It is a sign of the terrible decline of Britain’s “democratic” system that figures as insignificant as Hoon and Hewitt should ever have held political office. The only reaction I have to this “crisis” is that it is a reminder how deeply unattractive are the entire New Labour cast being paraded before us.
Is this attack on Brown motivated by revulsion at endless war on weak countries, at the attack on civil liberties at home, at the incredible amount of debt loaded on ordinary people to bale out the bankers, at the widest ever gap between rich and poor in this country?
No! They talk only about the chances of Labour MPs and the thousands of other Labour hacks sponging off the taxpayers, to keep their jobs and their noses in the trough. It is not about policy at all, or anything that benefits you or me. It is about New Labour politicos’ personal access to money and power.
You are all a bunch of troughing, hypocritical, war criminals. Fuck off New Labour, all of you.
Afghanistan:
Life expectancy at birth: 44.21 years
(source: Afghanaid)
Excellent post but it would be helpful if you could install Disqus as a comment system – much easier to follow the threads that way.
suppose my MP would be Old Labour, really. So New Labour point is fair. Did I hear Cameron trying to remodel the Conservatives as ‘Modern Conservatives’ the other day, by the way?
The question is:
Which of the two War Parties will you vote for?
That is if you’re not completely turned off by the electioneering that will continue for the next five or six months.
mary,
The trick is to get a ‘hung’ parliament – Vote Liberal – that should do it!
Seconded. Vote tactically for a hung parliament.
What’s exasperating about this is that under our disproportional system you can’t tell what effect your vote has until the results are in.
Here is your lifetime supply of democracy:
X X X X X X X X
X X X X X X X X
Please don’t run off with the pencil!
Afterthought – I should really qualify my 7:13 comment. If you’re lucky enough to live in a constituency with a morally sound candidate who stands a chance of being elected, vote for him/her.
This is what Craig was up against in Norwich. Voters can’t tell in advance if a candidate can muster enough votes, so they ‘play safe’ and vote for one of the major parties. Thus Tory and Labour both favour the current system.
As far as I cld see Craig was up against a party which had delivered a relatively decent previous incumbent. Respect for the Norfolk roots, and for seizing the chance of a by-election, but it’s not quite the same as standing against someone like Harman or Smith. Or settling in Norfolk and conducting a long game. Of course, they’re weeding out all the other decentish old Tories too. Parliament will be full of nasty little boys, what’s the betting?
That’s the trouble with being one of the only three countries left in the civilised world with a primitive first-past-the-post voting system. Even worse, FPTP always suits whoever has just won using it, so they are the last people who want to see it changed.
We need instant run-off voting, combined with some form of proportional representation, in order to claim even a semblance of democracy in the UK.
http://www.fairvote.org/how-instant-runoff-voting-works
don’t you think we need to get decent people into the system before it gets changed?
We shouldn’t use this “first past the post” label. It’s not just totally inaccurate, it also sounds very fair and reasonable, which it isn’t. I’ve been using “winner takes all” or “disproportionate”.
Technicolour: this is a convoluted problem. I think that maybe we should try to do both simultaneously. The current system makes it hard to chuck lousy people out.
QUOTE:
“How did we ever come to the stage, in a demcracy, where we are ruled over by deluded criminals, who specialize in mass murder, and are professional liars?”
>>>It’s horrific, isn’t it, how the UK’s been overrun by criminals in the last 10yrs? How did it happen?
QUOTE:
“You are all a bunch of troughing, hypocritical, war criminals. Fuck off New Labour, all of you.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself. The only decent New Labour minister died on a country walk.”
I thought it was very well put too. But..Michael Meacher? Claire Short – ish?
First off, add a spam blocker to your site. Once they find they can spam you you’ll be on a list, and the next stage is attempts to upload virus infection links. Just a warning.
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I would in general advise you that I much rather have a bunch of “Let’s have a *slice* of this” Tories in office than current “let’s grab everything we can and damn the consequences” New Labour. Tories know they need a working economy to get something out of it, and tend to plan more long term as a consequence.
People seem to forget that in order to harvest more than once you need to leave something to grow anew, a fact that Tories understand.
However much Tony Blair polished up Labour and made then wear shoes instead of sandals, they are still incapable of shedding their roots, so you get unelected Mandelson who licks up to anyone with cash, Blair the marketeer who knows how to BS with a straight face (good lawyer credentials) and unelected Brown who hasn’t got a clue about finance but has left to hold his own mess after Blair wisely skipped before it all blew up. Gordon Brown is responsible from turning a budget surplus into a deeper black hole than the LHC will ever hope to produce, and that is AFTER raiding the pension funds in the process.
