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.
A sad fact, but a fact nonetheless – regardless of all the whining about it from the LD’s – your party made an election pledge that it discarded for political expediency.
No matter how you feel about it the people who stand to lose because of your party’s electoral vanity are going to spend the next five years letting you know about it, and they’re not buying LD excuses. And they’re not accepting the NUS line on it either – they’re far angrier than that. It’s all your own fault if they – as I suspect they will – refuse to allow their political values to be corralled into party politics by people like Mr Murray, who would convince them that they should join the LD’s for the sake of the party, despite having nothing to offer them in return.
Good Luck Liberal Democrats. And after today’s news, you’ll need. You won’t like this – but this is a fundamental similarity between yourself and New Labour after all: in the rank and file membership of both sets of parties, despite the compromises and dodgy positions made by the leadership there are multitudes who will complain but never leave. Take note – there are still people in Labour who, after 15 years are still sitting there talking about renewal to a pre-blair moral eden. Take a look at your future.
Ingo,
language is a barrier to communication as well as an aid, haha! OK I am guessing here but I think it’s a case of crossed wires. I do not consider popular sovereignty to be a shallow concept, in fact I think it is where the logic of democracy ultimately leads. What I meant is that there is a logical discord between what popular sovereignty means as a concept, i.e. ultimate authority resting with the people, and what we have in practice (ill-informed populace infrequently presented with severely limited choices). In effect we are asked to believe in a myth, that our system is based on popular sovereignty. This is elaborated in Edmund S Morgan’s book ‘Inventing the People’.
As for political parties, I would hesitate to accuse any of them of having our interests at heart. The interests of the Party and the interests of the people inevitably and predictably diverge. But sometimes they coincide and small incremental compromise of a reform is better than none at all..
To paraphrase Adam Roberts in “New Model Army”:
Our current political process is an oligarchy punctuated by publicity contests to see which party has the best control of the media.
What will the Libs have to do to make Craig realise they are just as bad as the rest of them?
Will they have to go back on their fees promise, and raise them?
Did that, he still supports them.
How about attacking disability living allowance.
Did that, he still supports them.
How about slaughtering all babies and using this blood to make christmas crackers in the shape of John Bright and John Stuart Mill?
I am somebody who believes he will always support them, and there is nothing they can do to make him realise that he shouldn’t be supporting them.
So Craig where do you draw the line, what is the promise they will have to break which will be one promise too far?
Thankyou Anonymouse for your kind admonishment. Can you make your source a bit clearer please?
I understand the sophisticated entanglement of new Labour with big business and am not proposing their sainthood.
But they do have a history of investment in the public sector and if Craig was looking for a corrupt party to rebuild I was simply saying the Liberals seem a curious choice.
Regarding yours and Evgueni’s comments on democracy, and how it can be acover for elitism, to add to the gloom its worth remembering that in Ancient Greece the more complete democracy became (excepting of course slaves and women) the more chaotic it got, resulting in the collapse of the Athenian empire and inter-state co-operation within Greece in short order.
sorry, to clarify, in Craig’s post about heathrow he was bemoaning lack of state investment in infrastructure
dazed and confused, w.r.t. PFI/PPP, the quote is referenced by a link at the end.
£300 BILLION stolen where the Lab govt. denied full disclosure of the contracts due to “commercial confidentiality.”
I don’t see any difference between Lab and Cons. Both are in service of capital, but Lab are worse as they claim they represent workers.
Frankly, I’ve yet to see an example of any party actually delivering on their election rhetoric. Look at how the Greens sold out in Germany:
“Five years after the collapse of the country’s first ever social democratic (SPD)-Green Party federal coalition (1998-2005) the Greens are once again being groomed for government. The reason is not hard to understand. The ruling elite needs the party to maintain control over increasing social opposition.
This was precisely the role played by the Greens 10 years ago, when the party intervened to wind down the annual protests and blockades of the nuclear waste transports to Gorleben. The Green environment secretary at that time, Jurgen Trittin, agreed a so-called “nuclear consensus” with the giant energy concerns, which in the long-term envisaged an exodus from nuclear power, while in the short-term guaranteeing existing power plants an average running time of 32 years. This meant that disputed nuclear reactors could continue running without disturbance?”while all parties were fully aware that a new government would overturn the “consensus,” as has now occurred.”
— http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_61636.shtml
Of course the apparent impenetrability of the capitalist/political party hegemony in modern society makes the activities of Assange all the more valuable.
