"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
Shortly after the IRA had tried to wipe out the British cabinet and assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, Jeremy Corbyn invited the Sinn Fein/IRA leaders to Parliament.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
I'm the last to say Labour has any answers. But they are identifying a big problem.
household debt, house price and asset inflation, manufacturing, hedge funds, housing shortage. nastiness, nasty people.
Small children in Morecambe can identify problems.
The issue is what to do about it. It all circles round to spending and anti-austerity which may or may not be legitimate but for Lab, that ship has sailed. They cannot come to the next, or any election and say they will spend their way out of this.
They needed an alternative big idea. And Jezza, although he said many many words and told us how nice he is and what a nice society he wants, did not provide it.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
It was quite hard to listen to what he was saying. Primarily because his delivery was terrible but also because of the rambling unfocused nature of the whole thing.
It sounded like a Eulogy.
Which is perhaps the most appropriate tone it could have had.
"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
A large chunk of the words that tumble out of Corbyn's mouth are complete fibs. 'Kneel before the Queen? Never knew about that'. Of course not Jeremy. Of course.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
I thought that one of Corbyn's USPs was that he would make it easier for Labour to win back votes in Scotland. If he can't do that........
Do you want a nicer, fairer society? yes/no Do you want poor people to be less poor? yes/no Do you think it awful that houses cost so much to buy? yes/no ...ad infinitum...
Perhaps a study of the French and Russian revolutions might be instructive.
Personally I see the relative gap between wealthiest and poorest as a bit like an elastic band. And it is getting stretched.
I do think that there is an issue with social cohesion when you have rich people with no obligation to the society in which they live. But the far left answer has led to far worse consequences - usually involving the death of many and a society far more unbearable to all than the one they were trying to improve.
How to achieve a society where hard work is rewarded, where people don't get something for nothing and where people take responsibility, especially when they are rewarded well are the questions. I don't believe that Corbyn or those who think like him have the answers.
The more you post, the more I find myself in agreement with your views. We have to look without dogma at what motivates people, how they are rewarded, and how that feeds into social rights and responsibilities, and tweak policy accordingly, rather than tear up the rule book.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
John McTernan @johnmcternan 18 mins18 minutes ago Worst political speech I have ever heard by some distance
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
I thought that one of Corbyn's USPs was that he would make it easier for Labour to win back votes in Scotland. If he can't do that........
The worm/Sky Pulse or whatever name the Satanic nonsense is now called is worthless.
A self-selecting audience will be crammed with Three Pounders opposed to gentrification, profits, or a democratically elected government because the electorate got it wrong [the swine!].
I don't know where this bizarre idea that there is more inequality now in a globalised world than before comes from. The inequality in the UK or the US in, say, 1900 was massively greater than anything we now see, with the super rich such as the Rockefellers or Andrew Carnegie, or the traditionally wealthy of England, contrasting with many ordinary people who were unable to afford basic food and clothing.
Of course, you know it comes from regularly published dubious statistics that have gained a megaphone with Piketty's book. I believe that if you look at the period from say 1975-2015, you can make a valid argument that there has been a concentration of wealth in relative terms, but on a historical scale, it's nothing like the concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny elite in ancient civilizations or, as you point out, in Victorian times.
You also have to distinguish between inequality internal to a country, and inequality globally (i.e. between countries).
As Hans Rosling points out, living standards in developing countries have been improving at an astonishing rate, rapidly cutting the gap with the "West" (or "North").
The blogger Tim Worstall consistently pushes a thesis that globalisation has helped this reduction of inequality between countries, by allowing people who were previously excluded to plug in to a global marketplace, while also giving new opportunities for inequality within a country. Globalisation means there are global talent pools in high-wage areas like IT or sports or management, and the fruits of being at the top end of a food chain like that are very rich indeed; it also means that people who corner a global market - e.g. if you can create a social media platform with 1.5 billion users - you're gonna get bare minted.
Not sure how much Worstall's thesis is backed up by academic studies but it has an air of plausibility about it.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
Is socialism about telling women who don't want to get felt up by 'talent' that they should just go and become hairdressers instead?
