A few days ago there was discussion/speculation as to what Kiz does for a living that allows her to spend so much time online. She edits learning materials for English language learners. I'm not betraying any confidences in telling you -- she has said so publicly herself in the past.
Hi Jay - just popped over to say congrats on the 2:1 Open which I too have (class of 79). Hard bloody work but I enjoyed it as am sure you did.
How things have changed: In those days I worked in council electrical maintenance (there were still some gas-lit tenements in Glasgow at that time) and the council PAYED for summer schools - the notion in those far off distant days was that it was right for councils to contribute when employees wanted to (as used to be said) 'better themselves'.
What - results out already? Well done, Jay! (have always wondered what the nickname for a 2:1 should be - there's Damians, Desmonds, and Douglases - what's a 2:1? best I could come up with was a 'Julie Newmar'. anyway...)
QT tonight: panel including Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Office Minister, John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary, Laurie Pennie, columnist, and Paul Staines, better known as the blogger Guido Fawkes. oh my word...that's a mix that can only end well...
Cheers Edwin, as you say, hard work but enjoyable, was a bit sad to finish it really. Not the economics, but the Pol and Phil were very interesting to study. Tricky exam that final Phil one - out of 138 people who took it, only 2 got firsts. They give you online breakdowns of other people's results from your course - quite interesting.
"Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Office Minister, John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary, Laurie Pennie, columnist, and Paul Staines, better known as the blogger Guido Fawkes."
Jesus christ. What a collection. I cant believe i missed Pennie's QT debut, god she's everywhere isnt she, cant get away from the tiresome little joker...
I must have missed the bit where I said the Dutch benefits system was a 'pot of gold' probably because I didn't say it.
The Dutch system is far superior to the UK system and you've selectively used the high end and not the median to justify your viewpoint. And despite the more generous nature of the Dutch system, the unemployment level is lower than the UK and has been for quite some time.
Anyway, I can't be arsed with jousting today, had my works do last night, last day today and looking forward to the festive season.
Jay - same degree as me! (OK, better degree than me, but, y'know, subject-wise...) and i liked the pol / phil bit best too - 'dropped the E' after year one, it just wasn't taking...
Thanks Martillo, Phil (i dropped economics after 2nd year too, was by the far the least interesting). Havent seen Jen but she should have her result now.
What I meant to say was that a lot of the posters here lead comfortable established lives, dare I say banal middle class ones…
Charles I can only speak for myself and I do of course admit that conditions in my youth were much better than they are for you. Full employment, grants for university and an apprenticeship system that gave people a decent training. These things were achieved by people who fought long and hard for social justice. Many of these were indeed working class people but there were also many middle class, even wealthy people, who found the existence of poverty intolerable, even though they did not suffer it. Notably Frederick Engels who .was a wealthy factory owner.
…and I do find it galling that said people criticise me for not being radical/left enough.
People have the right to criticise you, the right to tell you they think you are wrong. There is no compulsion to agree with what you say and of course no compulsion for you to agree with them. People will differ in the way they do this, some express their opinions in stronger language than others. We all need to get used to this. I had to! I used to get quite upset by the way some people express themselves online. Used to it now!
If you have come to a moral conclusion that being left is the answer, so be it, but the left are no more 'the good guys' than someone who is right wing or someone like me who realises the idiocy of trying to divide all political/social opinions into meaningless terms such as left or right.
Firstly, whatever you call it there has always been, throughout history, a struggle for justice and against injustice. In British history alone I can cite the Lollards, the Diggers and the Chartists to name but three. I would agree that the left is a term that can be defined in many ways. The terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ which as you rightly pointed out derive from the French revolution are however generally accepted by most people today to roughly mean the following. (my definitions) Left = those who fight against injustice. for greater equality and fairer distribution of wealth. Right = those who fight to maintain the status quo, the rights of property and the right to exploit that property and those without property in the interests of those with property.
The problem of ‘the left’ is not the aim, it’s the tactics we should employ to achieve that aim.
All words are meaningless unless we agree definitions of them. The terms left and right are shorthand terms for two very different world views In short they reflect reality.
What I should have said also is that the days of one youth are generally 'supposed' to be one's best days, ie it is a commonplace in mainstream society and discourse, I think people should re think that idea. Especially as so many of my generation are literally scrabbling at the cliff face trying to build up their lives.
Sadly I have to agree with most of that. However I don’t think we should re-think the idea. I don’t think I am alone on UT when I say we should see ,as an aim, an ambition for mankind, that we should be struggling to find ways to remove the barriers, social, economic and political that prevent people of all ages from leading happy and productive lives.
Interesting stuff about Matt Seaton yesterday. It seems that he's remarried to an author, Anna Shapiro, who - absolutely coincidentally - does plenty of work for the Graun. I'd say there are still ructions at chez Shapiro-Seaton at his failure to land her a full-time moderating gig.
Call that an 'end' Jay. Hell no it's a new beginning. Although it's not really the point of education, the fact is you have made yourself much more employable and much more mobile, a degree is a passport for working abroad. Or you could continue postgraduate studying and becoming more influential, and respected.
Although I don't know if a BA hons (Open) will be seen by some as the same as a BA hons (Oxbridge), but fuck them. It's their loss.
Think will do an MA, Nap, in politics, damn pricey tho, will do it at Birkbeck i reckon - the night classes are invaluable, i dont know why all institutions dont make their part time courses evening only, then working people could do them. Because of that most courses just dont seem a plausible option, i couldnt afford to work part time on top of paying those damn fees. Birkbecks not too bad tho, from what i gather.
Maybe the Bracken could clarify whether it meets his standard?
jay - now you're following me...did my masters at Birkbeck - given my financial / work situation had to do the course fulltime (3 evenings pw) while working part time (3 days pw) - so yes, the evening classes were what made it possible.
I'd say if you're determined, you can work (at least PT) and do the course in a year - hard, but doable.
they reckon politics is a science, mind, which i think is a bit odd. but it was a great place. the group for my option course (globalisation) was particularly mixed - all ages, all backgrounds, a lot of very interesting different perspectives. go for it!
".....Although I don't know if a BA hons (Open) will be seen by some as the same as a BA hons (Oxbridge),............."
Nap - a lot of UT's do know the answer to that.............it's one of the reasons why many of us aren't at all ambivalent about our leftish viewpoint.
An Oxbridge BA can be turned into a MA without a stroke a further work ....you, just live for 12 months after graduation send your cheque and hey presto you are now an MA... kinda completes the inequality nicely
mind you some of our Scotish Uni's give out MA's as first degrees............but I seem to recall they are 4 year degrees
The twats of oxbridge (mostly) don't need fucking they need shooting, or ex communication to St Kilda.
Anne- you always keep things civil so I'm happy to talk to you.
"Charles I can only speak for myself and I do of course admit that conditions in my youth were much better than they are for you. Full employment, grants for university and an apprenticeship system that gave people a decent training. These things were achieved by people who fought long and hard for social justice.
Precisely, so while I'm not jealous of you all, I do find it a bit galling when the older generation on here like to lay into me for my own situation when you lot had it all. I suppose I suppose should be in favour of returning us to those golden days- at the moment I just want to get a stable life.
Besides, it was that comprehensive welfare state that allowed the baby boomers to embourgoise themselves and then spit down on us by taking away the ladder. Very socialist! If they were such utopian idealists bent on advancing human society why did they act like greedy twats.
What we need is a 'one nation' consensus model, which meant that until Thatch even the Tories were concerned about the lot of the worker and made steps to improve their conditions. Perhaps because the old school Tories had memories of the war, where all sacrificed equally etc.
That is unity of purpose- we don't have that though- we have a very fragmented and divisive society, unfortunately.
V. interesting about Seaton/Shapiro.... What disturbed me was the fact that I remember reading Ruth Picardie's column as she was dying, it was tragic and extremely moving and there was something a little bit grimy about her sister's subsequent writing career.... and of course Seaton's rise to the dizzying heights of CiF Editor.....
Jay - used to work as an Academic Administrator at Birkbeck so know how it functions... there's been a good deal of restructuring going on in the past 3 years, my old Dept. has changed beyond recognition and some long-standing member's of (Admin) staff forced to re-apply for their jobs (and then not getting them) but this has been happening across HE.
I don't think the quality of teaching has suffered though, if anything it is still pretty outstanding - and it has a very 'family' feel to it and of course ..... Zizek is there!!!! :)
Anne "People have the right to criticise you, the right to tell you they think you are wrong. There is no compulsion to agree with what you say and of course no compulsion for you to agree with them...."
Absoultely. And I have just an equal right to argue that left and right is bollocks. Some people will have to get used to this as well, and also the fact that being 'left' does not make you one of the 'good guys'. There have been millions of people worldwide who have been killed by people acting in the name of leftwing ideology, as of course there has been by right wing ideology. While I would never say that a socialist from a Welsh mining town is equal to Pol Pot or Stalin, those on the left have to understand a centre right small business owner is not a Pinochet.
deano - re the scots unis, you go straight onto a proper masters course, as you say 4 years.
re the oxbridge thing, you can distinguish someone who has paid for their M as opposed to done any work, as the paid for ones are MA (Oxon) or MA(Cantab), whereas the 'done' ones are MA(hons) - or, more likely, MStud, MSc, or MPhil...
Hi Jay - thanks for rescuing me from the spam folder!
I'm Ok its just that in my new place I seem to have more to do IRL, Nicer area and some good local food shops. Also always busy at this time of year cooking etc. very behind with this this year, just getting round to making Xmas cake!
Its snowing heavily here in Cardiff so I can't get out (DON'T want a broken leg for Xmas).
Just praying all my planned deliveries actually happen.
Re: Oxford MA's very good point always thought that was a bit cheeky1 But of course this is an institution that only started allowing women to graduate 1920. Before that women could not be members of the University, so even if they attended lectures and passed equivalent examinations they could not graduate.
Still not desperate to admit the working class as students are they?
"Left = those who fight against injustice. for greater equality and fairer distribution of wealth. Right = those who fight to maintain the status quo, the rights of property and the right to exploit that property and those without property in the interests of those with property."
You frame it as if the left are the good guys are the right are evil heartless scum etc. They are still two sides of the same coin, both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations.
As to property. What we need is highly regulated property system and a massive new council house building scheme so people can expect to get on the ladder. (or not bother at all- frankly I'm not particularly bothered about owning property, as long as I have access to cheap but developed social housing and live in a developed first world country) Laws heavily regualting BTL would help as well.
anne - worse even at cambridge, where a woman couldn't be a full member of the uni until 1948 - bizarrely while admitted for degrees in 1920, they still couldn't take exams, think. not sure how they managed to actually get degrees, therefore...
Jay, Hallam have just discontinued their part-time evening law degree due to 'lack of interest' (read 'lack of profit'). The lecturers have done sterling work in arguing that it just about broke even and they were happy to continue working late evenings to provide it for mature students, but the honchos have axed it regardless. It was supposed to be a 'community-oriented' alternative to the Big School up the hill, but they seem to have lost sight of their guiding principles. I really don't think I would have been able to do the degree without the part-time option. The nearest place offering similar was Leeds Met 30 miles up the road.
If you're going to invite 30,000 wild-eyed, pissed-up teens every term to come and kick your bins over and wee on your cenotaph, you could at least offer your services to all...
Charles and also the fact that being 'left' does not make you one of the 'good guys'. There have been millions of people worldwide who have been killed by people acting in the name of leftwing ideology...
I could argue that people like Pol Pot and Stalin were not Left wing, because I firmly believe that to be left wing you have to believe in real democracy, you cannot force a revolution at gun point. This issue is a real problem for the left.
While I would never say that a socialist from a Welsh mining town is equal to Pol Pot or Stalin, those on the left have to understand a centre right small business owner is not a Pinochet..
Small businessmen are not really that much of a problem. The level of exploitation is very small and can be non existent in the case of very small businesses. In fact in the former Yugoslavia small businesses were allowed to exist, Only the major companies (sometimes referred to as 'the commanding heights of the economy') need to be in public hands. It is these large (now international) companies that are the problem. It is they who often support regimes like Pinochet's because they prefer to have a non union environment.
BTW 'in public hands does not mean nationalisation as we have seen it here. There has to be an element of worker's and community control. This should ensure that a factory does not endanger the local population and that the workers have a say in the running of the industry. Even under US capitalism, worker's co-operatives have been known to flourish - quite simply a contented workforce is more productive.
hon mensch to city uni as well, for the more southern. mostly know it through its professional ed side (Charity management MSc, eg). but seemed pretty good, with a wide range of courses.
"worse even at cambridge, where a woman couldn't be a full member of the uni until 1948 - bizarrely while admitted for degrees in 1920, they still couldn't take exams, think. not sure how they managed to actually get degrees, therefore..."
The whole 'extrapolation 'til you reach Stalin' thing' is not so much a straw man, as it is a whopping great Worzel Gummidge effigy that can be seen from space!!
The best that you could say is that authoritarianism, at either end of the spectrum is fundamentally similar (and I'd agree), but it's the significant differences before that stage that matter!!
All you jealous mockers, FYI I am the following twit:
"Leader, strategist, architect, courtesan of capitalism. Guitarist. Political animal."
My identity on the Guardian is a little different (horses for courses, ha ha). There I am "a Spain-based, left wing "Cordobaphile", feminist and Guardianista who plays classical guitar, supports Real Madrid, reads poetry and in my spare time works as a courtesan of capitalism." Equally pompous, but I'm sure you'll agree that it shows a bit more of my softer more feminine side - the Guardian chicks love that sort of thing.
I have published extensively (twice) on the website of the world's best newspaper. I wrote a fine piece on socialism in Spain and everybody who stayed awake long enough to read all of it said that it was fucking magnifico. Encouraged by this spectacular success, I pestered Cif until they gave me another article. I got a lovely Email from Natalie. She said, "OK, Marty, you can do one more, but that's definitely the last one. Just stop fucking stalking me."
So I pulled out all the stops and wrote a blistering piece of investigative journalism (hat tip to bru for the idea). I found out that a load of Nazis! had moved to Spain after the war! Probably millions! I came up with the totally new theory that this might have had something to do with Franco being a fascist and also Hitler's mate. Amazingly, nobody had ever put these pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle together before. Until me.
So although Natalie swore 'never again' after my last iconoclastic piece (she can't handle the truth!), and doesn't reply to my mutiple daily Emails and twitters and many compliments on Cif, it's only a matter of time before I'm back ATL. (They took my C away too, the bastards.)
Yeah but this is the thing Anne, the left has an unerring ability to disown it's own and try and wipe their hands clean. Maybe that is why there are so many splitters from left wing parties and people's fronts of Judea popping up as they squabble over the 10% of the electorate who comprise the socialist vote.
How can anyone say objectively who is or is not left wing? As it was designed during the French revolution, maybe the people of that time would pronounce modern standard bearers of the left as not being left. Or, if Stalin described himself as left wing then he is left wing.
It just seems to me that the only entry requirement leftists have for one to be left wing is for you to be one of the 'good guys'. Which is convenient, because you can then dismiss all the tyrants carrying out heinous acts in the name of the left as being 'not of the left'.
Finally, a trditional conseravtive (pre 1979) would say that Thatcher was not really right wing/conseravtive. And that is a very reasonable debate to raise. She went against all the traditional values of conservatism. Thatcher was a revolutionary and an ideologue as much as Lenin.
Jay - yay! Congrats!! The MA sounds very ineteresting.
Montana and MsChin - you've both got mail. Can you let me know if you haven't got mail? Having some ''issues'' with the mail account - all explained in said mail!
Nap - with all due respect property rights are extremely important. Even a rabid freemarket right winger like Hayek admits that the ownership of vast swathes of land by a rich elite can only have occurred through violence and robbery but he then just sort of shrugs his shoulders and says ''but that's where we are now and we can't really do anything about it''.
That is the right for you.
Property is at the source of everything. You say you only want good social housing - and that property isn't the issue. But you see good social housing and the welfare state etc - they were just sops. They were good things of course but they didn't address the issue. And they were given by our ''betters'' and as anything that is given in that spirit, it can be taken away again.
Read what Anne says about property. Taking control of it doesn't have to mean going into peoples houses and taking that heirloom that their great Aunt Gertrude left them. But it can mean taking control of the things that produce wealth - the land, seas, farms, factory's, resources etc - the things that have been taken by a certain group from everyone else.
If that is going too far - and I don't think it is - then we should at least tax the hell out of land ownership. Instead we give the buggers tons of money just for owning the stuff.
