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

an inanimate carbon rod would have got elected for labour after 20 years of tory rule. the same will be true for the tories now for a while. the british system is incredibly fucked.

Macmillan possibly? (xp)

I think the fear of the animate carbon rod that was Neil Kinnock is probably formative in a lot of Blairites.

gosh yes that awful man with his socialism and his Welshness

will give Kinnock some credit for adding to the gaiety of nations with this kind of thing:

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/27/sadiq-khan-eric-pickles-dying_n_5042499.html

(tbh I normally find 'Eric Pickles is fat' jokes to be kind of cheap and crass, but Kinnock writing a letter where he wishes for Pickles to did of a heart attack, Khan tweeting the letter apparently not considering that there could be anything controversial about this and every UK news outlet reporting the story in a completely dead-pan serious fashion was hilarious at just about every level imo)

kinnock's original letter was funny because nowhere did he say "eric pickles will die", he just told khan to invite pickles on the marathon and said it would provoke an election, and our minds make the leap to suggest, oh yes, pickles died because he is unhealthy and it is a marathon = HOW COMEDY WORKS

http://www.visitcardiff.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Barry-Cryer.jpg

agree, Khan having make an embarrassing apology after it gets written up likr this:

Sadiq Khan, the shadow justice minister who is now considering running for Mayor of London, published a letter on Twitter written by Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader, that suggested Mr Pickles would die if he ran a marathon.

adds another level to the comedy though, I think

is 'HOW COMEDY WORKS' followed by that Barry Cryer picture a meme? if not is should be

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/simpsons/images/1/10/McBain_-_Let%27s_Get_Silly.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130813194642

THE MEME BEGINS HERE

and given the choice between failing with some principles and failing without any, I'd go for the latter every time.

Erm....the former?

i'm assuming that was a typo, right?

Hah, yes it was a typo.

or just labour party policy eh eh

better to die on your knees than live on your feet

If the leadership candidates weren't bad enough, the London Mayoral candidates compound the misery.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/24/liz-kendall-lord-falconer-accuses-dismissing-women-labour-leadership-race

is it falling into conspiracy theorist territory to think that this Times piece was given a misleading headline intentionally so that Kendall could take the opportunity to attack Burnham's campaign? the actual quote from Falconer seems totally innocuous...or did he say some more stuff that actually justifies the accusations of sexism?

Kendall believes the comments from Charles Falconer, the shadow lord chancellor, about her and Yvette Cooper – reported in the Times under the headline “Women not tough enough to lead Labour’’ – had sexist undertones.

Falconer was quoted as saying: “Neither Yvette nor Liz can steer the Labour party through the challenging few years ahead when we need a leader who can reach out to all wings of our party and provide unity. As a result, both Liz and Yvette are unlikely to beat Jeremy [Corbyn, the fourth leadership candidate].”

I cannot see who Kendall and Cooper are supposed to appeal to. They are both awful cynics and I'm pretty sure Kendall is a genuinely terrible person. I can't really see who Burnham is supposed to appeal to now either. In spite of his egregious abstention, made worse by his back-pedalling, I don't think he's all that bad. He's not evil. They are all three essentially blatant careerists who lack vision. Kendall and Cooper really are opportunist complainers though.

Ps I'm drunk

The gang of three are all as gratingly awful as each other to me, listening to any of them talk has a thermobaric weapon type effect of drawing the oxygen out of the room. But I suppose Kendall's blatant Toryness + inability to mask her mean spiritedness shades it for me, wouldn't vote for any of them.

find this whole contest so depressing, I like Corbyn, but is there any way that him winning (or even coming a respectable second) would not lead to complete Labour party meltdown and civil war? maybe that would be a good thing thing in the long run, idk, but I can't see any outcome that doesn't involve tory hegemony for the forseeable future. I guess Cooper seems the best chance for the part to not fall apart, Burnham seems useless, Kendall victory surely the death knell for any hope of the Labour part as a vaguely leftist force

Kendall seems so far to the right even a description of "Blairite" looks misleading. Burnham, Cooper and Miliband are / were all pretty much Blairite for the most part, Kendall seems to lack even that wonky moral compass. She's also a terrible communicator. If you want to propose a platform that is out of step with almost everyone in your grass roots party, you need a more convincing sales pitch than whining 'but we lost the last election'.

Burnham seems fairly personable in comparison but i'm not convinced he isn't an idiot .

Cooper is she's extremely capable and intelligent as an individual but either unable or unwilling to give any sense of what she'd do as a leader. I think the idea her game plan is to not say anything controversial and let the others dig their own graves is probably correct. She'd probably make a fairy effective PM but idk whether she'd be a good leader of the opposition.

Corbyn might not be electable but, at this stage, i doubt any of them will be for another two terms so you may as well have someone willing to articulate an alternative platform. He's not as Marxist as the press is keen to make out - most of his ideas are fairly solid-Smith-era Labour, he has been a decent and principled constituency MP for decades and speaks more directly and more honestly than the rest of them put together. His presence in the race, even if he has always known he has no real chance, has been effective in shaming the rest of them.

