Senate The UK Politics discussion

Now that would probably be a story..

 

The list of wrong-uns seems very incomplete, especially if the crtieria is just publicly being rude about Jez (or Dianne Abbott). My local MP is a proper wrong-un in respect of trashing the leadership, trashing the membership, being on the wrong side in the EU referendum, and she's not on ze list at all. If it's truly a 'de-selection list' then it needs about 150 more names on it.

 

Vaguely related, perhaps - two of my facebook friends appear to have been denied voting rights as labour party members due to evidence of supporting other parties on social media. In one case, this seems to have amounted to 'liking' a post by a green party candidate several months prior. In the other case, it seems they found issue with the term 'Blairite' (although I take this one with a pinch of salt... evidence of support for another party?). This is all facebook hearsay, but hearing the same basic story from two people who don't know each other made me stop and think. Interestingly, both friends are constantly posting pro-Jezza stuff. Clumsy attempt to influence the leadership election?

Before I'm taken to task, my facebook friends are mostly athletes, coaches, fighters and others who share my love of picking things up and putting them back down again. I try to tune out their political posts, which range from pro-Jezza through JRod-esque and across the line of sanity into 9/11 conspiracy theorists and David Icke disciples. It's ok, though, they all lift.

 

So, good people whom Abbott would talk down to?

 

Well, yes, but given that the set of people Abbott would talk down to = the set of all people other than Abbott herself, that only asserts that Dianne Abbott is not one of my fb friends.

 

I have a Pavlovian reaction to Dianne Abbott - if I hear her talking I lunge to change the TV/radio station..

 

I'm not threatened or upset in any way by Dianne Abbott. She takes the whip a bit too much (though in this golden age of leadership that's not much of an issue), and she's far too close to Portillo for anyone's liking, but she's one of the good ones.

 

I think that's pretty common. I'm the same. Whenever I hear her voice I find myself snarling and quickly changing channel/station.

 

Yep similar in our household too.

 

And here.

 

never forget

 

She got to do a ****load of cocaine. I'm sure that made up for it in some way.

 

I get the sense she's probably patronising to herself.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/15/brexit-liberalism-post-liberal-age

thoughts?

 

I really hate the usage of terms with the format "post- [x]".

Except "post-punk". I'll accept that as legit.

 

Because that was a real watershed. Now they would just call it punxit or something.

 

Yeah, I can see her in front of a mirror practicing on herself. Y'know, getting the patronising tone just right so that it makes all the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

It's a bit straw-grasping at this point, but some interesting points.

On the economic liberalism front... this is a nuclear reactor we're talking about. With the security/safety implications I'm not sure it can be thought of as government interference in the free market. Not much else is offered on this front other than a vague notion that there need to be more controls in place following the 2008 financial crisis.

On the social liberalism front, there's probably some validity. Radical Islam poses a real problem. Absolute freedom of speech works for most things. I think the reason we have such a small neo-nazi problem here compared to the rest of Europe is largely down to the fact that it's not illegal to express views such as holocaust denial. The fact that all of the arguments were brought under scrutiny in the David Irving trial and shown to be utter nonsense means that nazism can't thrive here in the way that it does in countries where those views go unopposed in dark rooms. It doesn't work for radical Islam, though. Religious beliefs don't really lend themselves to that kind of scrutiny and allowing people to express views that amount to 'destroy western civilization and turn Europe into a Caliphate' has been problematic. Anjem Choudary is a good example... years of preaching hatred, often through the BBC/Channel 4, with no way of really pulling his arguments apart because they're based on faith/interpretation of scripture, not on anything that can be approached using logic or empiricism. Abu Hamza may be a better example... where we actually harboured and protected someone wanted for terrorism in Jordan and allowed him freedom to preach the message of destroying us for years. We don't really have a mechanism for dealing with that kind of thing. Social liberalism meets a brick wall.

I do think there's an economic liberalism slant to the Brexit result that wasn't covered in the article. It's easy to blame it all on the old codgers unhappy about people 'talking foreign' and Polish shops appearing on the high street but the pre-boomer vote was - I think - driven at root largely by the housing crisis. Thatcher's thinking back in the '80s was that the private sector would build houses to meet demand with the death of public housing. Of course, it's worked out much better for them to sit on land and allow demand to massively outweigh supply. Less turnover but a much thicker profit margin than if they actually built housing. This has affected not only those who used to rely on public housing but also everyone else. The average price of an apartment in London is close to £500,000. Assuming a typical deposit of 20% and typical mortgage for 3.5x annual salary, this means saving £100,000 and having a yearly income of £114,000... meaning that you need to be in the top 5% earners in order to be able to afford an average flat, while someone on a median London income of £30,000 can only afford to rent a room in a shared house. I think the fact of insufficient housing causing a rapid drop in life quality over the last few decades is a major factor here. While it's lunacy to think that this is caused by immigration, it does seem to be what a lot of people 'feel' - along with things like school places and the strain on the NHS.

If 'post-liberalism' can solve the housing crisis by somehow requiring the market to meet housing demand rather than profiteering from the huge disparity between demand and supply it might be a good thing.

 

It read like a disinterested student's meandering, word-count fulfilling essay on something.

 

Yes, I think they traveled behind the "Iron Curtain" on motorbike and just like Omar Sharif and Julie Christie (bear with me) in Dr Zhivago they became a pair of doomed lovers against the backdrop of communism and (cold) war.

Martin Kettle is one of the more sensible commentators at The Guardian and I suspect his thesis is broadly correct. Though as Andrew Rawnsley says today, the death of liberal centrism has probably been greatly exaggerated;

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/17/centrism-party-politics-brexit

 

UK politician surprised to learn that the Moon causes tides

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...ravity-and-brexit_uk_57e105cde4b05d791370ff8b

 

The nice thing is that he's a fringe party MP, whereas this would be a required position for a Republican presidential candidate.

 

I hate when Ender's right.

 

As expected Jeremy Corbyn re-elected leader of the Labour Party with 62% of the vote against 38% for Owen Smith.

http://news.sky.com/story/live-labour-leadership-battle-jeremy-corbyn-v-owen-smith-10590541

Question now is whether all those Labour MP's who resigned from the shadow cabinet will return and serve under Jezza or whether "open warfare" will continue?

 

Jeremy isn't the right man for the job but he's the one that the people want.

As a result the party now need to get behind him and push him to do what's right. He needs to be more vocal and challenge the Tory party.

Labour I believe though won't do this and will fracture at some point in the not too distant future.