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Hazel Blears is blaming political blogging for making everyone cynical about politicians …
[b:2xuqi51q]BBC article about it[/url:2xuqi51q][/b:2xuqi51q]
.. I was under the impression that it’s the politicians themselves that have made people cynical about politics and not a hand full of bloggers. She mentioned one blogger [b:2xuqi51q]Guido Fawkes[/url:2xuqi51q][/b:2xuqi51q] for a special mention and I’ve read through what he has to say .. he’s got a point.I’m much more of the opinion that it’s vapid, no-talent, Party-centric, gob-shite, half-wits like Hazel Blears who have made people cynical about politicians.
Strange that no-one was cynical about MP’s like Tam Dayell or Tony Benn or Teddy Taylor or any other MP who actually tried to serve Parliament and their constituents, rather than their Party. People may have disagreed with their individual policy stances, but they generally accepted that what you saw was what you got, with these MP’s.
The current class of MP are, in the main, a shower of nest-feathering chuggers – some noble exceptions apart.
This is what she actually said ..
"We are witnessing a dangerous corrosion in our political culture… Perhaps because of the nature of the technology, there is a tendency for political blogs to have a ‘Samizdat’ style. The most popular blogs are rightwing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes. Perhaps this is simply anti-establishment. Blogs have only existed under a Labour government. Perhaps if there was a Tory government, all the leading blogs would be left-of-centre?
"But mostly, political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy.
"Until political blogging ‘adds value’ to our political culture, by allowing new voices, ideas and legitimate protest and challenge, and until the mainstream media reports politics in a calmer, more responsible manner, it will continue to fuel a culture of cynicism and despair."
It’s a bit rich for a politician critising people for not ‘adding value’ when the only value she adds is to her own pension fund.
Guido’s response ..
What has deservedly brought about disengagement from and cynicism towards politicians is spin, triangulation, focus group derived policies, positioning purely for partisan advantage, vacuous slogans and meaningless promises. Add in personal self enrichment from expense fiddles, petty corruption and barefaced lying to that toxicosis. Hazel has herself personally defended with repulsive sophistry everything from 45 minutes to mass destruction and cash for honours in her time. Who has really fueled corrosive political cynicism? Look in the mirror Hazel.
Pretty much along the same lines as you Grasshopper. I agree with both .. so, yeah .. go look in the mirror Hazel.
There are a good number of MPs and prospective MPs that are worryingly far removed from reality…especially the ones who have been MPs for God knows how many years. Public perception on this one is pretty accurate.
A lot of political bloggers are perhaps what Blears would label ‘anti-establishment’, but in reality they’re only saying what most people think and what most printed newspapers won’t say. Most of the bloggers also have too much time on their hands and lurk around Westminster trying to sniff out stories. I know and have met most of the prominent ones, and yes, most of them are right wing…but not all.
Something that rarely gets mentioned regarding MPs (from all parties and without political allegiance) is the work they almost all do on behalf of individual or groups of constituents.
That part of the system works pretty well I think.
Does anyone remember last year Hazel with her ‘MP Hat’ on campaigning against NHS cuts outside Hope Hospital in Salford. Having, the previous week voted for those cuts in Cabinet, with her ‘Government Minister Hat’ on.
Yes Pete, I remember that piece of classic hypocracy well. I work with people that can change their whole belief structure mid-sentence depending on the audience. Aggressive yes-men and toadies, one and all.
"A lot of political bloggers are perhaps what Blears would label ‘anti-establishment’, but in reality they’re only saying what most people think and what most printed newspapers won’t say."
This an absolutely fundamental truth you have hit upon, Meshaheer, and is indicative of the sorry absence of democracy this country has suffered for all too long. The sad truth now is that most of the younger people, who have scant memory of the half-decent soceity we had in the fifties and sixties, even the seventies, would no longer know what to do with it if we did.
Not only do they have no memory of it, but their education has been deliberately underfunded, and worst of all they are no longer provided with the moral compass that Chistianity used to provide. From a practical worldly point of view, it didn’t matter whether you believed or not, its general ethos which, in some measure, we were all imbued – so that half the atrocities we read of in the papers today and that occur in broad daylight, would simply never have been DREAMED OF, bizarre as that may sound now. Literally, they were so unthinkable.
I mean, as an example, a young lout urinated on a woman dying on her doorstep some months ago! For crying out loud! When I mentioned this sort of stuff on Guardian Talk, some moron started rambling on about how poor people were after WWII.
Ironically, what had brought it up was a photo I’d seen of children playing hop-scotch in the street, and they were all wearing proper little overcoats; not some flimsy shell-suit the monied half-wits sneer at. And they were working-class children, like I was.
Yes, we were poor, and there was food rationing, but we were all in it together and understood why, but at least people were able to buy their children proper overcoats; young couples join a queues for a council house – so many half-decent aspects to our new welfare state. Young villagers didn’t have to leave for the towns, after their families had lived in their house, generatoin after geneation, so that the likes of the Blears and her parliamenttary associates culd have second and third homes. It was a low income – low cost society, but became a low income -high cost society, decades ago. I don’t know whether it started wtih Thatcher but her "trickle-down", neo-liberal lunacy would certainly have exacerbated it enormously. Privatizing the infrastructure and utilities was criminal.
