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

(and i doubt she expected press support, even the RW press - look at the comments on the spectator and telegraph, the ppl she's going for think both those publications are terrible liberal metropolitan elite rags)

funny how these conservatives, who we'd been led to believe were going to just leave corbyn in the dust as a laughable irrelevance, can't stop talking about him now

I think they know when these tax-credit cuts kick in that a lot of people are going to feel visceral hatred for them, it will prove about as popular as the poll tax was in the 90's. They ought to be worried.

Just saw Gove using the Jeremy Hunt line that tax credit cuts will "incentivize" work... how the fuck? Seriously.

I think what he was driving at is that it'll force the plebs to improve their wages by working harder.

Or unionising and making their bosses pay them more.

A lot of people (those who can, at least), will have to take a second job, which of course deprives some even more vulnerable people of a first job. It's a complete clusterfuck in the waiting, and that's before we have to deal with the inevitable bungling of the Universal Credit implementation.

this flagship "starter homes" policy of redefining what the "affordable housing" is that developers can provide also throws up approx 10000000 questions as to its implication on several fronts

I don't know many people who could buy a 'starter home' for a quarter of a million pounds, although I guess it's just about feasible if you're a couple each earning circa £26k (which is approx average wage) and have a £30k deposit. How you save that deposit when rent is not protected I don't know. Our first flat cost £150k. Average wage here is not £26k.

And of course that's going to be £450k in London, isn't it.

"security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising", just how close is cameron getting to slander here?

Dan Hodges ‏@DPJHodges 1 hr

I'm not going to join the Tories. But it may take me a while to come up with a coherent reason why.

Just saw Gove using the Jeremy Hunt line that tax credit cuts will "incentivize" work... how the fuck? Seriously.

― Terry Micawber (Tom D.), Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also read Hunt apparently saying that people on tax credits lack dignity. That gem hasn't been widely reported but hey he believes it so who cares about accuracy.

I believe Tory press office batted that one down and said those were comments made at a fringe meeting. It was a pretty big fringe meeting from the photo I saw.

is it widely accepted that things said at fringe meetings don't...count?

it's a safe space for thinking the unthinkable eh?

Dan Hodges ‏@DPJHodges 1 hr
I'm not going to join the Tories. But it may take me a while to come up with a coherent reason why.

We've got time.

interesting that the Tories seem to feel the need to move their rhetoric leftwards

Almost as if the centre ground had moved left, but that's crazy talk.

There was a decent piece by (I think) Jonathan Freedland who was saying that policies like the preposterously titled National Living Wage aren't really about winning the votes of the poor, they're about attracting the sort of voter who doesn't like to think of themselves as NOT caring about the poor. Hodges falls for this kind of bollocks time and time again.

In reality they think they can hoover up soft left Labour voters who feel imperilled by the madman, Corbyn.

Also amid all the fawning guff from 'centre-left' commentators, have they all forgotten that Cameron won't actually be contesting the next election?

Indeed. He might have got away with all sorts of plaudits for this conference speech but what about the ones three or four years from now, who will give a flying fuck what he has to say about anything then? Not that I expect him to stick around that long.

Jonathan Freedl @Freedland

Cameron has thrown down a challenge to liberal, even centre-left voters: what, besides habit, is preventing you backing me? #cpc15

Plenty of lib-dems vote Tory already, sheer greed of these ppl.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11917236/David-Cameron-is-the-new-leader-of-the-British-Left.html

The state of this credulous cobblers. "It’s now impossible for anyone on the progressive Left to construct an intellectually coherent argument for voting Labour" - really? The paucity of vision in this sentence is astonishing.

It's possible he's trying to shit the PLP up to such an extent they start trying to oust Corbyn immediately, but I dunno, maybe he's just stupid.

Jonathan Freedl @Freedland

Cameron has thrown down a challenge to liberal, even centre-left voters: what, besides the pig-fucking thing habit, is preventing you backing me? #cpc15

Yeah, why aren't you backing Cameron, Jonathan?

Judging by the content, I think Freedland's talking about political positioning rather than giving a ringing endorsement?

By citing the longtime Labour voter who had written to him announcing his conversion to the Tories, and indeed with this entire speech, the prime minister was throwing down a challenge to liberal and even centre-left voters: What really, besides habit or ingrained prejudice, is preventing you from supporting me? There are plenty of answers to that question – his shameless branding of his Labour opponent as “Britain-hating” would be one, Theresa May’s assault on immigration would be another – but it is a sign of how much Cameron believes the landscape of British politics has been transformed, not least by Corbyn’s victory, that he feels he has every right to ask it.

I mean this is pretty much exactly what Cameron was surely going for? It's also basically the same trick he pulled from 2005 to 2010, so it's hardly new.

And Cameron is not only hardly new, he's on his deathbed, so to speak.

