The Purpose of Politics 192


A stark example of the entire purpose of modern politics; careers for the political class. Lib Dems may agree to a referendum on EU membership because it “reflects the thinking of English Lib Dem MPs in seats where they face Eurosceptic pressure”. That is, nothing to do with their beliefs, just trying to save their jobs. Exactly like the Westminster Labour establishment in Scotland.


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192 thoughts on “The Purpose of Politics

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  • nevermind, there's a future, still

    Great news to have you back, Mary, you were missed, not much has changed and the skin has aquired a few more layers.

    Thanks for the advanced warning on next mondays event, Ian, wish I could attend and get back home, events as such are always two day events if you use Abelio, they also love putting you on buses, not that this is to a reduced price, some of the yearlong commuters are not very happy with the situation at Ipswich and the constant disruption further south past Colchester.
    So let us have a resumee if you have the time, not sure whether the MSM would pick it up. Are you still sending the letter to Frau May?

  • Republicofscotland

    The United States has concocted a new terror threat, known as the Khorasan Group, to satisfy the UN Charter which allows the use of force without authorisation in case of an imminent threat, says an analyst.

    The very idea of the Khorasan Group is a fiction spun out of thin air to satisfy the UN Charter, which specifies that one nation may not attack another without UN Security Council approval, unless it is confronted by an ‘imminent threat’, political commentator James Henry Fetzer told Press TV via email on Monday.

    Fetzer, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, explained that the fabrication of this latest threat by the US to justify its bombing campaign in Syria is in line with a reversal of US foreign policy.

    ___________________________________

    The Khorasan Group, like Al Qaeda, was dream’t up in some dim lit boardroom in the bowels of the Pentagon, and the UN are complicit in as much, as they went along with it.

    http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/10/06/381288/us-creates-khorasan-to-suit-un-charter/

  • Republicofscotland

    Mary, Ben, Nevermind, Peacewisher, RoS and everyone. You will love this:
    How do you solve a problem like Obama?
    _____________________
    John Goss

    Nice one John.

  • Ba'al Zevul

    The highest bid was in fact from National Express (multinational, but HQ in Birmingham). Abellio offered greater improvements to the service. It remains to be seen if the promises are kept, as always.

  • Ben E. Geserit Muad'Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators

    Peacy-prizy POTUS is a small part of the problem, John. The security apparatus see the Prez as a trained seal. The correct response to a command is followed with a treat; an extended life.

  • Republicofscotland

    MOSCOW, October 7 (RIA Novosti) – Municipal workers in an industrial zone of the northern Israeli city of Upper Nazareth have discovered 25 black flags associated with the brutal Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, the Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.

    Local authorities were looking into the incident, the paper said, adding there had been no arrests yet.
    On Monday, black flags with white Arab writings emerged over the besieged Syrian town of Kobani on the border with Turkey as IS fighters are closing their grip on the strategic settlement.

    In early September, Israel officially banned the Islamic State as a terrorist organization and prohibited any IS gatherings or the use of IS symbols on its territory.
    _____________________________________

    Hmm! The question is who put them there? we know IS, is a western (and its allies in the middle east) backed terror group, its not beyond the bounds of possibility that IS are using Upper Nazareth, as a staging post, and it highly unlikely that Israel wouldn’t know who’s infringing on its territory.

    Conclusion, Israel supports IS.

    http://en.ria.ru/world/20141007/193764981/Scores-of-IS-Flags-Found-in-Israels-Upper-Nazareth-Reports.html

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Just heard that Britain is to follow US lead and send 700 Troops to fight Ebola.
    Would it not make more sense to stop traffic in and out of the afected countries ?
    If our troops get sick ,do we treat them out there or fly them back ? We’ve had paranoia with SARS,and then Swine Flu, and now we’ve got super lethargy and lackadaisical politicians with the supposed deadliest and most infectious disease the world has ever known.
    The soldiers can’t shoot the virus, so I take it they are there to shoot people.
    Then every 3 weeks there’ll be surviving soldiers sent home on leave.They can’t possibly have accurate numbers about incubation time so how can they tell when its all clear?

