British Right-Wing Pundits

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Talking of crackpots, get a read of the Scottish Christian Party manifesto:

9. Prisons
The Scottish Christian Party believes that the much needed extra prison
capacity should be purchased from developing countries for the purpose
of catering for Scotland’s medium Security Prisons. This should take the
form of building state of the art prison facilities in developing countries
that wish to host Scottish Prisons.
Advantages would include:
1. Less overcrowded prisons, cheaper costs and greater efficiency
2. More resources at home to look after our worst offenders properly
3. More economic trade instead of aid handouts to developing
countries
4. Raising prison standards in developing countries by example and
the provision of expertise.

onimo, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:17 (seventeen years ago) link

They say this is no different to setting up call centres abroad.

onimo, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:17 (seventeen years ago) link

'by any 20th century standard'

what now?

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:18 (seventeen years ago) link

do they have less sway cos the most emotive right / left battles have been "won"? ie the unions, the acceptability of prejudice? i think they are "learning" from the american's clarkson's whole schtick is provication isn't it, look how angry i can make these daft eco-nuts!

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Between 1980 and the present the whole political spectrum in the western world has been drifting rightwards back into liberalism (with certain conservative tendencies)

Ed, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link

british journalism is more frivolous and clubbable than US journalism. all UK hacks know each other. this probably isn't so much the case in the states.

yes ed i know. but the idea that liberalism is the worst the 20th century right has to offer is batshit insane. as is the idea that welfare capitalism was some kind of 'left'. even without factoring in the fact that at the start of the century liberalism was kind of... left-wing.

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:24 (seventeen years ago) link

outsourcing prisons to eastern european countries in the EC - who will be the first New Labour or Tories?

djmartian, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:26 (seventeen years ago) link

Send 'em all to Botany Bay.

I think for historical reasons the U.S. has this strong libertarian streak (ie right to bear arms etc.) coupled with a strong religious/puritan streak. Put the two together and they coelesce into a very strong, very dynamic right-wing culture that simply doesn't exist in the UK. And that's why rightwing pundits don't have so much sway. I mean David Cameron would be quite a bit to the left of most Democrat candidates.

underpants of the gods, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean David Cameron would be quite a bit to the left of most Democrat candidates.

Not where it matters he isn't

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:29 (seventeen years ago) link

Rightwing pundits have an absolute fuckload of sway, party politics is an irrelevence here. Ask White Van Man what he thinks about asylum seekers.

Matt DC, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:29 (seventeen years ago) link

I would say that liberalism was progressive not left- wing per say. And whether or not you think 'welfare capitalism' is of the left or not, the centre is to the right of even that now.

Ed, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:30 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost to Tom D.

Where it matters? Well for a start I'm guessing Cameron's not going to dismantle the NHS in any fundamental way. Can you imagine a serious Democrat candidate proposing universal, free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare?

underpants of the gods, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:32 (seventeen years ago) link

british reactionary right is xenophobic and defensive rather than on constant attack like the americans?

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:32 (seventeen years ago) link

Where it matters? Well for a start I'm guessing Cameron's not going to dismantle the NHS in any fundamental way. Can you imagine a serious Democrat candidate proposing universal, free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare?

We'll see how good that guess is when he wins the next election. Cameron isn't proposing universal, free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare either, we've already got it. Cameron is only "radical" when it comes to wearing a wind turbine on your head or cycling backwards on a bicycle made entirely of radishes

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:35 (seventeen years ago) link

You sure you're not mixing up David Cameron with John Otway?

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:38 (seventeen years ago) link

And Wild Willie Whitelaw?

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:38 (seventeen years ago) link

upthread are you dudes talking economic or social liberalism? or both?

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:41 (seventeen years ago) link

both

Ed, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:42 (seventeen years ago) link

xpost

Sure, Cameron didn't come up with free healthcare! But the political climate is such that he'd have a hard time getting rid of it. Which underlines my point about the political background being skewed more leftwards in the UK, despite years of Thatcher/Blair.

underpants of the gods, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:43 (seventeen years ago) link

"Cameron isn't proposing universal, free-at-the-point-of-service healthcare either, we've already got it."

well except for things involving teeth or eyes, ie the only two things i ever go in for...

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:44 (seventeen years ago) link

just going to say

Alan, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:45 (seventeen years ago) link

We'll see how hard a time he has getting rid of it, it'll be less hard than you think once he persuades the middle classes it's in their interest (xxpost)

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, I think if it were politically possible to get rid of the NHS, it would have already been done. Anyway, doesn't Cameron have a disabled kid or something. He probably uses the NHS more than the average Tory.

underpants of the gods, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

They are getting rid of it already, piece by piece

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

um guys the nhs is already on the way out...

xpost!

