good article by polly toynbee

[egb_hibs]

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


[Only Registered Users Can See Links. Click Here To Register]

apart from the pointless partisan stuff (does anybody bar polly really believe the tories care less about the poor than labour), and apart from the usual tired single answer to all problems, this article is redeemed by it's articulation of the mounting inequality in the UK and the US.

it really is shocking and lamentable. not up enough on the american sitch to comment on what's going on there (am about to read 'Deer Hunting with Jesus' which is about the conditions of america's white rural poor, so hopefully that will provide some insights).

in the UK though, one can point to a catalogue of damaging policies and behaviours, ranging from the sickening greed of sections of the city, through to the - sorry to go on, but it's true - effects of pc.

something really must be done. this has been created by the ideas of both right and left, and it needs both the right and left to acknowledge that if any progress is to be made.

[O'Driscoll]

Polly is right, the trouble is that people seem only to listen to such arguments in the face of adverse economic conditions.

it seems that socialistic interventions on the economy are there only for the bad times

re your point about PC which isn't mentioned in the article, again I agree! the trouble with PC is that it is just as repressive and inefficient as the excesses it was brought in to redress. However i pick up from your argument a kind of communitarian link between politics, economics and morality.

The other thing I pick up from the article is that Cameron may be stealing Labour's clothes in the way Blair did the Tories! Interestingly if (like Blair) he is genuine in his statements, he may be able to push through the kind of reforms that a Labour government wouldn't get away with, in the same way that Blair and co got tuition fees through (if the tories tried it then it would have been expected of them and met greater opposition).

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by O'Driscoll
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Polly is right, the trouble is that people seem only to listen to such arguments in the face of adverse economic conditions.

it seems that socialistic interventions on the economy are there only for the bad times

i disagree. i think she is right about this particular problem being a problem, but wrong, as always, with proposed solutions

re your point about PC which isn't mentioned in the article, again I agree! the trouble with PC is that it is just as repressive and inefficient as the excesses it was brought in to redress. However i pick up from your argument a kind of communitarian link between politics, economics and morality.

isn't there a fundamental link? at the root of both left and right's contributions to this mess is a hyper-individualism that disavows communal concerns, and moral precepts that go beyond the self (which includes, btw, conscience salving actions for selfish purposes, which i think accounts for much of gesture politics).

now i'm no socialist - they tip the balance far to far away from the individual - but there is a balance to be struck.

as for morality and politics; the alternative is focus groups and pandering to marginal voters. is that a better way forwards? politics surely requires a moral base - just not to overbearing and authoritarian a one. just as ideals are required while ideology is to be shunned.


ps - pc is part of my diagnosis - hardly going to be mentioned by PT who has long championed many of the causes of the problems we now face.

The other thing I pick up from the article is that Cameron may be stealing Labour's clothes in the way Blair did the Tories! Interestingly if (like Blair) he is genuine in his statements, he may be able to push through the kind of reforms that a Labour government wouldn't get away with, in the same way that Blair and co got tuition fees through (if the tories tried it then it would have been expected of them and met greater opposition).

i don't think polly's right on this - she can't accept social concerns on the part of tory's and so can only reach the conclusion she does. but i think some of them at least, really mean it:

i think danny kruger - the policy wonk behind 'hug a hoodie' - really means it; he's given up a career path of the alexander / milliband flavour to commit himself full time to a charity he set up focussed on rehabilitating former prisoners.

i think ian duncan smith, dweeb that he might be, means it, with as deep moral conviction, as any member of the PLP.

i think gove and others do to. perhaps even cameron himself.

there is indeed a bit of politics of all hues gravitating to a centrist mush here - which has both good and bad sides - but there's also i think a return of traditional concerns on the conservatives benches, that were put aside during the thatcher era. it's not all noblesse oblige either - david davis, along with alan johnston, must be the most un-'high born' members of the front benches.

i think it needs the best of the left and right to correct the failings of the worst of left and right.

[O'Driscoll]

ahhh! the good old one nation Tory, come back Ted Heath all is forgiven!

The rampant individualism that our society seems to go by is indeed a problem, but I'm not convinced that the best of the left and right as you put it can really solve the problems we face as a society since we have been through several periods of consensus politics and they didn't do it before!

