10 Reasons to be Cheerful on Election Eve
W Stephen Gilbert
- In what they keep calling “the most unpredictable election of recent times”, the pundits report a continuing Tory lead in the opinion polls, indicating that Boris Johnson will have a majority in the House. Let’s just remember that, throughout this century, the polls have almost always been wrong.
- Labour has a fantastic ground operation to get the vote out, far superior to that of the Tories and better even than the legendary Liberal grassroots campaigns of the 1970s and ‘80s. Much of it is based on the immense activist base and the highly developed online skills of Momentum.
- Young and first-time voters break heavily for Labour and are strongly motivated to vote, especially on issues that directly affect them which are addressed fully and sympathetically in the Labour manifesto. Nearly 40% of Tory Party members are over 65 years old. Some of them will be deterred by the weather, complacency or seasonal duties.
- The Tory campaign has been narrow, cautious and accident-prone. The constantly hammered slogan “Let’s get Brexit done” will have paid diminishing returns with many voters who have other concerns. Remainers (half the electorate) have no motive to vote Tory.
- The election allows Labour roughly equal opportunities of exposure (unlike the government-favouring coverage during the rest of the political cycle) and many who don’t follow politics will have had their first real sight of Jeremy Corbyn and will have been able to measure him for themselves against the constant undermining by the mainstream media.
- Johnson and many of his MPs have often received a rowdy reception. Johnson has fled several events (especially hospital visits) because of the evidence of hostility. Though you don’t see much of it in the media, Corbyn routinely addresses huge crowds everywhere, and ticketed events are greatly oversubscribed.
- Johnson boasts that his candidates are united behind him. That suggests that those who don’t support the Tories will not be inclined to give Johnson the benefit of the doubt, while those who scorn Johnson will be equally repelled by his party. By contrast, the uneasy alliance of Corbynistas and intractable Blairites that is the Labour Party and its supporters is much more likely to be accepted as the lesser evil by those in each half of the alliance.
- The proportion of “undecided voters” found by opinion polls is still comparatively high. A lot of people make up their minds when they look at the ballot paper. Hesitancy may well be more about Labour’s huge ambition than Johnson’s known quantity. Perhaps the hesitant will be apt to break for us.
- After the local and European elections in the spring, pundits declared that two-party dominance was over and that smaller parties would greatly increase their representation in parliament at the next election. That election is here, and nothing suggests that the smaller parties will make much – if any – headway and will certainly not repeat their spring showings. This benefits both big parties, with a decline in Brexit Party support favouring the Tories but a similar slump in LibDem votes helping Labour. The LibDems, Greens and Nationalists made pacts in some seats in order to help the anti-Tory vote – in some seats that should stop Tories winning, in others perhaps Labour doing so. The Brexiteers stood down in all the Tory-held seats, which might stop Labour taking some Tory marginals, but their continuing to stand in Labour-held seats might equally prevent the Tories from taking Labour marginals.
- These may all be straws in the wind. Or it might be clutching at straws. No one knows what will happen on polling day, save that the election will be won and lost not in the campaign but on the day itself. We’re constantly told that the nation is divided, exhausted and fed up. This may he fertile for Johnson. The positive and hopeful vote will go to Labour. As long as sufficient supporters encourage people they know to vote positively, we can still win this.
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The British Brainwashing Corporation is confidently predicting a Tory landslide, 368 seats, 191 for Labour.
Of course I always believe everything the BBC says.
As a distant observer dwelling in the belly of the Western imperial beast, I can’t help but think of this election as constituting a rather important political and social “experiment” by the Western ruling class and by the intelligence and media apparatus at their disposal. Will literally four + years of baseless and relentless anti-Corbyn and anti-Labour propaganda promoted throughout Western MSM “pay off” and keep the odious Torries in power – having sufficiently brain-washed the populace? Regardless of what one thinks of the state of “democracy” in the U.K. this still seems a rather important question to anyone who cares about our collective future on planet earth.
Under the influence of the Western intelligence services, MSM now simply prints and reports a “completely fabricated reality” which bears no relationship whatsoever to actual events that take place in the actual physical world, but which through endless repetition simply becomes the “accepted” reality for many people. How effective is this technique? Do most people still “trust” MSM? Are more people beginning to wake up? We shall soon see.
For a number of reasons I tend to think that if Corbyn and Labour can win today it will quite possibly exert a very positive influence our U.S. election next year. However, if the massive propaganda operation that has taken place over a number of years now proves effective, I dare say our collective future will simply be more of the same – forever – throughout our so called – “Western democracies.”
One reason to be very unhappy. My polling station, which is always near empty, has cars backed up down the road, waiting to get in the carpark. You can’t move for doddering, wealthy old fuckers going to stop the security risk, anti-Semite and get Brexit done.
The only hope now, is in 5 years time there hasn’t been a collapse of the Euro, people realise Johnson was lying, we’re still as close to Europe as ever, and paying through the nose for it, the middle-class are being squeezed by Indian immigrants…….and Corbyn’s replacement is a left winger, possibly Rebecca Long Bailey. In reality, Labour are finished.
