Blighters to a man, dash it all!

http://www.onlineuniversalwork.com

>>Huge puzzlement is being expressed all over the media and blogosphere about how the Tory lead can have narrowed so much. There is your answer.

Agreed. Had the Tories chosen David Davies as their party leader when they had a chance, they’d be out of sight. Cameron is a lightweight version of Blair, and he’s being found out.

“A journalist who filmed an interview about gay rights with a stumbling, confused David Cameron yesterday said the Tory leader’s press chiefs begged him not to release the embarrassing footage.”

It was the most embarrassing thing I’ve watched in my life, almost. To think this man aspires to be PM is beyond belief. He’s trying to be another Blair, and is failing miserably. Largely, in my view, because he never sounds sincere. Blair had that trick down pat.

On the other hand, Brown has major psychological problems. I’d like to get him on a couch.

What is even interesting is the recruitment processes of legal and financial houses are often just passed to family members than posting vacancies in public places.

Where I currently work, other than me who arrived here on a temporary basis through an agency before working for contractors in the same company. All employees share the same DNA and I would keep little girls away from this place because crimes such as rape would be difficult to pin down on any of these DNA sharing people.

You’d be wisse to keep little boysss away too.

People have noticed that Dave and Co are not very good at what they do. They have been a sensationally incompetent opposition and are not even regarded as good Conservatives by the bulk of their own party.

Just before a the most important general election in a generation, no one would piss on Dave if he burst into flames.

The Useless Tories are back.

Oh yes, it’s true. I was browsing around the news yesterday, specifically the Purcell scandal and his links to organised crime (you won’t read much about it in the Scottish press as it’s a bad story for Labour). One website had a nice block diagram, showing all the interlinked interests of quangos, the Labour Party, Labour councillors, and the great and the good. Up there with each of his ten fingers in a different pie was a character I know from way back – a ne’er do well who was probably lucky to stay out of jail. He failed at just about everything, and in final despair his (obviously well-off) dad gave him a pub to run. Golly, someone’s hands have worked busily a day, and there he hangs now, like Ferrara’s Last Duchess. Next thing will be the knighthood, sans doute.

Spot on , Craig as usual.

The problem with Mrs T was that for some reason, maybe because she was a woman, she respected the Toff class including the US money Toff class. Being educated with the Toff class I knew what they were like. I had been trying to get them to level honestly with me from the age of seven.

Mrs T stupidly handed the steering wheel to them and they drove us into the catastropic mess we are now in. I think your’e right to gamble on a swing against New Labour to the Liberals, because it is our only hope. We must never let the Tories in again. Just before the Blair entry election I told a true-blue Tory friend, who had serious intentions to stand for election as an M.P., that not only would the Tories lose, but they would not come back for generations. I lost a friend, my best man at my wedding in fact, and he was a very good friend. The Tories need to be kept, like a Doberman, locked firmly in their kennels and their ferocious barking should not stop other contestants, like the Liberals or Respect from standing, and getting in.

Sorry, 11.51 AM post was mine. My ancient laptop gets confused and deletes the details on re-submission.

I agree, but it’s not just New Labour voters who are in ignorance about the extent of what you term ‘the nexus’. You just have to listen to radio phone-ins to see that the elite have done an amazing job not only of concealing the truth from the masses but have also taught them to feel somehow ennobled by their subjection.

The toffs who climbed off their pedestals to succeed under Mrs Thatcher,were only joking and climbed back on again. The non-Toffs who asked to try out the pedestal were only joking and didn’t get off again.

This electioneering is not about the illegal invasions and the banking crisis.

It is about the non-Toffs who got on the pedestal, who have temporary Toff status as New Labour, being invited by the real Toffs to have a chance at being real, nasty proper Toffs with the old guard.

It’s nothing to do with the illegal invasions or the banking collapse as these things are now run by the hand of Global Hard Power. It’s just a pathetic Westminster game.

The British ruling class (by which I mean the bankers and other super-rich, not the Royal family and the old aristocracy) seems to have successfully imitated its American equivalent. Perhaps for the first time in recorded history, millions of poor people who have no prospect of improving their lot are apparently resigned to their fate. Not only do they not resent the wealth and power of the ruling elite; they actively praise and support it.

It was, of course, in the USA that the wealthy first pulled off the clever PR trick of convincing poor people that the rich were good, virtuous, and praiseworthy – largely by making them think (quite wrongly) that anyone can become President, or a billionaire.

There is an argument that circles the web, about whether a female or female-dominated cabinet would be as quick to go to war as a male one.

Mrs T is cited as an example by those who claim, “Yes, they would”. I don’t see her as a typical female at all. I see her as a woman who aspired to being a Toff, and decided early on that to succeed she would be “more male than the males themselves”. Not that she couldn’t flirt, if the stories are to be believed.

I don’t think she proves anything about anything, she was a one-off. In fact, I like what one writer said about war (paraphrased):

‘Women would spend much more time on diplomacy, but when they did go to war, they would be twice as vicious’.

———–

I just read this in the Independent:

“Mainstream parties were routed in an astonishing council by-election result just days before Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to call a general election.

“The Greens’ Rachel Eburne captured a Tory seat at Mid Suffolk District, also humiliating the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

“She polled 61 per cent of the vote at Haughley and Wetherden with a 33.2 per cent net swing from the Conservatives.”

Quo vadis??

———-

We are all, those of us in the Engish-speaking world, suffering from cultural imperialism, whether it’s in armed cops shooting innocent people, dumbing-down of education, the arrival of Tasers, gang/drug turf wars, obesity epidemic, celebrity culture, PR-controlled politics, spin doctors – and now presidential style PM debates. All aping the USA. It’s high time we stopped. I see the same stupid spellings (like “loose” for “lose”) coming from British and Irish kids (internet-driven) that used to apply only to the USA. And the other famous mix-up, “their, they’re and there.”

“largely by making them think (quite wrongly) that anyone can become President, or a billionaire”

There’s a great article on that, and on what “positive thinking” has done to e.g. the American education system.

“The Myths & Mistakes of the Positive Thinking Movement” Steve Salerno

http://bit.ly/EyQKv

(scroll down about 1/4)

and also Barbara Ehrenreich’s article, “Smile! You’ve got cancer”, here

http://bit.ly/4oUp59

Result: Mid Suffolk District – Haughley and Wetherden:

2010 Green 444, C 176, Lib Dem 51, Lab 32, Ukip 25.

2007 – C 354, Lib Dem 309, Green 122

‘Women would spend much more time on diplomacy, but when they did go to war, they would be twice as vicious’

Yes, Boudica is a good example. Astonishingly vicious. Didn’t bother much with the diplomacy bit either. Still wish she’d won though.

Mini-correction about Mrs T:

“and decided early on that to succeed [in politics, not in being a Toff]“

This is something I’ve wondered about – how did New Labour manage to close up the gap in the opinion polls? Bribing pollsters to make up results is one possibility. Other than that, it seems to me that the people who are supporting New Labour are doing so because they believe that it is in their interests. Specifically, they may have become convinced that New Labour will protect their job prospects better. This is a serious matter for other parties. Hitler’s promise of full employment must have had a powerful appeal in times of depression, notwithstanding the fact that this was achieved by excluding women from statistics, and threatening ‘work-shy’ people who would not accept any job offered by the government with the concentration camp (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazis_and_the_german_economy.htm)

“The Myths & Mistakes of the Positive Thinking Movement”

Enjoyed the tale of the football blocker who spoke back to the coach. Saw the same put-down a few years ago when we had a guest captain for a rugby match. He started to go around the dressing room, asking each player in turn: What are we going to do today? The answer had to be: We’re going to win! Alas, he came to the club wag, who answered: Well, I suppose we might win, but could I suggest that to save time, you just put it to a vote?

Craig, the politicians are using class to attract voters to upgrade to Conservatism. But this is a decoy. The real issue, as always is a religious one.

NO INTEREST>NO MILLION POUND GRAVY.

There is only one solution to the present inequalities. Gordon Brown has presided over an economic collapse, and refused to reject the banking theory of interest-based banking. He’s signed us up to massive interest payments, while allowing the banks to increase their profits and salaries.

I have been a Muslim long enough to know that non-Muslims are always allergic to even sensible advice from Islam. Muslim talking, blahblahblah, sorry, what did you say?

That’s why I can’t see any point of staying here, because intelligent people become completely irrational when logic and understanding are sourced from Islam. They’ll vote for anything so long as it isn’t Islam.

If these city twerps weren’t eating interest, they’d be sitting at home for four months without any income like me.

It is difficult to understand why people who are unemployed can continue to vote for more of the same.

You see, Craig, with all due respect, it seems to me that you are a person who aspired to Toffdom, but when you got there, you didn’t like what you found. Meanwhile it opened doors for you. Every one is entitled to an honest living.

Most people are still aspiring, and the rich Toffs in the Tories are posing for them to get their votes, like models.

I was dropped into the Toffs at any early age. They make up about half of the percentage of private schools. That 50% of proto-Toffs are obscene. The only antidote I have found against Toffdom is Islam. Even the Muslims aspire to Toffdom. No wonder nobody seems to aspire towards Islam.

Maybe you’ll remember my words, if I say that, the British public, like yourself will not turn away from Toffdom until they have fulfilled their aspiration. Then and only then will they realise the horrible mistake they have made, in twenty years time.

Craig: “Huge puzzlement is being expressed all over the media and blogosphere about how the Tory lead can have narrowed so much”

Abe Rene: “it seems to me that the people who are supporting New Labour are doing so because they believe that it is in their interests”

As the election gets nearer I suspect people are taking a deep breath and wondering who they would really prefer as Chancellor: Darling or Osborne? If there is anything of substance that distinguishes the two main parties it is in where the cuts and the tax rises will fall.