  • Mary

    Excellent John. I was pleased to see that like BLiar, he is described as a ‘psychopath’. I think his extrajudicial killing by drone has been the worst of his crimes.

    Incidentally, has the quashing of charges of torture against the Bahraini prince been discussed on this blog and then the High Court overruling?

    Prince Nasser of Bahrain torture ruling quashed
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29521420

  • Ba'al Zevul

    Ben – The term ‘libertarian’ doesn’t yet have much traction here – the commonest association probably being made with Sarah Palin. ‘Left libertarian’ is then a contradiction in terms.

    Also bear in mind that what the US calls ‘left’ could be until quite recently pretty hard right in comparison to what we think of as left politics: Tony Blair being the shining shit-encrusted exemplar of this. The UK Left is a broad church, which accounts for its lack of cohesion and direction, perhaps. At one end there’s corporatist Tony, at the other end are palaeo-Marxists. In between is where most of us go, and there may yet be a consensus that national assets should be owned by the nation and that free enterprise is a good idea, but must be regulated somehow for the benefit of the majority. Much as I sometimes disagree with Fred’s opinions, I don’t think he’s being inconsistent in this context.

  • Ben E. Geserit Muad'Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators

    “They can’t possibly have accurate numbers about incubation time so how can they tell when its all clear?”

    They actually are good on incubation-five to 21 days with an average of about 7. What they are not clear on is when a person is infectious during that period before symptoms arise. I’ve been questioning how they are so certain it isn’t airborne, or even admitting it could mutate to that stage

    But the Dallas guy just died, and no reports his family has developed symptoms, so this time they were right it seems.

  • Macky

    This Blog’s greatest asset returns ! Mary, welcome back ! 🙂

    Fred; “Try just thinking about the points I raise rather than trying to analyse me and you won’t get confused”.

    Impossible to separate the points raised, why & how they are made, from the person making them; eg, you were engaged in a discussion with Ben about ideas reforming governing systems, in which Ben highlights a general & major corrupting influence on Western type Governments, ie, Corporate influence on politicians, and you responded with a deflecting whataboutery that didn’t addressed Ben’s point, but sought to mitigate the problem in the UK by a unnecessary comparison to the US. When Ba’al points out that corrupt politicians are venal wherever there are, you bizarrely responded by asking him if he thought that corruption was a bigger problem here than in the US. Your next Post then completely ignored the substantive valid point about Corporate corrupting of politicians, and instead you talked about ex-policeman, soldiers etc !

    Anybody could be forgiven for thinking you are deliberately seeking to downplay Corporate “Revolving Door” corruption here in the UK; are you ?

  • Republicofscotland

    The first alleged Isil-linked terror plot on UK soil has been foiled by police and MI5 amid fears jihadists are returning from Syria to carry out beheadings on British streets.
    Four men were arrested in dramatic armed raids in London during which one suspect had to be Tasered by police.

    The men are feared to have been in the “early stages” of planning a “significant” attack and it is understood one line of inquiry is whether they wanted to emulate the sort of brutal execution that has become Islamic State’s hallmark on a British street.

    Police and intelligence agencies have become increasingly concerned that the terror group, which has already beheaded four Western hostages, is encouraging similar attacks overseas.
    __________________________________

    The Telegraph news paper, the preferred Whitehall mouthpiece pumping up the “UK Terror Plot” propaganda, I feel a somewhat like, 7/7 false flag scenario, coming on, in the near future,which will frighten the public, into letting the UK forces, off the leash proper.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11147495/First-alleged-Isil-terror-plot-on-UK-foiled-amid-growing-fears-of-beheadings.html

  • Ben E. Geserit Muad'Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators

    Yes I know Ba’al. In the US liberals laugh as they see it as a Trojan Horse for conservatives, but I said LEFT libertarian which believes in social services and public welfare with an emphasis on decentralized government. Traditional libertarians don’t even want the government building bridges dams or roads. Very extreme. We need a re-vamping short of violent revolution because the new boss is the same as the old, no matter what party gains position, because the spine has been irrevocably twisted into a permanent structure.

