Cameron’s Old Etonian status is irrelevant. The whole business of running an election like a schoolboy debating society project is inane. In a serious (and successful)country like Singapore no such infantile nonsense is permitted.

Democracy – Two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner. (HL Mencken?)

Alastair

In what sense is Singapore succesful. nasty authoritarian miserable little place.

If GB had any of TB’s flair for the self serving political stunt he would be sending Royal Navy amphibious assault ships to Dunkirk to pick up stranded holidaymakers from the beaches. He could get some great shots of himself on the flight deck of HMS Ocean, HMS Bulwark or HMS Albion handing out steaming mugs of tea to grudgingly thankful Brit holidaymakers who don’t have the imagination or resourcefulness to get themselves home. It’s not as if these ships are doing anything important right now as we are currently only assaulting brown people in landlocked countries.

I thought that his comment that his wife was quite unorthodox since she went to a day school said it all really.

Alastair – and the alternative you’re suggesting is? Just let the wolves eat the sheep without bothering to vote first?

Craig

Whether Cameron (and many of the Labour Cabinet) went to public schools is irrelevant and by playing on you demean yourself. It’s also hypocritical – Nick Clegg went to Westminster, ffs.

What about judging people on “the content of their character”? And it’s the policies of Labour and Conservatives I worry about, not their individual and collective family background.

How about some more grown up analysis of why the current LD surge matters?

As a long-standing LD voter, what I really fear from all this is that all we will get is more LD votes without many more MPS as we’ll be second in almost every seat. Brown will then get back in through the back door, courtesy of the electoral arithmetic. Labour has had 13 years of gerrymandering the Boundary Commission (as the Tories did before), so that there are disproportionate numbers of seats in the Labour heartlands with smaller electorates than elsewhere.

If the national vote share was 29:29:29:13 Labour would have many more seats than any other party.

Call that democracy? Well I DON’T

Have you thought, Craig, that in fact Cameron’s performance might be exactly what was intended. If, as I am sure, the whole election processs is being manipulated into bringing in a coalition government, which, when the public are told how dire our economy really is, will transform into a government of National Unity. Everything is now in place to deal with public discontent with massive surveillance, censorship and of course the 28 day detention.

So Cameron in his ‘loser’ role did very well; the parties are getting closer and closer. Just what those who really pull the strings want.

more grown up analysis:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bElpIG_l0PY

John D. Monkey: “And it’s the policies of Labour and Conservatives I worry about, not their individual and collective family background.”

Yes, but the family backgrounds tell you something about the relationship between their stated policies and what they’d actually implement. In particular, it tells you who will have most influence over those differences.

Ruth

Err, no, I haven’t thought that.

John D Monkey

Everyone has a right to be forgiven and overcome their background. But Cameron cannot. It is not just the odd Old Etonian, it is the fact that we stand to be governed by a entire exclusive cabal of Old Etonians, and that is ow he wants it.

Ed Davies

“Yes, but the family backgrounds tell you something about the relationship between their stated policies and what they’d actually implement. In particular, it tells you who will have most influence over those differences.”

It tells you nothing of the sort. It merely confirms your prejudices about them. By their deeds ye shall know them.

In any case, most MPs are nowadays from pretty privileged backgrounds. Where are the Mick Claphams and dennis Skinners of yesteryear? All the parties choose disproportionate numbers of well-heeleed, Oxbridge types. The Labour party has recently parachuted The Hon Tristram Hunt (son of Lord Hunt of Chesterton) into Stoke on Trent Central.

Nick Clegg is Westminster and Cambridge. Chris Huhne Westminster, the Sorbonne and Oxford. Vince Cable, grammar school and Cambridge. So does this “tell you who will have most influence over those differences”? Like hell it does!

Playing the “toff” card won’t work, and is disreputable even if it did.

Craig

More playing the man not the ball.

Leaving the typos aside, what evidence is there for saying “we stand to be governed by a entire exclusive cabal of Old Etonians, and that is ow he wants it.”

Despicable and a lie! So William Hague, Ken Clarke, Liam Fox (brought up in a council house) all went to Eton, did they?

When you’re in a hole, stop digging!

I will never vote for the Tories. But ir’s because of their policies, not who their parents were.

PS

Can someone explain the visceral hatred evident in the media and the blogsphere for the products of Eton over those of all other schools for the rich and privileged?

As a mere grammar school 60s lefty, I still don’t understand. Is it the uniform, the accent, the arrogance bordering on serenity, or what?

Or is it just lazy shorthand?

