Ken vs. Boris: It's So On

I don't understand the point of the microscope comment when NV had admitted as much in his own post.

It wasn't a disagreement with NV!

It's true that the right-wing media and the Labour party said Ken would be bad for London in 2000. But as I said, I didn't think that, and nor did anyone I knew - and our view seems to have been quite popular, not crankily marginal as he won the election, far more comfortably than anyone is likely to win it today.

What kind of statement will be rhetorically useful to persuade someone to believe or do something (eg to vote in a certain way) is always very hard to say. If someone wants to vote for BJ, then I don't think anything I could say could stop them. I don't have any suggestion as to what anyone should say to stop BJ, because I wouldn't expect to be able to persuade anyone who could already contemplate doing so.

I don't so much think BJ is a buffoon - I think he is a nasty, cynical person - something of a fraud, kind of a user; maybe I feel that he is laughing at us. I also think he is hideous - utterly hideous to look at and listen to, and that his persona in this campaign has been aggressive and nasty to a deeply unpleasant degree.

btw, people in discussions like this often say internet-hardman things like 'Basically the Tories fucked up the economy' and 'So basically under Brown the economy's going tits-up and we're all going to be fucked'.

It's not an idiom I like, in its easy, unearned crudity. But I'm also dubious of the vagueness of it. It points to the fact of economic downturn, as registered in (eg) higher unemployment or people being unable to pay their mortgages. But can the people who talk in this way say what the relevant governments should do / have done to stop things being, as they say, fucked up?

Seems to me that ups and downs, boom and bust if you like, is pretty endemic to the kind of economy we have. Talking (vaguely, and even in hard-nut style) about governments' agency in these matters may occlude that.

This is a digression from London Votes, anyway.

Seems to me that ups and downs, boom and bust if you like, is pretty endemic to the kind of economy we have. Talking (vaguely, and even in hard-nut style) about governments' agency in these matters may occlude that.

Even if said government explicitly promised "no more boom and bust" repeatedly?

Do you not think that ups and downs might be endemic to the kind of economy we have?

Perhaps I am mistaken and they are not. I guess that could be good!

Like I said, this is a digression.

But like I said: part of what irritates me is that it's not clear that the internet hard men really know what they would do differently, or just what the fucking-up actually meant in terms of policy detail.

You are quite right, Onimo, to say that Brown used to talk no return to boom and bust, and maybe this was misleading of him. Maybe that is just not possible. My point above was both Tory and Labour governments.

1000th post ha!

I don't claim, btw, that governments have no agency in economic policy. On the contrary, they have had a lot. Whether their agency has been lessened in the last 20 years or so is another question, I suppose.

pinefox: your theory of boris is very close to my own.

i'm sure my friend and erstwhile collegue peter ross won't mind me posting this link to his interview with him in 2004, in which he reveals himself not just to be a boorish arsehole but a fucking stupid one, too. or maybe he doesn't care what some scottish hack/the scottish public thinks.

either way, he's a loathsome character, and the whole lolboris thing really does bring me back to that simple equation i posted this morning.

I hope the early polling pointing to Boris win motivates people to get down to the polling stations and so not gonna happen that shit. Can't vote myself, so PLEEEEASE go if you can.

Is there any kind of economy that does not have ups and downs, boom or bust? Serious question.

Indeed.

Peter Ross interview:

"Well," he says, humming and hawing, "we are all self-invented to some extent. Frankly, honestly, it's now too late to try to invent anybody else. It's exhausting. In so far as I'm an invention, this is the best I can do."

That is the most worryingly plausible thing I have ever seen / heard BJ saying. It's almost Wildean, though without the elegance.

Also in that interview he repeats the utter BS canard we saw in that recent Mamet piece: 'socialists believe in the perfectibility of man ... we conservatives are realists who accept the world as it is'. BS.

hopefully a load of people with actual jobs will vote in the evening, outweighing the initial rush of Boris votes from legend-loving student twats who deserve to die

Also, in my case, Pinefox, I was using deliberately crude language as a taxi driver redux of what a big swathe of the British public thought about the Tories circa 1997.

In terms of electoral attitudes, it doesn't really matter the extent to which it was Norman Lamont's fault or whether George Soros or overall global economic trends were to blame, because once you get stuck with a label for economic incompetence there's next to nothing you can do to stop the electorate hurling you out. Especially if economic incompetence is coupled with multiple scandals involving high-profile party members. The economy turned round significantly under Kenneth Clarke and it still didn't help them.