James "The best that you could say is that authoritarianism, at either end of the spectrum is fundamentally similar (and I'd agree), but it's the significant differences before that stage that matter!!"
Ok, fair enough but I have views that transgress both moderate sides of the divide, as do many people, which is why I am saying left/right has no relevance. For example I am in favour of renationalisation of the railways and utilites etc, simply becuase it is the best for the citizens of the nation and cut down on the wastage and expense charges/fees under the present syste.
I feel your pain, Twit. If it's any consolation, CiF's turned to shite recently. Where's Denis MacShane when you need him? Oh hang on, he's on his way to jail.
Charles: You frame it as if the left are the good guys are the right are evil heartless scum etc. They are still two sides of the same coin, both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations.
Firstly I genuinely do not consider the self named socialist republics (USSSR, Cuba, Cambodia, China etc) to be Socialist. There has not been a truly socialist society on earth. (A socialist state is technically a misnomer as the state is there to adjudicate between classes and by the nature of class society will always come down on the side of the ruling class).
In a socialist society what is left of the state would simply organise things,people can organise themselves. Leadership roles would be held by people whose judgement and skill people admire and trust, not by people who are simply more wealthy and powerful than the rest of us. The problem as always is how we get from here to there!
Secondly I do not necessarily think that people with right wing views are heartless scum. Some are! The person who invented the scheme that allows companies to insure their worker's lives for millions so that they profit by their death certainly are! Most right wingers are nice people who genuinely believe that the present economic system is the best for everybody. I think they are wrong, that's all.
I can get angry (you should hear me shout at the radio!- I'm as uncivil as anyone!).The effects of the current system on the lives of the vast majority of people on this planet are intolerable and we should not tolerate it.
I want to end it, it will only end when enough of us believe that another world is possible. We just needs enough of us to realise that it is.
This world breeds unhappiness, unhappiness for the poor for whom life is a continuous struggle. But unhappiness for the rich also who live in constant fear that their wealth and power will be taken from them.
Yes but… in order to position yourself as being “positionless”, you’re constantly having to position yourself against “left” and “right” (see your last post) policies. So saying the terms have no “relevance” is wrong… oddly.
”…I have views that transgress both moderate sides of the divide…”
What… you mean the left/right divide that according to you is irrelevant? It’s clearly not, if you’re depending on it to describe where you stand… “I’m a little bit leftie (renationalise the railways), and a little bit right (chavs)…”
Err, ever thought of hanging with the Lib Dems?
I’m exaggerating the point, and I actually have some sympathy for your argument, believe it or don’t, because I’m in the same boat – but I can only define my beliefs according to the time-honoured terms of “left” and “right”. They may indeed be outdated, and we probably do need a new lexicon to describe much of today’s politics, but as it stands, they’re really the only currency we have now to describe politically and socially what we support and what we oppose.
I think we all have a disparate and wide-ranging set of political 'beliefs', some of which are from one side, and some from the other.
It's about priorities and averages for most people, and then pegging to 'the nearest' party (for some of us, that's none of 'em, to be fair!).
If we agree with some of the points of the 'other side', it doesn't mean that left and right are meaningless, or that 'politics' has ceased to exist as we know it, it's just a reflection of the confused and diverse nature of the human condition!!
Moody's downgrades Ireland's rating by five notches and maintains 'negative' outlook on concerns over cuts--The Graun, today
Another critical element in the plot was the fact that the bond rating agencies were paid by the commercial and investment banks issuing the securities. The rating agencies used statistical models that did not take into account the possibility of a crash in housing prices.--Charles Morris, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
'...that did not take into account the possibility of a crash in housing prices.'
Ask yourself: would you take advice on horse-racing strategy from someone who didn't take into account the possibility of horses losing?
Why is anyone listening to these chumps. And as for 'satisfying the markets'...Jesus wept--if only poor Ireland had politicians who weren't hopelessly corrupt sacks of shit, they might have told the bloodsuckers to go fuck themselves.
Yet the inept, the incompetent, the hopelessy dim, the corrupt and the criminal keep getting a pass. Just the other day, I read a respectful review of Anatole Kaletsky's 'Capitalism 4.0' in The NY Review of Books.
Anatole Fucking Kaletsky...I ask you.
That nincompoop hasn't been right about a single thing since he turned on a radio in 1964, heard 'Love Me Do' and confidently predicted that The Beatles would never catch on. The man's a joke.
Well spotted, Eddie...the clueless MyLittlePonyInEnnis 'tweets' about emailing the Groan. Stop the fucking presses.
Like I told you, when we break 'em to the saddle, they stay broken.
If McSame is jailed, it'll make me a very happy man.
Oh and by the way, I'll choose my own comrades thanks. Stalin betrayed socialism, his regime although economically socialist in a way, was politically authoritarian as others have said. True socialism has to be politically democratic as well.
The soviet state was not based on what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat(which means that everyone is a dictator over himself and no-one else)but on the dictatorship of the Communist Party and ultimately the dictatorship of its leader.
Sorry but by definition that is NOT socialist.
To quote a !Kung San hunter from Botswana 'We do not have a head man we are each of us a head man over ourselves'. These people were then still living as hunter gatherers - a state of primitive communism.
I don’t participate in CiF any more but on the off-chance you pop back here from time to time… hope you’re keeping well, mate. Best wishes for the Festive Season and all that.
The OU does offer some post grad courses as well.When i've got the time i want to do an MA and i'll be considering the OU route( provided of course they've got the course i want)
Charlie
Well done on getting your credit.Will you be able to continue your studies in Russia?I know the OU does have overseas centres as well but dunno whether they have any in Russia.
Duke
Still haven't managed to fully digest the stats from your link about Dutch welfare.But given the choice i'm sure many British welfare recipients would have felt they'd won the lottery if they were suddenly offerred Dutch levels of benefits.
My understanding is that there are exceptions though.Teenage lone mothers in the Netherlands for instance are primarily seen as being the responsibility of their families and don't even get the miserly level of benefits their British counterparts get.Would be interesting to know whether that plays any significant part in explaining the very low Dutch level of teenage pregnancies-which incidentally is one sixth the British level in real terms.
Nap - ".... both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations...."
It's the word "caused" that is the problem in the above. You have an odd idea of causality.
It's not the particular ideology that causes the nutter's behaviour rather that power seeking nutters are attracted to politics because they are after all after power.
Ideology was largely irrelevant to the likes of Blair and uber creep Mandelson......it seems more likely that the idea of power was what attracted them into politics and thus there was not even a second thought in their changing the core values of the Labour Party to secure their own ends.
If the political pendulum had been moving the the right at the time Blair would just as easily have joined the Tories at Oxford - the man was an out and out chancer.
We ain't going to do it by pretending it's our ideology that causes the problem........perhaps we should develop a genetic test to disqualify these twats from entering politics?
The god awful truth is that far too many leaders in politics and banking and corporate life are sicko's.... a worrying characteristic of these nutters is that they are so plausible.
Sadly the truth is it's the nuts that are running the asylum
This website summarizes some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths.
Glibness and Superficial Charm
Manipulative and Conning They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
Grandiose Sense of Self Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
Pathological Lying Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Shallow Emotions When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Incapacity for Love
Need for Stimulation Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily."
Paul - they do have post-grad yeah, just not the courses I'm after, annoyingly. But Birkbeck looks quite good, so not the end of the world. Expensive tho. But £3.5k a year i think, so 2 years PT £7k.
I wouldnt worry too much about left/right, Nap, obviously the labels aren't perfect or adequate but they still have meaning and relevance.
What bothers me much more is inconsistency, people who claim to be "left" waffling on without a second thought as to whether the consequences of their proposals would be left/right, and same with the right - like the Thatcher example someone's already made, good ol "conservatives" laying waste to the social fabric with the latest hair-brained economic gimmicks.
Did they really take MIE's big shiny 'C' away from him? I'd translate that as broadly meaning "Fuck off and stop bothering us. You won't be writing any more dirges ATL." I could be wrong.
When the financial crisis struck, many people — myself included — considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.
How naïve we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.
It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.
Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.
Last week, Spencer Bachus, the incoming G.O.P. chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Birmingham News that “in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
In the end, those of us who expected the crisis to provide a teachable moment were right, but not in the way we expected. Never mind relearning the case for bank regulation; what we learned, instead, is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. And the answer is, the facts lose.--Paul Krugman, The NYT, today
Followed a Laurie P Twitter link - it's a slow day here in Dublin - to a CiF article by who Laurie calls "my dear friend and hero" Seaneen Molloy. I read a bit of it and then IAD, Internet Attention Disorder, kicked in. So I took a look at Seaneen's blog/website.
Her most recent (re-posted) article was on the portrayal of the underclass, which included the striking line "I am not one of those crazy kids who lives in London on benefits while their rich parents sneak a few hundred into their bank accounts every month."
Cheers Montana - wasn't a nagging reminder - just not sure my emails are going out properly.
Nap - I think left and right can mean different things to different people but to say they are irrelevant - and then to frame your own position by them....
Fundamentally I think what matters most is how someone is economically. Someone can be a great liberal but if they are economically liberal they can't - in my humble - really want freedom for all - because the very economic system they support crushes so many. So they only care about the freedoms of a select few - those wealthy enough to enjoy them.
The issue in the UK and the US is that the left has been hollowed out and taken over either by right wingers (Blair etc) or by those on the left who are obssessed with identity politics etc and who really are probably nearer to what I would imagine a classic liberal is.
That is not to say that I don't think there are issues with sexism and racism etc - there clearly are. Just to say that the most pressing problem is economic. That until we get rid of a system that fucks so many over - all the other stuff is tinkering about at the edges. Until the left starts to address that then they are irrelevant. As long as someone buys into the neo-liberal dogma then in my view no matter what their other views - they are right wing. Someone else may disagree entirely.
As if to prove my point: Atos Origin is set to buy Siemens IT arm in a deal worth 850m. Money taken directly from the UK taxpayers and earned on the back of the suffering of the most vulnerable in society.
Many of whom paid into NI schemes and paid tax for bloody years, or whose parents did etc, to be now told it was a fraudulent scheme and those contributions are worthless. And are now thrown on the scrapheap as a whole industry evolves around welfare to further line the pockets of the private sector.
We are not a democracy we are a corporatocracy - that needs changing.
The problem with identity politics is that its an illiberal attempt to remedy illiberalism, so unless its very precisely done, and the identification of prejudice and illiberalism is spot on, it is overall an illiberal policy. When you combine this with the rampaging egos and self-righteousness of the identity brigade, you have a recipe for widespread idiocy.
The argument is sound that various identity prejudices restrict the liberty of the people in question, and that its a fair trade-off to restrict the liberty of the bigot to protect the liberty of the victim.
But when you take a very broad brush approach, howl down any and all critics, immerse yourself with fellow backslappers in your NGO/academic institution/liberal Grauny paper, etc, you get this sort of mad, and illiberal, world coming out where a relatively small portion of the population wield quite a lot of power.
For instance, the new law on race and gender in employment. A white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man.
Shocking but true. There is no possible explanation for that in the world that could fall under the "liberty" banner. Yet thats where are with identity politics. The censorious approach of the Graun on the issue is a classic of its kind - people so utterly convinced they are right and infallible, and of the highest moral purity, that they dont bat an eyelid to censor those who disagree, even politely and intelligently.
Anyone who claims that Stalin was a communist because he said he was is also duty bound to accept that East Germany was democratic because that's what it called itself.
That's called "being gullible".
And when you only accept what people and countries call themselves when it suits you, that's called "being dishonest".
That's odd...an earlier (completely innocuous) post has vanished. The fucker didn't even have any links in it. Oh, well...at least @thauma saw it before it got Ciffed.
I see MaryMagdaleneInEastOfEden is back at the old Waddya Want To Cook recipe stand (minus his big blue 'Cunt Alert' sign).
He appears to channelling an Irishman (or, more accurately, an 'Oirishman'...oh, yeah...I forgot: he has a foot in every culture. That cunt's got more feet than a fucking millipede.
Christ, I can't think of people more illiberal than identity politics peddlers. The only commonality is that they usually come from what they fancy is a socially liberal background and trace their ideological roots back to 60s radical liberals. But they're herders, slicers and dicers, the very people who would claim the primacy or moral superiority of one group over another. See CiF for details.
As for self-serving cunts, Ed Miliband is already proving his worth in esteemed company. He was against the Iraq war but didn't utter a word against it in public and voted against an inquiry into it. His 'commitment' to a permanent 50% top tax rate to put funding for public services on a sound footing is already piss weak and he won't bring it back if the coalition get rid of it. He put Woolas - already under investigation - in as shadow Immigration Minister as a 'tough on immigration' sop and a nod to the white working class Don't Like Darkies Tendency. He refused to go on a march against the cuts because it would look bad in the red tops the next day. He's schtum on welfare reform because he voted for it in government and he's not against too much of it. He's also silent on both Atos and A4e because they were both brought in by Labour. He won't reign in the banks because he wants to pull the same fund-public-services-out-of-casino-profits stunt that Blair and Brown did.
The little he has done shows a right-wing populist bent and the lot he hasn't done shows that he's a Blair-like panderer. And if it sounds like, as usual, I'm reserving my greatest venom for Labour, I am. Because it's their job to look after those at the very bottom of the pile and they don't. Miliband's doing the electoral maths, gladly letting the coalition do his dirty work for him and setting himself up for the usual pitch at the middle-class, middle England swing voters in 4 and a half years time.
A white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man.
Well, I don't find that 'shocking' at all. If they are equally qualified, why shouldn't they hire the black woman? What should they do: toss a coin, or make a small correction for centuries of injustice and prejudice?
You can argue for the coin toss, and that's fair enough. For me, when I am selecting a service (for example, solicitor), I will pick a woman over a man all other things being equal.
Because I know it was fucking hard to get taken seriously as a working woman 20 years ago. Less so today, admittedly, but that is in great measure because of past battles that have been fought.
But I still hate bloody identity politics as a concept. I want to be given a job because of my abilities, and not because of a quota - because that undermines the whole idea of equality.
"Well, I don't find that 'shocking' at all. If they are equally qualified, why shouldn't they hire the black woman? What should they do: toss a coin, or make a small correction for centuries of injustice and prejudice?"
I think its a moot point. What is shocking is the pay stat, not the scenario itself.
In real life, i find the concept of "equal candidates" are little far fetched. Is it really possible to meet two individuals for the same job and say they are identically well qualified, you really could not put a cigarette paper between them? I find it very hard to believe.
And if people want to choose one candidate they can already - they *didnt* have to toss a coin, they could employ whichever of the two they wanted.
The whole thing is a positive discrimination measure so worded to avoid causing anger/controversy.
''The only commonality is that they usually come from what they fancy is a socially liberal background.'' _ That's really what I meant RE - didn't put it too well. They think they are liberals, and they often hold economically liberal views. So they tinker around within the status quo trying to advance their particular cause.
Jay is that true about black women earning more than white men? I have to say that did surprise me.
Thauma - Point taken as also from Eddie. Re the takeover - it might not happen - it is ''intended.''
if it does Atos will: ''jump from number six in Europe to number two in managed services revenues, according to Atos and Gartner figures.''
So that's lots more poor buggers all over Europe subjected to them!
RappidEddie - ''And if it sounds like, as usual, I'm reserving my greatest venom for Labour, I am. Because it's their job to look after those at the very bottom of the pile and they don't.'' Totally agree with you. They are the betrayers. I mean the Tory's are just looking after their own as they have always done.
Although I have to say that I have a physical loathing for Osbourne that is as strong as the one I had for Shitdribble - and I didn't think that was possible!
Anyway must be off. Waiting for a cab to spirit me away to work.
The HO, is at last, running a project to catalogue, review and prepare files for release, related to the Hillsborough disaster. Since they have only just begun this, it could be some time before we get to see them and not all the files, (inevitably), are likely to be released. They have weasel ways of getting round the FoIA.
Oh and one other thing - The courts have just ruled that the cap on immigration is unlawful and accused Theresa May of trying to "sidestep parliamentary scrutiny." Par for the course then.
I suspect Labour will try to do what the Tories tried to do 2008-2010: say as little as possible, about anything, and let the incumbents unpopularity bring in the votes. Thats why they;ve been such spineless little weasels, along with the fact that they agree with the Tory approach in a lot of areas, or they were directly responsible for a lot of the issues in question anyway.
As an Opposition, they are currently useless, completely useless.
