A Personal Vendetta (indulge me)

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (37 of them)

Come on Robin, admit it, you've got a vendetta against the entire Conservative party *and* everyone who voted for them. Not that there's anythng wrong with that, of course. I'm copying down all those remarks about Jasper to send to my friend CR, he'll laugh his arse off (he feels the same way I do about the fellow). Last I heard he was at Stirling university, but the bloke who runs the site goes to QM&W, apparently. Kate, you probably have seen him lurking about up London, or you may just be getting him confused with Harold Bishop from Neighbours.

― DG, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Yes, but some more than others. I thought Michael Heseltine came out of the defeat with credit and intelligence and (gasp!) understanding of what Britain is like today intact. But who in their ranks will listen?

Now that the Lib Dems have held Devon West and Torridge and Labour have held Dover, I wonder whether any Tory will even *dare* to mention anger at foot-and-mouth and anti-asylum-seeker sentiment as strengths of their party. If any Tory does, mention the above two results and see how his / her face turns. Or not.

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I like this idea that eventually the majority of Tory voters will just *die off*.

― DG, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I think it's going to happen, you know. It will certainly happen with the core *membership* of the party (what's the average age again? 65 or something?).

― Robin Carmody, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Robin: I secretly quite like Peter Hitchens myself. Not his politics, but the fact that he's a Parker from Thunderbirds lookalike who desperately, pathetically, angrily yearns for a pastoral 50's Englandshire that never existed anyway. And he's getting more and more and more pissed off that the rest of the population wants to *move on*. His brother, Christopher, is his polar opposite. A shambling, perma- dishevelled left winger who picks off his targets - Diana, Mother Therasa, Clinton - with a laser-guided snipers accuracy. Genius. Strange siblings anyhow.

As for a personal nemisis, it seems I have one. Once my freind - TICK! Now has some half-forgotten, obscure vendetta against me - TICK! Now a junkie - TICK! And an all round, good old fashioned twat of the first order - TICK!

Haven't seen him in a dog's age though. Last time I did I found myself sat opposite him on a train. He looked like a fat, bloated, palid, junkie-corpse. He regarded me through half-open, watery eyes with what looked a sneer. But he - and I - said nothing.

I doubt if he's on the triple W though. If he is he's probably hosting www.repugnantwastoid.com Or something.

― DavidM, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Christopher Hitchens is a complete madhead. Clinton is his latest target by the by. I'd hate to get into an argument with him though, he'd make bits of you. I find his slight pro-Bush stance at the mo a bit worrying, though.

― Michael, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

William Hague, Robin Page, William Rees-Mogg, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Charles Moore, Boris Johnson, Dominic Lawson, Roger Scruton, Richard Littlejohn, Peter Hitchens, Ian Bruce, Oliver Letwin, Adrian Flook, Andrew Rosindell, Bob Dunn, Christopher Chope, Iain Duncan Smith, Ann Widdecombe, Chris Moyles, Neil Hamilton, Christine Hamilton, Gillian Shephard, Virginia Bottomley, John Townend, Christopher Gill, Laurence Robertson, Sir Richard Body

Who ?

― Patrick, Saturday, 9 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

I think it's going to happen, you know. [Tory support literally dying off] It will certainly happen with the core *membership* of the party (what's the average age again? 65 or something?). (Robin)

Yes but before that happens they will be forced to reinvent themselves as a more socially liberal, centrist party (as Heseltine said on Thursday night - elections in the UK are won on the centre ground). Admittedly it might take another defeat for them to finally realise this. But even then, don't assume that Labour can automatically expect a third term - they've been fortunate with the state of the economy so far, and have been given the benefit of the doubt on improving public services (arguably an impossibility).

