Labour Party Desolation v3: Abstainence Makes the Farce Grow Stronger

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Thanks for sharing. That woman is great on all the sadly vanishingly rare occasions I have seen her allowed on mainstream tv.

No wonder she is blocked from public view because the public might start realising what's going on.

If Jeremy Corbyn stood up for himself a little bit more then that would also help. Come on, if not for yourself then for those you are trying to help.

[BlodwynPig]

Usually you just go for the pre-emptive strike with greatly exaggerated tales of their demise.

You can't get more exaggerated than the absolute.

GONE...

and I can count on two hands the number of times I've done this.

Pancreas almost GONE

[Sebastian Cobb]

Interesting stat here.

[BlodwynPig]

Interesting stat here.

und? no surprise surely

middle class Labour voters are the Tory voters of the past.

[Buelligan]

Or could it be that people who feel relatively safe and comfortable trust what the Establishment tells them more?  When people are getting fucked, they mostly know who's doing it.

[BlodwynPig]

Or could it be that people who feel relatively safe and comfortable trust what the Establishment tells them more?  When people are getting fucked, they mostly know who's doing it.

whatever it is its bloody obvious, I don't know, tell me about it, give me a break

[Buelligan]

It is obvious but it's also sadly surprising.  I earn a lot less than £20Kpa but I like to think that if earned a great deal more, that would not preclude me from supporting dear old Jez just as much as I do.  Does money alter people to that degree?  I hope not, though it appears so.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Really the only amount of working class labour voters or members the liberals want is enough to point at to convince themselves they're not the baddies isn't it? Any more and they get shook that they might have influence.

[Johnny Yesno]

Interesting stat here.

Also:

Poll of Labour members:

"Which of the following statements best reflects your view of the policies in Labour's 2019 General Election manifesto?"

The policies were broadly correct: 74%
The policies were broadly wrong: 14%

Via @Survation / @LabourList, 23-25 November
7:59 PM · Nov 26, 2020

https://mobile.twitter.com/LeftieStats/status/1332051276977348609

[BlodwynPig]

Are there polls for everything at all times?

Its a malignancy, like addiction and greed.

[Cuellar]

Labour voters thought the Labour manifesto was good? Gosh

[Kelvin]

It's a stupid question, anyway. The polices were mostly good, but probably not the right mix or focus, especially for that election.

[colacentral]

It should be astonishing that 14% thought the manifesto was broadly wrong, but the party is so corrupted with cunts at every level that it's really not.

[SOMK]

It is obvious but it's also sadly surprising.  I earn a lot less than £20Kpa but I like to think that if earned a great deal more, that would not preclude me from supporting dear old Jez just as much as I do.  Does money alter people to that degree?  I hope not, though it appears so.

Yes there is reams of evidence on this, for example people in expensive cars are three times more likely to drive from a hit and run, the richer you are the the less you give proportionately to charity, there was a fascinating study earlier this year that tricked wealthier people into admitting they're racist (because the researchers in question figured such is the stigma people won't admit to such things directly) it involved having 6 statements one of which was something like "genetics accounts for the income disparity experienced by ethnic minorities" and then person in question says how many of the statements do you agree with?" anyway it turned out the very wealthiest are the most likely to have such beliefs, and it scales to income (ie. the exact opposite of how it is commonly understood) what else? In experiments say you have a game of some sort with a cash prize and you rig it so that some people win, they will (generally) instantly take credit for that win and act like dicks to the others. Also money in and of itself is a demotivator, people perform complicated tasks much worse if they are incentivised for it by a cash reward. Loads of stuff, The KLF had the right idea. The second Atlantic article here points out how out of the top fifty largest donations made by the rich in America none were to charities addressing poverty or wealth distribution, they were all for things like universities or art museums, things they get their names put on (which is a weird deeply idea of charity, is the money Emirates Airlines pay to have the Wenger Arena named after them also charity?) in other words institutions that maintain class control. Hell Bill Gates made a ROI of something like 1200% when his 'charity' investment in the vaccine industry came good. I mean 'Billy The Normal Person' wouldn't insist a homeless person change their name to 'Billy the Normal Person' via deed poll before giving them a fiver?



https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/just-looking-at-money-makes-people-selfish-and-less-social/382088/

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the-rich-dont-give/309254/

Also

Did anyone read the James Butler thing in the LRB, half decent if typical back of the hand compliment novaramedia's punditry posing as intellectualism schtick (the problem with Corbyn is he didn't 'want' it enough (fuck knows why or how the bloke is a career politician with such anemic ambition), whilst his reported genuine hurt at being labelled 'anti Semitic' showed vanity apparently), increasingly more likely to quote Weber over Marx (wouldn't want to spook the commissioning editors, though at points it feels like he wishes he could quote the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon "how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part."), no serious questioning over Jones' sincerity because they are essentially members of the same guild within a guild, a thirty-something London based media/arts clique out for jobs, moulded to be to new voices of 'sensible radicalism' for the establishment, the Suzanne Moore's of the mid twenty-first century. Failed vocation indeed.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n23/james-butler/failed-vocation

[pancreas]

I read the LRB thing.

