Come on MSN more often, darnit! I miss you.
I can't help noticing that a university student used the phrase "like they should of".
I've got a horrible suspicion "aweful" wasn't a typo either.
And they say there's no dumbing down.
Maybe, maybe. At least the LibDem share of the total vote at the election increased whereas the Labour share fell 6%, while the Conservative share flatlined. But the really stunning insight is that there were more non-voters than Labour voters. Conservatives need to worry when Philip Stevens in the Financial Times described their campaign as "repellent". At least Angus Maude, the new chairman of the Conservative Party, can see what the problem is in the Indy's interview with him on Monday:
"We can now see with absolue clarity that Labour is not unbeatable, that Labour is in a losing position. Our problem is us, not Labour."
Yes, hilarious I'm sure that some kid is naive enough to think that the voting trends in his jazz band will be reflected nationally, but if I were to look back at my university days, I'd prefer to have been politically wet behind the ears but pursuing my passion for music, rather than getting my kicks championing an odious political organisation with an average membership age well over sixty. I'm 'laughing long and hard' at one of the two of you, and it isn't the one with the trombone.
Passing through, I'm not convinced, I'm afraid. Why is it stunning that there were more non-voters than Labour voters on May 5th? Back in June 2001, the number of non-voters easily trumped the number of Labour voters. And why should the party care unduly about the FT? Everyone seems to think that because it is (presumably) read by yuppies and sells for £1 or so it must be as Tory as the Telegraph. In fact, it's long been solidly europhile and pro-Labour, even supporting Neil Kinnock in the 1992 election.
Joe, I'm pretty sure the average membership age of all three parties is pretty much the same. Pensioners just have more time for these things, and are often involved since the days when parties really had mass memberships in the millions - I believe the President of one Constituency Association I am involved with campaigned for Stanley Baldwin, and has certainly been involved since the days of Neville Chamberlain. And "politically wet behind the ears" is an unlikely explanation when the poster in question has made over 3,000 separate posts on the Lib Dem forum since October. So what you say should really apply to us both.
"And "politically wet behind the ears" is an unlikely explanation when the poster in question has made over 3,000 separate posts on the Lib Dem forum since October. So what you say should really apply to us both."
Try reading the rest of his 3,000 posts, and the myriad lib dems (he's not actually a member) lining up to blow holes in what he says. I think politically wet behind the ears is actually a rather generous description of him.
Peter - Why no comment on Angus Maude: "We can now see with absolue clarity that Labour is not unbeatable, that Labour is in a losing position. Our problem is us, not Labour"?
The low turnout in both the 2001 and the 2005 elections shows that a large slice of the electorate is not motivated to vote at all, hardly a sign that all is thriving with our Parliamentary government and the democratic process. Especially, yoof is alienated from politics, which might just have some connection with hoodies, muggings and the low stay-on rate in full-time education at 17 in Britain compared with peer-group countries. What's wrong when the yoof unemployment rate here is nowhere nearly as high as in France?
As for the FT, it is hardly monolithic. True enough that FT editorials are Europhile but the paper's lead economic columnists, Sam Brittan and Martin Wolf, have been consistently cautious for economic reasons about the benefits for Britain from joining the Euro, a position which broadly accorded with the Treasury's critical assessment in June 2003. Note that the objections relate to economic and business factors, not the political factors which have largely exercised Conservative Eurosceptics. With the lamentable economic performance of the major Eurozone economies, the unbounded enthusiasm of the LibDems - and Denis MacShane, Blair's Euro minister until the election - for joining the Euro just look funny peculiar.
For this election, The Times and The Economist among the media were also backing the return of a Blair government. With that and no increase in the Conservative share of the vote, there is something Conservatives really need to worry about.
The anti-labour vote is larger than the labour vote, which shouldn't surprise anybody. The anti-Tory vote has always been larger than the Tory vote too.
A larger problem for the Conservatives is the size of their core votre basically not changing - Labour were down but mostly to the Lib-Dems who were up. Unless the Tories can stage some kind of break through in the next 4 years - something I seriously doubt myself, they won't stand anymore chance of taking a working majority in 2009/10 than they did this time around.
While our system does give us stable governments, it also gives an effective opportunity to any leader with a large enough majority to do what they hell they like to our country with absolutely no oversight of any effective type. I'm not a PR fan, but I'm starting to feel that it is the only way to actually start protecting some of the things were soon going to be losing.
Why no comment on Angus Maude?
Probably because there's no such person.
Alex, there is, but he was an MP in the days of Ted Heath and Thatcher's early years. He's Francis' father.
Passing through, I attended an academic lecture on the very subject of modernising the Conservative Party two days ago, and the basic conclusion was exactly the opposite of Maude's: that the Tory Party's policies weren't off the playing field, especially compared to the clearly extreme views of Labour in the 1980s, and it was mainly external factors that the party cannot control (like the government's economic performance) that are likely to determine the result in 2009/2010.
I don't see what this has to do with the original post, anyway.
>I don't see what this has to do with the original post, anyway.
Well, not a lot but everybody is waiting for you to actually post on the result of the election with your thoughts on what happened and what went wrong/right for the Conservative Party.
What happens in 09/10 will be partly driven by the economy, and there'll be an element of kids voting who've only known Labour as a government - but the anti-conservative vote seems to have it's act together in a way it never did in the 80s.
Peter - Why no comment on Angus Maude: "We can now see with absolue clarity that Labour is not unbeatable, that Labour is in a losing position. Our problem is us, not Labour"?
