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

i don't think it's one or the other. over-relying on your ability to play the media is a fool's enterprise if you're proposing anything that's broadly unpalatable to the media, as any anti-austerity position wd be. winning hearts and minds is going to take grassroots work and the ability to get a message out there thru a steady barrage of flack. it's going to take enough patience to not worry about soundbiting yrself into short term TV popularity. obviously a "leader" has to not make an arse of themselves in public whenever poss, but i don't think meaningful change is something that can be accomplished thru a polished enough media presence. Blair, after all, wasn't interested in meaningful change.

Unfair advantage for the Tories is that they don't need personality as such, just presentation (don't be bald or too old looking).

I'd rather support politicians who react like human beings when confronted with bullshit and posturing. Part of the problem in Westminster is that they do not.

xp - All kinds of medicines have origins in nature, eg. morphine. Aspirin is a synthetic iteration of a chemical found in willow bark, which has been used for pain and inflammation relief since forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aspirin

if the Labour party's got nothing to sell then it doesn't matter who's in charge. the next step needs to be to sort itself out a vision and a plan for realising that vision. this is the step that i think it's going to absolutely fail at.

Right, but homeopathy is not medicine of any kind, it's not the same thing at all. That's my point. Willow bark contains an active ingredient. Homeopathy is magical mystery water.

xpost

dude, it's water with molecules in it

over-relying on your ability to play the media is a fool's enterprise if you're proposing anything that's broadly unpalatable to the media, as any anti-austerity position wd be. winning hearts and minds is going to take grassroots work and the ability to get a message out there thru a steady barrage of flack. it's going to take enough patience to not worry about soundbiting yrself into short term TV popularity. obviously a "leader" has to not make an arse of themselves in public whenever poss, but i don't think meaningful change is something that can be accomplished thru a polished enough media presence.

Yeah you need both but as I keep saying people are going to be a lot more open to your message if you're the sort of person they want to listen to in the first place, but you also need to be disciplined enough not to just chase soundbytes. There are popular politicians who can work the media and sell an anti-austerity message to the public, they're just in Scotland (which admittedly is a more favourable climate to this sort of thing). But then again I don't think anti-austerity is as unpopular as it's made out to be - the issue is mistrust and/or fear of Labour themselves.

Heartening to know Corbyn can do no wrong, unlike this guy lol

NV also otm, no tories are going to be joining labour to vote for Corbyn.

― 2011’s flagrantly ceremonious rock-opera (Bananaman Begins), Thursday, July 16, 2015 9:19 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dunno about that, they might get tempted after being very pleased that Ed got in instead of David, and they might like the idea of ensuring the 'vote winner' doesn't get in.

I'd rather support politicians who react like human beings when confronted with bullshit and posturing.

I do think that the electorate might enjoy someone that does that, rather than the well-trained politico that smiles and describes the alternate scenario all the time.

Hmmm. Coming to suspect that the electorate, despite claiming to want honesty and straightforwardness in politicians, actually much prefer well-trained politicos' smiles, bullshit and posturing.

Of course they fucking do.

Boris Johnson is the bellwether of this really? Did you see him being interviewed about the water cannons on Sky? butter wouldn't melt. even when he's writhing around and squirming, he's still got this smugly amused grin as if he knows something the interviewer doesn't, and that comes across as superior even if he is clearly checkmated.

Since he has habits that make Bill Clinton look like a eunuch, I'd imagine that the second he got near leading the Tories, the public might somehow find out a bit more about his behaviour.

lots of rightwing blogs + twitter ppl are doing giggly 'vote corbyn' campaigns, not sure how many votes that would actually translate into, though

some folks also reviving this oldie but goodie:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGuKzoxXAAETIYv.jpg:large

http://flashbak.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Screen-shot-2015-04-01-at-09.50.09.png

Ironically, Corbyn's one there is... okay? No-one would bat an eyelid if he said it tomorrow.

LOL Keith Vaz

LOL like there's anything dodgy about George Galloway right

http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl~6~6~51843~105198:1987-31?sort=Shelfmark&qvq=w4s:/when/1987;sort:Shelfmark;lc:ODLodl~29~29,ODLodl~7~7,ODLodl~6~6,ODLodl~14~14,ODLodl~8~8,ODLodl~23~23,ODLodl~1~1,ODLodl~24~24&mi=31&trs=33

who were the 'militants' they were all helping to fund?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_(Trotskyist_group)

ah right

In fact, Corbyn is obviously only on there because he looks the beardy sociology lecturer part.

off topic, but some fantastic Militant tendency related photos can be found here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_sinclair_liverpool_photos/albums/72157602168852769/page1

Tim Farron is the new leader of some party or other

not so much a party as a book club

Hands up if you can name anyone else he was competing up against.

