I received this in an email from the local LibDems – as a joke, I hasten to add.
It does cause me some difficulty. I had to dig deep to get past the second question and avoid voting UKIP, but then found it almost impossible to skip past the Greens to my home as a Lib Dem!!
Do you hate the current political classes ?
yes – wipe your arse on the ballot paper
no – try and use your vote to create some sebalance of future positivity … i.e. vote lib-dem
If the Tories get the largest number of seats and then do a deal with the Blairites, the LibDems will be excluded from power. Therefore the LibDems are better off if Nulab get a larger number of seats, because then it will have to share power with the LibDems in some measure.
This election could end up as a terrible mess, with weak government at a time when one needs the opposite, because of the dire economic situation the UK finds itself in.
Even the idea of rapidly introducing a “fairer” voting system, some kind of proportional representation, at a time like this is problematic, and perhaps even dangerous.
Proportional representation isn’t all pluses; there are minuses too. For example proportional representation actually gives “disproportional” representation to small parties that hold the balance of power between larger blocks. Small parties can become far more powerful and important than their actual electoral support justifies, as is the case in many countries with PR.
At a time like this, is the potential fragmentation of the old party political system, really a wise course to embark opon?
Obviously the old system is grossly unfair; but for decades it provided for stability and strong government. Obviously one can argue that we’ve had far too much of both, for too long, but now, to enter uncharted waters in the middle of an economic depression, with the UK close to the edge of a cliff, radical change in these circumstances strikes me as being somewhat risky.
Do you like homosexuals adopting children? Vote Edinburgh Lib Dems
Have a look at MPAC’s site Craig, they are running with your story about jack Straws breach of electoral law.
How much longer can the powers to be stall his interview and questioning?
Brillinat debate live on Ummah channel today, Jack unfortunately had to leave early, he threw in the towel.
But what you fantasists ignore is that the three main parties, including the morally superior, above-the-political-fray Lib-Dems, are for globalization, empire and war.
That means bombing the shit out Muslim countries until such time as Muslim believers are led by men (and women of course) who are the moral and spiritual equivalent of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
It also means unrestricted wage arbitrage that will bring the great majority of British workers into direct competition with Asians working in many cased for no more than pennies per hour (so much for Suhayl’s wacky idea of compelling British employers to pay everyone a decent wage — including the eight million unemployed or only partially employed). And by the time that process plays out, Britain and the other Western nations will be largely de-industrialized.
Then, the West will be the third World and the Asian giants will constitute the new First World. It will be the Asians who have the leading edge industrial and military technology, the top research universities, the great corporations. What’s more, the great Western corporations will be doing most of their business in Asia and employing mainly Asian workers. IBM’s workforce is already more than 70% non-American. (And in passing it may be noted that many Asians who migrated to Europe will by then realize that the real action and opportunity was in Asia.)
Instead of smirking and jeering at the BNP whose immigration and industrial policies appear to be a rational attempt to deal with real economic problems, why don’t Liberals think about reality once in a while, especially one might hope during an election campaign, and try to find some basis (a) for ensuring a decent life for the twenty percent of the workforce and their families who are unemployed or underemployed; and (b) ending the war for global governance, (c) preserving British sovereignty, (d), etc.
“Do you like gosht curry & sweet rice?” YES ==> Vote for Straw
sounds a bit weak and implausible, doesn’t it?
Commenters marvel how voters can be bought so cheaply, are missing the point. The crime is not “bribery”, it is “treating” – i.e. preferential treatment for a special group; they just have to vote to keep the provider in power. This crime is a manifest attempt to manipulate free voting by appealing directly to self-interest of a chosen group. It’s not exclusive – just come along and you can be admitted to the gang (you will vote for Jack, won’t you).
So it should be: “Do you want to be represented by someone who promises you special treatment (look at what we’ve done for you tonight!)” YES ==> Vote for that nice Mr Straw.
Ah, the BNP, here it is again. Glory, glory hallelujah. Amen and Omega. Of course Asia is rising. That’s history. It doesn’t mean we had. have to jack-in our manufacturing. Germany didn’t. They were clever. Thatcher and her successors were/ are stupid – or acting on behalf of international finance not the UK. What’s wacky about paying a decent wage? You get better productivity if you do. We are constantly told we need to pay the rich even more to keep ’em here. What about the rest of us? Chinese workers’ wages have risen so much, they now outsource to Vietnam. It all evens out eventually.
