DISCUSS: UK General Election Before Christmas?
A rapid volte-face from the Labour Party means the UK may be headed for a Christmas time General Election.
For those of you following, this is the second proposed GE in a just a few weeks. Labour voted down the other, claiming that they would only vote for an early GE once No Deal was off the table, and an extension had been approved by the EU.
The equivalent of declaring “I’ll only drive this car if you take the steering wheel off first!”
Nevertheless, those two eventualities came to pass. The UK will not be leaving the EU until January 31st 2020, and they won’t be able to leave without a deal.
Why this is at all a desirable state of affairs I do not understand, but Labour have got what they want, so Corbyn is prepared to back a new GE.
We’re ready to kick start the most radical, hopeful, people-focused campaign that this party has ever mounted.
We’re totally united. Totally determined.
It’s time for real change. #GeneralElection2019 pic.twitter.com/LJC8ETYJka— The Labour Party (@UKLabour) October 29, 2019
The rest of Labour seems less sure, whether that’s because they fear losing or are still actively trying to prevent Corbyn becoming PM is unclear. For whatever reason, a portion of the PLP is still (allegedly) trying to prevent the election happening, or even resigning in protest.
If it does go ahead, then what?
Well, unfortunately from Labour’s POV, that’s nothing like as clear as it was. A few months ago I would have said Labour would win at a canter, but they’ve busied themselves in self-humiliation since then.
Whether through incompetence or design Labour have spent a decent amount of the last 12 months actively disenfranchising their base.
The on-going campaign to undermine the Palestine issue by forcing anti-Israeli sentiment to mean “antisemitism” has weakened the Party’s standing, as has the loss of Chris Williamson – a charismatic and forceful speaker on the side of Corbyn’s socialist manifesto.
More than that, the slow and steady betrayal of all Lexit voters in the North will really hurt Labour in what is traditionally their stronghold areas.
In short, Labour’s chances rely on two things:
1) That pro-Brexit working-class voters in the North can look past the Brexit issue and vote on austerity and protecting the NHS instead
OR
2) That each Northen vote lost is countered with a Vegan teenager from Brighton voting for the first time.
Neither seems likely.
That said, and despite deep misgivings about an awful lot of “progressive” causes, the Green New Deal, banning Private Schools, the Gender Pay Gap and all sorts of other issues…Labour stills seems the only way to vote.
They are the only party (notionally) dedicated to ending austerity, decreasing military spending and increasing taxation on big companies and the super-rich.
Only Labour have a shot, or even the ambition, to actually make things better for everyone. No one else will even try. The Tories and LibDems will actively make it worse.
Somehow, it’s hard to see that saving Labour. Beset as they are with an ever dishonest and corrupt media, and a PLP that doesn’t want to be in government.
In 2017, despite the constant press doom and gloom, it really felt that Labour had momentum and opportunity. It’s hard to sense that same energy this time around.
Saying that, the Tories could easily lose a lot of Leave voters to the Brexit Party, or hard remainers to the Lib Dems.
It’s hard to see anyone coming out of this with a clear majority. Assuming it isn’t rigged.
- Will there be an early election?
- Will the Brexit Party split the Tory vote?
- How will the Lib Dems fare?
- Does Labour stand a chance?
- Does it matter anymore?
- Will the UK ever really leave the EU?
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What’s going on with Ch4 News and Tory BIM (uncle Tom) whatever? Every night he’s been the Tory spokesman on everything while saying nothing and looking pc.
Vote tory = get brino
Vote labour = get customs union + second referendum
Vote libdump = get rabies
People, this is your time to rid us of these tribes and declare a new national agenda = for the people, by the people
To all the lesser evil brigade. I think it needs pointing out that the UK is an imperialist country, and it will remain an imperialist country no matter who is in power. Under a Labour government we will continue to be pro-zionist – Labour Friends of Israel – pro-NATO, pro-Trident, Russophobic, under US occupation, and under EU-occupation. The permanent state bureaucracy will continue to hold power with governments of the day playing the role of legitimation.
You see Labour was designed to take office, not to take power or formulate and implement policies. It has effectively transmuted into a conservative bureaucracy it’s goal being to survive and expand, like all bureaucracies.
”The followers of a warrior or faith once they have achieved power, tend to degenerate with particular ease into a thoroughly commonplace caste of office holders.” (Max Weber – Politics as a Vocation)
Neo-liberalism and the markets will still retain their power without any substantive change in policy. After all we must be ‘competitive’ and prostrate ourselves to the dictates of the global market. Labour has drifted steadily to the right since 1945 and the process has become irreversible. Any connexion it ever had with socialism – which actually never did – has long since past. Blair administered the coup de grace and there will be no going back.
You should know by now that voting changes nothing. But there’s none so blind …
Corbyn could take some tips from Socialist Syria for his election campaign. Dr.Assad’s latest interview, what are his plans for Syria after the years laid waste by the AZC occupation [edited by Vexarb to fit a UK context]:
“Liberate the country without taking the necessary measures to invigorate the economy will not improve things. So, as a state, we need to accelerate the rebuilding of infrastructure – like restoring electricity and other utilities, and the role of state institutions, in order to facilitate the return of the productivity cycle. Here I am not referring to major industries and large projects. Even before the New Labour tried to turn us into a neo-Liberal party, we had the view that large projects are important but they are not the solution. For a country like Britain, the strength of its economy lies in small and medium-sized enterprises. This will help invigorate the economy.
The problem is that some people wait; they say, Let us wait to see what happens. If we are to wait, then we cannot expect to see the signs of a resurgent economy. What will be the signs? — industries which have emerged, workshops that have returned to work. The number of British people who have been impoverished is higher than the development of the economy. The challenge now is to integrate these people into the economic cycle. Can we do it? of course, we can. We should not say that “the system” or “circumstances” prevent us. No! we have some laziness, we have some constraints and sometimes we do not have the vision of how to move. And by We, I mean all of Us as a Society, as a State and as Citizens. The state is responsible to provide the necessary conditions and the infrastructure, but it cannot open all the shops, workshops, and industries.”
Correction: _renationalizing_ electricity and other utilities
O! for a post-posting Edit button.
Can the vote be rigged? I definitely think it can and it will be as there’s a major flaw in the system. After councils receive and process the postal votes with rigid checks that they are valid, the actual ballot slips in their envelopes are put into large boxes ready to be taken to the counting centre on election day. There the envelopes are opened and the ballot slips are mixed with the polling station votes. They are counted to check that the exact number of votes registered at the council offices matches the number of votes. If a government was so-minded/desperate for a certain result, surely it would be very simple to get its agents to enter council offices and swap boxes making sure that the total number of votes correspond to the number of council registrations of the postal votes sometime before election day. Postal votes make up about 20% of the vote. If postal votes were counted separately, this would eliminate major rigging as their result would be expected to tally more or less with the polling station vote.
This practice would be especially effective in marginals.
Can US or UK public votes be rigged? Easily. Why are these procedures not updated / modernized? Because they are so convenient to rig by the ruling 1%.
What is this ‘great deal ‘ the fat slob keeps talking about, who is it great for?
Voices from the grave, or actually, a shallow ditch where he laid down to die (& lie).
Except for “different frank” nobody of On- or Off Guardian seems to recall this guy Farage and his Brexit party. Maybe when the Christmas general election results are out memories will be refreshed.
Joint operation “Omerta”?
Waiting for Dom ‘young Strangelove’ to give him his marching orders.
I can’t enter into it…..not even if I wanted, it repulses me, they repulse me, is a grotesque freakshow where the succuba squirm for their portion of the scummy pie of unnatural complications, the bigger the portion the greater the position of persausion, being confusion to cast among the people who’ll once again fall behind them, staggering around all crapulous from their rancid secretions……am constantly amazed folk keep on ‘falling’ for it
My first comment here. One thing that really puzzles me about The Guardian is the mass of negative comments about Jeremy Corbyn from its readers. Every below-the-line discussion is just full of posts saying ‘Corbyn is useless’, ‘Corbyn is unelectable’, ‘Labour don’t stand a chance of getting into power until they ditch Corbyn’, etc.
It puzzles me because I’ve read The Guardian for years, and I would have thought Corbyn’s values were EXACTLY those of most Guardian readers; I’d have thought Corbyn was the ‘dream politician’ for most of them.
This all makes me wonder if these comments are a smear campaign by The Guardian itself, and that most of the posters are shills. I was always moderated whenever I wrote anything defending Corbyn, which was why I don’t post there anymore, so I know The Guardian itself doesn’t like him.
Does anyone else think there’s something suspicious about Guardian readers’ apparent dislike for Jeremy Corbyn?
It’s odd that Rawnsley, from the Observer, frequently either refused to have a comments section or it was very limited. Yet on Sunday, there was over 5000 comments many of which were attacking Corbyn. This doesn’t surprise me nor the Guardian readers attacking Corbyn since both the Guardian and the Observer have opposed the democratic socialist Labour Party from day 1. The notion that newspapers can’t affect opinions belies the fact that advertisers spend a Kings ransom trying to persuade people to purchase their products.MSM Journalists are the inverse of advertisers.
Probably just wall to wall vitriol from Hasbara Central and the Board of Deputies.
I’ve had pro Corbyn comments removed. I think a lot of old commenters have left (or banned?) but there is definitely something suspicious about it. I just read a Polly Toynbee article and the comments below were ridiculously anti Corbyn and far more nasty than anything against Johnson. ‘Integrity initiative’ ? Also noticed a few tactical voting sites springing up that appear very suspicious in recommending Lib Dem as the tactical choice when they were about a tenth of the labour vote last time with labour only a few hundred behind the tories. Mind I’m getting so cynical now I’m thinking Theresa May getting 43% after her campaign was bloody suss.
The Graun purged me nearly a year ago. They seem to dislike anybody who dissents from the new editor’s narrative these days.
It’s been very interesting to read the replies to my message, but I’m still really mystified. Whenever there’s an article about what the Tories are doing to people on benefits, the disabled, the homeless, etc, comments almost to a man and woman condemn what they’re doing, yet strangely, Guardian readers seek to vilify the one politician above all who’d fight against these things tooth and nail.
Guardian readers hate this Tory government with a passion, yet they happily undermine the chances of Labour – the ONLY party that has a chance of beating the Tories – just because it has Corbyn at the helm? You keep getting posts saying ‘Labour doesn’t stand a chance if it’s led by Corbyn’ but they must know that when Corbyn was selected, his vote was greater than any other two candidates’ put together. They know that at a Corbyn rally, there are people as far as the horizon, yet a rally by Owen Smith, when he was challenging Corbyn for the leadership, there were a dozen or so people and an ice-cream van.
If the people slagging off Corbyn (knowing that in doing so they’re helping to give us another hellish Tory government) are real Guardian readers, then I just don’t know anything.
My guts tell me this is a shill operation by the Guardian itself.
More a combined op I should think Peter,with the LIbDems,the Blairites,the Israeli Embassy and its Zionist foot soldiers,and who knows joined together in unholy matrimony.
Welcome to the phoney blow-off contingent. The aim of our Grundian “dissidents” is to voice the anger that everyone feels, get the boot into the bastards that everyone hates and suggest that “we really DO something!”…but when somebody who looks like he might actually DO something appears, denounce him as “useless”, “unelectable” etc. The Grundy is a blowhole for letting off steam against a shitty situation whilst doing everything in its power to maintain and reinforce the shit.
I’ve just posted this (3.26pm) in the Guardian under Andrew Sparrow’s main election news item:
“I’m totally mystified at the full-on hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn in BTL comments.
I’ve always thought of Guardian readers as being people who hated oppression of any kind, and who consequently hated what this vile Tory Government has done to the most powerless and most vulnerable in our society – the people on benefits who have been driven to suicide or died in other ways, directly because of Tory policies. In Jeremy Corbyn we have the one Labour politician above all others who has fought this type of oppression tirelessly, all his political life, yet strangely, Guardian readers don’t have a good word to say about him.
When he was selected as leader of the Labour party, his vote was so much higher than the others’, it was almost unreal. When he was forced to run for selection again, all his rallies were just a sea of people, yet Owen Smith, the best rival Labour could come up with, had to make do with speaking to a couple of dozen people and an ice cream van. Thanks to Corbyn, the membership of the Labour party soared so rapidly, one would hardly think it possible. Yet all I seem to see in BTL comments is, ‘he’s useless’, ‘ditch him’, ‘Labour can’t win with him as leader’, etc.
If Guardian readers are mainly strongly against the Tories, this sort of rhetoric just doesn’t make sense even if the commenters are being sincere, because whatever you think of Corbyn, he’s the one campaigning to be PM, and Labour is the only party that can unseat the Tories, so in talking down Jeremy Corbyn, you’re talking Boris Johnson back into Number 10. Is that what you want? I just don’t believe it can be.
This is why I’m highly suspicious of these anti-Corbyn messages: I can’t help thinking there might be a Guardian-led organised shill campaign going on here.”
