Mensheviks v. Leninists.
You may be surprised to learn that Labour, under Mr Corbyn’s leadership, does have a ‘strategy and communications chief’ – the millionaire Seumas Milne.
The current chaos suggested that this was a party in disarray because nobody was dictating ‘strategy and communications’. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you had suspected that a guiding hand was behind the dishevelled spectre that is Labour today – you may have imagined the archetypal anarchist. A reject from ‘Occupy’ perhaps; all tangled dreadlocks, tattoos and snarling face bedecked with ironmongery. Or perhaps the stereotyped gruff voiced union leader, ‘brung up the hard way’, with a conversational style designed to shout down any possible alternative view?
Try the super smooth, Winchester-educated son of a former Director-General of the BBC. Admittedly the first Director-General to actually get fired from his spot amongst the fat cats. Seumas followed his father to Winchester where he stood in a mock election as a ‘Maoist’ (as a point of interest – fees at Winchester are actually higher than those at Eton) and later to Baliol. “He spent his entire time at Balliol,” a college contemporary recalls, “wearing a Mao jacket and talking with a fake Palestinian accent”. He is such an ardent believer in socialist values that he bussed his own children across London to the Tiffin School – one of the best in the country. He lives in a £2 million pound house in leafy Richmond – having inherited a share of his Father’s multi-million pound estate. All very champagne socialist.
He follows the usual pattern, as does Corbyn from a similar background, of supporting any dodgy dictator in disagreement with the US over anything at all. He called Iraqis who helped rebuild their country after the Iraq war ‘Quislings’ for working alongside the US – they should, presumably, have lived proudly amongst the rubble without essential services.Two days after the 9/11 attacks he wrote in the Guardian that Americans were ‘reaping a dragons’ teeth harvest they themselves sowed’.
He is a total believer in the power of democratic votes when it suits him – the election of Corbyn as leader, naturally – though this was a vote amongst Labour activists, not Labour voters – an important difference. Yet famously railed against the 99.8% vote in favour of remaining British from the Falkland Islanders, calling it a ‘North Korean style ballot’. He bitterly denounced Britain’s role in defeating the forces of Fascism in WW2 as ‘not something they should be proud of’, but then went on to shake Putin’s hand and chair a meeting at the Valdai international discussion club – legitimising the aggressive and authoritarian invasion of Ukraine.
Not all Guardian journalists are so resolutely crypto-communist, the fact that he has remained a Guardian journalist officially ‘on secondment’ to Corbyn is a sore point with other journalists there. His fellow Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore reacted to his appointment by saying: ‘I fu*king hate these public school leftists. Bye bye Labour.’
His background is of interest today, because of a new report from academics Tim Bale, Monica Poletti and Paul Webb. Academics ironically funded by the European Union. The report showed that over half the new members (55%) believed that an MP should be deselected if he criticised his leader – apparently blithely unaware that Corbyn’s main claim to fame before they signed up was criticising past Labour leaders!
It also showed that less than 1 in 6 of the new members who had voted overwhelmingly in favour of Corbyn as leader could in anyway be described as ‘working class’. The majority were university educated and profitably employed – not the furnace stokers and engine fitters, nor the unemployed or marginalised that Labour traditionally supports.
It makes me wonder why so many public school educated and wealthy members of the ‘elite’ do support hard line left wing policies. An entire generation of academics and intellectuals have moved sharply to the left in recent years.
Is their support of Stalinism or Maoism a genuinely altruistic desire to improve the lot of those in the lower strata of society – or do they recognise in Stalin and Mao a very effective way of maintaining control over the overwhelming numbers of the ‘working-class’ and thus a way of protecting themselves by aligning with the elite of a future dictatorship?
Answers on a recycled postcard, please.
- right_writes
June 29, 2016 at 11:08 am -
What a waste of a good education (system).
Anyway here is my recycled postcard…
I reckon that it is a variation on ‘cultural marxism’, the point is that no person, except the writer/activist that is writing a given piece, should ever feel comfortable about anything.
For instance, if one finds abortion an uncomfortable idea in a given society, blather on about it and criticise and ridicule the people that feel that way, until those people either become accepting or fully embrace the practise, then immediately adopt pro-life views and carry on. Apply this to every ‘norm’.
My view it is not big and it is not clever.
Best practise is for people to mind their own business, and that includes government…
As Crowley said… Do what thou wilt should be the whole of the law.
Government should be neither left nor right, it should not be spewing out laws and regulations, it should be there to defend the governed peoples’ property rights and that is all. Magna Carta, apart from being a bit old fashioned is probably enough control.
- Stewart Cowan
June 29, 2016 at 2:06 pm -
Crowley said, “Do what thou wilt should be the whole of the law,” because he was a Satanist (which he denied) who wanted to do very bad things to others if it satisfied his decadent way of life.
I wouldn’t take ‘morals’ from someone who looked like this.
Society is in decline because of the moral relativism which he no doubt helped to promote.
Agree about Magna Carta and a proper Bill of Rights, but few people today (perhaps no politicians) could produce a righteous and sane one.
- Stewart Cowan
- the moon is a balloon
June 29, 2016 at 11:15 am -
It used to be called “the long march through the institutions”. Slowly but surely we reached a place where the young have all been subjected to an entire education designed to produce political conformity. I reckon that we are somewhere on our third generation now. The first stocked the universities and the second – with the higher numbers – has now stocked the school staffrooms. It is almost impossible to ask that a child be free to express an opinion in a school today. Acceptable opinions and moral codes are fixed. Unorthodoxy is rooted out, held up to derision, and with playground cruelty as its weapon excised from view. “You can think X but you cannot say it.” (The first man to mention “1984”…) Your clearest recent example would be the response in schools to the EU referendum. Leave voters are, they just all “are”, racist knuckle-dragging future-thieves, destroyers of harmony. They must be made to vote and vote again until they conform. Until the right question can produce an answer which can be described as right. If you doubt me, just look at the news.
Michael Morpurgo the other day was asking that morality be left to form inside kids’ heads – although naturally he said it better than that. This is what we have become. Our kids are educated, and then re-educated until they get with the programme.
Seamus Milne? Our only comfort must be that he appears to be extremely bad at his job.
- Whyaxye
June 29, 2016 at 11:18 am -
I think I understand one bit of the “strategy”. Capitalise on the opportunity inadvertently created by Miliband’s reforms by using the constitution to appeal over the heads of the Parliamentary Party to the crusties and student union types across the country. So far so good, because Corbyn is still there and can sit tight while all his MPs reject him. It’s an effective way of making some kind of a point.
But it’s the next bit I don’t get – the actual reason for doing all this. The story (repeated often in The guardian CiF) was that once Corbyn was in post, his integrity and common-sensical socialism would then begin to convert the ordinary voters. People would see him acting calmly in response to Cameron’s bluster, and listen to his reasoned denunciations of capitalism, and vote for him. But if they don’t, then we’ve got no more than an irrelevant pressure-group and virtue-signalling club, because all the crusties and student-union Marxoids are too thinly spread out to make any electoral difference. But Corbyn has been in post for a year, and my guess is that the general public are more convinced than ever that he is a hapless clown who couldn’t be trusted with anything, let alone the country. If Milne knows this, then what game is he playing? If he doesn’t realise it, then he is completely daft.
