The BBC and corporate media coalesce around an extremely narrow consensus of political thought, and ensure that anybody who steps outside that consensus is ridiculed and marginalised. That consensus has got narrower and narrower. I was delighted during the general election to be able to listen to Nicola Sturgeon during the leaders’ debate argue for anti-austerity policies and for the scrapping of Trident. I had not heard anyone on broadcast media argue for the scrapping of Trident for a decade – it is one of those views which though widely held the establishment gatekeepers do not view as respectable.
The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. They have huge areas of agreement that stand equally outside the establishment consensus. Indeed Nicola is more radical than Jeremy, who wants to keep the United Kingdom.
The establishment’s great difficulty is this. Given that the SNP had just slaughtered the Labour Party – and the Tories and Lib Dems – by being a genuine left wing alternative, how can the media consensus continue to insist that the left are unelectable? The answer is of course that they claim Scotland is different. Yet precisely the same establishment consensus denies that Scotland has a separate political culture when it comes to the independence debate. So which is it? They cannot have it both ways.
If Scotland is an integral part of the UK, Jeremy Corbyn’s policies cannot be unelectable.
Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.
A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”
There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.
The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.
Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.
Percentage of Eligible Voters
1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%
There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.
More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.
The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.
It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election
Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.
The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.
The stupid stunt by Tories of signing up to the Labour Party to vote for Corbyn to ridicule him, is exactly the kind of device the establishment consensus uses to marginalise those whose views they fear. Sturgeon is living proof left wing views are electable. The “left unelectable” meme will intensify. I expect Jeremy Corbyn’s biggest problem will be quiet exclusion. I wish him well.
Mary, animals are great at doing the unexpected in times of need and Tara was a possible life saver there.
Not every child is lucky enough to have an animal intervene on their behalf, as we have seen recently.
A great Post Mary, as usual. Keep them coming.
I also liked the one about the wee pigeon with one leg.
That was a message for you, and you were aware enough to notice that message. Well done!.
Returning to the Royal parasites,this,is I presume the Royals way of frugality.
Charles (Dobby) has spent more than £1million of public money on air travel in the past year, thanks in part to his use of a luxury French jet named Head of State.
Boasting a double bed, shower room, presidential area and an array of plush, clubman-style recliner seats, the converted Airbus A320-232 has been hired for three of the Prince’s foreign trips. One of these alone – to America – cost almost a quarter of a million pounds.
Source is whatreallyhappened.com
It’s heartening to see the Royals,act responsibly during these austere times.
Anon1
21 Jun, 2015 – 1:48 pm
Your narrow minded, deeply divisive and counterproductive “skivers versus strivers” argument is well passed it’s sell by date and assumes the system is being fleeced by hordes of claimants.
The overwhelming majority of those who live consigned to skintness are anything but skivers and deserve to have their voices heard expecting no pity any more than they want ridicule.
This majority are those who have just lost their job, are long term unemployed, disabled or at risk of becoming homeless or bedroom tax homeless. Many are young people constantly moving between zero-hour contracts or inexperienced young self-employed door-step sales people frustrated at constantly being told to fuck-off.
Pensioners living on less than £100/week frightened by the prospect of loneliness and isolation as local council funding that helps them meet weekly to socialise is pulled.
These people simply want to be treated with a semblance of dignity.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/news/benefit-cuts/
Robert
“However, If you have a “positive gem” you think may be of help to me, now is your chance to do some good.”
Am familiar with TM™ Robert. I wold offer this as a very soft beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mry02Yxw5T8
Please don’t take my word for it, but if you’re encouraged go deeper and deeper and ever deeper. You will reach the source. I don’t mean as a matter of ambition.
Good luck!
Re the anti-austerity march in London yesterday, l fear it will fall on deaf ears, the government will continue with its slash and burn policies,infact the only part of the Westminster government that does listen to the public is GCHQ.
So to Trident which looks like it will be renewed, at a cost greater than its worth.
Bear in mind what Martin Shipton said,when you think of Trident.
“When others want nuclear missiles they’re weapons of mass destruction, when the UK blows £100 bn on Trident, they’re an essential deterrent”.
