bc the westminster bubble sustains itself via pantomime
― lex pretend, Tuesday, 19 May 2015 13:18 (nine years ago) link
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/voters-dont-actually-care-about-labours-attitude-to-aspiration-poll-finds-10266729.html
Lol.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 13:16 (nine years ago) link
40% polled basically adhering to received 'wisdom' unchanged from 40 years ago (linking Labour with economic disarray). Suggesting absolutely nothing has been learned in that time.
Meanwhile net migration approaches a ten year high - probably to be blamed on the coalition preventing a real 'crackdown' now feasible.
― nashwan, Thursday, 21 May 2015 14:11 (nine years ago) link
It makes minimal difference anyway, the guff about aspiration isn't really aimed at voters, it's about trying to placate the RW press (and in doing so trying to calm the noise around those first three objections).
― Matt DC, Thursday, 21 May 2015 16:01 (nine years ago) link
Umunna has officially endorsed Kendall.
― Petite Lamela (ShariVari), Tuesday, 26 May 2015 09:59 (nine years ago) link
Andy Burnham's 2010 campaign logo vs Andy Burnham's 2015 campaign logo
http://i921.photobucket.com/albums/ad53/razzlewis/Andy4Leader/afl.png https://36.media.tumblr.com/e67cc519634c47be61f3c9a5b6f7d707/tumblr_noc6e5cFiZ1uu6dvho1_500.jpg
― soref, Wednesday, 27 May 2015 19:50 (nine years ago) link
2015 logo trying to be a little bit too clever for its own good imo, bring back the triangles
― soref, Wednesday, 27 May 2015 19:52 (nine years ago) link
Second one emphasising how body odour is actually the heart of Labour
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:03 (nine years ago) link
first one looking a bit Constructivist for today's go-ahead Labour Zero
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:05 (nine years ago) link
if we're equating labour with manual toil then body odour kind of IS the heart of Labour tbf
― an absolute feast of hardcore fanboy LOLs surrounding (imago), Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:07 (nine years ago) link
it's weird, the images on his campaign's twitter feed seem to be going out of their way to avoid any hint of having been carefully or thoughtfully designed:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFJ8WvfXIAAttTl.jpg:large
― soref, Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:08 (nine years ago) link
it's perfect, all the emphasis on contemporaneity and chummy ordinariness, none of them unappealing policies or ideas
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:13 (nine years ago) link
yeah, it seems intentionally made to look like an amateurish facebook macro, but it's an odd contrast with the flashy look of his last campaign
― soref, Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:16 (nine years ago) link
2015 will be all about reconnecting with the people i guess
― gong mad (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:20 (nine years ago) link
i was listening to this Liz Kendall profile on R4 last week and there was this "She used to love Public Enemy when she was a student and does like rap music" element which seemed very forced and made her seem even more of a robotic Blairite rather than whatever the desired effect was meant to be.
― xelab, Wednesday, 27 May 2015 20:35 (nine years ago) link
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/91/Splazsh_cover.jpg/220px-Splazsh_cover.jpg
― Matt DC, Thursday, 28 May 2015 08:38 (nine years ago) link
http://www.tshirtpod.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Hex-Illuminati.jpg
― 'come around to your house and fuck your ho' (paraphrase) (Bananaman Begins), Thursday, 28 May 2015 11:28 (nine years ago) link
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0263/1575/products/sbr050-moon-duo-mazes_c455b43d-f2bc-4a5a-9096-cf2b2dd02c48_1024x1024.jpeg?v=1398720065
― p:s nerds know (dog latin), Thursday, 28 May 2015 11:36 (nine years ago) link
Andy Needs your support
that capital N is pissing me off
The Mirror had her admitting to liking hip hop :/
― There was Bjork from Iceland and Alanis Morissette from Canada (onimo), Thursday, 28 May 2015 12:04 (nine years ago) link
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32927139
Is the only reason the unions are backing Burham because everyone else is somehow, mysteriously, worse or is there more to it than that?
