Miliband promises tougher immigration controls than Tories, after his promise of triple lock guaranteed austerity. How much more right wing can Labour get? Having alienated the Scottish people, are Labour now trying to alienate everybody outside London and Surrey? It seems Labour policy is made by a focus group of hedge fund managers infiltrated by Farage.
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You are doing it now Craig? 🙂 Not everyone in Surrey is racist. In fact I know of none.
Even UKIP has got an open door immigration policy. As long as you call yourself an agricultural worker and have an employer to go to, you’re fine to enter, over and much above their stated number of 50.000 as a cut off point.
We have to be prepared that the establishment parties will be trashing around and lying through their teeth during the next two weeks, anything to pull this kipper off a plate and get into power.
I’m fully expecting a letter from Ed to demand that I take my civic test and become naturalised, what a term for becoming a serf.
Mary
evidently you don’t frequent the golf club 🙂
Miliband is indulging in that most venerable of political rituals: reassuring the financial markets.
City Bankers now demand a boutique blend of austerity, racism, and bailouts. If they don’t get their way they’re going to have a tantrum and blow up the economy.
Austerity means the state promising to limit itself to illegal violence abroad and corporate welfare at home, whatever the financial cost.
Racism – Bankers need a scapegoat for the social inequality, environmental destruction and barbarism they’ve created. Migrants, muslims, etc. Any minority will do.
And thus the iron wheels of the Westminster juggernaut turn.
..and more of Surrey is given over to golf courses than housing. But does mowing the grass count as agricultural labour
Mary
You see – I am not the only one to equate Surrey with leafy, gracious, rather well-off living.
However – when I say it you try to piss on me, but when Craig says it you bite on your tongue and write a smiley.
Craig
Perhaps you would consider joining UKIP? We don’t discriminate against loonies and, let’s face it, who else will have you? 🙂
Perhaps a little bit unfair Craig.
I’m no supporter of Labour’s past record but I do think that Miliband is trying to steer a different course.
His hands are tied however as the right wing media have indoctrinated most of England into believing that the sun moves around the earth where immigration and the economy are concerned.
His only chance is by paying a degree of lip service to these areas otherwise he might as well give up now.
Lets judge him by what he actually does (if he gets the chance) rather that what he is compelled to say, at this pre-election juncture.
We all remember the Florida hanging chads of coruse, but I (and perhaps others) would find it interesting to read a considered and informative post on ballot rigging in the US at any level of election and, specifically, on the subject of postal voting in the US, again at any level of election (eg does the possibility even exist; if so, has there been documented fraud, is there any debate on it, etc…).
Is there perchance an American reader of this blog, living in the US, who could provide such a post for our edification?
“I’m no supporter of Labour’s past record but I do think that Miliband is trying to steer a different course.”
Have you seen his commitment to Israel?
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/103221/ed-miliband-im-a-zionist-and-oppose-boycotts-israel
….you try to piss on me….
What a crude way to say that I deride you.
My wider point is that he is gradually steering the party away from the New Labour calamity.
That doesn’t mean I think he gets everything right but then who does?
With regard to Israel however I find myself in partial agreement with his position.
Mary
Then you should also deride Craig, who has also used Surrey in the way I use it.
Will you deride Craig, Mary?
Oh, I think Labour can be much more right wing especially if they’re not in some form of coalition government.
Left to their own devices Labour,can ad have been far more ruthless than the Tories.
As for Farage and UKIP,they’re definitely far right leaning infact Farage berated the audience during the live debate,for daring to have some left leaning thoughts….oh the audacity,of the public..eh.
‘Even UKIP has got an open door immigration policy. As long as you call yourself an agricultural worker and have an employer to go to, you’re fine to enter, over and much above their stated number of 50.000 as a cut off point.’
The UKIP policy in this area honestly recognises that in wealthy western countries hard anyone born therein(including the long term unemployed) will take seasonal, back breaking work in the fields. Farmers either have to utilise foreign labour or leave their produce to rot in the ground. Californian farmers depend on Mexican & Central American labour, French and Spanish farmers depend on north African labour, Israeli kibbutzim depend on contract labour from SE Asia. The UK’s predicament in this area is hardly unique; the job of western governments is to facilitate these seasonal inflows and at the same time ensure decent minimum standards for the foreign workers themselves.
The way Miliband cynically turns to camera and regurgitates what are clearly rehearsed and stage managed responses to audience questions during the leaders debates, says it all.
I wouldn’t agree that Labour in a majority have ever been more ruthless that the Tories but I do agree that under Blair they lost their way and betrayed their core supporters.