- decnine
June 29, 2016 at 12:21 pm -
I’m reasonably sure that Corbyn and his clique are indeed completely daft. He appears to believe that the British working class is yearning for someone to offer them a ‘real’ Socialist option – red through and through, ideologically weapons grade pure Socialism. His strategy is to purge the Labour Party of everyone who self identifies as doctrinally suspect (ie disagrees with him). It’s lucky for them he doesn’t have a ready made Gulag to send them to.
His policy seems to be to destroy the Labour Party in order to save it. He will succeed only in the first of those aims.
So, first we vote for Brexit, Cameron gone, then Corbyn. How much good news can we take?
- Whyaxye
June 29, 2016 at 12:57 pm -
I think you are right, and my only reservation is based on the principle of leaving no stone unturned. I keep wondering if I’ve missed something.
I also share your joy at our good fortune. Brexit is wonderful. Let’s hope whoever succeeds Cameron isn’t “got at” by malign forces who don’t want the changes that the British people have approved. And let’s hope that Corbyn has enough common sense to realise, in time, his own utter futility and irrelevance.
- Whyaxye
- decnine
- Eric
June 29, 2016 at 11:40 am -
Us Champagne Socialists (I look forward to joining the Menshevik party) want everyone to be millionaires.
- windsock
June 29, 2016 at 1:47 pm -
“Corbyn from a similar background” … not quite..
Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, Corbyn attended Adams’ Grammar School and later North London Polytechnic, though he did not complete his degree. Before entering politics he worked as a representative for various trade unions. His political career began when he was elected to Haringey Council in 1974; later he became secretary of the Islington Constituency Labour Party (CLP). He continued in both roles until he entered the House of Commons as an MP.
While still at school, he became active in The Wrekin constituency Young Socialists, his local Labour Party, and the League Against Cruel Sports.[12] He achieved two A-Levels with “E” grades before leaving school aged 18.[13] After school,[14] Corbyn worked briefly as a reporter for a local newspaper, the Newport and Market Drayton Advertiser;[15] aged 19 he spent two years doing Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica. Returning to the UK, he worked as an official for the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers. (Wikipedia)
With all due respect, Milne is a fraud. Corbyn, while his politics may not appeal to you, or even be the most academically gifted, is not.
- Eric
June 29, 2016 at 10:49 pm -
So he’s basically he’s Middle Class where all the best revolutionaries come from.
- Eric
- windsock
June 29, 2016 at 1:59 pm -
A story about Milne from Guido…
“how he was floored in a game of chicken in the Guardian newsroom:
Former colleagues reveal how, despite his slight figure, Milne had a remarkable habit of refusing to give way in corridors. Over several years, his fellow journalists grew tired of his insistence that oncoming co-workers make way for him. Eventually, one snapped, telling his desk, “I’m not going to do it again. Next time he plays chicken with me, I’m not going to get out of the way.” The whole office waited for the inevitable confrontation. Soon enough, it happened. As Milne walked down a corridor, the six-foot colleague approached from the other direction. They smashed into each other, sending Milne flying, along with the papers he was carrying. “Seumas was in shock,” recalls an onlooker. “No one had ever done that to him before. He expected people to show deference to him. There was a horrible silence in the office. It was a moment that demonstrated how aloof he seemed from the rest of the working environment.”
- Michael Massey
June 29, 2016 at 2:00 pm -
The wretched Stalin apologist Milne is of course by no means the only “public school leftist”: eg James Schneider who seems to be the main motor-mouthpiece of Momentum.
“In the last week James has attacked “comfortable elite liberals” and promised Momentum will pose a “fundamental challenge to the old and corrupt ruling elite”.
However, like many on the hard Left, he had a highly privileged upbringing, attending the Dragon School, Oxford, one of the top prep schools in England, then Winchester College, also the alma mater of Seumas Milne – Mr Corbyn’s press spokesman,
He transferred in the sixth form to St Paul’s in west London and went up to Trinity College, Oxford, to read theology. He was president of the university Liberal Democrat Society but left the party after its reversal of a pledge to scrap student tuition fees.
During the holidays James went home to a five-storey Victorian house in Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, across from the hill, in one of London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods and now valued at around £7 million. The family also had a house in Glen Tanar, on Royal Deeside, a few miles from the Queen’s residence at Balmoral.”
I suppose we can at least be thankful that Milne is so piss poor at his job.
It is sad that so many of the students and academics spouting their bile in response to any criticism of Corbyn are so ingnorant and unable seemingly to do a tiny bit of research into the activities of the Blessed Tony Benn and the antics of his acolytes – not least one Corbyn J – that to large measure kept the hate figure in chief, Margaret Thatcher, in power for so long. I lived through it and, while a complete tribalist Labour person at the time, was a Denis Healey man and could not abide the self-regarding antics of Viscount Stansgate.
- Don Cox
June 29, 2016 at 6:31 pm -
One reason Margaret Thatcher stayed in power was that she was a very good Prime Minister, who rescued the British economy from disaster. And she won elections.
- The Jannie
June 29, 2016 at 6:47 pm -
Thank 4ck someone noticed.
- Eric
June 29, 2016 at 10:52 pm -
Then why was she bundled out in tears by her colleagues and put into a taxi reputedly saying “wazz happening? I’m the Prime Minister”
- Don Cox
June 30, 2016 at 8:02 am -
Because she had run out of steam by the end.
- Don Cox
- The Jannie
- Don Cox
- Stewart Cowan
June 29, 2016 at 2:31 pm -
The majority were university educated and profitably employed – not the furnace stokers and engine fitters, nor the unemployed or marginalised that Labour traditionally supports.
Or that Labour creates? Then adds 80% tax to their fags, makes them stand outside in the rain to smoke them while their heavily-taxed drinks are inside. If they can’t afford a car, the taxi fare to get home is overpriced because of the 70% tax on petrol/diesel.
Then they get their benefits sanctioned because they weren’t one of the 700 applicants who got an interview for the fish-gutting job 60 miles away.
Then they receive a letter informing them that their operation to remove an ingrowing toenail will not be performed because they smoke, even though they have paid a Premier League footballer’s weekly pay in fag tax.
Then an Estonian gentleman gets the fish-gutting job and the Labour voter is thrown out his council house to make way for this productive member of society from Tallinn.
Meanwhile, the entire 699 failed applicants have to live in a cardboard box in middle of t’road and have to do voluntary work licking the road clean with their tongues in order to be given a stale Jacob’s cream cracker at the end of an 18 hour shift.
Luxury!
We used to dream of having a stale cream cracker after 22 hours down t’pit and voting Labour back into power just in time to go back down t’pit and being beaten half to death by the foreman for slacking – if we were lucky.
Still, look at us now – champagne socialists wreaking havoc with our pathetic, sadistic revenge just so we can feel self-important. Oi, garckon – more champagne.