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 13:50 (seventeen years ago) link

BUT immigration is the no 1 concern of uk voters! apprently. maybe my first hypothesis was v v wrong.

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:21 (seventeen years ago) link

Not according to the most recent polls.

Ed, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:23 (seventeen years ago) link

Being tough on immigration didn't do Michael Howard much good last time round did it?

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:23 (seventeen years ago) link

... and wasn't Cameron one of those responsible for that policy?

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:25 (seventeen years ago) link

parties don't campaign on 'number one concern of voters' in general but the voters who will swing the election, ie middle england blah blah blah.

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Middle england (according to the polls) cares about health and house prices.

Ed, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:30 (seventeen years ago) link

healthy and house prices

fixed

onimo, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:31 (seventeen years ago) link

what on earth could their problem be with house prices!? they are winning that war. it would be interesting to know the nature of middle england's concern w. health -- taking my parents as barometer of same, their problem isn't exactly lack of service but quality of it: hospital bugs etc. a move by the tories towards increased private provision probably wouldn't phase them too much.

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:48 (seventeen years ago) link

their kids getting on the property ladder?

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Having to live near poor people?

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 14:52 (seventeen years ago) link

are the right wing pundits repping for "middle england" thou? as dom points out Littlejohn is, or at least was, the voice of white van man. all the big scares of recent years have focused on working class fears as much as middle england haven't they?

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:02 (seventeen years ago) link

the fact that homeowners who actually rent their houses from the bank think theyre rich overnight and are spending the paper money they dont have?

600, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Ha ha, who cares about "working class fears"?

Tom D., Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Difference between white working class fears of immigration and middle England fears of immigration? Straightforward difference of economics vs culture?

Dom Passantino, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

also theres a sense that rightwing british pundits dont really believe that much in what they right, so it all comes off a bit geezer down the pub, who says one thing one minute and another the next

600, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:08 (seventeen years ago) link

a decent education system in this country might mean people writing right instead of righting write

600, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:09 (seventeen years ago) link

If nothing else, the French election campaign makes me feel nostalgic for the days when one party stood for something and another party stood for something else, clearcut with no ambiguity and no chasing after the same limited and overrated floating electorate.

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:09 (seventeen years ago) link

perhaps with a decent university system that keeps the poor out, some of them may even write correctly

600, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:10 (seventeen years ago) link

"the fact that homeowners who actually rent their houses from the bank think theyre rich overnight and are spending the paper money they dont have?

-- 600, Tuesday, April 24, 2007 6:05 PM (4 minutes ago)"

lol 8080

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:11 (seventeen years ago) link

There are a lot of rent-a-rightie types on the op ed pages of the Times who you know cynically knock out 500 words of half-hearted spleen on the turn of a dime and really don't give a toss one way or the other - stand up Stephen Pollard, Ross Clark, Mick Hume and Rosemary Righter, which latter name could have come straight out of Kingsley Amis.

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:12 (seventeen years ago) link

oh i think mick hume cares a lot. he's sinister fucker with a scary team.

That one guy that quit, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Since when was Mick Hume on Sinister?

Still, never trust an ex-Marxist.

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:23 (seventeen years ago) link

i think saying they don't actually believe what they're saying is a bit dangerous. cf that thread about melanie phillips and the missing WMDs.

acrobat, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:53 (seventeen years ago) link

I've said this before elsewhere on ILE, but Peter Cook used to write a fervently right-wing column for the Daily Mail in '76-8. He said he didn't agree with a word of it but he thought that was the kind of writing the editor of the Daily Mail wanted, and it paid good money. Most notoriously, he gave a scathing denouncement of punk rock which he'd written with Malcolm McLaren the night before.

Marcello Carlin, Tuesday, 24 April 2007 15:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Perhaps, but also - what if it isn't actually happening? It feels like the category of 'bad faith' has grown too much so that it is starting to include "person I disagree with", at which point the person isn't someone I disagree with on this thing but an example of a category of person I don't like, holding an opinion they don't actually believe.

Well but this thread was ppl agreeing that Hitchens - a Person We Disagree With - is in fact not arguing in bad faith!

Daniel_Rf, Friday, 24 May 2024 11:43 (three days ago) link

those Cambridge students who blanked Braverman made her game look as transparently vacuous as it is, no debate would have done that - it would have just made more slanted GB news content.

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Friday, 24 May 2024 12:12 (three days ago) link

As an example if Russell Brand becoming born again a grift? and he doesn't really believe it?

I don't think it is a grift. I think his conversion is genuine. But he hasn't converted to Catholicism, Catholicism has converted to Brand. It has been shaped into the form he prefers and he is a genuine believer in that.