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
Another disgruntled Blairite.
Tory comments on Corbyn just amuse me with their golf clubby battiness.
I actually thought he was better than Miliband as Mili always seemed to be walking a tightrope between what he wanted to say and what he felt he ought to say to get elected. Corbyn didn't bother with the second at all so was more consistent.
I give him some credit as well for taking on the Saudis (although no mention of Wahhabism) and for making clear how the high cost of housing pushes up the benefits bill.
On the downside, there was a lot of waffle (you could easily cut 10 minutes out) and some areas such as the NHS hardly got a mention. I thought the defence section was unconvincing (retraining trident workers) as was foreign policy (making peace with ISIS). Wasn't there supposed to be something about loving Britain in there - if so I must have zoned out. Nothing in there for voters in Middle England.
Lance Price "I had low expectations and this fell way way below it"
Says a disgruntled Blairite.
I've not seen the speech so won't comment on it directly. I will however note that those commentators and activists who criticised Miliband's speeches were on the money.
If Corbyn's speech was poor then it's hardly surprising. He's had little time to prepare and has had no training in this sort of thing. If he's lucky, he'll get some decent clips this evening and the news cycle will move on before it falls apart (which badly prepared speeches tend to). If he's not, then it just adds to the view that he's not up to the job.
"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
I thought that one of Corbyn's USPs was that he would make it easier for Labour to win back votes in Scotland. If he can't do that........
Scotland is free. It was free to hold a referendum. You are free to vote for who you like at a general election and the SNP govt is free to negotiate extended devolution. The only people not free are English voters who suffer Scottish MPs voting on English matters which they cannot vote on in their own constituencies.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
John McTernan @johnmcternan 18 mins18 minutes ago Worst political speech I have ever heard by some distance
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
I thought that one of Corbyn's USPs was that he would make it easier for Labour to win back votes in Scotland. If he can't do that........
''That is true enough, I am not arguing that point, but simply yanking money off people and talking about 60% (or higher) taxes will not solve it either. ''
Oh I agree with you it would solve nothing. It would clobber the middle, not the top. Indeed, I've never seen a good solution to tempting the rich to part with a bit more, either through spending or taxation or charity.
Peer pressure works a little in the US. The Buffet-Gates Giving Pledge challenge to billionaires seems to have had quite an effect - a bunch of billionaires who are trying to outdo each other in giving away the bulk of their fortune. Even the young 'uns. See Open Philanthropy - no-one in the organization, including the two big donors, is over 30.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
John McTernan @johnmcternan 18 mins18 minutes ago Worst political speech I have ever heard by some distance
Jeremy Corbyn has a worse grasp of history than Morris Dancer.
That's how bad Jezbollah is.
No. Lansbury had a Flashman-eque chops-into-tache. I think Corbyn is the first Labour leader to wear a beard since Hardie, though technically he wasn't leader (Labour didn't establish the office until c1920), and I'm not sure of some of the other early pseudo-leaders.
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
Sounds like a slam dunk result for the Tories.
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
The most significant bit of Corbyn's speech was his analysis of why Labour lost on May 7.
Oh, I suppose that might count. I took it to mean that there was no analysis.
Labour are in huge huge trouble here.
I was in the "I didn't really spot any" camp re analysis. But I think more significant than that was not just that there was no analysis of why they lost, but no addressing of the fact they lost at all. A void of electoral introspection.
Not a lot of... "We have to face hard choices". "We were rejected by the electorate". "We have to confront reality and understand why, at a time of great national need for social justice, people did not vote in greater numbers for a Labour government." "WTH happened in Scotland?"
Not that that would necessarily have helped. And the selectorate didn't pip for Kendall after all. Perhaps it's more important to gee up the members before going out and addressing the populace at large. But worth noting.
And it wasn't that there was no introspection at all. Not only did the speech barely recognise that the people at large had rejected Labour, no more than 20% of it seemed addressed to the Great British Public in any way, rather than to the activist and member base. It certainly wasn't an electoral, vote-grabbing appeal, so in that respect I think most of the speech counts as "introspection". Just not analytical introspection and with no reflection upon the events of last May. Most of that speech could have been written the same even if May hadn't happened at all.