I think it's very obvious who Kendall is meant to appeal to, her problem is there aren't anywhere near as many of those people in the Labour Party as she thinks there are. Say what you like about 1994 Blair he could at least sell his own policies to his own party.

It's actually quite difficult on the basis of this campaign to understand what Yvette Cooper actually stands for because as far as I can see she hasn't really talked about policy at all. I don't really believe she actually believes a lot of the guff that's coming out right now, but there's close association with Gordon Brown which I suspect is electoral suicide.

Burnham appears to be tacking slightly left in the softest least committal way possible. He also just doesn't appear to be particularly bright. Also I've seen it mentioned that his (entirely laudable) involvement with the Justice for the 96 campaign means that at some point he will need to choose between facing the full wrath of The Sun or alienating much of Liverpool and looking like the world's worst sellout in the process.

Basically, they're all three unelectable, so may as well go for the other unelectable guy who won't triangulate the party into irrelevance.

Perhaps a year of Corbyn in charge might help realign what the Labour party wants to stand for. Then they can replace him with someone who might be more 'electable', but now leading a party with a clearer vision of what it wants to be (and that vision being less like 'the Tories but not in power'). It's not as if they're operating as any kind of opposition as it stands.

Andy Turnham seems wooden and awkward - but I'm not sure where all this 'not very bright' is coming from.

(says the person who gets his name wrong - no finer endorsement)

Burnham didn't exactly shine as Health Secretary and was passed over as a possible replacement for Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor because Miliband thought he didn't have the capacity for it.

good poker joke missed

Which was?

Burnham & turnham

I know nothing of poker but I trust you that that is a good poker joke <----- post in the style of Pinefox

ha

from: Nancy Dell'Olio <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
to: conrad
date: 23 July 2015 at 20:09
subject: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

Dear conrad,

Put on your dancing shoes and join me at the Southwark Rooms next Wednesday!

I will be with Deputy Leadership Candidate Ben Bradshaw MP for a fun evening of drinks and mingling.

I've known Ben for years, as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but also as a great dancer. This is your chance to get to know him too, and hear his ideas.

From 7.30pm on Wednesday 29th July, we'll be at: Southwark Rooms, 60 Southwark Street, London, SE1 1UN (Nearest tube station: London Bridge)

I hope to see you there!

With love,

Nancy Dell'Olio[/i]

from: conrad
to: Nancy Dell'Olio <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
date: 23 July 2015 at 20:28
subject: Re: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

you what?

from: Ben Bradshaw <✧✧✧@ben4dep✧✧✧.o✧✧.u✧>
to: conrad
date: 24 July 2015 at 16:43
subject: Re: Strictly Ben for Deputy 💃

Hi Richard,

Thank you for your message.

Nancy is a long-time Labour supporter, and friend of mine. Aside from being a lawyer, Chair of Truce International, and a British Red Cross ambassador, she has also done a great deal of work on behalf of the Terence Higgins Trust, our leading AIDS and HIV charity, as well as other LGBT causes which I hold dear. She wanted to support my campaign, and I'm pleased that over 300 other Labour members have so far signed up to come along.

I have always thought that politics, though a very serious business, should also be fun. Maybe that is one reason we have managed to build such a successful Party in Exeter, where with over 700 members we trebled Labour's majority on May 7th in a former safe Tory seat. If we'd done that everywhere, we'd now have a Labour Government, and could put our serious values into practice.

Thanks for your support for our Party.

Best wishes,

Ben

decent snark, Richard

I imagine it was a stock response gawker's psychotic monkeys

sad lols at John Cryer and Lord Hutton actually blaming the Militant Tendency for Corbyn's recent popularity

Yep:

http://i.imgur.com/prdIQo8.jpg

Meanwhile, British society continues as it always has.

They keep saying it is £3 when it is actually £3.88. I wouldn't even risk that much for a vote that will be subject to Red Tory sabotage. Fucked if they are getting a penny, especially when I already had to cancel the charity direct debits last year.

Interesting contribution on the problems of drug abuse and prostitution by one of Tony Blair's chums

sad lols at John Cryer and Lord Hutton actually blaming the Militant Tendency for Corbyn's recent popularity

― pop addicts should "do their thing", whatever that may be (soref), Sunday, July 26, 2015 1:14 AM (21 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wonder when one of the losers is gonna crack and start whinging about entryism distorting the election, either from the left or the right

― regret it? nope. reddit? yep. (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, July 22, 2015 11:46 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, I was looking for that post earlier. John Rent-a-fucking-Mouth Mann has called for the leadership contest to be halted because of "Militant Tendency types coming back in"... with their zimmer frames and walkers I assume.

might rewatch Bleasdale's GBH this week, the time feels right

so does the Telegraph still want tories to register as labour supporters to vote for Corbyn or what <confused face>

Imagine a decade from now, when we live in the utopian Corbynfutur where property is theft and all men are equal, we will be able to look back upon the Torygraph of 2015 and say THANK YOU COMRADES

BTW, Go on then, who do you reckon will win? The Labour Leadership contest, that is... (I realise that's where most of the focus in UK Politics is at the moment)

http://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/the-tories-are-staying-off-tv-so-everyone-watches-labour-tea