I was not impressed. I asked Lorna Finlayson what she thought about it, who also writes for the LRB sometimes, and is proper left-wing. She hasn't got back to me yet.

It's the pathetic craven desperation for an imprimatur from centrist intellectuals that fucks me off so much. Snivelling crawling arse-kissing, dressed up as detachment. HELLO I AM LEFTWING I CAN BE EVEN-HANDED, MASTER.

In a long essay, like that, you can dwell on the relatively small number of faults Corbyn has compared to any other politician—if you really fucking insist—but if you don't come back at the end and say quite clearly, this country fucked its last fucking chance and the corruption which brought you Corbyn's downfall, will now bring you a vast desert of endless unabated misery ... then I think you're on a grift.

[Sebastian Cobb]

ate policy, vision, actual integrity, antiracism in general
love rhetoric, electibility, posturing
simple as

[pcsjwgm]

Absolute bollocks from John McDonnell:

John McDonnell has urged Jeremy Corbyn and Labour to "keep on apologising" to Jewish people for the pain caused by anti-Semitism in the party.

In a new podcast, the former shadow chancellor said he wanted Corbyn's reinstatement as a Labour MP but accepted that the "language" and timing of his response to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission report into the issue had caused friction in the party.

Corbyn was this week warned by Labour chief whip Nick Brown that he had to unequivocally apologise for his claim that anti-Semitism in the party had been "dramatically overstated" for factional gain by his critics.

Defenders of the former leader are backing his legal challenge to Keir Starmer's decision to withhold the parliamentary whip, arguing that he was factually correct to point out that 0.3% of party members had a case of anti-Semitism against them.

But in an interview for Intelligence Squared's "How I Found My Voice" podcast, McDonnell made clear that the case numbers were not relevant and the key was to acknowledge the impact of abuse on the UK's Jewish community.

"Numerically, the number of cases of anti-Semitism within the Labour party might be small, but that's not the issue. It's the pain," he said.

"The point that Jeremy made ages ago, 'one anti-Semite in the Labour Party is too many'. So you don't calculate the numbers, you calculate the pain that's inflicted, and that's been immense."

McDonnell stressed that he wanted the party to "move on" and implement the EHRC's statutory verdict to improve its processes and root out discrimination, and suggested Corbyn and Starmer shared both objectives.

"The anti-Semitism issue has been a nightmare, we've got to come out of this nightmare. it's been a really dark night," he said.

"Mistakes have been made, we accepted that. Apologies have been made time and time again and I repeat, even now the number of apologies we've made to the Jewish community and we need to keep on apologising to them as well."

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/john-mcdonnell-corbyn-pain-jewish-community-anti-semitism-podcast_uk_5fbd9adec5b6e4b1ea46ac6a

Perhaps you can "calculate the pain that's inflicted" and not "calculate the numbers", but if you calculate both then you'll see that the mainstream narrative has to be called into question. McDonnell, in claiming that the numbers are irrelevant, seems determined to avoid having to face that fact. In particular, how is it that "immense" pain has been inflicted on Jewish people by alleged anti-semitism in Labour, where anti-semitism is miniscule, compared to other political organisations and sections of society, where anti-semitism is more prevalent? Corbyn's response to the release of the EHRC report identifies political weaponising of anti-semitism and hysterical media reporting as (at least part of) the cause of the pain:

"One antisemite is one too many,  but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated."

McDonnell even quotes the first part of this paragraph, but condemns, while completely failing to address, the rest of the paragraph that talks about the "pain" that he is supposedly so concerned about.


Jamie Stern-Weiner's response:
https://twitter.com/jsternweiner/status/1331640279703691269
and Daniel Finn's:
https://twitter.com/DanFinn95/status/1331683140109295617

[jamiefairlie]

It is obvious but it's also sadly surprising.  I earn a lot less than £20Kpa but I like to think that if earned a great deal more, that would not preclude me from supporting dear old Jez just as much as I do.  Does money alter people to that degree?  I hope not, though it appears so.

I think it does but it's not the whole answer. To earn a good wage, it helps if you have a selfish ruthless streak and that characteristic makes you more likely to be right wing.

[greenman]

It is obvious but it's also sadly surprising.  I earn a lot less than £20Kpa but I like to think that if earned a great deal more, that would not preclude me from supporting dear old Jez just as much as I do.  Does money alter people to that degree?  I hope not, though it appears so.

It does arguably mean that its that much harder for the establishment to trick these people into the idea there working for their best interests, realistically even at 40K per year right wing Labour and the Tories aren't "on your side" relative to someone like Corbyn and its only actually a tiny percentage of the population who benefit from their dominance of politics. There is obviously a much greater level of comfort though which makes it easier for this people to be led into ignoring how poor funding of the NHS, education, etc hurts them as well.