I think that Miliband will pull them back towards the left somewhat but probably won’t go far enough to satisfy me. For that reason I’d like to see them in coalition with the SNP.
That combination may well produce one of the best governments the UK has ever seen.
Old Mark
18/04/2015 4:16 pm
We’re a long way from this, aren’t we?
“The Relevance of Anarcho-syndicalism (excerpt)
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Peter Jay
The Jay Interview, July 25, 1976
JAY: I put it to you, Professor, that if that residue were very large, as some people would say it was, if it accounted for the work involved in producing ninety per cent of what we all want to consume — then the organization of sharing this, on the basis that everybody did a little bit of all the nasty jobs, would become wildly inefficient. Because, after all, you have to be trained and equipped to do even the nasty jobs, and the efficiency of the whole economy would suffer, and therefore the standard of living which it sustained would be reduced.
CHOMSKY: Well, for one thing, this is really quite hypothetical, because I don’t believe that the figures are anything like that. As I say, it seems to me that if human intelligence were devoted to asking how technology can be designed to fit the needs of the human producer, instead of conversely — that is, now we ask how the human being with his special properties can be fitted into a technological system designed for other ends, namely, production for profit — my feeling is that if that were done, we would find that the really unwanted work is far smaller than you suggest. But whatever it is, notice that we have two alternatives. One alternative is to have it equally shared, the other is to design social institutions so that some group of people will be simply compelled to do the work, on pain of starvation. Those are the two alternatives.
JAY: Not compelled to do it, but they might agree to do it voluntarily because they were paid an amount which they felt made it worthwhile.
CHOMSKY: Well, but you see, I’m assuming everyone essentially gets equal remuneration. Don’t forget that we’re not talking about a society now where the people who do the onerous work are paid substantially more than the people who do the work that they do on choice — quite the opposite. The way our society works, the way any class society works, the people who do the unwanted work are the ones who are paid least. That work is done and we sort of put it out of our minds, because it’s assumed that there will be a massive class of people who control only one factor of production, namely their labor, and have to sell it, and they’ll have to do that work because they have nothing else to do, and they’ll be paid very little for it. I accept the correction. Let’s imagine three kinds of society: one, the current one, in which the undesired work is given to wage-slaves. Let’s imagine a second system in which the undesired work, after the best efforts to make it meaningful, is shared. And let’s imagine a third system where the undesired work receives high extra pay, so that individuals voluntarily choose to do it. Well, it seems to me that either of the two latter systems is consistent with — vaguely speaking — anarchist principles. I would argue myself for the second rather than the third, but either of the two is quite remote from any present social organization or any tendency in contemporary social organization.”
Kind regards,
John
Mason,what makes you think Labour will be any different from the Tories,when Ed Balls,publicly stated he wouldn’t change a single thing in Gideon Osborne’s budget.
The only way a Labour government can be held to account,is if,smaller parties use their votes in blocks,even then,there might no be enough of a consensus to introduce progressive policies,but I remain hopeful.
Anybody who is an apologist for ruthless genocidal violence against innocent civilians in an Apartheid country, is a collaborator and guilty by association, including you Mason. However much you try and excuse these wannabes with fine tempered words, their undermining of Britain’s foreign policies, as well as its resolve, has gone on for far too long.
Their split loyalties to a ME rogue country, in priory to their EU partners, is not conducive with serving Britain or Englands standing/interests within the EU
That alone is a very good reason not to vote for the three main establishment parties.
Obvious. I respect and admire him.
~~~~
Mil(l)ipede who performs to Axelrod’s choreograpy and who did UKIP today whereas Cameron does Sikh today as Lynton Crosby prescribed. They are both so facile.
They even dragged SamCam along.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03272/Gravesend-Sam-and-_3272246b.jpg
::::
Oops.
Firm run by David Cameron’s election guru Lynton Crosby lost £1 million in two years, as pressure mounts on unanswered tax questions http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/firm-run-by-david-camerons-election-guru-lynton-crosby-lost-1-million-in-two-years-as-pressure-mounts-on-unanswered-tax-questions-10184013.html
17 April 2015
@RepublicofScotland
If I were Ed Miliband I would want to pull back heavily on austerity but would realise that stating so publicly would destroy my chances of becoming PM.
This is because English voters (in particular) have been brainwashed by a rabid right wing press colluding with the Tories etc.
My strategy would therefore be to give England what it wants to hear on the economy and immigration knowing full well that it is pie in the sky because I’ll never win a majority anyway.
When I end up in coalition with the SNP I can then dial back on austerity etc claiming that it was a compromise situation.
