Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era

i think clinging to the notion that the Labour party is any kind of locus of resistance to our ongoing political degradation is probly unhelpful, so anything that loosens the sentimental ties is a good thing

given the lack of plausible loci of resistance (+inertia of course, always) I can understand why ppl remain there. all the hustings I've seen lately have underlined how huge the gulf is between party leadership and its local candidates, v suspect flow of information within the parties

All I'm clinging to is that a lot can happen in 5 years... pretty desperate, I know.

since Blair took the leadership the modernizing program has been all about centralizing power and strengthening hierarchies. ultimately this was more damaging than any Clause 4 moment - i see no way for any grassroots revolt to take power back from the technocrats and career politicians who run the party now. which is the same boring defeatist line i've been peddling for 10-15 years, admittedly, but it's cute how every time the party lurches further and further into neoliberalism people still look surprised.

because ultimately these are no longer social democrats in disguise trying to win back the popular vote in the service of egalitarianism or even redistribution of wealth - they're just neolib policy wonks with a faint glimmer of bleeding heart - for deserving, hard-working families - still nagging them, tho they've forgotten why

The former I could happily accept, but yeah the latter is almost certainly the case, I don't get any sense of moral purpose or indeed any real purpose at all, and neither do most of the rest of the electorate.

The thing is, this lot have become so fixated on the Brown/Miliband defeats that they've forgotten what happened to Gordon Brown when he scrapped the 10p tax band. Rightward shifts are just handled differently by the press depending on whether it's Labour or the Tories, they're not going to start clapping like seals if they adopt Tory policies wholesale.

Most of the electorate don't even think in Left-Right terms, and Harman's "listening to the electorate" line overlooks the fact that more often than not the Tories don't really bother, they just go ahead and do it even when the policies are unpopular. I still believe the British public are open to listening to social-democratic policies, individual policies that are even now popular in isolation. You just have to be someone the country trusts and wants to listen to - so not Miliband, not Harman, certainly not any of this lot (probably not even Jeremy Corbyn sadly).

Labour won't win "economic credibility" back until the Tories have managed to blow theirs, there's just no point to throwing every remaining principle out of the window in the meantime, people won't care.

that's about right, tho i think it's too late to worry about them retaining principles.

i do believe that there are better policies that could be sold to the electorate, but that would take a set of coherent beliefs, the will to do the hard work of fine-tuning and selling those beliefs and the recognition that you won't effect a substantial change in worldview in the short term, probably not even in a 5-year cycle. if a political party in our system has any point at all then it's to lead people, to persuade them and to show them alternative ways of thinking. the whole focus group market research culture is really the death of meaningful parliamentary politics, just as the de-democratizing of the Labour party has been.

but it's not like anybody gives a shit. this is the best of all possible economic worlds so maybe it's best just to let people enjoy it. while it lasts.

I joined the Labour Party after the election - as did several people I know - but nothing over the last two months has given me any clue who to vote for in the leadership election or wtf the party needs to do going forward. If anything I feel worse; it feels like the electorate in general simply doesn't care about what the Tories are doing.

Will vote Bradshaw for deputy out of local loyalty, and also because I think he's a decent moderniser and knows how to win things. But I want principles too. So maybe Corbyn for leader.

I joined the Labour Party after the election - as did several people I know

joining the gym in January

Think the gym has a little bit more shame when it comes to bombarding you with emails and text messages 24/7.

also when you sign up to the gym it probably won't decide it's a doughnut shop 6 months later

Yeah, there are a LOT of emails.

the whole focus group market research culture is really the death of meaningful parliamentary politics

OTM. See the tweets now from MPs going on about how Kendall is polling best with the voters, as if the idea is to go where the public leads, rather than to lead them.

I supported some labour party petition backing a parliamentary motion once. I kept getting emails from Alistair Campbell after.

Thinking of paying three quid to vote Corbyn.

^^^ have had the same notion but purely for the lulz you understand

Understand only too well.

See the tweets now from MPs going on about how Kendall is polling best with the voters, as if the idea is to go where the public leads, rather than to lead them

It needs to be a sensible balance between the two - "leadership" is pointless without ground-up engagement and proper dialogue. The problem is that they are being highly selective about which voters they "listen" to.

As if any of "the public" know or care who Liz Kendall is.

Can anyone fill me in on who "labour first" are. All the major press organs have been giving them a platform to say that Corbyn's politics are not "ours" but googling them all I can find aside from this story is a two year old blog post that refers to them as "mysterious." Assuming that they're the Blair led pressure group that I read about before the election in something that implied they would hand pick the next leader, but I can't find that article

they're just neolib policy wonks with a faint glimmer of bleeding heart - for deserving, hard-working families

i believe 'strivers' is now the term of art. Given that Frank Field has apparently used it three times in two sentences.