"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
Sounds like a slam dunk result for the Tories.
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
Yes, the Tories could end up with a 40-seat majority (even in a reduced HoC) on the same 7% lead. In practice the lead might be a fair bit bigger.
I don't know where this bizarre idea that there is more inequality now in a globalised world than before comes from. The inequality in the UK or the US in, say, 1900 was massively greater than anything we now see, with the super rich such as the Rockefellers or Andrew Carnegie, or the traditionally wealthy of England, contrasting with many ordinary people who were unable to afford basic food and clothing.
Of course, you know it comes from regularly published dubious statistics that have gained a megaphone with Piketty's book. I believe that if you look at the period from say 1975-2015, you can make a valid argument that there has been a concentration of wealth in relative terms, but on a historical scale, it's nothing like the concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny elite in ancient civilizations or, as you point out, in Victorian times.
You also have to distinguish between inequality internal to a country, and inequality globally (i.e. between countries).
As Hans Rosling points out, living standards in developing countries have been improving at an astonishing rate, rapidly cutting the gap with the "West" (or "North").
The blogger Tim Worstall consistently pushes a thesis that globalisation has helped this reduction of inequality between countries, by allowing people who were previously excluded to plug in to a global marketplace, while also giving new opportunities for inequality within a country. Globalisation means there are global talent pools in high-wage areas like IT or sports or management, and the fruits of being at the top end of a food chain like that are very rich indeed; it also means that people who corner a global market - e.g. if you can create a social media platform with 1.5 billion users - you're gonna get bare minted.
Not sure how much Worstall's thesis is backed up by academic studies but it has an air of plausibility about it.
MBE - I sort of addressed that point in a previous post way back in this thread - that globalization has brought a huge new workforce from China, India etc... into the Western corporations' labour market, thereby depressing the price of labour (in the West) relative to the price of capital (in the West). I am sure in China the relative prices of labour and capital have moved in precisely the opposite direction.
The figure of £55m came, I believe, from a Labour Party document where they had lumped donations from anyone vaguely connected with any financial institution as 'donations from hedge funds'. But feel free to research it if you think the £55m is right.
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
Sounds like a slam dunk result for the Tories.
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
Gerrymandering = having regular boundary reviews to keep up with population shifts.
I actually thought he was better than Miliband as Mili always seemed to be walking a tightrope between what he wanted to say and what he felt he ought to say to get elected. Corbyn didn't bother with the second at all so was more consistent.
I give him some credit as well for taking on the Saudis (although no mention of Wahhabism) and for making clear how the high cost of housing pushes up the benefits bill.
On the downside, there was a lot of waffle (you could easily cut 10 minutes out) and some areas such as the NHS hardly got a mention. I thought the defence section was unconvincing (retraining trident workers) as was foreign policy (making peace with ISIS). Wasn't there supposed to be something about loving Britain in there - if so I must have zoned out. Nothing in there for voters in Middle England.
He is the first British politician to criticise the Saudis openly.
I thought his cadence and presentation was rather improved since the start of his time at the stump in the campaign. Direction of travel wasn't bad on this one.
If we are talking about presentation issues, rather than content, I actually thought the words of the speech were terrible - it sounded as if he was ad-libbing from his notes, for large parts. They were not word-smithed There were jarring bits, places where some sort of rhetorical device appeared to be raised and then forgotten about, repetition in the vocabulary when variety would've worked better, and generally very poor flow.
The thematic design sounded like something a team of speech-writers could have produced, but the words themselves didn't; like they were homespun on the spur of the moment, or just scripted by an amateur.
Lance Price "I had low expectations and this fell way way below it"
Says a disgruntled Blairite.
I've not seen the speech so won't comment on it directly. I will however note that those commentators and activists who criticised Miliband's speeches were on the money.
If Corbyn's speech was poor then it's hardly surprising. He's had little time to prepare and has had no training in this sort of thing. If he's lucky, he'll get some decent clips this evening and the news cycle will move on before it falls apart (which badly prepared speeches tend to). If he's not, then it just adds to the view that he's not up to the job.