‘:’ at 12:12 PM “It tells you nothing of the sort. It merely confirms your prejudices about them. By their deeds ye shall know them.”

You are right, I didn’t put it well. Craig did much better at 12:04. It’s not their backgrounds as such, it’s their current associates which need consideration. I was confusing the two as it doesn’t seem like there’s much distinction in, say, Cameron’s case. From the little I know about him, it seems there’s much more in Clegg’s.

Were you buggered by an Etonian, Craig? Your new boss, NC, is just as posh. His fag was Louis Theroux, who hand-delivered Nick his copy of the Telegraph everyday.

PS you sound posher than both of them.

Now everyone, after three…one…two..

http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/lord-ashcroft-conservative-party-donor-2953499

Very much agree with post.

The last sentence will stay with me for a very long time

When I hear Cameron I think of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKFjWR7X5dU

I recall a scene from the excellent series “The West Wing” where a political campaigner says that to win the presidency, the candidate has to believe that he has been Chosen, which is what gives him the ability to make decisions that affect other people’s welfare in a big way. I believe that Blair had more of this than Brown, but he compromised it by wanting too much to be a sop to the Americans. Thatcher was at least her own lady.

Thus what matters is a true sense of destiny, and I wonder whether any of the three major leaders have it. Desire for power is not the same thing.

I would point out that George Orwell went to Eton. It may be a posh school but it is probably quite a good school as well and in any case attendance at the place should not automatically disqualify you as a person who may have sound political views and judgements. Nor should ‘Eton’ be used automatically as a kind of insult.

Your new leader when to Westminister, why is this any different?

Craig, the posts on this blog in recent days have been rather intemperate and they undermine arguments that you might wish to make on this or any other topic.

Ruth is on the money again. It’s about manufacturing a government of National Unity, there really is no other way to explain the overboard headlines over Clegg, with the latest, in The Times, being that he is now ‘the most popular leader’ since Churchill… you’d think ‘leader’ would be limited to leaders of countries rather than of a political faction that would fit into 5 telephone boxes

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/aug/19/sillyseason.media

But still.

I fully appreciate that if the Lib Dems perform spectacularly at the election that they may need 1 or 2 extra phone boxes.

This may sound foolish, but what is a government of National Unity, exactly?

Do people mean a hung parliament? If so, I can’t see it would be worse to have a moderate force in the centre of this. How could it be?

Just tried to post, but it vanished, so apologies if it appears twice. Quite a few posts seem to be vanishing.

Anyway, I wanted to know, what is this ‘government of National Unity’ of which people speak so gloomily?

Do they mean a hung parliament? If so, what could be worse about having a moderate force in the centre?

“what is this ‘government of National Unity’ of which people speak so gloomily? Do they mean a hung parliament?”

technicolor: it starts with a hung parliament, ie no party with an overall majority. Then instead of having another election the parties put their heads together and (with a little discreet encouragemnet from above) and agree to a multi-party government.

The reason some of us are gloomy about this is that opposition effectively disappears and it becomes a platform to push through swingeing austerity measures and other undesirable things which we would have no power to do anything about. It might be a kind of backdoor route to a one-party state.

Ruth

http://tinyurl.com/yyexrxk

“Do people mean a hung parliament? If so, I can’t see it would be worse to have a moderate force in the centre of this. How could it be?”

The problem with your reasoning is to suppose that a moderate set of policies would emerge from a hung parliament that decided against the simple expedient of fresh elections and engaged on a Government of National Unity.

The idea is to share the pain out equally, thereby avoiding one party becoming tarred for however long with implementing the necessary cuts, but the real clincher is that the Establishment is reaching a dead end where policy is a direct response to fundamental economic issues regarding energy resources. We’re already entering One Party State territory over the Afghan war, 77% of the British public against and all three main parties in favour. A Government of National Unity would just be the rollout of open One Party Rule with the added bonus of closing off all routes to representation of the BNP, UKIP etc as public desperation for any other political course crystallises.

Dan,

The style of this blog is polemical – always has been, I think. It is not meant to be balanced.

Further to George’s link this one is quite scary too:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17826

MJ

http://tinyurl.com/y2cjwhc

What difference does it make which of the three tedious Scotchman the English vote for, if they bother to vote at all, which most probably will not. They’ll still be sending young men off to the war in Afghanistan that 64% of the public think is a lost cause.

http://tinyurl.com/yfkclfw

And they will get no cap on immigration, although 75% of the population consider mass immigration to have been a failure.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y5q6uut

As an exercise in democracy, the election seems to be shaping up as a total failure.