But the BNP – Jesus McGinty! Or, as Billy Connelly said (quoting his old-time relatives), “Jesus Sufferin Fuck!”
Up in Aberdeenshire, in that wee toon, someone is printin BNP leaflets…
“Britain’s Election: Welcome to No Choice Democracy”
“In an advertently shocking admission of the stranglehold on Britain’s politics, a Financial Times (26 April) front page headline read: “Brutal choices over British deficit”. Its report went on to say: “The next government will have to cut public sector pay, freeze benefits, slash jobs, abolish a range of welfare entitlements and take the axe to programmes such as school building and road maintenance.” In other words: you can vote, but it won’t make a difference ?” this is how the economy is going to be run as dictated by capital.”
“Ruled out from the outset, it seems, are imminently sensible and workable options, such as taxing the super-rich whose combined wealth is more than twice than of Britain’s budget deficit, or immediately ending budget-draining criminal wars of foreign occupation.”…
http://tinyurl.com/3yadabg
Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)
One thing though, Brown is fatally damaged, very unlikely he will get three or more years as PM. This seems to be the way with British Politics, they have a “honeymoon period” then do the really dirty and bad stuff and then try to look all coy sweet and innocent, promise the earth, kiss their arses and hope to get back in again. Trouble is Labour has done so much wrong that the hundred or so key marginal seats will not give them the chance again. So the other lot get in for a while. Really will it make much difference who gets the levers of power, the country is effectively bankrupt and the real pain has yet to be felt.
So, logos, what really is so new about that? The rich gang together and cultivate one another and one anothers’ corporations in exclusive clubs and use codes only they know. Trade Unions gang together – that’s the whole point! What’s potentially objectionable is if actual bribery/ illegality is occurring. It’s got nothing to do with whether it’s beer and skittles, champagne and caviar, golf and pizza or keema naan and chicken-bleedin-tandoori. The extended family system (baratherie system; from the Indo-European root word common also to ‘brother’) prevalent among certain South Asian cohorts, the demographic of migration to the UK (from rural areas in Punjab and points north) and the way politics runs in South Asia facilitates such tribalistic manipulation – but it’s far from being unique to South Asian communities.
Suhayl
I should tell you that I find the juxtaposition of Jesus and swear words objectionable, even though I make no claim to any great religious experience. To me using bad language too easily in general is bad manners, disrespectful to the listener. Swearing under stress or frustration is not what I’m talking about.
Just letting you know, in case I’m not unique that way.
Oh, right, Abe, I’m very sorry. I was quoting from a very funny act by Billy Connolly from the 1980s.
The other thing is, expletives have a real place when used in humour – as was the case here – or strategically used for various purposes, not as a substitute for literacy.
The BNP and other assorted Nazi bodies are inflammatory in the extreme.
But I’m sorry if I caused you hurt.
“Parliamentary Democracy: A Triumph of Victorian Engineering”
“The degree to which the state is hanging on to its suit of Emperor’s clothes by a thread is evident in the rise of the Liberal Democrats, vacuous as they are, looking almost like ‘old’ Labour minus the cloth caps. But I seriously doubt that the propaganda onslaught will have the desired effect, Nick Clegg notwithstanding.”
“In fact it’s a sign that the electorate are grasping at straws, anything to get rid of what is obviously a corrupt and sclerotic political class. The problem is that the Lib-Dems are just as much a part of ‘club’ as the rest of them. Becoming an MP is just like joining the Masons, minus the secret handshake.”…
http://tinyurl.com/362ufkk
Suhayl
That’s OK, I’m glad you understood. The BNP are certainly trouble-makers. But extreme parties usually feed on grievances. The Nazis got elected to power in a democracy which was in grave economic trouble. I sincerely hope that people like that never appeal to the masses here. That’s one reason for not wanting Labour’s traditional base of support to collapse too suddenly – I wouldn’t want something much worse to take its place. That’s why I’m so wary about PR. I recommend the TV film “So proudly we hail” starring David Soul, a story about a neo-Nazi movement in America, if you ever get a chance to see it.