I wonder if it will be removed?
Some of them (posters) were so insensed about the result of the referendum their inner selves emerged and they realised they’d been Liberals all along. When it came down to it they wanted the pound to remain artificially high and they didn’t want house prices to go down, they liked Polish plumbers and nanny’s, their “right on” lefty views didn’t see any disconnect with European economic law. They squared it with “we’ll change it from within”. Corbyn was the sore that wouldn’t heal for them and they blamed him for not letting them hide their own hipocrisy, he brought class back into the conversation, something they thought they’d left behind. A classic example of this kind of poster is AndyPandy1968 on the cartoon thread, a very angry man. Another character is fishgirl23, a bloke. This one’s a bit different, he was a Corbynite who became a remainer for upvotes, he writes sickening, sentimental fluff interspersed with sweary lists of Tory MPs failings he’s copied from other articles. There aren’t really any pro Brexit comments, the remain fanatics, assisted by each other and Guardian staff have removed them all.
Corbyn’s position on Article 50 led them to hate him more than May. From then on he was finished and they mostly transferred their vote to the LibDems.
Peter, it’s not you who have changed it’s the Manchester Guardian which morphed into the Rothschild-supervised Guardian Trust which morphed into the present Soros-financed Guardian. Ever since their cheerleading for the rape of oil-rich Iraq and oil-and-water-rich Libya and their enthusiasm for the attempt to destroy oil-and-gas-and-water-rich Syria, it has become increasingly obvious that Guardian uses the old Liberal middle class Manchester Guardian as a front for resource-war propaganda and attacks on the social fabric by Anglo Zio Capitalist financiers who control the Guardian financially.
Hence, OffG — to which you and I are now posting.
Johnsons last pmq’s shared with Bercows and Clarks – he finally achieves something worthy and stands with giants (actually more photobombs). Meanwhile May, sitting between Ken and Alan Duncan has the sourest visage and seems like she would happily stab bobo and not return either.
There does seem a night before pointless and certain death feel from the Tory benches.
The presstitutes already having sent forth to lay down the barrage – also looking like their propoganda works will be judged post election like the haw-haws they are.
Freedland with his ‘why won’t you Labour members not listen! Get rid of Jezza?????
ITV with their raised dead Richard & Judy (repeating voices in their earpieces – “marxists! Anticapitalist! ” they agitated at Corbyn on the sofa. Whilst they ignored the blatant example of the child being deprived of medicine because of capitalist profiteering and NHS underfunding and privatisation.
Etc.
When Jezza offered to meet up with ‘oh no not another election’ Brenda from Bristol on their sofa to find out what she thought could be better in her life – they looked like they regretted their comeback. (It was comic gold).
Onivar!
The forest was shrinking, but the Trees kept voting for the Axe, for the Axe was clever and convinced the Trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them.
Turkish proverb
Here’s the lefty Labour take on the GE:
https://novaramedia.com/2019/10/29/labour-can-win-this-election-but-only-if-it-goes-beyond-2017/
From Barovsky’s link:
“More than simply undoing the damage of the Tories over the last decade, which proved so potent in 2017, Labour must now articulate a confident, alternative of Britain. One of civic pride rather than empty storefronts and betting shops, one of public and popular ownership rather than privatisation and outsourcing, one where power resides with ordinary people, not millionaires, lobbyists and newspaper owners in London.”
Sounds good; especially since power these days means financial power: Tax the Rich to empower ordinary people!
Golly gosh. All these English people chattering about English Labour and Tories. Not a word about Scotland and the SNP. My what a brainwashed lot we have here. Labour are history and the Tories are tiny scabrous minority in Scotland. The break up of this delusional “United Kingdom” is on the horizon and the sooner the better.
OK, I’ll bite. The SNP won’t do nearly as well as they think they are going to. There is not as much enthusiasm for indyref2 as the diehard indie supporters imagine, for better or worse.
I think we may see a resurgence of the Labour vote and a drop in the Tories. SNP will be pushed back a way.
Dungroanin….Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! Ha ! Ha ! My oh my aren’t we the little establishment guru. Do you live on Mars ?
More people in Scotland voted for Brexit than voted SNP.
Wanting independence and being pro EU are not synonymous.
There are pro independence people who supported Brexit.
There are anti independence people who voted remain.
Life can be a bit more complicated than the SNP would have you believe.
Having said that, I hope they get their referendum and independence.
1945 – Out with Winnie. Up with Atlee-ite Labour.
2019 – Out with ‘mini ‘ Winnie’. Up with Atlee-ite Labour.
——-
This is the last chance for the Brits to reaffirm the post war social democratic covenant.
No return to the Downton Abbey upstairs/downstairs idyll of the aristos and super rich rentier class divide.
That is the option for the voters if they can retrieve their brains from the crass mass entertainment propoganda opium for a month and vote for the future generations- just as these voters did in 1945 by dumping the revered Churchill.
Vote for the manifesto not the transient bearers.
For your kids, grand kids and yes you too unless you want to suffer in your remaining years.
An overwhelming majority is my prediction.
What covenant? Where have you been since 1979? The ‘social contract’ died a death decades ago with arrival of neoliberalism and the death of organised labour.
You beat me to it, Barovsky.
well it’s a no-brainer isn’t it.
BTW, what did happen to the left? I’ve been looking for decades without success.
They got with the programme and lined their own pockets.
Well for some, it’s a living, Tariq Ali for example, a professional lefty. And this is the problem, a veritable ‘mafia’ controls and determines debate, programmes and policies. I mean check out the left publishers to see what I mean.
If we ain’t democratic, how the hell can we talk about democracy for everyone else and again, it’s ALWAYS been like this.
look oo-er there a flying pig
Ah the Left. Well many of them, possibly the majority, followed Teddie Adorno. He never forgave those uncouth proles from not delivering the revolution to him and spent the rest of his life blaming them in enormous slabs of impenetrable verbiage. And so was born a nice little earner whose main attraction is that you could live very comfortably whilst admiring your cragged uncompromising profile in the mirror next to the bust of Schoenberg.
Hah! Think the Greek ‘left’ deceiving the electorate. Think the rest of the Euro ‘left, Spain, Germany, Portugal, France, Germany, all deceiving their citizens. Some join the talking heads circuit, get book deals, cozy jobs in corporate ‘centres of learning’, formerly called universities. Welcome to the 19th century rerun as a nightmare.
Agree, at this precise moment in time rhetoric is a luxury we can hardly afford.
We can take it as read most Off-G readers would prefer a party/leader committed to social justice, reduced wealth inequality, increased job and home security, an end to regime change wars and a green industrial policy – but as pointed out below none of the parties, at least in their current guise will deliver this kind of utopia, not least because there are powerful economic forces that are extremely adept at protecting their class interests, and are likely to come down like a ton of bricks on any perceived threat to them.
So at heart this leaves 3 choices;
[1] support nobody, either because ‘they are all or the same’ or because they cannot deliver utopia.
[2] vote Corbyn, perhaps the final chance in generations for a moderately left of centre government.
[3] vote austerity and reinforce the present power structure which panders to the rich while regarding workers, and certainly those claiming benefits as something to be controlled and policed while corporations get on with their never-ending campaign of wealth extraction (with health care likely to be next on the privatisation agenda).
Corbyn has faults, but it does not follow that because he is not perfect he is ‘just the same’ as a Johnson, a Swinson, a Farage, or a Blair.
My advice is to vote for Corbyn today and agitate for a better future while doing so.
BTW there is little point in endlessly rehashing Jeremy’s weaknessess because it still boils down to the same 3 choices.
It’s a real, repeating dilemma, in fact we’ve repeated it so many times, I’ve lost count. The lesser of two evils, blah-blah-blah. When will we ever learn? Apparently not but I suppose it’s the price we pay for living in the 5th richest (imperialist) country on the planet. Thank your lucky stars that you weren’t born in El Salvador or Mali or any one of 200+ countries that made us rich and them poor.
Abstain, Corbyn or austerity – this thread is about how people will choose at the forthcoing GE.
Its clear you won’t vote for Corbyn – so by a process of elimination that leaves either austerity or abstain (neither of which helps the people of El Salvador, or Mali)
I think you’ve made the wrong assumption about what I might do on Dec 9. But so you think a Labour govt will help the people of Mali? Dream on. The Labour Party is an IMPERIALIST party and always has been. It ruled over the colonies just as viciously as the Tories did (Nigeria, Kenya, Cyprus, Guyana, shit the list is long, come to mind).
I think we need to distinguish between Corbyn and the Labour Party. Yes many of us will assume they’re voting for Corbyn when they vote Labour but they ain’t! They’re voting for the other half of the political class that runs the capitalist state (and not very well either).
Will I vote Labour? Probably, gritting my teeth and cursing Corbyn for being a political coward who can’t stand up for his own (assumed) convictions. Who, by the time he does enter 10 Downing Street will have pissed away most the things that made us vote for him, just like 2017.
And like many, I ‘ll be voting FOR Corbyn but AGAINST Johnson and for no other reason.
Errata: I meant so say, that I WON’T be voting for Corbyn but AGAINST Johnson. Apologies.
It doesn’t seemed to have dawned on many of the posters that the notion of taking part in an election/referendum meant that the result was declared valid when the majority who voted carried the day; however this is no longer the case and can be effectively abrogated when the result went the wrong way. I suppose it started with Blair. We voted for a social-democratic administration in 1997 and got neo-liberalism in successive doses. Then there was the EU referendum. In this instance the outcome had already been decided – common practice in the EU – and the vote didn’t go the ”right” way and was therefore invalid.
So voting seems to have become simply a symbolic spectacle, a bit of political entertainment, but fundamentally a farce, and an insult to the intelligence.
Elections used to mean something, there was the red corner and the blue corner. Now they are simply exercises in pseudo-consultation.
Such always is the case whenever the dog-eared argument about ‘lesser evil’ does the rounds. Thus the Labour friends of Israel, is a lesser evil than the Conservative Friends of Israel. Labour’s support of NATO – taken for granted – is a lesser evil than the Tories support of NATO. Labour’s support for Trident is a lesser evil than the Tories support of Trident. On and on the appeasement and the sell-outs go.
Of course Corbyn as with all social-democratic leaders has bottled it on any issue of principle that he may once he once held. Of course he is carrying on in a great tradition of Labour leaders.
Lesser evil – you know what you can do with it.
P.S. Left of centre governments not only do orthodoxy Anglo-zionist foreign policies rather well but they are quite the dab hand and austerity too. See Syriza, Partie Socialist in France, SPD in Germany and Democrats in the US.
Vote and you’re voting for people who despise you and look upon you with undisguised contempt.
I’m not sure how democratic the UK’s political system really is. All votes don’t have the same ‘weight’ all over the country. The voting system is deeply flawed and ‘problematic.’ It’s a system designed to discourage voting in non-marginal seats and at the same time it grossly tips the balance in favour of the larger parties. That the system hasn’t been radically reformed is, extraordinary. And that’s before one even mentions the House of Lords, which has no parallel in the western world. An unelected second chamber!
Surely the Tories and Johnson, in order to claim a legitimate democratic mandate for their policies towards Europe have to, at the least, secure more than 50% of the votes cast in the coming election? How on earth can one argue that they represent and reflect the views of the people if they fail to get over 50% of the votes? This seems like a de facto second referendum on Europe, but with the added ‘twist’ that the Tories don’t actually need to get a majority over the opposition! And this bizarre system is labelled… ‘Democracy’?
Demo- crazy set up.
Who can deny that the main issue now is Brexit yes/no?
Brexit yes/no needs 50% +, the more the better but parties can combine to get that tally. Tories + Brexit party, or Labour + SNP + LD etc.
Even pro Remain Guardian can’t deny its all about Brexit: it is actually a second referendum. The outcome should settle the matter one way or the other – unless massive fraud is shown.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/31/the-guardian-view-on-election-2019-its-about-brexit-above-all
You mean, like in the referendum 3.5 years ago?
It’s not extraordinary. The Labour Party has been one half of the capitalist duopoly that’s run this country for well over 100 years. Democracy? Bullshit.
Q. “Assuming it isn’t rigged.”
A. POSTAL VOTES.
India does better with its thousands of standalone (not Net connected) electronic voting machines, but is does have the stupid British legacy of FirstPastThePost (and neglect the balance votes).
India most definitely do better. Ballot stuffing used to be endemic until they got their electronic voting machines, whereupon the outcome was determined by last minute “firmware” updates.
Only in your dreams: all EVMs that were used for voting are guarded 24/7 by well armed police till the count is read out.
It’s the armed police that apply the “firmware”.