Unless folks vote for the other parties that aren’t allowed to participate in the debate at all. You know, BNP, bring the troops home now, end immigration now, EU out.

But I’ll leave now before the howls begin: Nazi, fascist, racist, blah, blah, blah.

Oops! I see Clogg is not a Scotchman. He’s a Russian toff. That’s if you call a redbrick Cambridge college founded by a TV rental tycoon and ranking somewhere below Trinity Hall on Cambridge’s scale of academic toffness a toff school.

No need to shout Nazi at you, anonymous. You do know the BNP leader talks happily of ‘obliterating Afghan cities’? don’t you? I believe it’s on Youtube if you look. The party leadership is not quite the peaceful bunch you seem to imagine. I suggest you visit the Hope not Hate site too. Lots of interesting background as to why people might shout ‘Nazi’ at them.

What is particularly 18th century about Eton College? It was, after all, founded in the 15th century. Among its alumni are Sir John Harington (inventor of the water closet), Robert Boyle (a fairly useful scientist), Robert Walpole (generally considered Britain’s first prime minister), Pitt the Elder (Pitt the Younger being so bright he skipped school altogether and went straight to Oxford), Thomas Gray the poet, Howe, Wellington, Herschel, Shelley, Tennyson, Gladstone, Kean, Balfour, M.R. James, John Maynard Keynes, Julian and Aldous Huxley, Arthur Lyttelton (“Colonial Secretary and England footballer” – they don’t make ‘em like that any more), George Orwell, Ian Fleming, Freddy Ayer, Fitzroy Maclean, Ludovic Kennedy, Humphrey Lyttelton, Bamber Gascoigne, Ranulph Fiennes, Hugh Laurie, BoJo…

A mixed bunch, but not exactly a uniform gang of unoriginal, toffee-nosed snobs either. And I speak without fear or favour, as an alumnus of that older, less bumptious and (very probably) more distinguished college, Winchester.

Oh, I forgot to mention… some time, look up how many VCs have been won by Old Etonians. You might be quite impressed. (And VCs are not handed out with old school ties, by the way).

“And I speak without fear or favour, as an alumnus of that older, less bumptious and (very probably) more distinguished college, Winchester.”

That’s right, because you went to a different institution for toffs, you’re somehow incredibly unbiased on the entire subject.

Re: Government of National Unity: I think we effectively have one: Conservative opposition to the legislative totalitarianism of New Labour has been non-existent.

Nor is having two sides shouting at each other a particularly positive way to run a country, I think. If the Lib Dems (together with the Greens and independents) get enough MP’s to hold the balance of power then it’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen. Of course the radical (? where is it?) might get diluted. But more diluted? They would not have won the vote on Iraq that way, surely.

As even the Klingons now know, ‘Scotch’ is a form of whisky. Perhaps you – anonymous BNP supporter several posts above – should try drinking some.

It goes well, neat, with ice, water, coffee or in various desserts. It’s versatile and unlike the BNP, it mixes well, though purists in all parts of the world and of all colours and creeds will emphatically adhere to the ‘neat’ version.

Whisky is ‘the water of life’ in Gaelic.

‘Scotsman/ woman’ or ‘Scottish man/ woman’ is the appropriate designation for a human being.

Perhaps, then, the BNP ought to be renamed, the ENC – and good riddance to it!

But come to think of it, at root, the BNP have absolutely no idea of what it means to be English.

Suhayl: as a Muslim I take it your interest in whisky is a purely academic one.

MJ, I didn’t realise you were a Muslim! Thanks for explanation about GNU, btw. Realise I have blanked out thought that it’s possible for parties to agree not to have another election. Is it?

MJ had alluded to thir faith on a thread before, technicolour, I seem to remember, quite recently.

My interest in whisky is (to pinch a toddy of a term from Professor Kenneth White) geopoetic, as always, MJ…

technicolour: at present no, I don’t think so. I think the thing is the true scale of the fiscal problems. See George’s second link (http://tinyurl.com/y2cjwhc). Any single party that was wholly responsible for making the savage cuts that are in store would never get elected again. So a GNU would spread responsibilty and blame among them all.

Suhayl: I am a spiritual atheist. If you’ve reached the point of a geopoetic interest in whisky then I would advise you to cut down a bit.

BTW MJ & Suhayl, I think you might like this UK election debate remix:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bElpIG_l0PY

“Any single party that was wholly responsible for making the savage cuts that are in store would never get elected again.”