I take it Jonathan Pie isn’t gonna vote for the Tories then?
“We’ll put him down as an “Undecided.”
Misattributed to Einstein: “The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a different result”. If we do what we have always done: we will get what we always got – the hierarchical authoritarian capitalist state. Which is testament to poor old Mark Fisher’s (RIP) Capitalist Realism …TINA …there is no alternative. Despite the continuous and ever more pernicious invalidation of the cyclical votive offering of state obeisance: here we go again. Well I haven’t been so disheartened with my fellow travelers since 1983: when we voted Thatcher in …again. For starting a war. Not many people seem to understand that they are entering into a term-contract (of five years) by which they transfer their autonomous power of attorney to the co-constituted capitalist state. By which the authoritarian state legislature and statutory jurisprudence makes our decisions for us in the interim. But we remain co-responsible. We can try and hide behind the hyper-individual veil by saying “I did not vote for that”. Well, actually, you did. So do you think everyone will be happy being co-responsible for NATO, Trident, FCO interventionism and soft power projection, the clandestine activities of the Conflict, Insecurity and Instability Fund supporting the White Helmets and jihadi councils – even if it is in camps in Turkey …all for another five years? Or extending the mandate for the extension of private property rights over nature – for the exponential extractivism and expropriation from biomes to the new bottom line of corporate social responsibility? Conflict and blood profit we can all share? Then there is the City: mandated to exponentially increase the rate at which we extract surplus value from the already weakened and dying children of the world. Now we are going green and clean: the child miners have… Read more »
@BigB: Misattributed to Einstein: “The very definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again whilst expecting a different result”.
Pedantic note: Even if that famous quote is not authentic it actually encapsulates Einstein’s fundamental objection to Born’s probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory. Probability Rules, OK? then you _must_ expect different results from repeating the same action.
“Quod duo facient idem non est idem” — Menander (what two do the same is not the same).
I totally agree. We can go back to Heraclitus’ equally famous axiom “You cannot step into the same river twice”. “Panta rhei” – everything flows. And in systems theory: nothing is truly repeatable due to sensitivity to initial conditions; relentless non-linear causality; etc.
But human reality is abstracted from the potentially chaotic: and is ‘known’; fixed in identity; hierarchically ordered, linearised; generalised; ‘smoothed’; and repeatable. Objectivised almost totally by the rationality of the Cartesian Method. Einstein was famously aligned to the old physics that if we had enough information and computing power: we could determine every event in the past, present, and future. “God does not play dice”. As Steven Hawking later retorted “Not only does God play dice; sometimes He throws them where we cannot find them” …referring to the information loss in black holes.
The cycle of events and behaviourisms we are institutionalised to repeat in an Eternal Return or Ouroboross …are not identical or in fact repeatable. But they might as well be. It is what Ernest Mandel called “Parametric Determinism”. The future is not mechanically determined or knowable – as Einstein and many physicists would have it – but if we limit the parameters of our adaptive behaviours to repeatable and remembered cycles …it becomes so in a closed self-determinative circular causality. Otherwise known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The teleology or outcome of which becomes foreseeable.
And the outcome of this particular ritualised institutional cycle is known to me. And a good many others. What is not known or knowable is how to break the determinative cycle and open up new vistas of possibility and alternative futures. It only needs a small change: a butterfly flapping its wings that catches the currents of the collective imagination …
@BigB: “It only needs a small change: a butterfly flapping its wings that catches the currents of the collective imagination …”
Mother Gea, “wanton, witless Nature”, will take care of the big problems on our little planet, “rough hew them how we may”. She usually does it by encouraging a population of new forms to develope from a few insignificant individuals (your butterfly flapping its wings) — perhaps by encouraging the growth of “the plucky and the considerate” among the vast herds of subservient and heedless sheeple who are trampling this planet.
This election is a much smaller thing, important for Britain (and perhaps as setting an example for politics at large): it is a battle to re-install a Socialist as Leader of a major Western country after 40 years of Cultural Genocide against Socialism by Britain’s rich and therefore powerful Anglo Zio Capitalist Class.
”But who knows: maybe this time it will be different?” The triumph of hope over experience perhaps. But I clearly remember the speeches by James Callaghan at Ruskin College in 1976 where I was a student, and later at LPAC at Blackpool when he showed a complete conversion to the then newly fashionable monetarist doctrines. It went as follows. ”We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession, and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting Government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment.” I bet this went down a treat at the Adam Smith Institute. To think a leader of a Labour party – ‘a Labour party’ to quote Neil Kinnock – could endorse what in fact was the beginning of Thatcherism and Austerity. I don’t think much has changed in the interim, apart from the Blairite phenomenon. It seems to me that the relationship between the Labour party and its supporters is akin to an abusive relationship. They are let down time and again but continue to come back for more. Yes I know. ”But what is your alternative.” Try this for size. A mass participatory socialist party which doesn’t give a flying **** about respectability, moderation and what the Guardian, Daily Mail, and the chief Rabbi thinks – party that takes power, not the Labour which… Read more »
BigB
On a slightly different topic that may be of interest to you, I just took a look at the original Green New Deal from 2008. Its interesting to say the least how its evolved in the last 11 years. For instance, the original called for a vast overhaul of the financial system as one of its main strategies. Completely absent now even though the financial system has been in no way fixed and if anything is in far worse shape. Lots of talk about making every building a power station presumably with the aim of making people more energy independent, but that has been supplanted by big construction for building industrial scale wind and solar farms along with the rest of the corporate GND takeover and the shark feeding frenzy that entails.