Tactically this gives him a fighting chance of being our next PM.
Condemning austerity at this delicate time however would put him out of the running altogether and give the Tories an easy ride to No.10
That’s what I think for what it’s worth.
‘Trapped in a spiral of self-destruction.’
No matter the outcome of the General Election, the Labour Party is doomed:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n08/richard-seymour/bye-bye-labour
Americans self-identifying as Republicans place Israel’s interests ahead of America’s and feel more sympathetic to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than to President Barack Obama, a new poll finds.
Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the US should support Israel even when its policies are in contrast with US interests, according to the Bloomberg poll.
Self-identified Democrats, by about the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s, further illustrating how sharply partisan the debate has become.
On the question of whether to support Israel’s interests even when they differ from America’s, Republicans say yes by 67 percent to 30 percent, while 64 percent of Democrats say the US must pursue its own interests over Israel’s.
Republicans also say they feel more sympathetic to Netanyahu than to their own president, 67 percent to 16 percent, while Democrats are more sympathetic to Obama than to Netanyahu, 76 percent to 9 percent.
Do Republicans hate Obama and the Democrats that much,that they’d put a foreign countries interests before their own?
@Nevermind
I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of myself as a collaborator with
ruthless genocidal violence and I hope that the description doesn’t fit otherwise I’ll have to consider my whole life a failure.
I said I partly agreed with Miliband’s views not that I endorse Israel’s scorched earth tactics.
I see your point Mason,I hope Miliband,if he become PM doesnt lurch to the right,just to please the south east.
We’ll have to wait and see.
If he accepts the support of the SNP (and I can’t see how he can refuse) Nicola will nail his feet to the left of centre I’m sure, although I would hope she wouldn’t have to 🙂
Hopefully he will get the chance because if Cameron walks through that black door I’ll hang myself.
“I would want to pull back heavily on austerity but would realise that stating so publicly would destroy my chances of becoming PM….”
It is hard to believe that a majority of the electorate favours the societal breakdown that austerity is bringing.
And for millions in the direct firing line any party offering an alternative would win their support.
In other words I think that Miliband’s policies are suicidal, he may win the election by gaining the most seats but that is no guarantee of office and still less of power. Labour really is doomed.
“This is because English voters (in particular) have been brainwashed by a rabid right wing press colluding with the Tories etc…”
The press has been right wing, for the most part, for centuries. And yet, despite its siren songs, radical trade unions, political parties and mass movements have thrived in the past.
And, right now, the possibility of by-passing the capitalist class’s media is greater than ever: the Press never had fewer readers, or lower profits, the internet allows information to be exchanged without passing through the middlemen of the media.
The problem is not that Labour is intimidated by the Press but that it is on the same side as those who run the media. It is committed to the same policies-from throttling democracy, to dancing to the Pentagon’s tune, to apologising for Israeli genocides, to eavesdropping and spying on the people, to lowering living standards- as those who own the media.
Anyone considering a vote for Labour-as a party, there are a handful of honest candidates- in the hope that in office they will reveal a better side is an idiot. In office they will be even worse. The SNP’s voters to make sure that between them and Labour there is a 20 foot, highly disinfected, bargepole. and they should take a look at what happened to the Bloc Quebecois…
This is rather amusing. Jonathan Luff departed from No 10 to join Wonga in October 2012.
Exclusive: Cameron Aide Quits For Wonga
A senior Downing Street aide is to reignite the row over the payday lending sector by taking a job at Wonga, Sky News learns.
http://news.sky.com/story/1004407/exclusive-cameron-aide-quits-for-wonga
I have just read that Wonga have recorded a large financial loss.
Wonga Crashes To £35m Loss After Torrid Year
The UK’s biggest payday lender will disclose next week that it lost £35m last year, Sky News can exclusively reveal.
http://news.sky.com/story/1467657/wonga-crashes-to-35m-loss-after-torrid-year
Luff obviously got out but can you see any mention of Wonga on his Linked In page? No. You can see No 10, FCO, British Embassy Paris, Epsilon, LSE, etc etc, but no WONGA!
https://uk.linkedin.com/pub/jonathan-luff/39/993/b77
[cm-org.uk: Moderation filter saw “payday lending” and held for manual review – freed up a few minutes later]
Never underestimate the power of the print media’s propaganda especially amongst the older age groups who are the most likely to vote and the least likely to consult internet sources.
The general collapse of the trade union movement etc is a large part of why such right wing propaganda dominates so completely.
The phenomenon of people being cleverly encouraged to vote against their own interests (and doing so) is well studied. In this regard the UK are second only to the US.