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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Age is not just a number: Corbyn’s greying pals
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Age is not just a number: Corbyn’s greying pals
Stalin liked a good purge. Leaving aside his sadistic and psychopathic tendencies, and the fact that they kept population, politicians, military and everyone else in greater or lesser states of constant fear, they also raised him closer to the god-like status he presumably aspired to. Not just because he was ultimately directing events, nor the pseudo-religious worship but the fact that by the late 1930s, he alone remained of the revered revolutionary generation. Everyone else had died naturally, been executed or exiled.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/9bghrd/pineapple_on_pizza_is_peak_globalism/
"Pineapple on pizza was invented in 1962 by a greek immigrant living in Canada who was inspired by Chinese cuisine to put a south american food on an Italian dish."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-125877/
How London's streets are paved with dirty money... and this anonymous door on Harley Street is home to 2,159 shadowy shell companies
Shell companies help dirty money come out clean in London's laundering racket
Harley St is nowhere near Finchley Road!
Not one for me
The Future is Certain!
It's the past that keeps changing.....
Quite curious to see what the weather is in Milan (for the race).
Let us hope we don't find out what it's like when a cabal of elderly far left fools get into power.
Abbot needs to retire, but John McDonnell has been surprisingly good at his job.
It's why I believe that it is doomed as a Party. It just becomes ever less attractive to commit your life to. As a bright young ambitious politician, you have to sign up to full-fat Corbynism to get onboard. Until 2015, it had been a niche view of the world, even in the politics of the left. But now you have a clique who still bang on about Stalin and Mao as though the past century of experimentation with their ideas had never happened. "We can still make it work!".
Corbynism is Einstein's quote* made flesh: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That's what joining the Old Guard requires. A continuation of a century of experimental failure. And the people who will suffer most in these experiments are the very people they claim to be looking out for.
*there is some doubt if it should actually be attributed to him. But whoever, it was some smart person...
Having a man who describes Hamas as his friends, is 'present' but not 'involved' when laying a wreath at a funeral for men of dubious character (to be excessively polite), and whose followers think the way to response to Jewish fears is to accuse them of evil plotting is not a fit man to be PM.
That's before we get onto his lunatic nationalisation plans, desire to axe Trident, standing up for Russia when they used chemical weaponry on British soil, etc etc etc.
I'd be fascinated to know: is there a single instance of Corbyn taking the UK's side against, say, Irish terrorists? Or the Russians? Or Iran?
Just wondering.
https://twitter.com/ChrisBottaNHL/status/1035491166077235201?s=19
Molotov was still there. Indeed, still Prime Minister.
The problem is there are too few of them to replace the old guard and keep the shadow cabinet ideologically pure. There is a reason why there are such a lot of old stagers creaking on.
I am intrigued though by one remark. Hammond and May I know are both over sixty - but who's the third one?
Is there a single time Corbyn sided with the UK against Irish terrorists, or the Russians, or Iran?
He's been an MP for decades. There might be one, even if he did it by accident.
I can think of times in the last few years he sided with the Russian state against us when they used chemical weapons on British soil. A few years ago he attended an anniversary celebration of Iran's religious revolution. Shortly after the attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher he invited Gerry Adams to Parliament.
Which part of that is 'under the bed' or a 'scare story'?
And that's just off the top of my head, without even considering what the 'bomb and bullet' and 'best of our movement' Shadow Chancellor has come out with.
Perhaps you should call Corbyn up and ask him to lay a wreath for your argument about scare stories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lidington
Edit: Damn it, loses out in a speed trial to the Decrepit One.....
That, of course, could be unfair. Diabetes can be rather a fragile and unpredictable condition.
I think Abbott has type 2 and has a number of related medical problems, so rather more complicated and varying insulin not likely to be the answer.
.
He does need to promote a few more youngsters from the class of 2017. Lammy would make a good Shadow Home Secretary.
It's a view I suppose...
Odd character. Considering the way Stalin treated him and particularly his wife the way he continued to defend Stalin even as late as the Gorbachev era was extraordinary. Not to mention of course the capacity for
stinkydrink that gave him the nickname 'Ironarse.'Edit - that was an autocorrect error, but I quite like it.
I am not convinced that there are a lot of lessons for the modern Labour party. Labour MPs are often first elected in the waves of 1997 onwards, so are an older generation than the Tories who were first elected in 2010 and 2015.