― Petite Lamela (ShariVari), Friday, 29 May 2015 11:40 (nine years ago) link
is male, still affects non-RP accent
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Friday, 29 May 2015 11:45 (nine years ago) link
For better or worse the last leadership contest at least felt like a contest between different approaches and beliefs. In terms of policy and approach the difference between this lot is extremely minimal.
I don't really see how anyone could have come through the last seven or so years and not concluded that the state and business are interdependent but it would be refreshing for at least one candidate to admit that perhaps "business" and "wealth creators" aren't actually monoliths that should be treated as all brilliant or all evil depending on whether or not your name is Ed Miliband. The very question of whether or not you're "pro-business" or not is reductive to the point of being moronic.
― Matt DC, Friday, 29 May 2015 11:57 (nine years ago) link
yeah even "stakeholders" was better than what we have now
still think that developing the idea of businesses as part of a democratic system and therefore being subject to a level of democratic control wd be a less threatening way of selling the public on the notion that capital shdn't perhaps be allowed to just do whatever the fuck it wants
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Friday, 29 May 2015 12:01 (nine years ago) link
but, y'know, why bother, clearly what Labour needs to do is allow wealth creators to run the country as they see fit and play up to anti-chav and anti-immigrant prejudice as much as possible
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Friday, 29 May 2015 12:03 (nine years ago) link
You can achieve anything, as long as you're white.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/29/liz-kendall-will-back-white-working-class-young
She praised one primary school for having an “aspirations week”, saying such programmes were needed to “teach girls and boys, particularly from white working class communities, about the chances in life they may not even know exist – like being an engineer, a chemist and even leader of the Labour party”.
Kendall also mentioned the need to help white working-class communities, during a journalists’ gathering in Westminster last week, when she said Labour would still “be doing the best for kids, particularly in white-working class communities” in 2020.
― There was Bjork from Iceland and Alanis Morissette from Canada (onimo), Saturday, 30 May 2015 07:55 (nine years ago) link
"Aspiration is not the preserve of those who shop at John Lewis. Aspiration is universal; it is felt by Asda and Aldi shoppers too."
what does this mean
― lex pretend, Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:11 (nine years ago) link
shops as signifiers of class smdh
Labour party is in a mess trying to appeal to middle class Tories and racist Kippers and anti-austerity Scots all at the same time.
― There was Bjork from Iceland and Alanis Morissette from Canada (onimo), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:26 (nine years ago) link
depressing that a putative labour leader would rather trot out nonsense non-signifiers than actually say the word "class"
― lex pretend, Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:29 (nine years ago) link
aspiration means never having to say you're working class
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:37 (nine years ago) link
what's horrible/stupid about the aspiration mantra is the way it ignores inequality, ignores corporate responsibility and ignores environmental fragility in the name of a soulless acquisitiveness, an ever expanding frontier of prosperity built on nothing and oblivious to the damage it leaves in its wake
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:43 (nine years ago) link
This thing they call aspiration, do they just mean that feeling of wanting a payrise then wondering how easily you spend it all if you get one?
― bureau belfast model (LocalGarda), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:43 (nine years ago) link
aspiration to shop at Asda instead of Lidl, with dreams of John Lewis and their excellent warranties on electrical goods.
― There was Bjork from Iceland and Alanis Morissette from Canada (onimo), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:46 (nine years ago) link
and the way it positions selfishness as a positive. aspiration for YOU and YOUR self-enclosed family unit to be richer and higher up the ladder and fuck everyone else
― lex pretend, Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:49 (nine years ago) link
and so conformist. that infographic of life milestones that was going round the other week haunts me and this feels like part & parcel of that mindset
― lex pretend, Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:50 (nine years ago) link
yes - it's utterly contemptuous of the voters it pretends to flatter
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 May 2015 08:50 (nine years ago) link
And yet people feel good assuming they deserve to be more well off than others.
― bureau belfast model (LocalGarda), Saturday, 30 May 2015 09:09 (nine years ago) link
"Labour party is in a mess trying to appeal to middle class Tories and racist Kippers and anti-austerity Scots all at the same time."