Day after day I read the Guardian and my jaw drops.
However day after day I notice that by and large the other papers conspire to totally ignore everything that is revealed and this of course makes it easy for all the outed politicians to appear and make meaningful statements which usually amount to ‘Nonsense!’ and then retreat into their dollar-lined bunkers.
Labour are definitely too influenced by billionaire and big company donors – but they’re still not as bad overall as the Conservatives, partly because they rely even more heavily on trade union funding.
Labour did continue lots of Conservative policies (PFIs/PPPs, almost their entire foreign and immigration policy and publicly subsidised privatised railways,etc) but they also brought in the minimum wage (which the Conservatives opposed) and tax credits and various other benefits that helped the poorest and low to middle income families a great deal.
One hundred and thirty nine Labour MPs voted against the Iraq war – only a handful of Conservatives did.
So while i’m less than happy with the Labour party’s leadership to date and don’t support either main party there are significant differences between Labour and the tories.
Dazed (Dec 22 10:22 AM)
do you have a reference for that particular view of ancient Greek democracy’s demise? I haven’t come across this yet.
Angy said:
“So, you’re not a supporter of the BNP just a furious defender of their policies.
Riiiiiiiiiight!”
Angy, you’re such a twit.
Isn’t everyone here in support of the BNP policies of:
Getting out of Afghanistan now
Devolving power to the lowest feasible level
Protecting British jobs against competition with Asian plantation labor
Ending mass immigration (65% support nationally), while recognizing the full citizenship rights of all legal immigrants
Expelling illegal immigrants
Re-establishing the authority of teachers in classrooms and focusing education on literacy and numeracy, not indoctrination in political correctness
Pulling out of the EU?
I guess on immigration, most people here believe the more the merrier, the sooner to swamp out the indigenous British not only in London and Leicester but throughout the length and breadth of the land. The Lib-Dems, I understand, are keen to get more immigrants going to reside in the highlands and islands of Scotland, which will no doubt enhance the popularity of that party in those areas.
Anyhow, I do support all those policies.
And I remain of the view that Nick Griffin’s covert but well publicized racist antics, his maintenance of a bodyguard of thugs who beat up a Times reporter during the last election intentionally serve, as Vronsky explains above, to steer voters to the establishment parties that support none of the above policies.
That the BNP is some kind of security services operation is consistent with Griffin’s connections with the Italian train station bomber Fiore — train station bombings being a standard Nato secret army (Gladio) operation — the fact that Germany’s neo-Nazi party was run by MI6, and the fact that when a mob attacked the BNP’s london bookstore, the crowd was infiltrated by police with the task of protecting the BNP.
But that is mere surmise. What is not surmise are the proclaimed policies of the BNP, which are available for all to see under the “Policies” tab at their web site.
Evgueni
Yes. Christian Meier’s book Athens. Basically he says that the advent of democracy which at first introduced great energy and intiative to Athens kind of got out of control when the initial system which consisted of a large democratic assembly overruled by a smaller body which determined what subjects could be discussed got changed into just one large assembly. What happened then was that ill-thought through schemes got adopted on a quick vote and a lot of rash actions resulted, mostly abandoning the old alliances and launching into the ill-fated war with Sparta.
Demagogues ruled OK
I don’t think this view is regarded as madly controversial.
Furthermore, democracy if that is the right word didn’t work all that well at least towards the end of the Roman Republic, it was horrendously corrupt and caused chaos which is why Caesar booted it into touch.
In recent times following from Cromwell we have edged towards democracy again, only achieving a full plebiscite 100 years ago or less.
Alfred (‘LOL’), you haven;t answered my very simple question yet. In case you’ve forgotten, here it is again:
Alfred, if you lived in Britain, would you vote for the BNP?
A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer will suffice.
Thank you.
“Alfred (‘LOL’), you haven;t answered my very simple question yet. ”
Heil, Blog Commandant SS
Is smear your middle name?
Are you afraid to answer my simple question, Alfred? Tell us all why you are so afraid to answer this simple and straightforward question. But better still, please consider answering the question itself: ‘yes’ or ‘no’ would suffice.
I think I’m right in saying that you’ve had a distinguished academic career in Molecular Biology, you’ve run a publishing business, you have (at the very least) a PhD, you’ve written numerous papers, you’ve waxed lyrical many times on this website on a broad variety of subject, yet somehow you seem to have difficulty answering a perfectly simple question.
Here it is again, in case you cannot remember it:
Alfred, if you lived in Britain, would you vote for the BNP?
