And so finally, fascist flabby arse-wipe Nick Griffin has achieved national political legitimacy by winning a seat at the European Parliament.
And guess what?
We put him there. The progressives. Or so-called progressives, anyway.
The New Labour project, that brave centre-left experiment to bring Clintonian Third-Way politics to a post-Thatcherite Britain, is over.
Yeah, Slippery Dave promises us pragmatic politics without “isms”, but we know that’s a crock to triangulate the Tories for the maximum haul of MPs at the next general election. Cameron will use his majority to remind us what a bunch of twat-necks the Tories are, and always have been.
I’m not a socialist. I’m a centre-left liberal. I believe in robust markets and social liberalism. Labour’s failure is not its adoption of Ordoliberalism, but its failure to deliver it.
The State has spent millions on management consultants, yet it has been proven incompetent at improving systems and controlling costs — two pillars of good management.
Look at the colossal clusterfuck that is tax-credits. Hard working families have found themselves repaying thousands back, because the system is convoluted, over-complicated and utterly mismanaged. Brown’s gargantuan tax-system is an operational catastrophe that has ultimately failed the working poor.
Then there is Labour’s abject failure to communicate to the working classes. New Labour’s kowtowing to the Murdoch press and its rabid commitment to spinning a narrative to the bloated middle classes, have ensured it no longer speaks directly to the poor and disenfranchised. Whenever a section of society is ignored and marginalised, the predatory fascist right move in to fill the vacuum. I predicted this years ago, as did many writers and commentators.
The final nail was the expenses scandal, which was a plague on all their houses. But it was Labour, with its huge majorities, which could have reformed the system — had they not been abusing it like alcoholics at a free-bar.
Our politics is broken, but the Labour Party is shattered. It’s on life-support and few people actually want to see it pull-through. If we forget tribalism for a second, wouldn’t the progressive cause actually be helped by the quick suffocation of The Labour Party?
We need to reclaim the conversation from the far-right. We need to address, both rhetorically and practically, the concerns of the working poor.
Progressive politics must have a carnival of ideas. We need to experiment with proven policies that have been successful across Europe and the world, and we must remain focussed on efficiency and delivery. These are lean times, but it doesn’t mean we can’t work towards better times.
Labour will lose the next general election, but it lost a commitment to progressive politics a long time ago.
Unless Brown calls a snap election in the next month or so, we’ll have a General Election by June of next year whether we like it or not.
Personally, I couldn’t care less. Like the famous South Park episode, this election will offer the tempting choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.
Now I know the usual Labour commenters will hurl a volley of abuse at me. About how the Tories are so much evil’r - and of course, they are. But seriously, having been a Labour-leaning voter and blogger for many years, I have become to view this relationship as an abusive one. Labour kicked the stuffing out of me, and I just put up with it.
Sunny has a post over at LC commenting on the McBride/Draper affair. Sunny asserts that, surely, Derek Draper’s scandalous and counterproductive foray into the blogosphere is over. Done. Finished. Kaputt.
I hope so. Draper is not only “poisonous for the Labour party”, he has become a toxic presence that is soiling the entire medium. It’s almost as if Dolly’s a MSM agent, planted within the blogosphere to undermine the medium and bring it down from within.
He is a virus. A horrid bacterium that has spread, uncontrolled, through the online community. It’s time he slithered away.
But the thing is… there… just now… I fed the goat. That’s what Dolly wants. That’s what Guido wants. These wankers are HUGE ego-whores. They want you talking about them. Good or bad. They’re like the vacuous coked-up clothes horses that populate the celeb rags, they’re obsessed with publicity.
And you, I, we’re all just doing exactly what they fucking want. We’re talking about them. Aggghhhh!!!
I could write a hugely informed post about how Paul “Guido” Staines is a hypocrite for slating McBride/Draper, when he’s a pioneer of mud-slinging hate politics (chicken and egg?), but I’d be FEEDING THE FUCKING GOAT!
So please, I beg you, let’s stop waxing their egos and ignore these two self-seving wankers.