Nah this is inaccurate and unfair I think.
They don't appear to give a shit about anti-austerity Scots.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 30 May 2015 09:09 (nine years ago) link
True - but they do somehow have to get those 40 seats back
― There was Bjork from Iceland and Alanis Morissette from Canada (onimo), Saturday, 30 May 2015 09:28 (nine years ago) link
In any broadly representative democracy, as long as every citizen has the vote, there will always be demand and pressure for redistribution of wealth, because votes are distributed more evenly than wealth. The Tories have recognised this for as long as I've been alive, and with a brief period of aberration (say from about 1997-2005 or so) they've been largely adept at dealing with it.
The politics of aspiration are largely about offsetting that pressure. People with money are, by and large, going to vote one way or the other according to their levels of security, fear, intelligence and empathy, but 'aspiration' in the post-Thatcherite sense isn't really about addressing them. It's about convincing enough of the people without much money that they are more likely to be able to help themselves than any left-of-centre government is going to help them. A lot of those people will vote Tory, enough of the rest will just decide there's no point and not bother to vote at all, or take their vote to UKIP or whoever. Either way the pressure is off the Tories. It's an elephant trap that Labour have fallen into time and time again and just repeatedly honking 'aspiration!' and 'John Lewis' like a load of flapping fairground puppet heads isn't really going to address that.
It's also why I'm sceptical of people who assume that the Did Not Vote contingent is a broadly left-leaning mass that could be harnessed by a party with some actual social-democratic policies.
The thing that none of these cocks will address is that not once did Blair go into a General Election promising to cut spending, in fact it was usually the complete opposite. If they accept the myth of Labour overspending pre-2008, then that necessarily means distancing themselves from Blair, not moving closer to him. Blair himself appears to have nothing to say on the issue of austerity as far as I can tell.
'Aspiration' is particularly meaningless in this context because there's ample evidence that enough voters don't trust Labour to run any kind of economy, aspirational or otherwise.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 30 May 2015 09:32 (nine years ago) link
Right, that's Liz Kendall off the list: Don't need another leader with foot in gob syndrome.
(the other being Cameron, btw)
― Mark G, Saturday, 30 May 2015 10:01 (nine years ago) link
Also the logical endpoint of the politics of aspiration is the sort of the enormous credit bubble that helped break the UK economy in 2007-08, since the main driver of achieving material aspiration is borrowing today against tomorrow's imagined income, and credit booms are generally a symptom of inequality. If you really want to address Labour economic mismanagement, you need to start with aspiration. Suspect most of them are too stupid to realise this.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 30 May 2015 10:08 (nine years ago) link
xxxp will likely be a lot less than 40 seats by 2020 tbf
― 'come around to your house and fuck your ho' (paraphrase) (Bananaman Begins), Saturday, 30 May 2015 10:16 (nine years ago) link
Mark are you a paid-up member of the Labour Party? If so, what are the factors that will actually influence your vote?
― Matt DC, Saturday, 30 May 2015 10:24 (nine years ago) link
I follow some Andy4Leader type ppl on twitter and am now getting this stuff retweeted into my feed around 700 times a day
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGK3_2LW0AArIiS.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CGLABRqWUAArTfI.jpg
― soref, Saturday, 30 May 2015 10:30 (nine years ago) link
mature political discourse is the best thing about living in a democracy
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 May 2015 12:02 (nine years ago) link
'every person, every family, every business – whoever they are, wherever they come from, my Labour Party will exist to help them all get off' - Andy Burnham, 29 May 2015
― soref, Saturday, 30 May 2015 12:58 (nine years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHGyokI6fMU
― soref, Saturday, 30 May 2015 12:59 (nine years ago) link
twenty twee positions on which one might stand
― thoughts you made second posts about (darraghmac), Saturday, 30 May 2015 17:52 (nine years ago) link
full marks obv
― probs with the skag (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 30 May 2015 20:30 (nine years ago) link
Hello, person who asked me a question upthread, answer to q1 is no.
― Mark G, Saturday, 30 May 2015 21:44 (nine years ago) link