There are plenty of engaged youngsters. Retirements and reselections will bring in new faces, indeed one old timer has gone this week, in Frank Field.
Why do you think he'd make a good HS?
In any case, the polls problem is with the front bench rather than the PLP as a whole.
What price Aaron Bastani getting a nice safe Labour seat next time?
If he does become PM Corbyn would almost certainly be over 70 given the next general election is not due until 2022 and he is 69 now which would make him the oldest incoming PM since Gladstone in 1892
Not the there is much likelihood of that with Corbyn.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-45380373
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dump-corbyn-and-labour-could-crush-the-tories-36cjmdfwj
https://twitter.com/Mike_Blackley/status/1035795811102277633?s=20
The main point still stands though: Stalin's successors all got old together because sticking together was more important than renewal.
Of course Socialism doesn't actually lead to Communism because it doesn't work. That's why Brezhnev's government came up with 'developed Socialism' to explain why things seemed to have ossified.
Great Soviet joke:
This is Armenian Radio; our listeners asked us: “We are told that the communism is already seen at the horizon.” Then, what is a horizon?”
We’re answering: “Horizon is an imaginary line which moves away each time you approach it.”
https://twitter.com/Tpopularfront/status/1035412274033381377?s=20
Pidcock, on the other hand, has established herself as someone driven by hate and a very blinkered vision of the world. Perhaps she is the anointed successor after all
Or is there somebody actually crazy enough to tweet that?
Labour under Cooper or someone else of responsible competence would be 10 points ahead, maybe more.
But I can't see how on earth it will happen.
The English teacher jumped before she was pushed in the end. I wonder what will happen with Pidcock. I don't think North-West Durham is quite as safe for Labour as it once was.
Few years ago they had BAFTA-winning coverage of the whole season.
Still, it's not like they threw it away to blow £30m for the concept of another identikit TV talent show which they don't even broadcast any more...
The next generation however - those now in their mid-/late-forties and fifties - not only witnessed the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern European dictatorships, of China turning capitalist (albeit state-capitalism), and the abject failures of the economic and political models they represented, but they also moved into front-line politics in the 1990s - the time of Blair, Clinton, Schroeder and all the Third Way centrism, which not only delivered some real practical benefits but was electorally successful too.
However, the generation beyond - those now in their thirties - don't remember the old Cold War but do take as a reference point 2008 and the 'failure of capitalism'. For them, Blair was not only a sell-out but pedalled policies that brought on the crash, unemployment and the rest - and political defeat in 2010 into the bargain. Hence the renewed self-confidence in leftism.
But they'll have to wait: Corbyn isn't going to sack his ideological allies so they'll go only in their own good time.
Have to go now - a kids' party to plan. Have fun, all.
Plus Cooper never polled that well with the the public anyway
https://rochdaleherald.co.uk/2018/08/29/may-gives-nigerian-prince-sort-code-account-number-and-pin-in-trade-negotiations/
Cooper most importantly doesn't even want the job.
She went on vacation with her family when Jeremy was campaigning in the first leadership election.
If you are ambivalent about leading the Labour Party (or any political party), then you won't end up as leader.
The ambition, the drooling hunger for power has to be there.
Yvette doesn't have it.
(She has other defects as well, like lack of ideas & vision, but that isn't fatal to leadership ambitions.)
Our listeners ask: will there be theft under communism?
Radio Yerevan answers: no, everything will already have been stolen under socialism.
There actually was, and perhaps still is for all I know, a regular Q&A feature on Radio Yerevan but it wasn't remotely amusing apparently.
Egoism is a much bigger force in political division than most people realise. Sure, you have the odd split more or less purely over policy - Corn Laws in 1845-6, the Liberals in 1886, the SDP in 1981 - but they're far outweighed by the splits over outsize egos. Lloyd George (twice) Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain in 1903, John Simon in 1931, possibly Blair and Brown, Grenville and Pitt in 1804. The Irish Nationalists over Parnell perhaps could be included.
Of all the bizarre ways that the independence movement in Scotland could fizzle out however, I never thought it could have been something like this.
Forecast was to be dry today and tomorrow, so Italian weather forecasts are as accurate as British or Belgian ones.
From my admittedly partial information, it seems as though Nicola Sturgeon has behaved correctly.