Can't remember the author, but someone argued on Cif that society should accommodate flip-flopping transgenders. I think that's the right term - but there's so many trans this an' that I might be wrong. Anyway, I mean the people who want to be able to call themselves Paul one day and Paula the next, and wear clothes (to work) to suit - but don't feel able to because colleagues look at them queer, like.
Interesting discussion about identity politics.Will come back later on that if i can.
Just a quick point.Black women don't earn more that White men on average.Black Caribbean-as opposed to Black African women- do however earn more on average than White women.However as you know there are huge disparities within averages.And Black Caribbean women still suffer from higher levels of unemployment than White women.
Mods, yep, I noticed that as well. He's taking the loss of his Cunt sign very badly I fear, but he has only himself to blame. The prose was too pedestrian, the subject matters too obscure.
He should look to the CiF young guns for inspiration. A current affairs or pop culture hook (new movies and recent riots are always good), a few identity politics catchphrases to set up an us-and-them response and you're away in a trot. Light red touch paper and retire to a safe distance to watch the fireworks.
This faux polemic confecting is no game for old duffers such as he and I, I'm afraid.
Paul - unless things have changed dramatically lately the average black woman does earn more than the average white man. This was the focus of quite a lengthy debate a few months back, 6 maybe. So pretty sure thats correct but could be wrong.
Bracken - i remember that thread too, struck me as astonishingly narcissistic - i may desire to be a man one day and a woman the next, it is the job of everyone i work with to be ultra careful with their conduct towards me to accomodate this.
What is shocking is the pay stat, not the scenario itself.
Ah OK, I misunderstood.
I assume that the stat is for the groups in question *in work*?
I could deliberately stir up controversy by insinuating that the black woman has probably had to work a fuck of a lot harder to get where she is, and therefore deserves more pay. But I wouldn't do that, of course. ;-)
In real life, i find the concept of "equal candidates" are little far fetched.
Yes and no. Once you've worked with people for a while, you know what they're like. But when you're trying to make a decision based purely off CVs and an interview, it's quite difficult. People lie.
Or, to go back to my choosing-a-solicitor example, I can compare the letters after their names, but after that, I don't have the expertise to judge. Of course I will also ask friends if they have any recommendations.
And if people want to choose one candidate they can already - they *didnt* have to toss a coin, they could employ whichever of the two they wanted.
Well, they still can. But I believe it's a well-known fact (Meerkatjie?) that people tend to select employees who are more like them - so encouraging people to consider the 'other' doesn't hurt. It also makes for more successful businesses.
RapidEddie - with you on Ed M. Who fuck decided to call him 'Red Ed'?
Congratulations on your OU degree - will you be off to the award ceremony to collect it in your mortar board and gown?
More seriously given your subject, did you use any of your own contributions to CiF or those of others in your work and if so how did you reference them?
Don't be so silly Thaum'. Apart from wanting to use online exchanges for instance as case study material, it's the kind of question that OU tutors must face all the time given the number of civil servants / government employees who take OU courses and the nature of the Official Secrets Act.
OU Business Studies students are I believe required to produce work based examples for their assignments - so think about how you might deal with conflict management or ethics within an organisation.
Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre will close to children with immediate effect today, following a review of the detention of children and family returns by the government working with key partners.
"Reading an op-ed in an American newspaper last month, which argued that gay marriage should be legalised because it will help reduce overpopulation (homosexuals don’t breed, you see), I knew I had heard a similar sentiment somewhere before.
‘Given the social hardships of our era, the benefits of homosexual marriage could be immeasurable’, the op-ed said. ‘Even America, though its population pales in comparison to that of other nations, is considered overpopulated because the amount of energy each of its citizens expends in a lifetime is enormous. Obviously homosexuals cannot, within the confines of a monogamous relationship, conceive offspring.’ So, legalising gay marriage would ‘indirectly limit population growth’ (1).
Gays celebrated because they don’t have children… homosexual relationships culturally affirmed on the basis that their childlessness could help solve a planetary crisis… gay monogamy bigged up because it doesn’t involve conceiving offspring."
Let's all stop having kids and the human race will be 'OK'...maybe we can breed the shellsuits out of existence?..we'll keep those nice Polish and Latvians though..they always seem so eager to please and grateful...and they're so good with Tarquin and Jocasta
Now the city authorities, faced with talk of bankruptcy, plan to downsize Detroit by cutting off services, such as policing and sewerage, to large parts of the blighted metropolis in an effort to pressure residents to move to core neighbourhoods of a smaller city.
In some parts of Detroit, 80% of housing is empty amid widespread unemployment. Many have simply abandoned properties now worth a fraction of the mortgages on them.
Property prices have collapsed to the point where houses can be had for $100, although the average price is $7,500 (£5,000). The city council gives homes away to those prepared to pay the outstanding property taxes.
The mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, said that his administration cannot afford to go on providing services such as schools, firefighters, buses and rubbish collection to large areas of the city where the population has dropped sharply and fewer people paying property taxes has left a $300m hole in the budget.
The removal of services sounds horrendous, but I don't see what else they can do. However, they should pay people to move; many - in fact, most - are far too poor to scrape up a few thousand dollars for a house in a more viable area. Remember this is the country with no social provision.
"We should dismantle, deconstruct those areas and turn them over to urban farms where we are tilling a thousand or fifteen hundred acres and we are growing fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and creating jobs in canning and shipping and packaging. We could have half a dozen of those farms spread out across the city because the city unfortunately lacks quality supermarkets...."
This is a good idea. As he says, there are hardly any supermarkets in Detroit selling fresh fruit and veg.
Except that the pollution of the soil would be a serious issue.
And Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question. There will be no ContactPoint children’s database. Schools will not take children’s fingerprints without even asking their parent’s consent.
This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent. That’s why we’ll remove limits on the rights to peaceful protest. It’s why we’ll review libel laws so that we can better protect freedom of speech.
That was just after the election - on May 19 2010. Just seven months later, we have this:
Here’s one example of the intimidation of peaceful protest by the young that is happening all over Britain. Nicky Wishart is a 12-year-old self-described “maths geek” who lives in the heart of David Cameron’s constituency. He was gutted when he found out his youth club was being shut down as part of the cuts: there’s nowhere else to hang out in his village. He was particularly outraged when he discovered online that Cameron had said, before the election, that he was “committed” to keeping youth clubs open. So he did the right thing. He organized a totally peaceful protest on Facebook outside Cameron’s constituency surgery. A few days later, the police arrived at his school. They hauled him out of his lessons, told him the anti-terrorism squad was monitoring him and threatened him with arrest.
The message to Nicky Wishart and his generation is very clear: don’t get any fancy ideas about being an engaged citizen. Go back to your X-Box and X-Factor, and leave politics to the millionaires in charge.
The question would seem to be whether we can afford to let these mendacious fuckwits remain in office for another four years or so.
PS There is an email for Johann Hari - the author of the Independent article quoted above, which is worth following the link to read in full.
For those who have some dope on the whole A4E etc scam and con, it might be worth dropping a note in that direction, rather than the "We don't really do campaigning" shitbrain department of Jaffa Cake Central Office.
Actually, the articles and comments I have read on the Independent make CiF look like a puddle of slurried excrement anyway.
I would imagine the logic is something along the lines of:
Crack the heads open of people who are old enough for big-time protesting - kettle them, film them, get their details on a database, tazer them, trump up charges against them, trample them with pig-horses, use water-cannon on them, shoot them with rubber-bullets, extraordinary rendition them, put them in secret torture prisons...
...but just put the fear of god into the children who might be tempted and ensure they never demonstrate in the first place, so that in future years, we can just go back to our protection rackets, drug-dealing and pimping and we can still just beat the shit out of anyone we choose oif we start to get a bit flabby and feel like some exercise.
Actually, Master Nicky Wishart was probably lucky the rozzers decided to drag him from his little half-scale chair as he was dusting off his seven times table.
Otherwise, he could have been shot while trying to escape.
Brain not so much mash potato as puree now after 2 hours at 30 mph on the bleedin M25. Argh.
That Nicky Wishart story is an absolute disgrace. Warned off with "armed police"? And that even if he didn't attend himself he could be nicked for conspiracy? Arseholes.
I can't do the 23rd, me love, cos I'z got the work Christmas piss-up that evening. Would have been good to catch up with you too... I hear you had an unfortunate accident with some beluga caviare and your keyboard the other day, so I was going to propose to bring you some white truffle to cheer you up a bit :p
Well, the only other date I have on offer at the mo is in Seaford where I'll be dahn the boozah with some mates on Boxing Day. After that, the moveable feast travels to Berlin for New Year.
I'm getting in as much travel as possible because I hear that a certain tea lady in Brussels is putting pressure on the European Commissioners - who are all besotted with her, dahlings! - to have Communists placed under house arrest. Or in my case council-flat arrest.
Atoms, 'Interesting is not the word to describe dthat story. I was reading the real letters page in various papers on my travels round London the other day and there are an awful lot of narked people out there who were 'Kettled' on the student fees demo. These letters were from the teaching staff for example. What you sat ties in with my conclusion (and I am sure any sane person by now), that they will make demos so uncomfortable that people will think twice before attending. What we need is a legal challange to this and I'm surprised nothing has come of that but maybe I just have and old fashioned idea of justice.
RapidEddie , 100% agree on your description of Labour, they have let a lot of people down big time. Why do we never see that simple truth in the MSM (without the 'C' words I guess;-) )?
"For instance, the new law on race and gender in employment. A white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man"
I'm with Thauma on this. A tiny, miniscule, percentage of Black Women earn more (sometimes much, much more) than the average white man, or white women like me, but they remain that, a tiny minority in workforce/highly paid jobs which are still overwhelmingly dominated by White Middle/Upper class men.
I don't 'do' identity politics and a passing sop to employ '5' black women in top jobs is just that, a sop, but a bloody gift to the likes of the Daily Mail, which screams and wails about 'positive' discrimination without context - that the system is weighted against everyone except all but the most privileged (irrespective of skin colour - that's a red herring, but nonetheless the reality is that the upper echelons of Society are almost wholly dominated by white faces in this country)
Just look at what this shower of shite in government (Upper Class White men) have been doing - in just 6 months! If you're poor and Black you represent a minority within a majority of the seriously disadvantaged but you also disproportionately represent the majority of those who are most disadvantaged throughout society.
If you're poor and Black you represent a minority within a majority of the seriously disadvantaged but you also disproportionately represent the majority of those who are most disadvantaged throughout society.
Well said.
Identity politics is a form of Divide and Rule and should be eschewed. At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together. And stand together.
I find it very hard to believe that black women are earning more than any other group. What are they doing in the UK? In France, they seem to mainly be working as cleaners, nursing auxiliaries, post-office staff, low-level administrative staff, etc. Not exactly the best-paid jobs.
I know of quite a few Black women working in the IT sector as contractors who get in excess of 400UKP/day. And these are not short term contracts folks, they run for years. All very necessary and they are great people to know but examples like that are not uncommon. That might skew the figures a bit?
Or in London, working in fucking toilets all night, servicing clubbers who are off their nuts, whilst someone else looks after their kids....or picking up litter on the Underground..... cleaning offices, going to work at 4 a.m.
Fucking Hell - just spent half an hour writing a post to have the blogger destroy it. And i'm already wound up tonight as it is !
Really good reading - today's posts that is.
Atomboy - Please may I plagiarize your earlier post 18:07. I want to send part of it, to a work colleague who thinks the sun shine's out from Cameron's arse. He lives close to or within Cameron's constituency and never fails to extol the virtues and good he does for his constituents ! Can't wait for the reply from my colleague on that one !
Deano - There seems to be one who posts here that fits your 'Profile of the Sociopath' Ahh too close for comfort me thinks..
Reason I'm wound up - just took the RAC more than 3 hours to get to me to give my battery a jump start. Fucking thing just up and died. Fine one second - dead as a fucking Dodo the next. Coffee shop kicked me out at 5 cause they were closing - fairy nuff. Got home with frozen feet, after spending a not so comfortable amount of time in my 'then' not mobile fridge.
Gotta buy myself a xmas pressie tomorrow - New Battery !
I know of quite a few Black women working in the IT sector as contractors who get in excess of 400UKP/day. And these are not short term contracts folks, they run for years.
Really?
I am a contractor in the IT sector myself and I have never come across such a thing. I can assure you that I don't make anything fucking remotely close to 400 quid a day, although granted I am not black.
I do know of some contractors who are being *billed* at similar rates by their agencies, but unfortunately all the ones in question I can think of are white males.
At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together.
Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity.
Bitterweed - Thought Jody McIntyre handled that interview really well. Certainly got his point across.
Unlike Assange last night on Newsnight where he was constantly interrupted by that horrible woman... can't find her name.. conducting her own one sided interview.
Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity
LaRit - Wish I'd had some idea it was coming. My old work horse just don't talk to me anymore.
Stood in the snow with me steelies on. Nearly gave a guy in a Toyota a good kicking after he reversed his monster truck into my car. Should of - would have warmed me up !
Me: At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together.
You: Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity.
OK ... so which part of my statement do you disagree with? Do you think that anyone who isn't a white hetero male should be chucked out of the working class? Where are they going to go? Will they be magically whooshed into the middle classes?
Or are you buying into the Divide and Rule strategy of our overlords?
Sorry, LatRit. You're the working class wannabee opera singer who never got a fair chance, right? And you blame everything and everybody for everything that's ever gone wrong with your life, apart from yourself? Natch. 'It can't be me - I'm fucking briliant. And everybody here thinks so.'
I don't know how old you are, but it might be time to grow up. Constantly telling people to 'shut the fuck up' doesn't really work as a long-term strategy. It just makes you look like a fascist.
Apparently going to the pub to watch rugby is *infinitely* more heinous than going to the pub to watch football. Presumably that's all right. How do you feel about cricket? Racing? Boxing? Synchronised swimming?
As for spending half a week's JSA ... lessee ... er, no.
'Or are you buying into the Divide and Rule strategy of our overlords?'
No I'm not. I'm just saying that that is not really necessary - the 'divide' part is already there, and you support it and choose it yourself. Be honest. How many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people? How much time do you spend with people like that? Do you even know any? Do you go down the pub with them all the time, or do you do that with your very similar 'mates' instead? Poor people can't afford that sort of thing, you know. They inhabit another world, and you shouldn't pretend that you are a part of it, or understand it. Because you're not, and you don't.
Bitters--Good selection that, the man has put out some good stuff and is becoming, rightly, better known. Think he's doing Glastonbury next year too, you lucky buggers.
Well done to Jay on his degree.
weareallinthistogether--I know you were addressing thauma, but I count several uneducated, working class, unemployed people as close friends. We always have been friends despite social and economic problems because we live in close proximity in the same village, and all live in the same world, as shitty as it is at times.
Out with dog before popping in to the Legion to hoist a couple with some of the aforementioned. Bye for now.
The vast majority of the people down my local are working class. Most of them are employed, be it in a regular job for The Man, self-employed or picking up the odd bit of work here and there, whether on the books or not.
So yeah, all those brickies, gardeners, handymen, foundry workers (or rather, ex-foundry workers now the foundry has been closed), bar staff and care home workers that I hang out with are seriously posh. All of them have villas in Tuscany.
Hello - i know and am friends with many working class 'uneducated'people - ey are in the majority here.
Can I take issue with your 'another world' statement? there is but one world - some people ar denied access - for many reasons - from aspects of a society. In many ways by saying 'they inhabit another world ' you are marginalising them. Ways of life do cross each other - they merge and then seperate only to merge again.
The only people who are isolated from the reality of the majority are the elite and those who seek to claim educational or social superiority.
I am certainly not claiming the that middle management types who do not socialise with the 'lesser' employees understand the problems and difficulties many of their coworkers face but the dividing lines are not always so tightly drawn.
How many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people?...
...They inhabit another world, and you shouldn't pretend that you are a part of it, or understand it. Because you're not, and you don't.
They? You make them sound like another species. You're making some big assumptions about who we do and don't know. I know a few "working class, unemployed folk" I'd call friends.
Don't know where you hang out but if you fancied a trip to Sheffield, I'd be happy to take you out for a drink in Shiregreen or Parsons Cross say - it's easy to sound off on a blog, but my guess is they'd be no more impressed by you than they are with me, and thats not very.
I'm sick to death of people feeling they have to prove their credentials, otherwise they can't call themselves a Commie, on here.
It's complete bollocks and twaddle. It's also the twisted reverse logic that I've been abused with over the years on CiF.