Corbyn's speech was too long and rambling and not well presented but it had effective moments of passion that may be on the TV clips tonight. He is different from Milliband. He might be as ineffective but in a different way. Too early to say. The Betfair odds on a Labour majority of 5.3 when I last looked seem a bit short. I'm on NOM but a lot can happen.
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
I thought it was the Lib Dems who were most adept at protecting their under-sized constituencies? Calling Mr Carmichael.
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
Another disgruntled Blairite.
Tory comments on Corbyn just amuse me with their golf clubby battiness.
But the Blairite comments really irritate me.
Where is Dan Hodges ? We are eagerly waiting to hear how dreadful the speech was. But no doubt Plato will let us know when that idiot raises his head.
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
I heard there will be 599 constituencies south of the Trent and one mega one above.
I don't know where this bizarre idea that there is more inequality now in a globalised world than before comes from. The inequality in the UK or the US in, say, 1900 was massively greater than anything we now see, with the super rich such as the Rockefellers or Andrew Carnegie, or the traditionally wealthy of England, contrasting with many ordinary people who were unable to afford basic food and clothing.
Of course, you know it comes from regularly published dubious statistics that have gained a megaphone with Piketty's book. I believe that if you look at the period from say 1975-2015, you can make a valid argument that there has been a concentration of wealth in relative terms, but on a historical scale, it's nothing like the concentration of wealth into the hands of a tiny elite in ancient civilizations or, as you point out, in Victorian times.
You also have to distinguish between inequality internal to a country, and inequality globally (i.e. between countries).
As Hans Rosling points out, living standards in developing countries have been improving at an astonishing rate, rapidly cutting the gap with the "West" (or "North").
The blogger Tim Worstall consistently pushes a thesis that globalisation has helped this reduction of inequality between countries, by allowing people who were previously excluded to plug in to a global marketplace, while also giving new opportunities for inequality within a country. Globalisation means there are global talent pools in high-wage areas like IT or sports or management, and the fruits of being at the top end of a food chain like that are very rich indeed; it also means that people who corner a global market - e.g. if you can create a social media platform with 1.5 billion users - you're gonna get bare minted.
Not sure how much Worstall's thesis is backed up by academic studies but it has an air of plausibility about it.
MBE - I sort of addressed that point in a previous post way back in this thread - that globalization has brought a huge new workforce from China, India etc... into the Western corporations' labour market, thereby depressing the price of labour (in the West) relative to the price of capital (in the West). I am sure in China the relative prices of labour and capital have moved in precisely the opposite direction.
Sorry, this thread is long and I've been busy so didn't catch that! I've always thought it odd when people discuss globalisation (normally folk who are opposed to it) concentrate on its impact on some local aspect; the whole point about it is that it is changing the game on a global level.
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
Sounds like a slam dunk result for the Tories.
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
Yes, the Tories could end up with a 40-seat majority (even in a reduced HoC) on the same 7% lead. In practice the lead might be a fair bit bigger.
My rough estimate is that if you were to add the votes for Conservative and UKIP together in every constituency, and then add together the votes for Labour, Green, Lib Dem, SNP, TUSC, the Right would win c. 360 seats to c.270 for the Left. If you were to go back to two very broadly based parties of Right and Left, then a small lead in terms of votes would lead to a big lead in terms of seats, as in the 1950s and 1960s.
If I were a Labour party activist I would have loved that speech. But I'm not, so much of it passed me by - not least because it was poorly constructed and poorly delivered.
With a more credible leader some of the stuff about housing, the self-employed and not accepting that this is the way it has to be might be the start of something. But Corbyn framed it all wrong. I missed the start, but I did not hear anything aimed at anyone who is not living in poverty. Most people aren't and they need something from Labour too if Labour is going to ever be in a position to help the poorest.
All those who voted for Corbyn will be buzzing right now.
Lance Price "I had low expectations and this fell way way below it"
Says a disgruntled Blairite.
I've not seen the speech so won't comment on it directly. I will however note that those commentators and activists who criticised Miliband's speeches were on the money.