Going back to the Labour contest, if these lamers can't beat a "bearded voter repellant" like Corbyn, how exactly do they propose to beat Boris?

Norman Lamb!

http://bodley30.bodley.ox.ac.uk:8180/luna/servlet/detail/ODLodl~6~6~51843~105198:1987-31?sort=Shelfmark&qvq=w4s:/when/1987;sort:Shelfmark;lc:ODLodl~29~29,ODLodl~7~7,ODLodl~6~6,ODLodl~14~14,ODLodl~8~8,ODLodl~23~23,ODLodl~1~1,ODLodl~24~24&mi=31&trs=33

zoomable version with slightly less horrible url here: http://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/5a090e3d-2139-4e1d-8a47-e7a82add1379

Richard Stanton still paying for his Brighton bomb comments 30 years later

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/11648447.Green_Party_select_candidate_who_said_Grand_Hotel_bombing_was__justifiable__to_replace_hired_killers_tweets_councillor/

Even the quotes about armed workers' brigades aren't as embarrassing as Harman working for a "civil liberties" group that lobbied parliament to drop the age of sexual consent to 10 in that same era.

Thanks for that Flickr link soref.

So, now then

That post of mine up there

Just to clear up a few things:

I wasn't drunk, but I was very tired and have recently been ill from sawdust inhalation (so ...?)

And what's more callous than cheering on as vulnerable people are stripped of benefits and doomed to homelessness?

Agree 100%, and this is one of many things that was missing from my post.

This is an unfair pile-on really in that Cardamon is fully aware that these feelings are wrong and pushes them out of his head, which is more than you can say for huge swathes of the population, including some working class people and even including some benefit claimants.

I'll take responsibility for the pile on tho because of poor phrasing and throwing down ugly matter in an ugly way

xxp I genuinely had no idea that 'chavs beat me up when I was a kid' was a common reason for people supporting benefit cuts. Does David Cameron have Korn to thank for his slim majority?

All I can say is, 'Chavs beat me up when I was a kid' is a very common reason for people supporting benefit cuts in my city

Fp'ed that Cardamon post, all that shite about dramatising a feeling or whatever seems like a poor excuse for just simply letting rip with what is currently a very prevalent type of UK class bigotry. I deleted my angry post this morning because I am trying cut down on being a dick, but I still find the sentiments in the op appalling and unjustifiable and am calmly registering my dislike of it for the record.

@Xelab considering my post was an angry post of the most self-righteous unthinking kind, you'd have been way within yr rights to post your own angry post; I also find the sentiments appalling and unjustifiable

The bullshit bit of the Cardamon post was the 'should we judge these attitudes too harshly?' bit

I agree with you I think. There's a vaguely liberal way of approaching toxic people which says 'We mustn't judge', but really works to justify their toxic thoughts and behaviours; which sounds like positive + constructive thinking but actually just leads back round to the status quo. Right? And you read something like that in my post?

What I'm actually in favour of is a sort of clinical emotional maths.

For example Mr Joe Bloggs (of Billinge) votes for the benefit cuts because his elderly aunty was mugged outside Kwik Save by a gang of teenagers, had savings stolen and bruises across her face for months, was afraid to leave the house afterwards. Mr Joe Bloggs is fucking fuming, long term, and says 'Aye fookin dead right' when he hears new benefits cuts being announced on Sky News because he associates 'benefits people' with 'muggers'.

'Understanding' the anger of Mr Bloggs isn't going to get us very far, because at the end of the day, we disagree with him. We know for certain that slashing benefits may not even touch the people who mugged his aunty but will definitely hurt people who are innocent of anything like that. We know the cuts to benefits and public services will make such muggings even more likely to happen, in fact. We can't honestly concede anything to his position, which is a pathological position.

Strategically though, this is the situation: the tories are tapping into the psychic torment of Joe Bloggs up and down the country, so how are we going to proceed? The pathology is a fact about a chunk of our population. What then is the move to play here?

(I do see a moral distinction between people who have actually been mugged/attacked/victimised and politicians who make use of those experiences; and also between people who have actually had those experiences and respond 'illogically', and people who invoke or pretend to those experiences rhetorically, to puff up an illogical and self-serving argument; I can often sniff out whose terrible chav stories are real and who's bullshitting, likewise with horror stories about 'large groups of asian lads' etc etc)

he associates 'benefits people' with 'muggers'.

