In every Tory leadership election since Thatcher, the bookies’ favourite has lost. And while you cannot easily discern where the winner would come from on the economic left/right scale, the authoritarian/libertarian scale is absolutely significant. In every single case the winner has been the Tory of the most authoritarian views, and the losers – think Ted Heath, David Davies, Ken Clarke, Michael Portillo – have been on the socially liberal side of conservatism.
Our political “journalists” only think left/right. So Cameron’s victory was a Tory move to the “left”. In fact it was not about that at all. David Davies, the favourite defeated by Cameron, has described the new Tory anti-trade union bill as “Francoist”. He opposed control orders, stop and search, detention without trial and the banning of protest from around Westminster. That is why he lost – the Tories have a dog whistle reaction to follow authoritarian figures. Cameron’s Old Etonian patrician authoritarianism is what they wanted.
That is why Theresa May is going today to give a bloodcurdling speech attempting to stir up racism against immigrants by saying they are making us poor and making our society less cohesive. She will even pander to the ludicrous notion that an economy is of a fixed size no matter how many people are in it, with a fixed number of jobs, so “they” are taking “our” jobs. Doubtless she will also outline yet more definitions of thought crime and new reasons to lock up young Muslims.
She may be vicious and dangerous to our society, but she is not stupid. It is the way to become Tory leader.
Nobody ever lost money overestimating the viciousness of the Tories. In fact the arms and security industries and the bankers, the private health companies, the hedge funds and the private agencies enforcing government policy make fortunes out of it every day.
I’ll post a fuller response to your notes on racism and immigration, but broadly I think it is good that there are venues for a frank discussion on the topic (such as this very blog, of course). Having read your contributions for some years, Glenn, I do not think that you are in the slightest bit racist.
I posted earlier in this thread that people should not mind being called a racist, and Jemand took exception to that. It is true that I cannot assert that no-one has been harmed by an unproven accusation of racism, and I am sure that a few minutes with a search engine will show that someone, somewhere has been unfairly dismissed from their post, or some other injustice, because of an unproven allegation. So, in one respect, I am sympathetic to the idea that there is an over-sensitivity.
On the other hand, I think that working to eradicate racism is a pressing duty for society, and letting the old wounds fester by doing nothing does not sound like the best response to this historical aberration. For example, I think that it is correct that racially motivated crimes (e.g. a physical assault) should carry a stiffer sentence than the same crime without the racial component, so that a corrective seeps into society.
A broad point underlining this is that, if society develops a freer way of talking about race, and allows people space to talk about their feelings on the topic of immigration, then genuine, hardened racists will join that conversation. That “new rules” exist will not prevent racism from existing, and many racists will very much enjoy the extra protection that is afforded to them. Thus, I think we need to be concerned about how to guard against the growth of the far Right as well.
When I suggested that people should not be bothered about accusations of racism, I particularly had in mind anonymous forums such as this one. Where someone stands so accused, there is not much injury that one can claim from it. We have had folks on the hard Right and the hard Left here being called racist many times, and any of them can only point to a slightly bruised ego.
Of course, it was broadly the reason for the fall-out when folks here last tried the conversation, and perhaps it is used as a device to imply – often with successful effect – that the alleged racist has lost the right to participate in the conversation. For example, I think the views of our occasional contributor who refers to the “genocide” in Leicester is a real racist, and I do not mean that as a casual insult; I think it is his purpose to discriminate against people on the basis of their skin colour, and I think that is very wrong indeed. I think it is a path explicitly of segregation, which will lead to conflict and worse injustice than the world we have now where we at least try to live together. I think affording space for those views will lend unreasonable succour to groups like Golden Dawn and the National Front, and it is a paradox of democracy that we should not allow such fascist groups to flourish.
(There’s more to add, but that will do for now!)
For the record, Jemand’s assertion (07/10/2015, 2:53pm) that comments of mine have been deleted from this thread is false.
I made comments at 9:56 pm, 10:14 pm, 11:02 pm, 11:24 pm and 11:39 pm yesterday. All of them were made a very short time after Jemand’s comments, and are headed by referring to the time and date of the comment to which I am responding. All are still there. They follow a coherent sequence – check this out for yourselves if you can be bothered.
Jemand’s original assertion that he posted a thank you to “Fi” which got deleted is evidently worth exactly as much as his latest falsehood.