“(this country specializes in commemorating war)”
But we don’t yet set up children’s theme parks to do so or get the Head of State to open them.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/16/vladimir-putin-opens-russian-military-disneyland-patriot-park
Imagine Mary’s and others reactions if the Queen or Camernon had done the same in the UK.
Technicolour
“Again, crazy howls. You’re in a tower block. There is no safe place for your young children to play. You can’t afford to take them out. You can’t afford the theatre or the cinema. A television, affordable instantly, links you to the outside world.”
Oh, now we’re in a tower block are we? Top floor, presumably. Where will we be next time you comment, now that you’ve run out of altitudinal scenarios? In a space station? At the bottom of the ocean, with no escape for the little sprogs so we have to buy a plasma widescreen and Sky package to keep them entertained? Weren’t the little things born with legs, you know, to link them to the outside world? You think they have it hard!
If benefits are generous enough for recipients to afford luxuries then there’s no incentive to come off them, is there? And we know that a great many of them do not want to come off them. Would you deny that there exists in this country a whole underclass of workshy scroungers who have taken the decision to live off the state rather than look after themselves? Do you think that is morally right? What do you say to a hard working family on low income who pay taxes to prop up these wasters so that they don’t have to work?
I know you don’t like my language, which sets alarm bells ringing in your little precious lefty head, so I’ve toned it up especially. Trust me, I’ve been there and I’ve seen it all.
Walt
There are plenty of jobs, that’s why we’re importing hundreds of thousands of immigrants to do them, because our feckless underclass would rather live on benefits.
“Labour pissed away so much public money on creating a benefits class that the Tories are right to try and put some tough love back into society by encouraging the feckless wastrels to go out and do some work.”
Wasn’t Labour created the benefits class. We had full employment where I lived before Thatcher, 40% unemployment by the time she’d finished.
“It is the two white spots on my lungs that are dubious, cause for concern.”
Hopefully they will identify them asap and zap them, Robert, whatever they are.
It’s good that you have confidence in your surgeon.
and good luck with that nurse 🙂
Villager.
Thank you for your gem.
I know some of this man’s stuff. Just as I know some of most of all these guys stuff.
It is a search, a process that goes on and on. Sometimes, a bit of clarity appears and I feel “Bliss”. Most of the time I am hoping people would not spend their money buying lies, in so called newspapers. News addicts!.
I have just spent some time in a “media blackout”, great!. None of that rubbish touched my eyes or ears. A good meditation that slows down the thousands of thoughts that rage in all our minds all the time leaves one at peace learning about oneself is magic.
I sometimes don’t wont to hear of “man’s inhumanity to man” so I don’t come on here, or switch on the radio. I don’t have a t.v. most people can’t understand how I survive without it. Very well, is the answer. I am trying to free myself from the badness our big wigs are subjecting the defenceless people of the world to. My troubles are nothing by comparison.
I have become aware that those who start wars never get killed or starve or get bombed into homelessness. Until they do, wars will continue apace. Mind you, the potential is there now for them all to die and their wealth with them. They don’t see that or believe that, and that is what makes them so dangerous, not only to themselves, but to all of us.
They think they know it all. If they did they would not behave in such a barbaric way.
I can only hope my meditation and that of others gets to them in time.
Dreoilin.
My pal said something similar the other night about a big handsome man like you Robert, get out there and get yourself a woman.
I would not lumber any woman with me at the moment. The nurse is fantasy!.
Dreaming is nice when the pain is having a field day at my expense.
Fred, at 4:49pm today, good point. Does anyone remember the time when there actually were no beggars on the streets of British towns and cities? I do. Britain was famous for having no beggars. The first beggars appeared around 1980. The economic crash of 2008-onwards wasn’t caused by ‘too much public spending’. It was caused by an irresponsible – a “feckless”, cocaine-addicted financial sector.
Anon1
“Would you deny that there exists in this country a whole underclass of workshy scroungers who have taken the decision to live off the state rather than look after themselves? Do you think that is morally right?”
Sometime I wish posters where in front of my face.
Slave-shy more like, having worked in the dead end jobs that don’t pay enough to have a future, home, family, and that I (or society) would not accept animals doing (try factory work with monkeys if you don’t believe me) id say the way you paint things is totally perverted.