You haven't 'made it' therefore that means you're shite at what you do.
FFS nobody wanted to buy Van Gough's paintings when he was alive and the Michael Angelo was on his back for 4 years painting the Cistene Chapel for the modern day equivalent 50 fucking pence!
wereallin seems awfully upset about something. I hope that it wasn't just being ignored on UT. Happens to the worst of us.
Strange thread today - there is no right and left, working class black women earn more than working class white men, the Met's tactics are to be applauded, transgender people are fucking weirdos and now "middle class white women" don't have working class friends.
Oh well, I guess if I don't get involved, I can just giggle at silly ideas.
Good posts aloft - we certainly need some practical, on the ground socialism here.
Reminded me of 2 books I recently read - one about the cotton area in US in the 30s and the oter about coton picking in Turkey in the 50s.
The US small cotton growers borrowed money from local store to see them thru - they employed mexican pickers along with locals and their own children. Failure of the crop meant disastor all heavy debt for farmers nd poor reward for Mexicans.
In Turkey the whole village migrated to the coastal plain - on money borrowed from village Bey. Food and winter clothing as well as debt repeyment dependent upon successful season.
I was struck by the similarities in method of funding - and precarios existence - in 2 such different societies. All were exploited - workers and small farmers with poor quality land and totally dependent upon growing conditions and weather during harvest.
This is very similar to the high unemployment model now operating creating both dependency on things beyond personal control and accompanying debt.
Such precarious lives still exist for millions - we really do not seem to be getting very far at all in either feeding everyone or respecting them.
Yes, thankyou tascia... I found the first Guardian report and realised it was one of those that linked to an earlier one with more details. It's not the first time...
been a funny day - reading crap telling us how wonderful it all is - or will be for those who survive starvation rations - with cuts in winter fuel for hospitals and schools and the collapse of infrastructure cos it snowed.
This 2 world bs really irritates me - accepting this nonsense helps to perpetuate the lies. There is one world and all are entitled to a share in it, to resources and to opportunity whatever our ambitions and hopes.
"How many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people? How much time do you spend with people like that? Do you even know any? "
Was this a general question ? if so, a fair few, and I'll be getting pissed with a few of them tomorrow afternoon. They like rugby too. Not opera, but mind you, there's a few Verdi tunes that I reckon kick ass any century, any country, any class.
Funny old world.
Hi Sheff, is chekhov in one piece still ?
SK - likewise. Samuel fucking Pepys. Genius. Will be using that one tomorrow down the pub...
Ouch! That's told me! I should know better than to challenge the borg. Everybody here is beautiful and virtuous and brilliant and 'different'. Everybody here is middle class, but really, really relates to the working class. Everybody who challenges this delusion is a 'demented fucking bore'.
Why is it, from my point of view, that you all seem to mulch into a kind of colourless wallpaper paste where there is no original thought? No individuality or independent thinking? No escape from the repetitive boredom that is 'this bears repeating' and 'we can't stress this enough' when bores interminably reiterate what people fondly imagine to be the 'party line'?
I can understand that you like your little comfort zone, and you appreciate the positive feedback that you get when you all push the right buttons for each other, but don't kid yourselves that is an intelligent political debate forum. It's just a smug masturbatorium where dissenting voices are dismissed with a righteous 'fuck off' or 'troll'.
In that respect you're much closer to the likes of waddya and brusselsexpats and kizbot than you would like to admit.
It's good fun to watch, though. Serious engagement is obviously out of the question.
Watching The Daily Show. How on god's green earth can the Republican Party - the supposed party of The American Hero - justify not providing support and compensation to those firefighters, paramedics, police staff etc who are dying from illness related to their involvement as first responders to the 11 September 2001 attacks? How can they FILIBUSTER something designed to provide some relief to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to help and to save lives in a time of crisis? What the fuck is WRONG with these people?
The world is so fucked up. How many times and in how many ways can ordinary people be screwed over by these complete and utter fuckers?
Since I've spent a large part of my existence misguidedly either 'pretending' I was thick, to stop people bullying me and making my life shit (all classes) or 'pretending' I was a nice middle class person with all the right credentials but a glaringly obvious name that would 'never' cut the mustard with toxic amateur middle class people in Classical Music-fucked-up-world. I AM SICK TO DEATH OF THE PATHETIC flamers coming on here and elsewhere thinking WE OWE THEM an explanation for our existence!!!!!
I could probably rescue it if you wanted a chuckle Atomboy, I castigated you for believing twaddle that later turned out not to be so twaddlesome.
Having said that, organisers can be liable for offences (S.14 Public Order Act 1986) if protests get out of hand, and then it is for the organiser to prove that the circumstances were out of his control (probably after he's been arrested). Not an especially fair burden - we've all thrown parties were some big kids came, drank all the Advocaat and puked in the fishtank. Lesson: don't organise a protest on Facebook I suppose, or at least not with your real name. No wonder Aaron Porter was so vociferously trying to absolve his ass after Millbank got totalled
"You sure you not 'Luke'" Tascia..... I am his father. "Noooooooooo!"
D'you know what wearallin? People do disagree and discuss here, but when what is obviously a complete cunt comes looking for a fight, they'll fucking find one.
"Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity
Do shut the fuck up. 17 December, 2010 20:23"
You're doing yourself no good parading your ignorance here La Rit.
If you can't come up with a better suggestion of who the rapidly changing identity of weareallinthistogther might be I think you're less of a people person than you'd like us to think you are.
It's just a smug masturbatorium where dissenting voices are dismissed with a righteous 'fuck off' or 'troll'.
Don't get into a snot simply because people picked you up on some assumptions you'd made. No one called you a troll or told you to fuck off, simply didn't agree with what you'd said - to which your response was to have a little tantrum. My invite is still open.
I didn't see it, but I am quite happy to be told off whether I deserve it or not.
I'm not sure what a Facebook protest is, actually. Do they send a camera-crew with a small team to hand out cups of tea and offer blankets to anyone who gets cold?
Chekhov's here at mine tonight Leni - but is being coy about posting. Probably thinks it'll ruin his cred overnighting in this middle class haven in the midst of inner city dereliction.
Ah, the endless British obsession with class. Where would we be without it?
Personally I blame punk. I mean, before punk we had it to an extent but inverted snobbery was very much a left to extreme left thing.
Freaks did not give a shit what class you were. Theoretically, anyway. We were all in it together, man. So to speak. So I had middle class freak mates and upper class freak mates. Not many thoroughly working class freak mates, it must be said. And I was pretty much it in my school. The token longhair.
But punk changed it all. Then the middle class art students all decided that that freaks were middle class and that that was not cool so being working class became necessary not just if you were in some Trotskyisk sect but if you were anyone other than a completely straight bourgeois loser.
And the final nail in the coffin of classlessness as an aspiration was Ian Bone and Class War. Before that anarchists were often quite posh. Well, I know, anarchists are still often quite posh, but before that they could admit to it without total loss of credibility.
Punk has a lot to answer for. The art student's idea of what the working class was about.
And we still feel forced to display our working class credentials. It is pathetic, and I am not casting aspersions about anyone else here. I do it myself. Not deliberately, but I look back on stuff I say or post and think... Oh shit, I have got goaded or trapped into that stuff again...
(And the shivering was more than offset by me going mental for all the stuff I'd missed (thank you very much Ginsters), so I'm going for the 'sweating it off' approach now!)
I keep forgetting --
ReplyDeleteA few days ago there was discussion/speculation as to what Kiz does for a living that allows her to spend so much time online. She edits learning materials for English language learners. I'm not betraying any confidences in telling you -- she has said so publicly herself in the past.
Hi Jay - just popped over to say congrats on the 2:1 Open which I too have (class of 79). Hard bloody work but I enjoyed it as am sure you did.
ReplyDeleteHow things have changed: In those days I worked in council electrical maintenance (there were still some gas-lit tenements in Glasgow at that time) and the council PAYED for summer schools - the notion in those far off distant days was that it was right for councils to contribute when employees wanted to (as used to be said) 'better themselves'.
Have a good weekend guys - love and peace!
What - results out already? Well done, Jay!
ReplyDelete(have always wondered what the nickname for a 2:1 should be - there's Damians, Desmonds, and Douglases - what's a 2:1? best I could come up with was a 'Julie Newmar'. anyway...)
QT tonight:
panel including Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Office Minister, John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary, Laurie Pennie, columnist, and Paul Staines, better known as the blogger Guido Fawkes.
oh my word...that's a mix that can only end well...
Cheers Edwin, as you say, hard work but enjoyable, was a bit sad to finish it really. Not the economics, but the Pol and Phil were very interesting to study. Tricky exam that final Phil one - out of 138 people who took it, only 2 got firsts. They give you online breakdowns of other people's results from your course - quite interesting.
ReplyDelete"Oliver Letwin, Cabinet Office Minister, John Healey, Shadow Health Secretary, Laurie Pennie, columnist, and Paul Staines, better known as the blogger Guido Fawkes."
Jesus christ. What a collection. I cant believe i missed Pennie's QT debut, god she's everywhere isnt she, cant get away from the tiresome little joker...
Peter Bracken,
ReplyDeleteI must have missed the bit where I said the Dutch benefits system was a 'pot of gold' probably because I didn't say it.
The Dutch system is far superior to the UK system and you've selectively used the high end and not the median to justify your viewpoint. And despite the more generous nature of the Dutch system, the unemployment level is lower than the UK and has been for quite some time.
Anyway, I can't be arsed with jousting today, had my works do last night, last day today and looking forward to the festive season.
Edwin,
a pleasure to see you.
Jay, you've got mail.
Jay - same degree as me!
ReplyDelete(OK, better degree than me, but, y'know, subject-wise...)
and i liked the pol / phil bit best too - 'dropped the E' after year one, it just wasn't taking...
is Jen around?
Congratulations Jay! Now you've got your degree, you'll be able to argue effectively with the likes of Bidisha. Well, starting next month...
ReplyDeleteThanks Martillo, Phil (i dropped economics after 2nd year too, was by the far the least interesting). Havent seen Jen but she should have her result now.
ReplyDeleteDuke - sent it over to you mate.
Oh god..... face in hands this morning :(
ReplyDeleteJay - are you going to a have a celebratory party?
LaRit, out work drinks tonight, drinks at mates tomorrow, then CIF/UT drinks monday, so enough booze to cover a 5 year slog hopefully ;)
ReplyDeleteJay, you've got mail.
ReplyDeleteThere's a Brian May article on CiF this morning which brings me to the funniest CiF comment this year which appeared on May's badger article.
It was by StudRockman, who I believe to be the pseudonym of Humphrey Q Monkeyfish of this parish.
It was swiftly removed but it went something like:
"Good God man, look at the state of you. You look like Samuel Pepys the morning after 15 pints of Stella".
Absolutely briliant because May's CiF photo looks exactly like Samuel Pepys the morning after 15 pints of stella.
Jay - blimey! Hope you're in training for that!!!!
ReplyDeleteDuke - thanks for that, I needed a laugh this morning ;)
Tis indeed a classic, but let's not forget Benulek's "Brian May wants badgers kept alive so he can harvest their hair."
ReplyDeleteCharles re: your post at 10:55 yesterday.
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant to say was that a lot of the posters here lead comfortable established lives, dare I say banal middle class ones…
Charles I can only speak for myself and I do of course admit that conditions in my youth were much better than they are for you. Full employment, grants for university and an apprenticeship system that gave people a decent training. These things were achieved by people who fought long and hard for social justice. Many of these were indeed working class people but there were also many middle class, even wealthy people, who found the existence of poverty intolerable, even though they did not suffer it. Notably Frederick Engels who .was a wealthy factory owner.
…and I do find it galling that said people criticise me for not being radical/left enough.
People have the right to criticise you, the right to tell you they think you are wrong. There is no compulsion to agree with what you say and of course no compulsion for you to agree with them. People will differ in the way they do this, some express their opinions in stronger language than others. We all need to get used to this. I had to! I used to get quite upset by the way some people express themselves online. Used to it now!
If you have come to a moral conclusion that being left is the answer, so be it, but the left are no more 'the good guys' than someone who is right wing or someone like me who realises the idiocy of trying to divide all political/social opinions into meaningless terms such as left or right.
Firstly, whatever you call it there has always been, throughout history, a struggle for justice and against injustice. In British history alone I can cite the Lollards, the Diggers and the Chartists to name but three. I would agree that the left is a term that can be defined in many ways. The terms ‘right’ and ‘left’ which as you rightly pointed out derive from the French revolution are however generally accepted by most people today to roughly mean the following. (my definitions)
Left = those who fight against injustice. for greater equality and fairer distribution of wealth.
Right = those who fight to maintain the status quo, the rights of property and the right to exploit that property and those without property in the interests of those with property.
The problem of ‘the left’ is not the aim, it’s the tactics we should employ to achieve that aim.
All words are meaningless unless we agree definitions of them. The terms left and right are shorthand terms for two very different world views In short they reflect reality.
What I should have said also is that the days of one youth are generally 'supposed' to be one's best days, ie it is a commonplace in mainstream society and discourse, I think people should re think that idea. Especially as so many of my generation are literally scrabbling at the cliff face trying to build up their lives.
Sadly I have to agree with most of that. However I don’t think we should re-think the idea. I don’t think I am alone on UT when I say we should see ,as an aim, an ambition for mankind, that we should be struggling to find ways to remove the barriers, social, economic and political that prevent people of all ages from leading happy and productive lives.
Kermit - Only Cher has more need of spare hair than Brian May... her bonce this morning on TV was a sight to behold.
ReplyDelete(PS apols if I was drivelling on last night)
Congratulations Jay!
ReplyDeleteJust posted something that got spammed! Can someone rescue it!
1-1 was a racehorse 2-2 was 1-2
ReplyDelete1-1 won 1 race and 2-2- won one 2!
Cheers Annetan - comment rescued. How you been lately? Havent seen you for a while.
ReplyDeleteNo apology needed LaRit, you were just getting something off your chest
ReplyDelete...and drivel is as good a medium as any ;)
Interesting stuff about Matt Seaton yesterday. It seems that he's remarried to an author, Anna Shapiro, who - absolutely coincidentally - does plenty of work for the Graun. I'd say there are still ructions at chez Shapiro-Seaton at his failure to land her a full-time moderating gig.
ReplyDeleteOn a semi-related note, it appears that there is no place a CiF doyenne is safe from a virtual leg humping. I can make it longer if you like the style, I can change it round and I want to be an internet writer. Internet wriiiiiiter...
Call that an 'end' Jay. Hell no it's a new beginning. Although it's not really the point of education, the fact is you have made yourself much more employable and much more mobile, a degree is a passport for working abroad. Or you could continue postgraduate studying and becoming more influential, and respected.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I don't know if a BA hons (Open) will be seen by some as the same as a BA hons (Oxbridge), but fuck them. It's their loss.
Well done Jay - hope you enjoy the view from the shoulders of the giants you have scaled on your journey.
ReplyDeleteThink will do an MA, Nap, in politics, damn pricey tho, will do it at Birkbeck i reckon - the night classes are invaluable, i dont know why all institutions dont make their part time courses evening only, then working people could do them. Because of that most courses just dont seem a plausible option, i couldnt afford to work part time on top of paying those damn fees. Birkbecks not too bad tho, from what i gather.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Bracken could clarify whether it meets his standard?
Yes, good luck with that Jay.
ReplyDeleteAlso, where is this Question time with Laurie Penny. I looked on the Beeb and according to the schedule it wasn't on last night.
jay - now you're following me...did my masters at Birkbeck - given my financial / work situation had to do the course fulltime (3 evenings pw) while working part time (3 days pw) - so yes, the evening classes were what made it possible.
ReplyDeleteI'd say if you're determined, you can work (at least PT) and do the course in a year - hard, but doable.
they reckon politics is a science, mind, which i think is a bit odd. but it was a great place. the group for my option course (globalisation) was particularly mixed - all ages, all backgrounds, a lot of very interesting different perspectives. go for it!
it's Any Questions on R4 tonight at 8pm, Nap. if that refers to my earlier post.
ReplyDelete".....Although I don't know if a BA hons (Open) will be seen by some as the same as a BA hons (Oxbridge),............."
ReplyDeleteNap - a lot of UT's do know the answer to that.............it's one of the reasons why many of us aren't at all ambivalent about our leftish viewpoint.