Humanity’s enormous positive potential is buried beneath our inability to not be triggered into Us-and-Them polarisation across multiple fault lines: left and right (whatever they are), male and female, theism and atheism, liberty and social obligation, East and West, whatever. We are all saturated with an almost unknowable smorgas of carefully planted and tended trigger points that is incredibly hard to navigate. Discussion is fractious, tends quickly to anger and trench warfare, leads nowhere with plenty of noise and fury, then moves on to some other equally circular shouting match. We talk at each other and listen only to those who ease our sense of our fragile rightness. Divide and conquer, bread and circuses … the oldest and best-known tricks in the books yet we fall for them every time. Why?
Because we are emotional and psychological children (see this article by John Tylor Gatto for part of the explanation). Until we confront that aspect at its root and do the inner work it takes to grow up, we are sheeple to the slaughter. The logic is simple: Until we grow up we, cannot have grown-up discussions about what will work going forward, let alone act together effectively over the long term on our democratically reached decisions.
What is not simple is the inner work, which is why people shy away from it. And there are other, more pressing matters, like making enough money to live. But we can at least observe how we are triggered, closely examine the details of how it feels, moderate that feeling by accepting we do not really know all the answers to anything, then take a cooler, more considered approach to each other, and especially those with whom we strongly disagree. Only be entering discussion with a genuine – not tactical – readiness to be wrong can we learn and progress. Only that sort of stable humility can produce the sorts of discussion we need.
Toby Russell: “Discussion is fractious, tends quickly to anger and trench warfare, leads nowhere with plenty of noise and fury, then moves on to some other equally circular shouting match. We talk at each other and listen only to those who ease our sense of our fragile rightness.”
I agree with your drift, that discussion has become incredibly polarized and clamped-down (a common complaint by Truthers); but this state of affairs is a far cry from the England I used to know 30-40 years ago. Open discussion was encouraged, good form and good humour were the rule, English political discourse was a byword for politeness. One of the first things I notice on the websites during the BLiarite regime (at the run up to their rape of Iraq) was the introduction of foul language and intolerance by some posters BTL. That fashion has become almost de rigeur: a sort of trendy dumbing down of sociability. What you call “our sense of fragile rightness” is the very opposite of Western enlightenment: which is, a willingness to concede that we may be wrong.
“There is more faith in honest doubt / Believe me, than in all the creeds” — Samuel Butler, circa 1880.
That’s great quote. I’m all for any pithy wisdom that captures or illustrates the corrosive danger of belief.
But I think what we have today is a combination of having the real quality of our consciousness as humanity reflected back to us via the internet, while that poor quality is compounded and carefully nurtured by those who want desperately for their propaganda and other control mechanisms to stay effective indefinitely. One way or another, it’s up to us, as it always is, to grow up. No one else can do our growing up for us.
Excellent Toby: and a good link to Gatto.
For ‘most’ of us: it is over before we even get into ‘secondary’ education. Our primary education – or primary socialisation – is in the 0-7 psychomotor stage and the 7-12 pre-operative stage of social development [Piaget and Vygotsky]. In the psychomotor stage we learn – with a great deal of mimetics and parental interaction – to differentiate the undifferentiated sea of sense-data (bio-semiotics) into sensible and intelligible phenomena (semiotics). Mostly through the acquisition of language and its application to form and differentiation. Phenomena are differentiated as ‘concept-forms’ – ideal forms or ‘prototypes’ (nama-rupa – name and form) – which is mostly done unconsciously (alaya vijnana – the storehouse consciousness …ground of all phenomenal being). We form the ‘Cognitive Unconscious’ primarily between 0-7: then continue to develop it from there into adulthood [Lakoff; Johnson; et al].
As we do not create the language or culture we unconsciously assimilate: the child is already an autonomic cultural artifact of the ‘Collective Cognitive Unconscious’ before they enter secondary education aged thirteen. Then they are subjected to Inglis’ ‘Five Stage’ education to concretise their pre-conditioning. So by the time we end our pre-operative state education – or ‘higher education’ – to become ‘operative’ individuated independent adults …the Sixth Stage – the propaedeutic function – is almost never required.
We manage ourselves as autonomic automatic cultural artifacts of the Collective Cognitive Unconscious (CCU). Which results in a split dualised personality – that functions autonomically, automatically, and algorithmically just as self-programmed. And that is the Husserlian ‘natural attitude’ – which is anything but natural. It is only habituated and hypernormalised – therefore it can easily be changed. As Gatto and Paulo Friere make clear (Friere uses a similar and apposite ‘Banking Model’ – where societal structures; strictures; and norms are ‘deposited’ by rote by the teacher into the empty vault – the deposit account of the child – as ward of the state). To unlearn and uncondition: we first have to admit we are conditioned cultural artifacts – with a kind of pseudo-personalisation of the CCU (private usage-conditioned versions of the main collective capitalised value system (onto-axiology).)
So; we are triggered unconsciously by differential, hierarchical, capitalist cultural constructs we were largely self-programmed with – with a great deal of ‘guidance’ – largely in the 0-7 formative years of our lives. Which precious few recognise as the source of ALL the suffering and internal/external strife that ensues thereafter. Which we peer-police amongst ourselves – which anyone who dares to challenge this convention in public will recognise. Society is permanently psychosexually infantalised in the pre-pubescent range of socialisation – by choice. Unconscious choice: but still choice. The social guardian elite is no more matured by their entitled, privileged status – in fact, they are the least mature.
We have involuntarily; reflexively; and unconsciously/subconsciously followed our cultural auto-conditioning to the point where we can simply follow it no further. There is no point entering a debate or dialogical approach. The only thing this triggers is fear-first ontological confrontation – pre-programmed hypersensitive defence mechanisms kick in to physically shut down receptiveness (vagal constriction). We are going to have to take our trauma. Which will be triggered exogenously by system failure: there is no other way. Everyone will have to confront their own trauma and split, wounded personality – and deal with it as best they can. The outcome will be either fascism or the huge paradigm shift from duality to nonduality – actual live experience of life which will be raw, brutal horror and sheer beauty colliding. No one could possibly predict the outcome: but nothing other than the total rejection of all the values of the capitalised CCU will heal humanity and what is left of Nature. Nothing.
I call this the ‘Great Humiliation’ which will accompany the collapse. There is no point arguing whether or not there will be a collapse: that is the heart of the matter. Doomers are reflexively shouted down by the conditioned responsiveness of eternal quasi-mystical growth. Humanity has stored itself an infinitude of psychological trauma by imposing its dualised eternal growth hypothesis on a finite planet. Even now: as impoverished systems are showing increasing signs of great distress – we believe we can expand further …if only we vote for the right Party: a return to growth and prosperity is assured. This breaks my heart to see.
We require 3.34 planets worth of resources just to sustain our lifestyles. We vote for those who we best think can extend that to 3.4-3.5 planets of biocapacity. This is the depth of our unconscious trauma and involuntary psychosis. Who will vote for the planet? Who will vote for Venezuela – who we must invade to get to 3.5 planets? Who will vote for the Amazon – who we must log in order that we can have ‘clean carbon’ and ‘net zero’? Who will vote for the brutalised child miners that will have to go deeper and more deadly: dying in greater and greater numbers – so that we can have technology and electric cars? Who will vote for the 85% of humanity that we must starve – so we can have avocados and prawns 365 days a year? No one. Which is why we need a ‘Great Humiliation’ in order to confront the horror our lives export elsewhere – so we can continue to be the ecological bourgeoisie.
We do not need management: we do it to ourselves – by never examining the programming we all receive. This has reached its zenith. Collapse – including psychological collapse – is the inevitable consequence of our collective psychological trauma. How we deal with it determines our continued viability as a species. We either grow up: or we check out – probably in unconscionable unimaginable trauma and horror. Functionally infinite amounts of compassion will be required to deal with it. Know any Buddhas? I suggest we all make ourselves into one as fast as we can.
BigB: “vagal constriction”.
Interesting because, although I am a through-and-through rationalist and child of the Enlightenment, I am increasingly fascinated by how conscious perception is linked to our “brainless” autonomous nervous system — a more ancient level of awareness and control that we inherited from creatures which came into being as far back as the Jellyfish era. Autonomous nervous systems own the basics: ingestion, digestion, circulation, excretion and procreation. Our vaunted human intelligence and Cartesian “Cogito ergo sum” merely sit on top of the vagus system – an accessory product of evolution.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/vasovagal-syncope/symptoms-causes/syc-20350527
As I see it, it is Enlightenment Rationalism that is collapsing. The orthodox assertion that consciousness or “human intelligence” arises from biological activity is the dualism BigB addresses in the above, and in many other of his comments. There are many recorded phenomena that cannot be explained by the dualist model, with the placebo effect being but the most infamous.
If one takes the time to look at what contemporary physics is saying about matter and space, we see there is nothing there but mathematics, or information, or rules, not matter per se. Chemistry and biology are levels above that fundament. So there is in fact no tenable certainty in the materialist camp, only the reflexive sense that reality is ‘physical’ first, and ‘mental’ second. Materialist dualism is thus also a belief and should be handled as such.
Nima Arkhani-Hamed
Is there enough time before the election to get off the sofa, go down to Local party HQ and deselect your Local BLiarite MP?
if only it was that easy. the blairite bureaucracy rule the roost. Case in point, the LP conf voted for a few progressive moves but they might as well have taken place on another planet. Why do we not recognise that there are TWO Labour Parties!
Tried that and (über Blairite) Lucy Powell scraped back in, voted for by angry, don’t-rock-the-boat acolytes and toadies. The final straw for me in Labour.
I suspect many of these dog-in-the-manger Blairite hangovers, having rigged their reselections will find themselves being deselected by the electorate. It may deny Labour a majority but that is the price they must pay for failing to cleanse itself of these parasites.
They will win again like they did in 2017 when they tried to lose votes but ended up getting more!
They will agitate and oppose the whip – nowt wrong with that.
However, it should be made cast iron that any MP leaving their party MUST instigate a by-election.
@ Jaded & Barovsky. Lose a few, win a few. Lucy Powell is only one case of a BLiarite scraping back into the Labour Party. There must be a hundred other BLiarites in the party who can be deselected on their voting record; but where are the socialist troops? On their sofa whining.
Doesn’t that latter condition depend on who wins the next election?
What about the Brexit Party? Or has Off-Graun now lost all interest in Brexit, too?
THE BREXIT PARTY LIMITED.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11694875
If the Brexit party is a political party, where are the local branches?
Where are the local branches of the Labour and Tory parties?
In my town the local branch of the Tory party has been turned into a curry house.
The local branch of Labour has been turned into a lodging house for people with drink problems.
I remember when Labour and the Tories each had about 2 million members.
Now there are around 100,000 Tories, average age about 93.
When Jezza is deposed shortly and sent on allotment leave, there will be even fewer Labour.
Mark
more deflection.
Answer the question.
Where are the branches.
It is a money making company.
What’s wrong with that?
All political parties now are registered as companies in some dodgy tax haven like Panama. If it’s good enough for Chuka, Soubry and Co. I suppose it’s good enough for Nigel.
Corruption has been legalised.
They will soon make it compulsory.
On June 17th 1997 Farage was photographed talking with convicted BNP Bomber Tony Lecomber and Mark Deavin BNP and one time UKIP activist who Farage lunched with.
This Lecomber carried an explosive in 1986 and was convicted for that less than a month later. Farage must have known 9 years earlier!
He also once travelled on a bus used the previous week by the milkman who delivers to the Russian embassy.
If that doesn’t prove he’s a Kremlin puppet, I don’t know what does.
look oo-er there a flying pig, no wonder the price o’ bacon has gone up
Top example of deflection
I still think New-Old Labour under JC is the lesser of two evils; because his bumbling decency might soften the “crowd control” which British servicemen are training the Saudi Army to use; and which might be used on Britain, seeing the way we are heading since Thatcher’s “Smack of Firm Government”, BLiar’s Surveillance State with Dodgy Deaths, and St.Theresa’s open Poisoning the Public in the Park:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-10-28-the-uks-secret-military-unit-that-answers-to-saudi-arabian-commanders/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
The UK military has a team of 11 high-ranking soldiers embedded in the Saudi Arabian armed forces. The British programme, details of which have long been kept secret from the British parliament and public, involves training the Saudis in “internal security”. The British Military Mission trains the protection force of the ruling House of Saud and was established in 1964. Its central role is to defend the AZC Saudi regime from a coup.
Good article on RT about how Blair has f***ed Corbyn behind the scenes.
I left the party in August when JC was forced to say a new ‘Peoples’ vote’ was needed.
Chris Williamson’s treatment a case in point. And McDonnell and Abbot have shafted him too. He’ll be glad to lose and go back to the back benches! The U.K. ‘Deplorables’ are doomed.
Rubbish gas lighting. Trying to conflate Blair with the genuine socialists.
A link to your citation may help prove your point.
This may be the link alluded to:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/472118-tony-blair-corbyn-brexit-labour/
Very sobering reading. And instructional. Indeed, it helps to clear up something that has always mystified me. After that monstrous fraud over Iraq with its tragic consequences, George W Bush at least had the decency to bugger off. Not so, Blair. This disgusting little weasel should have been done for war crimes but, not only did that NOT happen and not only did he continue to be given a loud platform by the obsequious media, but when the threat of a trial appeared, it was the accusers who were ground down and the criminal who rose up. Why? Because Blair spoke for the ruling class interests i.e. the only interests that truly matter in our marvellous “democracy”.