If Corbyn's speech was poor then it's hardly surprising. He's had little time to prepare and has had no training in this sort of thing. If he's lucky, he'll get some decent clips this evening and the news cycle will move on before it falls apart (which badly prepared speeches tend to). If he's not, then it just adds to the view that he's not up to the job.
Corbyn's speech was too long and rambling and not well presented but it had effective moments of passion that may be on the TV clips tonight. He is different from Milliband. He might be as ineffective but in a different way. Too early to say. The Betfair odds on a Labour majority of 5.3 when I last looked seem a bit short. I'm on NOM but a lot can happen.
Your points are well made.
David Herdson's comments are usually well made. In fact, always. Nabavi used to be like this once. Now-a-days he is more Platoesque !
I thought his cadence and presentation was rather improved since the start of his time at the stump in the campaign. Direction of travel wasn't bad on this one.
If we are talking about presentation issues, rather than content, I actually thought the words of the speech were terrible - it sounded as if he was ad-libbing from his notes, for large parts. They were not word-smithed There were jarring bits, places where some sort of rhetorical device appeared to be raised and then forgotten about, repetition in the vocabulary when variety would've worked better, and generally very poor flow.
The thematic design sounded like something a team of speech-writers could have produced, but the words themselves didn't; like they were homespun on the spur of the moment, or just scripted by an amateur.
It's gone from dire to just appalling.
Content wise well it will cheer up some of the base.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
It was quite hard to listen to what he was saying. Primarily because his delivery was terrible but also because of the rambling unfocused nature of the whole thing.
It sounded like a Eulogy.
Which is perhaps the most appropriate tone it could have had.
I have never been to a mass rally of the sort that Mr Corbyn addresses. I had supposed that his experience would make him quite an orator. Maybe he isn't, and it's more that the people who attend those rallies simply cheer 'dog-whistle' phrases?
BBC: "Supermarket chain Morrisons has announced that from March next year it will become a living wage employer.
The firm becomes the first of the "big four" supermarkets to become to pay the living wage to all staff.
The move is to the pay figure calculated by the Living Wage Commission, based on their estimates of the cost of living, rather than the new, and lower, national living wage, which is essentially a higher minimum wage announced by the chancellor at the budget.
Morrisons' decision - which will benefit 90,000 staff and cost the company around £40m - follows other big wage rises in recent months at Lidl (which is also adopting the living wage), Starbucks and Sainsburys. "
Looks like Osborne's budget is doing the trick with employers replacing the cuts in tax credits for those who choose to work with wages paid for by business. Win, win. Labour said it wouldn't happen.
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
I thought the undisputed kings of Boundary Commission manipulation were New Labour.
I note that Blairite Labour "supporters" are trying to set the local elections as a test.
Gains very unlikely since most were last competed in 2012 (Labs high point in the last Parliament)
I am hoping for a Lab mayor for London, improvements in the parties position in the Welsh Assembly and some signs of recovery in Scotland compared to GE2015.
Lab are likely to suffer a net loss in Council Elections compared to 2012 IMO.
Danczuk, Mann et alwill try to set an unachievable council gains target IMO
People who will be removed from the register unless they apply to register under the new system If you haven’t already applied individually to be on the electoral register, you’ll receive a letter asking you to register. If you don't register under the new system your name will be removed on the 1 December.
Except that the Tories have brought forward the cut-off date for doing so.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
The Tories haven't brought the date forward. If you look at this Guardian article from Feb you can see they were always planning to remove the voters, who couldn't be matched and didn't provide the extra data, in December 2015. If anything, they were more than reasonable allowing voters who might not be eligible to vote in the 2015 GE.
The joke about it being Year Zero became flesh during that speech. I felt it was just a jumble of various paragraphs from previous protest marches he's megaphoned at.
I can understand those in Labour who are thinking Oh No. When your leader refuses to look beyond his own disciples - you're done for electorally.
The most significant bit of Corbyn's speech was his analysis of why Labour lost on May 7.
Oh, I suppose that might count. I took it to mean that there was no analysis.
Labour are in huge huge trouble here.