An Oxbridge BA can be turned into a MA without a stroke a further work ....you, just live for 12 months after graduation send your cheque and hey presto you are now an MA... kinda completes the inequality nicely
mind you some of our Scotish Uni's give out MA's as first degrees............but I seem to recall they are 4 year degrees
The twats of oxbridge (mostly) don't need fucking they need shooting, or ex communication to St Kilda.
Cheers Mr Kermit ;) Made me smile. Thanks.
ReplyDeletePart time/evening study has/is a noble tradtion.
ReplyDeleteBring back the Mechanics Institutes...
Anne- you always keep things civil so I'm happy to talk to you.
ReplyDelete"Charles I can only speak for myself and I do of course admit that conditions in my youth were much better than they are for you. Full employment, grants for university and an apprenticeship system that gave people a decent training. These things were achieved by people who fought long and hard for social justice.
Precisely, so while I'm not jealous of you all, I do find it a bit galling when the older generation on here like to lay into me for my own situation when you lot had it all. I suppose I suppose should be in favour of returning us to those golden days- at the moment I just want to get a stable life.
Besides, it was that comprehensive welfare state that allowed the baby boomers to embourgoise themselves and then spit down on us by taking away the ladder. Very socialist! If they were such utopian idealists bent on advancing human society why did they act like greedy twats.
What we need is a 'one nation' consensus model, which meant that until Thatch even the Tories were concerned about the lot of the worker and made steps to improve their conditions. Perhaps because the old school Tories had memories of the war, where all sacrificed equally etc.
That is unity of purpose- we don't have that though- we have a very fragmented and divisive society, unfortunately.
RapidEddie:
ReplyDeleteV. interesting about Seaton/Shapiro.... What disturbed me was the fact that I remember reading Ruth Picardie's column as she was dying, it was tragic and extremely moving and there was something a little bit grimy about her sister's subsequent writing career.... and of course Seaton's rise to the dizzying heights of CiF Editor.....
Jay - used to work as an Academic Administrator at Birkbeck so know how it functions... there's been a good deal of restructuring going on in the past 3 years, my old Dept. has changed beyond recognition and some long-standing member's of (Admin) staff forced to re-apply for their jobs (and then not getting them) but this has been happening across HE.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the quality of teaching has suffered though, if anything it is still pretty outstanding - and it has a very 'family' feel to it and of course ..... Zizek is there!!!! :)
Anne
ReplyDelete"People have the right to criticise you, the right to tell you they think you are wrong. There is no compulsion to agree with what you say and of course no compulsion for you to agree with them...."
Absoultely. And I have just an equal right to argue that left and right is bollocks. Some people will have to get used to this as well, and also the fact that being 'left' does not make you one of the 'good guys'. There have been millions of people worldwide who have been killed by people acting in the name of leftwing ideology, as of course there has been by right wing ideology. While I would never say that a socialist from a Welsh mining town is equal to Pol Pot or Stalin, those on the left have to understand a centre right small business owner is not a Pinochet.
deano - re the scots unis, you go straight onto a proper masters course, as you say 4 years.
ReplyDeletere the oxbridge thing, you can distinguish someone who has paid for their M as opposed to done any work, as the paid for ones are MA (Oxon) or MA(Cantab), whereas the 'done' ones are MA(hons) - or, more likely, MStud, MSc, or MPhil...
Hi Jay - thanks for rescuing me from the spam folder!
ReplyDeleteI'm Ok its just that in my new place I seem to have more to do IRL, Nicer area and some good local food shops. Also always busy at this time of year cooking etc. very behind with this this year, just getting round to making Xmas cake!
Its snowing heavily here in Cardiff so I can't get out (DON'T want a broken leg for Xmas).
Just praying all my planned deliveries actually happen.
Re: Oxford MA's very good point always thought that was a bit cheeky1 But of course this is an institution that only started allowing women to graduate 1920. Before that women could not be members of the University, so even if they attended lectures and passed equivalent examinations they could not graduate.
Still not desperate to admit the working class as students are they?
Wonderful reflection of the class system!
"Left = those who fight against injustice. for greater equality and fairer distribution of wealth.
ReplyDeleteRight = those who fight to maintain the status quo, the rights of property and the right to exploit that property and those without property in the interests of those with property."
You frame it as if the left are the good guys are the right are evil heartless scum etc. They are still two sides of the same coin, both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations.
As to property. What we need is highly regulated property system and a massive new council house building scheme so people can expect to get on the ladder. (or not bother at all- frankly I'm not particularly bothered about owning property, as long as I have access to cheap but developed social housing and live in a developed first world country) Laws heavily regualting BTL would help as well.
anne - worse even at cambridge, where a woman couldn't be a full member of the uni until 1948 - bizarrely while admitted for degrees in 1920, they still couldn't take exams, think. not sure how they managed to actually get degrees, therefore...
ReplyDeleteJay, Hallam have just discontinued their part-time evening law degree due to 'lack of interest' (read 'lack of profit'). The lecturers have done sterling work in arguing that it just about broke even and they were happy to continue working late evenings to provide it for mature students, but the honchos have axed it regardless. It was supposed to be a 'community-oriented' alternative to the Big School up the hill, but they seem to have lost sight of their guiding principles. I really don't think I would have been able to do the degree without the part-time option. The nearest place offering similar was Leeds Met 30 miles up the road.
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to invite 30,000 wild-eyed, pissed-up teens every term to come and kick your bins over and wee on your cenotaph, you could at least offer your services to all...
Charles
ReplyDeleteand also the fact that being 'left' does not make you one of the 'good guys'. There have been millions of people worldwide who have been killed by people acting in the name of leftwing ideology...
I could argue that people like Pol Pot and Stalin were not Left wing, because I firmly believe that to be left wing you have to believe in real democracy, you cannot force a revolution at gun point. This issue is a real problem for the left.
While I would never say that a socialist from a Welsh mining town is equal to Pol Pot or Stalin, those on the left have to understand a centre right small business owner is not a Pinochet..
Small businessmen are not really that much of a problem. The level of exploitation is very small and can be non existent in the case of very small businesses. In fact in the former Yugoslavia small businesses were allowed to exist, Only the major companies (sometimes referred to as 'the commanding heights of the economy') need to be in public hands. It is these large (now international) companies that are the problem. It is they who often support regimes like Pinochet's because they prefer to have a non union environment.
BTW 'in public hands does not mean nationalisation as we have seen it here. There has to be an element of worker's and community control. This should ensure that a factory does not endanger the local population and that the workers have a say in the running of the industry. Even under US capitalism, worker's co-operatives have been known to flourish - quite simply a contented workforce is more productive.
Happy people work better- obvious really.
the badger thread has opened up.
ReplyDeletefavourite post so far, from Fortress:
Spare them their lives from this monstrosity.
hon mensch to city uni as well, for the more southern. mostly know it through its professional ed side (Charity management MSc, eg). but seemed pretty good, with a wide range of courses.
ReplyDelete"worse even at cambridge, where a woman couldn't be a full member of the uni until 1948 - bizarrely while admitted for degrees in 1920, they still couldn't take exams, think. not sure how they managed to actually get degrees, therefore..."
ReplyDeletevaginas, know your limits...
Charles,
ReplyDeleteHow are they both sides of the same coin?
The whole 'extrapolation 'til you reach Stalin' thing' is not so much a straw man, as it is a whopping great Worzel Gummidge effigy that can be seen from space!!
The best that you could say is that authoritarianism, at either end of the spectrum is fundamentally similar (and I'd agree), but it's the significant differences before that stage that matter!!
All you jealous mockers, FYI I am the following twit:
ReplyDelete"Leader, strategist, architect, courtesan of capitalism. Guitarist. Political animal."
My identity on the Guardian is a little different (horses for courses, ha ha). There I am "a Spain-based, left wing "Cordobaphile", feminist and Guardianista who plays classical guitar, supports Real Madrid, reads poetry and in my spare time works as a courtesan of capitalism."
Equally pompous, but I'm sure you'll agree that it shows a bit more of my softer more feminine side - the Guardian chicks love that sort of thing.
I have published extensively (twice) on the website of the world's best newspaper. I wrote a fine piece on socialism in Spain and everybody who stayed awake long enough to read all of it said that it was fucking magnifico. Encouraged by this spectacular success, I pestered Cif until they gave me another article. I got a lovely Email from Natalie. She said, "OK, Marty, you can do one more, but that's definitely the last one. Just stop fucking stalking me."
So I pulled out all the stops and wrote a blistering piece of investigative journalism (hat tip to bru for the idea). I found out that a load of Nazis! had moved to Spain after the war! Probably millions! I came up with the totally new theory that this might have had something to do with Franco being a fascist and also Hitler's mate. Amazingly, nobody had ever put these pieces of the jigsaw-puzzle together before. Until me.
So although Natalie swore 'never again' after my last iconoclastic piece (she can't handle the truth!), and doesn't reply to my mutiple daily Emails and twitters and many compliments on Cif, it's only a matter of time before I'm back ATL. (They took my C away too, the bastards.)
Yeah but this is the thing Anne, the left has an unerring ability to disown it's own and try and wipe their hands clean. Maybe that is why there are so many splitters from left wing parties and people's fronts of Judea popping up as they squabble over the 10% of the electorate who comprise the socialist vote.
ReplyDeleteHow can anyone say objectively who is or is not left wing? As it was designed during the French revolution, maybe the people of that time would pronounce modern standard bearers of the left as not being left. Or, if Stalin described himself as left wing then he is left wing.
It just seems to me that the only entry requirement leftists have for one to be left wing is for you to be one of the 'good guys'. Which is convenient, because you can then dismiss all the tyrants carrying out heinous acts in the name of the left as being 'not of the left'.
Finally, a trditional conseravtive (pre 1979) would say that Thatcher was not really right wing/conseravtive. And that is a very reasonable debate to raise. She went against all the traditional values of conservatism. Thatcher was a revolutionary and an ideologue as much as Lenin.
right - lunch at swanky restaurant (present for the oisette) calls - will be back, half-cut and full of food, later.
ReplyDeletejust a notification...
Jay - yay! Congrats!! The MA sounds very ineteresting.
ReplyDeleteMontana and MsChin - you've both got mail. Can you let me know if you haven't got mail? Having some ''issues'' with the mail account - all explained in said mail!
Nap - with all due respect property rights are extremely important. Even a rabid freemarket right winger like Hayek admits that the ownership of vast swathes of land by a rich elite can only have occurred through violence and robbery but he then just sort of shrugs his shoulders and says ''but that's where we are now and we can't really do anything about it''.
That is the right for you.
Property is at the source of everything. You say you only want good social housing - and that property isn't the issue. But you see good social housing and the welfare state etc - they were just sops. They were good things of course but they didn't address the issue. And they were given by our ''betters'' and as anything that is given in that spirit, it can be taken away again.
Read what Anne says about property. Taking control of it doesn't have to mean going into peoples houses and taking that heirloom that their great Aunt Gertrude left them. But it can mean taking control of the things that produce wealth - the land, seas, farms, factory's, resources etc - the things that have been taken by a certain group from everyone else.
If that is going too far - and I don't think it is - then we should at least tax the hell out of land ownership. Instead we give the buggers tons of money just for owning the stuff.
James
ReplyDelete"The best that you could say is that authoritarianism, at either end of the spectrum is fundamentally similar (and I'd agree), but it's the significant differences before that stage that matter!!"
Ok, fair enough but I have views that transgress both moderate sides of the divide, as do many people, which is why I am saying left/right has no relevance. For example I am in favour of renationalisation of the railways and utilites etc, simply becuase it is the best for the citizens of the nation and cut down on the wastage and expense charges/fees under the present syste.
I feel your pain, Twit. If it's any consolation, CiF's turned to shite recently. Where's Denis MacShane when you need him? Oh hang on, he's on his way to jail.
ReplyDeleteCharles:
ReplyDeleteYou frame it as if the left are the good guys are the right are evil heartless scum etc. They are still two sides of the same coin, both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations.
Firstly I genuinely do not consider the self named socialist republics (USSSR, Cuba, Cambodia, China etc) to be Socialist. There has not been a truly socialist society on earth. (A socialist state is technically a misnomer as the state is there to adjudicate between classes and by the nature of class society will always come down on the side of the ruling class).
In a socialist society what is left of the state would simply organise things,people can organise themselves. Leadership roles would be held by people whose judgement and skill people admire and trust, not by people who are simply more wealthy and powerful than the rest of us. The problem as always is how we get from here to there!
Secondly I do not necessarily think that people with right wing views are heartless scum. Some are! The person who invented the scheme that allows companies to insure their worker's lives for millions so that they profit by their death certainly are! Most right wingers are nice people who genuinely believe that the present economic system is the best for everybody. I think they are wrong, that's all.
I can get angry (you should hear me shout at the radio!- I'm as uncivil as anyone!).The effects of the current system on the lives of the vast majority of people on this planet are intolerable and we should not tolerate it.
I want to end it, it will only end when enough of us believe that another world is possible. We just needs enough of us to realise that it is.
This world breeds unhappiness, unhappiness for the poor for whom life is a continuous struggle. But unhappiness for the rich also who live in constant fear that their wealth and power will be taken from them.
Time for humanity to better!
@Charles:
ReplyDeleteYes but… in order to position yourself as being “positionless”, you’re constantly having to position yourself against “left” and “right” (see your last post) policies. So saying the terms have no “relevance” is wrong… oddly.
”…I have views that transgress both moderate sides of the divide…”
What… you mean the left/right divide that according to you is irrelevant? It’s clearly not, if you’re depending on it to describe where you stand… “I’m a little bit leftie (renationalise the railways), and a little bit right (chavs)…”
Err, ever thought of hanging with the Lib Dems?
I’m exaggerating the point, and I actually have some sympathy for your argument, believe it or don’t, because I’m in the same boat – but I can only define my beliefs according to the time-honoured terms of “left” and “right”. They may indeed be outdated, and we probably do need a new lexicon to describe much of today’s politics, but as it stands, they’re really the only currency we have now to describe politically and socially what we support and what we oppose.
Charles,
ReplyDeleteI think we all have a disparate and wide-ranging set of political 'beliefs', some of which are from one side, and some from the other.
It's about priorities and averages for most people, and then pegging to 'the nearest' party (for some of us, that's none of 'em, to be fair!).
If we agree with some of the points of the 'other side', it doesn't mean that left and right are meaningless, or that 'politics' has ceased to exist as we know it, it's just a reflection of the confused and diverse nature of the human condition!!
Moody's downgrades Ireland's rating by five notches and maintains 'negative' outlook on concerns over cuts--The Graun, today
ReplyDeleteAnother critical element in the plot was the fact that the bond rating agencies were paid by the commercial and investment banks issuing the securities. The rating agencies used statistical models that did not take into account the possibility of a crash in housing prices.--Charles Morris, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown
'...that did not take into account the possibility of a crash in housing prices.'
Ask yourself: would you take advice on horse-racing strategy from someone who didn't take into account the possibility of horses losing?
Why is anyone listening to these chumps. And as for 'satisfying the markets'...Jesus wept--if only poor Ireland had politicians who weren't hopelessly corrupt sacks of shit, they might have told the bloodsuckers to go fuck themselves.
Yet the inept, the incompetent, the hopelessy dim, the corrupt and the criminal keep getting a pass. Just the other day, I read a respectful review of Anatole Kaletsky's 'Capitalism 4.0' in The NY Review of Books.
Anatole Fucking Kaletsky...I ask you.
That nincompoop hasn't been right about a single thing since he turned on a radio in 1964, heard 'Love Me Do' and confidently predicted that The Beatles would never catch on. The man's a joke.
Well spotted, Eddie...the clueless MyLittlePonyInEnnis 'tweets' about emailing the Groan. Stop the fucking presses.
Like I told you, when we break 'em to the saddle, they stay broken.
If McSame is jailed, it'll make me a very happy man.
Just looking in to say well done, Jay (oh, and good for racking up some credits, Charles/nap)
ReplyDeleteOr, what swifty just said.....
ReplyDelete(I'm claiming more 'Guardianista pompous points' for my use of 'the human condition' though!)
In a bit, folks!!
Oh and by the way, I'll choose my own comrades thanks. Stalin betrayed socialism, his regime although economically socialist in a way, was politically authoritarian as others have said. True socialism has to be politically democratic as well.
ReplyDeleteThe soviet state was not based on what Marx called the dictatorship of the proletariat(which means that everyone is a dictator over himself and no-one else)but on the dictatorship of the Communist Party and ultimately the dictatorship of its leader.
Sorry but by definition that is NOT socialist.