Really I would say the way the media works in recent decades has shifted from deference to authority to playing to ego and a lot of the middle class has successfully been convinced that a few relatively low cost markers such as avoiding open bigotry is enough to consider yourself moral in outlook. You take that view and you can basically consume the media and barely ever be in a position were your morality is challenged and I think that has had the effect of a lot of people being very easy to control with dishonest criticism. A lot of the drive for Starmer and "normality" wasn't really about electability for these people IMHO, it was about returning to a position were they could safely back a side and not face personal criticism.

[BlodwynPig]

I read the LRB thing.

I was not impressed. I asked Lorna Finlayson what she thought about it, who also writes for the LRB sometimes, and is proper left-wing. She hasn't got back to me yet.

It's the pathetic craven desperation for an imprimatur from centrist intellectuals that fucks me off so much. Snivelling crawling arse-kissing, dressed up as detachment. HELLO I AM LEFTWING I CAN BE EVEN-HANDED, MASTER.

In a long essay, like that, you can dwell on the relatively small number of faults Corbyn has compared to any other politician—if you really fucking insist—but if you don't come back at the end and say quite clearly, this country fucked its last fucking chance and the corruption which brought you Corbyn's downfall, will now bring you a vast desert of endless unabated misery ... then I think you're on a grift.

Precis. The Black Lodge Shoulders knocks it out of the park

[BlodwynPig]

Fuck McDonnell, they've won now.

Just one more piece to nail us to the cross - Corbyn coming out, fully apologising and saying that any one of us who doubts the words of Margaret Hodge is an anti-semite and a traitor to the Labour Party.

At that point you can stuff humanity, at least in political terms, and start the destroy and rebuild phase Chodney.

[Buelligan]

Yes there is reams of evidence on this, for example people in expensive cars are three times more likely to drive from a hit and run, the richer you are the the less you give proportionately to charity, there was a fascinating study earlier this year that tricked wealthier people into admitting they're racist (because the researchers in question figured such is the stigma people won't admit to such things directly) it involved having 6 statements one of which was something like "genetics accounts for the income disparity experienced by ethnic minorities" and then person in question says how many of the statements do you agree with?" anyway it turned out the very wealthiest are the most likely to have such beliefs...

I don't see that as evidence at all.  Who's to say whether the people agreeing with that sentiment were bald racists or whether they were acknowledging the systemic racism in society that disadvantages non white people, as another prevalent ism does non male people?  Sure, it could be evidence but it could also be something else.  I'm not convinced tally-sticks are an insightful way of investigating the human psyche, especially when the questions are so poorly thought out.  I say that as someone who doesn't even care how much a car costs as I will never own one.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think in general property ownership is probably what forces people to be a bit selfish over wages themselves, it's a great political tool in general for getting the public to vote against their own interests.

[holyzombiejesus]

I read the LRB thing.

I was not impressed. I asked Lorna Finlayson what she thought about it, who also writes for the LRB sometimes, and is proper left-wing. She hasn't got back to me yet.

It's the pathetic craven desperation for an imprimatur from centrist intellectuals that fucks me off so much. Snivelling crawling arse-kissing, dressed up as detachment. HELLO I AM LEFTWING I CAN BE EVEN-HANDED, MASTER.

In a long essay, like that, you can dwell on the relatively small number of faults Corbyn has compared to any other politician—if you really fucking insist—but if you don't come back at the end and say quite clearly, this country fucked its last fucking chance and the corruption which brought you Corbyn's downfall, will now bring you a vast desert of endless unabated misery ... then I think you're on a grift.

It's not very good, is it? How you can come away from either book and not mention the likes of Austin or Watson but instead talk of Corbyn's vanity. That final paragraph is wretched too. And as for when he describes the current situation of Corbyn being refused the whip as an uneasy truce...

[greenman]

I think in general property ownership is probably what forces people to be a bit selfish over wages themselves, it's a great political tool in general for getting the public to vote against their own interests.

There is I think an easy manipulation by playing up the fear the left would cause an economic collapse and effect the value of your property/pension but really the record of the right isnt exactly great on these things is it? neo lib orthodoxy trapped how many people in negative equality?

[Sebastian Cobb]

I think it's as simple as people will not be willing to do things that will make society and their quality of life better if there's merely an implication that big numers might stop going up. Even though left unchecked and given it's a bubble late-stage capitalism will make that a brutal certainty at some point.

[Johnny Yesno]

Uh-oh! Looks like we might have lost another one:



https://mobile.twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1332461331656679427

Of course, we don't know what the motion was but someone in that thread reckons it was this:



https://mobile.twitter.com/Red4Red1/status/1332466448568963073

Can't see anything wrong with that. Can't decide whether I hope they're right or wrong.

[Paul Calf]

Can't even mention his name any more. I hope Mr. Corbyn isn't planning a trip to Mexico City any time soon. Best watch out for them ice picks.

The Labour Party is right-wing Stalinist. The Tories are fascist. Everyone is corrupt. Violent nationalism screeches its name over the land.  Money is being pumped into guns and tanks and bombs while people starve and freeze on the streets.

It doesn't take a genius to see what's coming.

[colacentral]

"Anti-semitism is fine actually, as long as it's targeting lefties."

[Buelligan]

I'm just glad I'm no longer paying these people.