I was in the "I didn't really spot any" camp re analysis. But I think more significant than that was not just that there was no analysis of why they lost, but no addressing of the fact they lost at all. A void of electoral introspection.
Not a lot of... "We have to face hard choices". "We were rejected by the electorate". "We have to confront reality and understand why, at a time of great national need for social justice, people did not vote in greater numbers for a Labour government." "WTH happened in Scotland?"
Not that that would necessarily have helped. And the selectorate didn't pip for Kendall after all. Perhaps it's more important to gee up the members before going out and addressing the populace at large. But worth noting.
And it wasn't that there was no introspection at all. Not only did the speech barely recognise that the people at large had rejected Labour, no more than 20% of it seemed addressed to the Great British Public in any way, rather than to the activist and member base. It certainly wasn't an electoral, vote-grabbing appeal, so in that respect I think most of the speech counts as "introspection". Just not analytical introspection and with no reflection upon the events of last May. Most of that speech could have been written the same even if May hadn't happened at all.
Amongst GE2015 voters: biggest support for JC speech are from the Greens, then Lib Dem, Labour and followed by Did Not Vote. THe Kippers didn't like it.
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
Sounds like a slam dunk result for the Tories.
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
Yes, the Tories could end up with a 40-seat majority (even in a reduced HoC) on the same 7% lead. In practice the lead might be a fair bit bigger.
My rough estimate is that if you were to add the votes for Conservative and UKIP together in every constituency, and then add together the votes for Labour, Green, Lib Dem, SNP, TUSC, the Right would win c. 360 seats to c.270 for the Left. If you were to go back to two very broadly based parties of Right and Left, then a small lead in terms of votes would lead to a big lead in terms of seats, as in the 1950s and 1960s.
That suggests Alternative Vote would have been good for the Conservatives.
Mr. Owls, if Khan wins, it could be Pyrrhic. There'll be 4 years of Labour's opponents [well if they have any wits] pointing out that ethnic workplace quotas aren't necessarily popular.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
It was quite hard to listen to what he was saying. Primarily because his delivery was terrible but also because of the rambling unfocused nature of the whole thing.
It sounded like a Eulogy.
Which is perhaps the most appropriate tone it could have had.
I have never been to a mass rally of the sort that Mr Corbyn addresses. I had supposed that his experience would make him quite an orator. Maybe he isn't, and it's more that the people who attend those rallies simply cheer 'dog-whistle' phrases?
No - you are confusing that with 'Live at the Apollo'.
To be fair there was a very droll chap on the other week - he spent his entire act taking the piss out of lesbians. You could tell the audience did not like to laugh, but they felt they had to.
Comments
Have another glass of Bollinger, and wave bye bye to the afternoon.
I'm the last to say Labour has any answers. But they are identifying a big problem.
Jezzer probably wants to take it off you, and give it to a more deserving person.
Jeremy Corbyn has a worse grasp of history than Morris Dancer.
That's how bad Jezbollah is.
He is too shouty and fumbling over his words.
But much of the content I think will get a good reception in the country as a whole.
6/10
"Since becoming Tory leader, Cameron has received £55m in donations from hedge funds."
That's a nice, clear, no-holds-barred, unambiguous lie from the straight-talking, honest Mr Corbyn.
And it was the coalition government which drastically increased taxes on hedge funds by increasing the Capital Gains Tax they pay from Brown's 10% to 28%:
http://www.bkl.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/autumn-statement2013-chancellor-targets-avoidance-tax-grab.pdf
Not to mention Osborne's latest tax increase on Hedge Funds:
http://www.fundweb.co.uk/news-and-analysis/politics/as-2014-govt-launches-360m-tax-crackdown-on-hedge-and-private-equity-funds/2016886.article
Jezzabell, the well known racist;
Shortly after the IRA had tried to wipe out the British cabinet and assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984, Jeremy Corbyn invited the Sinn Fein/IRA leaders to Parliament.
The most significant bit of Corbyn's speech was his analysis of why Labour lost on May 7.
"Pretty notable that he only spent two sentences in that entire speech on Scotland."