To quote a !Kung San hunter from Botswana 'We do not have a head man we are each of us a head man over ourselves'. These people were then still living as hunter gatherers - a state of primitive communism.
Marx could not have put it better!
Now I really have to:
ReplyDeleteTidy the kitchen
Make Xmas cake
Do the ironing
make something for dinner
See you all later!
Last night's Newsnight Wark-Assange interview:
ReplyDeleteNewsnight Wark-Assange Dec 16th 2010
Yes, interesting points you made Anne, James, Shiloh, even if I still disagree. anyway, got to get back to daily life.
ReplyDeleteEdwin!
ReplyDeleteJust noticed you’d posted up at the top there…
I don’t participate in CiF any more but on the off-chance you pop back here from time to time… hope you’re keeping well, mate. Best wishes for the Festive Season and all that.
Your online pal
Swifty/Shiloh
Afternoon all
ReplyDeleteJay
The OU does offer some post grad courses as well.When i've got the time i want to do an MA and i'll be considering the OU route( provided of course they've got the course i want)
Charlie
Well done on getting your credit.Will you be able to continue your studies in Russia?I know the OU does have overseas centres as well but dunno whether they have any in Russia.
Duke
Still haven't managed to fully digest the stats from your link about Dutch welfare.But given the choice i'm sure many British welfare recipients would have felt they'd won the lottery if they were suddenly offerred Dutch levels of benefits.
My understanding is that there are exceptions though.Teenage lone mothers in the Netherlands for instance are primarily seen as being the responsibility of their families and don't even get the miserly level of benefits their British counterparts get.Would be interesting to know whether that plays any significant part in explaining the very low Dutch level of teenage pregnancies-which incidentally is one sixth the British level in real terms.
...the WikiLeaks controversy has inspired an ad campaign in Pakistan that boasts of Butterfly brand sanitary pads, “WikiLeaks…Butterfly doesn’t.”
ReplyDeleteNap - ".... both ideologies have caused an equal number of tyrants, dictatorships and global exploitations...."
ReplyDeleteIt's the word "caused" that is the problem in the above. You have an odd idea of causality.
It's not the particular ideology that causes the nutter's behaviour rather that power seeking nutters are attracted to politics because they are after all after power.
Ideology was largely irrelevant to the likes of Blair and uber creep Mandelson......it seems more likely that the idea of power was what attracted them into politics and thus there was not even a second thought in their changing the core values of the Labour Party to secure their own ends.
If the political pendulum had been moving the the right at the time Blair would just as easily have joined the Tories at Oxford - the man was an out and out chancer.
The problem that we on the left share with those on the right is how the fuck do we deal with....
The Psychopaths & Sociopaths next door?.
We ain't going to do it by pretending it's our ideology that causes the problem........perhaps we should develop a genetic test to disqualify these twats from entering politics?
The god awful truth is that far too many leaders in politics and banking and corporate life are sicko's.... a worrying characteristic of these nutters is that they are so plausible.
Sadly the truth is it's the nuts that are running the asylum
Recognise anyone?
ReplyDelete"Profile of the Sociopath
This website summarizes some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths.
Glibness and Superficial Charm
Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."
Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
Incapacity for Love
Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily."
Paul - they do have post-grad yeah, just not the courses I'm after, annoyingly. But Birkbeck looks quite good, so not the end of the world. Expensive tho. But £3.5k a year i think, so 2 years PT £7k.
ReplyDeleteI wouldnt worry too much about left/right, Nap, obviously the labels aren't perfect or adequate but they still have meaning and relevance.
What bothers me much more is inconsistency, people who claim to be "left" waffling on without a second thought as to whether the consequences of their proposals would be left/right, and same with the right - like the Thatcher example someone's already made, good ol "conservatives" laying waste to the social fabric with the latest hair-brained economic gimmicks.
Since its denizens are 'usually always' right, could it be said that wtfyta is a clear case of the dictatorship of the prollytariat?
ReplyDeleteDid they really take MIE's big shiny 'C' away from him? I'd translate that as broadly meaning "Fuck off and stop bothering us. You won't be writing any more dirges ATL." I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhen the financial crisis struck, many people — myself included — considered it a teachable moment. Above all, we expected the crisis to remind everyone why banks need to be effectively regulated.
ReplyDeleteHow naïve we were. We should have realized that the modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.
It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.
Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.
Last week, Spencer Bachus, the incoming G.O.P. chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told The Birmingham News that “in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
In the end, those of us who expected the crisis to provide a teachable moment were right, but not in the way we expected. Never mind relearning the case for bank regulation; what we learned, instead, is what happens when an ideology backed by vast wealth and immense power confronts inconvenient facts. And the answer is, the facts lose.--Paul Krugman, The NYT, today
Same old shit, different day...
“in Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”
ReplyDeleteThat is spine-tinglingly horrifying.
Oh, and:
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Jay! Sorry I didn't say something earlier.
@Princess:
Read your e-mail late last night. Will reply as soon as I'm home from work.
Followed a Laurie P Twitter link - it's a slow day here in Dublin - to a CiF article by who Laurie calls "my dear friend and hero" Seaneen Molloy. I read a bit of it and then IAD, Internet Attention Disorder, kicked in. So I took a look at Seaneen's blog/website.
ReplyDeleteHer most recent (re-posted) article was on the portrayal of the underclass, which included the striking line "I am not one of those crazy kids who lives in London on benefits while their rich parents sneak a few hundred into their bank accounts every month."
You mean like?...ummm...let's not go there.
Gotta hate those middle-class poverty tourists.
Cheers Montana - wasn't a nagging reminder - just not sure my emails are going out properly.
ReplyDeleteNap - I think left and right can mean different things to different people but to say they are irrelevant - and then to frame your own position by them....
Fundamentally I think what matters most is how someone is economically. Someone can be a great liberal but if they are economically liberal they can't - in my humble - really want freedom for all - because the very economic system they support crushes so many. So they only care about the freedoms of a select few - those wealthy enough to enjoy them.
The issue in the UK and the US is that the left has been hollowed out and taken over either by right wingers (Blair etc) or by those on the left who are obssessed with identity politics etc and who really are probably nearer to what I would imagine a classic liberal is.
That is not to say that I don't think there are issues with sexism and racism etc - there clearly are. Just to say that the most pressing problem is economic. That until we get rid of a system that fucks so many over - all the other stuff is tinkering about at the edges. Until the left starts to address that then they are irrelevant. As long as someone buys into the neo-liberal dogma then in my view no matter what their other views - they are right wing. Someone else may disagree entirely.
As if to prove my point: Atos Origin is set to buy Siemens IT arm in a deal worth 850m. Money taken directly from the UK taxpayers and earned on the back of the suffering of the most vulnerable in society.
ReplyDeleteMany of whom paid into NI schemes and paid tax for bloody years, or whose parents did etc, to be now told it was a fraudulent scheme and those contributions are worthless. And are now thrown on the scrapheap as a whole industry evolves around welfare to further line the pockets of the private sector.
We are not a democracy we are a corporatocracy - that needs changing.
Can I point out that my way of arguing with people who hold right wing views depends on who they are?
ReplyDeleteOrdinary people who hold such views can sometimes eventually be persuaded to change their views.
C*nts like Blair, Mandelson, Clegg, Cameron et al - I tell them to fuck off because they are self serving gits who deserve no respect whatsoever.
This implies no criticism of anyone else I am def NOT tryong to be 'holier than thou'.
I know I am not.
A rare moment of disagreement with the Princess:
ReplyDeletethose on the left who are obssessed with identity politics etc and who really are probably nearer to what I would imagine a classic liberal is
Identity politics is quintessentially illiberal because it infringes on freedom of speech and, to some extent, assembly.
Atos Origin is set to buy Siemens IT arm
Fuck, I work with some of their software. Mind you, they have never exactly been the most ethical of companies so no change there.
The problem with identity politics is that its an illiberal attempt to remedy illiberalism, so unless its very precisely done, and the identification of prejudice and illiberalism is spot on, it is overall an illiberal policy. When you combine this with the rampaging egos and self-righteousness of the identity brigade, you have a recipe for widespread idiocy.
ReplyDeleteThe argument is sound that various identity prejudices restrict the liberty of the people in question, and that its a fair trade-off to restrict the liberty of the bigot to protect the liberty of the victim.
But when you take a very broad brush approach, howl down any and all critics, immerse yourself with fellow backslappers in your NGO/academic institution/liberal Grauny paper, etc, you get this sort of mad, and illiberal, world coming out where a relatively small portion of the population wield quite a lot of power.
For instance, the new law on race and gender in employment. A white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man.
Shocking but true. There is no possible explanation for that in the world that could fall under the "liberty" banner. Yet thats where are with identity politics. The censorious approach of the Graun on the issue is a classic of its kind - people so utterly convinced they are right and infallible, and of the highest moral purity, that they dont bat an eyelid to censor those who disagree, even politely and intelligently.
@Charles
ReplyDeleteAnyone who claims that Stalin was a communist because he said he was is also duty bound to accept that East Germany was democratic because that's what it called itself.
That's called "being gullible".
And when you only accept what people and countries call themselves when it suits you, that's called "being dishonest".
That's odd...an earlier (completely innocuous) post has vanished. The fucker didn't even have any links in it. Oh, well...at least @thauma saw it before it got Ciffed.
ReplyDeleteI see MaryMagdaleneInEastOfEden is back at the old Waddya Want To Cook recipe stand (minus his big blue 'Cunt Alert' sign).
He appears to channelling an Irishman (or, more accurately, an 'Oirishman'...oh, yeah...I forgot: he has a foot in every culture. That cunt's got more feet than a fucking millipede.
Christ, I can't think of people more illiberal than identity politics peddlers. The only commonality is that they usually come from what they fancy is a socially liberal background and trace their ideological roots back to 60s radical liberals. But they're herders, slicers and dicers, the very people who would claim the primacy or moral superiority of one group over another. See CiF for details.
ReplyDeleteAs for self-serving cunts, Ed Miliband is already proving his worth in esteemed company. He was against the Iraq war but didn't utter a word against it in public and voted against an inquiry into it. His 'commitment' to a permanent 50% top tax rate to put funding for public services on a sound footing is already piss weak and he won't bring it back if the coalition get rid of it. He put Woolas - already under investigation - in as shadow Immigration Minister as a 'tough on immigration' sop and a nod to the white working class Don't Like Darkies Tendency. He refused to go on a march against the cuts because it would look bad in the red tops the next day. He's schtum on welfare reform because he voted for it in government and he's not against too much of it. He's also silent on both Atos and A4e because they were both brought in by Labour. He won't reign in the banks because he wants to pull the same fund-public-services-out-of-casino-profits stunt that Blair and Brown did.
The little he has done shows a right-wing populist bent and the lot he hasn't done shows that he's a Blair-like panderer. And if it sounds like, as usual, I'm reserving my greatest venom for Labour, I am. Because it's their job to look after those at the very bottom of the pile and they don't. Miliband's doing the electoral maths, gladly letting the coalition do his dirty work for him and setting himself up for the usual pitch at the middle-class, middle England swing voters in 4 and a half years time.
A horrible, useless cunt.
Jay
ReplyDeleteA white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man.
Well, I don't find that 'shocking' at all. If they are equally qualified, why shouldn't they hire the black woman? What should they do: toss a coin, or make a small correction for centuries of injustice and prejudice?
You can argue for the coin toss, and that's fair enough. For me, when I am selecting a service (for example, solicitor), I will pick a woman over a man all other things being equal.
Because I know it was fucking hard to get taken seriously as a working woman 20 years ago. Less so today, admittedly, but that is in great measure because of past battles that have been fought.
But I still hate bloody identity politics as a concept. I want to be given a job because of my abilities, and not because of a quota - because that undermines the whole idea of equality.
"Well, I don't find that 'shocking' at all. If they are equally qualified, why shouldn't they hire the black woman? What should they do: toss a coin, or make a small correction for centuries of injustice and prejudice?"
ReplyDeleteI think its a moot point. What is shocking is the pay stat, not the scenario itself.
In real life, i find the concept of "equal candidates" are little far fetched. Is it really possible to meet two individuals for the same job and say they are identically well qualified, you really could not put a cigarette paper between them? I find it very hard to believe.
And if people want to choose one candidate they can already - they *didnt* have to toss a coin, they could employ whichever of the two they wanted.
The whole thing is a positive discrimination measure so worded to avoid causing anger/controversy.
''The only commonality is that they usually come from what they fancy is a socially liberal background.'' _ That's really what I meant RE - didn't put it too well. They think they are liberals, and they often hold economically liberal views. So they tinker around within the status quo trying to advance their particular cause.
ReplyDeleteJay is that true about black women earning more than white men? I have to say that did surprise me.
Thauma - Point taken as also from Eddie. Re the takeover - it might not happen - it is ''intended.''
if it does Atos will: ''jump from number six in Europe to number two in managed services revenues, according to Atos and Gartner figures.''
So that's lots more poor buggers all over Europe subjected to them!
RappidEddie - ''And if it sounds like, as usual, I'm reserving my greatest venom for Labour, I am. Because it's their job to look after those at the very bottom of the pile and they don't.'' Totally agree with you. They are the betrayers. I mean the Tory's are just looking after their own as they have always done.
Although I have to say that I have a physical loathing for Osbourne that is as strong as the one I had for Shitdribble - and I didn't think that was possible!
Anyway must be off. Waiting for a cab to spirit me away to work.
MsC, PCC, Hank and others interested,
ReplyDeleteThe HO, is at last, running a project to catalogue, review and prepare files for release, related to the Hillsborough disaster. Since they have only just begun this, it could be some time before we get to see them and not all the files, (inevitably), are likely to be released. They have weasel ways of getting round the FoIA.
Oh and one other thing - The courts have just ruled that the cap on immigration is unlawful and accused Theresa May of trying to "sidestep parliamentary scrutiny." Par for the course then.
PCC - yeah it is (or was 6 months ago at least), really surprising stat. Someone linked it on a Harker thread, AllyF perhaps.
ReplyDeleteI suspect Labour will try to do what the Tories tried to do 2008-2010: say as little as possible, about anything, and let the incumbents unpopularity bring in the votes. Thats why they;ve been such spineless little weasels, along with the fact that they agree with the Tory approach in a lot of areas, or they were directly responsible for a lot of the issues in question anyway.
ReplyDeleteAs an Opposition, they are currently useless, completely useless.
Can't remember the author, but someone argued on Cif that society should accommodate flip-flopping transgenders. I think that's the right term - but there's so many trans this an' that I might be wrong. Anyway, I mean the people who want to be able to call themselves Paul one day and Paula the next, and wear clothes (to work) to suit - but don't feel able to because colleagues look at them queer, like.
ReplyDeleteMods - your post had fallen afoul of the infamous spam filter. I've rescued it, and also one of Deano's from a bit earlier.
ReplyDeleteJay
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion about identity politics.Will come back later on that if i can.
Just a quick point.Black women don't earn more that White men on average.Black Caribbean-as opposed to Black African women- do however earn more on average than White women.However as you know there are huge disparities within averages.And Black Caribbean women still suffer from higher levels of unemployment than White women.
Mods, yep, I noticed that as well. He's taking the loss of his Cunt sign very badly I fear, but he has only himself to blame. The prose was too pedestrian, the subject matters too obscure.
ReplyDeleteHe should look to the CiF young guns for inspiration. A current affairs or pop culture hook (new movies and recent riots are always good), a few identity politics catchphrases to set up an us-and-them response and you're away in a trot. Light red touch paper and retire to a safe distance to watch the fireworks.
This faux polemic confecting is no game for old duffers such as he and I, I'm afraid.
Paul - unless things have changed dramatically lately the average black woman does earn more than the average white man. This was the focus of quite a lengthy debate a few months back, 6 maybe. So pretty sure thats correct but could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteBracken - i remember that thread too, struck me as astonishingly narcissistic - i may desire to be a man one day and a woman the next, it is the job of everyone i work with to be ultra careful with their conduct towards me to accomodate this.
Jay
ReplyDeleteWhat is shocking is the pay stat, not the scenario itself.
Ah OK, I misunderstood.
I assume that the stat is for the groups in question *in work*?
I could deliberately stir up controversy by insinuating that the black woman has probably had to work a fuck of a lot harder to get where she is, and therefore deserves more pay. But I wouldn't do that, of course. ;-)
In real life, i find the concept of "equal candidates" are little far fetched.