- Oi you
June 29, 2016 at 2:50 pm -
Interesting post. Like you say, the left has changed so much over recent years to be almost unrecognisable. Wonder what my grandfather would say, him who worked in the shipyards of Barrow and a Labour voter all his life? Now spinning in his grave most probably.
My farcebook page is full of these strange loony lefties, all university educated, argumentative, manipulative, so full of self-righteousness, they make me cringe…well, they were all in shock last week at the result. In total meltdown over it. One was almost suicidal. Another homicidal. I received sarky abuse over my choice of Brexit. Then (quelle horreur!) the Labour party began it’s own meltdown and my farcebook page has become very quiet. Nothing to say from any of them, the opinions, the arguments suddenly gone. Hmm, somewhat puzzled over that…
- Eric
June 30, 2016 at 3:00 pm -
You are the company you keep.
- Eric
- Pericles Xanthippou
June 29, 2016 at 4:15 pm -
Crypto-communist? He sounds more apocalyptic to me.
I do have trouble distinguishing ‘socialist’ from ‘communist’, I must say: although the communist governments describe themselves as socialist, somehow those in the West that would place their own countries under identical forms of rule find their being compared with Oriental chums rather distasteful. Or is it just that they think such comparison might lead to their not being elected?
As to the question in your penultimate paragraph: answers itself really.
ΠΞ
- Don Cox
June 29, 2016 at 7:06 pm -
Socialism in Britain descends from the work of people such as Robert Owen and William Cobbett.
Marxism is a creed based on greed, envy, and the desire for power.It was imported from Europe and Russia. It aims to use the workers to overthrow the established order, so that the Marxists (or Marxist-Leninists, or Maoists) can rule instead.
- Anon
June 29, 2016 at 7:31 pm -
Don Cox,
Re: “Marxism is a creed based on greed, envy and the desire for power”
And what’s feudalism?
- Whyaxye
June 29, 2016 at 8:12 pm -
A socio-political system, rather than a creed.
- Stewart Cowan
June 29, 2016 at 9:04 pm -
Socialism is communism by stealth. “The goal of socialism is communism.” (Lenin)
- Stewart Cowan
- Don Cox
June 30, 2016 at 8:35 am -
The end result of Marxism is much the same as feudalism: the workers and peasants are at the bottom, are made to obey, and have no vote; the Party members are the lesser aristocrats; and the Politburo are the Earls and Barons.
Lenin may have claimed that the aim of socialism was Marxist-Leninism, but he was wrong. The basic aim of socialism was to set up a Welfare State, with free health care, free education, unemployment and sickness benefits for all. This was largely accomplished by the Attlee government. The Minimum Wage is a socialist measure (and a good one).
- Anon
June 30, 2016 at 11:49 am -
Don Cox,
Re: “Lenin may have claimed that the aim of socialism was Marxist-Leninism, but he was wrong. The basic aim of socialism was to set up a Welfare State, with free health care, free education, unemployment and sickness benefits for all. This was largely accomplished by the Attlee government. The Minimum Wage is a socialist measure (and a good one)”
I agree with you. But from what I remember from history at school the Russian’s had it worse with feudalism, hence the reason a revolution happened in the first place.
What I have seen with the english civil war, french revolution and probably the russian revolution too, it only happened when the middle class and some of the upper class got fed up too in those days. The peasants were always not particularly thrilled with their lot, nothing unusual there….
- Anon
- Whyaxye
- Anon
- Don Cox
- Hereward Unbowed.
June 29, 2016 at 4:19 pm -
Labour and the SWP – did they ever divorce and do we care any more?
I believe it to be part of the problem of the left, because pretty much they’ve won all the battles, though now, progressive politics has so pissed down the well – society is polarized and labour caused it, “as you sow, so shall ye reap”. Student unions are getting the message, at long last so are the great British public.
Labour, their bloc vote now is IslamoAsian, the rump white working classes have only stuck with them out historical loyalty – I think some of the traditional voters, sepia bespectacled still think that Kier Hardy is running the show. All that’s changing – not before time, white voters are just beginning to see that, the labour party as the societal cancer it actually is.
Yet, you have to be careful in whose company you keep, speak no evil comrade! Cultural Marxism is the dogma of choice, gay, gender equality has become so overdone, force feeding never wins hearts and minds nor, does it, can if ever alter ones sexual predisposition. The authorities as the poster above alludes to, they just aren’t interested in ‘white problems’ – the whole charity/welfare shebang, all of it is only devoted to the
ladsfleeing families of six kids coming over from Turkey or from Libya, and to helping them gain benefits when they pour off the plane from the Punjab – ECHR rights to family reunions, sup that and smack.So they’ve won the battle over Political Correctness, there’s only one thing wrong with UK Utopia Communist style, they’re not in power, how can this be? The left knows it too – they’re dinosaurs and the corporate world is their only hope, can you dig the irony?! But Britain OUT means reality is about to come crashing in, quangoes next – yes please and Common Purpose for the chop – boys get your axes whetted! Implosion, God yes and tumbling in over their paper thin walls – virtue signalling and righteous indignation is not much use as mortar. Hope is, being out of the EU and they hate it, they are so viscerally detested by the average Brit’ and they hate back with increasing incandescent fury in unquenchable frustration – nobody likes them and we don’t care.
- binao
June 29, 2016 at 5:51 pm -
Just an aside Hereward, …Common Purpose for the chop…’
Are they still active? Haven’t heard anything for a long time. It all sounded a bit like the Masons but without the fun & alcohol.
Never knowingly met one though, but met plenty of Masons.Still, very hard to see what Labour are for these days, in terms of purpose. Clegg tried the posh labour bit in coalition and that didn’t turn out too well.
Perhaps it’s just a shell of a party that’s waiting to be exploited by some extremist minority…oh wait..Shame, It could just as easily been those nice Greens, or the too posh to vote Labour Libdems.
- binao
- Anon
June 29, 2016 at 4:55 pm -
I don’t think Jeremy Corbyn objects to constructive or fair criticism. It’s unfair bullying, scapegoating and smear campaigns that are the problem.
I think the suggested deselection of mps is more about giving the people these mps were elected to represent the ability to vote to deselect them if they feel they are failing or not even bothering with that duty. I’m not sure about the idea myself, but I definately don’t think it’s anything sinister….
- Pericles Xanthippou
June 29, 2016 at 8:16 pm -
I have no time
to stand and starefor socialism — by what ever name — Good Heavens! I find the Reform Acts intolerable; I even take some pleasure in the disarray in which Labour now finds itself.As the Prime Minister said, however, the presence of the current Labour front bench, whilst of benefit to a Conservative Party in limbo, is of no use to the country. Were government reliable, the absence of an effective opposition would be of no concern; at the moment we seem to have an ineffective opposition … and the country herself run by an opposition!
The one thing I would say of Mr. Корбин is that, in marked contrast to the word of so many other politicians, what he says can be taken to be his truly held — if perhaps naïve — view.
ΠΞ
- Pericles Xanthippou
- Fat Steve
June 29, 2016 at 6:22 pm -
or do they recognise in Stalin and Mao a very effective way of maintaining control over the overwhelming numbers of the ‘working-class’ and thus a way of protecting themselves by aligning with the elite of a future dictatorship?
