For his first nine years as Prime Minister, Tony Blair appointed NO women to any of the “Great offices of state” over which Corbyn is under such concerted media fire. And he had many less women in his shadow cabinet and cabinet. Yet there was virtually no media comment at all, and none of this line of right wing “feminists” lambasting him.
Explain.
“Can you post a link to the Conservatives video again?”
It was taken down just as I was posting here. Sure it’s all out there somewhere though.
“I find it had to believe these brazen lies haven’t, by themselves alone, blown up the Tory party”
Par for the course I would have thought. Remember the poster campaign when Blair first got in, with the devil eyes? Ok, they get it right occasionally.
MJ, lol
LOL MJ! I appreciate your contributions. Thank you.
@Ishmael, is this the one;
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/uk/labour-a-threat-to-our-national-security-conservatives-1.2351013
BTW Criag, my research is pretty crap but I don’t (as others don’t) just ‘comment’. I support, have supported in my own loose way this blog for ages, With someone like Mary as a stand out example I really think this painting ‘our’ role in this way as nice at all. Sure some just make remarks. But many bend over backward for you…And you ask them to sometimes, research something or do something.
Nuff said, i’ll move on from this issues…
Several commentators have suggested that the cries of “sexism” from the political/mainstream are Left-wing in nature. In fact, it is folks from the Right who have suddenly, erm, discovered feminist principles.
I think the difference is important – just because someone misuses feminism for their political convenience does not discredit the real feminist movement.
Sry correction, ‘I really think this painting ‘our’ role in this way is* not* nice at all…
That’s a bit excitement rushed typing I think….Not an angry point.
Typical Tory propaganda Macky because when he talks about why we have all these weapons the video extract does not let him finish.Jeremy Corbyn wants to put the £100 billion to be spent on a Trident replacement to better use.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/heres-what-jeremy-corbyn-really-6438877
Anyway, unlike Cameron, he has not lost any nuclear weapons yet. We still don’t know where they are.
I agree that Corbyn can use social media to reach out on social issues. Whilst it will strike his detractors as self-indulgent, a weekly TV show like Russell Brand did, with a theme on each occasion, would be an excellent idea. A much better connection to ordinary people, bypassing a good chunk of the media, and he’s knowledgeable enough that he’d never run out of material.
ps, I mean, i’v posted links, told friends, splurged it over the guardian many times, and mentioned it numerous other times on Fb ect.
I do hope this goes some way to explain my feelings on this matter, and my previous undignified rant early in this thread. But i’m ok to live with that crapness.
The Tories can only rely on lies, misrepresentations & smears, whereas all the others have to do is post indisputable facts;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDGpYX95AA0
Habbabkuk: “Thanks for responding, Glenn, and thanks for the tips – I may do as you suggest. Just to clarify, I’d just thought that you had some sort of easy method whereby with a couple of clicks you could rustle up the info I was after and didn’t realise that you would have to elaborate a special programme (which would take up time which you could probably devote to more useful things).”
No trouble… the small programme I knocked up will take a given page of html, and run a count on the number of posts from each unique userid. To achieve the function you suggest, it would need to follow the back-links from each page, and run the same sort of check on each. You’d also need to collect the date from each post, to give stats on every user.
“I perhaps owe you a mini-explanation: it is that if Mary was one of the earliest commenters this would go dome way to explaining why she seems to exude a sense of “ownership” on here which makes her somewhat intolerant of (relatively) new entrants – or, at least, new entrants who have the chutzpah to pull her up whenever required in the interests of either clarity, motivation or even factual accuracy.”
Fair enough, if you want to check the archives may I suggest the following: use the archive selector to go about halfway through the records (starts at 2002, so select 2008). If you don’t find a post there of interest, select an archive halfway between that point and now. If you _do_ find such a post there, clearly you need to go back further, by selecting halfway between your current archive and the earliest one (in 2002).
This sort of successive approximation (effectively a crude binary search) will be the most efficient method, finding the point you’re interested in with the fewest number of searches.
I just did a quick search and Suhayl appears to be one of the very earliest posters.
Mackey, yes that was one of the link’s, dead now..
Sry wasn’t ignoring you. But just in case, Thanks. I’m still a bit dazed tbh..
Jon 12:56 pm
“Several commentators have suggested that the cries of “sexism” from the political/mainstream are Left-wing in nature. In fact, it is folks from the Right who have suddenly, erm, discovered feminist principles.
I think the difference is important – just because someone misuses feminism for their political convenience does not discredit the real feminist movement.”
Hmmm.
Well, we’d expect the right to suddenly discover gender equality and land on Corbyn’s choices for their own – non-feminist – agenda.
But it also matters what the progressives say, since they self-identify as of the left. And I saw cries of sexism about the cabinet choices from, off the top of my head, Labour MP Diana Johnson, union boss Len McCluskey, media feminist ohbloodyhelliveforgottenher name. The one that writes about food poverty. Jack something.
Just look at the #notforgirls Twitter hashtag to see just how many people supposedly of the left can’t wait five minutes to see how these appointments pan out in terms of a Corbyn-led Labour’s priorities. Progressives want women whose policy beliefs marginalise the vast majority of other women – just because they are women.
I’m a woman. I want people in place who will undo the damage done to marginalised women over the past five years, via welfare, working rights, criminal justice changes and all the rest of it.
I’m certainly not saying St Corbyn of Westminster has got all the appointments right. I’m just saying that those on the media/progressive left who are bleating are performing their usual gatekeeping function and certainly not helping WOMEN. Only a tiny subset of already privileged women. Trickle down doesn’t work for social engineering any more than it works for economic inequality.