― David, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

1: Which will split the party.
2: The more feral element will combine with UKIPpers and the BNP: a small but very nasty far-right party will emerge from the dilution of the now shattered conervative body.
3: Galvanising the currently morose and self-indulgent street-left into present non- purist urgency, splitting off a sector of current New Labour "support" (probably not so noticeable, as this support has been angrily grudging to the point of torpor recently...)
4: A spate of single-issue candidates will also emerge, in the wake of the heartening Kidderminster Hospital triumph: at least some of these will combine with extant activist orgs, since what "amateur" pols always lack is practical experience of organisation. (Some will combine with the LibDems, also...) 5: New Labour's inevitable move towards necessary rock-the-vote strategies, to galvanise youth, will — in the medium-long term — provide an energy injection with results quite dfft to any intended, as let- down follows promise (just as Kennedy's New Frontier went on birth SNCC and the "Movement", then the Yippies, the Panthers, the Motherfuckers and ultimately the Weather Underground...) Nothing kicks like betrayal.

― mark s, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Patrick: "Who?"; they're all Tories apart from Chris Moyles who is an obnoxious radio DJ, politics unknown.

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

Mark: "Which will split the party"; quite possible, certainly too many Tories are too far gone to listen to Heseltine's eminently sensible comments as quoted by David.

"The more feral element will combine ..."; yes, exactly, I predicted this privately a while back. You can begin to imagine a third party (as in several mainland European countries; Austria's Freedom Party was one such to begin with) where the more extreme side of Toryism joins up with UKIP and BNP attitudes. Meanwhile the Heseltine / Clarke wing might join up with ... who? Moderate Labour or the less socialistic Lib Dems? Maybe both; certainly I think there will be more Woodwards, Nicholsons and Temple-Morrises.

"angrily grudging": that's my mother's support for Labour now, and she's voted for them every election these last 35 years. I think you're right that the left-of-Labour movement will get more organised; the Green Party's impressive string of saved deposits (relative to their previous record: hadn't they only saved one deposit and that in the 1989 by-election in Vauxhall?) proves that there *is* a growing counter-movement.

"a spate of single-issue candidates": true, the result of the breakdown in stable, consensual attachment to one particular party (a wholly good thing because it makes voters far less uncritically accepting) itself related to the decline of communitarianism mentioned by David in the other thread. Noticeably the Lib Dems stood aside in Wyre Forest, doubtless aware that Dr Richard Taylor's cause was *symbolically* greater than theirs (they had many other seats to win, he obviously just the one).

"Nothing kicks like betrayal": true, why I think left-of-Labour parties (but not the old Scargillian hardline) will be *the* boom area over the next 4/5 years (and that includes both the Lib Dems and the "fringe" movements).

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

DavidM: "(Peter Hitchens) desperately, pathetically, angrily yearns for a pastoral 50s Englandshire that never existed anyway. And he's getting more and more pissed off that the rest of the population wants to move on"; well, obviously, and that's what makes his columns so sad to read in a way (even for someone like me who hates him). I feel very sorry for him in a way, in that he so obviously can't come to terms with anything about the modern world (and is also wracked with guilt about his youthful liberalism).

― Robin Carmody, Sunday, 10 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-two years ago) link

six years pass...

lol old ilx

― Dom Passantino, Sunday, 17 June 2007 20:02 (sixteen years ago) link

Yes but before that happens they will be forced to reinvent themselves as a more socially liberal, centrist party (as Heseltine said on Thursday night - elections in the UK are won on the centre ground). Admittedly it might take another defeat for them to finally realise this. But even then, don't assume that Labour can automatically expect a third term - they've been fortunate with the state of the economy so far, and have been given the benefit of the doubt on improving public services (arguably an impossibility).

-- David, Sunday, June 10, 2001 12:00 AM (6 years ago) Bookmark Link

Surely not THE David?

― Ned Trifle II, Sunday, 17 June 2007 20:16 (sixteen years ago) link

Aggressive Cameron is aggressive.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 17 June 2007 20:18 (sixteen years ago) link

In an attempt to counter that, I could only find the following fella, who 'occasionally plays at left back'. Ladies and gentlemen...

Defensive Cameron is defensive.
http://www.peterheadfc.org.uk/images/profile/0506/dougiecameron.jpg

― Just got offed, Sunday, 17 June 2007 20:28 (sixteen years ago) link

two months pass...

The Sainted Robin Carmody

― Heave Ho, Sunday, 16 September 2007 10:45 (sixteen years ago) link

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.