Thisreally is much ado about nothing — it’s no different to the expenses nonsense. They’re all at it. It’s what they do. They fiddle and they scheme, and one or two, might actually do some work once in a while.
Politicians like to claim that they’re morally superior to us, or that they’re in the know about things we’ll never comprehend, but in reality they’re like the rest of us: a mix of shirkers, workers, liars, pervs, twats and smart-arses (have I missed anyone?). MPs are no different to that bunch of goons and loons you work with. No better, and probably no worse. It’s the anthropology, stupid.
Guido’s desperate to make this a big deal because it feeds his gargantuan ego. Is it really news that politicos scheme against one-another? No, don’t be so daft you silly hypocritical gonad.
If the political blogosphere really is going to be the antidote to the MSM, rather than its desperate echo-chamber, we really have to be better than this.
The controversial Barclays memos, which the bank has blocked The Guardian from publishing, have been submitted to WikiLeaks - the anonymous online document database.
Today Barclays secured the continuation of the gag order, including a provision which stops the paper from pointing its readers in the direction of the Wikileaks page.
Sunny is requesting that bloggers step and in and link to the memos, making a mockery of Barclays’ attempts to block public knowledge of their alleged deception. Click here to view.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has agreed to hear my evidence on torture on Tuesday 28 April at 1.45pm. Many thanks to everyone who helped lobby for this.
I am delighted, as I have been trying for over four years to lay the truth about British torture policy before Parliament. I will testify that as British Ambassador I was told there is a very definite policy to accept intelligence from torture abroad, and that the policy was instituted and approved by Jack Straw when Foreign Secretary. I will tell them that as Ambassador I protested formally three times in writing to Jack Straw, and that the Foreign Office told me in reply to my protests that this was perfectly legal.
Hat-tip Jennie (email), who wonders whether the MSM will run with this significant story? We’ll see. If the blogosphere makes a big deal, then I would imagine The Guardian will pick it up.
The reviewer, one Sally McIlhone, contends that Lee’s “intellectual elitism” is pompous, and goes on to make the astonishing claim that Chris Moyles (and Jeremy Clarkson) are “immeasurably funnier than Lee”.
Seriously? People who make claims like that shouldn’t be allowed opinions. It’s beyond ignorant. Next she’ll be telling us that David Beckham’s smarter than Gail Trimble, and that Brooke Burke is nowhere near as hot as Jo Brand.
It’s about time, considering the absolute dog-spunk we’re usually fed on our TV screens, that somebody actually commissioned a programme that picks holes in the fabulously ridiculous circle-jerk that is our contemporary media. Lee’s right, most of the celeb books are complete tat, and the people who buy them are morons. And it’s about time someone said it.
As one of teh internets many bedroom-bound pseudo libertarians, I thought it would be a good challenge to outline 10 reasons why - in a maybe not exhaustive list - we need a government…
1. The speed limit outside your home
2. The age limit on alcohol
3. Schools
4. Hospitals (I pay for private healthcare, but that’s my *choice* - I don’t mind contributing to your well-being, trusting you’re not a smoking lard-factory)
5. Care workers (yeah, they get it wrong occasionally, who doesn’t?)
6. Property rights
7. Defence (if not wars of opportunity)
8. Maternity pay
9. Advertising standards
10. The Food Standards Agency
…I’m calling out Paula Murray, a “reporter” at The Daily Express who filed this utterly despicable piece [dead link, see update], as a complete and utter scumbag.
Ms. Murray, may spiders lay eggs in your head, and may their spawn eat their way to freedom through your scumbag face.
———
UPDATE: Poor Paula is in the shit (de dums), and The Express have pulled the article. This being teh internets, we have copies!
On Tuesday 10 March the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights will discuss whether or not to hear my evidence on the UK government’s policy of using intelligence from torture. They discussed whether to hear my evidence on 3 March but failed to reach a conclusion.
The government is lobbying hard for my exclusion. I need everybody to send an email to jchr@parliament.uk to urge that I should be allowed to give evidence. Just a one-liner would be fine. If you are able to add some comment on the import of my evidence, or indicate that you have heard me speak or read my work, that may help. Please copy your email to craigjmurray@tiscali.co.uk.