https://greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/a-green-new-deal.pdf
No matter who said this, I’ve never felt it was relevant to what really happens in politics. The real powers don’t expect a different result. They are perfectly happy with the result as it is. Of course this result is madness and horror to the vast majority but THEIR hopes, fears, wellbeing etc. are matters of no concern to the rulers. Of course the rulers know that this true situation i.e. that the results are as desired is something that has to be hidden – hence the armies of propagandists who scratch their heads and look concerned and say things, “Well – maybe we’ll get it right next time” thereby generating an image of humanity and leading to the false conclusion that the rulers are just misguided or insane. The rulers are evil. And that is the truth of the matter.
Using the fav press phrase ffs
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/dec/12/from-a-thumping-tory-win-to-a-corbyn-coalition-four-election-scenarios
The Groaniad continues IT’S gaslighting of the voters – just like the beeb, LBC msm and social and alt-media are.
What about the 5th scenario?
A Labour majority?
Bring on the Leveson 2 storm and sink all their boats!
Eleventh reason to be cheerful if Socialist Regimentation under a Corbyn Dictatorship (on the Chinese pattern) come to Britain:
“China solved this [U$ financial $anctions against Huaweii] by simply recruiting +3,000 engineers from [U$ $upported] Taiwan, offering them good wages and a better lifestyle in China proper; in that way hollowing out the production ability of the U$ Outsourced Cheap Labour Industrial Empire.”
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1172858.shtml
“In addition, China has instructed all government offices and public companies to replace foreign PCs and software with domestic made alternatives within three years.” [Prophetically, there was an episode fr0m Yes Minister where UK Minister Jim Hacker received a U$ directive designed to thwart his idea of buying British word processors for the UK civil service; I forget how Jim fixed it.]
Stephen Pollard has printed ‘millions of Jews like me are thinking of leaving the Uk…’ in the top DT election day website story.
The population of Uk Jews is 500,000.
Any non-Jew lying like that would be hounded out of polite society.
Hopefully it will come back to haunt him…
“with the hyperbole native to their race” — Joseph Addison ca.1700, on a Jewish account of a historical slaughter of Jews.
That’s probably a reference to the sixty-four-million Jews holocausted by the Romans during the Bar Kokhba revolt in the second century. In just one city, no less. Imagine what would have happened if they had been equipped with modern technology, like machine guns and poison gas.
Well, bye then.
and, don’t let the door slap you on the arse on the way out.
Smaller parties would greatly reduce both Labour and Conservative if FPTP were abolished.
Most of us have a worthless vote under the current system. And this time, you can choose between piss-poor BRINO and Remain. Clean Brexit is not available to vote for….
It suits both Labour and Conservative.
It appals me.
I did vote for Labour last time. But I am not voting for any of them this time. It has taken them 3 years to completely ignore our democratic vote to leave The EU.
If they don’t do what we tell them to do (they are supposed to represent us).
Then what is the point of voting for them?
No Feedback. No Point.
We Say Do THIS – They do nothing
Sack The Lot of Them By Not Voting
They are not worth my vote, and they most certainly are not worth yours.
So don’t Do It
Don’t Vote
There is no point in them. They don’t do anything.
Tony
Pathetic compo y not you vote?
Don’t bother whinging or commenting on anything political – enjoy your apathetic days left to you in blissful ignorance.
The Mail is reporting mega queues in many marginals.
Bozo didn’t even risk going to his constituency to vote for himself!
Has that ever happened before?
Only the dodgy postal votes will save the tories from total humiliation.
Playing Portillo/Balls bingo later.
The whole damn lot of them aren’t worth the shoe leather.
The Brexit party should get a good number of votes and thus upset GB’s Establishment apple cart..
Let them have some of their own “divide and rule” for a change.
I’m voting Corbyn, a decent bloke by all accounts. But just thinking about ‘Spaffer’ Johnson has my guts heaving, vain, vile and vacuous creature that he’s shown himself to be.
Mate there will be a lot of heaving from the ‘milk he delivered’ yesterday after popping into the fridge for a 5 minutes spaffing.
The thing I find so sad is that so many people hate Corbyn but have no idea why. The media has done a great hatchet job. I wonder if future generations will be so easily brainwashed.
Let me tell you why. A party most decent left-of-centre people felt they could vote for, disagree as they might with some its policies, a party which was broad church enough to include longtime establishment rebel Corbyn in its ranks, is now one led by that same Corbyn who counts terrorists as friends, who feigns not to have noticed the anti-Semitism which inspires his followers to gaslight MPs out of the party, who has so little sympathy for Jews alarmed and saddened by the grip anti-Semitism seems to exert that an apology can’t be dragged from him, however grudgingly, until the very last moment. We erstwhile Labour voters detest him because we know that, whatever the GE result, it will be hailed as a victory for this dim rabble-rouser.
