Get up, walk out the door and go and vote against New Labour.
NOW.
OK. you’re at work and you’re only a minion, so you can’t. Then on the way home.
Just do it.
Allowed HTML - you can use:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
I had a little fall-out with my wife this morning. She wanted to know what I was doing on the internet – and I immediately switched screens.
She said what are you trying to hide from me ( I wasn’t watching porn – honest – why on earth would I want to do that? )
No – I was finding the lyrics to Crazy – Gnarls Barkley – to try and construct an answer to eddie – who personally attacked me for having “a personal problem”
It was too hard to try and explain to my lovely wife – so she went off in a sulk – and said some nasty things.
So I got the bikes out and pumped up the tyres – and said – well are you coming for a bike ride with me.
She said – Go By Yourself
I said – well I want to go with You – and I will vote on the Way.
Don’t you want to vote?
So we cycled to the polling booth and we both voted – and then we went for a long cycle in the Countryside.
When we got home a nice lady with her son knocked on our door – and said are you going to vote.
Despite what I said earlier – I was really polite and nice to her.
I do respect Democracy – particularly local people who get off their arse – and get themselves elected.
She is my local councillor. She beat my mate across the road by a whisker.
Tony
No-one died in Iraq and no-one is dying in Afghanistan. Didn’t you know? It was all filmed on the moon. Tony Blair is Jesus, Gordon Brown, Saint Paul and everything is good and getting better. Corporate capitalism is the only true path. It is shining, it is light, it is God. Hallelujah. Amen.
Haha. I knew I was missing something. Thanks for your guidance Suhayl!
Laughing @ Suhayl … I needed that.
@eddie
Thank you for your measured response. We will have to disagree on the Lancet issue, but then my views on institutional media bias are probably a touch more radical than yours (as a paying Media Lens subscriber I would naturally be more cynical about a media survey like IBC, I wonder?).
You are right about govts being beholden to global forces, but perhaps our primary difference of opinion comes about because I view New Labour has having been *part* of the global force [of neoliberalism] rather than simply being subjected to it. Quite how this Thatcherite view has developed in the Labour party is quite beyond me, but it explains why internal debate and democracy in the party has had to be shut down.
I also struggle to balance some of the good points you’ve made with the Iraq disaster, which was, after the evidence of memos and statements are analysed, a quite deliberate and sustained project to invade a sovereign country on knowingly false pretexts, without the UNSC agreement that was initially required. I don’t mean this rudely, but in my view any statement of belief contrary to that is not compatible with the breadth of opinion the (old) Labour party stood for (the neo-con right of the Tory party, perhaps). (I have always maintained that this is a separate issue to whether Hussein should have been deposed i.e. I believe in the maxim that dishonest means cannot be justified by “good” ends – certainly not by democratic govts anyway).
With all that in mind, even if I were to plump for the IBC figures, my view still holds: 100K deaths caused for maintaining the special relationship, selling weapons, access to oil and newly liberalised markets etc. ought to lose Labour elections on any moral measure. The Iraqi “democracy” is a sham, by any careful analysis, and the “withdrawing US troops” will not drop below 75,000 for ten years or more. (I don’t imagine you are particularly politically aligned with Naomi Klein, but nevertheless her detailed analysis (in “Shock Doctrine”) of cancelled grassroots elections, and American construction companies used instead of local Iraqi tradespeople, on fraudulent contracts funded by the US taxpayer, in part explains the real intentions behind the disaster.)
On Green/Lib govt, I would tend to instinctively trust their generally moderate characteristics rather than many of the well-spoken Labour lawyers! To my mind, Labour has had a Machievellian, right-wing and remarkably authoritarian set of players: Charles Clarke, Blunkett, Straw, Blair/Brown, Hoon, David Milliband and so forth. There have been whippable wimps too, like Blears (I still can’t get her atrocious performance in the Monbiot interview out of my head!). I would sooner have considered and gentle characters at the top, who are not as media savvy, smooth-talking, question-avoiding or unstoppably careerist, and my view is (presently) there are more of that sort in the Greens or the Lib Dems than there are in the Labour elite.
The MSM might therefore be scornful of these amateurs, but in reality the top players in the MSM tend to be establishment conservatives (not necessarily Tories) anyway, and they are generally not in favour of transparent government, income redistribution and genuine social mobility.
JON Thank you for your measured response. In the time available all I will say is that politics is about getting votes and winning power. I have been a member of the party for 30 years and Foot and Kinnock were simply unelectable because, like it or not, they did not appeal to the vast majoity of the UK electorate. Blair’s genius was in moving the LP to the centre and making the LP electable – you call it right wing I call it pragmatism. Dogma without power is meaningless and the LP achieved great things in governement. Blair was also a brilliant communicator, whatever you think of him. The evidence of the last few weeks illustrates that. Brown is a disaster. I disagree with all the illegal war stuff – Iraq is a better place for our intervention and history will show it. I agree about green issues. My personal view is that the planet is doomed but there is no political force on the planet that can stop us going over the cliff.
I knew with certainty that he wouldn’t answer anyone’s questions and just limp incessantly onwards with his crazy fantasies. I have now been proved conclusively right. He must be feeling all spooked out. Oh dear Jessy. I will play my violin for you… 🙁