There is empirical evidence that more equal societies a healthier measured a wide number of metrics. See “The Spirit Level” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n20/david-runciman/how-messy-it-all-is

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/

David Cameron is aware of this, but seems to miss the point.

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/governments-and-parties/the-new-tory-party-desert-for-everybody/

Craig, I profoundly disagree with your statement “Class Does Matter – And Should”?” Class should not matter. We should be aiming at a meritocracy, not a society divided along class lines.

Yes what you had to do “To get the finance for my African project” is very typical ?” pay an “establishment tax” to an idiot who lives off introduction fees. Indeed, look at the current banking crisis. What was all that about, except greedy unqualified idiots who took huge risks (that they were too stupid to understand) in the knowledge that they would pocket the profits, with the taxpayer funding any losses. And, as we all know, serious wealth holders pay minimal taxes because they legally use tax avoidance schemes (offshore trusts, etc.) that shield their real income. And, of course my own issue, which just proves that the establishment are completely above the law, run the intelligence services like a secret police, and the politicians are scared of them.

But Craig, the answer is not to build a counter class structure. Politicians have tried to do this for 90 years, and except for Lloyd George it has got us nowhere.

The answer surely is to build a meritocracy. To remove the rich man’s tax loopholes, not to sponge him, but so that he pays the same share of his real income in taxes as the middle classes do; to develop a written constitution where there is an open form of democracy and all powers of the crown are exercised by elected bodies; to rain in the intelligence services who are presently completely out of control; to develop affirmative action programs in the civil service so that appointments are made by merit and not who you know; to get rid of stupid titles and the honours system, and so on.

“Who you know systems” are not just unfair to the vast majority – They are unpatriotic since too often they put idiots in top jobs. What is amazing to me is that these same topics keep going around and around again and never get solved.

Craig – off topic, but hopefully of interest. German government caught lying about relations with the Karimov regime:

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/03/hbc-90006778

Craig, in your comments on your campaign in Norwich North, you said that you thought that the good people of Norfolk admired a self-made man.

But have you thought that maybe they didn’t admire a self-made man who had achieved what they aspired to and then criticised it. You were spoiling their dreams. What they want is to have a dream that they can achieve wealth and power and that will be enough for them.

We are humans, some of us, not all of us. for the Blairs and the Hoons, they continue digging, thinking that their lack of success is because they didn’t try hard enough.

Cameron is a deeply cynical stuck-up twit, who has only one cheap card, his Toffiness. Everything else about the Tory party is rubbish. Gordon Brown similarly has only one miserable card, the welfare state. Everything else about New Labour is rubbish. They are troughers and mass murderers and Brown has absolutely zero understanding about money. Darling is no better than a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat as Nick Clegg has been pointing out.

For this campaign, the UK electorate need to be reminded that lottery winners are usually miserable, and that New Labour have mis-used power as the Tories did before them, that the marketing of political parties is shallow advertising and their financial manifestos are not just spin, they are deadly thin ice with a real possibility of economic drowning.

Dreoilin

I read somewhere about the phrase ‘mastering the English language’ being used to remind people who their ‘masters’ were, in this context.

Oh yes, social class is the elephant in the sitting-room. But is that room, or rrum? I blame the Normans.

David Davis resigned from the Conservative Front Bench in part because he was about to be pushed out by the toffs.

Go to a Book Festival and what kinds of voices does one hear? The authors, the audiences? Same with everything – except maybe rock music, but that’s another story, one of corporatisation.

As in 1970, the polls may well be wrong.

I agree with Craig. I do think, however, that Roderick Russell makes a key point.

Both the suggested trajectories seem so distant that one can get seriously demoralised. Yet when one considers the difficulties faced by both Craig Murray and Roderick Russell when, in their different ways, they faced-down the Establishment, one can have only unbreakable hope.

o/t to Craig: Have you seen this, is this of interest?

CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks – March 24

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/03/24/cia-state-department-apparently-acting-on-plan-to-destroy-wikileaks/

which includes alarming twitter feed

updated on Daily Kos today:

Wikileaks Releases Statement After U.S. Intel Detains Editor

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/3/26/851032/-Wikileaks-Releases-Statement-After-U.S.-Intel-Detains-Editor#c140

– me in us

“The UK has the lowest social mobility of any developed country”

Personally, I think this Statement is Largely Bollocks, though it is more true now than it was 50 years ago.

I have seen Craig Murray’s humble background.

The poor dress up, and the rich dress down.

You can’t get much more Working Class than me.

Yet I have and continue to mix with some of the richest and the poorest, and much of the time, I can’t tell the difference.

India and I suspect America is very different.

The UK is a much more equal society than is commonly recognised.

For many years we were fed bullshit about the US being a Classless Society.

Don’t believe everything you read.

If you get off your arse and are determined to achieve, you will, irrespective of your background.

Tony

If women can believe feminism, then they will vote ZanuLabour.

Dr. Goebbels knew the importance of winning over the gentler fascist, and ZanuLabour has implemented that policy in broad daylight.

The public sector is approaching 50% of the working population, and it employs about 75% women. Zanulabour has paid ‘Dame-geld’ from the public purse, to ensure that women are state dependent, from pre-emptive policing of ‘bad men’, to nurseries taking their children hostage. Women are being frightened into the belief that any other government will pull the rug from under their soviet feet.

Women will ensure that Labour wins.

Have you guys got a sense of humour?

You should read your own comments!

Pathetic!

Class analysis comes down to who’s a toff and who isn’t?

No wonder the country is going down the tubes.Wherever we end up-reading the comments above-we’ll sure end up where we deserve!

You all sound like a bunch of corporate media junkies who have simply lost the capacity to realise when you’re spouting utter horseshite-or in the light of what follows-elephant shite!

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/search?q=elephant+in+the+room

You bunch of dingbats!

Professor Prostate aka Oliver Hardy strikes again!

Jesus, Jimmy, you really don’t like women, do you?

Tony, you sound like Norman Tebbit, with his ‘on yer bike’ mantra. Do we really want to end up comparing ourselves with ‘Brazil’ economies in terms of social class/ wealth distribution?

‘Huge puzzlement is being expressed all over the media and blogosphere about how the Tory lead can have narrowed so much. There is your answer.’

That’s not the answer. It’s been quite obvious Camreon and his political mates are toffs for a while.

The answer is that there is a massive covert campaign to bring in a coalition government. A coalition of all three parties will be what’s needed to implement draconian economic measures as well as the suppression of opposition to these.

A telling sign was the extraordinary lack of media coverage of the Conservative conference. I suspect very shortly there’ll be some further Tory scandal to put the parties on a par.

I strongly suspect that Mandelson will be made PM of the triumvirate.

The elephant in the room link is here:

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/search?q=elephant+in+the+room

Quick the humorless censor doesn’t want you to see it.

“Britain is a country so heavily propagandized over generations that her people have no conception who they are or where they’re headed… Once the grip of London-based central banking and the offshore financial empire that launders its corrupt profits has been loosened people in this country are in for a rude awakening.”

Comrade Stalin, I agree with the central thesis.

It won’t stop the incontinent insults, though, will it:

“Is it just me? Why do I feel ashamed to be living in the same brain-dead country as the non-entities who comment here.”

Then you must be one, too, Comrade Stalin. Otherwise why would you deign to comment here at all?

You have not answered my very simple question yet, Comrade Stalin.

Most probably votes will be tampered with if they don’t bring in the required result for a coalition. When the results come out everybody will be satisfied because the reults will mirror the polls.

OK, standby to insert cat into pigeonhouse…

We need World Government, or at least, broad international consensus between governments.

There. Clark = NWO Shill.

I have a number of reasons, but I’m off out. Bye for now.

Clark, give my regards to any Rothschildians, Bildergers, bollocks, cheeseburgers and dingbats into whom you happen to bump! Hope it’s not too shilly out.

April 5th, note it down boys and girls.

Wikileaks gonna release a video of US masacre in Iraq/Arghanistan?

bet the main media are going to be customarily asleep.

anyway just like the bible that I found in the fiction section, Ive been leafing me way around the warren report on the JFK assasination. Man it sure gives the bible a run for its money out there in fantasy land…..

suhayl

According to Simon Montefiore’s bio of Stalin,Uncle Joe worked for the Rothschilds.He was their means to infiltrate the Baku oil workers unions.

While we’re on Stalin.Why does it not surprise me that you obviously haven’t read the Rakovsky confession? Christian Rakovsky was former Soviet ambassador to France where he was close to Rothschild interests.

Stalin’s drift towards “Bonepartism” is cited by Rakovsky in his interrogation as the reason the Roths decided to use Hitler to bring Stalin back under their control.

Apart from the fact that Stalin took his name from the Russian for “Man of Steel” the reason for your referring to Steelback as “Comrade Stalin” seems so inappropriate as to be totally ridiculous.

Your infantile sense of humour gets more embarrassing by the day.

For Christ’s sake do some reading or you attempts at insult will be as pathetically misplaced as your puerile sense of humour.

You’re clearly already out of your depth on most topics.

Weird! I’ve just been reading Wikileaks too. A CIA document on PR strategies to maintain support for the war in Afghanistan in France and Germany (including emphasis on Afghan women):

http://file.wikileaks.org/file/cia-afghanistan.pdf

@JimmyGiro

What’s your problem with women? I know at least three men who have become very bitter (understandably so) after experiences with family courts. Just sayin’ …

@MJ,

Yes, and Grainne Mhaol, or Grace O’Malley – although she was a lot later.

@anno,

It saddens me greatly that languages and dialects are dying all over the world, as a result of globalisation. Languages + cultures. Eventually we will be left with a bland, colourless world, utterly lacking in diversity. I decided I’d heard it all when I read that McDonald’s had opened in the Louvre.