The answer is of course yes though of course they are wrong.
Marxism postulates the ‘end of history’ drawing on notions of a linear and so it is claimed historically inevitable progression upwards (?) to the (surprise surprise) Utopian Communist State …..nothing new about such a vision of Utopia …..Calvinism and the Elect …..Aristocracy (rule by the ‘best’) ……Plato and the Classes in his ‘Republic’….Control of the Church of Rome before the Reformation ……after Antiquity and before the Enlightenment such a construct was usually based on some biblical justification but when that started to wear thin in the C19th other justification was sought
Socialist Philosophy in the C19th was all too often been the preserve of the younger sons of the Upper and Upper Middle Classes who lacked the Patrimony of the eldest son (the Estate/The Profession/The Business) and so looked away from the world as it was and for a way of getting to the top in the only way possible, namely changing the world.Academia with its relatively privilaged leisurely and secure lifestyle (safely away from the real world where real people and their lives don’t get in the way of theorising) was obviously the ‘go to’ place to start.
Marxist notions of the historical inevitability of the triumph of communism is simple, might colourably fortell the future and explain the past and is attractive to some, usually the young who haven’t yet fully experienced the richness of life outside of an ‘ism’ or of theory.
If one believes in it and is looking to get ahead of the evolutionery curve then the choice might be an attractive one to some…..they might equally have chosen to be a Dominican Friar in the C 13th or dressed in black and carried a bible around in Calvin’s Geneva
Actually when younger I tended to buy in to the Marxist analysis of historical inevitability of a Comminist /Socialist State though being an eternal fifth former being one of life’s prefects has never been my personal bag.
Just as an aside watching Farage in the European Parliament yesterday and Marie Le Pen being interviewed did rather remind me of the concluding scenes in the movie ‘IF'( Pace Sean Coleman). As to where we might just be being led try the 1998 film version of Brave new World - Don Cox
June 29, 2016 at 7:12 pm -
“Actually when younger I tended to buy in to the Marxist analysis of historical inevitability of a Comminist /Socialist State though being an eternal fifth former being one of life’s prefects has never been my personal bag.”
Likewise the Islamists believe in the historical inevitability of the Islamist State. The two religions have much in common. When you have looked at Momentum (or Common Purpose), look at the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Fat Steve
June 29, 2016 at 8:42 pm -
I reckon you are right Don Cox though I had never really thought about it ….and its an interesting analysis in that i have always looked at the Middle East (Turkey to Afghanistan) through the notion of post war neo colonialism by the USA/USSR and recently China (though it appears more interested in Africa.) ……but realistically I doubt many Muslims believe a large Islamic State can be achieved …..a Caliphate possibly though it seems unlikely the various Islamic sects could agree on a Caliph
- Fat Steve
- Oi you
June 29, 2016 at 8:07 pm -
Likewise the Islamists believe in the historical inevitability of the Islamist State. The two religions have much in common. When you have looked at Momentum (or Common Purpose), look at the Muslim Brotherhood.
Yes, it took me ages to figure this one out. The two religions have much in common, indeed! Good word that, religion. The lefties I know all ascribe to that One World Religion.
- Cascadian
June 29, 2016 at 8:12 pm -
Stalinists, Maoists, Leninists Mensheviks, Feminists……..who cares really, as long as they destroy each other, and they are doing a rather grand job at present, I do hope Jeremy stays. The Kinnockios, Millibands, Mr and Mrs Dromey and Mr and Mrs Balls, Straw Jr, Kinnockio jr, Benn jr, and the massed harridans who can argue this is worth saving? What these predominantly university-educated “activists” are fighting over are cushy taxpayer-paid sinecures with very little effort required I don’t think which brand of communism they ascribe to enters their greedy heads.
The liebour party long ago deserted the “workers”, it seems that only just now the “workers” have deserted the liebour party. The liebour electorate is reduced to university towns and welfare ghettoes (London, Liverpool, Scotland), not many workers thereabouts.
I have often wondered who decides what are the “top schools” and what criteria is used. The schools product is invariably mediocre, seeming only to inculcate a deep sense of privilege along with a distinct lack of any useful skills. I am pleased to learn that they seem to be gravitating to the liebour party, I was afraid they were all in the con-men and limp-dems parties.
Meanwhile we are left to speculate which wimmin will succeed Corbyn-shudder.
- Pericles Xanthippou
June 29, 2016 at 8:26 pm -
‘Kinnockios’: bravo, Cascadian! Wish I’d thought of that. (I’d have spelt it ‘Kinnocchios’ or even ‘Chinocchios’ but nevertheless … superb!)
ΠΞ
- Cascadian
June 29, 2016 at 9:14 pm -
Alas not one of my constructions Pericles, I believe its origination was at the “Call me Ishmael” blog. But certainly worth adopting and repeating.
- Cascadian
- Mudplugger
June 29, 2016 at 8:27 pm -
The Eagle is about to take flight – be afraid, be very afraid.
- Cascadian
June 29, 2016 at 9:47 pm -
Liebour politics being what it is requires second-by-second updates, the Eagle was in, now she is out.
The half life of the shadow cabinet seems to be in the hours.
A complete shambles, stay Jeremy stay.
- Eric
June 29, 2016 at 10:55 pm -
Her wings are already clipped.
- Cascadian
- Pericles Xanthippou
- Pericles Xanthippou
June 29, 2016 at 8:28 pm -
‘Chinocchi’ perhaps? But, if you make it too much Italian, it begins to lose its immediate appeal to the reader at large.
ΠΞ
- Pericles Xanthippou
June 29, 2016 at 8:29 pm -
Louse software!
- Pericles Xanthippou
- tdf
June 29, 2016 at 8:37 pm -
‘Liebour’, ‘wimmin’,’Limp Dems’, ‘reds under the beds’.
Most of the comments above read like something you’d read on Breitbart or Stormfront.
It is wishful thinking for you people to imagine that the UK Labour party, which got 30.4% of the vote at the last general election, is going away any time soon. Of course, it has seen better days in Scotland, but inconveniently for the far right, the SNP largely agrees with Labour on social justice and social policy issues.
- Stewart Cowan
June 29, 2016 at 9:24 pm -
Up here in the People’s Republic of Sturgeonistan, some of us more conservative and libertarian types yearn for the days of Labour, who were conservative and libertarian compared with Salmond’s Nutcase Party. For sure, Labour were tragic, but at least they got the buses running on time and throughout the day, unlike the Nats. The SNP are psychopaths where the end justifies the means – the end being freedom from Westminster rule in favour of EU serfdom, where all children and young adults under 18 are getting a state guardian – a ‘Head Gardener’,
“During workshops with 107 youngsters aged between nine and 12, the document related how they were encouraged to imagine Scotland as a garden, with each child as a plant growing within it.
“Children were told “all the adults in their lives” were “gardeners” while the named person would have overarching responsibility and be considered “Head Gardener”.”
They are even willing to offer up their children to the state in exchange for the vanity project that is ‘independence within the EU’.
- dak
June 29, 2016 at 11:56 pm -
“got the busses [sic] running on time”.