Kind regards,
John
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[ Mod: No comments from John Spencer-Davis have been deleted. ]
I think Glenn, fit and fresh from circumnavigating the earth on a pogo-stick (or something), understates, avoids the barbarity of the systems introduced by Labour and gleefully ramped up by the Tories, of assesment for health benefits for the sick and disabled. “I’m well, therefore ‘they’ all must be ‘at it’, is a flawed argument”. It’s all very well too having some sham medical exam with the dodgier discredited fringe of medical tradespersons, but ultimately decisions are made by some nameless, faceless “Decision Maker” – their real title – a civil servant with no requiremnt for, or any evident clue about anything health related at all. Rising somehow to grasp hold of a six-figure salary in a dystopian ‘buroo-ocracy’ doesn’t count, rather disqualifies. Consider too the inadequacy of the income levels if they’re grudgingly given, the day-to-day, week to week constant gnawing insecurity that low incomes cause and the constant crises that result from just trying to stand still, meet bare physical needs, amidst this unceasing storm of rods and sticks.
Likewise the impossibility of even partial compliance with the trickery, the pointless bizarre demands placed on the unemployed by the downright menacing and mendacious power-tripping low-level jobcentre goons, then there’s their superiors, who are by a significant order of magnitude worse. Once they’re involved, well -you’re a goner.
Far from providing social security, not just the security of the individuals, but for society as a whole, the entire ‘benefits’ system has morphed into a Gestapo-like terror, intimidation and surveillance organisation. Far bigger and far uglier than the EG Stasi.
Belated apology for going O/T.
Tony M: ” “I’m well, therefore ‘they’ all must be ‘at it’, is a flawed argument” “
Glad to make your acquaintance, Tony M, I don’t think we’ve spoken before.
Not only is what you supposedly quoted a flawed argument, it is also a straw man, because you’re arguing against a position I didn’t take – or go anywhere near taking, for that matter.
If you’d like to discuss something that I wrote, that’s fine. But if you’re railing against something totally unconnected with me, I’d appreciate it if you could leave my name out of it. Thanks.
This takes the cake, John you did good going on record, and Mod you have done well to support John’s stated fact. (no doubt there will be a need for sworn affidavits although Courtney can always be of some help on this) in response to counter this brainfart of niemand;
Note the apology and delete which are used in conjunction to imply John has apologised, ie niemand is vindicated and he was not lying!!! This of course has been deleted by the mendacious Mod further highlighting its plight and victim hood.
All the while this is to divert attention form this liar and fantasist whose racist zionist supremacist bilge flooding this blog has been carried out under the guise of being an “atheist”!!! Ie everybody hates Muslims, is the final message of this interloping vile fantasist!!!
Glenn: I’m sorry you took that as hostile, it is clear you completed some physically strenuous feat, but I didn’t catch the details. Yes there was a misplaced quotation mark, the double quotes should have ended after ‘at it’. I think we have spoken before, on the EU and Blackpool’s spanking new sewage system. It was the strong assertion you made that there are ‘serious abuses of the welfare system’, of which there is no evidence -fraudulent claims are in financial terms, less than one percent, infact are incalculably small, cost far more to determine, much less recover than the small sums involved. You posit perhaps by implication more than implicitly, in the very next sentence that ‘welfare queens’ and ‘scrounging layabouts’, each pejorative terms you at least partly embrace, somehow comprise or contribute in whole or in part, to these non-existant serious abuses -which stereotypical abusers, sadly, when you’re in ‘awkward spot’ you’re ‘forced to defend’. Abuses in general are abuses of claimants by the DWP and its minions. There’s just an air to your post of Guardian-like hand-wringing detachment, insincerity, feigned interest, a party-line as it were, as if it were all quite another strange and foreign world to you, inhabited by faceless others, experienced if at all, only remotely through the press, or in rarified company, rather than as a grim and awful reality for a great number of people. Though you did begin with “I’m not sure”, so it seems as if your heart wasn’t really in it, which could excuse the rather wooly, imprecise, wandering point that followed. On this perhaps, sitting on the fence is your comfort zone?
I’ll finish with a rhetorical question, no answer or reply is expected: Can you entertain that active persons in the peak of, or who enjoy near perfect health very probably have difficulty empathising with or comprehending the lives of those who do not?
