Re: @LucreLout - Can you guess what I'm going to say Tim...? @Chris
I find his assertion that the Conservatives being more authoritarian than Labour is 'patently untrue' to be laughable (and not supported by any evidence).
Look at where we were in 97. The level of surveillance, the level of petty rules and thought policing. Then look at where we got to by the time they were thrown from office. That is a pretty ballistic looking trajectory. The conservatives are better than labour only in that the trajectory has moderated extensively. It has, regrettably, not gone into reverse.
I'm not wed to one party or another, having voted Labour in 97, and Conservative ever since (it was the spending plans Gordon produced that showed lessons had not been learned). I dearly hope Jeremy Corbyn wins labours nomination, for three reasons. 1) He'll really reignite political debate. 2) He'll put the far left to death forever (though that won't be his intent). 3) He's unelectable as PM, allowing the third term we're very much going to need for the Conservatives to repair the economy labour torched. By 2025 I dearly hope to be able to vote for Ms Kendall as PM, I really do. Or perhaps Chukka could be persuaded to run again, as I genuinely believed he had a lot to offer.
Don't the tories paint themselves as the party of law and order?
Truthfully, I'm not wholly sure what they stand for just now. My view is they won an election by not being Labour or SNP. Not by being Conservative.
Aren't they now rubbing their hands together with glee at the thought of being able to implement more mass surveillance, having lost their Liberal millstone at the last election?
You really believe that? wow. I believe all of the activities they propose in their bill are already happening, this just legitimises it in law. Look at the party they began under.... yup, Labour. As I've said before, I believe the best thing Labour can do right now,since they collectively have no view on what the party stands for anymore, is to dissolve it, allowing the formation of new and eventually credible opposition to form around the ideas of ordinary people rather than party lines. There's no rule that says the party must exist.
And one only has to look at their record during the Thatcher/Major years
Thatcher saved this country from unionised greed, and the sock puppets of the communist USSR. Or useful idiots as they described them. Had the miners had better leadership, and one might legitimately suppose that had Scargill not been a mysoginist who delusionally believed that he should run the country, then much of the pain of those years could have been spared. Scargill, Red Robbo, all they did was destroy their industries and end their members livelihoods. Sad, very sad, but true. They achieved nothing else.
As an aside, it amuses me how many of the left complain about Thatcher, who left power more than 20 years ago, and well before her most vociferous detractors were old enough to remember events or understand politics.
For all his many failings and messianic visions I don't recall Blair directly ordering armed, mounted police units to charge members of the public en masse.
No, Blair just bombed the piss out of the arabs. But I guess they don't count in your world view. Blair was the most needlessly bloodthirsty PM this country has ever known. I dearly hope that his like will not be seen again, regardless of the colour of rosette they choose to wear. How is it not a badge of honour for a PM to serve three terms of peace? I am ashamed to have voted for him.
Orgreave should be investigated in full and any wrong doing punished. Hillborough has taught us that time need be no barrier to the truth, and I am personally saddened that those events won't yet be reviewed. Surely their time must come? I remain open minded as to wrong doing on either side, and believe a full, open, and public enquiry is the only way to establish the truth. Maggie, Scargill, the police, the miners.... none were saints. All should be scrutinised, and if necessary, judged.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
