On Twitter, a bunch of Labour activists led by one Duncan Hothersall are having a hilarious time tweeting and retweeting their incredulity that I should have been both in the St James’ Centre during the fake nationalist “scuffle” with Miliband during the referendum, and at St Enoch’s in Glasgow during the fake Murphy Riot, or that I can be called an “impartial” source.
Well, I was in the St James Centre but I wasn’t anywhere near Glasgow. Nor am I impartial. The Labour numpties are incapable of distinguishing between a blog, and comments on a blog. What they are aiming their hilarity at is a comment left by a lady named Anne Keay at 7.38pm yesterday:
I was there. I am in the photo. I did not plan to be there. I was shopping and heard the crowd and went to watch. I saw nothing except healthy democracy in action – a politician goes walk-about and people gather passionately to protest, call out, crowd in and generally make a lot of fuss and noise, as is their right.
I had read on sites such as yours about these Labour rallies and watched in disgust at the stage managed event unfolded. There was no passion, no attempt to reach out to voters, no attempt to engage with the people of Glasgow. It was a press event, purely and simply. P
I also saw and heard around me, from the few people who watched, only bemused indifference and/or dislike of Labour then, gradually, disgust at the pointlessness of the whole event.
If I had ever believed that Jim Murphy cared one whit about the ‘ordinary’ men and women of Scotland, I would now know better. Neither he or any one of the Labour activists with him had any interest in talking to, engaging with or convincing anyone. It wasn’t about us – it was about tonight’s news and cheap headlines.
I was revolted by the whole thing and, pardon my ignorance, astounded at seeing for myself what depths modern politics Labour style has sunk to.
So far as I am aware I have no connection to Anne Keay, who seems a very reasonable witness. By demonstrating their typical Labour Party stupidity @dhothersall, @stuart_w64 (who has a strange interest in my sexual preferences), @kb32904, @rnzhdad, @BrianSpanner1 have given me reason to highlight Ms Keay’s testimony. To be fair to Hothersall, he has as many followers as there are members of the Scottish Labour Party.
I am so much looking forward to reading their tweets this time on Friday.
I am not going to apologise for not being profound. Have just reduced book from 212,000 words (originally 243,000) to 197,000. About to tackle footnotes which I want to get down from 1,480 to 800. But have a parting thought from David Hume, which points the way forward for the UK: “Let us therefore lay aside all Anger, shake Hands and part Friends.” Somebody might want to leave a comment explaining who David Hume was, for the benefit of Labour Party members.
One full day to go before the General Election.
That is the trouble with the traditional labour supporters, they get the arse end of the story and run with it. Labour is no longer a workers party or a socialist party or for that matter a left leaning party. The blind obedience of the traditionalists somehow cannot see the actualities, as they live in a fantasy in their make believe world.
Fact that the necons have taken over the party apparatus and rendered this once great party as useful as a chocolate fireguard going missing on these followers whom cannot see, the swathes of working classes are seeking change in the UKIP that is entirely result of the incompetence and collusion of the labour necons whom cleverly called themselves neoliberal have in fact helped the worst of the right to gain even a greater foothold in the British politics.
However the same culprits then proceed to attack anyone whom points out the great betrayal of the working classes by this so called socialist party!
Yes. Fortunately for the mainstream media, the chances are a Scotsman somewhere will raise their voice at somebody, thus giving the main news headline.
Hey Craig, one of the posters on the Chris Spivey site is calling you “fake” today. Although, since it’s full of thoroughly offensive people who believe that the Boston Bombings, the murder of Lee Rigby and even the Holocaust are “fake” I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the ramblings of crazed conspiracy theorists!
http://chrisspivey.org/trolls-small-in-everyway/
Aye Anon and one full day before the Westminster Gravy Train dumps a crowd of pathetic passengers back into an unwelcoming world.No doubt there’ll be frantic last orders of iPads etc before they get “eric joyced” at the Parliamentary bar one last time with one for the road.
It is no rare thing to be misrepresented by the hard of comprehension, and though a source of annoyance, it may be accounted a backhanded compliment. Congratulations – the whoopee cushions are sounding for you on the other side. However it would not do at all to take them seriously or to comment on the quality of the ersatz flatulence produced.
Dignity, Craig. Dignity.
On Friday we will know which conglomeration of hapless narcissists is to drive us further into debt on behalf of the hungry bankers. I predict nothing will actually change except that the groundswell of fury will be augmented still further. Till next time, then.
On the BBC’s election cover story right now, there’s this:
http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32586421
“[Blah, blah, blah]
The SNP suspended two members of their party following scuffles at a rally held by the Scottish Labour leader in Glasgow
[blah, blah.]”
“The SNP suspended two members” is supposed to be a link to another news story, but click on it, and it says the page is not found.