Yes and no. Once you've worked with people for a while, you know what they're like. But when you're trying to make a decision based purely off CVs and an interview, it's quite difficult. People lie.
Or, to go back to my choosing-a-solicitor example, I can compare the letters after their names, but after that, I don't have the expertise to judge. Of course I will also ask friends if they have any recommendations.
And if people want to choose one candidate they can already - they *didnt* have to toss a coin, they could employ whichever of the two they wanted.
Well, they still can. But I believe it's a well-known fact (Meerkatjie?) that people tend to select employees who are more like them - so encouraging people to consider the 'other' doesn't hurt. It also makes for more successful businesses.
RapidEddie - with you on Ed M. Who fuck decided to call him 'Red Ed'?
Children's instincts are quite good. My eleven year old saw an old clip of Dame Edna the other week and blurted "What the fuck is he on, Dad?"
ReplyDeleteFair points, Thaum.
ReplyDeleteWTF called him red ed? People so pathologically blue that he actually does appear red through the warped lense of their worldview: the British media.
.
ReplyDeleteJayReilly
Congratulations on your OU degree - will you be off to the award ceremony to collect it in your mortar board and gown?
More seriously given your subject, did you use any of your own contributions to CiF or those of others in your work and if so how did you reference them?
Ha ha ha, Bitey is worried that Jay might have referenced his oeuvre without attribution!
ReplyDeleteGet over yourself.
Thank you Bitey. I dont think i'll bother with the ceremony. Never used any of mine or others contributions from CiF, no, so problem never arose.
ReplyDeleteOh jaysus..begorrah...MoomintrollInElDorado's back on Waddaya...
ReplyDeleteNot just channelling an Oirishman...he's dazzling us lesser morsels by flipping between Joyce and Beckett in alternate posts
Unfortunately for the Multicultural cipher from the valleys...(there's lovely)
it's Yootha and Margaret
Black Friday...can't stop long...out into the maelstrom of Middlesbrough on a Friday night..there'll be blood and tears before the dawn
Don't be so silly Thaum'. Apart from wanting to use online exchanges for instance as case study material, it's the kind of question that OU tutors must face all the time given the number of civil servants / government employees who take OU courses and the nature of the Official Secrets Act.
ReplyDeleteOU Business Studies students are I believe required to produce work based examples for their assignments - so think about how you might deal with conflict management or ethics within an organisation.
Bitey
ReplyDeletethink about how you might deal with conflict management or ethics within an organisation
Oh, that's easy.
I tell the twats to fuck off. They are usually also the ones with the ethical issues, so it's two birds with one stone, basically.
Yarl's Wood
ReplyDeleteimmigration removal centre will close to children with immediate effect today, following a review of the detention of children and family returns by the government working with key partners.
Just caught this...
ReplyDeleteanother conflict of interest(?)...course not.. for the relativist bourgeois eco-fluffs to triangulate
O'Neill on fire again...he's good at the anti-Malthus stuff..
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10011/
"Reading an op-ed in an American newspaper last month, which argued that gay marriage should be legalised because it will help reduce overpopulation (homosexuals don’t breed, you see), I knew I had heard a similar sentiment somewhere before.
‘Given the social hardships of our era, the benefits of homosexual marriage could be immeasurable’, the op-ed said. ‘Even America, though its population pales in comparison to that of other nations, is considered overpopulated because the amount of energy each of its citizens expends in a lifetime is enormous. Obviously homosexuals cannot, within the confines of a monogamous relationship, conceive offspring.’ So, legalising gay marriage would ‘indirectly limit population growth’ (1).
Gays celebrated because they don’t have children… homosexual relationships culturally affirmed on the basis that their childlessness could help solve a planetary crisis… gay monogamy bigged up because it doesn’t involve conceiving offspring."
Let's all stop having kids and the human race will be 'OK'...maybe we can breed the shellsuits out of existence?..we'll keep those nice Polish and Latvians though..they always seem so eager to please and grateful...and they're so good with Tarquin and Jocasta
Right...adios...to quote the immaculate Maurice Sendack..
ReplyDelete"Let the wild rumpus begin"
Stella all the way Bitey...tasty
This is what failure looks like: Detroit.
ReplyDeleteNow the city authorities, faced with talk of bankruptcy, plan to downsize Detroit by cutting off services, such as policing and sewerage, to large parts of the blighted metropolis in an effort to pressure residents to move to core neighbourhoods of a smaller city.
In some parts of Detroit, 80% of housing is empty amid widespread unemployment. Many have simply abandoned properties now worth a fraction of the mortgages on them.
Property prices have collapsed to the point where houses can be had for $100, although the average price is $7,500 (£5,000). The city council gives homes away to those prepared to pay the outstanding property taxes.
The mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, said that his administration cannot afford to go on providing services such as schools, firefighters, buses and rubbish collection to large areas of the city where the population has dropped sharply and fewer people paying property taxes has left a $300m hole in the budget.
The removal of services sounds horrendous, but I don't see what else they can do. However, they should pay people to move; many - in fact, most - are far too poor to scrape up a few thousand dollars for a house in a more viable area. Remember this is the country with no social provision.
"We should dismantle, deconstruct those areas and turn them over to urban farms where we are tilling a thousand or fifteen hundred acres and we are growing fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and creating jobs in canning and shipping and packaging. We could have half a dozen of those farms spread out across the city because the city unfortunately lacks quality supermarkets...."
This is a good idea. As he says, there are hardly any supermarkets in Detroit selling fresh fruit and veg.
Except that the pollution of the soil would be a serious issue.
Except that the pollution of the soil would be a serious issue.
ReplyDeleteAh, what am I talking about? These are only poor people. They'll eat what they're given (well, sold), no matter how toxic it may be.
Monsanto will probably be all over this.
Firstly, here's a reminder again of what Nick "Lying Bastard" Clegg was saying just a few months ago:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.libdemvoice.org/power-revolution-nick-clegg-new-politics-speech-19604.html
And Britain must not be a country where our children grow up so used to their liberty being infringed that they accept it without question. There will be no ContactPoint children’s database. Schools will not take children’s fingerprints without even asking their parent’s consent.
This will be a government that is proud when British citizens stand up against illegitimate advances of the state. That values debate, that is unafraid of dissent. That’s why we’ll remove limits on the rights to peaceful protest. It’s why we’ll review libel laws so that we can better protect freedom of speech.
That was just after the election - on May 19 2010. Just seven months later, we have this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-your-right-to-protest-is-under-threat-2162493.html
Here’s one example of the intimidation of peaceful protest by the young that is happening all over Britain. Nicky Wishart is a 12-year-old self-described “maths geek” who lives in the heart of David Cameron’s constituency. He was gutted when he found out his youth club was being shut down as part of the cuts: there’s nowhere else to hang out in his village. He was particularly outraged when he discovered online that Cameron had said, before the election, that he was “committed” to keeping youth clubs open. So he did the right thing. He organized a totally peaceful protest on Facebook outside Cameron’s constituency surgery. A few days later, the police arrived at his school. They hauled him out of his lessons, told him the anti-terrorism squad was monitoring him and threatened him with arrest.
The message to Nicky Wishart and his generation is very clear: don’t get any fancy ideas about being an engaged citizen. Go back to your X-Box and X-Factor, and leave politics to the millionaires in charge.
The question would seem to be whether we can afford to let these mendacious fuckwits remain in office for another four years or so.
PS There is an email for Johann Hari - the author of the Independent article quoted above, which is worth following the link to read in full.
For those who have some dope on the whole A4E etc scam and con, it might be worth dropping a note in that direction, rather than the "We don't really do campaigning" shitbrain department of Jaffa Cake Central Office.
Actually, the articles and comments I have read on the Independent make CiF look like a puddle of slurried excrement anyway.
@monkeyfish
ReplyDeleteIt's looking increasingly likely I'll be over late on Wednedsay, blizzards permitting, so I reckon I'll be fine for Brighton on Thursday 23rd.
Anyone else up for it?
Anyway, time to open a bottle of Muscadet.
Atomboy - a 12-year-old, ffs?
ReplyDeleteJeeeezus christ.
BBC Jody McIntyre interview here
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4eL0sLzKU&feature=player_embedded#!
Looks like the bill were trying a bit of the old shock and awe - stir up some trouble, crack a few more heads, give the BBC some more propaganda.
Filthy.
thauma
ReplyDeleteI would imagine the logic is something along the lines of:
Crack the heads open of people who are old enough for big-time protesting - kettle them, film them, get their details on a database, tazer them, trump up charges against them, trample them with pig-horses, use water-cannon on them, shoot them with rubber-bullets, extraordinary rendition them, put them in secret torture prisons...
...but just put the fear of god into the children who might be tempted and ensure they never demonstrate in the first place, so that in future years, we can just go back to our protection rackets, drug-dealing and pimping and we can still just beat the shit out of anyone we choose oif we start to get a bit flabby and feel like some exercise.
Actually, Master Nicky Wishart was probably lucky the rozzers decided to drag him from his little half-scale chair as he was dusting off his seven times table.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, he could have been shot while trying to escape.
Evening all
ReplyDelete"Anyway, time to open a bottle of Muscadet. "
Yeah, rub it in, Spike, you git! :p
Brain not so much mash potato as puree now after 2 hours at 30 mph on the bleedin M25. Argh.
That Nicky Wishart story is an absolute disgrace. Warned off with "armed police"? And that even if he didn't attend himself he could be nicked for conspiracy? Arseholes.
@BB
ReplyDeleteWell, if you will live in the UK... ;-) My supermarkets got a special offer on quite a drinkable Sevre et Maine for €2.19.
No chance of you making Brighton on the 23rd? You could order a bottle or two.
atomboy - thanks for pointing me to that, oisette mentioned it a few days ago (had seen it on french tv) and was asking what the hell was happening...
ReplyDeletebtw, today had probably the best lunch everm and definitely the best dessert...
I can't do the 23rd, me love, cos I'z got the work Christmas piss-up that evening. Would have been good to catch up with you too... I hear you had an unfortunate accident with some beluga caviare and your keyboard the other day, so I was going to propose to bring you some white truffle to cheer you up a bit :p
ReplyDelete...and so am now going to retire to the sofa to recover.
ReplyDelete(there were twelve different bits of the dessert)
(twelve)
Phil
ReplyDeleteWhat was the dessert?
@BB
ReplyDeleteWell, the only other date I have on offer at the mo is in Seaford where I'll be dahn the boozah with some mates on Boxing Day. After that, the moveable feast travels to Berlin for New Year.
I'm getting in as much travel as possible because I hear that a certain tea lady in Brussels is putting pressure on the European Commissioners - who are all besotted with her, dahlings! - to have Communists placed under house arrest. Or in my case council-flat arrest.
Atoms, 'Interesting is not the word to describe dthat story. I was reading the real letters page in various papers on my travels round London the other day and there are an awful lot of narked people out there who were 'Kettled' on the student fees demo. These letters were from the teaching staff for example. What you sat ties in with my conclusion (and I am sure any sane person by now), that they will make demos so uncomfortable that people will think twice before attending. What we need is a legal challange to this and I'm surprised nothing has come of that but maybe I just have and old fashioned idea of justice.
ReplyDeleteRapidEddie , 100% agree on your description of Labour, they have let a lot of people down big time. Why do we never see that simple truth in the MSM (without the 'C' words I guess;-) )?
JayR
ReplyDelete"For instance, the new law on race and gender in employment. A white man and black woman are "equally qualified" - of course in reality it was always legal for firms to employ whoever they want in that position. But now, they'll be softly encouraged to take the black woman because of a spurious notion of "inequality" - the average black woman actually earns more than the average white man"
I'm with Thauma on this. A tiny, miniscule, percentage of Black Women earn more (sometimes much, much more) than the average white man, or white women like me, but they remain that, a tiny minority in workforce/highly paid jobs which are still overwhelmingly dominated by White Middle/Upper class men.
I don't 'do' identity politics and a passing sop to employ '5' black women in top jobs is just that, a sop, but a bloody gift to the likes of the Daily Mail, which screams and wails about 'positive' discrimination without context - that the system is weighted against everyone except all but the most privileged (irrespective of skin colour - that's a red herring, but nonetheless the reality is that the upper echelons of Society are almost wholly dominated by white faces in this country)
Just look at what this shower of shite in government (Upper Class White men) have been doing - in just 6 months! If you're poor and Black you represent a minority within a majority of the seriously disadvantaged but you also disproportionately represent the majority of those who are most disadvantaged throughout society.
It is and always will be about Class...
Apols for all the typos folks.....
ReplyDeleteLaRit
ReplyDeleteIf you're poor and Black you represent a minority within a majority of the seriously disadvantaged but you also disproportionately represent the majority of those who are most disadvantaged throughout society.
Well said.
Identity politics is a form of Divide and Rule and should be eschewed. At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together. And stand together.
I find it very hard to believe that black women are earning more than any other group. What are they doing in the UK? In France, they seem to mainly be working as cleaners, nursing auxiliaries, post-office staff, low-level administrative staff, etc. Not exactly the best-paid jobs.
ReplyDeleteI meant "earning more than any other group".
ReplyDeleteI know of quite a few Black women working in the IT sector as contractors who get in excess of 400UKP/day. And these are not short term contracts folks, they run for years. All very necessary and they are great people to know but examples like that are not uncommon. That might skew the figures a bit?
ReplyDeleteNot judging just saying...
This is great.
ReplyDeleteThauma:
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely ;)
Spike
Or in London, working in fucking toilets all night, servicing clubbers who are off their nuts, whilst someone else looks after their kids....or picking up litter on the Underground..... cleaning offices, going to work at 4 a.m.
Fucking Hell - just spent half an hour writing a post to have the blogger destroy it. And i'm already wound up tonight as it is !
ReplyDeleteReally good reading - today's posts that is.
Atomboy - Please may I plagiarize your earlier post 18:07. I want to send part of it, to a work colleague who thinks the sun shine's out from Cameron's arse. He lives close to or within Cameron's constituency and never fails to extol the virtues and good he does for his constituents ! Can't wait for the reply from my colleague on that one !
Deano - There seems to be one who posts here that fits your 'Profile of the Sociopath' Ahh too close for comfort me thinks..
Reason I'm wound up - just took the RAC more than 3 hours to get to me to give my battery a jump start. Fucking thing just up and died. Fine one second - dead as a fucking Dodo the next. Coffee shop kicked me out at 5 cause they were closing - fairy nuff. Got home with frozen feet, after spending a not so comfortable amount of time in my 'then' not mobile fridge.
Gotta buy myself a xmas pressie tomorrow - New Battery !
Tascia:
ReplyDeleteThermal socks from the Army and Navy too ;)
IanG
ReplyDeleteI know of quite a few Black women working in the IT sector as contractors who get in excess of 400UKP/day. And these are not short term contracts folks, they run for years.
Really?
I am a contractor in the IT sector myself and I have never come across such a thing. I can assure you that I don't make anything fucking remotely close to 400 quid a day, although granted I am not black.
I do know of some contractors who are being *billed* at similar rates by their agencies, but unfortunately all the ones in question I can think of are white males.
At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together.
ReplyDeleteSpoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity.
Bitterweed - Thought Jody McIntyre handled that interview really well. Certainly got his point across.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Assange last night on Newsnight where he was constantly interrupted by that horrible woman... can't find her name.. conducting her own one sided interview.
And good track.. I need to mellow tonight !
Just enjoying a glass (or 2) of Gascone, browsing the web and getting over some damn bug that has given me a cough and cold for the last week.
ReplyDeleteYou can have your thread back now.
weareallinthistogther
ReplyDeleteAre you a new incantation of the Hermit? Bitey?
Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity
Do shut the fuck up.
LaRit - Wish I'd had some idea it was coming. My old work horse just don't talk to me anymore.
ReplyDeleteStood in the snow with me steelies on. Nearly gave a guy in a Toyota a good kicking after he reversed his monster truck into my car. Should of - would have warmed me up !
Tascia:
ReplyDeleteIt's a right bummer when shit like that happens ;( sorry....
wereallin thistogether
ReplyDeleteMe: At the same time, the working classes of whatever race, colour, sexuality or creed need to recognise that they have more in common than the trivial issues that divide them, and work together.
You: Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity.
OK ... so which part of my statement do you disagree with? Do you think that anyone who isn't a white hetero male should be chucked out of the working class? Where are they going to go? Will they be magically whooshed into the middle classes?
Or are you buying into the Divide and Rule strategy of our overlords?