Did they – what part of Scotland are you in? For all the years when my mobility was at the mercy of the Central SMT I don’t imagine that more than 5% of the buses actually ran to timetable.
They did run all day, though, and the journey from my village to Glasgow was just under an hour on one ticket, rather than the two hours on two buses now. But that all changed in the 1980’s.
I agree on the sinister Named Person scheme. I voted for independence in 2014 and will do again at the next referendum, but will then vote to get the SNP out of office and keep us out of the EU.
- dak
June 29, 2016 at 11:58 pm -
- Stewart Cowan
June 30, 2016 at 5:32 am -
The 44 service from Glasgow to Eaglesham was awful when operated by ‘First’. When the Scottish ‘Government’ handed the rail franchise to First, I was disgusted. The SNP gave the ten year franchise to Abellio, a Dutch company. So much for patriotism, but then, the SNP are traitors IMO. Have they sold Edinburgh Airport to the Qataris yet, as planned?
You couldn’t make it up.
I’m in D&G now. Good service from Stagecoach until recently when services slashed due to SNP cutbacks for rural services.
So much for the SNP’s ‘green’ credentials/obsession
“I voted for independence in 2014…”
You didn’t. You voted for direct rule from Brussels, cutting out the Westminster middlemen.
“…and will do again at the next referendum, but will then vote to get the SNP out of office and keep us out of the EU.”
Except that the five main parties are all pro-EU, so that won’t happen.
EU and national leaders have just told Nicola Sturgeon that they are not interested in Scotland staying in the EU now. Gaining entry as an actual independent country could take years, involve border controls between Scotland and England and become inflicted with the Euro.
Voting SNP is a lose/lose situation. Their behaviour is appalling, anti Scotland, anti-UK, totalitarian and generally demented.
- Stewart Cowan
- dak
- dak
- Cascadian
June 29, 2016 at 9:38 pm -
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11584325/full-results-map-uk-2015.html
See those broad swathes of red in 2015 tdf? North-east, north-west, midlands and South Wales-all mostly gone in the referendum, the “workers” finely tumbled the fraud that is liebour. You left them, what did you expect?
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 1:44 am -
Cascadian,
It is perhaps unintentionally appropriate that you put workers in inverted commas, as the non-working class – the chav underclass, to put it impolitely – were statistically far more likely to vote for Brexit than any other social class.
The phrase ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ has rarely seemed more apt, especially as many of the Brexit voting districts benefit from EU largess.
George Galloway, probably the closest thing to a real actual commie in UK politics in recent years, is a Brexiter, whereas Winston Churchill’s grandson Nick Soames is a committed and outspoken Remainer.
Maybe the voices in your head will convince you that Soames is a commie and Galloway is a True English Patriot (TM), but that would not be a logical view to hold in the really real actual world.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 5:31 am -
Chavs, plebs, “workers”, non–workers choose your favourite description, whatever they are, your former sure-votes are lost to liebour.
I repeat-“The liebour electorate is reduced to university towns and welfare ghettoes (London, Liverpool, Scotland), not many workers thereabouts”.
I sense an air of desperation in your posts, always moving onto different subjects.
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 6:18 am -
Cascadian,
Not only am I not Seamas Milne, I don’t even vote Labour where I live, and if lived in England, I likely wouldn’t either. I’d probably vote for a moderate Tory or a Lib Dem against a Labour-type Corbynite. When you complain that I am ‘always moving onto different subjects’, I suspect that what you really mean is that I am providing fact-based analysis that conflicts with the agit-prop that you absorb from whatever strange blogs that you read, and you can’t cope with that because it challenges your world view.
Your sneering contempt for university towns (edamacated snobs! bleedin’ experts! down with that kind of thing!) and for the world class, multi-cultural city that funds the rest of the UK (far from being a ‘welfare ghetto’, London is an enormous net contributor to the welfare bill of most of the rest of the UK) says it all.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 6:11 pm -
Well thank goodness for that!
tdf, you cannot help yourself, you wish to ascribe to me all manner of derogatory terms that in actuality are your constructs, that is not discussion. I am well able to use sneering descriptions and will own to them only.
If I sneer at university towns it is well deserved, there are far too many now and whatever former status they had has been debased by an influx of morons studying nonsense subjects and voting like sheep. Those are a good proportion of the remain voters you wish to be compared to.
As to London, as I tried to describe to another contributor here, the CITY of London (a miniscule part of Greater London) obviously generates great wealth, one can argue the CITY extends into Tower Hamlets now at Canary Wharf, but surrounding it are great swathes of welfare ghettoes and no-go areas. The other great source of its wealth is obviously the criminal amount of TAXES remitted to Westminster and distributed to the plebs at the bureaucracy’s pleasure.
- Cascadian
- tdf
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 5:44 am -
Chavs, plebs, “workers”, non–workers choose your favourite description, whatever they are, or were formerly before liebour blighted their lives those former sure-votes are now lost to the revolutionary liebour party. Your sneering commentary on voters that disagree with you is perhaps part of the reason they left liebour behind. Is tdf some strange shorthand for Seumas Milne, some characteristics seem amazingly similar?
I repeat-“The liebour electorate is reduced to university towns and welfare ghettoes (London, Liverpool, Scotland), not many workers thereabouts”.
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 6:35 am -
Cascadian,
The only former UK Prime Minister in my lifetime who came from a working class background was not a ‘Liebour’ PM at all – but in fact a Tory – I speak of John Major. A man from a humble background who pulled himself up by his proverbial bootstraps. Didn’t attend a public school, or Oxford/Cambridge – in fact, I don’t think he attended any university.
If you won’t listen to me, can you at least acknowledge that when all former PM’s, including Major, advocated for a Remain vote, they might have had a point, or at least that their views merited and still merit consideration?
- Mr Ecks
June 30, 2016 at 1:36 pm -
Whatever Major’s origins his political piggery has left him very comfortably off.
Remain can be divided as follows:
Approx 1+ members of the enemy class. Well off –mostly middle/upper class– Cultural Marxist scum. The BBC/Gladrag etc. Active supporters of managerialist tyranny, migration–because it keeps the very cosy “London Nice” bubble going. And keeps the wretched waycist oiks in their place. Doing what the enemy class tell them to. And sucking it up if their daughters get fucked over by imports.
500,000 Young-Snot leftists produce by the CM infiltration of the school/Uni system. Some will join the Enemy Class as it staggers into the future. Others will be schooled by the hard lessons that life teaches and drop the leftist shit as they age.
The millions strong bulk of remainers who are mainly worried about economics. Will I still be financially ok outside of the EU? Well the bad news here is that all of us are going to get in the neck–in or out of the EU. Because the world’s scummy and useless socialistic political and bureaucratic parasites have printed, borrowed, regulated and taxed the world into such a fucking financial mess that no one will escape a kicking when it comes down.