There is nothing the far-right will not privatize, there is nothing scared as far as squeezing profits out of it is concerned. The US now has a prison gulag vaster than Stalin’s was; mostly, but by no means all, of course, African Americans – the new lynching. Of course many will deserve to be there, but many will not – even on Death Row. But the enslavement doesn’t stop at prison. When they leave they have to undergo periodic psychologial assessments, parole vetting, all sorts – all of which they have to pay for. And these are the poor and often unemployed!
A man was caught fornicating in his car with his girlf-friend. The police also found a rifle. It was the Deep South. Everyone has them in their car for hunting. He was imprisoned as a sex-offender, lumped in with pedaedophiles, rapists and sex-offenders of all kinds. When he got out, he couldn’t go to the supermarket to buy his shopping, because he couldn’t go within 10 yards of a woman, so he had lto urk by the Ma and Pa corner shop to nip in when the coast was clear.
Then, of course, there were the multiple assessments he had to pay for, police coming up to his place, and the neighbours assuming he was some kind of monster. Joe Bageant wrote about it and the whole gulag thing on his blog: joebageant.com, and fortunately a lawyer offered to take up his case "pro bono", for no fee. It should give you just a tiny indication of why the Republicans now so thoroughly reviled.
The really scary thing about what was written about Blear and her Westminster colleagues, if what was written on here is accurate, is that she is evidently acutely aware of the disgraceful nature of what she was writing about, yet still trims her sales to virtually endorse them, when it’s personally politically expedient.
As a matter of fact, just as we now read every month or two that some Tory councillor has disgraced himself in some way faces criminal charges, or was impriosned, someone on the DU forum drew up a list of Republican sex-offenders, to which others were able to add, either convicted or awating conviction, and it is a very long list, indeed. And all this, apart from the financial fraud, racketeering, etc.
Looking at a photo in today’s Daily Mail of a beautifully-tended cemetry in France where our fallen servicemen were buried after WWII. I believe such cemetries and war memeorials are vandalised in this country. I thought what a sign of the degeneracy and covert violence of our policians in the UK that man-hole covers were being stolen for the scrap metal, but the otehr day, I saw they’d turned to war memorials. Of course the politicians will accept no blame for any of that.
Oddly enough, the Mail thinks we should take pride in the fact that our War Graves Commission has provided more beautiful and personalised monuments. Well, why not? But let’s not delude ourselves that it shows that our UK governments care tuppence about the living, those servicement’s descendants. (It’s like the rightful concern about State-sanctioned abortion on the part of the US Republicans, who, however, care nothing about them at all once they leave the womb).
In her own coumn in the Mail, speaking of this very subject, the theft of the bronze plaques from the war memorial, Ms Amanda Platell intones will all solemnity, "There are some stories that make you wonder how much lower can criminals stoop." On the face of it, fair comment.
However, this is the woman, if I am not mistaken who was one of La Thatcher’s advisers, an adviser of the woman who, perhaps more than anyone else took us down the path of deregulation, which as led to this economic crisis. And the plundering of the people by the CEOs of Big Business, so that, once they had run their companies into bankruptcy, they could enjoy a multi-million pound "golden parachute" and a very fat pension.
Reminds you of the politiicans themselves, doesn’t it? The people who set the scrap-metal thieves the example of disrespect for the country’s fallen servicemen. Indeed, it’s replicated in the contempt shown by our respective countries for both our country’s troops on the battle-field and after. But, boy,do they talk glorious battles by our troops! "We support the troops", has been the Republican cry. Yes, like a woman would support her "boy" in a cockfight, then pick up her dough with a big smile.
I always wondered how BLiar had had the gall to turn up at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. He, more than Thatcher by an order of magnitude, betrayed the country, by treacherously posing as a Socialist firebrand and leaving the people without any political representation.
Excellent post Grimes.
I think since Thatcher the biggest lesson the Proles have learnt is that no matter what they do, it is never their own fault. I saw Jack Straw on question time last week, having an intellectual debate with himself about the dodgy dossier and how if you twist things around a little bit, it doesn’t really matter anyway. I thought, ‘yes Jack, what a carry on and not a care in the world .. ‘
The US now has a prison gulag vaster than Stalin’s was; mostly, but by no means all, of course, African Americans – the new lynching
With sentiments such as these, its no wonder that the far left is a complete laughing stock. No offence personally Grimes but I am not sure I ahve ever read anything quite so ridiculous on this forum
He, more than Thatcher by an order of magnitude, betrayed the country, by treacherously posing as a Socialist firebrand
You are joking surely? Blair NEVER portrayed himself as a socialist. New Labours campaigning never once used the word. it was virtually banned. Why? Because it is electoral disaster. The far left is as marginalised as it has ever been in this country. Even with the present crisises. it is significant that they have been completely devoid of solutions and barely raised their heads above the parapet. Thery have nothing to say and nobody is listening
No wonder they have retreated into the arms of the extreme right wing islamofacists. They are their only friends
Topics like this in the lounge make it worth the visit; don’t get so many nowadays. Grimes’ post was worth the read. Although I’d disagree with a lot of what he had to say, it was time well spent reading it. And Grasshopper! Back on form. True, I’d probably disagree with his take on a lot of things, but if he were standing as an MP im my constituency I’d make a point of going to hear him.
but if he were standing as an MP im my constituency I’d make a point of going to hear him
oh lord…..
u must lead a very quiet life insomniac. Would cure your sleep problem i suppose
i would rather spend a week in the dentist chair
Always with the insults, eh clivex?