Can I just say to people who say that this election” doesn’t matter”:
The biggest political earthquake in modern history was the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century.
Unlike the French and American revolutions earlier (which were all carried out by the middle and upper class), the Russian revolution was a genuine working class thing.
The Russian revolution scared the shit out of the psychopaths who rule us.
That’s why Hitler and the Nazis were bankrolled by The City and Wall Street during the 1930s (the ‘German economic miracle’ – it’s all well documented).
And that’s why we had the biggest slaughter in history, World War Two, and the biggest invasion in history: Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded Russia.
The allies promised Stalin that a second front in Europe would start shortly after, but of course it never happened. It didn’t happen until the summer of 1944, three years later, because of course the allies thought that the Soviet Union would mostly be destroyed by that time.
It didn’t happen, and the Soviet Union survived, after losing somewhere around 30 million war dead.
I could go on and on with all this in the following decades (it amounts to huge numbers of people being slaughtered – more so than in the Second World War).
So to skip to this jolly little election in the UK in December 2019, it’s exactly the same playbook employed by the psychopaths who rule us: Corbyn must be destroyed.
Tomorrow is probably the last chance that citizens of the UK have to vote themselves out of shackles.
Bojo and his fellow psychopaths will quite literally kill you, if you allow them to do so.
The Russian revolutions of 1917 (the February one and the later Bolshevik one) were not working class affairs. The prime movers in both were lawyers, journalists, politicians, agitators, Jewish intellectuals. Not many horny handed sons of toil involved, apart from a bit of cannon fodder.
Jewish intellectuals
Don’t you know you’re not allowed to say that?
http://www.unz.com/article/lying-about-judeo-bolshevism/
The biggest political earthquake in modern history was the Russian Revolution in the early 20th century.
Unlike the French and American revolutions earlier (which were all carried out by the middle and upper class), the Russian revolution was a genuine working class thing.
— until it was quickly hijacked by the same kind of aspiring middle-class elements that always try to hijack popular movements, for their own benefit. Like the British Labour Party, for example.
Voline — The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921
I assume that the two downvotes are from people who are somehow enthusiasts for both middle-class social democracy AND the stalinist regime in Russia. The common feature is, of course, various privileged bureaucrats, managers, functionaries, and propagandists serving their own interests, while claiming to be representatives of the working-class majority. There’s a long tradition of this in Britain, a prominent example being the Fabian Society.
I assume that the single downvote is from somebody who is simultaneously an enthusiast for middle-class social democracy, the stalinist regime in Russia, AND the Fabian Society.
In other words, an MP for the British Labour Party.
Says the guy who blindly down votes others just on name tag…..
Joker!
Perhaps you could explain how it is that you claim to know who upvotes and downvotes are cast by.
In other words, you’re either a liar, or a deep-state internet spook.
The Russian revolution is now no. 2. Chinese state-capitalism is no. 1 these days. Shark Capitalism dominated by a Communist party, resulting in spirit dead mass materialism on a 13 x bigger scale under similar totalitarian supervision.
Yes, if the peasants in the countryside, with just pitchforks, hadn’t unilaterally stopped the relief ‘White Russian’ army getting to the revolutionaries – Then history would have been different.
Credit to Last American Vagabond for uncovering this. Hard proof that elections are rigged. What goes on in the US generally goes on here, because it’s the same scumfucks running the show.
US elections, RIGGED Computer Programmer TESTIFIES Congressional Meeting. ELECTION FRAUD!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-book-jews-control-media-general-election-a9239346.html
Boris Johnson depicted Jews as controlling the media and being able to “fiddle” elections in a little-known 2004 novel written while he was a Tory MP, it has emerged.
Maybe he’s in a position to know whereof he speaks.
Jewish deepstate insider Dr Steve Peizenik unveils what the US intelligence files say about Boris Johnson. He has access to this info, he is a pretty big cheese
OPUS 168 Boris Badenov Johnson
That Boris Johnson novel was called “Seventy Two Virgins”. Qatari state funded Al Jazeera of course will try to distract the attention away from extreme Islam towards…..the Jews. How predictable.
JC could have defended himself better from the lying Tory scum but think he seriously couldn’t believe they’d lie so much and sink that low, neither could I. His intellect, understanding, nuance and beautiful ethics have seriously stood out in this election, i’ll be gobmacked if they don’t carry him over the line tomorrow.
If they don’t we’ll know the election has been rigged, we know he has rock star status anywhere he goes, people love him, polls saying he is unpopular are false. Let’s hope we get a true result tomo, ig JC doesn’t win, it’s rigged.