Alfred: you are so equivocal, and to me illogical, about it that I too would like an answer as to whether you would vote BNP if living in this country. ‘Maybe’ will do for me. ‘I don’t know’ equally. Honesty is the thing, I think, otherwise no point in dialogue (weblogue?).
Thanks, technicolour. Precisely. Though I have to say, I prefer the MCQ sense of commitment (though I think essays develop the mind more). Since voting consists of putting a cross in a box and since Alfred is a scientist used to making decisions on the basis of available evidence, it would be preferable and more courageous for Dr Burdett to answer with either a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.
Please note: There is no negative marking.
Thank you, Dr Burdett.
LOL at December 22, 2010 5:22PM wrote:
“Isn’t everyone here in support of the BNP policies of:
Ending mass immigration (65% support nationally), while recognizing the full citizenship rights of all legal immigrants
Expelling illegal immigrants”
Read Immigration: Why Let The Truth Spoil A Good Story?
— http://nobordersbrighton.blogspot.com/2010/08/immigration-why-let-truth-spoil-good.html
Jennifer Griffin, Nick Griffin’s daughter interviewed in 2004:
“‘The Welsh language and identity is being threatened by the white flight of native-born Britons who are moving to Wales to escape the growing number of immigrants entering England,’ she says, thumping her Coca-Cola back down onto the table.
When pressed as to how her beliefs can co-exist with the findings of the latest census showing that the only population transfer threatening Wales is that of outward migration, Jennifer flushes. ‘Really?’ she says in amazement.
When told that 22 per cent of those classifying themselves as Welsh now live elsewhere in Britain, with the greatest loss being the decision of the young and university-educated to move to the south east of England, she fiddles with her pink mobile phone.
‘If that was true, I am sure my father would have told me,’ she mutters. ‘The Daily Mail seems sure that illegal immigration is causing terrible problems across the country. I am only 17. I can’t be expected to know all the facts.’
She admits that despite her claims that Britain is the land of milk and honey for asylum seekers, she has no idea how much they receive in benefits each week. When told that adult asylum seekers exist on £37.77, 30 per cent below the poverty line, she is genuinely shocked.
‘They should receive more than that,’ she gasps, then pauses and adds quietly: ‘Of course, dad would not agree.'”
— http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/may/16/uk.race
Well, Dr Burdett. Are you prepared to render an answer to my very simple question?
Or are you, like Jennifer Griffin, fiddling with your pink mobile ‘phone?
SS demands
“Are you afraid to answer my simple question, Alfred?”
IF SS means to direct that question to me, I would point out again that it is a stupid as well as an insulting question. Oh, and let me point out also that the ballot in Britain is secret. LOL
Anonymous, I’m not sure what you point is in quoting Jennifer Griffin. But it seems to me she must be a nice kid with her “they should receive more than that.” However, as a source on the policy of any party, she is obviously unqualified.
Tech
I have said nothing equivocal about anything that I am aware of. I have just declined to answer a question that is intended to insinuate what is obviously absurd.
But about the BNP I will say once more, that they espouse policies that are much more popular than those of the establishment parties (and which, for the most part I would support — see itemized list of policies above rather than making outlandish and false assumptions about the avowed policies of the BNP), yet the party is held in contempt by all and sundry, as I believe is intended to be the case, and is in no way surprising in view of the way in which Griffin, while espousing responsibility, racial tolerance and a commitment to non violence in public, privately — but in a way calculated to be made public and then implausibly denied — indicates the opposite.
From that I conclude that Griffin is a fascist agent, but not of the kind you think. I suggest that he is an agent of the establishment parties (Lib, Con or Nu Labor), serving to induce despair of any reformist political program in Britain.
And I call the establishment parties fascist because they all serve the plutocratic elite. That is exactly what the Nazis did when first coming to power. In fact that is HOW they came to power.
Hitler rose not through sheer force of personality, but by doing deals.
First he squared the corporate sector, allowing the industrial companies, the bank, the high tech (chemicals) and telecommunications sectors to form cartels to minimize competition and ensure good profits. (That is one of the reasons the Nazis were admired by many of the upper classes in both Britain and France. They wanted in on the same racket. And once France had been occupied the French corporate sector entered into cartel agreements with the Germans.)
Second, he bailed out the aristocratic (Junker) landowners who had been virtually bankrupted by a collapse in agricultural commodity prices. This, naturally, was appealing to the landowning class in Britain and elsewhere who had also been ruined by the great depression.