If you had listened to what he was saying and you had any idea what socialism is about you'd understand why he wouldn't indulge nationalism. I suggest you attend a fascist conference
Small children in Morecambe can identify problems.
The issue is what to do about it. It all circles round to spending and anti-austerity which may or may not be legitimate but for Lab, that ship has sailed. They cannot come to the next, or any election and say they will spend their way out of this.
They needed an alternative big idea. And Jezza, although he said many many words and told us how nice he is and what a nice society he wants, did not provide it.
It sounded like a Eulogy.
Which is perhaps the most appropriate tone it could have had.
Labour are in huge huge trouble here.
Do you want poor people to be less poor? yes/no
Do you think it awful that houses cost so much to buy? yes/no
...ad infinitum...
Huge surprise it is popular...
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul 11 mins11 minutes ago
Dire, boring, trite, wrong, sanctimonious, wrong, patronising and wrong.
Atul Hatwal @atulh 11 mins11 minutes ago
Poor speech. Rambling. No sense of Labour offer. Next week the Tories will fill in the blanks he left and really define him
John McTernan @johnmcternan 18 mins18 minutes ago
Worst political speech I have ever heard by some distance
https://twitter.com/MoragTwort/status/648865076083036160
Hypocrisy seldom plays well in politics.
A self-selecting audience will be crammed with Three Pounders opposed to gentrification, profits, or a democratically elected government because the electorate got it wrong [the swine!].
You give love Jez a bad name.
As Hans Rosling points out, living standards in developing countries have been improving at an astonishing rate, rapidly cutting the gap with the "West" (or "North").
The blogger Tim Worstall consistently pushes a thesis that globalisation has helped this reduction of inequality between countries, by allowing people who were previously excluded to plug in to a global marketplace, while also giving new opportunities for inequality within a country. Globalisation means there are global talent pools in high-wage areas like IT or sports or management, and the fruits of being at the top end of a food chain like that are very rich indeed; it also means that people who corner a global market - e.g. if you can create a social media platform with 1.5 billion users - you're gonna get bare minted.
Not sure how much Worstall's thesis is backed up by academic studies but it has an air of plausibility about it.
It was just one of his rallies with a bigger audience - nothing for the wider electorate.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/11580951/Fresh-voting-fraud-in-scandal-hit-borough-of-Tower-Hamlets.html
Sadly, the Tories hated it.
A 2 second 'google' showed this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/how-hedge-fund-super-rich-donated-19m-to-tory-party-10024548.html
Do you accept the £19m referred to and do you know how much more has been donated to the tory partys since Cameron became leader? With links if possible.
Tory comments on Corbyn just amuse me with their golf clubby battiness.
But the Blairite comments really irritate me.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2015/sep/29/labour-conference-jeremy-corbyns-speech-politics-live
I give him some credit as well for taking on the Saudis (although no mention of Wahhabism) and for making clear how the high cost of housing pushes up the benefits bill.
On the downside, there was a lot of waffle (you could easily cut 10 minutes out) and some areas such as the NHS hardly got a mention. I thought the defence section was unconvincing (retraining trident workers) as was foreign policy (making peace with ISIS). Wasn't there supposed to be something about loving Britain in there - if so I must have zoned out. Nothing in there for voters in Middle England.
If Corbyn's speech was poor then it's hardly surprising. He's had little time to prepare and has had no training in this sort of thing. If he's lucky, he'll get some decent clips this evening and the news cycle will move on before it falls apart (which badly prepared speeches tend to). If he's not, then it just adds to the view that he's not up to the job.
That cartoon isn't the scottish view of Corbyn otherwise we would be separated from the rest of the UK by now.
http://www.openphilanthropy.org/leadership-team/
Tories stick with Dave, and some kippers vote Tory for fear of Jezza.
Meanwhile Greens and Lib Dems rack up for Jezza in safe Labour constituencies and DNV errm doesn't vote !
Not a lot of... "We have to face hard choices". "We were rejected by the electorate". "We have to confront reality and understand why, at a time of great national need for social justice, people did not vote in greater numbers for a Labour government." "WTH happened in Scotland?"