And that’s the sum total of SNP coverage in the article. All they have to say about Britain’s third largest political party is an erroneous footnote about a bogus story.
(And given the recent history of the Beeb, is there anyone ready to give them the benefit of the doubt that this was an honest error?)
Becky Cohen
5 May, 2015 – 7:41 pm
“Hey Craig, one of the posters on the Chris Spivey site is calling you “fake” today. Although, since it’s full of thoroughly offensive people who believe that the Boston Bombings, the murder of Lee Rigby and even the Holocaust are “fake” I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the ramblings of crazed conspiracy theorists!”
……………………………………………………….
Tell me something Becky; are you Habbabkuk?
No.
The David Hume quote is of course about the US – David Hume himself was of course a supporter of the Union between England and Scotland as were most of the major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment.
RD – Enjoy this, though:
http://www.aforceforgood.org.uk/history/hume
NOTE! AND NOTE AGAIN: NOT THE SAME DAVID HUME. An earlier one, and a better one.
By appealing to the people as the sovereign source of all political authority, Hume challenged the divine right to rule which the Stuart kings claimed for themselves. Having attacked the old monarchist order, the idea of union was the culmination of his humanist thought, which would create a modern British nation and no longer allow Scotland to be treated as a backwater by an absentee king in London.
Emerging as it did from the writings of exiled radicals like David Hume and his contemporaries, there is little doubt that unionism was at its origins a fundamentally anti-establishment movement.
A PRO-SCOTTISH UNIONISM
Closely related to the modern idea of unionism as representing some vague sense of the ‘establishment’, is the idea that this unionist establishment is fundamentally anti-Scottish. Some of the nationalist campaigners at the referendum were quick to claim that unionists were somehow anti-Scottish, or that they held their native land in contempt.
Points to ponder, at least.
ResDis
Yes, it was a comment made about the USA. But it sets out the wise way that the UK and Scotland should now behave. Hume was, incidentally, also strongly against American Independence. But he knew how to give up a lost cause sensibly, which is an example the Unionists should now follow.
I have had occasion to make my feelings plain to Jim Murphy. Once in Dundee City Square, during the referendum when he was going about the country terrorising pensioners. Telling them that if they voted yes, they would lose their pensions ( sound familiar). The press had a field day ,? Totally misrepresenting what had actually occurred. The next time was when he came to Dundee with his shallow cabinet. Myself and several if the Yes Bus team gave him a hard time and followed him arround Dundee and had a good laugh when he stage managed going pre arranged houses to show the cameras that he was receiving a good reception. Unfortunately his team couldnt even get that right because he had several doors closed in his face. At one point when we were walking beside him with our posters spoiling his photo shoots. He said to me. ” do you call yourself a socialist ” ” no Jim ” I said ” I call myself a capitalist but one with a social conscience, whereas , you Jim are simply a capitalist” . He laughed but did not deny it.
“Somebody might want to leave a comment explaining who David Hume was”
______________________
Sound like a job for a certain Oxford-educated (allegedly) American polymath who occasionally posts on your blog, Craig.
Since Hume died on August 25, 1776 (too early to have heard of the Declaration of Independence), he was quite early in recognizing that the cause was a lost one.
Becky
“Tell me something Becky; are you Habbabkuk?”
______________________
Don’t waste your time with Mr Scorgie, he’s a spent force on here, a Wimbledon-based RobG without the bluster.
Lysias – you omitted to tell us the hour at which he died.
Forget asking a Labour Party member who David Hume was . The Labour Party canvasser who called on me looked blankly when I said the current Party was ‘ a far cry ‘ from the Party of Clem Attlee and the 1945 Labour Government which had created much of our welfare State .
Firstly he had no idea who Clem Attlee was ,secondly he was unaware there had been a 1945 Labour Government , and finally……………I couldn’t bear to mention the welfare state again in the belief he may have become so indoctrinated by today’s Labour Party he would start apologising for it instead of being proud of it .
Bob Costello – Was Murphy false-flagging in Dundee, too? I ask because at The Martyrdom of Murphy in Glasgow, his rentacrowd don’t appear to have a single official Labour placard between them. Instead, they had emotive, often off-manifesto discussion points plainly printed without attribution; “End The Need for Food Banks”, and “Tories Out” being two. Check:
https://labourlist.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/CDRbYQ3WgAAWYli-440×330.jpg
Aspirations which are certainly not unique to Labour. Is he perhaps ashamed of the party?
Whereas Izzard, in Edinburgh, was supported by official Labour placards only, (although dresssed in obvious admiring emulation of Sturgeon).
Eddie Izzard is wasting his time …..it’s a Sturgeon for me. Murphy is a conman.
Seems Scotland hasn’t fallen for his bag of tricks. England should give politics a try, it’s exciting.