“There was already an outcry last year when Starbucks opened a cafe perilously close to the Right bank museum’s entrance. Employees and art aficionados sent management a petition in protest; the cafe opened regardless but was asked to provide a cultural corner of brochures and catalogues as a placatory measure.”

I’ve spent a lot of time in France, but haven’t been there for a while. The above makes me slightly nauseous.

Always interesting to see “Steelback”, “Freeborn” and “Apostate” turn up within a short while of each other. And so condescending – hardly the way to win ‘hearts and minds’.

“hardly the way to win ‘hearts and minds’”

In the context of a posting about ‘class’, I find it reassuring that we’re all still ‘nonentities’.

Hah! well said, Richard.

“The answer is that there is a massive covert campaign to bring in a coalition government. A coalition of all three parties will be what’s needed to implement draconian economic measures as well as the suppression of opposition to these.” – Ruth

First person on here to actually get it.

There is also the additional fact that *every* election in the PR era is now covered in a way to make it 50/50 and maximise public interest / media ad spends. In the US particularly, you can feel the see-saw moments, as scandals are confected to haul in a huge front-runner and make a race that both candidates and their parties have to suddenly start pissing money away trying to win.

I’m pretty sure that if somebody has analysed the data that in the 24 hour cable news era races are becoming closer and closer, with, clearly, bogus polling being used to accomplish a genuine shift, like the ‘share ramping’ that the tabloids were busted for.

After a Storming Start a couple of months ago, I thought what the hell is she thinking of?

The venue can comfortably take around 500 people…

This is economic suicide

I get this text message a few days ago…with absolutely no advertising whatsover…

This bloke’s New Band is On

Sure We knew the Bass Player

So I thought rather than 300 or so – which is probably the size of the audience that they played to earlier in the week…

That about 15 people would turn up

My expectations were exceeded – about 20 people turned up

And the Band Were Really Good, but the audience felt really embarrassed because there were so few of us…

So near the end of the final set, we all came together and linked arms and danced together in a line right in front of the band.

We just about covered the width of the venue.

We were trying to make the Audience Look BIG

The Guitarist was Fucking Brilliant and Could Sing So Well, it was like seeing someone – on a motorcycle cruising, knowing that if he just twists his grip, he can go from 30 mph to 100 mph effortlessly

Such Quality is quite Rare

But I Reckon Far More Interest Was Shown Than Most Political Meetings

Our Daughter Not Only Started Her Job Today and Did 10 hours for £45 but is NOW Leaving…

With all her Kit to Go Ski-ing with her University Mates

She Was Voted Skier of The Year – when she was 15 – by the Teachers and Kids…

Apparently it was down to her tricks

Her Brother is Even More Insane on Ski’s

Tony

I agree with you Craig – though i don’t think social mobility or breaking the barriers between classes alone is the solution if it leaves massive inequality.

In South Africa for instance the division between black and white is over, but the gap between rich and poor as is big as ever.

Allowing a few of the poor to become billionaires wouldn’t be any better – and while most people have something they’re go at, people do vary in ability, so a pure meritocracy would punish people who try their best but just aren’t that able.

I don’t want to tell a mistruth

I think Her T-Shirt was Actually Skier of The Week

The school she went to is a perfectly ordinary normal school in England where both boys and girls go to.

It is not a Grammar School

It is Not a “Public” School which means the almost exact opposite in America

It is a normal school

With Boys and Girls

In ENGLAND, Education is Provided For FREE

But if you want to go on one of the annual school trips of which there are many choices…

Your parents have the opportunity to save up for it over a year or so in advance and pay the installments gently in advance

O.K. it might mean giving up something else ?” like a packet of fags and a pint of beer ?” a week

But if you save that Fiver up for Your Son or Daughter Every Week, then it builds up

And Your Children Can Then Travel To Other Places In The World With Their School Friends Whilst Still At School and Meet Other Children In Foreign Lands

And have fun with them

Tony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Duncan: I agree with you about the lackings of meritocracy. In an aristocracy, at least _some_ obligation is felt towards the downtrodden, because the lowest levels of society could have sympathy bestowed on them by those born into privilege.

In a supposed meritocracy, and I say supposed because we make the fallacious assumption everyone has an equal shot at success, those who are most well-heeled have an excuse at sneering at those in the gutter. They can say, “I pulled myself up from my bootstraps. You could too, if you could be bothered.”

Nobody has ever pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps – they had an entire society supporting them, and most likely the best part of it, if they did well.

A meritocracy allows the Blairite/ Thatcherite claim that the filthy rich deserve to be so, and to hell with everyone else.

The saddest thing, as Duncan again touched upon, is that the ordinary person has no means to get off the bottom rung. Working hard, being honest, playing the game – that just about keeps one out of the gutter while on the minimum wage. Where’s the reward for playing it straight anymore, if one is not particularly gifted, lucky or well born, in this supposed meritocratic society?

dreoilin -

I think asking whether females are less likely to go to war than males overlooks perhaps more relevant issues. I don’t think it is a persons sex that determines how they behave in power, rather it is the political/social climate they operate in. M. Thatcher, I. Gandhi and G. Meir all fought wars. To achieve such a position of power, you have to accept certain orthodoxies of the local elite. Whether you are male or female does not change this.

You write about Thatcher “I don’t see her as a typical female at all”. Neither do I, but I also don’t see Blair as being a typical male either. Both had to sell their soul to become PM.

In the Scandinavian countries with a high representation of women in politics, the male leaders are also better. I think it’s a kind of chicken and egg scenario. Is it more progressive because there are more women involved, or are there more women involved because its progressive? As I said before, I think its determined by politics and culture more than a simple male vs female equation.

BTW dont loose ur mind bout speeling. U can ushually understand what there trying 2 say.

tony_opmoc -

“Yet I have and continue to mix with some of the richest and the poorest, and much of the time, I can’t tell the difference.”

I was born and raised in a country which places far less emphasis on class than the UK and I still strongly disagree with you. It ain’t hard to spot the difference between someone who has a privileged life and someone who battles to make ends meet. Body language, vocabulary, accent, world view make it pretty easy to tell the difference.

OFF TOPIC

Craig how about placing an article or link on you main page to wikileaks.

this one site, seems to be causing a great deal of discomfort to the ruling elite

I would suggest another one (boiling frogs post from Sibel Edmonds)

regards…happy electioneering

So much analyses–and most having a common thread–that, Britain–like the most of world, is run by powerful elites.

Quoting from particular books, whilst helpful to particular arguments, do nothing more, than does a pill against a particular ailment. In other words, it is not of itself, a panacea, nor does any one book cover the subject empirically.

Populations have been coerced, by ruling elites, one way or another, for millennia.

What is socially and morally destructive, is that philosophers have given us the Age of Reason, the Age of Enlightenment–and so forth–combined with all the alleged, emancipating benefits of “democracy” and we are still shouting from our cages.

How does one bring about a meritocracy, or fair society? I suspect that, any like change, however meritocratically intended will involve a hefty blood price. In the meantime, the issue is becoming more and more a global problem, and it is open to anyone’s interpretation, as to where it will lead.

“Class” is so Edwardian–try “benign tyranny”, or “benign slavery” as possible 21st century “class” equivalents.

Mindless dingbats-talk about dumbed-down Britain.

Years ago Brits who encountered Americans abroad or here used to wonder at their lack of knowledge re-the rest of the world and general low-down ignorance.

By now you guys sound exactly like those Americans did decades ago.So completely propagandized you’re now like mind-control slaves in perpetual slow destinationless motion.All the elite media system need do is fill you head to toe with falsehood and fable and you’ll regurgitate is as if it were evidence of independent thinking on your part.

Reading the comments above on the election prospects resembles turning on the corporate media and being gob-smacked at the same time entertained by the sheer level of disinformation and myth-making going on out there.

Tuning in is the means to begin to understand the pretty absurd things mindless Brits are thinking and saying these days.

You just think what the corporate media tells you to think.

The pious comment re-the need to use this comment board “to win hearts and minds” was typical of the kind of regurgitated media sound-bite that passes for wisdom in your tiny convoluted little corporate media-created parallel unverse.

The “hearts and minds” bollocks is usually parrotted ad infinitum when the media cover Afghanistan.

Typically you dumbed-down Brits haven’t yet worked out that the prospect of the British winning even one heart or mind in Afghanistan is nil.

Afghans are well aware that while the US may be deemed to have made one mistake by attacking their country in 2001 the Brits have done so on three previous occasions.

The Afghan resistance reflects the particular Pathan determination to send each British invader encountered home in a box.

Hearts and minds my fucking backside!

No wonder the disinfo team chose to attack this site when they set about revamping the ridiculous official 911 fable!

Mindless dingbats!

Apostate.

Give up those evening classes at “South Park” academy. Even your abusive sloganising doesn’t reach the banal standards of Sarah Palin.

As for dumbed-down Britain–quite agree–we have a lot to curse America about.

Unfortunately, your ignorant masters, have become our ignorant masters’ masters.

Only shitoids like Bliar–that is “Blair” spelled appropriately, for your understanding–have hung Britain like a turd about the ass of America, to share the inordinate costs of its mercenary corporate wars.

Yet, like clever working Americans, we too suffer the effects of bankruptcy in education and health services.

BTW. Have you noticed how seriously aggressive your Democrat and Republican electorate are towards one-another, while your politicians lick the backsides of the same Corporate masters?