This is the bit of the RT link that sums it up:
To be fair, I don’t think you can lay all the blame on Corbyn. I suspect some really nasty stuff was going on behind the scenes. And he didn’t want to wake up with a horse’s head in his bed.
Damn it! Barovsky’s already linked to this below!
Cheers George I too saw it below and responded there.
You must understand the role of the noxious privy council in all this. We don’t have a transparent parliamentary democracy. We have theological monarchy dressed up as one. The opposition have to sign up to some onerous rules. Blair used it to get his vote for war. He IS an international criminal. He stayed because he could and lined up Gadaffi as an encore. Dubya didn’t go he did his term and is happily enjoying his ‘seat at the top table’. Their dynasties secure.
Have no doubt a Corbynite maority govt will happily go after the murderer Blair and Intelligence bastards if they can.
Look! Over there!! A flying pig!!!
Is that all you ever comment with?
The SNP held a debate in Parliament about putting Blair and Co. on trial.
Jezza and all the Labour luminaries suddenly remembered “urgent business” elsewhere and absented themselves.
When I said that Dubya buggered off, I meant he didn’t stick around the political field with the megaphone that the meedja was only too happy to hand BLiar. But then again, Dubya comes under the Reagan category: just stick him out there and get him to read the idiot boards. Thought without Reagan’s (alleged) charm.
Sadly,I think you are mistaken about the nature of the Labour partyDungroanin.The expulsions and suspensions are proceeding at pace and accelerating,as I have found out myself in the last few days.My official letter of suspension for crimes unspecified,and with no evidence offered other than “your conduct on social media”arrived this morning.I am resisting the temptation to judge the direction of the LP by my own experiences,so lets just say it isn’t looking good.
I don’t know about the LP, their procedures and rules or how many are ejected and for what reasons.
I do know that they don’t have manadatory reselections and that MP’s don’t have to submit to by-elections if they walk out of the party and sit elsewhere in the House. The fact that someone like Vaz can carry on being a Labour MP and being on a powerful committee is outrageous. That applies to any MP of any party. The guy who assaulted a woman. Elphick…etc.
All of which does not have any bearing at all on the manifestos we get to choose on, does it?
No,my vote if I had one,would still go to Labour in most constituencies.
Why is my comment “awaiting moderation”has OffGaurdian morphed into the actual Guardian?
Ground Hog Day.
As the Brexit party are a one pony [Tory] show, expect some kind of deal to prevent Tories splitting the Tory vote. After that it will be all downhill further into the imperial corporate crock. The dilemma of how to achieve a brighter future will disappear in the face of more unregulated extractive shit fuckery.
The ghost of Christmas’ to come, a harrowing Thatcherite spectre of greed and corruption worshipped for so long, will continue to stalk the shadow lands.
Only 42 shopping days to the big day. Remember a vote is not really for Christmas…
They could split the Labour vote as well in constituencies that voted 60-70% leave. You can’t take anything for granted.
Expect a hung Parliament – the only thing we can hope to achieve is to vote the fat, sanctimonious self-serving ones out of Parliament and replace them with a fresh batch that better represents the people’s interests.
Labour Remoaners in leave areas, Tory Brexiteers in remain areas must surely go. Illiberal Democrats deserve another near death experience, better still the real thing, and I am hoping that the Brexit Party will deny Boris a mandate for his reheated May deal.
Umuna, Soubry and assorted tossers – so long and thanks for all the fish.
Vote tactically, vote the bums out.
I’m surprised they think they can organise a general election to happen before Christmas. They can’t even organise an exit from the EU after being given two years to do it!!!
Turkeys, voting, Christmas comes to mind.
The mere mention of a British election has got Mr Pompeo scurrying to the Batphone and putting plans in place.
Once again, we have to thank our allies in the USA for their tireless commitment to democracy.
RT seems to have nailed it, or rather Neil Clark has:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/472118-tony-blair-corbyn-brexit-labour/
Yes, a good analysis by Neil Clark.
Gaslighting by Neil Clark
“The truth is that even if Corbyn were to defy the polls once again and lead Labour to an against-the-odds election ‘victory’ in December (if an election then is confirmed), the pro-status-quo PLP would either prevent him becoming PM or else act as a brake on anything too radical being enacted. ”
How exactly would a depleted Blairite plp decide who would be PM and stop a winning manifesto being enacted?
Corbyn is not a Stalin.
He is a democrat.
Democrats don’t instigate purges.
Acting like the despots that are the enemy of the poor does not elevate – it mirrors.
Win fair or it is meaningless.
The Blairites are toast.
The ones who jumped ship will melt like the wicked witch.
Others are standing down to go pick up their ‘careets’ – like Owen Smith this morning.
Whatever the outcome – there are going to be many fewer neolib Blairites after this election.
In normal times (whatever that is) Corbyn will walk the next general election, particularly once the public start seeing Labour party policies under Corbyn, because the media have to report them under General Election rules.
Unfortunately, the psychopaths who rule us (and under that umbrella are most of the PLP, Blairites one and all) will never allow someone like Corbyn to come to power. The Blairites would rather lose an election than have Corbyn as PM. That’s how completely insane the Blairites are.
If by some miracle – in one of the most corrupt nations on Earth – Corbyn does become PM there’ll be a handy heart attack or road accident, et al.
They are destroying Julian Assange before our very eyes. Anyone who thinks they won’t do the same to Corbyn is naive in the extreme.
I kinda see the “Blairites” as UK’s version on the Clinton clique in the USA.
They’re not “kinda”. They ARE.
I see them as Satan’s minions. Which, granted, may be the same thing.
Corbyn is no more than a neutered mascot. People like Watson, Benn and Co. are in the driving seat. Probably some time next year, Jezza will be sidelined further and probably kicked out through some kind of internal skulduggery and chicanery. Probably the PLP seizing back control of leadership elections. Then Jezza will be spending a lot more time on his allotment.
Let us start with the scum of the Liberal Democrats and extreme pro EU and remainer Leader of the Libdems.And as the scum always rises to the top.“Swinson’s voting record shows that she consistently voted to reduce welfare and benefits, including cutting payments for people with illnesses or disabilities. She also voted to cut the Educational Maintenance Allowance for 16-to-19-year-olds. And she helped to raise university tuition fees, despite promising not to as one of the key policies that helped elect many Lib Dem MPs in 2010. Her track record on environmental issues, meanwhile, shows she supported the badger cull, fracking and HS2.”Also voted for the Bedroom tax, and for a cap on public the sector pay rise. She’s all heart this one.Being the darling of the liberal press, used her role as Minister to oppose increases in the minimum wage, sing the praises of zero-hour contracts, and hike up the fees for employment tribunals – placing justice out of reach for thousands of workers. ‘Progressive’. Jo Swinson consistently voted for selling England’s state owned forests.July 2017 Swinson took a personal donation of £10,000 from Mark Petterson, director of Warwick Energy – a company with fracking licences across England – and a further £4,000 in January 2018. This was after she had voted against an eighteen-month fracking ban, against a review of the industry’s environmental, health and social effects and against requiring frackers to get environmental permits.Jo Swinson is beyond the pale.while claiming to have “campaigned tirelessly” for the environment.Voted for requiring the mass retention of information rise about communications.“Swinson’s voting record shows that she consistently voted to reduce welfare and benefits.
I wholeheartedly agree. I would also mention that I feel a mixture of visceral anger and am nearly sick when I see the revolting Layla Moran on TV. She epitomises smug, wealthy, selfish LibDems.
She also put in an expenses claim for eye liner.
Swinson is the archetype of everything that’s wrong with politics.
You need to have had a frontal lobotomy to vote for people like this.
Likewise with the Greta nonsense.
Britain will never really leave the EU because Europe will still remain the UK’s closest and largest market and trading partner. It’s been like that for decades and that’s not going to change anytime soon. What matter of course is what kind of economic relationship the the UK is going to have with the EU. How close and how damaging.
Access to the huge EU market will be linked proportionally to how closely the UK follows EU regulations and standards. The very idea that the EU would simply accept the creation of a UK economy that challanged and undermined the EU by cutting standards and profitting from it, whilst demanding access to the EU market on favourable terms, is an absurd mirage conjured by the Brexiteers.
Then one comes to the difficult question about what the coming election is going to be about. The Tories want to keep it simple, a de facto second referendum about membership of the EU. Labour wants it to be about far, far, more than that.
I always thought the referendum about EU membership was a dreadful idea and dangerous, as millions of people were asked to vote on a subject they knew next to nothing about, blaming the EU for the gross inequalties and problems of UK society that were created by decades of domestic UK politics that had precious little to do with the EU.
The referendum was a terrible idea, but, at this, stage, an election about the EU could be even worse.
What happens if the Tories win the most seats, which is likely given the perculiar British electoral system; but actually receive fewer votes than the opposition parties combined? Johnson could easily lose the popular vote but gain the most seats and a majority in parliament. Will he really have a democratic mandate to ignore the majorityy who voted against him? Are the non-Brexit majority just supposed to sit back and accept such a bizarre outcome?
You’re quite right, democracy is so inconvenient.
I know women who vote for someone because “he’s got a nice smile” or “he’s got nice eyes.”
Elections should be done away with.
Only superior beings (maybe people like me) should take all decisions.
That would be much better.
democracy is so inconvenient……wouldn’t it be better having tried it before making that call. 😉
ha ha ha ha ha well put!
There are people like you, fat arse Johnson
I don’t think Johnson will get a majority, he may even lose his own seat. Normally a mirth inducing result, who knows what hobgoblin might replace him at the head of the Tory party.
Phillip Hammond? (shudders).
Could be worse. Could be Gove or Fox.
There are going to be many Portillo/Balls moments if the DS can be persuaded not to stuff the ballot boxes.
IDS would be cream and Johnson the cherry.
”Are the non-Brexit majority just supposed to sit back and accept such a bizarre outcome?”
Well actually, yes they are. It’s simple majority voting. Don’t like it? Tough shit. Try instigating a coup, like the Blairites or that rampaging mob in HongKong. I remember voting in 4 general elections, 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992, and was on the losing side every time. What did I do? Nothing much, just carried on with my life and waited until the next time. That is the way the system worked. But of course the euro elites know better. Now electoral outcomes are decided in advanced and will be rectified in case the approved outcome doesn’t take place. And if this is the new system voting becomes actually redundant. Well to the brave new world of euroland.
As I’ve been saying to myself these past years: the UK is heading for economic collapse whoever is in No10. I mean, has anyone been paying attention? Here is a partial list of issues that actually matter that will form no part of any campaign anywhere ever.
Will we get through the coming Winter of Discontent with the lights on? Maybe: but probably not every day. Tim Watkins has several detailed reports and blogs as ‘The Consciousness of Sheep’. Brief synopsis: we phased out coal but did not replace the capacity – making the Grid incredibly susceptible to outages or spikes in demand – like everyone putting the boiler and kettle on at 6.30 on a frosty morning. Where did the kettle go? Why are there no lights outside? Fuck me it’s cold!
Of the absolute impossibility of the 1:1 replacement of coal with any array of renewable energy you’ll have to go elsewhere. But no doubt: we’ll just assume the lights will stay on until they are not. Then blame someone. That seems to be how it works, isn’t it?
Back in May: I reviewed the Committee for Climate Change science fiction novella that preceded even the GND. Though the GND will no doubt utilise some of its range of options. Short synopsis: none of them will work. They are all costly energy sinks. The GND is humanities suicide pact with the corporate ‘green’ revolution. A vote for Labour is akin to signing that note. On each conscience be it.
This country is extremely vulnerable and exposed to globalisation by being an island. In practical terms: we make nowhere near enough to survive. And depending on crop and time of year: ranges of 40-60-100% of our food has to come in. By diesel: for at least some of that way …’just-in-time’ or not? There are no inventories or real storage facilities: so on day two – the shops start running out and fuel starts running short. Diesel which is disappearing from world crude inventories. Oil is plentiful: naptha/diesel is not. In January next year: ships have to stop burning high sulphur fuels and switch to diesel. Will the refineries cope? No one knows. No one talks about it. The trucks will always run, won’t they? Until they don’t.
If they do not: in a really cold Winter for instance …we really are a tiny bit fucked. Alice Friedemann wrote the book – set in America – but applicable here. Especially the sections on the absolute impossibility of replacing diesel trucks with anything much other than petrol trucks. For now. Until the petrol runs out.
Our economy is a Ponzi scheme. We monetise £6 of debt to manufacture £1 of GDP [Tim Morgan]. If you think we are all going back to work under Labour: I actually feel sorry for you. Have a look at the near stagnant global economy – everything is idling -and still we delude ourselves with imaginary growth scenarios that more and more are proving to be Weapons Grade A Pixie Dust.
