A great many people are asking me why I am not leaving the Lib Dems. Well, I am a party member because of John Bright and John Stuart Mill. I am not leaving it because of a nonentity like Nick Clegg.
I am hugely angry over tuition fees. The policy itself, with the effective withdrawal of the state from university teaching and the reinforcement of social division, is a terrible disaster. The blatant display of political opportunism and bad faith by Cless and his ilk will poison politics for a generation.
But not only am I staying in the Lib Dems, I am seeking actively to recruit students. A very high proportion of the student vote went to the Lib Dems at the last election. Those genuine Lib Dem voters are absolutely entitled to join the party. They voted Lib Dem – this is not entryism from outside.
Every Lib Dem MP must win a majority of a vote of his local party members to be reselected.
Under clause 11.7 of the Federal Constitution if a sitting MP wishes to be reselected they have to either:
win a majority vote of the members present at a local party general meeting (conducted by secret ballot)
or
If that resolution is defeated then the MP can request a ballot of all members of the local party.
http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-time-to-end-the-special-treatment-for-sitting-mps-22319.html
I want to see many, many students join the party, in places like, oh, Sheffield Hallam, for example. The answer to the disillusion of students with our democratic system is for them to join the party and actively participate in, oh, Nick Clegg’s reselection vote, for example.
“assuming it is intended for me (no one signs themselves LOL/Alfred)”
What a pathetic little man.
Dreoilin, angrysoba, well said, my thoughts exactly.
I think it is clear that Alfred is a supporter of the core policies which the BNP (and the racist UK Far Right in general) advocate.
By his expansive statements, both in these, recent, threads and in many of his contributions to this blog over a number of months, and finally now in his cowardly avoidance of my very straightforward question, it might be argued that he has demonstrated precisely where his true allegiance lies.
I will leave readers with three questions:
Is it possible that Dr Alfred Burdett has demonstrated that his expressed views accord with those of the Extreme Right in the UK, i.e. with those of organisations such as the BNP, the National Front, the English Defence League and the rest of the violent, racist, anti-Semitic political organisations whose agenda, it might be argued, he has assiduously promoted on this blog?
Is it realistic to suggest that all of Dr Alfred Burdett’s statements – hereto and henceforth – on all subjects would have to be viewed through this prism of possible Right-wing Extremism?
Is it conceivable that, in essence, when Dr Alfred Burdett contributes to this blog, his contributions may as well be regarded as though they were contributions from a self-appointed unofficial spokesperson for the British National Party (BNP)?
Would it be unreasonable to regard Dr Alfred Burdett as an internet troll?
I leave the readers and contributors of this blog to draw their own conclusions from what they have read on this matter.
“(1) I specified avowed policies of the BNP — as stated under the policies tab on their Web site — that I supported.
(2) I said that the role of the BNP was to discredit such populist policies by associating them in the public mind with racist and thuggish attitudes.
Therefore, …
Well, if you are not a moron you can complete the syllogism, and in doing refute your own argument.”
This is not a syllogism. There is no logical conclusion to be had from these statements.
Nobody is any the wiser about whether or not you are a supporter of the BNP.
If you don’t grasp this it is either because you are stupid or because your whole behaviour is dedicated to being evasive when asked simple questions.
However you have given us a logical syllogism of sorts by saying that my inference that you would vote BNP is remarkably illogical.
Therefore we can conclude that you would NOT vote BNP and presumably would not recommend anyone else vote BNP.
In the spirit of exchanging ideas, Is this true?
That last comment was from me to that srupid fucking cunt, Alfred!
“srupid”
stupid!
How that looks silly…
angrysoba: you seem to have been hitting the sake.
angrysoba, have a good Christmas and New Year, man. Technicolour, too, have a wondrous and mellow time.
(Moderated: offensive.)
I suppose he could be hitting the sake, but Angry doesn’t talk like that, and there has been a lot of impersonation going on recently. (It’s not hard to add a URL to your name.)
Yep, impersonator clown is back.
One clown (Alfred) goes off… another (Apostate) comes on! What a circus! Roll-up, roll-up! Who’s the one with the oversized shoes?
Not so much sake, then, as Buckfast!
And a very Merry Christmas was had by all.