Congrats on finishing the book. The aftermath of this labour ‘rally’ brings up really interesting deep-rooted attitudes on right of access to our public spaces. Apparently it is totally legitimate for Labour to use Glasgow’s public spaces for a stage-managed event used to talk AT the Scottish public, but when people try to talk back (and raise points of view on socialism, working-class identity, imperialism and so on not often given an airing in the mainstream media) it must be demonised as anti-democratic and violent.
“England should give politics a try, it’s exciting.”
I wish.
Craig
You forget that many of the arguments that Hume (and Adam Smith) made for the Union were economic and still have validity today. Hume also wrote “A Jacobite seems to be a Tory, who has no regard to the constitution” so perhaps he saw the true nature of the Scottish Nationalism as well.
Since Craig’s post mentions Twitter, and some comments here allude to conspiracy theories…
“ASTONISHING: at least 300 MPs/#GE2015 candidates have joined call for reversal of DPP’s Janner decision…”
https://twitter.com/ExaroNews/status/595682264467509248
“There are SO MANY new MPs/#GE2015 candidates who have joined Janner call since yday, it may take until tmrw to update full verified list.”
https://twitter.com/ExaroNews/status/595687436539326464
There is still some sort of democracy in the United Kingdom, once you get away from the totally corrupt Westminster Establishment and mainstream media, and of course all the trolls.
The Westminster paedo scandal has had the lid totally screwed down tight during this election campaign. That lid might come off tomorrow, although it’ll probably be too late to effect the GE.
And no, this wasn’t me:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2015/may/05/election-2015-live-nick-clegg-boost-campaign-final-48-hours#block-55490869e4b06a2d98d2f1ef
I assume Hume’s economic arguments would also have applied to the American colonies remaining in the British Empire. But he was willing to stop fighting for a lost cause.
The policy of Anglosphere governments is to intensify any antagonism that crosscuts universal mass revulsion against the state. In the US it’s mutual Five Minutes Hate every hour pitting democrats against republicans. Seems to work on the dwindling minority of Americans who are stupid enough to vote.
Since no one can tell British parties apart, that won’t work here. So the effort of polarization goes towards inciting national animus. Thus the puerile neener-neener taunts aimed at Craig. But that approach founders on the awkward detail that the people of Scotland have asserted their prerogative to leave this failing state. The animus boils down to envy that Scotland is not stuck with the UK.
Antisemites and misogynists are thin on the ground too. So fake annoying Jewess Abby Cohen takes a stab at creating divisions along a different orthogonal axis, by chanting the conspiracy slur to bait people who object to state criminality. It’s pretty desperate when you’re reduced by evoking the specifics of the state’s criminal culpability. At least it might distract you from reflecting that the UK is so very fucking pointless.
Janner quit board days before sex case decision. (He quit on April 10 of this year. “In documents lodged at Company House, he listed his occupation as: ‘Working peer, writer, lecturer.”)
Lord Janner was still director of his firm THREE WEEKS ago, it emerges as damning dossier alleges police chief allowed peer to molest young boys:
Chunky Mark (the ‘artist taxi driver’) has been on a roll today. Here’s one of a number of YouTube vids he’s posted, this particular one about the NHS:
Lucy Reynolds AFTER THE NHS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2mW0uX-oyg
(for those not familiar with Chunky Mark, he’s a London taxi driver who was up in Scotland at the weekend and has been a longtime supporter of the SNP).
Ba’al
The other David Hume is interesting – because he at least recognised the positive influence that Scots could have on the Union – and perhaps realised that having a more nationalist and Tory England on its own would not necessarily be a good outcome for most Scots.
I wish to offer a few observations about David Hume, the United States and the British Constitution.
Hume was much more pessimistic about the future of the British constitution than is often acknowledged. In “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth” (Hume’s Essays – Part II, Essay XVI), Hume argues that even allowing for alterations that he suggests would bring British government to “the most perfect model of limited monarchy”, it would remain “still liable to three great inconveniences”. The ultimate effect of this ‘inconvenience’ is “a mortal distemper in the British government, of which it must at last inevitably perish” .
In the same essay, Hume immediately moves on to conclude with an objection to the contemporary common opinion that “no large state”, such as France or Britain, “could ever be modelled into a commonwealth, but that such a form of government can only take place in a city or small territory”. He argues that “The contrary seems probable. Though it is more difficult to form a republican government in an extensive country than in a city, there is more facility when it is formed, of of preserving it steady and uniform, without tumult and faction”.
It is also worth noting that Madison, Jay and Hamilton close “The Federalist Papers”, on the formation of a Constitution, with a glowing tribute to the wisdom of an anonymous “writer equally solid and ingenious”, quoting from Hume’s Essay, “The Rise of Arts and Sciences” (Part I, Essay XIV).