I love it when you talk about the idiotic ‘far left’ or how ‘socialism’ is electoral poison. It especially tickles my funny-bone, given that you hold these positions to be true, at a time when "right"-wing parties throughout the Western world are taking huge swathes of their banking systems into public ownership. I had hoped that this irony wouldn’t be lost on you, but it appears it may have been.
Your simplistic worldview is no longer applicable, I’m afraid.
"right"-wing parties throughout the Western world are taking huge swathes of their banking systems into public ownership
Browns labour is "right wing" now is it?
Lazy with the facts again. They have taken stakes in some banks. they are not "in ownership"
And they will offload these at the first opportunity. Everyhwere in the world. They know that the dead hand of socialist governance has zero to offer
The dead-hand of socialist governance has nothing to offer………………except when the capitalist system is on it’s knees, perhaps you meant?
And stop splitting irrelevant hairs about "ownership" and "taking a stake".
You can dress it up any way you want, but these bailouts – temporary or otherwise – represent state intervention. Basically, the ar*se would have fallen out of the UK economy without it, so it was most definitely the correct thing to do, but lets not try and dress it up as anything other than state intervention on an unprecedented and massive scale.Anyone suggesting it is anything else, is simply being lazy with the facts.
Clivex, it’s pointless arguing with you, because you appear to be as insane as you consider me to be; in other words our very assumptions are diametrically opposed.
It is as if you are really going to immense trouble to see how crazy you can appear; for all the sense you make, you might as well be speaking a foreign language so outlandishly false are the assertions you make.
I’ll just leave you with this last thought – in view of your belief that Milton Friedman created an economic miracle of prosperiy in Chile. It is a quote from a small book, available on the Internet for a few pounds, called WHAT WE SAY GOES – Conversations on US Power in a Changing World. the author is a man who was a professor in linguistics, who, in fact, revolutionised the field, and then began to take an interest in geopolitics and world affairs. He backs up his information with references. Of course he also offers his particualrly educated opinions, some of which you might argue are less compelling than others. But they are few and far between, because he doesn’t deal in conjectures, but verifiable facts.
Here is what he says on page 51-2:
The rigorous application of neoliberal rules typically requires dictatorship, because people don’t like them. (On edit: They are what created this incipient depression, chiefly via deregulation) The most rogorous applicatin was in Chile after the Pinochet coup in 1973. That’s when the economists from Chicago became involved. They could do anythign they wanted. The country was under the rule of a vicious police state, so nobody could object. By 1982, under the influence of the "Chicago Boys", Chile suffrered probably the worst economic collapse of its history. The government had to step in and bail out virtually the whole of private industry and the banks. In fact, Chlieans called this "the Chicago road to socialism". The state ended up owning more of the economy under Pinochet than t had under Salvador Allende. That was the great neo-liberal experiment. Finally, the militart itself couldn’t handle the situationany more and turned it back over to civilians. And Chile slowly recovered, with a mixed economy of a complex sort. It’s called a "free-market miracle," but in fact the economy relies very hevaily on a nationalised copper company Codelco, which was originally nationalised by Allende. Pinochet didn’t dare rivatize it. Codleco is very efficient, apparently, and is the biggest copper-prodcer in the world. It also provies far more revenue to the state than the private companies, subsidizing social programs and other expenses. So, if copper goes up, Chile does fine. And in other ways, the economy is somewhat liberated from the orthodox prescriptions that had devastated it.
Anyway, long story short. Even Rees Mogg of the Mail on Sunday wrote a stinging rebuke of the reckless deregulation that has led to this depression, (though – don’t laugh, he ends his article decrying a re-impositin of regulation, as its very expensive! Thatcher, Reagan and their guru, the half-wit, Milton Friedman, were responsible for the neoliberalism that has led to this depression.
I believe I posted an article about a young American nun who was one of th peole tortured by Pinochet’s goons. did you not read it, Clivex? What is your opinion of it. Can’t make an omelette wthout breaking eggs?
Chomsky listened to the stories of some of the few survivors of the torture. They had doctors on hand to make sure they stayed alive, to receive more torture. They are now practising in Santiago, and it’s little wonder an ambience of fear still hangs n the air, and a formerly vivacious people are now subdued and not keen to socialise any more.
Stop sitting on the fence and just say what you mean Grassy 
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