There was a reason for Cameron’s pisspoor performance in the first debate, and that reason will be repeated in the second. Cameron is being coached for the debates by the Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox, son of Lord Sir (sic) Nicholas Charles Gordon-Lennox, grandson of the Duke of Richmond. The Hon. Anthony Charles Gordon-Lennox is the Tories’ communications guru. Tax dodger in chief Lord Ashcroft presumably thinks the Hon. Anthony is worth the £322,196 pa the Tories pay him.
The Hon. Anthony is, naturally, an old Etonian. This is no laughing matter. Cameron evidently has a visceral need to be surrounded only by people of precisely his own caste. Do we really need an 18th century government? Hence his obsession with tax breaks for the ultra rich. Hence also his inability to communicate anything to anyone who doesn’t think yes is pronounced yaaah.
Thatcher, Major, Tebbit and Clarke actually knew what everyday life for ordinary people was, whatever their peculiar political beliefs. Today Cameron. Osborne and Gordon-Lennox will be knitting their noble brows to work out why forelocks are not being tugged.
They are about to get a pitchfork up the arse.
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.