I have never been a member of any political party, and rarely vote, though came close to joining The Labour Party, when Jeremy Corbyn got elected, and I did vote Labour at the last General Election. I am not inspred by this General Election, nor any of The Politicians. However, if George Galloway, was standing as a candidate, in my constituency, I would vote for him, regardless of what party label he was using. Whilst I don’t agree with all his political views, he comes the closest to many of mine, and has the courage to tell the Americans to go to hell, which basically is what is urgently needed. Jeremy ain’t going to do that is he? At best he would ignore them, but that is not what is needed for a Leader of a Country. The Leader just has to Have BALLS, despite the consequences. Don’t Lie. Just Say what you Think. So far as I can see, I am not the only one with virtually no interest in this General Election. Where I live, I see virtually No Election Posters in Windows or Gardens for any political party, so I sincerely wish, like me, my neighbours don’t vote for any of them. By voting it just encourages them. What good have they done? So far there are not that many gaudy, Christmas house decorations on display either…just mainly a few subtley decorated Christmas Trees, and almost no flashing lights… However Father Christmas is coming round tomorrow in his cart, and our two young granchildren will be home, with their parents and us Grannie and Grandad in our house. So I am working on the gaudy bit. In initial location tests in our front garden, both my wife and I are exceedingly impressed with our new toy. So… Read more »
Nice one Tony.
Is the Australian ABC working for the US government, taking orders from Pompeo (US Sec. of State) directly?
Right now, in their Analysis and Opinion section, the two top items show a vendetta against Corbyn. The first item says the UK election is a ‘Toxic’ choice, alluding that both candidates are toxic.
The second item titled ‘ Why Jeremy Corbyn so unpopular?’ doesn’t get better. The ABC ridicules Corbyn’s policies and what he stands for. The ABC didn’t even mention that the slandering against Corbyn was the work of warmongers in the US and UK.
Glaring ommission from the Australian ABC analysis is the declaration by the US Sec. of State, Pampeo, to prevent Corbyn from being elected.
In June 2019, Mike Pompeo suggested “he will not wait for the Labour Party leader to be elected, rather he will attempt to stop it from ever happening.”
The question is, who is dictating the narrative at the ABC? Where to turn for fair and equitable news coverage?
A couple of alternatives LeCon>>
https://independentaustralia.net/
https://newmatilda.com/
Or catch The Anarchist Hour with Joe Toscano on 3CR Melbourne (available on podcasts).
The vote will be rigged in the marginals through a major flaw in the system. After councils receive and process the postal votes with rigid checks that they are valid, the brown envelopes are opened and actual ballot slips are put into large boxes ready to be taken to the counting centre on election day. There they are counted to check that the exact number of votes registered at the council offices matches the number of votes. The ballot slips are mixed with the polling station votes. If a government was so-minded/desperate for a certain result, surely it would be very simple to get into council computers and 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 into the number of votes for each party and the result published, this would eliminate major rigging as the outcome would be expected to tally more or less with the polling station vote.
I hope you are correct and Labour gets up, but I am afraid that too many turkeys will vote for Christmas.
The election is a complete charade. Whatever the outcome, the people get screwed, which for many years has been the point of the exercise.
yes sir indeed
cast your vote
for the beast system
even if corbyn is a good man
he is surrounded by the friends of tory blair hundreds of them
many captured demonics
he will be neutralized or
robin cooked john smithed or david kelleyed
You got a better idea?
Yes! Imagine a social system that fully engaged the people’s imagination and ingenuity and applied it to evolving better ways of doing things on a trial and experimental basis. Bad ideas get binned the good universally adopted. Education and health being high on the reform list – along with about everything else in our existing crumbling, inadequate and totally corrupted Governing system. Imagine a social system that filtered out waste, incompetence, state propaganda and sociopaths seeking high office. A competitive media with the winner’s State subsidised to ensure high calibre investigative journalism to catch any malfeasance slipping through the filter. Imagine a strong and united society that didn’t weakly stand-by whilst the State imprisoned and psychologically tormented a journalist, with sickening impunity, for exposing State war crimes. I could go on but it suffices to say such a world could be created through the medium of a Smartphone and a 70% consensus for making such a transition. It would undoubtedly involve trauma and upheaval requiring transitional army oversight, but frankly, on present track we are facing a total breakdown orchestrated by an ‘Elite’ intent on creating a ‘New World Order’ that will subdue, enslave and ultimately kill US all off. The set-up for achieving this is getting clearer by the day given mounting climate propaganda and their advancing ‘Technocracy’ that is s…l….o….w….l….y embedding us in a hermetic AI driven social management and CONTROL system. Yes! Imagine a social system that fully engaged the people’s imagination and ingenuity and applied it to evolving better ways of doing things on a trial and experimental basis. Bad ideas get binned the good universally adopted. Education and health being high on the reform list – along with about everything else in our existing crumbling, inadequate and totally corrupted Governing system. Imagine a social system… Read more »
Sorry about the duplication, read the last one.
The outcome will be no victory for anyone.
Tories the largest party but neither them or Labour able to form a workable coalition.
More chaos and gridlock.
He can’t be both Santa and JC!!! Surely that’s against the rules of Chrimbo?
(My silliness aside, though, I hope we get some respite from the psychopathic Tories, whose sole reason for existence has always been and will always be the protection of the interests of the wealthy).