However–outside the EU –we can take steps back towards fiscal health and sanity. Inside the EU we are on a 28 strong chain-gang under the guns of some very nasty and stupid thugs who would have us lurch into even worse trouble. Finances are no reason not to be free of another layer of tyrannical scum. We still have to deal with our own scum but that is easier than trying to prosper under an organisation that exists to ensure little people have absolutely NO power over their own lives and fate.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 5:46 pm -
That’s precious tdf
“If you won’t listen to me, can you at least acknowledge that when all former PM’s, including Major, advocated for a Remain vote, they might have had a point, or at least that their views merited and still merit consideration?”………..good lord, why would anybody listen to the assembled blatherings of past PM’s? The very people who have presided over seventy years of decline.
- Mr Ecks
- tdf
- Cascadian
- tdf
- Stewart Cowan
- dearieme
June 29, 2016 at 10:55 pm -
“Is their support of Stalinism or Maoism a genuinely altruistic desire to improve the lot of those in the lower strata of society”: no, you may safely ignore that in your search for their motives.
- Sean Coleman
June 30, 2016 at 12:32 am -
I don’t agree. I once had an exchange with Peter Hitchens after saying that Michael Give seemed to believe in his own educational policies. “If you examine them,” he said,” they aren’t conservative. Don’t believe everything you read.” I had to explain that I meant he really did believe in comprehensives. He sends his own daughter to one but it isn’t the local academy he had lavished with praise but rather a posh one whose outfitters are in Chelsea. At university I asked the young man teaching the Politics ancillary course if the Soviet leaders truly believed in communism and he was a little bit taken aback. “They do, unless you believe in conspiracy theories.” The first time I heard the term. When the USSR later collapsed I imagine most of them managed to adapt to new beliefs. Has anyone made a study?AGW is similar. I have no doubt Al Gore is a true believer in the delusion but he has made (or stands to make) a fortune from trading in carbon credits. Political correctness is a world view and is doomed to be short lived because it is obviously absurd. Beliefs are now mainstream (and indeed compulsory) which would have amazed revolutionaries a few short years ago. They will adapt when that goes too. The question for me is whether they will be consciously aware of doing so. I think they will just follow the crowd; they might have the odd twinge but will prefer not to think about it. I have been arguing with my Remainiac sister on Facebook since Friday and it is to her a disaster although I never heard her mention Europe before now. For them is worth redefining democracy. But they will get over it in time and probably even forget it ever happened. Sorry, can’t do paras on this tablet.
- Sean Coleman
June 30, 2016 at 12:41 am -
I should have added that the belief in leftist politics, AGW, evangelical atheism, scientific scepticism, the Evil Jimmy Savile, Europe and the whole pc package is based on emotion: a fierce defence of conventional wisdom and received opinion, of ‘what everybody knows’.
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 1:36 am -
- Sean Coleman
June 30, 2016 at 12:55 pm -
Yes. By pc world view I mean the conventional package of opinions on display on most of the media, the BBC, Facebook and most ‘spaces’ except the private ones. It makes sense to have a cohesive world view and if the traditional inherited one is discarded then something has to take its place. Look at Rupert Sheldrake’s website where he has a fascinating section about the Skeptical Guerrillas who police Wikipedia to remove any hint of heresy. That is why Sheldrake’s Wiki entry, absurdly, will never describe him as a scientist. The same dishonesty and intolerance is in evidence as in AGW, ‘Brexit’ and the rest.
While I’m at it, Mao’s case might be seen to refute what I said above. Jung and Holliday’s biography shows that everything he did was for his own personal ambition, but this really seems rather to help explain the phenomenon in that he probably identified himself withe the cause so what was good for Mao was ipso facto good for communism. What is good for Gore is good for the planet, and for Cameron, Corbin, Milne and the rest.
Finally, as regards my remark that many will not even be conscious of where their views come from, look up Gregory Berns and NYT. His team recreated Ash’s famous conformity experiment but with brain scans which appeared to show that the conforming behaviour (giving the wrong answer because ‘everyone else’ (in fact actors) did) was not intentional so as not to be out of step with the rest but a perceptual thing: because the others saw black as being white, they did so too.
- Sean Coleman
June 30, 2016 at 1:09 pm -
There is an amusing video on YouTube where Ben Stein mocks Richard Dawkins in an interview (‘So do you believe in any of the Hindu gods then?’). This was a mean trick the comments protest: the interview was set up under false pretences. And yet Dawkins did exactly the same with Sheldrake (again see his website) when interviewing him for a TV documentary intended to ridicule ‘pseudoscience’. By the way, Stein appears briefly as a boring teacher (Anyone? Anyone? Yes, the Phillips Curve’) in Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.
- Sean Coleman
- tdf
- Sean Coleman
- Sean Coleman
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 29, 2016 at 11:52 pm -
Off topic but perhaps of passing interest; Merkel was soundbited today on the German evening news saying that there is no way back for the UK. She sounded pretty determined…this was after the 27 decided to have breakfast having sent Cameron Minor back home-he now not being allowed to play with the big boys and girls.
Also it seems the 27 have decided that they need to do ‘more of the same’ and to ‘keep on doing what they were doing’ and not be distracted by the side show of Brexit.
German news also interviewed some people in Boston (Linc?) -the town most in favour of Brexit-and what a nasty small minded bunch of Xenophobes they seem to be. According to the way it was portrayed on the news, people in Boston followed the call of the local UKIP Battleaxe/gauleiterin (whom they also inteviewed heading roses as if she were beheading Poles). The report finished up with the comment that Bostoners had voted in droves for Brexit because they want to keep benefit claiming EU workers out but it has already been made very clear (Merkel?) that if Britain wants access to the EU markets then they will have no choice but to sign up for full freedom of movement etc.
“So jolly bad luck on the Bostonians” -no the News didn’t quite say that but that was definitely the tone…ie by voting for Brexit they would now lose all the advantages of EU membership and still end up being over run by nasty swarthy eastern Europe types, with customs not their own demanding full access to the UK benefits system.
Also the point was made that whilst Little Davey Cameron was being sent home , Nicky Fish was being warmly greeted by Juncker to make the point that his door is always open to her and Scotland- she looked like she was about to drop to her knees and perform a certain act upon him in gratitude.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 1:27 am -
The EU has no more coherent set of exit plans than does the Brexit team, both sides could benefit from the announcement of their negotiating teams and actually reading the treaties that have been signed by both parties. (but for the moment procrastination seems to work to Britain’s advantage as the EU disintegrates).
The French Finance minister has now been reported as saying that immigration limits are negotiable and Spain has vetoed Scotland’s BJ diplomacy. So, who to believe?
The only people who have half a clue about what is achievable within current legislation and agreements are the EU Referendum blog
Given the current rampant idiocy I can foresee that yUK might assemble a team of “experienced negotiators” from, ahem “former politicians with time on their hands” ladeezungennlmen I present Jeremy Corbyn, Nick Clegg, Ed Milliband, the camoron and Ed Balls-the A team.
- The Blocked Dwarf
June 30, 2016 at 7:41 am -
but for the moment procrastination seems to work to Britain’s advantage as the EU disintegrates).