In fact: a General Election becomes a Spectacular distraction too set against the finite nature of the real world background. We are the epicentre of global destruction. The City of London Corporation is; to be precise. Which technically, is not in the UK at all. We have a collapsing economy centred on the overfinancialisation oversold there. With a $595 tn derivatives bubble – which has incalculable risk – which may or may not be fully coming down. Even a partial collapse will be catastrophic – as all other asset classes are proxies for each other. Do not be fooled that the current ‘repo-pocalyspse’ is happening in NY. They are more than intimately enough connected. As we shall see. In full, or in part.
But no political party will even talk about the City. Labour is pro-City. That’s what ‘pro-business’ means. Remember that when they are using the NHS as an asset to restart the global Ponzi scheme – for probably the last time. If this time is not the last time. Which no one knows. It won’t happen if we don’t talk about it.
It’s actually too late to make the structural changes necessary. So we will have to make do. Which is a bit bleedin’ annoyin’ when you’ve been going on about it for forty years. So wrap up warm; get plenty of candles, bottled water, and Brexit beans; take your money out the banks; install a woodburner; etc …and be sure to spread some compassion to those driving in 4X4s to vote.
Because that ‘X’ is signing away the life of every creature on the planet into the corporate green revolutionaries hands. Do you think they will have a duty of care for that ‘X’? Or having duped enough of us: will they do what they have been planning for these last forty years – before getting the Labour party to front it for them.
Here’s hoping it is a mild Winter: then we might be able to extend and pretend our private desire-dream imaginary fantasies into the Spring. And maybe float the very last business cycle with all the assets we stupidly thought were being saved. So if we end up in total blackout: with permanent austerity the only reality in town – maybe with food tokens or diesel rationing …will anyone then think: I wish we did something about it …when we had the chance when we could? Instead of voting my life away.
X = the Xponential Xtirmination you voted for.
Do you know for me, what would be worse? If none of this happens and we carry on as normal without ever addressing the underlying issues. Then we make it worse for the future: not better. A mild fuel shock and some low key power outages that don’t kill my 90 year old Dad might wake a few more up. Who am I kidding?
Don’t worry.
Little Greta and Caroline Lucas are going to sort it all out for us.
What could possibly go wrong?
What could possibly go right?
I think you mean.
How i wish you had a blog with your collection of writings all in one place.
A few years back I predicted that we would be reopening the coal mines. I stand by that prediction, especially once St. Greta and her eco-fascist death cult have flamed out.
We will, however, have to make do with less energy. Energy usage levels going back to those of the 70s would not be the end of civilisation…I am frequently appalled by the waste that has been built into our existences over the last 40 years, there is a lot of room for belt tightening without rationing meat, banning cars or central heating.
We will: to make hydrogen – from the underground gassification of coal. I’m not even going to try and describe – but imagine sending masses of energy underground to gassify the coal; sending it upstairs to make hydrogen in another massively energetic transformation; hydrogen is not an energy source: it is a carrier of energy; so you need another massively energetic tranformation as a secondary power source for the hydrogen. So that when we burn it; the only waste is water and heat. But hang on: where did all the energy go?
Does this even sound economic? This is the sort of insanity contained in the CCC/GND. Sold to the gullible public as ‘clean energy’ so we can just switch from driving ICEs to EVs and hydrogen trucks and buses. And the uncritical public just accept that we have solved the ‘climate crisis’ without ever having to think for themselves. This is the sort of insanity that if we do not snap out of – will get us all killed.
For the actual science and impossibility of a hydrogen economy: I recommend ‘Tad’ Patzek – a Professor; and petroleum engineer – or Alice Friedemann – a logistics expert who blogs as ‘EnergySkeptic’. But I do warn you: their calculations are brutal and you will never be able to believe in sustainable development or the continuation of this particular form of energy and resource dense civilisation ever again. It’s over. The sooner we deal with it the better.
”Our economy is a Ponzi scheme.”
Of course it is. When debt grows faster than national income – which it is – it can’t be anything but a Ponzi scheme. The dreaded law of diminishing returns is in play precisely as David Ricardo pointed out two centuries ago.
I recently re-read Michael Hudson’s “And Forgive Them Their Debts”: about the history of the Mesopotamian Bronze Age ‘clean slate’ or ‘debt jubilee’. We know from early Cuneiform tablets that they were debt inventories and interest calculations. It was known 5,000 years ago: debts grow exponentially whilst economies follow an S-curve distribution. If debts are not moderated by law or intervention of the King: they destroy civilisations. With no other factors involved: just exponential debt deflation.
What have we got? Neither of us is a big fan of endogenous money – or MMT (public QE) – but this is the one advantage it does have. Debt can be liquidated without the complete destruction of value. No one loses their savings. Keen goes on about this quite a lot. He was on a ‘Jubilee’ mission for a number of years. Now he has returned to thermodynamics and the ‘Keen Production Equation’ that is energy and biophysical throughput compliant. Just in time for their being very little to put through to maintain industrialised production: of which he seems to be a fan.
If we do not cancel debts: debts will cancel us. Keen has also shown in MINSKY: that our wages are a residual which goes to service debt. Which, as country by country we are approaching the point where ALL growth will IMMEDIATELY be recycled into exponential debt servicing: means permanent austerity for everyone in the real economy. All wages; remaining public assets; and growth reinvested in a Ponzi scheme equals the Ponzification of Ponzi!
And; depending on the severity of the collapse in motion – we are going to need HUGE inputs of material, energy, assets, labour, and the kitchen sink to get the ponzi-Ponzi going again. Only for it to collapse again. At some point: someone other than me and you is going having to question the sanity of this? Over doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. The logic that created the problem cannot be the same logic that finds the solution. Two aphorisms attributed to Einstein: who probably never said either. You do not have to be Einstein to realise that capitalism is failing us: and more capitalism cannot be the answer. We just have to convince the capitalists.
Whenever I talk about the explosive growth of debt ($300 billion was added to the US national debt last month) people assure me debt doesn’t matter any more. Your debt is someone else’s asset.
Cheer up BB – Putin and Merkel and the EU won’t let us freeze – the interconnectors are there.
Nordstream2 is nearly complete and there is plenty of cheap Russian gas ready to flow to keep the central heating going.
No need to buy the expensive and nasty shipped LNG from the yanks or fracking Caudrilla
Xmas is coming and Santa has promised that this year there will be an end to the 40 years of neolib con job.
REJOICE!
DG:
Listen. Listen. Can you hear it? That faint whooshing noise growing louder?
That’s not Xmas: nor is it Santa coming – that is the avalanche of debt collapsing gathering momentum. To which $135bn a day and $80bn a month is the only countervailing force right now. Plus zero rates.
It does not matter what these amounts mean: they are the proverbial boy with his finger in the dam. A dam containing $595tn of derivatives. It does not matter how much of this is currently illiquid: all that matters is that it is interlinked with every other asset and every transaction we make. Even the purchase of a proverbial coffee.
How long can the boy hold back the dam with a finger? How long can the Fed, ECB, BoJ, PBoC; etc – contain an avalanche of debt by adding more debt? Or the BoE? Keep a weather eye on LIBOR. Even if you do not understand: a sharp spike in rates or rate tampering will be an early indicator of contagion.
I do wish people that forecast eternal growth had more than a Goldfish memory. What happens when finance collapses? Trade stops because banks will not issue ‘letters of credit’ so nothing can be paid for – except in cash. Which you have to transfer yourself. So you go to the bank to get your cash. OMG: look at the queue!
Oil and resource production stops. Trade stops and things stop moving. Just-in-time stops. Shops, pharmacies, hospitals, banks, petrol stations; etc stop getting deliveries. Waste builds up. Schools shut down. Hospitals are ’emergency only’. Power stations pack up. On day four the water is no longer pure or purish. Even pipelines need maintenance and electricity to pump. We have no gas storage left. Gas is ‘just-in-time’ too.
Nothing has run out. Finance just crashed. So we restart finance with the NHS and Windsor Castle; the Queen has to sell the Koh-I-Noor to heat Buck Pal. There is precious little that was not privatised before – including the Mint and our gold reserves – to restart the last round of the global Ponzi scheme. This time it will be your savings, mortgage, and subsequent wages. And mine. And Frank’s pension. And any other asset McDonnell can liquify.
That’s what you will be voting for. Which carries exactly the same weighted probability as me not voting for it.
Maybe the proverbial boy – the central banks – can keep their finger in the dam till after Xmas. Who knows? But we will have a global Minsky Moment soon enough. I’m just waiting for enough people to realise that this economic dream is over. And any further investment will go on debt service alone. Including everything you and I own. At least I have been trying to raise awareness that we should not keep doing this and at least try something else.
You never know: you might come round to my way of thinking? It is only pessimistic if we keep on having unrealisable expectations of permanent ‘sustainable’ growth. No such thing exists. Realisation is disburden and relief. We can have a better life face-to-face with no growth or degrowth. The only thing that degrows is false expectation. When we are all humbled and meet on the level, so to speak, we can all laugh about our silly expectations. We might have that dance yet? One day.
I am not dissing all your confabulation – it would play better in more chewable mouthfuls ;-).
Banks can collapse. It means their shareholders lose everything. That imcludes investors – tough.
Credit disappears as it did in 2007 with AIG withdrawing guarantees that caused the collapse of the real economy – not the banks failure. Another sleight of hand.
The government can create endless ‘money’ it doesn’t need physical tokens. A sum can be introduced into your account. Or every man wonan and child can be given ‘coupons’.
Inflation is the only limiter. With plenty of spare resources – labour, agricultural land, manufacturing capacity, etc inflation is not a danger.
The US dollar is screwed as it loses its reserve status – here comes the Chinese to step into the vacuum.
Fresh water rains down is collected and pumped to our taps. The infrastructure exists and everyone can carry on doing their jobs.
Don’t worry about the ‘real’ by all means worry about the ‘virtual’ as far as I am concerned they can go to the devil! Good riddance.
All best.
DG:
Your worldview is so fantastically naive: it’s no wonder you are so chipper all the time. Nothing can go wrong!
The banks aren’t even ”too big to fail” in NeverNever land. You just take a drink of magic moonbeam water and expend 3,000 calories a day with no food.
Of course, neither of us knows what will happen this Winter. It could be all rather humdrum. One thing I forgot earlier: all our nuclear reactors are due to go offline in five years. That is 20% of our generation capacity. No need to go into details: but that really will take some replacing with renewables. Or we relicense 1960/70s reactors – which should warm thing up a bit.
It won’t be replaced with new nuclear – as glow in the dark Labour want …40% nuclear – are they actually insane …but no one wants to build it.
The only problems we have are denial and ignorance of the problems. As soon as we admit we cannot grow exponentially and we cannot therefore transition our current lifestyle to renewables …we cease to have any problems. Except the ones stored in the system: which we will have to deal with.
Why are we playing extend and pretend when we could just deal with things now? Would it hurt to be more resilient with services and infrastructures more localised and not being so reliant on global supply and value chains?
It just seems so sensible to me and such gobbledygook to others. Its probably the bit about living sustainably requires us to live on around a third of the mass resource flows per capita? Holding out for a fourth planets biocapacity – to extend the 3.45 we already consume will cost us all.
But you produce for free in NeverNever land: from just capital, labour and pixie dust sprinkled water, don’t you? 😀
BB – you have me wrong.
I don’t believe in never ending exponential growth. Population being the leading bogey myth usually espoused – bullshit disproved scientifically by Rosling years ago (and disappeared since his death because it doesn’t play with the XR narrative and PR).
I have long believed the god of GDP growth to be wrong – hell even JFK/RFK boys said as much in the 60’s – they got the bullet for it.
Banks are not to big to fail – as aren’t countries (the Scots south sea), industries (the tulip bubbles) or monopolist modern global corporations (anyday now – Boeing boing boing splat!).
Call me naive – i’ll wear that with pride.
I’ll call you blinkered, which I have tried to point out to you before. Your self important ‘WE’, which is a westerncentric egoistic modelling of the planet ignoring its multiples more of humans.
Yes it’s true resources per capita cannot be matched at the USA levels – such wastefulness can’t be they have more grapes of wrath coming – it means instant death in terms of environmental poisoning. As is evident by deaths by petrochems across the world, plastic eating fish, smoggy cities, the ‘markets’ for the dying corporations hooked on their growth on Wall Street. Meat production for MaccyD’s and the likes
http://beef2live.com/story-world-beef-consumption-per-capita-ranking-countries-85-111634
They (global robber barons) have known it for decades that they destroy the resource (e.g Whale hunting) but they screw every last bit of marginal profits from their decrepit poisonous infrastructure before investing in the future industries – leaving behind the poisoned landscape and depleted species as they motor off in their superyachts and to their Tracey islands and investments in developing lands, dynasties intact.