(Apologies for stating the bleedin’ obvious about the Tories…).
Ah, but all these factors are outweighed by the fact that Jezza is a complete bounder, as revealed in a thoughtful leader by the Chief Rabbi in the Daily Mail. He is an anti semitic Kremlin agent, who kicks his dog, uses non-Fairtrade sugar in his jam, and uses non organic fertiliser on his allotment. How can anyone possibly vote for someone like that?
Jezza is probably at this very moment preparing to flee to Moscow after receiving less than 50 votes nationally. Bojo will save us all, don’t worry. The Chief Rabbi is his best mate, and he knows a thing or two.
Jeremy Corbyn: I fear my cat is a Tory
Paul I know you are lying, Jeremy does not have a dog, he has a Tory cat, Jeremy Corbyn has revealed he fears his cat, El Gato, is “a bit of a Tory” because of its behavioral habits.
The Labour leader said he had grown concerned after the feline displayed a “disappointing individualism and lack of concern for others”.
Mr Corbyn’s initial worry was shared by his wife, Laura Alvarez, as the pair discussed the political affiliations of their pet.
However they have become increasingly encouraged by the cat’s behaviour recently as a “gentler kind of politics” has been on display.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/07/jeremy-corbyn-i-fear-my-cat-is-a-tory/
Sorry don’t have the skills to download those pictures of Corbyn with his cat, please click on link, pictures should be worth another 40 seats tomorrow.
Harry, the Corbyn cat reminds me of the Roosevelt dog. “You have slandered me, I don’t mind. You have slandered my wife, she doesn’t mind. You have slandered my children, they don’t mind. But this time you have gone too far. You have slandered my dog, Fido does mind”. Quiet ridicule is the best answer to boorish behaviour in public eg, the wealthy “lady” who calls you a F$$k$n Anti-Spasmic.
No, this must be true, H. I read it in the Daily Mail. He has a pedigree Borzoi called Vladimir that was given to him by Putin personally.
The only reservation I have about those ten reasons is that the media have consistently implied that every election is a neck-and-neck race, and I simply don’t believe that is true.
In a neck-and-neck race, whatever the media owners decide is the outcome they want, when it happens, the result will never look all that far-fetched, because it was, after all, “neck-and-neck”.
They have a vested interest in advertising all important elections as close-run, since they are obviously much easier to manipulate in such circumstances.
This trick is used so widely today, that I really think we should all wise up to it.
Next time you hear a media shill exclaim that the election is “too close to call”, just stop and think for a minute.
Are human beings really so far-gone that excruciatingly unremarkable people like Trump and Johnson are their choice for running the country?
Of course they’re not.
”…excruciatingly unremarkable…”.
Nicely put.
Optimism of the will…you can’t beat it. I’ve seen many powerful contributions to the political debate this election perhaps none more so than this from Philip Pullman today:
“There was a common understanding of the value of civic decency. There really was such a thing, and many of us really believed in it. My parents and grandparents did; my teachers did.
And then it began to vanish, almost invisibly at first. Little by little, an acid rain began to dissolve the structures of thought and feeling that gave us healthcare and libraries and schools and council houses and public parks. By the 1980s, it was working its way deep into our politics and our lives. The public life of this nation has decayed into a state of moral squalor. Lies, cowardice and betrayal leak from the very pores of our political leaders; trust limps after them like the poor little dog following the murderer Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist, even though Sikes is going to kill him.
Nothing can grow in this poisoned wilderness except money. Shame, which needs the soil of conscience before it can take root, can’t flourish here; little shoots tentatively appear, only to fade and droop and die in the corrupted air. Imagine Boris Johnson expressing shame. Imagine Donald Trump doing so. Why feel shame? Who needs shame? Shame is for losers.
In the doorways of great, stony-hearted buildings, in urine-stinking underpasses, under crumbling bridges, people who have nowhere else to go lie down to sleep.”
Powerful writing.
You forgot the first part old chap: I think ”Pessimism of the intellect” would give it a close run … I think that Max Weber had it about right when he uttered the immortal words: ” … There only two sorts of mortal sin in the political world: lack of realism and lack of responsibility.” (Politics as a Vocation) Reading some of the comments contained one wonders what sort of world many posters live in. Open your eyes and look what happening in Europe. Social-democratic parties have all but been eliminated. These include the SPD in Germany, the oldest party stretching back to Eduard Bernstein in the late 19th century. The Parti Socialiste in France, the renamed Italian Communist Party, Syriza in Greece … and so forth. If and when Labour wins the election there will be enormous pressure to adopt compromises of the type which always characterises social-democratic outfits. In fact Labour was already making concessions before the election. This is called acting responsibly. They come into power with high hopes and soon starting adapting to the demands of the PTB. In Greece Syriza wanted to return to a social democracy which was already history buried by a neo-liberal transformation throughout Europe in preceding decades, especially since 1999, that was fundamentally incompatible with social-democratic, that was fundamentally incompatible with social democracy programmes and policies. The eventual upshot of this process was a complete capitulation to the existing order. What was left of social-democratic parties in Europe had already capitulated to neo-liberal forces, or in some cases, such as Germany, had allied themselves directly had allied themselves directly with bankers and investors running running the Eurozone-wide pan European institutions like the EC and ECB. The upshot of this whole approach was Varoufakis declaring that the Greek sell-out to the Troika… Read more »
I have said very little about this general election (despite my utterances on this board).