But he added: “What is unacceptable is for the government to wallop strivers who are already in work, with their low wages brought up to a more decent level by tax credits.
“The Tory attack on strivers now gives us a chance to to reposition Labour on the strivers’ side and not simply be a pressure group for people on benefit whatever their circumstances.”

oh god it's all going to be strivers vs skivers next

a chance to to reposition Labour on the strivers’ side and not simply be a pressure group for people on benefit whatever their circumstances

vote Labour

Strivers vs strikers.

and the strassengers

Anyway..

Whatever Labour does, this is going through, right?

So, we have at least one candidate that is against this, and at least one that thinks its a great idea.

So, basically, everything is abstainable unless all the potential leaders agree, at which point something can be voted against even though the end result will be the same?

Or not?

Why does Frank Field still exist?

because God doesn't

The thing is that cutting tax credits is in and of itself an assault on "strivers", unless the skivers category has now been expanded to include the working poor as well. Even the ropiest of previous Labour front benches would have been hammering the government for this.

This sort of meek capitulation only serves to enable the Tories to shift the mythical centre ground even further to the right, it's falling directly into the elephant trap set by Osborne.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/13/david-cameron-open-to-workers-saving-up-fund-own-sick-pay

cutting benefits to the very poor while reducing inheritance tax for the wealthy is indefensible

but they don't seem to have to defend it to anyone, nevertheless

It's this continuous pushing of the idea that the general public is not to be trusted, that if you're ill that's down to your own lack of responsibility, that sick pay is 'a benefit', and that anyone in receivership of such benefits are to be treated with the deepest suspicion.
There really ought to be a moratorium on the word 'benefits'. Too many implications in that - that it's a privilege enjoyed by some people and not others as opposed to something that is really a bare-minimum essential.
The Tories use the positive connotations around the word 'benefits' to suggest that those who claiming them are lucky, that they should be grateful for the fact the government are 'paying for their lifestyle', as if they're using their JSAs on limos and fine dining, when it's the exact opposite.
And now they're quite egregiously going after the working poor by saying they should pay for their own sick leave. What exactly is national insurance then? How will it benefit anyone?! Oh hang on, yeah the private healthcare companies that's right...

OTM, fuck "welfare" and "benefits" both. The Guardian seems to be reverting to "social security" in most places, which is much more like it.

NI doesn't pay for SSL, employers do. Which essentially makes this wheeze another dodgy redistribution from the wealthy
https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/what-national-insurance-is-for

er, to the wealthy even

Fantastic bit of political TV debate on C4 with Corbyn this evening. Trying to get a link now.

Lost the rag a bit, I thought, the Corbynator.

corbyourenthusiasm surely

It was a bullshit question, they kept interrupting him, and he called them out on it.
https://youtu.be/3z-a5hy7QO8

Krishnan Guru-Murthy is a manspreading twat.

When I lived in Clerkenwell, he could often be found sitting in front of the felafel place below my flat, with his stumpy legs akimbo in too-tight grey flannel trousers, knees at 8 and 4 o'clock.

fox hunting ban "relaxation" going to fail because of nasty scotnats interfering with English laws.

Here's the full interview. The 14 minute one's at the bottom.

http://www.channel4.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-i-wanted-hamas-to-be-part-of-the-debate

Guru-Murthy does seem to have that affect on people doesn't he?

If he actually thinks anybody wants wants to actually look at his knackers he must be fucking deranged.

he could often be found sitting in front of the felafel place below my flat, with his stumpy legs akimbo in too-tight grey flannel trousers, knees at 8 and 4 o'clock.

the devil's angle, no less

Govt withdraw amendment to foxhunting bill, Nikki Sturg once again showing the Labour Party what a real opposition politician looks like

Mhairi Black kicking Labour's arses:

https://youtu.be/lZAmhB55_-k

Bugger-all support in CLPs for Liz
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/07/which-clps-are-nominating-who-labour-leadership-contest

St Helen’s South and Whiston

come one the New Statesman, get it together

... though not as much as the fact that the Great British public lap it up.

One question that's been playing on my mind, looking back from this vantage point, is how much our situation in 2015 has to do with the kind of people who killed Sophie Lancaster, who was my age:

While returning home, Lancaster and Maltby were subjected to a "vicious mob attack" from "a large group of people" between 01:10 hours and 01:20 hours on Saturday, 11 August 2007, at the skate park area of Stubbylee Park, Bacup (grid reference SD865218).[3] The couple were walking home and came across a group of teenagers at the entrance to the park.[7] The group followed them, but there was no trouble until some of them suddenly assaulted Robert Maltby without provocation. When he was knocked unconscious, the gang attacked Sophie Lancaster, who was trying to protect him by cradling him in her arms. A 15-year-old witness told police: "They were running over and just kicking her in the head and jumping up and down on her head." One distraught witness used a mobile phone to call for emergency services saying: "We need... we need an ambulance at Bacup Park, this mosher has just been banged because he’s a mosher."[8] Witnesses revealed that afterwards, "The killers celebrated their attack on the goths — or "moshers" - by telling friends afterwards that they had "done summat (something) good," and claiming: "There's two moshers nearly dead up Bacup park — you wanna see them — they're a right mess."[9]

That's a teenage girl being kicked to death by kids who, let's be honest, came from families that were long-term benefit claimants and who, had they not been sent to prison, would have just continued along those lines; and that attack was just normal, just the sort of thing that used to go on at least once a month with kids at my school; I myself was a victim of such an attack, except my attackers got frightened off in time. (I got concussion though and still get the occasional hallucinations and deafness and blackouts years later.) Lancaster's killers may not have intended to kill exactly, but they had no problem with doing enough violence to kill.