Third, he settled with the army. Ernst Roehm wanted the brown shirts (Sturm Abteilung), who he headed, incorporated into the regular army — officers in the SA to have matching rank in the army. This was anathema to the army, so Hitler, to gain the Army’s support for his dictatorship, murdered Roehm and disbanded the SA.
Fourth, Hitler earned the backing of the Catholic Church and its political representatives in the Reichstag, by promising a crusade against atheists both at home and abroad.
The program in Britain is different, of course. But serving the needs of the corporate and banking sector are pre-eminent. The first three times David Cameron spoke with (by phone) or met with Barack Obama it was reported that he had raised the issue of BP and the importance keeping it a strong and independent company (i.e, he demonstrated that doing PR for the corporate sector was one of his chief functions).
But in addition, the British leadership have to take account of Britain’s subordinate status in the global empire, and empires have their own special requirements, including destruction of national identities. Fortunately for the British, they already speak the imperial language, but their nationalism is an ever present threat to imperial control.
Hence, mass immigration — it makes Britain so much more like America, mass indoctrination by way of a highly inefficient school system geared primarily to indoctrination, not education, and a general dumbing down of the populace with the aid of hollywood, internet porn, MSM lies and gossip, etc.
So Griffin is simply the agent of the establishment, not an alternative to it.
That Griffin is not exactly Hitler is evident from the fact that he is a Mason (he boasted on his blog of having built a wall, a very masonic thing to do) and Hitler hated Masons as violently as he hated Jews. Moreover, Griffin backs Israel against the real Palestinian nationalist movement, hardly a Hitlerian position.
But you continue to refuse to answer my simple question. Yes, the ballot in the UK is secret. I am not asking you to actually cast your vote, nor am I asking you to tell me how you have actually voted (In Canada). I am simply asking you about a hypothetical situation, Alfred, i.e. if you lived in the UK, would you vote for the BNP? It doesn’t mean that you will or that you did. I am not asking you to breach confidentiality.
In my time (as far as I can recall) in various elections, I have voted (albeit sometimes -increasingly – with little belief that anything different would happen) Labour, Lib Dem, Green, Scottish Socialist and Independent.
So, I am not afraid to tell people how I actually did cast my vote. I am not even asking you to do that. And yet you seem unable or unwilling to answer my simple question with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Incidentally, on Hitler, perhaps too many people in 1920s/1030s Germany said “maybe” or “I don;t know” and one can understand their situation what with the Versailles financial demands and the Depression, etc. But now, we do not have that excuse for “maybe” or “I don’t know”. There are times when I think it is important not to sit on the fence.
Now, are you prepared to answer my question, or not. I think it likely that if you do not, people will be tempted to draw their own conclusions.
Shall I make it a little easier? Okay. Can I ask you, Alfred, whether you would be prepared to state that you categorically would not vote for the BNP if you lived in the UK?
Face it Craig – there s a bankruptcy in the political landscape. Across the pond Obama did much the same to his charges. Don’t believe for a moment it is not deliberate and manipulated. “It” being the actions that the politicians take – and – deliberate – in that they know full well the consequences of not having government assisted education. Why? – well much of our lot of yours and my generation and the majority of the politicians who voted in the shit were beneficiaries of grants – weren’t we?
Why not cut the defence budget even “f…..g” deeper and let education live and thrive?
Face it Craig – there s a bankruptcy in the political landscape. Across the pond Obama did much the same to his charges. Don’t believe for a moment it is not deliberate and manipulated. “It” being the actions that the politicians take – and – deliberate – in that they know full well the consequences of not having government assisted education. Why? – well much of our lot of yours and my generation and the majority of the politicians who voted in the shit were beneficiaries of grants – weren’t we?
Why not cut the defence budget even “f…..g” deeper and let education live and thrive?
“But you continue to refuse to answer my simple question.”
For the reasons I have stated.
It is apparent from what I have already said that your question is both stupid and insulting. It must, therefore, be intended as a smear by insinuation, and as such, it serves what I have postulated to be Nick Griffin’s game.
So, SS, are you paid to hang around here and push the NWO agenda, or are you driven solely by a personal obsession?
“But you continue to refuse to answer my simple question.”
— Suhayl
“For the reasons I have stated.”
–Alfred/LOL
You won’t answer because you’re a coward. And from your refusal, it’s quite easy to deduce what the truthful answer would be. Otherwise, why not just say ‘No’.
