Of a particularly poor panel, only Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles (a vastly experienced diplomat and current Foreign Office special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan) managed to escape saying anything that provoked much ire from me. If I'm being generous, Caroline Flint was more of an empty shirt than an active annoyance, hamstrung for the most part by how shit Labour's last term was and their current state of disarray.
The other three were a perfect storm of a little reading, a lot of hatred and a complete disregard for anyone who isn't exactly the same as they are.
Starting with the wicked witch of Westminster, Theresa May. I imagine she positively danced out of the studio having escaped questioning on the fact that, as Minister for Equality, she's a massive homophobe. And generally has contempt for anyone who isn't white and middle class. It's probably only the amount of additional head swelling she'll have garnered by becoming Home Secretary that's stopping her being crushed under the titanic weight of irony involved.
It was interesting to hear that she doesn't believe she should intervene in matters of policing protests, which is something I'd agree with. Considering she's not a police officer, has no experience of crowd control, or indeed protest of any kind. But I don't think that's why she's backed away from such suggestions. If my understanding of "The Big Society" is correct, I think she's probably expecting a vigilante group to form out of the ether to police such events in the name of "community spirit" whatever the fuck that's meant to mean. Either that or the private sector will magic it all better.
Clive James is the very worst, most vile and dangerous type of pub bore. He's a very well read man, but I get the feeling he has done all of that reading from a prejudiced starting point. I remember him on an edition of Radio 4's A Point Of View programme delivering an essay on scepticism which started out quite soundly and reasonably, but veered wildly off course at the end by essentially calling people who believe that climate change is a real thing a bunch of slack jawed idiots. At one stage last night I heard him call Ed Milliband "a fantasist" for positing an 80% CO2 reduction target for 2050. This was the only reason he gave for Milliband not being a real leader for the Labour party. The only one.
That particular comment is one of the ones that really troubles me. Calling some a fantasist for aiming for a target widely reported by the IPCC and the likes of Lord Stern as being necessary to safely avert possible catastrophic consequences of global warming, a target based on best available evidence with some of the finest minds in the world working on it by the way, smacks of the kind of belligerent, business-as-usual, we're fucked anyway kind of thinking from dinosaurs like James that prevent anyone from actually doing anything worthwhile in government.
Finally though, the real inexplicable bit of carrot in this particular bucket of vomit was "journalist" and all-round cock-knocking thundercunt, Britain's only Neoconservative, Mr Douglas Murray. I'll go into a little depth about why Neoconservatism is so utterly retarded in a second, but first up let's run through a few of Dougie's best bits from last night.
- Apparently 25 people kicking windows in at a largely peaceful and legally organised protest is completely abhorrent, but torturing people is fine as long as it's in a legal grey area.
- The Conservatives don't "love" making cuts, it's all Labour's fault for the state of public finances. All of it is Labour's fault. Because it's not standard Tory policy to reduce public spending anyway. They didn't just need any old excuse to get the red marker out. Oh, and the global capitalism system that inherently has boom and bust built into it, the previous bust of which happened during a 15 period of Conservative government, had absolutely nothing to do with it.
- Waterboarding is not torture because a few people have volunteered to have it done to them to see if it's torture or not. It's not the same as having your fingernails pulled out. Oh and by the way, as long as it's in a legal grey area it's fine. Morality doesn't come into it because of the nasty men we're fighting.
- Torturing people is probably necessary to keep the wolves from the door. The ends justify the means and blah blah blah.
Noeconservatism is based on one thing. Not freedom. Not liberty. Not equality. No. The big idea here is fear. Fear to maintain order. Fear to make people consume. Fear to oppress opposition. Fear to increase profit margins. Fear of communism. Fear of drugs. Fear of crime. Fear of terrorism. Fear of Islam. Fear fear fear fear. And the vast majority of it is a fabrication.
Neoconservatism requires an enemy in order to function. In times gone by it was easy. The Soviet Union was big and mysterious and threatening. The fact that it was a country on it's knees that couldn't feed it's own people and was on the brink of collapse for decades wasn't an obstacle. Once the USSR had been "defeated" neoconservatives found themselves in the wilderness with no-one to fight. And so they stayed until the last decade, whereby Islamic extremism became their new bugbear.
I'd strongly advise you to watch Adam Curtis' magnificent documentary, "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" which will explain a lot of what has happened over the last decade, and why we should be resisting the kind of nonsense Murray and the Tea Party movement might have you believe. If you follow the link you should be able to get all the parts on youtube. It's 3 hours you won't regret investing in finding out some pretty shocking things about how our current situation has evolved.
yup.
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