On Hydrogen – are you trying deliberately to wind us up? – it will come from coal???
Anyway this thread is supposed to be about the election and I see that the first below the belt attack is deployed at the Groniad.
‘jewish-group-removes-campaigning-support-for-labour-in-election’
Quelle surprise!
Be good BB, ttfn.
No, we have to buy the LNG. This is “freedom gas.” We could get some freedom fries to go with it.
Great news the Danes have folded on their holding up of NS2.
It could be complete within months and filled.
It’s the end of the road for Ukraine/Poland, US proxy actions. They have achieved exactly the opposite of their aim – an economic security closeess btween the EU and Russia.
I wish i’d bought shares in gazprom 10 years ago.
Weren’t you supporting XR and believing in a CO2 catastrophe? Missed your change of mind.
The XR types will wreck any economy before your “favorite” financial catastrophe kicks in.
Even the real 1% made immigration asylum catastrophe creates a slower European 99% mental asylum.
I still have a great deal of sympathy for XR – despite the fact they are obviously recuperated safe channel …re: Cory Morningstar. I have always said we are in a permanent everything crisis – of which: the climate comes down the list. XR cannot wreck an economy that is already completely wrecked. You cannot grow debt exponentially forever. It collapses of its own contradictory dynamics. Around about now (it is already technically bankrupt: only central bank intervention is extending it). Or later. Not too much later: we are reaching saturation where growth and compound interest eat each other. The longer it goes on the worse it gets. Nothing to do with XR: that is just capitalist denialism. Capitalism fucked capitalism with no outside help.
A Christmas time election?
…..I can’t help but think of the old tradition of Saturnalia and the ‘Lord of Misrule’ with Jeremy playing the lead role at the “Feast of Fools”. Perhaps wee Nicola could be appointed the Scottish equivalent of the Abbot (Abbess?) of Unreason, with Boris as ‘the Fool’?
From Wikipedia (for what it is worth … not much I know, still…): “In England, the Lord of Misrule – known in Scotland as the Abbot of Unreason and in France as the Prince des Sots – was an officer appointed by lot during Christmastide to preside over the Feast of Fools. The Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant or sub-deacon appointed to be in charge of Christmas revelries, which often included drunkenness and wild partying.
….a man chosen to be a mock king was appointed for the feast of Saturnalia, in the guise of the Roman deity Saturn;[1] at the end of the festival, the man was sacrificed.
….This is misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance; since going out-of-doors is burdensome, and staying within doors is not undisturbed. For the common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house. The gates of public officials they besiege with especial persistence, actually shouting and clapping their hands until he that is beleaguered within, exhausted, throws out to them whatever money he has and even what is not his own. And these mendicants going from door to door follow one after another, and, until late in the evening, there is no relief from this nuisance. For crowd succeeds crowd, and shout, shout, and loss, loss.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_Misrule
Here we go again, Labour as the political version of the Myth of Sisyphus. The same pathetic replay of political cargo-cultism where we know the outcome in advance yet really believe that ‘This Time it’s Different.’ Of course there is always a remote possibility that it will be different, but the record says otherwise. Wilson with his ‘white hot revolution’ and Blair with his mantra of ‘education, education, and education’ and of not forgetting his ‘third way’.
But then the Labour party was never really a socialist party, but it has blocked the space for the development of a genuine socialist party – historical mission fulfilled. That has always been true, but today’s Labour party makes no claim to be socialist, quite the opposite in fact. The Labour party has transmuted into a centrist middle-class liberal outfit. People who dominate the Labour party today, particularly in the PLP are, in Orwell’s words are, ” … the type who squirms into the middle-class via the literary intelligentsia or the type who becomes a Labour MP or a high-up trade union official. This last type is one of the most desolate spectacles the world contains. He has been picked out to fight for his mates and all it means to him is a soft job and the chance of bettering himself.” (The Road to Wigan Pier – p.164) Is this we are supposed to vote for?
Let me anticipate. ”But what is your alternative” How about this. A mass movement committed to root and branch political, social economic reconstruction with its own foreign policy, economic policy. A country not under the tutelage of foreign powers – the USA/EU. An end to the two-party cartel and the FPTP electoral system. An elected second chamber and Head of State. Yep, a Hurculean labour. But that would be worth voting and fighting for. Is it utopian, maybe, but it’s less utopian than expecting a Labour administration to bring about any significant change in British society.
That choice won’t be available in January – when all is said and done it comes down a binary choice between austerity apologists (in their different guises) or a leader who might make in- roads into the kind of utopia you describe.
As I say below it also impacts on Brexit since the the pros/cons of coming out of the EU become moot if there are no credible domestic politicians (or parties) to re-shape the country’s future.
Indeed, all the talk of constitutional conventions and reform of the electoral system will disappear like Scotch mist as soon as the election is over, not to be raised again until we are in top of the next one.
“the Labour party was never really a socialist party,”
What do you call the 1945 party that setup the NHS and the rest of the socialist policies?
OF course if you think that a revolution with guillotines as being the only way to achieve full real change – i can’t really disagree.
Is this a joke?
Hopefully the labour party will be wiped off the face of the planet due to the majority of it representing the anti-democratic tendency of aligning with a foreign power. Despite what is being claimed there is absolutely no evidence that this labour party would want anything other than to feed off the people for another few years. Does Corbyn have any friends in the labour party or the country anymore?
Having said that a tory victory would not bring about leaving the EU as requested by the electorate as Johnson’s cover has been blown. He has accepted the EU extension until January 2020.
The people were asked to stay or leave the EU. They voted to leave. Simples. This cannot and must not be ignored. It is unfinished business.
The notion of democracy in this country is well and truly dead.
Only by removing everyone that voted to remain and still stands to disregard the people’s vote (yes, that includes you too Swinson and co) will there be any sense of justice. We need a new parliament with fresh blood that will do as it is told; that will deliver on the will of the people; that will abide by common law; that will not be run by and for foreign powers; that will not start illegal wars and will not waste our hard earned money. The old tribalism has had its day. Not one of the current parties makes the grade as representatives of any of us, the people. I want NEW, I want KIND, I want to be treated as a human being and as a citizen. I am NOT a customer of the state.
I don’t understand your position – why does it matter if we are in or out of the EU if party politics is a failed system?
But lets say you are right, surely a consequence of your belief is that ANY system politicians operate within doesn’t really matter that much because they are ‘all the same’ anyway?
I can understand extreme frustration with Labour but what is the alternative, abstain from voting and leave Johnson, Swinson and the Brexit party to have their way with the country.
Or are you saying that we should be voting for the tories?
I might be wrong but I don’t think that would end very well, especially if you are unlucky enough to belong to the bottom third of the income distribution curve.
For example – have a read of the Slog – here: https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/opinion-confused-about-brexit-you-shouldnt-be/#comments
We don’t have to accept any of them, labour tory libdems etc – we can find a new way with a totally new structure – don’t the people, the electorate have any imagination or will anymore?? Surely, what we have isn’t working???
Vote Labour! #JC4PM
Vote Labour and you’re handing over this country to the Board of Deputies and Nuttyyahoo.
You might just as well appoint Shai Masot as prime minister and have done with it.
Who are you suggesting people vote for then genius.?
There is an old anarchist saying. ”Don’t vote, it only encourages them.” In an increasingly post-democratic society such as ours voting doesn’t change anything; in a situation where the outcome is decided by the elites in advance voting becomes purely symbolic. This is the stage we have reached.
I assume you are comfortably off.Not sick ,not unemployed,not aver going to need the NHS, not on a zero hours contract etc etc.
Some people think that voting makes a difference for people who are sick or unemployed.
Some people believe in Father Christmas.
I think you underestimate how much worse things can become unless someone arrests Britain’s slide into a full blown feudal society.
Young people today grow up in a country that;
*has normalised shitty working conditions,
*takes home insecurity for granted,
*abuses vulnerable groups, especially those claiming disability allowance,
*blames individuals if they do not better themselves despite numerous disadvanatges (such as an education undermined by resource depleted schools or living in a deprived neighbourhoods characterised by low expectations).
*is in deep denial about the extent of poverty that grips many regions.
*regards burgeoning personal debt as the answer to all of societies ills.
Corbyn can’t fix all of this, not least because the rot is now so deep but is there any doubt that Johnson and the cabal of right wing fruit cakes he has surrounded himself with would only make it much worse?
Then there is Swinson – Jo Swinson, the epitome of everything that is detestable about today’s politicians.
Corbyn is a flawed but decent man, we should at least give him a shot – if he fails, and he may well do given the dark forces he is up against (both withing the PLP and the establishment) then we simply leave ourselves open to the long-term project of the rich taking back all of the social gains that the likes of trade unionists and pressure groups fought for throughout much of the 20th century.
Corbyn at least gives us the possibility of a platform and after everything that has gone down since Blair that is something worth supporting.
None of the above.
Deprive them of the oxygen of legitimacy.
In 2016, 130 million people voted for Trump, Crooked Hilary, the Green Idiot, and some other nonentity whose name escapes me.
120 million (48%) didn’t vote at all.
I’d like to see that 48% rise to 100%.
Suppose they gave an election and nobody came.
Nobody would vote for them, not even their dog.
The Returning Officer would announce nul points for all of them.
Cut them down to size.
We can all construct unlikely hypotheticals – its fun, but self-indulgent, especially given the harms that are going to inflicted if things keep on as they are.
Never in the history of British elections have people not voted so that’s obviously a blind alley to go down.
If people can see a viable alternative outside the flawed parliamentary system then now is the time to promote it – otherwise it comes down to the fundamental choices described elsewhere: disengage from the voting process in protest, ie the Russel Brand position, vote for austerity, or vote for Corbyn.
Now which is it, eh?
The old, old story.
The Lesser Evil.
How has that worked out here and across The Pond over the past 50 years?
Vote Labour and you’re spitting in the face of Chris Williamson.
And the millions of victims of the criminal wars of aggression.
I will vote Labour with no confidence in them ideologically or expectation of them winning. I am a leave voter who’s appalled at the selfish, fake Socialist behaviour of most of the MPs, middle-class members and Momentum. The left is truly dead in the UK. The only reason I will vote for them is that they are the only party who won’t sell us out completely in an unneeded trade deal with America, though I’m under no illusions of how deeply Atlanticism has infected our politicians. While the Tories claim the NHS is not up for negotiation, they are currently negotiating with American pharmaceuticals which would financially cripple us. It is my opinion that apart from Corbyn and a few genuine MPs, the whole lot of them should be stood in front of a wall and shot.
I wish you well and sympathise with your dilemma.
But at the end of the day you’re just playing the old game of Lesser Evils.
How has that worked out in the past?
Isn’t that the state of soi-disant liberal democracy these days? The reduction of politics to a miserable choice between the lesser of two evils. Fog shit sandwich or cat shit sandwich? Cast you votes now.
As I see it we should forget about the leaders for the while and focus on punishing the Parliamentarians that have led us to this sorry path over the last 3.5 years.
Look closely at the antics of your local MP, if he has reneged on his manifesto promises or voted through appalling anti-people people (aka pro-war or pro-business) policies, then work out how best to cast your vote to remove him/her from office, even if that means voting for a party you otherwise despise.
The one thing we can be sure of is a hung Parliament, what we need is a cleaning of house of those figures we have come to hate and who have not been serving our interests. Normal voting can resume next time around, which will not be long in coming.
Forgot to say:
#VoteTheBumsOut
I admire Corbyn, I have checked out his entire history, from his teenage years to date. He is a good man, destroyed by the UK MSM at every single turn. I used to wonder how people were taken in by Hitler and co, now I know. Propaganda works. I see perfectly intelligent well educated, open, confident, worldly, any word you can think of that describes reasonable non fascist, non xenophobic folk. They hate Corbyn. The drip drip unceasing bullshit we have listened to since Mays dickish election has paid off. The establishment freaked out at the idea of a possible BIG C government and we have had our brains infiltrated ever since.
If I did not have my children living in the UK I would be long gone.
I think you’ll find that the full spectrum propaganda campaign against Corbyn began in earnest in late July 2015, when it became apparent to the London Luvvies that their chosen one, one Ms Cooper Balls, was going to get thrashed, since that timeline all MSM media, with the exception of the Morning Star, has been anti-cornyn and anti-democratic Left. Lets face it, they detest democracy and detest the poor.
So we FINALLY get to have an election now that our superiors in the Labour party have deigned to grant us one, but unfortunately there’s still absolutely nobody to vote for?
I like(d) Jezza and the majority of his previous manifesto but that seemingly wasn’t worth the paper it was written on (at least he learnt from Milliband’s carved in stone mistake eh?). My family was involved with the party’s old incarnation for several decades, but I absolutely refuse to vote for Corbyn if there’s even a remote chance of it resulting in the resurrection of New Labour’s enthusiastic support for intervention in whichever country needs to be brought democracy by the sword this week. If a vote for Jezza means directly supporting mini fascists like Tom Watson and Keir Stamner then count me out.