I wonder how long it will be before Brown puts Alistair Darling to the sword, and whether it will make any difference to the electorate when he does.

hopefully a load of people with actual jobs will vote in the evening, outweighing the initial rush of Boris votes from legend-loving student twats who deserve to die

Lol at the concept of students getting up early for anything, especially voting.

early could be 2pm to be fair

real talk ^

DC, I hope you won't mind my suggesting that I'm not sure that there is much difference between the way your imaginary taxi driver talks, and the way you write on ilx - as distinct, no doubt, from the thoughtful and creative way you think, write and talk in other contexts.

Where is this exit polling 'data' you speak of coming from?

I think DC got it from a taxi driver.

Matt DC, yesterday

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3336735.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=4DAA13B573E1BD2F289632D5FD6017DCA55A1E4F32AD3138

"won't go south of the noize board this time of night"

internet hardman I like that. Like a tabloid description of [insert poster of choice].

Off-topic, I know, but:

Even if said government explicitly promised "no more boom and bust" repeatedly

Well we haven't had a boom, and we haven't had a bust yet - and almost certainly won't, even in the most negative forecasts - so fine.

Does the housing market not qualify as a boom then?

That'll be £20 to you, guvnor.

You've just vomited in my back seat.

There have been 3 booms and 3 busts during the current labour administration. Or rathe 3x hubris followed by 3x reality and correction.

not as catchy :(

Overall economic boom - there has obviously been a housing one, and could be a crash, although I doubt it - but I had a long and boring fight with laxalt on another thread about that.

Meanwhile, why can't I get a live feed of the betting balloons?

http://betting.betfair.com/mayor/heads-up-boris-leads-the-way-london-marathon-300408.html "> http://betting.betfair.com/mayor/heads-up-boris-leads-the-way-london-marathon-300408.html

There's a nice graph here (if I can do the effing link right).

http://www.economics.strath.ac.uk/julia/teaching/mf/L1_JD.pdf "> http://www.economics.strath.ac.uk/julia/teaching/mf/L1_JD.pdf

Then add four more year's real growth to the right.

Gah

at 9/4 it is almost worth backing Ken.

An exit poll of sorts...
http://vote.sparklit.com/poll.spark/1052579

^almost as bad as rickroll

the current data would naturally have bj in the lead, since working people are, well, still working - right?

Working people vote Boris too, though.

Would it be justified to go through my Facebook friends list and indiscriminately defriend everyone whose status update reads 'Vote Boris' or suchlike?

I think that would show a high discriminating and upstanding character.

i did the same for anyone who mourned jol, so yeah i guess.

Do it now!

DC, if anyone you know feels that way ... well ... how did you get friends like that in the first place?

Would it be justified to go through my Facebook friends list and indiscriminately defriend everyone whose status update reads 'Vote Boris' or suchlike?

no. i might do the same thing. several people on mine (hello at least two posters on this thread) are sporting some violently anti-boris ones. so am i.

I suspect some of mine are pro-Boris so I'm trying to goad them into revealing themselves and defriending me

anti-boris status updates: 6 (7 including self).

pro-boris: none.

that's reassuring.

Think I'm 5-0, not sure about this fuckin clown though:

Lou1s Jagger
YAAAAH BORIS YAAAAH.
Updated about a minute ago

Does facebook have an application where you can send painful electric shocks through a user's mouse yet?

I stopped bothering with the anti-Boris count when it got to 20, pro-Boris count is 9 or 10. The pro-Borisers are all people I went to school with - when you consider my school was about 90% working class kids from around Lewisham, I worry what this might say about a possible flight of working class votes to the Tories.

This is probably not a solid bedrock from which to begin making statistical projections, admittedly.

essex is our texas <--- jacques perreti on the barrymore doc last night

essex, brrrrr

lol easy target

If anyone on my fbk was pro-BJ I would cut them off.

I was just thinking about the apparent difference between me and DC earlier. Really, I think we agree. He said: it will be bad if BJ gets in and succeeds, rather than buffoonishly fails. I agree. My expectation is that he *will* succeed - on his own terms, not mine (or DC's?). So has W, so did Maggie, etc - these people are not considered failures by their own side, but heroes. I think BJ will be hailed as doing very well the things he wants to do - a mixture of reactionary things, cutting back progressive things, sucking up to certain interests, and ego-tripping.