― anvil, Friday, 24 May 2024 bookmarkflaglink

I want to pray for you, anvil

xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 12:24 (three days ago) link

^that's that good faith

rob, Friday, 24 May 2024 12:35 (three days ago) link

finally a lol!

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Friday, 24 May 2024 12:53 (three days ago) link

I don't think it is a grift. I think his conversion is genuine. But he hasn't converted to Catholicism, Catholicism has converted to Brand. It has been shaped into the form he prefers and he is a genuine believer in that.

― anvil, Friday, 24 May 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Please stop posting.

Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Friday, 24 May 2024 12:57 (three days ago) link

has that ever worked?

nashwan, Friday, 24 May 2024 13:38 (three days ago) link

No but it’s always worth a try.

Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Friday, 24 May 2024 13:56 (three days ago) link

If Bear Grylls was baptising that fucker it’s a dead cert he’s doing the Alpha course.

steely flan (suzy), Friday, 24 May 2024 14:23 (three days ago) link

The mad thing is believing this anything about anything other than Brand trying to deflect attention and court religious right sympathy (and funds) after that article the Times published about him. The worse thing is imagining that fundamentalists are the only true believers of any religion, as though the lunatic holdouts who don’t believe in Vatican 2 were closer to the word of God than the rest of us. Church traumatised generations of parents for literal centuries by telling them their babies were going to hell, before they changed course on that belief and now something that my parents were taught as fact in school was something I learned as a relic of the backward past. It is fucking nonsense to be a fundamentalist. It’s fucking absurd to believe in the sincere fanaticism of someone who is a bone-deep cynic.

Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Friday, 24 May 2024 14:38 (three days ago) link

I wonder if Andrew Tate's conversion to Islam is entirely sincere too?

Poets Win Prizes (Tom D.), Friday, 24 May 2024 14:52 (three days ago) link

We could leave arguments about ad hom out of the discussion altogether, I still think debating bad arguments simply lends them undeserved power, debate has been a poison word for a long time now

Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2024 15:54 (three days ago) link

you can't just dismiss Toby Young's thought provoking pitch for progressive eugenics, you've got to debate him throw the cunt out of the nearest top storey window after beating him senseless with a lump hammer!

vodkaitamin effrtvescent (calzino), Friday, 24 May 2024 16:07 (three days ago) link

debate has been a poison word for a long time now

Debate is too strong a word, and I think here we're talking about interactions and conversations we might have, either in person or online, not public figures as such which is more unlikely (though not impossible I suppose)

I think we're increasingly seeing the writing off of non public figures as being bad faith, which is where I think the mistake is, mostly, as though nothing can be done, everything is a fait accompli. The good arguments don't argue for themselves, they need transmitters and advocates the same as any other arguments. If we collectively lose the ability to do this, I think thats a net negative

anvil, Friday, 24 May 2024 16:27 (three days ago) link

Once again, the people stanning for eugenics being exactly the sort of derp who’d fall foul of their own bullshit standards.

steely flan (suzy), Friday, 24 May 2024 16:50 (three days ago) link

The students keeping silent as someone like Braverman goes around asking about Hamas have it right.

No conversations with vermin, let them rot.

xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 16:59 (three days ago) link

Otm

Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2024 17:36 (three days ago) link

Talking to friends and acquaintances is different, I agree with you there anvil, but I don't "debate" my friends no matter how shitty their thoughts might be. I'll say what I believe if asked, I'm not in the conversion business

Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2024 17:41 (three days ago) link

the actual relevant situation here is that your friend/relative is sharing approvingly an article by a British Right-Wing Pundit

This is Dance Anthems, have some respect (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 24 May 2024 17:47 (three days ago) link

roll your eyes, tell them to get tae fuck, talk about something else. avoid interaction if the habit gets unbearable

Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2024 18:13 (three days ago) link

From that video I'd say the lessons the younger crowd are learning is to simply cut contact with friends and family who turn into bigots.

My kind of people.

xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 19:27 (three days ago) link

I admire anybody who's able to do that, fuck engaging with a nazi

Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague), Friday, 24 May 2024 20:58 (three days ago) link

Yup, its rough

xyzzzz__, Friday, 24 May 2024 22:08 (three days ago) link

Love this “actually the right are the REAL progressives” line being pushed everywhere

Just say you're voting tory pic.twitter.com/HwJPdFukRk

— Generic English Teacher (@TabitaSurge) May 26, 2024

Roman Anthony gets on his horse (gyac), Sunday, 26 May 2024 12:57 (yesterday) link

tragic how these lifelong leftists have reluctantly been forced to side with fascists to protect their hatred-based rights

i love a man in a unicorn (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 26 May 2024 14:09 (yesterday) link


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