Hello Tony – was it your good self that claimed I’d cited the clean water, “fewer jobbies bobbing about”, if memory serves, was the pinnacle of achievement for the EU?
If so, I replied at the time that you must have me mistaken for somebody else, and that I’d never even referred to a sewage system on this blog (other than to refute that I’d discussed same). Never heard back from you on that.
Anyway, to this point – and I’m happy to discuss it with you.
There are a few things you’ve possibly misunderstood, with all respect – arguments about “welfare queens” and scroungers are made by the gutterpress, not me. To deny there are any such scroungers at all is not helpful imho, because there clearly are quite a few out there.
I’ve known some, including a fellow who was supposed to be legally blind (and claiming in accordance, with his family milking it for all they were worth. Literally.) But he pedalled his mountain bike around like nobody’s business while running his drug-dealing side-line (“deals on wheels”) and if you dropped a fiver, he’d catch it before it hit the ground.
But that’s not _fraud_, that’s just people working the system. At the other end, you’ve got landlords, corporations and tax avoiders working the system to the tune of tens of billions a year.
You’re absolutely right about the tiny scale of social benefit fraud. Fraud is at least an order of magnitude smaller than is generally reckoned, which given the press coverage is not surprising.
Sorry if you feel I’m just giving a “party line”, I must come across badly to you. Did my posts last night about religion (on this thread) sound as if they followed a detached party line? I can’t tell if you actually want a reply at this point, or just want to denounce. If it makes you feel good, go ahead.
*
Just in case you’re serious, in your “rhetorical question”, Yes – I can understand that directly empathising is probably difficult. Just as sexism, racism, all sorts of bigotry and bullying, mistreatment and savagery cannot properly be understood by anyone except the victims of such treatment. The rest of us can only try to understand as best we can.
It’s obvious enough to me that there are very fragile people out there, and a country that brags about being as rich and powerful as this one should be able to look after them. Strutting around with our London excesses on one hand, boasting about how we have over 100 billionaires in this country now, we can surely be proud about that! While on the other pleading, “We’re poor! We’re poor!” when it comes to our obligations to the least among us, both at home and abroad, even while Cameron pretends we’re guided by “Christian values.”
Mod
Fedup
Thank you.
J
Hello Kempe
somewhat irked by your correction but mainly because you are right. In my first comment I referred to FGM as a religiously formed act when of course it is a culturally determined one and exists in numerous different religious contexts However I would describe circumcision (again strictly a cultural construct) as a religious construct in the context I was using it i.e. to Judaism.
i will quibble a bit and say that the distinction is somewhat blurred. In the distant past I doubt if there would be much difference, between culture and ‘religion’ in the sense that religion would be highly defining of culture and vice versa, within the kinds of tribal groups that were the norm in the past, although with the arrival of more formal scripture based religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is a need to distinguish.
I accepted that there was difference of degree in that circumcision is a much less onerous than many forms of FGM.
Ally Fogg in the Guardian had an article a while ago where he argued that it was inconsistent to omit circumcision from a definition of abuse somewhat akin to FGM.
Obviously the topic is rarely raised because of course it would raise the ugly spectre of anti-semitism.
the essential point i was making however was that it is difficult to define the boundary between freedom of religion and the acceptability of that in relation to a dominating and secular, civic code of behaviour. i think it is an issue that is mainly glossed over but remains a constant problem.
Deepgreenpuddock FGM (Mutilation not an emotive word at all!!) is used as a tool to batter the Muslims, and at time the Black Africans, this rites roots lie in the indigenous religions of Africa, and in particular it could be attributed to Ethiopia.
In fact any anthropologist worth their bloody degree would narrate the story of the Mother Earth (my interpretation) that had a termite mound built upon it and the mound had to be cleansed/cut off, with the associated imageries carved in some far off the beaten path place.
The brouhaha surrounding this particular issue is yet another means of bashing the blacks and the Muslims, which are portrayed as the demons incarnate in the way of justification of their large scale slaughter through such dehumanisation processes.
The above can be verified in a package that was about finding the ark of covenant, that ended up in an Ethiopian temple,and was aired I believe on beebeecee and the package did not explore the old story tellers narrative about ” cutting off the mound” and the associated carved imageries, and just skipped over it!!!!