“but for decades it provided for stability and strong government.”
You would need to justify your concealed assumption that strong government is a good thing, in the face of oodles of evidence to the contrary (or we wouldn’t be talking here). ‘Strong government’ is a bit too ‘thousand-year-reich’ for my palate.
It’s strange that you are usually an opponent of what you style ‘nationalism’ (actually meaning fascism) but merrily advocate strength and stability. My ideal is a system which never quite works and can’t reliably deliver power to anyone. I like that feeling of safety.
I’ll certainly check it out. Thanks again, Abe. You’ve made a very good point, too about Labour’s support-base.
Nextus, the ‘leader’ of the BNP in Scotland is based in Turriff, a small town in Aberdeenshire, and their election material (in Scotland) comes from there. I know there’s zero support in that county for that party, thank goodness. That why it seems so incongruous.
My ‘on the bus’, ‘have a cuppa’ invitations to Larry were humorous, not vicious, to do with Ken Kesey and his Acid Pranksters and the Tea Party, respectively. It was really a tactic I used because there seemed no point entering into discourse with him/ them on political matters. So I thought I’d try and chat with him/ them, and then, when it was obvious they weren’t interested, just to toss out the occasional Mad Hatter’s teapot. But you’re quite right, I ought not to indulge them.
I’m sorry I used Billy Connolly’s quote, it was OTT and inappropriate. Jings, now I feel like Gordon Brown!
Hey Craig
Interesting thing over at wikipedia. You’re credibility as a source for wikipedia is up for discussion.
The article? Rory Stewart.
Added an interesting point I saw from your blog. It keeps being deleted. Primarily by two users who’ve only ever edited this one page.
Any thoughts?
I’m in the Richmond Park marginal between Lib Dem and Tories. The Tories had a chance of taking the seat from Lib Dems, because they’ve got quite a good local well liked candidate until he blotted his copy book in being revealed as a non dom.
Anyway we’re bombarded with election material from the Lib Dems and Tories, lots of letters from St Vincent of Twickenham etc.
Today I get this letter from Dave himself. It’s a contract between me and the Conservative party with my name on it and all sorts of Tory pledges, done up in this kinda faux legal paper. I get all excited that maybe Dave’s pushing the boat out and really going for it with some new and novel way of holding politicians to account; you know like all that change stuff he goes on about.
At the end it says, and I quote:
“So this is our contract with you. I want you to read it and – if we win the election – use it to hold us to account. If we don’t deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years’ time.”
LOL. Same old, same old shit…
“just to toss out the occasional Mad Hatter’s teapot. But you’re quite right, I ought not to indulge them. ”
I dunno, I think it’s constructive. Conversation’s more interesting between people who act like human beings instead of automata (though, how much to indulge people who won’t, may be another matter).
Suhayl,
The reason they have to pay the top execs millions, or is it billions now, is because they are doing such a brilliant job of outsourcing everyone else’s job. It’s very profitable hollowing out the Western economies — for the capitalists who do it, not for society at large.
Abe Rene,
“The BNP are certainly trouble-makers. But extreme parties usually feed on grievances.”
What exactly are these grievances that the BNP feed on?
The war in Afghanistan. They say they want to bring the troops home.
Outsourcing and off-shoring, which wipes out jobs in Britain. They want to discourage it with tariffs, investment tax incentives, etc.
Mass immgration. They want to end it. Not because they hate anyone, but because it drives up the cost of housing, drives down wages and increases the need for infrastructure investment and hence the need for higher taxes.
And they have other policies that most people agree on: for example not spending $18 billion in subsidies to the third world, supposedly to limit climate change, but in fact, to increase the competitiveness of Asians in the competition for jobs and income.
As I said you’re all fantasists. You don’t know what the real issues are or where the main parties stand. Well I’ll tell you where the main parties stand. Unless your a Clegg or a Cameron or some other kind of toff, they out to screw you.
Basically, Alfred, they’ve adopted the clothes of the Left because of the vacuum left (!) by the collapse of the Left in the UK and the removal of the Labour Party ever further to the Right and it’s deal (via Blair, Brown, Smith et al) with big business.