We know who takes most form the state, and they don’t even do it to try and get basics, its on top of the riches they have from the public they fleece..
You sick, sick, bastards.
Work-shy? You don’t fucking know work and struggle. That’s clear. TOSSER..
Cat’s are away.
morally right
Morally fucking right he typed….
How about we just take back all the fleeced wealth the kind hearted capitalists have stored up in their vaults. Yes, i’d expect a lecture on ‘honesty’, and the army called out.
We should really try it sometime.
https://youtu.be/HTjMkxoE77U?list=PL3o1qhkkdxoYVlxMDpoaQj8xODOoq_7Ys
Anon1 – It’s not just that I don’t like your language; I don’t like your factual inaccuracies, which seem only to exist so that you can indulge in some hate. There are not enough jobs in this country: and before you start laying into ‘immigrants’ you might consider the 1.4 million British emigrants currently working abroad in Europe. Other jobs are so low-paid that the ‘hard-working’ families have to be propped up by tax credits. Do you know nothing? Have you watched that documentary I linked to yet? One of the families lives, yes, in a tower block. On the top floor. Any concern? Any reason why they should be th
e object of anyone’s scorn?
“Documentary telling the stories of some of the 3.5 million children living in poverty in the UK. It is one of the worst child poverty rates in the industrialised world, and successive governments continue to struggle to bring it into line. So who are these children, and where are they living? Under-represented, under-nourished and often under the radar, 3.5 million children should be given a voice. And this powerful film does just that.
Eight-year-old Courtney, 10-year-old Paige and 11-year-old Sam live in different parts of the UK. Breathtakingly honest and eloquent, they give testament to how having no money affects their lives: lack of food, being bullied and having nowhere to play. The children might be indignant about their situation now, but this may not be enough to help them. Their thoughts on their futures are sobering.
Sam’s 16-year-old sister Kayleigh puts it all into context, as she tells how the effects of poverty led her to take extreme measures to try and escape it all.
Poor Kids puts the children on centre stage, and they command it with honesty and directness. It’s time for everyone to listen.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BN7ml6b-e4
Robert Crawford
21 Jun, 2015 – 5:00 pm
Villager.
“Thank you for your gem.
I know some of this man’s stuff. Just as I know some of most of all these guys stuff.”
__________
Robert thank you for your kind reply and for sharing.
I’d just share a couple of observations fwiw:
* On meditation there are the various ‘schools’ like T.M., Deepak Chopra’s Primordial Sound, Vipassana and so on. These have great therapeutic value, but carry the risk of being stuck in a groove, in a pattern. There is then the meditation of simply being in the moment and being able to grasp the whole movement of life in one swoop of attention, whatever the circumstances of that moment. Maybe a wholesome conversation sitting in a park with a friend on a beautiful evening like today’s, being aware of the sounds of the birds, the movement of the breeze, the movement of the clouds, the depth of the exchange of conversation, the awareness that man continues to kill man relentlessly at the back of one’s head and so on. The distinction is one , with attention is inclusive, whereas the other, concentration is exclusive. The two are compatible as long as one is aware.
* Knowing someone’s stuff is fine — knowledge, but with its obvious limitations. But when knowing becomes one’s own through a process of understanding something at a very deep level, where it becomes one’s own, part of one’s DNA, part of who we are, then that is another thing and thereby it operates with its own intelligence, rather than the interjection of the intellect of the brain.
* This man was no one’s guru and had/has no disciples. No rituals, no dogma, no ideologies, no philosophies, no claims whatsoever. Makes him different and the more I have read/listened/watched, the more I see how wholistic and rational every aspect of what he uncovered and shared is.
All good wishes for your healing and may your energy be all cylinders firing very soon. Awareness of the flow, observation and response in intelligence. And so it goes.
BTW, sometimes the things I wish aren’t good, but that’s honesty sometimes. And id assume this is an adult forum.
And I know what I can be like (so stay away for possible encounters) having been at the ass end of so much abuse, real abuse not words on a screen. Like dreams torn away, along with self respect and dignity and any real hope of a future any better…
It does seem to me some people need their tongues ripping out and shoving where it belongs.