But remember the Ghost of Christmases-Yet-to-Come…
Since The Blog Commandant, SS, Dreoilin, who desperately needs to grow a pair of brain cells and Angrysoba, sputtering misspelled obscenities, have all dived into the sewer, I will abandon them to their coarse, mendacious and imbecile rantings.
Though it would have been interesting to have had an answer to the question I raised with SS and Angry, “are you paid to hang around here and push the NWO agenda, or do you do solely because of a personal obsession?”
“… have all dived into the sewer, I will abandon them to their coarse, mendacious and imbecile rantings.”
But of course! even though you are well aware that none of the above is true. Gives you an “out” though, doesn’t it. And you’re going to fabricate it, and then grab it with both hands, you coward, Dr Alfred Burdett.
kathz,
who has been sickened by lying Liberals and NuLaborites, and who said she was wondering “whether I should vote for a minority part in the hope it retains integrity or simply join the protesters on the streets” now points out that she had the Green Party in mind rather than the BNP when speaking of possibly supporting a minority party (actually they’re all minority parties now, thank God).
I would say that as for joining the protesters, that is a matter of personal preference. I mean if you like demos, then by all means protest. I met my first girl friend when playing truant from school and went on one of the big ban-the-bomb protests in the 1960’s. She was a real cutie, blues eyes, straight blonde hair and had the wonderfully Dickensian last name of Snook. I really should have married her. But at the time we didn’t seem to know what to say, so it all kind of fizzled out.
Demos rarely achieve anything in the political sphere, because keeping the populace down is what politicians see as their prime function, so naturally anything folks protest is going to be around for ever — like the bomb.
But if demonstrating is futile, voting must be more so. I mean, when was the last time your vote determined who’d be Prime Minister, or your parliamentary representative, or even captain of the Tiddly Winks team.
But if you think it important to be conscientious about voting, then you need to consider both the practicability of the pary’s platform and the credibility of the avowed intent.
Thus, if the leader of the Pink Party promises that if elected she will go to Westminster and collect her pay cheque, then I think you can see that her platform meets the tests of both feasibility and of plausible motivation.
However, when Ned Clogg promises to send half the population to uni for six years at public expense, it is obvious that this meets the test neither of feasibility nor of plausible intent. Clogg, after all, is a millionaire, so why would he want to send your kid to university at his expense?
Looking at things this way, what do the Greens, the party kathz considers supporting, have to offer. If they promise a windmill in every back yard, then their platform fails the test of feasibility since wind power costs many times as much as coal power and is thus a proposition neither environmentally sound nor economically sane. However, if they promise to reduce the human impact on the environment by reducing the GNP by 3% a year for the next ten years, this goal to be achieved by encouraging people to get up later in the morning, take more sick days and spend more time at the pub, then clearly they have a program that is at least feasible, and perhaps one that they even believe in.
The straight answer to the question posed by Dr Alfred Burdett of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, “are you paid to hang around here and push the NWO agenda, or do you do solely because of a personal obsession?” is that neither is true. So, as I think everybody here already knows, the answer to both parts of the question is, ‘no’.
Now, Dr Burdett, I have answered your questions promptly and clearly. Are you prepared to answer my simple question?
Would you be prepared to state here and now categorically that you would not vote for the BNP if you were living in the UK?
I could be lying or I could be telling the truth where I say that I am being paid to spy on Dr Alred Burdett (or whatever the cunt’s name is).
I am paid to do this only on the basis that Albert is so important, almost as important as that stupid tosser Mark Golding that it is worth people like me just hanging around and listening and then just listening.
Have fun!
Okay, enough already. We’ve all made our points.
“Okay, enough already. We’ve all made our points. ”
Points? You’ve made your point? What was your point exactly, Suhayl Saadi, other than to smear me and to intimidate me by seeking to publicize as much personal information about me as you had ready to hand?
And since you approve of Angrysoba’s lies about me and abuse of me, why should I accept your “point?”
And if Craig Murray’s blog is falling apart because his NWO agenda is becoming exposed, why do you want to shut down the discussion since you’re not a paid gatekeeper? So you say.
Oh, because it’s Christmas. LOL. But you’re an atheist. You hold Christian religiosity in contempt.
Come on, Suhayl, be a man. Face the reality of what you’ve been saying. You’re a smear artist. And you smeared me deliberately.