Disintegrates? Not the impression I’m getting, infact just the opposite. I have always known that the EU was not going to be particularly bothered by Brexit – at least since they hung Cameron out to dry at that summit when he was going to renegotiate, but even i have been surprised at just how ‘not bothered’ the EU is. Not sure where is belief originates that Britain flouncing off will inexorably cause the collapse of the EU. Yes the EU is worried about ‘contagion’, very worried infact, but on the other hand I expect Angie has explained to her mates that as long as don’t weaken in their resolve for a fair divorce settlement then they, the EU, are going to get all the things that Cameron and others spent so fighting to prevent. They now get to call the shots….or as she put it the other day the EU will not let GB ‘cherry pick’ (she said ‘raisins’).
Oh and Cas, you should know by now , and I know you do, that the only people worth listening to are Juncker-Schultz-Merkel , in that order.
It’s not over until the not so fat German Lady purses her lips and forms her hands into a rhombus.
- Mr Ecks
June 30, 2016 at 1:42 pm -
Wait til the Italian bank go tits up–and then tell us about how well they are doing.
The EU will meet an inevitable end. They started it with the Euro and it will kill them no matter how many of their fellow travellers
re-assure the world that they are as “constant as the Northern Star”. - Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 5:42 pm -
BD, like Mr Ecks, I believe this will be resolved more by market forces than politicians, the Italian Banks needing to be recapitalized is an indicator, but nothing can be done without weakening Deutsche Bank and other member banks (including Barclays and Lloyds) further. Add to the bank problems the cost of integrating, educating and providing welfare to an endless stream of gimmegrants and even the robust economy of West Germany will be damaged. Spain, Portugal, Italy, France are all basket cases. Thus my description of “EU disintegrates”, it’s future is in further “bail-outs”, quantitive easing and other flim-flammery designed to hide massive revaluation of the currency.
Frankly both sides are making up shit as they go along.
You will perceive my faith in Britain being able to form coherent policy while the camoron is around, or its ability to even assemble a negotiating team, in that regard the Juncker-Schultz-Merkel trio look like genii only because the competition is so dire.- The Blocked Dwarf
June 30, 2016 at 6:40 pm -
BD, like Mr Ecks, I believe this will be resolved more by market forces than politicians, the Italian Banks needing to be recapitalized is an indicator, but nothing can be done without weakening Deutsche Bank and other member banks (including Barclays and Lloyds) further.
You are probably more right than you are wrong about the banks, which is why Bexit seems even more idiotic . For years the UK has fought to keep the City Of London beyond the reach of the EU. Migration and ‘border control’ are a mere side show compared to what ‘settlement’ the UK will be forced to reach with the EU on banking/financial dealings. „was für einen guten Freund haben wir in dem David” is the Frankfurt bankers tshirt of choice atm.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 7:02 pm -
“What a good friend we have in the David “…….says Google translate, which is a little too obscure for me to understand. Surely the Germans are not making fun of Jews.
Bankers will do what they do, banking is so interconnected these days when one gets a cold they all sneeze, that is the real danger. No commercial bank is going to try to damage any other bank especially over politics. What the ECB or BoE does however is totally unpredictable.
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 7:19 pm -
“which is why Bexit seems even more idiotic”……hmmmm, not idiotic, but certainly not well planned.
My suspicion is that once the hurt feelings are salved and a common purpose to make the best of the situation is arrived at, then UK and EU will get along OK both commercially and politically. This is more symbolic than practical, who for instance has any faith that the Border Agency can magically transform into a functional service? and how does UK propose to secure its border with three patrol boats? Will France still make-up the power shortfall due to yUKs windmill idiocy through the channel interconnect? Three very minor problems that government will wrestle with for twenty years, and there are probably a million more.
I am sure the “YES Minister” types will resolve these problems expeditiously and cost-effectively-cough, cough.
- The Blocked Dwarf
July 1, 2016 at 12:21 am -
but certainly not well planned.
That’s one of the things that continues to puzzle me, no one in the Brexit camp seems to have clear vision of what they want, of what sort of UK they want…not beyond nonsensical sloganising anyways. All well and good saying you want to be ‘Free’ (and I constrain my urge to write ‘SO what? I’m 4!) but what should a FREE Britain (with every box of NEW tastier Brexit?) look like?
The whole Brexit thing has little to do with facts, it is all about vision/perceptions/mythology…and delusions, both clinical and of grandeur.The Brexiters need to understand that they are not perceived in Europe as a loss for the EU, as I said and shown before , a huge chunk of the EU would probably sum up Brexit as ‘good riddance to bad rubbish’ (and would even the most frothy mouthed FOTL brexiter dispute we Brits are ‘rubbish’ at being European?), Britain is perceived to be the sponging doley who does nothing but whinge and has a huge sense of ‘Entitlement’. Whoever does do the negotiating for us , needs to understand that that is how we are viewed. Is that perception of us justified ? Probably about as justified as the British belief that the EU will disintegrate or that the NHS is the envy of the world.
I replied to your previous post in some haste, the German Tshirt slogan should have read ‘Boris’ not ‘David’.I too have no doubt that it will get sorted in the end, if only because of the TTIP.
- Mr Ecks
July 1, 2016 at 2:34 am -
Who cares how the scummy bureaucrats of Islamtown view us. A large part of the people of Europe now view us as heros who have given them hope of getting out from under.
Nor do we need some unified view of what Brexit should be–each to his own.
That is called freedom.
We have still our own political scum to deal with. But they are vastly weaker on their own than with 27 packs of fellow pukes backing them up. No more “Its them EU rules –sorry nothing we can do”
- Cascadian
July 1, 2016 at 3:14 am -
BD-Ahhhh, Boris now it makes sense.
And then in the blink of an eye, British realpolitik takes hold and it should be Mikey or Theresa or ?.
Are the con-men trying to make liebour look competent?
- Mr Ecks
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Cascadian
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Mr Ecks
- The Blocked Dwarf
- Cascadian
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 1:37 am -
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CmKA79_WgAAnU5B.jpg
Heckuva, job Nige.
You really showed those (GRRR!) experts.
- Mr Ecks
June 30, 2016 at 1:52 pm -
And what are they all doing in politics–trying to dictate to others–if they are such big cheeses in the world.
Why would you give up saving life as a surgeon–unless you are a sanctimonious arsehole who thinks that banning one kind of lightbulb to replace it with a more dangerous kind of lightbulb was more important than lives saved. And enjoys strutting their ego in exercise such “power”. That is what they are all about.
MEPs are mostly well-paid traitors to their own nations who rarely see a piece of dictatorial bullshit they don’t like.
And Nigel’s remark–even if technically not so of the MEP sellouts around him (the whole chamber would have to be tabulated to know that–please get on with it if you care to) is certainly true of the bureaucratic and professional political scum around the MEPs. Those who feed said MEPs the bungling and dictatorial garbage they rubberstamp.
- Mr Ecks
- Junican
June 30, 2016 at 4:01 am -
I am Labour and you are Tory. Let us see who is right. We shall jump in the air, and whoever jumps highest is right. I am Labour, and I jumped highest, and therefore I am right.