“I think asking whether females are less likely to go to war than males overlooks perhaps more relevant issues.” –CheebaCow

I’m not asking the question, and I don’t really care, one way or another, to be honest. It’s men like JimmyGiro who keep bringing up the subject on the web, in one forum or another, and using Thatcher, Gandhi and Meir as their “proof” that women are as warlike as men. My view is that if there were no military, nobody to fight, nobody to fly the planes, nobody to operate the drones — politicians could yell at each other all day on the phone, or face to face, but they’d have no young men or women to send to fight to their deaths. Pushing buttons won’t send missilis either, if those missiles haven’t been maintained, along with the systems that launch and direct them. Or if they have never been produced because there was no market for them. Arms manufacturers drive war. The military carry them out, while the politicians waffle.

“BTW dont loose ur mind bout speeling. U can ushually understand what there trying 2 say.”

I think that falling standards of literacy are indicative of a general dumbing down of youth. I have heard it said that most Americans don’t read as much as one book per year. I don’t know the statistics for these islands. But if the youth of today continue to get their spelling lessons on the web, it won’t be long before they can’t read at all. Othr thn txt mssgs. I have a son who was educated in UCD, and did post-grad in London. He’s worked in the US and is now in Australia. When he left Ireland he would never have mixed up “they’re” and “there”. He’s doing it now, and quite frankly, that upsets me … If the internet is going to reduce our young people to the lowest common denominator in literacy, I don’t think it’s a good thing. And as a semi-aside, I’ve had my eyes thoroughly opened regarding the extent to which American culture has overtaken Australia, which in my youth I thought of as a very distinct, different, and slightly exotic place. Now it’s all “Awesome” and Starbucks and McDonald’s and “cool”.

———————————–

“Dreoilin, re. Jimmy G, I know what you mean. But it’s so wearing, the constant and predictable attacks on women, regardless of the topic or the thread, as though all women in the world … “–Suhayl Saadi

Yes, yes, I agree. I have dealt with men who makes the most outrageous generalisations about women, based on their own bad experiences. We have a journalist in Dublin who’s had a difficult time with child custody, and manages to drag the subject into every article he writes, irrespective of *what* he began writing about. I’m simply wondering what’s up with JimmyGiro, and if my past experiences are anything to go by — it’s possibly the family courts. Which have been outrageously biased against men – even though in “Catholic Ireland” we’ve only had divorce since 1995.

“I’m bitter about various things, you know, as are we all, I should imagine, but I don’t attribute all the world’s ills to my personal hobby-horses.”

Take it easy. If you thought I was inviting Jimmy to spew some more anti-female material, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m curious what’s driving him, which is a different thing entirely.

“The pious comment re-the need to use this comment board “to win hearts and minds” was typical of the kind of regurgitated media sound-bite that passes for wisdom in your tiny convoluted little corporate media-created parallel unverse.

“The “hearts and minds” bollocks is usually parrotted ad infinitum when the media cover Afghanistan.”

So you didn’t even get my sarcasm. I see.

Leaving aside the matter of freeborn’s tone, the site he links to (cluborlov) is actually rather interesting. As is the onward link from there to:

http://flood.firetree.net/

“Typically you dumbed-down Brits haven’t yet worked out that the prospect of the British winning even one heart or mind in Afghanistan is nil.”

Worked it out long ago, mate, and I don’t know where you get your notion of “superiority” from, but I’d be curious to know. I’m not British, but same difference on this subject.

Rothschilds in charge of UK for centuries?

Party dogs turned into willing huskies?

British brains more washed than US ones?

Massa Craig kicks ass for blogger’s views?

Electioneering is about marketing, but in this thread it has turned into fish market with every stallholder calling his wares to drown out the others. There are real issues in an election, and yet those real issues usually get totally ignored.

The real issue of class is demonstrated by Thatcher and Blair, that very ordinary people, when they get on the magic carpet of a Rothschild idea, will ride the thing to destruction, like they are riding a persona for which they are unaccountable. They are just frail, mammalian invertebrates inside dalek shells.

In my book the word Toff is nothing to do with wealth, but completely to do with a persona of British duplicity, deceit, callousness, not me guv, jobsworth, nastiness, which I see across all income and social classes. It is accompanied by a swaggering, dog-fighting, territorial, vengeful ignorance, a persona which I see just as much in politicians like Cameron as top executives of Rothy Banks or on the building site, and across all income and social classes.

Craig is defining class as income. By this definition, I agree in so far as income matters, class matters. It is disgraceful that Maggie and Blair have hugely increased the divide between rich and poor. I always said that, and it was very painful to me, a poor little public school boy, watching her introduce such blatant inequalities as the Poll tax etc.

The Roths don’t give a toss if the pound gets rogered by QE, devaluation, or IMF/EU Greece-style decree or the markets. They have taken their pounds out of the country. The markets closing. One box of avocadoes a pound. Fresh fish. Fresh fish. Must go. Must go. One pound. One pound. The price tag on the UK plc has been taken off and we’re going to be sold off for a few p.

“Typically you dumbed-down Brits haven’t yet worked out that the prospect of the British winning even one heart or mind in Afghanistan is nil.”

Oh, and by the way, it’s even less for the Yanks. You’re in minus figures. So where you’re coming from I’m not sure. I have read about the (up-to-now) standards of the so-called “trained” army and police in Afghanistan, and between language difficulties and questionable loyalties, I wouldn’t bank on any of them to back up anything NATO does. Nor would I blame them if they didn’t. It’s their country, not NATO’s.

Sorry. ‘ calling ‘his’ wares, ‘ should read ‘their wares’. When bashing bankers of the last letter in the alphabet variety, it’s always important to remain completely pc.

Hah! Indeed, anno.

Suhayl Saadi, and dreoilin,

You are both confusing women with feminists; rather like some people confuse Germans with fascists. By doing this, you freely engage in straw-man arguments; just look back on what I actually wrote, and compare it to what you reported.

Did you know, Lieutenant Tongue, that there is a persistent legend in Afghanistan that some Afghan tribes are descended from the ‘lost’ tribes of Israel? Did you know, Comrade Stalin, that there are tribes who wear Stars of David all over their chughas (long-coats)? The same claim is made for Kashmir and some Kashmiris. And of course, ‘lost tribes’ lore is widely dispersed across West/ Central Asia and East/ southern Africa as well. The veracity of such claims is almost beside the point.

Although many of your links are very interesting and well worth a look (I agree with Vronsky), your obsession with ‘The Jews’ – and it is this, isn’t it, Work-Makes-Free, that is central to your thinking – undermines any good you may be imparting.

I think that you, under another name, may have posted those comments about me on another thread which at my humble request got deleted or blocked because they were so obnoxious. If you claim material of yours is being deleted, perhaps you ought to ask yourself what is might be about that material which results in its deletion. I think too that perhaps the webmaster might indicate the nature of the material so that everyone can see there is no political censorship going on.

You know that many of the people who tend to post here might well agree that the horrible and psychopathic ‘Israel-First’ imperialists are screwing-up the world and that rich and powerful elites run the military-industrial complex. The banks, gold and arms, drugs, porn, organ-extraction-and-trading, the whole stinking thing. It may well be that some of these elites are also into pederasty on an industrial scale. I agree that all these ‘enquiries’ whose evidence gets censored for 75-100 years are suspicious in the extreme.

To their credit, bloggers like Arsalan, with whom, as you know, I have not always agreed on everything, have always been very assiduous about drawing a distinction b/w vigorous and sustained critique of Zionism and just being Anti-Jewish. I do not think that you make that crucial distinction.

I also get your surreal and sometimes entertaining irony and it’s very clever and all that. But when you constantly demean all the other bloggers here and link anti-imperialist ideation and action to an arcane and obsessive schematic which posits a neat hypothesis of world domination, you come close to the modus operandum of David Icke et al. That is, to mix-in some serious stuff with which anyone remotely anti-imperialist could not fail to concur with an underpinning construct of irrationality so that the effect is to destabilise the entire edifice of anti-imperialism. I think people like Icke are disinformation agents of Empire.

I think that it is time for you to ‘come clean’ about your views, as one single, albeit pseudonymous, identity and finally to do what the larries did not seem able to do, and answer my direct (and now very obviously partisan) question in a direct and clear manner:

Are you against US/ UK corporate war-machine economic and foreign policy or are you an imperial lackey?

I am sorry if I seem to be hectoring you, but I think anyone would agree, Professor, that if you can dish it out, you have to accept that some of your medicine will ‘blow back’.

And as I said, I am Pushtun. And no-one messes with them.

“Oh, and by the way, it’s even less for the Yanks.”

Again, dreoilin, why the obsession with Americans?

The larries are back. Strange, that, no? Answer my question, one-of-the-larries. I asked you a question, which you have never answered. Yet you persist with asking others questions. I do not think that your questions need to be answered until you have answered this most basic of questions. Do you remember what the question was? I am sure that you do. If not, check with Vauxhall.

I can empathize with Apostate totally.

Like him/her,I suspect,I spend most of my time on other sites but am struck by the poor quality of comment here.

The comment board is clogged up with adolescents pretending to be adults.You guys will find it instructive to visit comment boards on sites where research is valued and each point on a topic is evaluated by contributors on the basis of its validity as thinking or sustainable argument.

The pathetic attempts to pigeon-hole contributors as conspiracist/ Ickeists ,”anti-semites”,pro/anti-imperialist,or right/left are indicative of the Franfurt-engineered politically correct mind-set that prevents original thinking.

You are stuck in a box of your own making.Were you to escape the box you would rapidly find yourself imprisoned in another one.Since you’d likely have no idea how you got out of the first box you’d be equally bewitched and perplexed for decades until you worked out how you ended up stuck in the second or even third one.

In real discussion what is important is not so much the answers that are given,but rather the questions that are asked.Like Apostate,I detect an inability here to get beyond even the framing of worthwhile questions.Like adolescents you seem obsessed with your own credibility and status and this overrides any thirst for knowledge you might have.