Sorry, LatRit. You're the working class wannabee opera singer who never got a fair chance, right? And you blame everything and everybody for everything that's ever gone wrong with your life, apart from yourself? Natch.
ReplyDelete'It can't be me - I'm fucking briliant. And everybody here thinks so.'
I don't know how old you are, but it might be time to grow up. Constantly telling people to 'shut the fuck up' doesn't really work as a long-term strategy. It just makes you look like a fascist.
Oh, um, and let's see...
ReplyDeleteApparently going to the pub to watch rugby is *infinitely* more heinous than going to the pub to watch football. Presumably that's all right. How do you feel about cricket? Racing? Boxing? Synchronised swimming?
As for spending half a week's JSA ... lessee ... er, no.
'Or are you buying into the Divide and Rule strategy of our overlords?'
ReplyDeleteNo I'm not. I'm just saying that that is not really necessary - the 'divide' part is already there, and you support it and choose it yourself. Be honest. How many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people? How much time do you spend with people like that? Do you even know any? Do you go down the pub with them all the time, or do you do that with your very similar 'mates' instead? Poor people can't afford that sort of thing, you know. They inhabit another world, and you shouldn't pretend that you are a part of it, or understand it. Because you're not, and you don't.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi All
ReplyDeleteBitters--Good selection that, the man has put out some good stuff and is becoming, rightly, better known. Think he's doing Glastonbury next year too, you lucky buggers.
Well done to Jay on his degree.
weareallinthistogether--I know you were addressing thauma, but I count several uneducated, working class, unemployed people as close friends. We always have been friends despite social and economic problems because we live in close proximity in the same village, and all live in the same world, as shitty as it is at times.
Out with dog before popping in to the Legion to hoist a couple with some of the aforementioned. Bye for now.
wereallin etc.
ReplyDeleteThe vast majority of the people down my local are working class. Most of them are employed, be it in a regular job for The Man, self-employed or picking up the odd bit of work here and there, whether on the books or not.
So yeah, all those brickies, gardeners, handymen, foundry workers (or rather, ex-foundry workers now the foundry has been closed), bar staff and care home workers that I hang out with are seriously posh. All of them have villas in Tuscany.
wereallin
ReplyDeleteHello - i know and am friends with many working class 'uneducated'people - ey are in the majority here.
Can I take issue with your 'another world' statement?
there is but one world - some people ar denied access - for many reasons - from aspects of a society. In many ways by saying 'they inhabit another world ' you are marginalising them. Ways of life do cross each other - they merge and then seperate only to merge again.
The only people who are isolated from the reality of the majority are the elite and those who seek to claim educational or social superiority.
I am certainly not claiming the that middle management types who do not socialise with the 'lesser' employees understand the problems and difficulties many of their coworkers face but the dividing lines are not always so tightly drawn.
SpeedKermit
ReplyDeleteDon't know if going in with size 12's, then trying to shove said foot into mouth really cut's it.
Also, don't really know anything about Brazilian law enforcement in the 70's. Was it corrupt ?
weareallinthistogevva
ReplyDeleteWe're also a long time dead.
Find something better to do with your sad life.
Leni:
ReplyDeleteDon't be fooled into a rational argument with waaitt ........ how many deprived, working class people does he/she hang out with?
Been laughing about Samuel Pepys all day...
ReplyDeletekermit:
ReplyDeleteand 'harvesting Badger Hair' ?
Belated because I was not around yesterday, but congratulations to Jay.
ReplyDeleteLaRit
ReplyDeletehow many deprived, working class people does he/she hang out with?
Good point ... I think we should be told!
wereallin thistogether
ReplyDeleteHow many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people?...
...They inhabit another world, and you shouldn't pretend that you are a part of it, or understand it. Because you're not, and you don't.
They? You make them sound like another species. You're making some big assumptions about who we do and don't know. I know a few "working class, unemployed folk" I'd call friends.
Don't know where you hang out but if you fancied a trip to Sheffield, I'd be happy to take you out for a drink in Shiregreen or Parsons Cross say - it's easy to sound off on a blog, but my guess is they'd be no more impressed by you than they are with me, and thats not very.
Thauma:
ReplyDeleteI'm sick to death of people feeling they have to prove their credentials, otherwise they can't call themselves a Commie, on here.
It's complete bollocks and twaddle. It's also the twisted reverse logic that I've been abused with over the years on CiF.
You haven't 'made it' therefore that means you're shite at what you do.
FFS nobody wanted to buy Van Gough's paintings when he was alive and the Michael Angelo was on his back for 4 years painting the Cistene Chapel for the modern day equivalent 50 fucking pence!
You gotta laugh ;)
wereallin seems awfully upset about something. I hope that it wasn't just being ignored on UT. Happens to the worst of us.
ReplyDeleteStrange thread today - there is no right and left, working class black women earn more than working class white men, the Met's tactics are to be applauded, transgender people are fucking weirdos and now "middle class white women" don't have working class friends.
Oh well, I guess if I don't get involved, I can just giggle at silly ideas.
SheffP:
ReplyDeleteNice call there..... ;)
Hello All
ReplyDeleteGood posts aloft - we certainly need some practical, on the ground socialism here.
Reminded me of 2 books I recently read - one about the cotton area in US in the 30s and the oter about coton picking in Turkey in the 50s.
The US small cotton growers borrowed money from local store to see them thru - they employed mexican pickers along with locals and their own children. Failure of the crop meant disastor all heavy debt for farmers nd poor reward for Mexicans.
In Turkey the whole village migrated to the coastal plain - on money borrowed from village Bey. Food and winter clothing as well as debt repeyment dependent upon successful season.
I was struck by the similarities in method of funding - and precarios existence - in 2 such different societies. All were exploited - workers and small farmers with poor quality land and totally dependent upon growing conditions and weather during harvest.
This is very similar to the high unemployment model now operating creating both dependency on things beyond personal control and accompanying debt.
Such precarious lives still exist for millions - we really do not seem to be getting very far at all in either feeding everyone or respecting them.
LaRit - you're right! Let the accusers provide their credentials first!
ReplyDeleteIf you want Thaum, you can have me.
ReplyDeleteI'm working class, uneducated, and under-employed, if not unemployed exactly!
Tascia
Not sure what speedy said, but the Brazilian 'police' force were pretty brutal in the 70's, and now, they're not exactly 'honest'.
Oh, and evening all....
Tascia
ReplyDeletePlease feel free to pinch whatever you want whenever you feel like it without any need to ask.
The bits in italics, though, belong to the people at the end of the links given - so, Clegg in the first case and Johann Hari in the second.
Sorry for taking so long to get back. Been watching Corrie and stuff.
Yes, thankyou tascia... I found the first Guardian report and realised it was one of those that linked to an earlier one with more details. It's not the first time...
ReplyDeleteHabib:
ReplyDeleteBlack is White and White is Black.....
JamesD:
;)
Leni:
:)
Habib - Occasionally you should do a satirical version of events.. You sure you not 'Luke' :.)
ReplyDeleteHi LaRit
ReplyDeleteYous is probably right.
been a funny day - reading crap telling us how wonderful it all is - or will be for those who survive starvation rations - with cuts in winter fuel for hospitals and schools and the collapse of infrastructure cos it snowed.
This 2 world bs really irritates me - accepting this nonsense helps to perpetuate the lies. There is one world and all are entitled to a share in it, to resources and to opportunity whatever our ambitions and hopes.
"How many of your close friends are uneducated, working class, unemployed people? How much time do you spend with people like that? Do you even know any? "
ReplyDeleteWas this a general question ? if so, a fair few, and I'll be getting pissed with a few of them tomorrow afternoon. They like rugby too. Not opera, but mind you, there's a few Verdi tunes that I reckon kick ass any century, any country, any class.
Funny old world.
Hi Sheff, is chekhov in one piece still ?
SK - likewise. Samuel fucking Pepys. Genius. Will be using that one tomorrow down the pub...
Ouch! That's told me! I should know better than to challenge the borg. Everybody here is beautiful and virtuous and brilliant and 'different'. Everybody here is middle class, but really, really relates to the working class. Everybody who challenges this delusion is a 'demented fucking bore'.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it, from my point of view, that you all seem to mulch into a kind of colourless wallpaper paste where there is no original thought? No individuality or independent thinking? No escape from the repetitive boredom that is 'this bears repeating' and 'we can't stress this enough' when bores interminably reiterate what people fondly imagine to be the 'party line'?
I can understand that you like your little comfort zone, and you appreciate the positive feedback that you get when you all push the right buttons for each other, but don't kid yourselves that is an intelligent political debate forum. It's just a smug masturbatorium where dissenting voices are dismissed with a righteous 'fuck off' or 'troll'.
In that respect you're much closer to the likes of waddya and brusselsexpats and kizbot than you would like to admit.
It's good fun to watch, though. Serious engagement is obviously out of the question.
Watching The Daily Show. How on god's green earth can the Republican Party - the supposed party of The American Hero - justify not providing support and compensation to those firefighters, paramedics, police staff etc who are dying from illness related to their involvement as first responders to the 11 September 2001 attacks? How can they FILIBUSTER something designed to provide some relief to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice to help and to save lives in a time of crisis? What the fuck is WRONG with these people?
ReplyDeleteThe world is so fucked up. How many times and in how many ways can ordinary people be screwed over by these complete and utter fuckers?
Thauma
ReplyDeleteSince I've spent a large part of my existence misguidedly either 'pretending' I was thick, to stop people bullying me and making my life shit (all classes) or 'pretending' I was a nice middle class person with all the right credentials but a glaringly obvious name that would 'never' cut the mustard with toxic amateur middle class people in Classical Music-fucked-up-world. I AM SICK TO DEATH OF THE PATHETIC flamers coming on here and elsewhere thinking WE OWE THEM an explanation for our existence!!!!!
Here's a nice cheery Friday night choon.
ReplyDeleteCan we share you James? Am desperate to add to my street cred and you'd do nicely.
ReplyDeleteGot Chekhov staying the night on his way oop north - just back from him treating me to dinner, so am now full of curry and beer and gratitude.
Leni:
ReplyDeleteJust sending over a big fat kiss and a hug ;)
I could probably rescue it if you wanted a chuckle Atomboy, I castigated you for believing twaddle that later turned out not to be so twaddlesome.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, organisers can be liable for offences (S.14 Public Order Act 1986) if protests get out of hand, and then it is for the organiser to prove that the circumstances were out of his control (probably after he's been arrested). Not an especially fair burden - we've all thrown parties were some big kids came, drank all the Advocaat and puked in the fishtank. Lesson: don't organise a protest on Facebook I suppose, or at least not with your real name. No wonder Aaron Porter was so vociferously trying to absolve his ass after Millbank got totalled
waaitt
ReplyDelete"Serious engagement is obviously out of the question"
Says the person who bloody came out here on the attack with no frigging intention of 'serious debate'.
Have a pop why don't you? Is that your only level debate?
Don't be fooled into a rational argument with waaitt
ReplyDeleteQuite right! Don't engage, don't think, don't question. After all, she's not 'one of us'. Stay blinkered and stupid!
Thanks, leni. I take your points.
"You sure you not 'Luke'"
ReplyDeleteTascia..... I am his father.
"Noooooooooo!"
D'you know what wearallin? People do disagree and discuss here, but when what is obviously a complete cunt comes looking for a fight, they'll fucking find one.
La Ritournelle said...
ReplyDeleteweareallinthistogther
Are you a new incantation of the Hermit? Bitey?
"Spoken like a true white, middle class, educated female who earns a decent wage and who really 'cares' - when she's not at the pub watching rugby and spending half a week's JSA on pints and a curry. I applaud your solidarity
Do shut the fuck up.
17 December, 2010 20:23"
You're doing yourself no good parading your ignorance here La Rit.
If you can't come up with a better suggestion of who the rapidly changing identity of weareallinthistogther might be I think you're less of a people person than you'd like us to think you are.
:-)
ReplyDeleteWereallin thistogether
ReplyDeleteIt's just a smug masturbatorium where dissenting voices are dismissed with a righteous 'fuck off' or 'troll'.
Don't get into a snot simply because people picked you up on some assumptions you'd made. No one called you a troll or told you to fuck off, simply didn't agree with what you'd said - to which your response was to have a little tantrum. My invite is still open.
Brilliant that Thauma ;)
ReplyDeleteFanks a million x
LaRit - you have a beautiful name. Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly a tosser. ;-)
ReplyDeleteFields of Athenry - go on Munster!
Ooo Errrr, Sheff!!
ReplyDelete;oP
(Actually, there's plenty of me to go around, and I haven't even started on the Christmas stuff yet!)
tascia
ReplyDeletegot any jungle guy ?
Oil be back later though!
ReplyDeleteExcellent, Xmas Friday night punch up.
ReplyDeleteJames
ReplyDeleteYou suggest a well padded figure - come back here again. The shivering will slim you down. You are clearly living in luxury, basking in sunshine .
Thauma;
ReplyDeleteA big fat kiss and hug back atcha too!
Be back later, but more than likely, the worse for wear n tear!!!
Bitters
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit early for me to be hiding under the table.
Has chekhov left you now ?
Time for a choon
ReplyDeleteBurma shave
Bitterweed:
ReplyDeletehehehehehe! Cheers for the toon earlier too x
Speedy
ReplyDeleteIt's up to you.
I didn't see it, but I am quite happy to be told off whether I deserve it or not.
I'm not sure what a Facebook protest is, actually. Do they send a camera-crew with a small team to hand out cups of tea and offer blankets to anyone who gets cold?
"'pretending' I was a nice middle class person with all the right credentials but a glaringly obvious name that would 'never' cut the mustard"
ReplyDeleteI can very much relate to this.
LaRit - worse for wear n tear - excellent! Mind you, am suffering and will probably be off soon.
ReplyDeletexo
Chekhov's here at mine tonight Leni - but is being coy about posting. Probably thinks it'll ruin his cred overnighting in this middle class haven in the midst of inner city dereliction.
ReplyDeleteLovin' the Tom Waits, Sheff....
ReplyDeleteAh, the endless British obsession with class. Where would we be without it?
ReplyDeletePersonally I blame punk. I mean, before punk we had it to an extent but inverted snobbery was very much a left to extreme left thing.
Freaks did not give a shit what class you were. Theoretically, anyway. We were all in it together, man. So to speak. So I had middle class freak mates and upper class freak mates. Not many thoroughly working class freak mates, it must be said. And I was pretty much it in my school. The token longhair.
But punk changed it all. Then the middle class art students all decided that that freaks were middle class and that that was not cool so being working class became necessary not just if you were in some Trotskyisk sect but if you were anyone other than a completely straight bourgeois loser.
And the final nail in the coffin of classlessness as an aspiration was Ian Bone and Class War. Before that anarchists were often quite posh. Well, I know, anarchists are still often quite posh, but before that they could admit to it without total loss of credibility.
Punk has a lot to answer for. The art student's idea of what the working class was about.
And we still feel forced to display our working class credentials. It is pathetic, and I am not casting aspersions about anyone else here. I do it myself. Not deliberately, but I look back on stuff I say or post and think... Oh shit, I have got goaded or trapped into that stuff again...
I prefer Charlie/Nap to yourself. At least he has the guts to spread his thoughts over this blog.
ReplyDeleteAll you've managed so far... character assassination.
From you're own written word:
Serious engagement is obviously out of the question.
Where, if you had read today's post's, you would see that view points (in a political sense) from various posters can offer alternative view point's.
You're post is complacent !
sheffpixie
ReplyDeleteDon't know where you hang out but if you fancied a trip to Sheffield, I'd be happy to take you out for a drink in Shiregreen or Parsons Cross say
Used to live there pixie - north side of the valley, top floor, seagulls flying past the windows, not too bad at the time.
Meerkatjie:
ReplyDeleteGlad you find it familiar.
Waaitt.....
I retract, but you were the rude and nasty liccle shite first. What do you expect? Flowers and Chocolates?
Leni
ReplyDeleteWell-padded's a nice way of putting it.
(And the shivering was more than offset by me going mental for all the stuff I'd missed (thank you very much Ginsters), so I'm going for the 'sweating it off' approach now!)
But can I just say, working class league or Welsh Union or upper middle class English Union...
ReplyDeleteThere is simply no excuse at all for rugby.
Bitters - saw the original DVD in town tonight. Maybe if i'm lucky Santa will put it into me sack !!
ReplyDelete"Sorry, sheff, I must have misunderstood these comments: "
ReplyDeleteOh sweetie are you feeling upset?