I know someone who lived in Wales who was hounded out of her home, I've met a Morrocan man who, when he lived in Liverpool 7, got dogshit put through his letterbox every day and had dogs set on him and his wife and kids when they went out.

I know I'm talking about the most evil behaviour, of some discrete individuals, within the huge sea of people who one way or another need social security to help, where a neoliberal economy cannot or will not employ them. (This has included me for several long periods.) We all know that confusing the part for the whole is unreasonable, and that the monstering of 'scroungers and chavs and benefit cheats' etc is counter-factual.

Still though: when I think back to the eyes of my attackers, which as I recall were very piggish and tight and the eyes were all pupil and no white, when I remember that I meant about as much to them as an insect, I have a strong brief feeling that it doesn't matter if they get kicked off JSA, and starve, doesn't matter if they get gentrified out of wherever they live; after all, I hold down a job and like drinking coffee and reading books, and am either neutral or good to the people around me 99% of the time ... but send them to the food bank, then shut it down, why not? Really should I have to pay taxes on the off chance some of them will reform?

Then of course I come back to my senses. But I think a lot of people who got the treatment from 'chavs' are caught up in the hate spiral still, a lot of people in my office certainly, a lot of people I overhear, and not just ppl who shared my taste for stupid trenchcoats and t shirts circa 2003, but totally normal people who made the mistake of asking a neighbour to turn their music down. I struggle to 'organise' this: are people who've been in real conflict with real scum to be forgiven or not for hating 'people on benefits'?

Maybe not quite the right thread, but given we're stuck with this shit for five years it seems we can/should think through this?

Sorry but that makes no sense whatsoever, what does the benefits system have to do with any of that?

not sure that any of them seriously think they could win an election under one of their own

Blab blab bland

Sorry, my drunk girlfriend got hold of my phone on the train home

Devastating political insight tbf

"The failed Britain Stronger In Europe campaign has been run by executive director Will Straw, the son of Jack Straw"

I had more respect for the little tosser when he was selling weed:p

hypnic jerk (rushomancy) wrote this on thread Psychoactive Substances: Rolling UK Politics in The Neo-Con Era on board I Love Everything on 28-Jun-2016

"The only alternative to not stabbing them in the back is cutting our own throats though.

― stet"

honestly, a lot of the damage has been done already. the metaphor i'd go for is that the majority of voters have stabbed britain in the face. i can't say for sure that this won't prove fatal to britain, and certainly i understand the desire for self-preservation, but i do think there needs to be an understanding of the cost. failing to honor the results of this referendum would not just be a stab in the back to the voters, but to global democracy, which is already being pretty sorely threatened everywhere.

right now, there is a man running for president of the united states, and he is getting up and cheering britain, and he is saying that this is what he wants america to be like. and those of us with the slightest bit of sense in our heads, we are horrified, because here's somebody openly proclaiming that, if elected, he will immediately turn the entirety of the most powerful country in the world into a disaster area. a guy like that doesn't

Feel like ive done a good deed for the day somehow by slogging that far into that post tbh

Sorry, my drunk girlfriend got hold of my phone on the train home

― imago, Tuesday, 28 June 2016 22:49 (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

NO, ESTE ES FALSO

Feel like ive done a good deed for the day somehow by slogging that far into that post tbh

― poor fiddy-less albion (darraghmac)

joke's on you- everyone who actually finishes reading one of my posts gets a free beer

(not counting this one)

apologies, my previous post was typed by my curvy co

gonna repost every ilf salsa shark post ever

Not tryin to pick on you rushomancy, these are shit times etc, but that one was a dud im afraid.

weve all had em, beckett that shit up and go again i will support u

pull yourself together tt, this situation calls for *hic* *vomit*

wins i cannot nurse u with bottles of water and so forth, be well

Okay I'm going to shut this one down now, we can use the Brexit thread for UK politics from now on.

Fight over Europe! Hammer the Scots! Pay down the debt Labour ran up! Gerrymander the wards! Ban immigrants! Increase the cuts! Sell the NHS! Open consultations on a draft paper for proposal for a British Bill of Rights! Vote for Boris! Sign TTIP! Ban Porn! Spy on Everything!

Is there anything to look forward to?

― stet, Wednesday, June 10, 2015 9:58 AM (1 year ago)

No, FYI.