That is why I bet you will never acknowledge the fact and why you want to end the discussion now. Especially now that Angrysoba has made such an unseemly display of vile language and libelous allegations.
(Moderated: offensive.)
it’s not working, ‘alfred’
“it’s not working”
No Techie, there’s no way SS will admit he’s smearing me and attempting to intimidate me.
I take it that is was what you were referring to.
It’s interesting though how virulent the hate speech and lying has become when I touch on the the way CM’s agenda matches that of the NWO.
All I did was ask you a simple question, Alfred and take issue (yet again) with your “genocide in Leicester” and other, similar, statements. I answered all your questions. You answered none of mine – and I had only one.
Who’s who at WikiLeaks – lots of links:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEV20101216&articleId=22437
Dazed,
thanks for the reference. I agree now it is not controversial to say that the Greek democracy self-destructed in some way. What puzzled me earlier was the apparent implication that the Athenian democracy grew less stable as it got ‘better’ but I see now that is not what you meant. I am not a scholar of the subject of ancient direct democracy but I wonder if other factors would have been at play also such as external pressures and a (technological) lack of effective means to disseminate information.
Critics of Athenian-style direct democracy correctly point out that it does not scale up, that is to say it works best in small communities where individuals all live locally to one another and better still know one another, and it is completely impractical on the scale of more than a few thousand participants. But history has already shown that direct democracy can evolve into a form that is scalable, as it has done in Switzerland and elsewhere. Safeguards against hasty decision-making have also evolved. There must have been good reasons why this did not happen in ancient Greece.
We in the ‘Western world’ are indoctrinated continuously starting from school to think of our societies as advanced democracies. To be sure this is true in some relative sense, but it is instead presented as an absolute truth and this serves to limit critical thought. Democracy is so much more than full franchise. Maybe the eventual demise of the Greek model of democracy is evidence in support of this view.
Evgueni at 12:03am, yep, spot-on again. And so, many (esp. moderately well-educated, middle-class) people who are not involved in oppositional politics seem unable even to comprehend the point you make in your last paragraph, though with Iraq, the variegated scandals like BAE, etc. and crucially, the internet, that gradually may be changing. One can over-estimate the change, though, if one spends too much time on the internet (!)
On a separate matter, I note the allegations of “smearing” made against me by Dr Alfred Burdett (10:23pm, 23rd Dec 2010).
In truth, the only real “smears” applied to Dr Alfred Burdett, PhD have been those which have emanated from his own pen. If one consistently expresses political views in grid-locked concurrence with Right-wing Extremism and if simultaneously one appears deeply evasive about the logical conclusion consequent upon the public display of those views, I’m afraid all one can expect in any forum (other than those of the Extreme Right) is firstly, vigorous reaction and secondly, a complete loss of credibility. In my view, it seems likely that Dr Alfred Burdett, PhD now will have zero credibility on this site. And a good thing too.
I love the smell of genocide in the morning. I rented a small semi-detatched house in Leicester with my wife and kids and apparently that is genocide.
Ha! Good one, anonymous poster at 12:10pm, that is a good one. Give my regards to the scorched earth of Leicester!
A question which has always possessed me is this: If one divides England into North and South (eliding, for a moment, the concept of ‘The Midlands’), does Leicestershire fall into North or South? I think that culturally, the boundary moved northwards during the 1980s. But still, in traditional terms, Nottingham, Stamford and Grantham are definitely ‘North’, while Peterborough and Cambridgeshire are definitely ‘South’. So, dear anonymous resident of Leicester, that town at the centre of many discussions, what do you think about this? Not that it is great import, just an interesting oxbow of the flatlands, shall we say.
Nominate this for coolest spambot comment of the year:
“You write nonsense, then people will read until the sorrow is to read.”
Quite!
Yes, techicolour, that’s got to be the professional motto of all spambots. What would it be in Latin, I wonder…?
The BNP are clearly fakes, they have no chance of ever being in power and Griffin knows it only too well. If this what not the case and they ever did get near the levers of power, you can be sure he would be retired from public life asap.
Many things in British political life are not what they appear and insitutions such as BNP UKIP Question Time Readers comments pages on popular newspapers only serve to discharge the anger and frustration built up within the populace. Mass entertainment serves a similar purpose. Nothing can really be changed by the populace but the facade of a functioning democracy has to be maintained.