for a while yet but would very much like to see something sensible begin to coalesce. To that end and seeing as I said “sensible”:
Which non-controversial statements can be made that together suggest an imaginable vector for humanity that is, essentially, “None Of The Above”? How about, as a rough starting point:
1. Consumerism does not make us happy; it is a stream of endless distractions from our unhappiness.
2. Perpetual economic growth is neither possible nor desirable.
2a. What is it about economic activity that remotely suggests that it alone should grow forever?
3. Humans are, broadly speaking, social animals. As such, meaningful participation in a community of some kind is critical to our healthy functioning.
4. Wealth and health and synonymous. The former means nothing without the latter, whether we are speaking of individuals, groups, ecosystems, etc.
To fruitfully discuss elemental, non-controversial points such as these, that almost everyone might be able to agree on, would require we all drop baggage such as “socialism”, “capitalism”, “libertarianism”, “anarchism”, etc., and then slowly, carefully sort through our socioeconomic options using them as our guides. Hardly a new idea, I know, but confusion and obfuscation are so widely pervasive that it seems to me we are obliged to go back to basics to have a chance.
Obviously, this is no easy undertaking, but it is at least a way of framing a discussion, among however many people, that focuses the participants on what counts, what unites. We might also train ourselves to remember that as diversity is a foundational property of biological existence, should we hit upon agreed measures, they must also pass the sniff test of encouraging maximum freedom of expression as qualified by the needs of Other.
I for one would like to see this sort of thing start to happen.
Great to get some input from you Toby.
“THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM IS TO CALL THINGS BY THEIR PROPER NAME.”
― Confucius
This Blog by Toby Russel posits the ruling Elite, Hybridised Oligarchy call it what you will as a Danistocracy borrowed from Popp and Albrecht, http://thdrussell.blogspot.se/2011/12/from-here-to-there.html The medias role as the fourth Estate is brought center stage in this analysis with the Political Theater relegated to a role subservient to or co-mingled with the Main Stream media. This Speech , a rare one from Popp sets out much of what we need to do which could be summed up as Ignore the Bastards and do what you know will do some good. Do not pay attention to the Narcissists it only encourages them.
From the Russell blog:
More platitudes
barovsky, I assume you mean the whole article linked to was a string of platitudes, because the quote you took from it, being short and (probably almost verbatim) from Charles Eisenstein, can only really be a “platitude”, or at least nowhere near enough on its own. It is, as a simple observation, one of many to bear in mind in times as interesting as these.
But the article Roger kindly linked to is an open-ended recounting of the “Plan B” put forward by the German outfit Wissensmanufaktur, a plan that has a lot to commend it, in my opinion. It is far from platitudinous. In fact it is one of the more concrete sets of ideas and proposals I have come across.
Perhaps you misunderstand my position.
Toby you were well ahead of the curve in 2011 when you wrote that and I dare say you are still ahead of the curve now, probably not having stood still, or perhaps precisely by standing still and reflecting on the many viewpoints arriving and departing the set of ideas you so meticulously dissected on your ( and what remains one of my favorite) Blogs. Not only your Writing but the comments and discussion.
So long and thanks for all the fish ( another tall person wrote somewhere once) .
The best I came up with was this Trilogy, still writing the Fourth Part ( Conquest of Dough)
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/globalisation-un-entangled-a-found-poem-cipher-of-globalism/
Regarding real time democracy I am finishing off programming of Objective Kuhnts ( working title) a distributed web 3 publishing platform.
If you would like to write in the First edition please get in touch , serialisation of novels, poetry, and various multi media art content even TV series fiction and documentary all encrypted and all providing no middle man full payment to the Writers and artists. Uncensorable, immutable and eternal.
I have a few tricks up my sleeve to defeat the Alphabet and FB, NSA Media Complex monopoly
IPFS has already none most of the work of course but getting at the herded audience requires a few spoofs and feints as it were.
https://twitter.com/PMotels/status/1123459438365564928
It’s funny you should say that! What you sketch here is something I’ve been building up myself, more or less. So yes, I’m interested in joining forces and will be in touch. It really is time for action…
Big B you are talking about the current Tory Government. Labour under Corbyn offer an entirely different proposition and one this country badly needs: Redistribution of wealth and good old fashioned Keynsian economics. They are the only Party offering something completely different and are fit to Govern. Everyone can remember the Lib Dems coalition with the Cameron Tory Government – they aren’t fit to govern at all after that shambles – especially as they could have made a difference by voting against austerity.
Now let’s turn the community elections into the same result for the national elections.