Not that that would necessarily have helped. And the selectorate didn't pip for Kendall after all. Perhaps it's more important to gee up the members before going out and addressing the populace at large. But worth noting.
And it wasn't that there was no introspection at all. Not only did the speech barely recognise that the people at large had rejected Labour, no more than 20% of it seemed addressed to the Great British Public in any way, rather than to the activist and member base. It certainly wasn't an electoral, vote-grabbing appeal, so in that respect I think most of the speech counts as "introspection". Just not analytical introspection and with no reflection upon the events of last May. Most of that speech could have been written the same even if May hadn't happened at all.
Mostly disjointed, wish list stuff. Tories boo hiss, look how lovely and cuddly we are etc.
Will play well to the hall no doubt.
Though there were a couple of decent sound bites for the news headlines, it was a poor speech delivered poorly.
Of most concern IMO is that he just does not come across as a LotO, let alone PM in waiting.
This is quite clearly so that the Boundary Commission will draw up the boundaries before people have got round to getting registered - in some places more than others.
The result will be an even larger gerrymandering of the boundaries in favour of the Tories than it otherwise would have been.
The Tories are very good at gerrymandering the boundaries to suit their own convenience. Everybody recognises this.
If we are talking about presentation issues, rather than content, I actually thought the words of the speech were terrible - it sounded as if he was ad-libbing from his notes, for large parts. They were not word-smithed There were jarring bits, places where some sort of rhetorical device appeared to be raised and then forgotten about, repetition in the vocabulary when variety would've worked better, and generally very poor flow.
The thematic design sounded like something a team of speech-writers could have produced, but the words themselves didn't; like they were homespun on the spur of the moment, or just scripted by an amateur.
Your points are well made.
With a more credible leader some of the stuff about housing, the self-employed and not accepting that this is the way it has to be might be the start of something. But Corbyn framed it all wrong. I missed the start, but I did not hear anything aimed at anyone who is not living in poverty. Most people aren't and they need something from Labour too if Labour is going to ever be in a position to help the poorest.
All those who voted for Corbyn will be buzzing right now.
That is around 0.05% of the population.
Jack Monroe @DrJackMonroe 2m2 minutes ago
While I'm in a humble apologetic mood;
I was wrong about Corbyn. Wrong to judge him through a weird media kaleidoscope. He is remarkable.
Content wise well it will cheer up some of the base.
Interesting thanks. Perhaps we could start by recognizing that people who pay a lot of tax are heroes, and not c8nts
"Supermarket chain Morrisons has announced that from March next year it will become a living wage employer.
The firm becomes the first of the "big four" supermarkets to become to pay the living wage to all staff.
The move is to the pay figure calculated by the Living Wage Commission, based on their estimates of the cost of living, rather than the new, and lower, national living wage, which is essentially a higher minimum wage announced by the chancellor at the budget.
Morrisons' decision - which will benefit 90,000 staff and cost the company around £40m - follows other big wage rises in recent months at Lidl (which is also adopting the living wage), Starbucks and Sainsburys. "
Looks like Osborne's budget is doing the trick with employers replacing the cuts in tax credits for those who choose to work with wages paid for by business. Win, win. Labour said it wouldn't happen.
Gains very unlikely since most were last competed in 2012 (Labs high point in the last Parliament)
I am hoping for a Lab mayor for London, improvements in the parties position in the Welsh Assembly and some signs of recovery in Scotland compared to GE2015.
Lab are likely to suffer a net loss in Council Elections compared to 2012 IMO.
Danczuk, Mann et alwill try to set an unachievable council gains target IMO
"Now-a-days he is more Platoesque !"
The unkindest cut of all........
http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/feb/05/missing-voters-individual-electoral-registration-disaster
I can understand those in Labour who are thinking Oh No. When your leader refuses to look beyond his own disciples - you're done for electorally.
The idiot who called the election very right whilst every labour poster on here was drooling over 34% yougovs?
That idiot?
To be fair there was a very droll chap on the other week - he spent his entire act taking the piss out of lesbians. You could tell the audience did not like to laugh, but they felt they had to.