Please also pass on this plea to anyone you can and urge them to act. Help from other bloggers in posting this appeal would be much appreciated.
The evidence I am trying to give the parliamentary committee is this:
I wish to offer myself as a witness before the Joint Commission on Human Rights on the subject of the UK government’s policy on intelligence cooperation with torture abroad.
I appeared as a witness in person before both the European Parliament and European Council’s enquiries into extraordinary rendition. My evidence was described by the European Council’s Rapporteur, Senator Dick Marty, as “Compelling and valuable”.
Craig Murray has a history of fighting for universal human rights. As a result of his outspoken criticisms of Islam Karimov’s brutal regime in Uzbekistan, Murray was withdrawn as an ambassador. Since leaving this post, Murray has continued to campaign for the rights of those suffering at the hands of “friendly” governments, and to question the UK government’s complicity in torture.
Now is the time for you to do your part.
Please send an email and let’s get Craig’s voice heard.
Sunny has posted an extract of Chris Huhne’s speech at the CoML. One paragraph caught my eye (in what is an excellent speech) ::
And let me make one final point, which is that if we want to achieve that consensus that I very much want to see, we have certainly to build a popular campaign a that is absolutely crucial but the end of that copopular campaign to my mind should be an entrenchment of our civil liberties in a way that cannot be challenged in the fewer to you in the way that it has been challenged in the last ten years in particular. I am thinking here of a written constitution. … That is the sort of entrenchment of civil liberties which we’ll never have in this country unless we too have a written constitution to guarantee that judges can oversee laws and can make sure that they do not contravene fundamental civil liberties.
I’d also like to see a British constitution.
But the American constitution was reached after a bloody war of independence. It was forged in the fires of suffering and struggle. It was drafted by the lionised fathers of a nascent republic. It is protected by its own pillar of government - The Supreme Court of the United States.
Yes the U.S. constitution has been amended at times, but recent history tells us that a British constitution would be treated by our self-important political classes as a nebulous hindrance that can be ignored, or worse, reshaped for every new “political reality” that will be constructed to terrify us into obedience.
We don’t need a document. We need a new way of running this country. For once, let’s be as radical as our forefathers and shake this shit up.
Any abusive relationship tends to end with a long, slow phase of mounting disappointment followed by a sudden, irreversible snapping point. The descent to rock bottom may take years but when you get there, the force of impact still shocks, and it’s precisely this shock that gives you the strength to walk away. Take smoking, for instance. You can light up for years, hating yourself and the habit a little bit more with each accumulated puff, yet remain hopelessly locked in nicotine’s pointless embrace, until one day you find yourself scrabbling through the kitchen bin, picking potato peelings off a dog end because it’s 11pm and the shops are closed and GOD YOU NEED A FAG . . . when you catch sight of your sorry junkie-arsed reflection in the shiny bin lid and undergo an epiphany of self-disgust, vowing to quit there and then.
It’s hard to swallow, but Brooker is right. And as he continues to explain, we have no real other option. The Tories are even more of a shower. Do we really want to go back to those creeps?
I guess I should vote Lib Dem. But a Liberal government? It just isn’t gonna happen.
You better get used to a Prime Minister Cameron. *spits*
“It might be enforceable in a court of law, this [pension] contract – but it is not enforceable in the court of public opinion, and that is where the government steps in.”
I can’t help but think this is not the right attitude. We’ve already had about as much as we can take of this government breakingbending reshaping the law to fit its will.
If the government already okayed Goodwin’s pay, then that’s where it ends - regardless of the vulgarity of his remuneration. Full. Stop.
Maybe we should have a court of the average Daily Mail reader?
It’s time for the government to stop playing the populist card, and to start standing by its mistakes. Taking the moral high-ground has limited scope when indeed the ultimate buck stops at Number 10.
Labour could continue to play this game, and indeed - given its majority - pass a law to cut Goodwin’s pay, but at the end of the day, it must own up to the reality that it missed the boat and it has already agreed to his pension fund.
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