MJ

I have put this on before,here goes again…

Back in the late 1990s/2000 while watching the Conservative party conference at Blackpool on television…I can only tell it as it happened…

Outside the conference hall two members of the Conservative party stood waiting to be interviewed (they were not MPs but were high up’s in the party) they were asked… “What is the big talking point on the floor of this years conference”… the reply floored me this is what they said…

“It is clear that people don’t know how to use their vote.We left this country in the best economical state it has ever been in and now Labour will ruin it all.The big talking point on the floor is who should be allowed to vote should it be done on academic achievement or given to those who create the wealth or a combination of the two.” The other one concurred.

Please note it seems the decision to take the vote away from us had already been decided.

Given that nothing happens on the floor of Conservative party conference without being instgated from above should frighten anyone that cares about democracy.The video of this must still be available in the archives of the BBC/Sky.Why I wonder are the Conservative party getting their members ready for a fascist state.After watching the documentary of what nearly happened to Harold Wilson’s government it becomes even more frightening…

http://tinyurl.com/325mk2

Suhayl, I was making a small joke, because I thought I knew MJ was mainly pagan. I think the volcano is affecting my sense of humour.

I shall take your advice, MJ. Is there an ‘AA’ for geopoeticolics (try intoning that after imbibing a surfeit of intoxicating poetry!)?

Pantheism is another area of interest. How one can be ‘spiritual atheist’ and ‘mainly pagan’ (and is that Pagan or pagan; the debate continues) is intriguing and says muh about the breadth of paganism (and maybe also atheism) today.

Chalk men are ferocious beings.

I’ve never used the word pagan. In truth Judaism and Christianity are pantheistic. Only Islam is genuinely monotheistic (in my opinion).

George: yes. I think we are approaching endgame and the age of ostensive rule by the global banking cartel is nigh.

Yes, sorry MJ, I was extrapolating.

But how can they rule? All the money apart from 3 percent is made up!

(heads off to chew sofa)

Ah, MJ, but what about the Sufi tradition which is the kernel of Islam? Pantheistic, or what?

I once was on the radio – via studio-link – with someone from the ‘Billy Graham Crusade’ and a pagan gentleman. Interesting converstaion.

“what about the Sufi tradition”

OK. In which case I revert to my default position, which is that all the major faiths are but seamless continuations of ancient pagan beliefs. There is not one precept in the monotheistic faiths that cannot be found in the Egyptian religion, Zoroastrianism or Plato.

“All the money apart from 3 percent is made up!”

Yes but we’ve just paid off their notional debts with our own real money, which they are now loaning back to us at interest. What a scam. Nice work if you can get it. We are living in a kleptocracy.

Yes! I know!! (apparently the current situation makes me want to add exclamation marks like Barbara Cartland on speed). Did you watch the election debate remix yet? I’m not sure if it’s funny or not.

Now there’s a thought, MJ. Seamless continuation…

Jason, this was unworthy (and you probably know it):

“That’s right, because you went to a different institution for toffs, you’re somehow incredibly unbiased on the entire subject”.

My father was from Giffnock in Glasgow, my mother was from Rothesay; both were from lower middle class families, and became teachers through merit (thanks to Scotland’s excellent merit-based education system). They could not possibly have sent me to an independent school, but they happened to be serving abroad on government business (British Council) so were entitled to do so – as otherwise I would have had no education at all.

Fortunately for the government, I was able to win a scholarship and so the school itself paid my fees. I met a lot of “toffs” (as you call them) and found some clever, some agreeable, and some unpleasantly conceited. Those who have done best in adult life were not always the clever or even the agreeable.

If you will do yourself the favour of switching off your emotional responses for a few moments and thinking it through, you will see that although the rich will often send their children to the best schools, that does not necessarily imply that those who have been at those schools are the children of the rich.

“It is clear that people don’t know how to use their vote.We left this country in the best economical state it has ever been in and now Labour will ruin it all”.

George Dutton, what part of that would you disagree with today? (I only ask because I want to know).

Tom: I think it would be a little unfair to claim that Labour were responsible for the financial meltdown, which was obviously a global event. Brown’s stewardship of the economy was, by most objective criteria, a rather successful one and it is difficult to imagine a tax-cut obsessed Tory chancellor being able to match his success.

MJ, I don’t think the financial meltdown was “a global event” at all, although you might be forgiven for thinking it was if you have listened to too many of Gordon Brown’s speeches lately (or his flunkeys’ for that matter). There is clearly a rule that the financial crisis cannot be mentioned unless it is immediately prefaced with “global”. Kinda like global warming or the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes: not our fault, but if it is the blame is spread so thinly it can’t be attached to individuals.