The Liberal Democrats still seem to be operating from an alternative reality completely devoid of irony. I like Swinson if only for her hastening of her party’s inevitable demise literally every time she opens her mouth. She’d be dangerous if only she wasn’t so damned hilarious.
Either by highly unlikely accident or well crafted design, the SNP has become an establishment party and half of Scotland doesn’t seem to have noticed yet. Compare recent events in Catalonia with the way Nicola has spent the last 3 years desperate to talk about anything other than independence, never mind actually pursuing it, and the whole thing looks like a nice establishment gig, really.
So that leaves us with what? Another 4 years of the born to rule landed gentry of the Tory party sniggering as they fill their pockets? At least you know they hate the poor, I suppose. Or the assorted mis-fits, psycopaths and random token people of colour of the Brexit party? Could they do a worse job than the rest of them have done? Probably.
All I want is to vote for a politician who will try to improve things for the working class but more and more it looks like we should be asking the Gilets Jaunes if they’ve got a guillotine we can borrow.
The idea of a guillotine has long fascinated me. I have fondly imagined myself sitting at the bottom of it, knitting clothes for my to date non existent grandchildren as the Neo Cons heads roll.
I was very impressed by “A Tale of Two Cities as a child.
Guillotine actually invented his device on humanitarian grounds as being preferable to using an axe.
It’s sad that a lot of perfectly decent intelligent people still put their faith in Labour and hope against hope it can make a difference.
This represents the triumph of hope over experience, delusional and wishful thinking, and playing the game of Lesser Evils, to get shafted in the same old way yet again.
Whatever you think of Jezza and the grass roots membership, and the very small number of decent surviving people in the PLP, Labour is a lost cause, a dead end, a waste of time, effort and energy. Nothing can be salvaged from the wreckage. It is beyond redemption. It is a distraction and a diversion from more productive endeavours.
How can anyone seriously contemplate voting for a party that treats Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, and so many others, in the way it has? How can anyone kick people like that in the teeth and contemplate voting Labour again? Really?
Labour is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Friends of Israel, the Board of Deputies and the Mossad office at the Israeli embassy – which all the Blairite Backstabbers have on speed dial.
Vote Labour and you don’t get Jezza (who has been totally emasculated and will be deposed anyway in a few months time.) You get Benn, Bradshaw, Bryant, Starmer, Thornberry, Phillips, and all their ilk, who despise the people they claim to represent. Neoliberal, pro austerity, warmonger Friends of Israel one and all.
You are as likely to get any meaningful change from these people as you are to be struck by lightning.
Whatever the problem is, Labour is not the answer.
So what is to be done? What is the alternative? Not an easy question to answer.
We need something completely new, fresh and unused, that serves the interests of ordinary people, not the 1%. That is not in thrall to an alien minority and a foreign terrorist regime.
This is difficult to achieve and is obviously a long term project. But Farage, whatever you think of him, has shown what a new party can achieve, picking up millions of votes and winning the EU election from scratch. So have widely differing new parties in Germany, Italy, Greece and elsewhere.
Playing by the rules of the established order and hoping for a few crumbs or a bit of incremental change is a fool’s errand.
So what is going to happen?
Who cares? It doesn’t really matter. The system is broken beyond repair. Nothing will be resolved. Just more chaos, extending for years into the future. Things are not going to improve, whatever happens with Brexit. Britain will probably “leave” the EU soon, but it will be a Brexit without the exit. We’ll still be in the EU in all but name. Maybe we just won’t go to the EU Xmas Party like before.
There will be an early election, certainly within 3 months. But it won’t make any difference. There are 5 main parties that will attract mass support. Labour, Tories, Liberals, SNP, Farage. There is unlikely to be a clear winner. The largest party may gain less than 30%. Some form of dysfunctional minority government, as at present. Maybe somebody could cobble together an unstable temporary coalition of Labour/ Liberals/ SNP. But they all hate each other, and they all (the PLP especially) hate Jezza. The end result could be very similar to what we have now, give or take a few seats here and there. Certainly not a government capable of implementing a programme or just taking care of day to day business.
Brexit could do quite well and act as a spoiler for the Tories, picking up a lot of votes but few seats. Though Johnson could try to pull the wool over people’s eyes and claim to be delivering Brexit.
The Liberals will pick up Remain votes. They may get a few extra seats, but it won’t change very much.
Labour are unlikely to fare well. They have tried to waffle their way through Brexit without much success. Dyed in the wool Remainers are likely to opt for the Liberals. The millions of Leavers in Labour constituencies outside London who voted for Brexit by 60% plus are unlikely to remain loyal. They will stay at home or vote for Farage. Jezza has been turned into a hate figure, a bogey man. He is a communist spy, a terrorist anti semite. All the PLP say so. They have been stabbing him in the back since the day he became leader. Johnson can quote scores of Labour figures slagging him off and saying he is unfit to be elected dog catcher. The PLP is more terrified than any Tory of Jezza forming a government.
In short, don’t expect any improvement.
What we have now is the new normal.
This will go on forever.
Mark:
You are an enigma. I made my comment on Gabbard yesterday thinking you would show up with a similar take: but you did not. At least you are back today. The Labour Party of Israel – Westminster Branch …still seem to have a few fooled. A vote is a waste of precious pen ink and a waste of a good walk. If you drive. Save the fuel. You’ll be needing it.
I can sympathise with people who still hope for something from Labour against all the evidence.
I certainly don’t like any of the alternatives.
But they are ignoring the possibilities.
The world is becoming increasingly turbulent and unstable. Support for the elites and the systems that sustain them is dwindling away rapidly. At such times anything becomes possible and radical change can arrive overnight.
Look at what happened in Thuringia. The CDU was crowded out by Die Linke and AFD. The SPD was wiped out. Or what is happening in France, Italy, Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, Lebanon and so many other places. I exclude synthetic regime change operations like Hong Kong.
The best possible outcome, which is not that fanciful, would be for both major parties to be destroyed and simply disappear. This would make the space for something better to emerge.
The same thing applies with Gabbard. She is a less obnoxious candidate than the others, though that is not setting the bar very high.
I think she is now simply being set up by Wall Street and Zionist interests as a third party controlled opposition to siphon off votes from Trump. Not that I hold any brief for Trump either.
But there isn’t anything that warrants much enthusiasm. In Utah, because of the Mormon religion, they used to give convicted murderers the option of being shot or being hanged. The options available to us now are scarcely more attractive.
I really think it depends where you are – if a vote for Labour will unseat your local, entitled incumbent then by all means cast it with joy.
The Black Crow Of Death goes “Aaaark!”
The Black Crow Of Death gets an ice pick.
No more Crow.
Get behind Corbyn, people, or we’re fucked forever. Everybody here should know this, even those with nothing constructive to add. The manifesto will speak for itself on the doorstep. 200-odd reasons to vote on issues other than Brexit. Winter is a great time for reminding people, ESPECIALLY the disillusioned in the “heartlands”, what 10 years of austerity has cost us and what is at stake if Labour don’t win, the NHS being the most obvious example.
As the election draws near, and Labour get a fair media hearing, the people will snap out of it and vote in their own interests. They must. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.
Labour still has too many dog-in-the-manger Blairites who will abandon those policies with just as much alacrity as they abandoned their pledge to implement the result of the referendum.
Until that rump is cleared away, Labour can be trusted to deliver nothing more or less than the Tories, whether Corbyn is at the helm or not.
In case you haven’t noticed, real Labour, socialist Labour, is not a ‘lost cause’.
There are countless millions of people out on the streets at the moment, in many parts of the world, and they are all protesting against (basically) neo-liberalism.
This is the biggest revolution in history.
Those who live in the very dense fog of western propaganda can’t perhaps see this.
…but the PLP still contains a majority of neo-liberal, “third way*” Blairites. They have mostly rigged their local selections to get on the ballot. These people need to be removed before Labour has any chance of opposing neo-liberalism externally.
*which was and is bollocks
Mich as I dislike Farage and the Brexit Party, I find myself thinking we need him and enough MPs to deny Boris a majority and keep him honest. At the moment he is pulling the wool over his own party’s eyes and is trying to gull the electorate. TBP will prevent him from getting away with it.
TBP cannot hold together over the long run but have some utility in allowing the electorate to give the current political class a slap in the face.
Since 1979 capital has driven the UK toward a replica of the US political system – ie a binary choice between right wing parties (like NuLabour) or outright neofascists (Johnson, JRM, Priti Patel).
That’s why Corbyn was so significant – despite failings bound to arise for any politician single-handedly taking on the establishment, he managed to awaken the idea that politics should serve the electorate rather than just the City of London and its orbiting satellites.
In particular Corbyn was one of the few politicians to attack the austerity narrative which was simply a smokescreen for national asset stripping on an operatic scale.
But lets say Corbyn loses – what then?
My guess is Labour will go back to the Blair strategy of trying to out-tory the tories – the tories on the other hand will unleash the kind of feudal society that characterised Britain during the 1930s.
Needless to say when the US tells it Britain it has to deal with existential threats like Venezuela the Guardian will slip into overdive warning its readership how rotten things are under Maduro while failing to admit they are one of the news platforms responsible for Britains lurch toward becoming a failed state.
If Corbyn wins, and that’s still a possibility the media campaign to discredit him will make the previous slurs seem like a positive character reference – for example it is unlikely he will ever be able to sleep again unless he misses an important sporting event (I am not going to link to the Daily fail article entitled, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is caught taking a nap on a train to Scotland as the rest of the country cheered on England against the All Blacks’).
The problem is that only the residents of Islington North get to vote for Corbyn, the rest of us have our own constituency MPs to elect. These are the people who have been paralysing Parliament and failing to represent us.
Focus on unseating your own MP who has probably been there for decades and who has probably been working against your interests the whole time.
Forget party tribalism this time around.
The Blairites, centrists, moderates by and large sing from the same hymn sheet to prevent a Democratic Socialist Labour Party from winning a GE. At the last Labour conference they lost the vote to prevent Brexit. It’s a thing called democracy. Corbyn has been around the block long enough to know if Labour had tried to prevent it from happening that would have been the death knell of Labour as a democratic socialist party and a return to a cloned Neolite Tory party again which as Einstein said when you keeping making the same mistakes don’t expect a different result if you repeat it again. Now, the essayist says it’s “ hard to feel the same energy and enthusiasm this time around”. Really, evidently he/she has not been to any of the rallies which Corbyn has led, the rush by young people to register to vote, the overwhelming support for Labour on social media. Admittedly, if you had been either listening to the State Broadcaster or reading the MSM, this impression would have fermented.It’s called propaganda. The GE will offer the Labour Party to project its message about policies, not about slinging smear and slander as the :Tories, their supporters in the media and fellow travellers in the PLP do since they have nothing else to offer, and, according to broadcasting law, have a level playing field for a change. “ Does it matter anymore?”. To the poor, the destitute, the homeless and ordinary people living from hand to mouth it does!
John,
I don’t listen to UK State propaganda, nor read UK State propaganda, however, since what seemed like a triumph in June 2017 – the Labour Party securing its highest vote in a generation and almost getting to the prize of 10 Downing Street under Corbyn, I can only say its been all down hill from that juncture in time.
Let us be blunt, 10s of 1000s flocked to the Party as new members only to encounter a Party machine that literally detested the new membership, between August 2015 – to February 2018 some 12-13K members were Auto Expelled, Suspended and then Expelled by those that detest democracy and standing up for universal human rights – this alone is one hell of a stain on the Party and this crap has not stopped under Ms Formby, as another Black activist found out to her peril only today, and she ain’t the only one of late, I know of many all suspended on fabricated charges, charges that make one laugh when viewed against the crimes of Kieth Vaz and Dame Margaret Hodge.
As if the above were not bad enough, the Party consultation Corbyn called after the 2017 election was to put it mildly farcical – grass roots members made a plethora of well thought out suggestions for meaningful change, alas, their time was wasted and zero change was not forthcoming, this from a Party headed by a man who allegedly understands the import of bottom-up political organisations.
Alas, the defeats to the Left just kept coming, despite alleged Leftwing gains on the NEC the Party adopted the full IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism, which many argued against warning you cannot appease those who can’t be appeased – indeed, Freedom of Speech and Thought within the Party is at a all time low, quite an achievement when we consider the Blair years.
And, to cap it all the greatest defeat the grass roots suffered was that of the NEC stitch-up on Open Selections, which, had huge support at a CLP level, alas, it would seem our masters only like democracy when it swings their way, at all other times they detest it, and this fact is best illustrated by the Party’s move away from supporting the EU Referendum Result to one of being a full on Remain position, despite Conference last month voting against such a position, capping all, John McDonnell was involved in this nonsense, a fact that made this observer vomit, vomit because I and 1000’s of others went out of our way during the ChickenCoup of 2016 to ensure Corbyn was not removed as leader and that McDonnell would remain the Shadow Chancellor.