To put it bluntly this is posturing not thinking.Speculation re-justice,freedom,honesty,defence of liberty versus tyranny are the business to which we need attend not massaging each other’s fragile egos! This is starting the journey that speculation necessarily entails in a decidedly inauspicious and inexpert manner.

Stating the problem clearly and examining its various proposed solutions was the Popperian method.If it sufficed for him it should do equally well for us.

If Apostate is an ardent seeker for truth-and I think he is-his frustration with those who limit their speculation within self-imposed artificial political constraints is thoroughly understandable-and I,for one,share it.

“In real discussion what is important is not so much the answers that are given,but rather the questions that are asked.”

So that explains Larry then. Thanks. But you could have kept it shorter.

No, Bornfree, I’m just asking whether or not you are part of the war-machine. That is not ‘Frankfurt-engineered’. That is a question of whether or not you agree with the incineration of millions of Iraqis, God-knows how many Afghans and that (planned) of millions of Iranians. It’s really easy to answer. Yes, pose questions and dance on the heads of pins if you wish. But occasionally you have to get off the damned philosophical fence! It’s fuck-all to do with my status. It’s everything to do with whether or not you support mass murder.

1) Pretending to be several people all of whom support one another in argumentation is hilariously adolescent. Like an evil queen, it may be prudent to consider gazing into the (Lacanian, or just bog-standard silver-backed) mirror once in a while.

2) One wonders whether Karl Popper would have referred to people with whom he discoursed as, “dingbats” and “arseholes” or whether in philosophical debate he would have used terms such as “my fucking backside”.

3)You use the same roundel of phrases constantly. It is you who are stuck in a box.

4) You seem to have developed a particular focus on debunking Arsalan and I. An observation, merely. Empirically made.

5)What are your views on the British National Party? Oh! That was another question! Well, the questions are the thing, aren’t they. The ones left unanswered tell us more about the person to whom they are addressed than a thousand pompous posts by pseudonymous personages attempting to justify their failure to answer the central question of this discourse.

“In real discussion what is important is not so much the answers that are given,but rather the questions that are asked.”

Sadly, this philosophy is wasted on most people. It’s like when you’re in the countryside, and someone asks you for directions to the local pub, and instead, for a bit of a laugh, you direct them round the houses, up a creek, and into a sewage pit. And then they complain! Because you’ve covered them in shit! The idiots. From now on I’ll explain that my *answers* were not important; what was important was the fact that they had *asked* how to get to the pub. That should shut them up.

But seriously, strange multi-faceted entity, what did you mean by being a ‘truth seeker’? Do you know what truth you’re looking for?

“You guys will find it instructive to visit comment boards on sites where research is valued and each point on a topic is evaluated by contributors on the basis of its validity as thinking or sustainable argument”.

Probably true. Any links you’d recommend?

“you seem obsessed with your own credibility and status”

Odd remark. I don’t see any of that here, except perhaps that guy who has to post as several different people, each backing up the other.

tony_opmoc – Yes – i meant “good”. I think what you’re getting at about the dancing (which i’m also crap at) is that no-one needs to be good at everything.

That’s true – and i suspect there are lots of people who would make very good plumbers, carpenters or electricians and who might have gone on from those careers to take degrees in other professions who have been denied any chance because of the shortage of apprenticeships in the UK and the false idea that people are either academically inclined from the start or else stupid.

I’m not saying most people aren’t able – but ability varies – you get geniuses like Stephen Hawking and you get people who are less intelligent than average. Education and upbringing can influence that, but a pure meritocracy would still punish people who did their best, while rewarding people who happened to be born very intelligent and very good at making money (i’m not saying a lot of people who make money don’t work hard to earn it – a lot of them do – some of them don’t)

Glenn – I agree with everything you wrote.

As you and Craig both point out Britain is nothing like a meritocracy. Geoff Hoon and Stephen Byers became government ministers and Blair Prime Minister – but all they’re good at is manipulation and social networking (and Hoon isnt even much good at those), but a pure meritocracy could still mean massive inequality, could still mean some people earning billions and others in poverty, could still mean over-rewarding some and punishing others.

It might only change who is at the top of the pyramid and who is at the bottom, unless there are some safeguards to prevent anyone getting a bigger share than they could possibly need and anyone getting so little they couldn’t survive on it.

“The working class – much of which has no prospect of work – still clings to New Labour.”

WHY? If you take a look at the areas which have returned Labour MPs since 1945 (and often before)they are always the most socially deprived areas of the country. So, just what has Labour done for these people?

You really have to ask just why this appalling government stands any chance of re-election. Yet, it does. Such is the lack of connection between the Cameroons and the general public.

suhayl

Are you clinically insane?

You seem to think your place on the comment board is to interrogate all visitors under a bright light.

Are they anti-imperialist,anti-semite,BNP etc.? They must all into line with your silly,adolescent politically correct view of the world.

Sadly you and your pal,arsalan-our resident pop psychologists-have still not learned to think for yourselves.

How else do we explain the repetitive recourse to lumping the real researchers here:Freeborn,Steelback et al together as one person-and then reciting a Thatcher-like mantra re-them being the enemy within/anti-Christ etc.

Whereas the researchers’ view of the world consistently challenges official narratives re-War on Terror,911,left/right paradigm etc. you guys insist on all visitors declaring an a priori allegiance to your own absurdly adolescent naive endorsement of the such official mythologies.

Grow up for Christ’s sake!

The first questions I would ask in any interrogation of visitors would be:

ARE YOU OLD ENOUGH TO USE THIS SITE?

DO YOU HAVE THE ATTENTION-SPAN TO ADDRESS THE THREAD TOPIC?

ARE YOU AWARE THAT SARCASM IS THE LOWEST FORM OF WIT-Only oilman need answer this one!

Whereas because you lack the basic analytical capacity to discern where contributors are coming from you would ask such questions as:

ARE YOU A DISINFORMATION AGENT OF EMPIRE? suhayl will ask all visitors this one at some point of his own peculiarly inept choosing!

The question itself is revealing since it suggests a sort of undergraduate postcolonial studies school orthodoxy to which he seems to think it is mandatory for everyone else to subscribe.He sounds like Said in Culture of Imperialism writing about Kipling and Forster.

In other words suhayl wants to ask are we politically correct when the researchers that most peturb him- because they trouble his adherence to

the orthodoxy-have made it amply clear they are not!

ARE YOU IN THE BNP?

ARE YOU AGAINST THE WARS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ?

ARE YOU ANTI-ZIONIST or ANTI-SEMITE?

Two more favourites of Torquemarda…..sorry,suhayl.

Now while I am not-and this will disappoint those like oilman who like to squish us all the same compartment-party to what Freeborn,Steelback et al think on all these issues-I am pretty sure that they have all made it patently clear where they stand.

The failure to commit to any form of close reading on the part of these inquisitors can be the only possible reason for their still having to ask such facile questions.

Didn’t Steelback tell us he was on the 2m march in February 2003? I’m pretty sure he did.He’s written quite lengthily re-how he felt,like many of us who wonder how that war went ahead,let down by the anti-war movement’s failure to denounce the 911 fraud that was used to legitimize the whole War on Terror.

To tell a guy he’s got to come clean on his views after such a declaration of honesty must be pretty exasperating.

Are you just thick or are you a disinformation agent of Emp…..no, forget I asked that one!

Helllo, apostate, good afternoon! I think Suhayl can ask whatever he’d like to ask. If you choose not to answer that’s your busness, but don’t abuse the questioner, please. By the way, of course it is true that the official BNP line is anti the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.

I have another question for you. When I worked in a residential care home one of the residents, a young man who often thought he was Julius Caesar, used to have one question about any new careworker. And that question was: ‘Are they nice?’. Which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, an important question about anyone, no matter how much knowledge they claim to have.

So Apostate, ignore Suhayl if you must, but please answer Colin. Are you nice?

…Are you as ‘nice’ as a used-car salesman?

One of my relatives used to sell used cars; he was nice. Didn’t bully anyone, didn’t lie, didn’t cheat, didn’t hate, was in it to do a fair job for OK pay. Don’t get your point, Mr Giro.

“Whereas the researchers’ view of the world consistently challenges official narratives re-War on Terror,911,left/right paradigm”

I think you’ll find there are plenty here who agree with that and have done the same research as you.

Who is “oilman” by the way?

If ‘oilman’ is me, by any chance and is an attempt at a “play on words”, it fails miserably.

“ARE YOU AWARE THAT SARCASM IS THE LOWEST FORM OF WIT”

I disagree, and so do many others. Those who complain that it’s the lowest form of wit are generally its victims. Who can forget Basil Fawlty?

“What did you expect to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically …?”

“How else do we explain the repetitive recourse to lumping the real researchers here:Freeborn,Steelback et al together as one person”

Well, first of all there’s the content.

Secondly, there’s your typing. I qualified as a keyboard teacher many years ago, and ended up writing for a living, so I tend to notice. I’ll put my life savings on you being one and the same person.

But that’s what they say about trolls – that they introduce other persona to pretend that they have support.

“suhayl

Are you clinically insane?”

That’s just SO Larry.

“Secondly, there’s your typing”.

Yup, it’s your mannerism of never putting a space after full stops, commas and dashes. Have you not noticed in all your researchin’ that everyone else does?

Apostate

I have mentioned being on STW marches ad infinitum but given the attention span of these dickheads-several of whom-oilman,MJ,techni et al-I tend to think turned up on the 911 thread debating Larry…(?!) I might just as well have said I’d met the man in the moon!

I think their brains are totally addled by drugs and the corporate media they simply bcan’t follow the discussion-end of story.

Their new debating line has changed from ARE YOU POLITICALLY CORRECT to ARE YOU NICE?

Ugh!

Like you said Apostate these mindless adolescent dingbats are utterly out of their depth.

P.S.Are you nice? Do you do nice?