The vote will be rigged; that’s for certain (those that follow these things will know what I’m talking about).
On the other hand, it is my personal experience that noisy music with a hammered rhythm encourages people to switch off their brains and twerk instead of thinking.
Twerking is probably the best way to go in Britain in 2019.
The Dickensian theme park is almost upon us.
Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.
I fear you’re right…
In case any readers aren’t familiar with the excellent investigative reporting out of the Grayzoneproject:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/12/08/us-uk-military-intelligence-apparatus-destroy-jeremy-corbyn/#more-17604
Great stuff there by Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal – Max has a book out right now called “The Management of Savagery – How the US State Dept fuelled the rose of ISIS and Donald Trump – I recommend this book to all of you – and Max Blumenthal is also being persecuted by the US “authorities” for the crime of investigative journalism in Latin America. We are all indebted to the likes of Julian Assange, John Pilger, Max Blumenthal, Chris Hedges, Aaron Mate and others, who are lone voices speaking truth to power – power than has now been corrupted beyond the imagination of many. Returning to the subject of our election – my hopes are pinned on JC because he is the only person in the political sphere who has actually got the guts to have Julian Assange released from that Belmarsh shit-hole. Spineless cowards like Jeremy Hunt (have I spelt that correctly?) are responsible for this warrior of truth being incarcerated – meanwhile the Daily Mail keeps pumping out its excrement – So it’s going to be “Friday The Thirteenth” which incidentally is the title of a tune by Thelonious Monk. . . . .
Some good news. They’ve dropped their charges against Max.
Thank you for your comment John, and I will say yes, because there weren’t any valid charges in the first place – and so it goes on. . . . . . .
As I have said on various threads connected to this discussion, is a vote for Labour aligned with the views Off G readers have? Is voting Labour going to even remotely change anything about the issues discussed here?
I do have issues with one or two of Corbyns domestic policies but if he and his party reverse the regime change/war policies I would vote.
Problem is I’m not sure he would or could.
Labour at MP level and above is filled with Blarites. How can someone vote for Labour councillors who only have warmongering/ Al Qaeda apologists in their local area?
How many candidates like Chris Williamson or Galloway are standing?
Unless and until someone convinces me I’m wrong, and somehow voting is not giving the corrupt legitimacy, it’s a no show here.
Despite my total annoyance at much of the PLP over its post-Conference Brexit stance, which makes a mockery of both the 2016 EU Ref. outcome and Labour’s 2017 Manifesto commitment to uphold the 2016 vote, but negotiate a Norway Plus deal with Brussel’s if possible, much else the Party is offering bucks neoliberalism – obviously, as the 2015 June vote on Welfare Cut’s suggests, a clear majority of the PLP is still addicted to Blairite Third Way policies, essentially neoliberalism with a Progressive face, its still neoliberalism though, the same can be said about warmongers within the PLP.
Given the above critique, and concerns over the Green New Deal (its not Green by a long shot) the fact remains a vote for the Clown is a vote to destroy what remains of the social fabric of the UK, whilst voting LibDem just enables the Clown whichever way you swing it. If in Scotland, vote SNP, if in England or Wales, nowhere else to vote except Labour I’m afraid. Quite simple really.
We needed a candidate like Tulsi Gabbard – she is principled like Corbyn but a tactician. Just imagine if Corbyn who has far greater reach than her through his party had worked out a strategy to campaign on one main issue. Scare the hell out of voters exposing war crimes and the soon to be blowback. Corbyn has been outflanked and outfitted at every turn. He could have spent the last few years educating and changing minds- not playing along as if the system we have has legitimacy.
I would take Bernie Sanders any day over Tulsi Gabbard….I know many on the Left love her, but I have always questioned, (1) Why she joined the military to fight in Iraq?….She must have trusted the words of the lying Bush….Pretty bad judgement, I would say, and (2) Why she is a great fan of Right-Wing murderer, Modi of India?
Your own judgement of PM Modi is of Guardian level = bought champagne socialism. ME oil dollars…
Look at India’s neighborhood: Khan Pakistan or Xi China and you’ll real totalitarianism and murder.
Modi did look on while Muslims were being murdered in his province….And look what he’s doing to the Muslims in Kasmir?