Actually, as one might expect given the source, that is the exact opposite of the truth. The credit crunch was home-grown in the USA, and exported worldwide – and of course among the first (and most eager) victims was the UK, where we cannot wait to lap up the USA’s freshest vomit. Private Eye (often a more reliable source than the “broadsheets”) notes in its latest issue that, when Lehman Brothers could not get even the venial and pathetic US authorities to agree to its latest bending of the law, it simply turned to a London law firm which quickly did its bidding. All this happened on Gordon Brown’s watch, and with his smiling approval. At the opening of Lehman’s flashy new European HQ in Canary Wharf, 5 April 2004, Brown said:

“Lehman Brothers is a great company today that can both look backwards with pride and look forwards with hope. And in wishing Lehman Brothers the success it deserves for its future, let me thank you for the privilege of being here and formally declare this new building open.”

It turned out that, a few short years later, Lehman Brothers did get “the success it deserves for its future”. But the Great Prognosticator never saw it coming for a moment. And now he is trying to convince us he was against deregulation from the start!

Tom Welsh

Ah,there we have it. You see it was the “Chicago school” that started the present day…The Accelerating World Financial Crisis/Collapse… they were the ones that were the disciples of Milton Friedman, free-market economist who inspired Reagan and Thatcher who led us into this mass. The “Chicago school” is the essence of pure evil and will/have never changed. New Labour kept true to Thatcher deregulated finance model. I leave some links below for you to read…

http://tinyurl.com/yber858

“Ian Gilmour served as defence secretary during Edward Heath’s administration, before becoming Lord Privy Seal in Margaret Thatcher’s first government”

“In September 1981 he was sacked by Mrs Thatcher and remained a prominent critic of what he regarded as extreme Thatcherite policies”

“He responded to his sacking by Mrs Thatcher by issuing a statement declaring that she was steering “full speed ahead for the rocks”…

tinyurl.com/6cmprl

“Death Agony of Thatcher Deregulated Finance Model”…

tinyurl.com/cdtuw4

Yes. The finacial meltdown may have been a US/UK thing really and not global at all, but the idea that a Tory government would have stopped it needs a bit of explanation.

“The credit crunch was home-grown in the USA, and exported worldwide – and of course among the first (and most eager) victims was the UK, where we cannot wait to lap up the USA’s freshest vomit.”

Tom Welsh

Thatcher started this and exported it to the USA and then the world…

The influence that Thatcher had over Reagan as regards economic thinking (or lack off) was key to todays events.

“They really respected each other’s views, and if that is not influence, I don’t know what is”.

“President Reagan said: “We met before she became prime minister and I became president, and the moment we met, we discovered that we shared quite similar views of government and freedom. Margaret ended our first meeting by telling me that we must stand together, and that is exactly what we have done ever since”…

http://tinyurl.com/2266eb

technicolour: just watched that video. I thought it was quite amusing.

As for the Chicago School, or whatever they are called, I must say that I think all economics is modern-day shamanism. Someone once said, “If all the economists in the world were laid end to end, it would be a very good thing”; I think that about sums it up.

I’m reminded of the remark about John Kenneth Galbraith that his theories were made up of parts as exquisitely designed and machined as the finest Swiss watch; but when put together, they could not tell the time. That’s spot on, too. Economists see patterns and model them mathematically; and very often the patterns are real. But sadly they cannot hope to make their models complex enough to predict the real world accurately. As long as economics cannot predict (and it cannot) it will remain pretty useless – except for its practitioners, many of whom have become extremely rich and famous. No matter what your views, you can always find a squad of famous economists to support them. And if you wake up tomorrow and find your views have done a U-turn, why there is another squad of economists to explain why things must be so.

Tom Welsh

I saw this coming in 1981. Please don’t tell me others much more clever then me didn’t see it. This was planned and planned well. Deregulation and globalisation in a world where world resources are being exhausted was sheer insanity the outcome was so predictable. Don’t get me wrong we were always going to go where we are today but what Thatcher done was to climb out onto the wing off the jet that was already hurling to the ground and strapped a turbo onto the engine.

About sums it up.

Craig, it is surely gratifying for you as an honourable defender of the generic underdog to note Cameron’s promise to “empower” this racially alien minority group – one which, on a per capita percentage population basis is woefully under – represented in Business, the Law, Medicine, Media, Academe and Politics :

http://www.totallyjewish.com/news/national/c-13853/cameron-i-will-empower-uk-jews/

Sadly,Craig,your paltry observations on Singapore owe little to an understanding of that city’s history or colonialism.