P.P.S.Maybe that’s what techni and oliman ask when campaigners come knocking.

Utter dingbats!

Come back Larry and angri then when the “debates” between them and the adolescents start we can just visit this site just for sheer entertainment value.

LOL!

mindless, adolescent, dingbats, disinformation agents.

morons, nutjobs, batshit crazy, conspiraloons.

Hmmm…

Anyhow Steelback, before you jump to conclusions about attention spans, I recall that months ago you said you had been involved with the Left but had become disillusioned because they wouldn’t acknowledge the role of Israel/Zionists in global politics for fear of being labelled “anti-semitic”.

Naturally, not long after Freeborn or Apostate popped up offering total agreement with your views.

Hope you’re impressed and wish to reconsider your rather rash comment about attention spans. For what it’s worth I agree with you about the Left having a regrettable blind spot about Israel/Zionism.

That was me.

Thank you, apostate. I appreciate you answering my questions. I think that you are very nice person who is pretending not to be. Emerlist Davjack.

Although sometimes in affect you remind me of a Maoist I once knew. Here come the nice…!

“Emerlist Davjack”

Blimey, you’re going back a bit there Suhayl.

Good album. Before it all got too ponderous. Some of the best prog-rock actually was played and recorded in Eastern Europe.

Speaking for myself I despise the English working class much like my Dad before me.

At the time my Dad’s prejudices seemed quite abhorrent and unjust.Now,in retrospect long after his demise I realise he was proselytizing for a way of life-now fast on the way to extinction to which he wanted all his children to aspire.

Being brought up in such a conventional a middle class family environment all I wanted to do was rebel.In the 1970s middle class kids like me looked up to the working class because to us they were the ultimate rebels.They did all the stuff that appalled our parents.They drank in pubs.They had powerful unions that went on strike and forced the bosses to back down.They played games we liked like darts and football.They had their own youth culture.

All the sociology textbooks seemed to be written by working class grammar school ex-pupils.They did studies where conventional middle class professions were denigrated and ridiculed.One to which my Dad took great exception to was by David Lockwood.It was called,The Black-Coated Worker.

My Dad who wore a black suit and bowler hat to work said it made them sound like beetles on the march!

Macho working class car workers and miners were lauded by their “neutral” participant observers for their community spirit and solidarity.

The working class and their accents dominated film,theatre and TV.They were cloth cap cool,man!

Contrastingly the middle classes were conventional and effete.Their insecurities about losing everything and dropping into the working class seemed frankly absurd.Today those fears seem quite prescient.My Dad deserves some credit after all.

The “deferred gratification” that was said by sociologists to distinguish the middle from their working class counterparts was just boring.We preferred what we perceived was the working class aspiration to have the world and to have it…..well,NOW of course.

Marxism we learned when we studied Sociology in school taught us to despise the bourgeoisie and we certainly did that.It was just cooler to be a working class hero.

Then Thatcherism came along and changed everything.It was then we learned how the working class worshipped Mammon.All they wanted to be was middle class so they shat on their own people and the much vaunted class loyalty of the proletariat was smashed during the miner’s strike.

George Carlin used to say there was no-one more bitter than the idealist who came to discover that his plan for human perfectibility was but an impossible dream.How ironic that the idealist was bound to end up as the worst kind of cynic.

Thus it was that Thatcherism and its appeal to the working class left many a middle class idealist with a life-long grudge against against the people who so badly let him down.

Now the working class are feckless heiffer lumps with dysfunctional family backgrounds and learning difficulties.People who are shaped completely by their environment and have no capacity or desire to change it.

These people once had communities they could be proud of and a class solidarity that seemed awesome from the point of view of middle class kids like me whose parents seemed cowed and unduly respectful of the system and the elites above them who dominated it.

Now their gemeinschaft community structures have broken down and they prey on the most vulnerable in their own backyards.

They are on the point of losing much more as the elite Final Solution moves forward.

Who and where are the working class in the elite plan?

They’re the “useless eaters” of course.Their dependence on the very public services that are on the point of collapse will determine their fate.

They always said over the decades as their influence waned that it didn’t matter who they voted for “cos they’re all the same” etc.

That was about the only thing they worked out for themselves.

Now it’s too late for them-and it’s probably “Good night” from us,the middle class who are now left standing,as well.

On the Coming Collapse/Final Solution see Niall Ferguson’s most recent piece in Foreign Affairs or any piece on same topic by Engdahl,Hedges or my favourite,Gerald Celente.

Freborn: “Now the working class are feckless heiffer lumps with dysfunctional family backgrounds and learning difficulties.”

I can’t see that going down well in a party political broadcast. Also, thank goodness, it’s not true. I don’t know what your salary is, but you try fighting the machine on £50 a week as a single father. If you survive the day, as Charlie Parker once said, it deserves trumpets.

But at least our thoughts are free. Try it. You’re not so far away, maybe. ‘Heffalump’ comes from Winnie the Pooh, originally: now that was a nice book.

Youz mitey hard on all ussa heffer lumps,Massa Freebon.

Down St Louis we hate der people wot lef dare own to goan makin’ dollars an’nickels offa back sum ol’cathouse in the desert.

I gess yu noze who I meanz Massa Free?

P.S.I reckon yu sure dam rite on bout dem adolecents anna shills too.

P.P.S.Massa tungstein say yo bio like a bref a fresh air.He reedin’ it now wile drinkin’ol’Larry’s licker.He say he goan looka up dat Nil Fergus stuff too.

Bravo,Massa Freebon’!

Ah, juniper, how lovely to read more of your work. But I think we’ve all got where you’re coming from, so why don’t you save your fingers and do some knitting instead? Meanwhile, with your cod ‘black persons’ talk, you could always try stand-up in Brixton. I would be very happy to witness the results!

Unless I’ve missed something, an entire discussion thread concerning class and social mobility has petered out, without anybody so much as mentioning inherited wealth. Surely, in order to have anything even faintly resembling a meritocracy, inherited wealth must be capped. I’m not talking about a few hundred thousand or even a few millions, that would be ‘politics of envy’ territory. What I’m talking about is the inheritance of assets so vast that they represent a degree of political influence that should be unacceptable to a democratic society.

Freeborn, thanks for that very intriguing and moving history and the references. Yes, the trajectory of political consciousness and activism in the UK is a dispiriting one; I, along with many others, shared those feelings esp. during 1980s-and-on. It shapes one – everyone, not just the groups defined culturally as ‘working class’ (though of course, if we’re on a wage or salary, we are working class).

Were you a Mod, by any chance?

Those who know a lot about gold seem to have a handle on the underlying macro-economic rubric. Still, as technicolour rightly points out, even today not everybody is brain-dead – but will it make a difference? Will a trumpet solo sound – from either ‘Bird’ or Israfil (Raphael)? I hope so.

“What I’m talking about is the inheritance of assets so vast that they represent a degree of political influence that should be unacceptable to a democratic society.” MarkU

Absolutely.

MarkU, I think the reason the thread has petered out is

a) Class, pfui. Eton may have produced Cameron, but it also produced Orwell. Who’s to say the latter should have been silenced because he sounded posh?

b) Unscrupulous use of contacts and peers and pursuit of personal power is not limited to class

c) It is, really, not what you know, or who you know, but who you are

d) And yet it’s all so unfair.

The problem is that we know what the problem is. We now have to find the answers. The thing is, I think it will take about 300 years to sort this out seriously, and the short term measures currently being proposed do not go far enough to alleviate real suffering (hunger, homelessness, dying of the cold) even in this country, in the meantime.

Did I say ‘do not go far enough’? I meant ‘do not’.

On working class heroes a must read is Nick Warren’s memoir about his Dad:the great Dessie Warren.It’s called 30 Years in a Turtleneck Sweater.

Dessie was one of the Shrewsbury pickets who included scouser actor/comedian,Ricky Tomlinson.They were imprisoned under 1970s Tory anti-trade union legislation restricting the right to picket.

Dessie refused to do a deal with the authorities that would have got him early release.Dessie’s son,Nick took on the paternal role in the family while his father was inside.

Naturally Nick resented his father when he finally got out for putting his principles before the family.

The book is a retrospective tribute to Dessie the class fighter and I cannot recommend it highly enough.It gains much of its emotional power from the fact that Nick is obviously quite apolitical but has since his father’s death come to understand that Dessie fought for what he believed in.In the end no-one can ask more of anyone.Not even his own son.

Dessie’s speech on being sent down in 1973 spoke of an elite conspiracy against the unions.Ironically,of course,it was conspiracy legislation that was being used to prosecute them!

“The working class movement cannot allow this verdict to go unchallenged.It is yet another step along the road to fascism and I would remind you:the greatest heroes in Nazi Germany were those who challenged the law when it was used against them as a political weapon by a government acting for a minority of evil men.”

It’s poignant and stirring stuff that will remind Freeborn of just how cool it really was once to be working class.

Sadly now in the days of co-opted union leaders now in Cabinet and the Lords we won’t see the likes of Dessie Warren again.

RIP Dessie.

Uh oh, I think the bots are learning. Steelback ‘disagreeing’ with Freeborn? Good game, guys. And yet, somewhere, there’s a smidgeon of something. Am I wrong? Could you give up the BNP? Would you be writers instead? Poets? Songsmiths? Lovers? Dreamers? Academics? Where would it lead you? Only away from damage and destruction, which I would not wish on you, or anyone.

I’m going to get it through the library. What a great title! Have you read Glaswegian, Stuart Christie’s book, I think it’s called ‘Granny Made Me an Anarchist’? The title reminded me of that of the song, ‘Granny Takes a Trip’ by The Purple Gang, a kind of whimsical 1920s-style pastiche.

This is about my pal, Willie Maley’s father:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Maley

Willie and his brother wrote a play about their father’s life.