So, as with extremists the world over, they concur with, and exploit, the analysis of what the problems are – untrammeled corporate capitalism, run completely amok with the active participation of the Business Parties, the capitalist war machine… but their solutions – and this is what the BNP won’t talk about openly anymore – are extreme nationalist, racist, etc. The dynamic, and this applies to the Front national in France and all the others of similar ilk, is that of the NSDAP. How can an affable, clever, astute guy like you, Alfred, not see that? Perhaps your wife burnt the cakes (!)
And so, in Hungary, the accession of a Far Right Party because the ‘other side’ is corporate capitalist and sells the national silver to the Davros Murdochs of the world.
We are b/w several rocks and a number of very hard places. There are no ‘goodies’, just different kinds of ‘baddies’. And in the UK context, the BNP are worse than most. They are really not the answer.
“and this is what the BNP won’t talk about openly anymore – are extreme nationalist, racist, etc.”
Suhayl, This is what everyone from the BBC to the Daily Mail says about them. But they do not say it themselves. The only justification for such claims is that they once may have said such things and Griffin makes a point of saying such things privately, but while being secretly filmed ?” things he then says he did not say.
“Hard state rent boys, is what you called them”. By which, I take it, you mean they are a security services operation to smear radical opposition to the mainstream party policies, i.e., to perpetuate the long war, globalization and the transformation of western civilization into a new feudalism under which heretics, i.e., people who question the new orthodoxy, are burnt at the stake, or subject to some latter day equivalent.
But that is why I keep referring to their platform. It is the populist platform. So why does no one support it? Because the BNP are doing a brilliant job of alienating the public from their real interest. Nigel Copsey’s book on British Fascism cites clear evidence that when a policy is associated with the BNP, support for it collapses.
So this is what I am saying, if you think any of the mainstream parties work for anyone but the global elite and Israel, you’re crazy. And if I am correct about that, the policies that you should be considering are those espoused by the BNP. As I proposed before, Britain need a new party: DNTN ?” Definitely Not The Nationalists, but it will have the same policies and it will be run by radical reformers not Masonic scum.
Forget the election, it has already been decided.
Our new government…
http://tinyurl.com/22un2do
Nextus,
“I joined ‘Unite Against Fascism’ here last year and we did some leafleting, but there was nothing to react against.”
Why, then, may I ask did you join?
Also, did you know the United Against Fascism was infiltrated by the police to protect the BNP?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/libertycentral/2010/mar/21/police-demonstrations-fascism-racism
Why do you think they infiltrate the antifascists to protect the BNP? Could it be that the BNP is a state asset?
George,
Interesting link, which confirms my case. As that damp rag, unelected President of the EU said, 2010 “is the year of global governance.”
“Because the BNP are doing a brilliant job of alienating the public from their real interest.”
That is a very lucid analysis, Alfred. Yeah, I think that’s largely their role.
Ned
Fascinating! The notes in the discussion seem entirely sensible.
“India’s EVMs are Vulnerable to Fraud”…
http://indiaevm.org/
Abe Rene,
The BNP are not saying what you are say they are saying or expressing the fantasy that you say they are expressing. What you are doing is playing their game. Making the policies they espouse contemptible by identifying them with Nazism, racism, etc.
The racial policy of the BNP, is based on the following premise. Britain, like all European states has a negative birthrate, i.e., less than 2.1 per female (very much less in some states). Some immigrant groups, however, have a very much above replacement fertility rate. Hence there is a process of replacement that will see the indigenous British a minority in their own land within 50 years. While I do not have the exact figures at my finger tips, I believe that a little research will confirm this to be essentially a non-controversial statement.
In view of this reality, and in order to preserve the indigenous British as the great majority in Britain, the BNP propose to end mass immigration and to provide financial aid (under existing law) to those immigrants who may wish to return whence they came.
There is no resemblance between this policy and the Nazi ideology of racial superiorityor racial extermination. One can support this policy at the same time that one may think the Brits are in some ways a truly pathetic lot. I mean look at them. The have a goddam police state which is justified in terms of fighting fascism, a justification that is swallowed by most of the population even though it means the eventual extinction of their own race. Is that pathetic, or what?