In case anyone forgot, it was Labour who introduced the “sleaze” concept, the idea that politicians are somehow no longer human but white knights that never make a mistake. And who returns when times get tough? Yup, twice disgraced Mandelson.
And yet, people vote for them, proving that elementary logic has indeed become the victim of educational standards.
glow-in-the-dark say :- “People seem to forget that in order to harvest more than once you need to leave something to grow anew, a fact that Tories understand.”.
That’s why they’d never dream of, to change a metaphor, selling off the family silver. Right.
“In case anyone forgot, it was Labour who introduced the “sleaze” concept”.
Oh, *please*. Granted, Neal Hamilton, etc, were petty compared with some of what’s been done since, but sleazy they certainly were. That’s what I voted against in ’97, for what it was worth.
Those who can’t remember history, what are they said to be condemned to do ? (retype it, probably, this being the ‘net).
Glow-in-the dark:
it was Thatcher (and Reagan) that removed the restrictions on ‘repackaging’ credit. And I seem to remember that the Tories voted unanimously for the Iraq war…
I agree with your comments about Blair and Mandelson, however.
Glenn:
I looked at your ‘Instant Run-off’ link. Instant Run-off is to single seat constituencies what Single Transferable Voting is to multiple-seat constituencies. Both seem very good for giving independent candidates and small / new parties a fair chance against the big, entrenched parties. http://www.voteforachange is campaigning for PR.
as the corrupt uk kangaroo court and system will not punish the real war criminals it not be in order that someone else punishes the war criminal despicable creature3 called tony bastard blair? how long can one go on decieving oneslef about justice system of kangaroo courts of england?
If the kangaroo courts of uk and the corrupt system of england is not going to try the msot despicable war criminal the tony balir then is there a jmnustification for someother countries to get him tried and after finding him criminal have him hanged for war crimes?
how long can the world put up with this war criminal beibng loose at alrge?and even appylying to be head of european union? what a disgust!!
surely one cannot rely on ja=kangaroo corrupt state that is england.
Clark: We need a change in how people view their politics, I think. At the moment, they’re standing back and eyeing it nervously, or wanting to give it a good kicking, when they could be rolling their sleeves up and making it work for them. My worry is that the STV and other such interesting ideas for adjusting the system are red herrings. Are Ireland and Holland glorious examples of popular democracy? Not really. They might be a bit better than the UK, but much? In any case, unless the politicians themselves want to change the system, the system cannot be changed, surely?
So I think you need to work with what you have. How best to throw the bad ones out is a good question, alongside the equally urgent ‘how to stop the bad ones getting in’. It all strikes me as needing long term planning, which is why the inchoate forces of (often knee jerk) opposition are in a bit of a fix.
By the way, I don’t think Craig could have won Blackburn or Norwich with the STV; though I might do some sums to check.
Technicolour,
your ‘sums’ are going to be highly speculative; you can’t work directly from the results.
If I’d been a voter in such an election, and assuming that Craig just appealed to me (rather than me being a follower of his blog), I would have put Craig first on an STV ballot, and my party of choice second. If Craig hadn’t got a lot of votes, nothing lost; my vote would have transferred to my party of choice.
In a conventional UK ballot, I’d have wanted to vote for Craig, but would have considered it a risk of wasting my vote, and so put my one and only X next to the name of my least unfavorite party that I thought stood a chance.
In any case, it will take time for voters to get used to their new freedom under STV.
Clark, true, had overlooked the aspect that people might be too scared to vote for the person they really want in case they don’t get in.
Patricia Hewitt once threw the entire contents of her very large handbag at me, when I was employed on the turnstile at the University of East Anglia library. A part of my job was to tell people that bags were not allowed in the library, but that I could issue them with locker keys to store their bags, while they were in the library. Patricia Hewitt was the dean of one of the UEA faculties at that time. I didn’t recognise her. Besides, no-one told me that I was supposed to apply different rules to deans. She threw the handbag contents at me, and onto my desk, then claimed that she needed the entire contents of the bag, while she was in the library. She scooped it all up in her arms and stormed up the steps into the library, trying to carry it all in her arms, leaving a trail of strange lotions and potions all the way up the library stairs. Afterwards, we had a discussion about why she might have needed her suntan lotion in the library. I also noticed that she had rather a lot of products from Boots chemists. I believe she has now become a highly paid employee of Boots, after she was the Health Minister who was responsible for setting up privatised doctor’s ‘super-surgeries’ – with a Boots pharmacy in every one. She certainly wasn’t trying to get my job, since she already had a far superior job of her own. But, apart from that, I suspect her attack on me may have been similarly motivated to her attack on Gordon Brown. Lashing out at anyone who hindered her progress, in any way, or offended against her careerist ego and vanity. I’m sure she would have liked to have prevented me from having my job.