I could go on, but as someone with a leg in Asia and one in Wales its difficult not to feel deflated when we have buggers like Chris Bryant and Owen Smith in our midsts, both of whom, like many others are virtually impossible to remove under the cop out known as Trigger Ballots.
And, if this was not bad enough, we now have the PLP playing games yet once more with peoples lives by actively ensuring there will be no General Election this side of Christmas by crafting on caveats to their alleged support for a GE, caveats that are meaningless, unless of course you firmly believe a majority of 16 year olds are mature enough to enter a Polling Booth, which, having taught this age group, I can assure you many do not hold the necessary maturity to vote. As for non-UK nationals, well, that goes down well in the heartlands – I’m all for civic democracy, but all this stinks of a Rightist ploy, a ploy to stop Corbyn ever becoming PM.
Apparently 16 year olds are mature enough to vote but not to buy a packet of fags or get a tattoo. Personally I think we should extend the franchise to 12 year olds, or maybe go the whole hog and include 5 year olds. We could also exclude all pensioners, as they are mostly old, uneducated, bigoted, ignorant and racist.
As one of those suspended in the last few days( I have cancelled my membership) under the catch all rule 2.1.8,for “comments on social media” that is criticism of Israel and Zionism,(though they haven’t said so of course,no evidence is offered to support my suspension),I have to agree with you Chris,especially as the evidence is beginning to accumulate that suspensions are accelerating back to the level under McNicol.However,we are talking about how to vote in the coming election,and that must mean,in general, Labour,though I could not under any circumstances vote for the likes of Hodge,and the other members of the Israeli Labour party.The Labour party manifesto s a manifesto worth voting for.
Yes,I believe that the PLP will block implementation of much of it,but we need to go through that process for the “soft left” membership to understand what we are up against.,and enough will get adopted to make for an improvement in the life chances of the poorest and the sick.A Labour government will prevent the total destruction of the NHS,and it is worth seeing them get elected to achieve that alone.Though for some of the tin pot revolutionaries commenting here,nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism at the election will be acceptable.
Hi John,
Have you made contact with the Facebook Group that assists those within the Labour Movement who have been Suspended, Auto-Ejected or Banned?
We have more than 1.1K members and it really is an eye opener to read some of the stuff the Compliance Unit have dispatched – personally, I’d be ashamed, if not for the reality that the buggers don’t know squat shite about Compliance, never mind Governance.
Anyhow, if you have not connected yet, let me know and I’ll see if I can get the Mods to connect with you.
The PLP is just a Zionist kangaroo court.
Thanks Chris.
What is the name of the fb group please.
Can you locate me on Facebook please, which is Christopher Rogers, location Hong Kong & Torfaen. I’m not at liberty to give out the name of the FB Group as its Private, but can sort you out if you communicate via FB.
A few weeks ago I went to a local branch meeting which had McDonnell as guest speaker. He was trying to garner support for Bryne as a candidate for mayor . Now, I did not support him because he his a Blairite but I did agree with McDonnell view that the state Broadcaster and the MSM are trying to fracture the party. This is nothing new. You are right about the right trying to control the party but this is nothing new. From the very beginning of the party’s origins they have tried to do this. However, it’s important to keep the eye on the ball. Who is the worst the Tories or a party trying to wrest control from the right? The Tories offer more austerity. Let’s remember who the main enemy is!
The second in two days – I have lost count over the last two months. Corbyn keeps shooting himself in the foot. His stance towards the EU now means that his manifesto of a few years back will not fly. The EU will not allow it. The UK now has a huge disenfranchised population that no longer has anyone to vote for. I now think of most parliamentarians as self-serving scum. The Brexit problem has been manufactured by them and if they had been honest in their endeavour to leave the EU as they had promised we would be out and making a sensible deal for trade with them and with the rest of the world.
I think this election, if it happens, will show different trends in different parts of the country, even in neighbouring constituencies.
1. I would not want to be a Remain MP in constituencies that were strongly Leave in 2016.I can see both Labour and Conservatives losing seats.
2. The Libdems may win a few more seats in areas with strong Remain/Student/trendy electorates.
3. I suspect the SNP will lose a few seats but remain the dominant force in Scotland. More and more Scots are realising that the SNP up there is just like Labour down here: trotters voraciously in troughs and principles missed the train the past two years….
4. I expect quite a lot of Labour and Tory safe seats to see significantly reduced majorities as voters punch unpopular MPs on the nose knowing that their hated enemies cannot win.
5. TBP could get anything from 0 seats to 150 seats, it really is impossible right now to gauge what will happen. The media will be against them, but then they were rabidly Remain in 2016 and we know how that all ended. There are millions who know that BRINO is worse than Remain, what is unclear is how many may see TBP as the only option left to get what they voted for in the first place: a clean BREXIT.
6. I leave Northern Ireland politics to the Northern Irish: the rules over there are very different.
The biggest imponderable is how the electorate now view Boris Johnson. Go Die in a Ditch or Go Beat those Remoaner MPs to a pulp? What percentage of the electorate is oblivious to polarising MSM mind control?
I think Farage is unlikely to pick up many, if any seats.
But he doesn’t have to.
His main strength is to act as a spoiler for Bojo, letting in Liberals and Labour by default.
Yes, but even a handful in the monkey house would prove critical to peventing an establishment stitch-up.
I’m praying that Corbyn can pull a rabbit out of hat as he did in 2017. You’d need to be a magician faced with Johnson’s dirty tricks (he’s unlikely to run as poor a campaign as Theresa May did), MOSSAD, MI5, the CIA, Rupert Murdoch and co – and with friends like Emily Thornberry, Keir Starmer and even John McDonnell, you don’t really need any enemies. Still, optimism is the best policy and I and thousands of others will bust a gut over the next few weeks to get a Labour government led by Corbyn. Anything else is a disaster for our country.
I agree with you. I moved to Wales to get away from the Tories and to leave forever behind me English house prices, complete greed [ really its not near as bad in Wales] and its a joy to be back with the Celts. As an Irish person living in England, Boris, David and Theresa would have been just too much to bear.
I do not have too much hope for England but I will be joining Plaid and will help them fight for Welsh independence because Westminster is a cesspit.
Yep, its a great idea to leave one cesspit only to join another, larger cesspit in Brussels – as I keep instructing my Nationalist friends, just look at the Baltic States and see how well they’ve done playing to the fiddle of Brussel’s. Mind you, if depopulation is your goal, then an independent Wales suckling at the alter of Brussels and its fetish for perpetual austerity will be a huge success.
Emm, didn’t say anything about the EU. In fact the reason for an independent Wales is for the Welsh people to finally after centuries of oppression and being a colony to Westminster, kept poor, kept at heal, laughed at and insulted. Do you think Europe is so powerful it could over ride centuries of poverty??? I voted out of Europe having always in my heart been a socialist. Voting for an independent Wales is not necessarily voting to rejoin Europe.
Try having a bit of insight, a bit of humanism.
No wonder we are fucked.
Maybe you’d better keep an eye on Plaid Cymru policy then, for the fact is, despite a clear majority of the Welsh electorate voting to Exit the EU, Plaid seems to think, like all other illiberal, anti-democratic UK parties that the vote is null and void, namely, despite the facts, they want Wales in the EU – obviously, if you are actually on the Left in Wales, as many are, the EU is deemed much the same as Westminster, namely, a neoliberal basket case. Can’t help what Plaid’s policy is, but please don’t expect an informed welshman to turn his little country into a replica of Estonia so we may feast at the Brussel’s table – we’ve lost enough of our population I’m afraid to say, and that’s without Brussel’s/Frankfurt imposed perpetual austerity.
But the EU treats small countries really well. Just ask Greece and Cyprus.
I am from Ireland, a country once destroyed by the English. I have watched the internment of Irish men and women, watched the putrid Westminster establishment destroy everything they touch.
Why do you scorn an independent Wales, it’s feels like you are being purposely cynical about everything, that nothing is worthwhile fighting for.
As I have said I have no time for the EU, never have had but read my comment again instead of your knee jerk we know all the answers, your looking down on people from above as though you have all the solutions. You don’t.
I would guess that I probably know more about Irish history than you do. And for me Wales is one of the most beautiful and magical places in the British Isles. It was an independent country once and could conceivably be again.
My point was that Wales (pop. 3 million) voted to leave the EU, and Plaid Cymru, like Labour, have done everything they can to sabotage the result and remain. In theory at least they want independence while staying in the EU. This is also the position of the SNP for Scotland (pop. 6 million.)
Small countries like Greece (10 million) and Cyprus (1 million) are expected to keep quiet and do as they’re told by Brussels. I don’t know how well independent Wales and Scotland would be treated by Brussels. My guess is not very.
That said, it would be beneficial for the rest of the UK (England) if they went for independence. If Dublin could be persuaded to take back Ulster, so much the better. They are a drain on the rest of the country, as the 14 other republics of the old USSR were on Moscow.
I very much doubt you know more Irish history than me. My grandfather Cathel Brugha who fought in the Easter rising was killed in the civil war, my mother 3 months old at that time. My grandmother Caitleen Brugha started Mna na eireann.
You sound like a deeply arrogant and unpleasant person.
How bloody dare you.
Having studied the subject and having lived in Ireland, I believe I do. A relative of mine was killed there a couple of years before Cathel and is buried in Dublin. I’m sorry for your family’s loss.
Excellent comments from yourself, Betrayedplanet. I long for the day when little old Cymru becomes free.
(By the way, I’m glad you moved here. We could do with more people who think like you).
Betrayed Planet,
I don’t like having words placed in my mouth, I have critiqued Plaid Cymru and its love affair with Brussels, which I and many other Leftists born in Wales do not share – as for Welsh Independence, this is complex stuff and usually I discuss the potential for economic independence – which I’m well versed on, otherwise, I usually promote a Federal solution to Wales’s dilemma, but not in a million years do I promote Wales becoming a monetary and fiscal fiefdom of Brussels, much as its presently a fiefdom of England, which to me is madness and constitutes no Independence whatsoever!
Not again don’t you ever give up with that one?
My gut feeling is that voters will try to avoid giving either Corbyn or Johnson a strong majority, as they are probably somewhat fearful of both options. If the polls look favourable for Johnson, expect a swing towards Corbyn leading to a hung parliament, and vice versa — if the polls are too favourable for Corbyn, expect enthusiasm to die down, again leading to a hung parliament. Of course, I may be totally wrong! The lib dems and Brexit party are probably going to wither away, IMO.
Another thing, although an outright labour majority may be somewhat unlikely, the odds on the betting websites of 20/1 seem far too low to me. I’m considering placing a bet on that.
This is the greatest chance for the wholly unprincipled lying LibDems to take seats from Labour In the South and some metropolitan boroughs with remain majorities. They’d rather have extra seats and a Johnson leave deal than anything else.
I got 16/1 today William Hill ,labour win
What’s wrong with banning private schools?
Diane Abbott and all the Labour MPs send their kids there.
Bog standard comprehensives are only good enough for the Great Unwashed.
Well Mark, I’m pleased to state that my own daughter attends a bog standard Secondary School – too poor to pay, alas, I’m not of import to many of those sitting on the PLP benches, only the middle class in London and the South East seem to be of concern to many of them, that and their pet project of ‘identity politics’, which don’t fly too well in actual working class constituencies, indeed, those constituencies that on the whole elected to exit the EU.
I don’t think the policy is to ban schools Kit. It is about improving the education for the many and removing the undoubted privileges of the few who dominate life in this country from politics to sport and just about everything else within the establishment, simply by their having attended the right school. I would be interested why you have a problem with this Kit
Too Marxist for most of us.
Just remove their charitable status, tax them as other businesses and tax their massive real estate holdings such that it becomes prohibitively expensive to send kids there.
Once Eton and Marlborough cab cater only for a tiny sliver of the British elite’s scions and those of many overseas oligarchs and warlords, the rest of us can focus on making the state education system fit for the needs of the nation.
At the moment their pampered status makes it a viable option for people of relatively modest means (through scrimping and saving) to avoid the state system and thus the demand to improve it is stymied.
Corbyn’s chances of becoming PM aren’t really helped by the fact that he’s a baby-eating, cardigan-wearing, houmous-weaving, allotment-owning, terrorist-sympathising, train-floor-sitting hater of the you-know-whos.
(I get all my Corbyn-related info from an impeccable source – The Guardian).
Cardigans, eh? That’s a covert sign that he’s planning to take us back to the Val Doonican 70s!
I look forward to the headlines squawking about how the Loony Left™ will be forcing us all to wear garish knitwear.
The mainstream media are nothing if not superficial. The 70s – when worker rights and protections were much better safeguarded – is presented as a time of unrelenting grimness. The 80s – when the real assault began – was presented as so much more flashy and glitzy. And as the decades go on, the inverse relation continues with a vengeance: the shittier it gets, the more hyperactive and glaring the circus show.
Or maybe pull the wool over our eyes !