I'm still struggling with this connecting of benefits to crime. I don't know who you're hanging about with but how many people actually think this way, seriously? Where are you hanging about? I just don't get it.

Strategically though, this is the situation: the tories are tapping into the psychic torment of Joe Bloggs up and down the country

They aren't though, Osborne said it himself, it's about people getting up in the morning and passing their neighbour's house who still have their curtains drawn, i.e., they're still lazing about in their kip until they roll out of bed at noon to watch Jeremy Kyle or the Real Housewives of New Jersey or whatever, not that they're out mugging aunties or murdering Goths, do you actually have any contact with real people or what?

Er, there are probably some drawbacks to buying in to George Osborne's mastery of the national psyche.

Nick Clegg was the person who came up with blinds-drawn skivers as a THING. Clearly he's not working from home in a room with huge south-facing windows.

(xp) The point was that the populist anti-benefits rhetoric from politicians, like Osborne, is about fecklessness not violence.

I was going to say that. I've never seen anyone make that connection (to violence) before.

'Alarm Clock Britain' was Clegg's slogan wasn't it? Ah, what times, what memories. Longest time for the Liberals in government since Lloyd George, you know.

I'm still struggling with this connecting of benefits to crime.

Would you struggle with a link of poverty to crime?
Would you struggle with a link of poverty to benefits?

join the dots

I don't think anyone's saying all people on benefits are criminals. However, it's likely that a high proportion of violent and anti-social crime takes place in areas of deprivation where a high proportion of people are on benefits.

I think cardamon is saying making these links and playing on those fears generates support for the cuts.

tbh I think I do recognise what Cardamon is talking about. I have heard this kind of thing, both from Tories and working class ex-Labour presumably now UKIP types. Although the Tories would just see Council Estate = On Benefits = Criminal = Scum, the working class people I've heard this kind of thing from are sometimes living on council estates (or maybe have previously) but they are working and see scroungers and layabouts as a problem and often they are associating them with crime on the estate. One of the people I've heard come out with this his own brother is an ex-junkie alcoholic who is on benefits and probably does the odd bit of petty crime so I can sort of see where he gets the idea from.

In no way condoning these attitudes, they are not my own, just to be clear.

Maybe Tom D. doesn't talk to many people from outside London? I don't really hear this from anyone here, but go back to the Midlands and it's all over the place.

Things are probably somewhat different in London, I'd agree- an idea borne out by the election results.

Seems this sort of thinking has deep roots, unfortunately, in a way that can't really be combatted by the labour party 'reconnecting' or somehow pitching its message a bit better. If ordinary people are easy prey to politics of kicking-down resentment these days, it's because people are more inclined to see social life as consisting of individual conflict (and not to notice, or care, about larger structural issues) and to view the idea of 'community' in a strictly exclusionary sense.

The sort of attitudes that have been building up over decades, basically. Probably inherent in consumer capitalism, and indivisible from it.

the slow but sure enforcement of values based on extreme meritocracy has a lot do with this too, i think

Guessing rich people are lovely, except you just don't get to meet them. Don't know if anyone else here does, but if they do please report.

the working class people I've heard this kind of thing from are sometimes living on council estates (or maybe have previously) but they are working and see scroungers and layabouts as a problem and often they are associating them with crime on the estate.

Sure, but the original claim is that "may kick my head in" was a higher reason to hate dolies than any other, which still seems like nonsense.

(Also of course unemployment benefit is 3% of actual welfare)

I don't think anyone's saying all people on benefits are criminals. However, it's likely that a high proportion of violent and anti-social crime takes place in areas of deprivation where a high proportion of people are on benefits.

I think cardamon is saying making these links and playing on those fears generates support for the cuts.

First two statements are obvious tbh. Who is making these links and playing on those fears though? I don't think even IDS has done that? Maybe it's something that's going on wherever cardamon lives? Bringing up the murder of the goth girl in Lancashire in his original post was straight up bullshit however, remind me to keep away from sawdust in the future.

"people believe mean things about demonized social groups" = yeah ok i think we get that
"you can understand why people believe these things, because of their everyday experiences of people from these groups" = mistaking the distorting lenses of prejudice for a simple cause and effect process

the point is always that the demonized social group is already demonized, and any confirmation of prejudice that people gain from their personal experience requires the prejudice to already be in place

also, there are quite a different set of assumptions and experiences made about "benefits scroungers" by people from different social classes and regions. plenty of working class people hate scroungers but it's rarely because they think of them as terrifying, exotic feral beasts

perhaps ironically, there's something coming close to Stalinist about the neoliberal 'strivers versus skivers' rhetoric - the idea that you're either a useful cog or a rusty ratchet in the works