There was a referendum. Why was there a referendum? The Powers that Be would not have proposed such a thing if it were not intended to further some plan. There was never a need for a referendum. It can only be that the referendum was intended to justify Gordon Brown’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty. We must remember our Constitution. It is, fundamentally, that THE PEOPLE ARE SUPREME. Parliament is NOT supreme. No Government can give away the supremacy of The People to another organisation or another People.
An Act in Parliament, creating the referendum, decided that there was a fundamental, constitutional principle that needed to be addressed. That was what the referendum was about. The Act transferred POWER from Parliament to The People. What The People decided reinforced the Constitution. The People decided to leave ‘The European Union’.
Is it really possible that Cameron et al can mess about? I do not think so. The matter is simple. As a start in any negotiations, it must be clearly stated, even if not publicly, that Gordon Brown’s signing of the Lisbon Treaty was ‘out of order’. Our constitution forbids the transfer of law-making to other nations or bodies. No Treaty can deny that fact. Parliament is not SUPREME. The People are SUPREME. Parliament cannot transfer SUPREMACY to other bodies.
It all becomes so messy. The sensible thing to do, in the first instance, is to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty. Treaties before that can stay in place (Common Market stuff).
What is important is the definition of ‘European Union’.- Ho Hum
June 30, 2016 at 9:56 am -
The FOTL people are in the padded room down the corridor
- Ho Hum
- tdf
June 30, 2016 at 4:13 am -
Junican,
Can you please cite a source for your assertion that under the UK constitution, the people are supreme.
- Mr Ecks
June 30, 2016 at 1:54 pm -
So long as you get what you want any way you can eh.
- Mr Ecks
- Ho Hum
June 30, 2016 at 12:28 pm -
So when the shit does eventually hit the fan, who’s not going to be seen to be the one who throws the switch?
Feet of clay…
- Ho Hum
June 30, 2016 at 1:04 pm -
Labour’s firing squad is forming a circle and Boris has committed hari kiri
Any more comic turns likely to show up today?
- Ho Hum
June 30, 2016 at 4:48 pm -
@ Mr Ecks
Could you, please, describe how you perceive yourself?
It’s a serious question. It might help us understand why you feel the need to be quite so vituperative in the way you choose to describe others and attribute motivation to them.
TIA
- Mr Ecks
July 1, 2016 at 2:37 am -
I don’t like those who stand with and endorse tyrants and thieves.
Not rocket science and no pop psych needed.
- Mr Ecks
- Ho Hum
June 30, 2016 at 6:22 pm -
@ Cascadian.
A quick, serious, query please? Is my memory playing tricks when it tells me that you’re either a Canadian, or at least based in Canada?
If either of these is correct, what is it about all this that drives your enthusiasm for dabbling in something which would, on the surface, have nothing much to do with you?
It would help clarify where you’re coming from on all this
- Cascadian
June 30, 2016 at 7:37 pm -
No secret there Ho Hum, you are quite correct. Last I checked the landlady required no passport before entering the bar.
If Brexit goes sideways for you chaps and you find yourself starving, we might even consider trading with you again rather than sending megatons of free stuff and manpower as we have done on previous occasions when you fu##ed up.
My enthusiam is driven by past residence in yUK when it was known as the UK (born and bred in East London-oh the shame!). Apart from that the denizens seem to tolerate a good deal of banter, both good-tempered and occasionally bad-tempered. The conversations are normally informed and interesting. Occasional updates to the landlady’s health situation also bring me back.
Permit me to ask what are your motivations?
- Cascadian
- Cascadian
July 1, 2016 at 2:17 am -
Ho Hum, no offense was taken, I tend to “talk” here as I would have in an East End boozer amongst friends-that means questionable statements would be robustly denounced, comments directed against politicians would be merciless and comments against political parties that had seemed to “screw you” were subject to no limits, though swearing was frowned upon if ladies were present.
I accept ownership of your comments in the second paragraph, I believe economic issues will drive the whole EU to some startling and undesirable results (Canada and the USA too in due course). As to aberrant educational policies, I assume you mean my antipathy to most modern universities output, that is a matter of record, when people take ridiculous majors then end up in a coffee shop as a server I have little sympathy. STEM graduates have my admiration. Of course other factors are important, I tend only to engage on existing subjects.
I can sympathize with your eldest son predicament, I too am a refugee from what I consider diabolical political and economic circumstances that were extant in yUK in 1973, my move to Canada was fraught with uncertainty, not a little bit of fear and many misgivings from both sets of parents. (Sound familiar?) For what it is worth I now consider the decision as the best I have ever made. If I can be of any assistance to your family providing some practical advice please provide an email address where we can communicate offline.
As potential parents of Canadian residents, I would not consider the location as “a galaxy far-far-away” though in terms of Britain the distances are vast, air travel has made the world a small place these days. Should they make the move you should consider the probability that you could visit a very interesting and geographically diverse country. This could be the start of a very interesting phase of your lives.
I cannot in good conscience promise to be more considerate of others feelings, but if you have felt my comments were meant to hurt you personally I plead ignorance of your condition.
- BobH2003
July 2, 2016 at 5:49 pm -
Yet another bizarre fact about the consistency of socialists.
They “occupy” Wall Street and St Paul’s in protest against evil globalists, and then work furiously for them in the Remain Campaign.
The following is a list of vested interest from Wall Street etc. who funded the Remain Campaign.-Goldman Sachs (£500,000)
JP Morgan the biggest bank in USA (£500,000)
Morgan Stanley (£250,000)
Bank of America (£Similar)
Hedge fund manager David Harding (£750,000),
Travelex founder Lloyd Dorfman (£500,000)
Tower Limited Partnership (£500,000).
Conservatives In, the party’s pro-EU campaign group raised £362,534
Lord Sainsbury (£2.7Million)
Accountants PriceWaterhouseCooper (£xxxx?)
George Soros, (he who deliberately crashed the Bank of England in 1992 so he could walk away with $billions)If I, a mere mortal, can google this on the Electoral Commission web site and elsewhere, why can’t Labour voters do that?
- tdf
July 3, 2016 at 1:01 am -
@BobH2003
That’s interesting, do you have a direct link?
It seems from the link below that as of 11/5/2016, the total donations to Brexit were in a similar ballpark to the total donations to Remain.
Interesting to note that ‘Leave EU Group Ltd’ was lent £6.0m (by whom?) but had only spent £3.2m at that point.
- BobH2003
July 3, 2016 at 2:34 pm -
I just googled “remain campaign funding” or similar and came across several sites including the Electoral Commission. The latter only covers donations reported before 9th June but will be updated later in July, thus it missed off some of the larger donations.
Effectively, my list was a conglomerate made by checking several articles.The above list although incomplete, was made for targeting the likes of the Guardian to try and wake up the Labour voters to who was bankrolling their campaign.
As I pointed out frequently, they occupied St Pauls, and Wall Street in a hatefest against these people, and them go and work for them for free. Only dumb lefties could fall for such idiocy.I have to say, given the continuous leftie accusation that Brexit works for the vested interests of the elites, the big institutions and globalists, I am amazed that some of the big hitters of Brexit haven’t made use of this well documented information to silence their critics.
It would be great if there was some media exposure to these facts, especially if it was placed alongside the false accusations.
- BobH2003
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