Who lost over 500 seats? Only the Tories
My error, apologies. It was a number I picked up earlier today. Labour have actually lost 77 seats but the results are very revealing, aside that is from the awful lib-dems who probably would have voted Tory (I thought they were dead?). It’s massive gains by the unidentified, 656 seats gained and 192 to the Greens. So clearly the electorate are sick and tired of the same old shit, though they’ll get a good dose from the lib-dems.
Unless there’s a radical break with this ancien regime, we’re doomed I tell you, dooomed!
Skewered the mainstream spin right there.
How a party that loses about 4 or 5 % of its seats can in any way be equated with one that has haemorrhaged one quarter of its councillors is just simple outright lying. Not that I hold any truck with either of them.
The key lesson seems to be that the liberals are the protest vote choice, plus ca change…
Good luck with the website move OffG
We can never forget LibDem treachery in supporting a Tory government
No, no, 90 is very nearly the same as 1,330.
very sheepish about turnout as well. I think its been pretty low but can not as yet track down official figures.
I read the turnout around 30%.
The Lib Dems have done well you can’t mask that but how many of the votes are lent?
The LD’s won most seats where they were second to the Tories mainly in the Shires but Chelmsford was a big win alright.
The big towns and Cities didn’t vote so it’s difficult to transfer vote share into a forecast of a GE result.
Truth is though is that in a GE we would be discussing economic and social policy and not just theRemain/Leave
part of the whole domestic agenda.
The LD’s are still pro austerity as are Change UK and most Tories and that would be revealed in the process of a GE.
Labour would be more effective with its anti – austerity Manifesto than it was in the Locals and will be in the Euro Elections but the question is for Labour is: How can we bring this awful government down?
It is clear ( despite the BBC and other MSM outlets ) that the Tory Party is disintegrating before our very eyes and it could split more than two ways eventually.
My view would be to get on with the Euros in order to bury the Tories further and utilise the ensuing chaos that will arise if Farage’s Brexit Party totally splits the Tory vote.Yes – Labour will some as well but not in the same ratios as losses from the Tories to the Brexit Party.
I think the Brexit Party will do well but mainly amongst Tory Leavers. They represent the Leave Now vote.
The problem for Nige is that the Brexit Party has no MPs so that’s going to be a promise he and they can’t keep unless there is a GE.
Possibly by then things will be so bad in the Tory Party that even some ERGr’s might vote against May in a vote of no confidence in order to try and remove people like Grieve for example and replace them ( via the membership ) with more right wing Prospective Parliamentary Candidates.
A possibility does remain that May herself might call an election but that is an ultra nuclear option.
I don’t dismiss it if a deal is not agreed with Labour over the Withdrawl Bill.
Then again for both parties agreement over any deal is fraught with downsides and dangers.
Parliament has not changed and won’t until there is a GE.
The main question for all people and MPs who want to see the back of the Tories as a government and as a Party
is how to get a GE post EU Elections?
All the above is opinion only as we live in volatile times.
Five million Labour voters in 2017 also voted to Leave. They now realise the extent of Labour’s betrayal, and they won’t be voting for JC4PM.
I think the True Publica piece hit the spot:
Apparently there were a colossal number of spoiled ballot papers.
Unfortunately, they don’t count spoiled ballot papers
Yeah but they haven’t been much better for Labour either, they’ve lost over 500 seats! The political system is broke, don’t try to fix it!
Oh Dear. How do you equate -72 with -500?
I think I explained it.
I think there’s more than a fair chance that most of the 72 seats lost by Labour in the local elections could have been saved, and gains made, if that party’s municipal politics were not so rotten. For years now, majority Labour councils, such as mine in Lewisham have cut, cut and cut again. The result has been a haemorrhaging of vital services for the borough’s most vulnerable, causing untold misery and privation. The problem has been that when push comes to shove, Labour locally jumps to the Tory call for austerity rather than stand firm behind the borough’s electorate who are called upon to tolerate ever worsening services at an ever higher price as council tax soars. This situation is replicated around the country. No wonder voters are ditching their Labour councillors and electing LibDem and Green candidates in their place.
The ‘Brexit’ effect has been wildly exaggerated. Local elections are, first and foremost about local issues – about the frequency with which bins are emptied, street graffiti and flytipping as well as the just and equitable financing of social support. The Tories have indeed suffered a catastrophic setback, which I am sure will be widely celebrated on ‘Off Guardian’, but, equally Labour need to weigh up just how much their subservience to the Tories in making cuts has affected their showing in the present series of council elections.
I am a Labour Party member and a critical supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. I fervently hope that a Labour government is elected soon with him as Prime Minister. There will then be no further excuses for cuts. If they continue to be made we, the people, must draw our own conclusions and move beyond social democracy and Parliamentary politics.