“It must, therefore, be intended as a smear by insinuation”
So, deny that you would vote BNP if you lived in the UK, and you will have proved that (what you call) “the smear” is unfounded.
“So, SS, are you paid to hang around here and push the NWO agenda, or are you driven solely by a personal obsession?”
I take it that, in your loopy world, Alfred, this is not a ‘smear’ since it was you who wrote it, and therefore by definition it cannot be a smear.
Why did you change your handle to ‘LOL’ and stop linking to your website? The answer you previously gave to Jon is a load of bunk. It seems pretty obvious to me that you wanted to disconnect from your previous persona and be a lot more rude, for starters.
Goodnight, Dr Alfred Burdett. Grow a pair before you come back, and then answer Suhayl’s question.
Dreoilin,
The answer to SS’s tedious, pointless, insulting and stupid question, assuming it is intended for me (no one signs themselves LOL/Alfred), follows logically from what I have already said.
So it is you, madam, who needs to “grow a pair”: cerebral lobes I mean, since you are evidently as logically challenged as SS, now cowering, it seems, behind a woman’s skirts.
Or is it Dreoilin/SS I should be addressing?
But anything, I suppose, to distract attention from the argument I made about the role of the BNP in promoting the idea that there is no alternative to the Cons, the Lib-Dems or NuLabor.
“The answer to SS’s tedious, pointless, insulting and stupid question, assuming it is intended for me (no one signs themselves LOL/Alfred), follows logically from what I have already said.”
Well, we can only infer that the answer is therefore, yes, you would vote for the BNP and you would vote for the BNP because you agree with their stated policies.
You also tell us that you think the BNP has been hijacked by a man called Nick Griffin who is a plant by MI5 to discredit all those noble policies of the well-meaning BNP.
The trouble for you is that you seem to have no understanding of the BNP – or you affect to not know what they are about.
If you watch Nick Griffin’s performance on Question Time you’ll realize that the BNP were founded on racist, anti-semitic and deeply fascistic lines. It was essentially the National Front that has gone through a re-branding process.
Nick Griffin was asked a lot of questions about the nature of the BNP and as he squirmed slug-like in his seat he went through many of the same pointless evasions that you go through when asked simple questions. He explained that when he joined the BNP it WAS a racist and anti-semitic organization (making any normal person wonder what attracted him to this racist and anti-semitic organization in the first place) and that he has worked hard to change the BNP’s policies away from that meaning that your analysis is completely back-to-front. In fact, there are those in the BNP, the hardliners, who think that Griffin has betrayed the party by doing such things. Recently they even changed their party logo to a Union Flag in the shape of a Loveheart! I shit you not!
Their Facebook page even has a fucking Santa hat on the top of the Loveheart.
Please check for yourself:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/British-National-Party/71523830069
If you think that the BNP have changed at all and think it is only the mendacious behaviour of the security services who are tarring the BNP with the fascist brush then you are, frankly, the most gullible man in all of Christendom.
Most people don’t actually think you are that gullible here and will therefore wonder if perhaps you have any other reasons to support the BNP and you have provided plenty of evidence – your long dissertations on race and how Pakistanis and Chinese haven’t “evolved” to cope with British society and your railing against “The Jew Soros” – to suggest that the racist BNP is simply a party that appeals to your most fervent political convictions…i.e that “immigrants” should be “sent back” to where they came from. Oh, except those immigrants that look like they could well be British, i.e Irish or perhaps Canadians.
The thing that unwelcome immigrants for you have in common is that they tend to be not-white while those that you consider “indigenous” tend to be white. In fact, you have explicitly stated that this is the distinction you make and you have done this several times now only to affect outrage and bleat self-pityingly about being smeared whenever anyone points out the bleedin’ obvious.
By the way, perhaps you can organize for a movie called “The Jew Soros” to be made and screened at BNP headquarters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jud_S%C3%BC%C3%9F_(1940_film)
“Well, we can only infer that the answer is therefore, yes, you would …”
For a philosopher your lack of logic is remarkable. Here are the premises:
(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.
But not only are you a fool, but a liar also:
“your most fervent political convictions…i.e that “immigrants” should be “sent back”.
Nowhere did I say that or imply it of legal immigrants. It is not the publicly stated policy of the BNP.
What I did say is that immigration law breakers should suffer the consequences of their actions, which means, under UK law, expulsion, as is the case in most other countries.
Incidentally, Angry, are you paid like Dreoiveling and SS to push the NWO order agenda, or is it just a personal obsession. Certainly, you don’t come here to exchange ideas.