Besides, isn’t your argument a bit like, “look at” Stalin, maybe Hitler was not that bad afterall!
https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/a-new-internationalism/ QUOTES: Our approach will be based on our values. Within the first year of government Labour will: – Introduce a War Powers Act to ensure that no prime minister can bypass Parliament to commit to conventional military action. Unlike the Conservatives, we will implement every single recommendation of the Chilcot Inquiry. – Conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule. – Invest an additional £400 million in our diplomatic capacity to secure Britain’s role as a country that promotes peace, delivers ambitious global climate agreements and works through international organisations to secure political settlements to critical issues. We will: – Establish a judge-led inquiry into our country’s alleged complicity in rendition and torture, and the operation of secret courts. – Issue a formal apology for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and hold a public review into Britain’s role in the Amritsar massacre. – Allow the people of the Chagos Islands and their descendants the right to return to the lands from which they should never have been removed. – Uphold the human rights of the people of West Papua and recognise the rights of the people of Western Sahara. We will: – Immediately suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen and to Israel for arms used in violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians, and conduct a root-and-branch reform of our arms exports regime so ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians. – Reform the international rules-based order to secure justice and accountability for breaches of human rights and international law, such as the bombing of hospitals in Syria, the illegal blockade of the… Read more »
Mucho
All that’s great.
But do the public know the manifesto?
The problem is communication and presentation. And whether, if elected that manifesto would carry through considering the Labour party is full of Blarite toads.
You can’t keep lamely complaining you’ve been misrepresented. You have to fight and think clever. Corbyn hasn’t been successful because he’s been too defensive, too timid and is not a tactician.
I wish him luck though. He could pull off a surprise.
Something very strange going on here, I just posted a copy and paste of Labour’s truly inspiring anti-war manifesto, it has now vanished. Something truly evil is responsible for that, not Off-G I imagine. Loverat’s vile minsinforation post remains. Horrible
Nothing sinister – a bunch of your comments were held back by our spam software
I think its a bit much to say a post is vile and giving misinformation. Israel have been abusing Palestinian rights for years and still does. That situation is what is vile – not Loverat’s comments which make good sense
” if he and his party reverse the regime change/war policies I would vote.”
Looking at the info I posted from Labour’s manifesto ,it’s fair to say that what Loverat has posted is outright misinfo. If they lose and the count is real (i seriously doubt that it will be, the Establshment think nothing of a continual policy of genocide in the ME so rigging an election is small fry by comparison) it will be in no small part down to idiotic, false, bad information being spread by people like Loverat. Labour’s policy on war is totally honourable and anyone saying otherwise, as Loverat has, can FO.
wow, a mere loverat – liable for so much bad in the world.
Chris Williamson maybe, but Galloway ?
Geoff
Why not Galloway?
I live in suburban Tory heartland where the elderly say ‘ oh that evil communist’ and the younger ‘oh that bloke purring like a cat on big brother’
GG is absolutely a legend. Watch him take apart the US congress committee over Iraq. He’s been smeared because he is highly effective at dismantling narratives. He is truly one of the most intelligent people in politics as well. One issue is he does not always follow through on the promises.
I will continue to admire the likes of Galloway, Hitchens and Williamson. Party affiliations or perceived image in the media are not deciding factors for me.
I totally disagree with his idea that there should be a total world wide ban on anyone who disagrees with the excepted view on the ‘holocaust’, I disagree with his ‘her majesty’ I disagree with his ‘the holy father’ as a socialist I don’t look up to anyone , certainly neither of them.
Well, I am guessing these are comments made by Galloway?
Look at the whole man, the proper context these comments were made and his debating skills. Look at the substance. And actually in this case, the style which perhaps could have done with.
Don’t judge based on a few sound bites spun by the media. I thought most readers here were beyond that level and more in tune with the sophistication of thought in the articles.
Not one single party has the interests of the people at heart. All are anti-democratic. This shoddy election process is totally out of kilter with reality
I will vote Labour since I am disgusted with the way Corbyn has been treated and smeared and the outrageous intervention in the election by an overseas country in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of the UK through it local zionist proxies. I don’t think I need to spell this out. That’s it really, my sole reason. The Labour Party, is host to the largely Blairite PLP, and the Labour Friends of Israel, of course, is a loyal member of the NATO alliance will purchase the new Trident submarine missile programme, for a cool £30 billion with a £10 billion reserve – a complete waste of money, but hey someone is going to make a pile of dosh. And then of course Labour is the Reamain party. And a second referendum is an outrageous affront to anyone who believed in fair and square elections. Not elections to be repeated until the right result is obtained – this of course being the consummate EU version of democracy. Then of course Labour has got to get its putative ‘radical’ policies pass the EU bureaucracy. I think we know how that is going to work out.
But, hey let’s do it anyway, I’ll vote Labour and be going to bed at 9 O’clock.
But what you have to ask yourself is: who will benefit from your Labour vote? Corbyn or the disgustingly Blairite PLP?
As I said the other day, even if he wins, Corbyn is going to be eased-out sooner or later. He may even be ready to go. And with a more “moderate” leader, Labour will drift rightwards again. Without the one true Corbyn, the Momentum-ites will disappear back into the shadows from whence they came. Politics will get back to its proper business of being intensely relaxed about a few people becoming immensely rich, with plenty left over to provide lifetime pensions via seats on boards for a few minutes “work” a month, not to mention the House of Snooze for the totally unemployable.
You have written three sentences there – the first two are false – the third could contain a grain of truth – but reading between the lines, it appears to me that you are pissed off with the possibility that we may be remaining in the EU – which, I assure you, we will be doing.