  • Republicofscotland

    Britons must accept a greater loss of digital freedoms in return for greater safety from serious criminals and terrorists in the internet age, according to the country’s top law enforcement officer.

    Keith Bristow, director general of the National Crime Agency, said in an interview with the Guardian that it would be necessary to win public consent for new powers to monitor data about emails and phone calls.

    Warning that the biggest threats to public safety are migrating to the internet and that crime fighters are scrambling to keep up, the NCA boss said he accepted he had not done a good enough job explaining to the public why the greater powers were necessary.
    ___________________________________

    I think we all know what’s in the offering here, if they get their way, a major clampdown on the internet looks likely.

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/06/digital-freedoms-terrorism-crime-uk

  • lysias

    Electing representatives doesn’t work. We need the Athenian system of random selection, which we know from history does work.

  • lysias

    Speaking of NATO, the new left-wing Swedish government has made clear that it is not going to seek NATO membership.

  • CanSpeccy

    @Habbaupchuck

    Here you are again with Luton and Leicester.

    Luton : inaccurate as far as I know – please back up your assertion with figures.

    many other urban centres : please elaborate on your scare-mongering assertion – which other “major urban centres”?

    Thank you.

    What is this? A goddam official genocide denial site, or what?

    If you’re too ignorant or lazy to use Google, don’t expect any help from me, Habby.

    Anyhow, OldMark put you right the last time you tried to muddy the water on this issue about the ethnic majority in Leicester. So just fuck off, now.

  • Ben E. Geserit Muad'Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators

    Now that Sweden has pissed off the US and Netanyahoo, how long before they contact the UK…?

    Charges dropped on Assange?

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Great news Lysias, but Sweden has been secretly alligned with the West and NATO miltarily since the 60’s.I doubt the level of cooperation will drop.Let’s hope so and Sweden returns to real neutrality.All this change is giving me hope that the Assange debacle will be solved.
    They have said publicly that the US does not drive their foreign policy, and hopefully not their Judiciary either.

  • Ben E. Geserit Muad'Dib Further Confounding Gender Speculators

    RoS; ISIS has already toured Syria. They want to see the cedars of Lebanon. 🙂

  • Iain Orr

    Nevermind and Mary

    Thanks for both your comments (and welcome back Mary). Yes, I still plan to write to Frau May, probably late tomorrow or early on Friday after collecting more signatories. I’ve already sent John Goss and some others whose emails I have my latest draft. If you want to see it, please send me your email [the moderators have not yet done so] Mine is [email protected] – already put in a comment at 11.24 am on the Lack of Forgiveness thread, which is where most of the recent postings on Moazzam Begg have ended up, after Craig’s excellent blog on Teresa May Must Resign seemed to run out of steam, probably because of a tendency many of us have – myself included – to post on the most recent/ active thread rather than the one with the most appropriate heading.

    Grateful to hear (by email) from anyone else (Peacewisher? Arbed?) who’d like to be a co-signatory. For continuity I suggest that other postings on fallout concerning the Moazzam Begg case revert to the Teresa May Must Resign thread, which will be open for another week. I’ll copy this one there, plus Mary’s useful identification of Lawrence Pollard as the interviewerof MB on the BBC World Service.

  • fred

    “Anybody could be forgiven for thinking you are deliberately seeking to downplay Corporate “Revolving Door” corruption here in the UK; are you ?”

    I don’t believe we have a problem anything like as bad as they do in America, largely down to our having an entirely different system of government.

  • Macky

    Fred; “I don’t believe we have a problem anything like as bad as they do in America”

    Nobody has suggested otherwise; do you believe that it’s a problem here in the UK ?

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