Steel

Read it,mate.Loved it too.

suhayl

Maybe you were in Torra Borra when the Mods were around.Even I was too young for that particular youth culture.Anyway like most such-it was working class.How could I possibly be part of a working class youth culture?

A pint-real ale only of course,a game of darts,football yes- but running around on a Vesper and popping purple hearts?

Get real,pal.Think I’m some kind of bloody oik,or what?

No, no, you see the Mods drew in youth from various social classes. During the 1960s, they were mainly a London phenomenon (though later ‘waves’ encompassed broader geographies) and quite a few middle-class lads became Mods. Their taste in clothes was derided by their rivals, the Rockers, as being effete, middle-class. Of course, the whole thing could not have happened in the way it did in the absence of the British class system. There were different groups of Mods: the ‘hard’ Mods later evolved (if that’s the right word) into skinheads, while some of the ‘soft’ Mods became hippie-types – and not all of these were middle-class, eg. the Kentish Town Mod group, ‘The Action’. This is a simplification, obviously, but it makes an interesting study.

Lambretta.

Ware da fuck Brickstown,man?

Who yu sayin’ warein’ a cod-peece? Iz mitey big sho’nuff dere’bouts anyways widout puttin’ on sum kina piece,man!

Maybe I can’t speke as good as ol’venerable Doctor Du Boyz but I noze horseshite when I smells it,boy!

Larry,angri,suhayl,techni an’dat guy wid crabs wot finely got him izza alla’bunch a horseshite sho’nuff!

One final queshun for yu Massa techni.Yu nefer herd a gal call Zora from down Florida? Her books fulla peepl talkin’ jussa likka me.Dem dayz dem literaree critics all sed she demeaning her peeple an’ all wid characturin’ dem likka minstrels an stuff.

Well,today Missa Zora wot rote Dare Eyes Woza Wachin’ God anna Jonah’s Gourd Vine reconized as one da gratest chroniclers a’ da African-American Esperienze ever lived.Hell,gals likka Toni Morris anna Alice Walka jussa worship da groun’ she walked on!

Jussa like me,Missa Zora din need no high falutin’ talk anna codpiece.

So,Massa techni you dam shill-yu jussa takka yo’ codpeese anna stick it inna yo’pipe anna smoke it,boy!

Come on, Freeborn, you’ve seen Quadrophenia. You can’t be that much younger than me, and one of my best friends was a Mod, who joined the ICF. And why would Suhayl have been in Tora Bora? Come on Freeborn, people who work – the working class – are beautiful, and if they’re not being ground down by poverty and hardship and cynicism, more so. We know that.

And Freeborn, if you’re a fighter, and want to punch things, get a punchbag, not other people. It’s OK, to be that scared though.

If it’s working class history you want read Phil Piratin’s Our Flag Stays Red.

Piratin and Willie Gallacher were the two communist MPs returned in the 1945 election.Both lost their seats after one term only.

Piratin’s account of the rent strikes in Stepney and the Battle of Cable Street when the East Enders turned out en masse to repel the Mosleyite fascists and their police allies is quite unforgettable.

Evidently the locals laid a trap that cornered the police trying to railroad Mosley’s march through Aldgate,Stepney and further East in a side street.At this point women in a local lemonade factory began pelting the police on horseback with the huge glass bottle-stoppers they used in those days.

The police took one Hell of a pasting before promptly “surrendering” to the locals who not expecting this outcome took the police helmets for souvenirs of the great victory of what was remembered for a long time in that part of London as the Battle of Cable Street.

During the war,according to Piratin,it was the communists who broke down the gates to the Underground so that working class people could shelter from the Blitz.They also gate-crashed the Savoy in protest at the elite’s extravagance there in the war years.

Check out Phil’s obit in The Indie.

“A Working Class Hero is something to be”-John Lennon.

Enjoy,Freeborn!

P.S.Wasn’t there an English Leveller called “Freeborn”,George I think? I read about him in Paul Foot’s The Vote.

You know, Freeborn, Apostate et al, although you’re sounding more rational, I still suspect that you’re only talkking to each other. Come on, tell us, what music do you enjoy?

technicolor: there’s only one prog-rock band worth bothering with these days. King Crimson.

“They also gate-crashed the Savoy in protest at the elite’s extravagance there in the war years”.

Yes, and as a result it was made illegal during the war years for posh restaurants to charge more than 5 shillings for a meal, ending conspicuous extravagence in this regard virtually overnight.

Ok, MJ, thanks, will try (icon with sunglasses) Meantime, could you answer my question about knee-jerk left-wing support for Israel (full text above). I’m interested, not defensive!

Spirogyra, pals of Steve Harley. Brilliant stuff.

‘The People’s War’, Angus Calder. Angus died a couple of years ago – a much under-sung and brilliant historian.

technicolor: I’ll be happy to – a bit later. It’s quite complicated and I’ve just had a couple of glasses of wine with my dinner…

Quadrophenia? The Who-too much like bloody oiks,man.Though Townsend sounds well-spoken;Daltrey was or claimed to be from a more McVicar(w.c.)-at least he said he did when he played him in the movie-background.The only other one I remember the name of is John Entwhistle-could be w.c.?

Their sound was a bit primitive and they were “commercial” which was a fatal flaw for a lot of us back in those days.

Do a commercial single and you alienated your whole fan base.Zep were above that.In fact they were so arrogant they put out an album that didn’t even have their name on it:the “Runes” LP or Led Zep IV.

Atlantic were mortified naturally but with a fan base as huge as Zep’s they needn’t have worried! It sold and went platinum,silver then gold troppo rapido like the rest of them containing as it did classic tracks like Stairway To Heaven.

Led Zep had a mystique and aura about them that came from their deliberately eschewing patently commercial ventures.Ironically the Top of the Pops show always started with an instrumental version of their signature tune Whole Lotta Love.It was a show which they made a virtue of never deigning to appear on.

Paradoxically the non-commercial strategy studiously followed by all these bands was a modus operandi that ensured that they became very rich indeed!

When Bonham died on a mammoth binge in 1982 it was found he’d bought up huge swathes of arable land across Wiltshire though typically for the time he died intestate.

Earls Court,1975-I was there.Zep came out of the folk-blues scene.They could be acoustic or killingly powerful,especially with Bonham on drums.

I don’t think any of them were working class.John Paul Jones was public school and I suspect the other three were grammar school.They were all quite posh,really.Certainly not Mods!

Nodder Holder,a Wolverhampton lad who went on to find fame with Slade was like the rest of the “suede-heads”/two-toners-working class.They were all former roadies for Zep!

Anyway back to the working class.What happened to all the strikes they won,the yoof cultures that made British life so vibrant,the radical heroes?

All gone….wait while I write an Obit for the working class!

My Obit would certainly NOT include words like “beautiful”.Their women are not worth looking at after they’ve hit 25.Remember Christine Keeler or Anita Pallenberg-they deteriorated big time, dude.

And the blokes? Fuckin’ hideous-all tattoos,pig ignorant with big chips on their shoulders!

Beautiful they are not.Techni-you sound like some aging hippie stoned on pot,man! In fact you’d have to be on something to find them beautiful.Why do you think Lowry painted them from a distance as matchsticks for God’s sake?

Beautiful my arse!

juniper saw you off,mate.I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy is a sort of Henry Louis Gates professor type pretending to be…..working class!

One things for sure-juniper’s a dark horse-forgive the pun P.C. police.LOL!

The Small Faces, The Artwoods (Keef Hartley, John Lord), The Birds (Ron Wood), The Creation, The Action, The Steampacket (with ‘Rod the Mod’ Stewart, Julie Driscoll-now-Tippets and Long John Baldry), The Syndicats (Steve Howe), David Jones (Bowie) and the Mannish Boys were all Mod groups. There were many more. Some of them were a mixture of working class and middle class, but they were basically working class guys who might’ve been to Art School, that was the ’60s route. Marc Bolan was a London Jewish lad and was also a Mod; a lot of Jewish guys who were into the scene at all were Mods in London. In other words, it was very mixed. The Mods listened to Jamaican and US ‘black’ music.

Zep were fantastic. I never saw them live though. The occult stuff was a bit freaky – they toned that down after Plant’s young son died, I think.

‘Whole Lotta Love’ for TOTP was Alexis Korner’s (instrumental) version of their song.

Terry Reid ought to have been the lead singer; famously, he also turned-down the offer of being lead singer in Deep Purple, Mark II; it went to Ian Gillan instead. But Plant made it his own. ‘Kashmir’ is paradise. The song, that is. Did you get the Page-Plant-Moroccan musicians album from 1994?

Apostate

Piratin was Jewish and you’re an ANTI-SEMITE,right?

Reckon these guys have got egg on their faces! That Franfurt conditioning screwed up their powers of perception big time!

Interestingly there were of course Jews on Moseley’s side too.Gershon Mendelof more popularly known as Kid Lewis the boxer as well fighting professionally at Olympia may also have been one of Moseley’s notorious bouncers on the night of the infamous fascist rally there in 1936.

It was Piratin’s experience of seeing leftists brutally ejected from the arena on that night that led him to join the CPB.

Kid Lewis’s fascist involvement is not mentioned in his wiki entry but he was one of Moseley’s “Biff-Boy” bodyguards.

When Lewis finally wised up to Moseley’s anti-semitism he paid him a visit and all Hell broke loose:

http://www.anteprizering.com/ttlewiscut.html

Pallenburg was Italian-German and was not working-class. The drugs and demonia did for her. James Fox (actor) has an interesting tale to tell about her. ‘Performance’ was a great film, I thought. I was had the privilege of meeting the producer, Sandy Lieberson; the co-director, a Scot named Donald Cammell, much later shot himself in the head.

You really can’t generalise about the majority of British people in that way, well you can, but it’s not accurate.