"It’s now impossible for anyone on the progressive Left to construct an intellectually coherent argument for voting Labour"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-attempts-to-defend-squalid-deal-with-saudi-arabia-in-excruciating-interview-with-jon-a6684066.html

What has propelled Corbyn is that the holy 'centre ground' doesn't offer enough opportunities, affordable housing and is killing the poor and vulnerable. Cameron's question is to be waved aside as he leaves to begin the first draft of his memoirs in a couple of years.

Reckon the Tories take a chance and elect Teresa May for the real deal as they believe Labour is finished. Osborne won't connect with voters (nor would May but Thatcher Mk II etc) and Boris has too many skeletons.

Cameron has thrown down a challenge to liberal, even centre-left voters: what, besides habit, is preventing you backing me? #cpc15

just how oblivious to the amount of actual suffering this govt has and will cause the vulnerable do you have to be to make such a ridiculous statement?

oh okay, he was just reporting dcam's statement. well, okay, easy...

https://medium.com/@shirkerism/lots-of-political-commentators-are-making-lots-of-noise-about-how-cameron-s-conference-speech-has-32712cd67902

"The “centre” of politics can only plausibly exist when certain material conditions are in place: in simplified terms, a decent level of economic growth and geopolitical stability. Then you get people voting for governments that can genuinely claim to pursue and sustain rising profits for the rich alongside rising living standards for the working class, in a secure and stable world.
When those things aren’t possible, you get political polarisation, which spills over into the kind of social and political instability that would make a mockery of Cameron’s claim to “security”. We don’t currently have decent and sustained economic growth — British GDP growth is currently a pathetic 0.7%, and the IMF says that the world economy is on the brink of another recession. And, with China, Iran, Russia and the US all militarily involved in Syria, we’re hardly looking at a decade of geopolitical stability either.
But most British journalists and politicians completely refuse to think on these terms: political dynamics to them are about the centre-left, the centre-right, and the centre, and their idea of politics is basically a small group of nerds manoeuvring a clunky and reluctant party apparatus around these three positions, in accordance with the views of an abstract “electorate” reduced to numbers on a screen by vacuous survey methods.
They consistently fail to predict or explain the things that don’t fit the model: the SNP, Corbyn, UKIP, Greece’s OXI vote, etc, are all explained away as vague and inscrutable sociopolitical pathologies, and yet these are precisely the things that provoke political change.
The centre ground is a fantasy, and the only people still there are the fantasists who won’t stop talking about it — the people whose careers and self-worth are wrapped up in an illusion: the permanent and (for them) lucrative stability of an inherently unstable capitalist world-system that they stubbornly refuse to even think about. Cameron’s speech was notable for its centrism, yes, in the sense that he’s performing a crucial social role: he’s reassuring a particular section of society that the the “centre” still exists, and with it, their future."

This is worth pasting it its entirety because it really is OTM.

nearly posted that exact section on Facebook, it is very otm

Very good.

Good stuff.

I like the idea of tossers like Andrew Rawnsley feeling the white heat of that last paragraph "people whose careers and self-worth are wrapped up in an illusion"

"This is a story about two men who tried to change the world. One of those men was Peter Mandelson. The other was Eric Pickles. One called himself centre-right, and the other centre-left. They believed that a better society could be forged by skullfucking the public and elevating financial firms to a position of dominance over governments and indeed the world. But this was an illusion."

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/t31.0-8/12087244_10156134112845475_4453828029966744823_o.jpg

hahahaha

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/16/tax-credits-question-time-labour-conservative

OwJo largely on point

Schama's elegant riposte to Liddle on QT last night, most of the audience were clapping every Lidl utterance on refugees.
"Do not presume to lecture me about the inadequacy of an emotional response. Go back to your journalistic hackery about outcomes and turn your suburban face away from the plight of the miserable."

so the tory apparently had no response to the woman with the tax credits question, do i have that right? i can't watch QT anymore.

none at all, nothing to see here next question

Security. Stability. Opportunity.

Schama's elegant riposte to Liddle on QT last night, most of the audience were clapping every Lidl utterance on refugees.
"Do not presume to lecture me about the inadequacy of an emotional response. Go back to your journalistic hackery about outcomes and turn your suburban face away from the plight of the miserable."

that really is elegant!

Could've gone to blows if they were sitting next to each other.

Don't know why I'm watching bits of QT again (*shakes fist at John McDonnell*) however wrt to that Owen Jones piece its more about educating rather than "love-bombing". Many of them are happy with benefit cuts as long as it doesn't impact on them.

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2015/oct/16/homeless-children-dying-at-the-sharp-end-of-the-housing-crisis?CMP=share_btn_tw

This link has the follow-up on the baby from Bournemouth. I posted a link about a month or so ago from the local press.