I am not in favour of nuclear weapons at all. However, I imagine industry could come up with a budget one at £10bn, leaving a nice £90bn chunk to spend on public infrastructure.
Watson and Corbyn are going to have to compromise on NATO and nuclear weapons in some fashion. Leaving NATO and purchasing just a budget firework – that won’t get used – is one option.
“Fair enough”
Not it’s not Glenn. it’s clearly a vindictive witch hunt, pilfering through old people’s comment to get at them. Don’t know were you guys get off tbh.
People’s old* comments…
Sorry for that slip.
Sixer, fair enough, and thanks. Yes, I see your point – there can be an unreasonable rush to judgment. I don’t know if that is specifically a feminist fault though – a very human one, I think! You are absolutely right that progressive individuals of any gender should be waiting patiently.
To be fair, I quite like Jack Monroe. She’s been through real poverty, the kind that most of the political/chattering class have never had to experience (I think I am the chattering part, and I’ve no experience of poverty either). Monroe was heavily castigated for getting work with Sainsbury’s, and whilst I agree that those on the Left should be critical of corporations for various reasons, I suspect she was just relieved to get a job, as any of us would be in the same circumstances.
If she has had a go at Corbyn, then I expect I’d call that premature also. But he can weather it!
And look at what the people who ‘comment’ here face? I’m not suppressed most don’t.
Trickle down doesn’t work for social engineering any more than it works for economic inequality.
Agree. Would you agree with me that what does work is community? I’m thinking of several years spent in rather isolated communities, where, if anything got done for the general good, it was the women wot done it. Mind you that was the kind of setup where the men went out to work for money while the wives stayed at home – maybe with a part time job – and were able to discuss things/plot.
Jack Monroe castigated for working for Sainsbury’s? She was merely following a noble NuLabour tradition,,,
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/582206/Tony-Blair-s-close-friend-and-ally-Lord-Sainsbury-emerges-as-mastermind-of-pro-EU-campaign
surprised* grrr
Stick to posting links Ishmael . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNjsBWuItSE
“It is read by people who find my thoughts provoke their own thinking.” – yes, and who like watching the firework displays in the pub which tend to follow any utterance that begins “Craig Murray says…”
Ba’al and Jon
I don’t dislike Jack Monroe (thanks for getting the name right) either. But see what I said upthread about how the influencers tend to form excluding cliques as soon as they become influencers. I don’t think it’s even deliberate half the time: perhaps a gender version of the Chomsky theory at work?
I think community does work.
But in specific terms of the Labour Party and what Corbyn should be doing for women while he leads it? I think he should be setting an agenda that ensures working class women, particularly mothers (who head more than 90% of the single parent households in the country) can be independent economic actors. I don’t want women to require a man, any man, even an abusive one, in order to deliver a secure home and decent standard of living for her children. This will require the undoing of cuts to domestic violence services, cuts to access to Legal Aid, reversing of welfare changes, etc etc.
Almost all the New Labour women supported the austerity agenda that took away state support for working class women, thus rolling back gender equality and returning them to dependence on men. I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman who heads the departments that undo all this damage, so long as it’s undone.
I see myself as a feminist. But perhaps I’m just a class warrior!
(See? I KNEW one comment here and I’d never look away again!)
Corbyn’s threat of democracy
15 Sep 15
Mark Curtis
It is delightful to see Labour voters defy the establishment by finally electing a leader on the centre ground of British thinking. Opinion polls suggest that Jeremy Corbyn’s policies of nationalising the railways, energy companies and Royal Mail, along with opposition to the Iraq war and British intervention in the Middle East are all supported by a majority of the public.
These views stand in marked contrast to the neo-liberal, military policies of the Conservative and ‘mainstream’ Labour parties at home and abroad. These extreme positions, which are contributing to unprecedented domestic inequality, the draining of wealth from the world’s poorest countries and terrible military interventions (and not least the rise of Islamic State), have amazingly been allowed to be presented as the centre ground or ‘liberal democratic’ – an astonishing propaganda achievement for policy planners.
/..
https://markcurtis.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/corbyns-threat-of-democracy/
https://markcurtis.wordpress.com/about/
Thanks for the Curtis link Mary. I see Craig gets a mention together with a link to this site. I didn’t realise he was a visitor, do you think he comments here sometimes under an assumed name?
Corbyn’s moderation and the uncontroversial nature of his policy proposals is the subject of this article:
http://www.irishleftreview.org/2015/09/14/21040/
There is an evident confusion over the phrase “feminism” as it appears is many things to many people. Perhaps it would serve the debate well to refer to feminist theory.
Treating the symptoms, may be a good idea for immediate tackling of the problems facing the women and minorities in UK. However, more important would be to stop the suppression of the majority of population of this country comprised from half of the population, ie women in addition to the population of minorities whom are subject to scapegoating by various political operatives. This resulting in the current awful treatment of these populations, which further is not even recognised as abhorrent and shameful!
There needs to a paradigm shift and a fundamental reassessment of the abuses of human rights in UK that is currently tacitly accepted and tolerated in the guise of government polices and “traditions”. Therefore the issue is not a class issue but a reflection of degrees of civility/self awareness and maturity of any society.
It would be self-defeating to ban the Resident Invigilator (I take note of the fact that once again he objects to being called a “troll”. As if far worse language is not often used on this forum, including by him.)
With every post he makes, he further discredits himself, and every cause he stands for.