It’s funny the way they paint their captives with their own obvious glaring traits. The repugnant inhumanity that’s really what they have become, projected onto their victims.
…I do despair at these vile pathological fuckers, I still have some humanity left.
Villager.
Magic!
It is great to meet someone who understands what I am trying to achieve.
I am trying to remain “detached” while observing all that is going on. Not easy, sometimes I can let it wash over me without getting uptight.
I have read a lot of Dr. Deepak Chopra’s books. I am a fan.
I have had moments when everything “fits”.
A little story to go with this cancer. Another meditater told me he always asked to be shown something he needs to know when he starts to meditate. Great, I’ll do that.
Next time up comes a picture of what looked like an ox liver with a lot of little white things all around it eating it. Well, that spooked me, and I came rocketing out of it. What a pity! I have never been able to be shown anything so clearly since.
Is that not what has been going on with my kidney?
I was given a message and did not pick it up fully and take action.
I appreciate your input Villager, feel free to add anything at any time if you feel the urge.
This is wonderful place to be when my mind is quiet. The wealth of knowing is beyond calculation.
More people should try it, it is therapeutic. Healing even.
Thanks again.
Bloody Neighbours!!!!!!!!!!
There’s a huge house in our street, the extended family is run by a grumpy old woman with a pack of irritable dogs allowed to run without leads.
Her car isn’t taxed or insured and it doesn’t even have a number plate,but the police still do nothing.
To the best of my knowledge she has never worked in her life.
Her bad tempered old man,is notorious for his racist comments. A shop keeper blamed him for arranging the murder of his son, and his son’s girl-friend.
All their kids have broken marriages,except the youngest one who everyone thought was gay.
The two grandsons are mean’t to be in the army, but are always out partying in night clubs. It’s not even know if they have the same father.
I hate living near Buckingham Palace.
The Royals for what they are.
As Mary’s video showed…
(who will probably get chastised for me referencing that post, forming ‘alliances’)
Even cat’s can put others before themselves. Yet some humans are in some sick place abusing them. Continually, and exulting in it. I call it fascism.
It’s deeply disturbed ‘thinking’, behaviour…Most are clearly in need of therapy, or should at last be restrained for the massive harm they cause. Then the system that embodies it should be dismantled. That’s what’s morally necessary..
Resident Dissident There was no need and you had no right to include my name in your anti Putin comment.
I don’t know what could be more morally repugnant than not only doing all this, But to use the good nature of humanity to kill or abuse other people? To compel people to give their lives that this abuse may continue.
It clearly a high point we’ve reached in humanity isn’t it? And no doubt we should exult in it’s impressiveness. As many do, they actually do.
“(who will probably get chastised for me referencing that post, forming ‘alliances’)”
So right, because ‘referencing a post’ is exactly the same as making vicious, abusive and fact free attacks on other posters, really. Identical.
Spiritual mental development, morality, the real fact’s of life? On and on they go lecturing.
These people are clearly physiologically disturbed in a most profound way. I’m not joking.
“Any of the candidates for Labour leader would be acceptable except left-winger Jeremy Corbyn, Alan Johnson has said.”
“The New Labour grandee, who served as Health Secretary and Education Secretary under the last Labour government, said he liked Mr Corbyn personally but likened his politics to electoral “suicide”.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-next-labour-leader-should-be-anyone-except-jeremy-corbyn-alan-johnson-says-10332782.html
With friends like Alan Johnson who needs enemies?
Anon1
“Trust me, I’ve been there and I’ve seen it all.”
What do you mean?
You’re dissing what you call “lefties”, and you seem to be suggesting that you’ve some personal insight that supports you in your current view, perhaps even that you’ve had some Damascene conversion in your own life.
Is that correct?
And if so, what it is specifically that has changed your view?
Sorry, off topic, but in remembrance of the victims of the recent racist shooting in the USA:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/21/charleston-church-shooting-service-dylann-roof
On division.
There is a fire raging and some aim to have us think they are not the fire, but I think it’s important to identify this clear and present danger to the people. And fight it.
My feeling is if enough stand apart, that’d be something. Maybe they’d burn themselves out.