have you noticed how every time some conservative makes a criticism, or he brings out some new legislation, it’s reported in the media as ‘obama fights for political survival’, or ‘crucial test for barak obama’.
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life is bewildering. my aim here, mostly, is to add to the general bewilderment
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July 4, 2009 at 10:11am Comments
id
so alan johnson is now telling us that id cards are simply a practical aid in the fight against identity theft. i would have thought that more papers represented more opportunities for fraud, not less, but what do i know.
id cards are to be brought in on a voluntary basis he says. they are to be elective
more blairite third-way-ism here: no id cards, compulsory id cards, elective id cards.
so, it wasn’t about threats to national security and terrorists after all. it’s about the cost to the economy of identity theft, which according to johnson costs the uk economy £1.2 billion each year (and if ever there was a figure plucked out of the ether, this is it)
the fact they expect us to cough up thirty quid for these things adds insult to injury.
laugh? i almost voted tory.
June 14, 2009 at 8:46am Comments
david mitchell, as well as being one of the funniest comedians around in the uk at the moment, is rapidly becoming one of the most perceptive and astute political commentators on the current political scene. this article in the observer manages to have a go at dave ‘the rave’ cameron a politician whose only policy, mitchell points out, is to become the next prime minister, as well as the current crop of ne’er do wells, brown, sugar etc.
some of the comments are good too. i particularly like “this country has become a one party state, with two opposing factions”. there’s also a reference to alan sugar as sid james’ ugly little brother (‘successful businessman? you don’t see many amstrads round these days. do you.’)
The Observer, Sunday 14 June 2009 Article history (via Whatever next - a man with an opinion? | David Mitchell | Comment is free | The Observer )
June 7, 2009 at 6:50am Comments
modern times
(again) back in november, i wrote wearily that ‘you couldn’t make it up’ when (the then prime minister hohoho) gordon brown, brought the thrice discredited and corrupt peter mandelson back into government. now he’s virtually deputy prime minister.
but alan sugar as government advisor? that you really couldn’t make up.
as someone on the news quiz said yesterday “what next? susan boyle to replace hazel blears?” how about jimmy crankie?
what is sad about this, and what has always been the great tragedy of the labour party, is the power that the rank and file, branch membership, and, back in the day, the union block-vote grandees, have always been happy to surrender to the career politicians. (and there’s always been a lot of class deference to account for that.) surrender and tug their forelocks to the self-serving arrogant scumbags who - with a few very honourable exceptions - dominate the parliamentary labour party, which i say is an entrist organisation infiltrating the labour movement from the right.
there is a chance that the labour party could be rebuilt as a socially progressive party after its now sure defeat in the next election, but i doubt it. more likely a decade and more of wilderness years marked by infighting and self-immolation.
i’ll never forget that hideous smirk of tony blair when he addressed the labour party conference after its adoption of the revised constitution in 1995. he was so fucking full of it. “… and now i’m going to tell you about the name change [pause … ] there isn’t going to be a name change” more self-satisfied smirking, cue rapturous applause from the intoxicated accolytes at what was looking increasingly like a mass cult rally.
anyone who has been active in the labour party is likely to know this from clause iv, part four, of the old constitution:
“to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”
this had remained unchanged since it was drafted in 1917 by sidney webb, and adopted by the party in 1918.
in 1995 old tb had it changed to:
“It [the labour party] believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few”
why? what’s the fuss? he’s just changed a few words right? doesn’t mean anything. what it meant was a labour party centrally managed like a corporate business, with the annual conference a shop window, where the parliamentary party and the dear leader could talk directly to the people who really count for the labour party: the media. the constitution also helped laid the foundation for a style of leadership, taking its cue not from the movement’s history, but from the trend started by margaret thatcher, for more and more autocratic, presidential style prime minister-ship, answerable neither to parliament or party, and without any democratic mandate whatsoever.
fourteen years on, and we have the spectacle of ‘labour’ politicians, their hands grubby from helping themselves to taxpayers money, with a cry of “fuck you jack, it was in the rules so i’m getting what i can” now rounding on each other to pick over the bones of what’s left of the new labour project. blair’s babes indeed.
how many old socialists can remember the new revised clause iv? i had to look it up, but not the old one.
the sentence preceding tony blair’s revised clause iv reads:
“the labour party is a democratic socialist party”
October 6, 2008 at 5:19pm Comments
modern times
“brown brings back mandelson”
you couldn’t make it up.
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