People know what’s going on. Yeah, sure there are idiots and systemic social decay, etc., as well a reduction in effective literacy and Lennon’s Working Class Hero-dynamic was alive even then and now it’s the norm, we all know this, and the ‘organised’ Left is not a mass movement any more, but really it’s the educated, chattering middle classes in Britain who’ve been brainwashed most completely. Anyone who’s had contact with actual people will come to realise this.

Cynicism is a natural, but defeatist, position to take. You have to adopt the long view. Read the last paragraph of ‘Middlemarch’.

Yes, humanity, and human history, is full of paradox. So, there are Bedouin Arabs (Muslims) who fight in the Israeli Army and there is (one) Sikh who has joined the BNP. There’s also of course the ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ (Franz Fanon) phenomenon in Africa. The collusion b/w Zionists and Nazis has been alluded to elsewhere on this blog. Some American Indian tribes had black slaves; divide-and-rule meant that some tribes fought with the Confederate Army during the US Civil War. But then, Indians fought with the British Army in Africa, etc. The Romans did it too – Syrian troops on Hadrian’s Wall and British troops in Syria.

The miners’ strike was emblematic. The Notts miners and the dockers did not display solidarity. MI5 had infiltrated the highest levels of the NUM; in retrospect, the miners didn’t have a chance. One thinks of names like Kim Howells (allegedly) and Roger Windsor (allegedly). Mick McGahey, an honourable man, was a victim of MI5; his hotel room in London was bugged. Scargill, too, dirty tricks were played against him constantly. The govt were ready to call in The Army, though. I remember our car being stopped by the police somewhere in eastern England and the cops asking whether we were miners. Did we look like miners…? I remember being shocked at the time. The cops were preventing people from traveling from A to B to C. That was the beginning of the in-yer-face security state we have now. ‘The enemy within’, as Thatcher called it.

“Did you get the Page-Plant-Moroccan musicians album from 1994?”

I did. Still play it. The version of Kashmir is sublime. Ditto the radically rejigged version of Nobody’s Fault But Mine off Presence.

“The govt were ready to call in The Army”

The army was called in, according to quite strong anecdotal evidence. Several miners reported seeing brothers, cousins etc who were in the armed forces, dressed in police uniforms alongside the regular police.

‘…it’s the educated, chattering middle classes in Britain who’ve been brainwashed most completely.’

This is exactly what I’ve found though there are exceptions, some who know exactly what’s going and getting prepared. But the majority live in a world that has no place in reality. Their trust is almost absolute in the ultimate benevolence of their government. And this is how the government gets away with individual and mass murder, torture, theft of their taxes through setting up VAT carousel frauds, etc, etc

Oh I see, now it’s the ‘educated chattering classes’ who’ve been brainwashed & are to blame. Not the ‘toffs’. Or as Steelback would have it, the working class heffer lumps.

I guess all you people must be pretty pleased with yourselves. I wish I belonged in a ‘not them’ group too.

Night.

technicolour: Why on earth should I be pleased with myself? My particular well being is of little significance compared to those murdered, imprisoned and brutalised by our government.

I must say that in my experience if you challenge someone from the middle classes with the proposition that the government was involved say in the July bombings they get very tetchy and feel personally attacked whereras if you discuss the matter with someone from Europe you get a reasonable response.

I don’t think one can ‘blame’ a whole demographic, that wasn’t my point, technicolour. In some ways, perhaps we’re all to ‘blame’. I’ve just had so many tiring and dispiriting conversations with highly educated people (people like me!) who seem to find all kinds of convoluted reasons for assigning benificence to the state on a particular issue when an outside observer – even sometimes one with a lot less education, etc. – might have had no hesitation in cutting through the fog and seing reality for what it is. They used to call it ‘false consciousness’. It’s not the preserve of any single demographic group, of course, and it manifests in different ways across the social spectrum. Btw, this specific dynamic doesn’t just apply to the UK, though it’s rather well-developed here. I guess it’s always easier to spot the faults of ‘others’. I certainly don’t have a monopoly on truth (!) and am learning (or at least am trying to) all the time.

This is what people are being asked to post on their Facebook page:

“If you work for British Airways and have been on strike this week, next time you see a soldier who’s returned from Afghanistan make sure you tell him/her about your awful working conditions, poor uniform and low pay!!! Let me know how you get on!!! Copy and paste this for all our troops!!”

Ruth, on the contrary, I think your well-being is rather important. I’m not sure what the July bombings have to do with anything, but when you say ‘middle classes’ I think of the two women who started Greenham Common. Perhaps people just don’t want to hear about the July bombings on top of everything?

Suhayl: I understand. I do find generalisations about classes reductive and frustrating. And once one disposes of the toffs, the bourgeoisie and the hoi polloi, as this thread was starting to, there’s no one left to talk to.

I think you’re right, and people in the UK tend to assume the government’s benificence; possibly because people are fairly decent on the whole, so they tend to assume it in others. On the other hand, of course, people who benefit most from the state of affairs are those most likely to try and support it.

Strange, because the state of affairs is clearly insupportable, and we are all going down together. I suppose the ‘false consciousness’ could be protective colouration. I increasingly feel quite sorry for everyone in this awful mess, including the people who are trying to tell themselves that 2 plus 2 equals 5.

Have a very good day, everyone. Can recommend Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine for refreshment.

In today’s world, the ruling class has become pretty much invisible. The most powerful way they stop the stop us from turning against them is by using immigrants and ethnic minorities as scapegoats for the social and economic problems they have created. That’s why Malcolm X was spot on when he said you can’t have capitalism without racism.

Well,it might be possible to have genuine capitalism without racism but – as Noam Chomsky points out – the rich and powerful would never allow genuine capitalism to evolve and thrive.

Vis-a-vis, they will continue to use the divide and rule tactic that Malcolm X alluded to, as the gap between the rich and the poor gets even wider.

Do you agree?

@Tony_S, regarding your Facebook phrase, it is designed to generate a culture that is anti-union and pro-Afghanistan-war, even for posters who are not specifically either of these things.

Accordingly, I won’t be posting it. It may be a meme started by the right-wing tabloids anyway.

Tony S ?” I agree that Racism and free market capitalism are incompatible, since free market capitalism (by free market capitalism I don’t mean Crony Capitalism as practiced in The City, or Gangster Capitalism, or Corporatist forms of Monopoly Capitalism) by definition requires an economic meritocracy and is colour blind. May I refer you to my comments, above, at March 26, 2010 4:08 PM, about meritocracy. Responding to your quote “the rich and powerful would never allow genuine capitalism to evolve and thrive.” All I can say is that they would have no choice if the people had the courage to demand real democracy. Indeed in a real democracy I would expect Trade Unionism to thrive, and I doubt there would be many wars.

@ Roderick Russell,

A ‘real’ democracy, based on courage, possibly ideals, would lead to fascism:

http://jimmygiro.blogspot.com/2008/05/democratic-fascism.html

The only democracy that can survive fascism is anarchy. Now that would take true courage.

Jimmy Giro – If you want decentralized control, then free market capitalism is about as good as it gets ?” though I have no problem with cooperative ownership either. I grew up on Clydeside proud of the great shipbuilding and (engineering) high tech centre that Glasgow was in these days (I’m 63). I was aware that these great industries had been built up by free market capitalism (with strong trade unionism also) and that by 1912 the Glasgow worker had the highest standard of living of any worker in the world. By 1980 his standard of living was the second lowest in the EU, after Naples. So, what went wrong? Centralized London control by people who knew damn all; excessive regulation; high taxes that stopped investment in new plant and machinery so that the industry became severally decapitalized and quickly became old fashioned. So what did the workers and management do ?” get together to push for low taxes so that one could reinvest, an end to London control? No. They fought each other like cats and dogs, and killed the industry. And where did the investment money go ?” it fled into tax havens with the help of the City and got reinvested overseas. Talk about cooking the goose.

I sympathise Rod, but the brutal truth is that the customer is always right; hence highly paid workers, and unions to protect their wages, lead to expensive products, which leads to lower market value.

JimmyGiro – When I first came to North America in the mid 1970′s I bough a North American Car (a Pontiac Grand Priz). It was bigger and better and faster than a Jaguar, and yet it cost less that the Mini I had had in the UK. Despite its cheap price, the workers in Detroit (who built it) were making far more than the British car workers who had build my Mini. Why – higher productivity, lower taxes (which is a cost), lower cost of capital leading to much higher capital investment. It seemed to me that the moral of the story was that free market capitalism had led not only to better wages for workers, but also to better and cheaper products for the consumer. Then look at Clydside’s decline. The main beneficiaries were the Japanese who were actually paying their workers better wages than the Glasgow shipyard worker at the time. Of course I am only referring to industries that can operate in a free market environment: I favour public ownership for monopolies ?” water, rail, etc.

Britain paid for ww2; USA had to build Fort Knox, just to house Britain’s gold.

Guess who could afford to pay their workers, and who couldn’t?

Not just ww2, Britain paid for ww1 as well and bankrupted itself in the process. But putting sky high taxes on British industry and the British worker didn’t make things better, it made them worse. With the help of the City of London, the capital simply disappeared offshore (it didn’t hang around to pay punitive taxes). The formula worked this way. Sky high taxes from Whitehall & Westminster (highest marginal rate up to 97.5% at one point) which killed industry by stopping investment, and caused friction between workers and management. Did the money that was not invested in the UK then go to pay the US debt – not bloody likely. The City funneled a good portion of it offshore through tax havens. Exchange controls – No problem at all for those with the right connections !

It is less that a decade since Britain finally settled its massive war debt overhang; but with the recent banking crisis the City has done it again burdening Britain for generations to come.

On such reflections, one should sit back and watch a little Question Time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYA0DsPcbaU