The problem is that the torys are changing into a social democrat light, always ground they will struggle on (the whole idea behind goverment running everything is flawed). The voters only had a choice between Nu lab, a bit less new labour, and the lib dems that offered a chance to support fascist dictators and much more labour.
The coonservatives will not recover until they attract not only their core vote (they always vote anyway) their natural allies (ukip etc) and appeal to the masses with a proper individualistic freedom based message
Bring back family values?
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_...-
name_page.html
> appeal to the masses
Nope, sorry. Thanks for playing.
That will appeal to a subset of the 9 million core vote the Tories seem to have holding pretty strong for them.
I'm not sure what the Tories can do at this point except hope that the economy completely tanks in the next 4 years. Personally, I'd much rather it didn't just to make an electoral point. Even then I'm not sure they'd be able to get a majority.
" I can't help noticing that a university student used the phrase "like they should of".
I've got a horrible suspicion "aweful" wasn't a typo either."
Spell it correctly? You Fascist!
As members of the cognoscenti, the intelligensia realize that spelling and grammar, as well as the "standards" associated with them, are merely part of a hegemonic order of manipulation designed by the ruling class for the purpose of reinforcing traditional power structures and limiting the size of the discursive playing field.
For years, the capitalist elite have deployed pernicious technologies of control to keep subordinate classes in a state of subjugation.
This is beautifully encapsulated by the spellchecker. It has became the metaphor for the processes whereby disciplinary 'technologies', together with the emergence of a normative social science, 'police' both the mind and body of the modern individual.
Spellcheckers are, quite simply, the latest, and most visible system of bourgeois control. By defining what words are, or are not acceptable, multi national corporations exercise control over our intellectual discourse.
As we all know, Spellcheckers were designed by the Military/Industrial/Microsoft Complex, with the aquiescence of the Raegan administration, in an effort to the keep the populace stupid and controllable. A classic example of Bravermans 'deskilling' thesis.
If you have a spellchecker then you will never really need to learn how to spell, just type whatever and the computer will fix it. You stay stupid, the corporations can control you easier because of that stupidity.
However, as Gramsci brilliantly observed, cultural hegemony can only be achieved with the consent of subordinate groups. So, by adhering to the linguistic standards of the bourgeois, we are complicit in our own marginalization.
Consequently, we have to continue to use all of the resources at our disposal to poke holes in the grand capitalist meta-narrative that has so insidiously and detrimentally shaped the worldview of the working class, causing the dispossessed to remain apathetic in the face of fascist encroachments.
As such it is our duty to spell things wrongley as offten as posible.
Peter, isn't it about time for a bit of Conservative Commentary about, you know, the general election? Are these snickerings all you can muster?
This site has often been absurd, and occasionally offensive, but up to this point it has never been boring. You're disappointing people.
By contrast, Alan, you've always been absurd, offensive and boring. I want to post a great deal on the election, and to do justice to the subject, that will have to wait until my exams finish on the 26th.
steve shackleton: "Peter - Why no comment on Angus Maude: "We can now see with absolue clarity that Labour is not unbeatable, that Labour is in a losing position. Our problem is us, not Labour"?"
Maybe because Angus Maude has been dead for 12 years, whereas this blog has been cryogenically suspended for several months.
By contrast, Alan, you've always been absurd, offensive and boring.
Peter, you mad fool, you realize that we're just supressing our mutual lust, don't you?
It should be empathtically stated that the poster in question is a perpetually mocked and reviled joke on the LDYS forums, as well as being an American with little grasp of British politics.
Whereas Peter Cuthbertson is a perpetually mocked and ignored token Tory on 'Harry's Place': a rest home for former hard-leftists and closet Zionists who have switched their loyalty from Stalin and Trotsky to George W Bush and Ariel Sharon.
Peter is keener on trying to convert the unconvertible than talking to his fellow conservatives. I diagnose a touch of masochism.
Quite right Miss Phillips. The clowns at Harry's place are a bunch of Islamophobic biggots.
Their hysterical denigration of the right honourable George Galloway MP almost brings a tear to my eye.
They only wish they were half the man he is.
http://world-socialism.blogspot....as-
arrived.html
In Harry's blog, Galloway has been regularly demonised to fit a role akin to that of the character Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is rather unfair to Goldstein, who was a rather intelligent character with some astute observations:
http://
www.whatreallyhappened.co...stein_1984.html
What is so amusing to watch is how leftists must have revered celebrities to laud and follow as well as demons to hate. Stalin and Trotsky dead?? Never mind - substitute in George W Bush and Ariel Sharon. For all the heavy theorising of the left, when it comes down to it, the great ideological battles are conducted in terms of idolatry. What's new?
"The Koran is a hate manual. Toilet is the best place for it."
(Comment on Harry's Place, May 20)
There is no such phobia, Comrade, and you know it as well as I do.
At least Darth Tiberius has a sense of humour, not only did voting Liberal Democrat, Darth also liberated the Conservative tagline "Are you smoking what we're smoking?"!!
Is Darth Tiberius the one with the red face and the horns, or the new guy? The Sith are such a confusing bunch...
Comrade Smirnoff's pean of praise for the Mosleyite Mr Galloway is one of the funniest things I have read. Keep it up mate.
This is Darth Tiberius. I was rather drunk when making that post. I'm often more deep in what i say. I don't represent national voting trends by the band i belong to. And I'm not a joke. Just misunderstood by the Lib Dems who are a nasty bunch to non-Lib Dems in my opinion.
we are very sweet to non-Lib Dems in reality. people always welcome to join in.
Not in my experience.
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