The problem with the gravitation to the middle is as you put it driven by a desire to win marginals and therefore elections. The moral conviction you speak of, I have always seen as belonging to old Labour, perhaps some of what Old Labour were driven by needs to be revisited. And if IDS etc. (and I dont think he's a dweeb, he had the balls to get out and about and see for himself) agree then maybe we can get a new better hegenomy than the TINA tony one we've just had.

My fear is that it goes much wider than governments can deal with and it may need to come to conflict before we see a way forward, globally.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by O'Driscoll
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

ahhh! the good old one nation Tory, come back Ted Heath all is forgiven!

The rampant individualism that our society seems to go by is indeed a problem, but I'm not convinced that the best of the left and right as you put it can really solve the problems we face as a society since we have been through several periods of consensus politics and they didn't do it before!

The problem with the gravitation to the middle is as you put it driven by a desire to win marginals and therefore elections. The moral conviction you speak of, I have always seen as belonging to old Labour, perhaps some of what Old Labour were driven by needs to be revisited. And if IDS etc. (and I dont think he's a dweeb, he had the balls to get out and about and see for himself) agree then maybe we can get a new better hegenomy than the TINA tony one we've just had.

My fear is that it goes much wider than governments can deal with and it may need to come to conflict before we see a way forward, globally.

is one nation such a bad idea, if we have to have tories at all?

i agree, i think, with most of what you say; i consider myself a centrist but believe that is best achieved - like riding a bike - by constant little corrections to left and right. trying to stay fixed down the centre doesn't work.

i think old labour were possessed of moral conviction; but i think it's a partisan mistake to believe one holds it exclusively (i'm not accussing you of that btw, you didn't say it - i'm just trying to be clear on my view)

i also agree that the problems go wider than govt can address - but then as a non socialist that's my default position
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.


i believe cameron's pitch - sincere or otherwise - about the need for us all to get involved is the correct one. whether he means it, or more to the point - whether we can or will - is another matter.

ps - you are right to correct me on IDS. i just meant he's a bit geeky in his manner, but i think he is a man of admirable conscience and fibre, whether or not we'd agree on all points. more of that is needed, from both those we agree with, and those we disagree with.

[O'Driscoll]

At the risk of my head exploding whilst doing the ironing, listening to ELO, smiling at the fate of the huns in Vladville and visiting the bounce!

You seem to be caught in an ideology which is part benevolent paternalist and part third way (no not the fascist one! the Giddens one!) whereby the argument is that Government should look after its weakest members of society but unlike the nihistic no such thing attitudes of recent years, there is a very real society and we all have a responsibility to make it work.

the global market is of course the nemesis for all of us who espouse democracy and citizenship. Yet through many crises it endures, much to my lefty chagrin.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

[egb_hibs]

Originally Posted by O'Driscoll
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

At the risk of my head exploding whilst doing the ironing, listening to ELO, smiling at the fate of the huns in Vladville and visiting the bounce!

You seem to be caught in an ideology which is part benevolent paternalist and part third way (no not the fascist one! the Giddens one!) whereby the argument is that Government should look after its weakest members of society but unlike the nihistic no such thing attitudes of recent years, there is a very real society and we all have a responsibility to make it work.

the global market is of course the nemesis for all of us who espouse democracy and citizenship. Yet through many crises it endures, much to my lefty chagrin.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 5 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

my view - and apologies for this but it's how i honestly feel - is that we live in a protestant country. and the US is one too.

due to cultural tropes that proceed from that cultural inheritance, i feel that false dichotomies abound. to me, what we need to pursue is individual freedom, within the confines of the common good. these things have been, imho, needlessly yanked apart into opposing positions, due to differing prod takes on what is virtuous (need to wait till i've had a good sleep if you want this point expanded on).

i find that nothing in the anglosaxon world represents my perspective. i feel more empathy with the continental positions where social justice need not be bound to socially destructive transgressive agendas, and equally, where market sensibilities do not seem so married to rapacious darwinism.

perhaps i am being naieve and viewing things fondly from a distance that would look uglier closer up. nevertheless, even if i am wrong about the convergence of my views with theirs, i strongly believe that the way forward involves harnessing the fruits of individual enterprise to the common good, and cultivating (rather than denigrating at every opportunity) the institutions - from the personal to those of the body politic - that oblige rather than coerce collectivism.

i've started reading a book i mentioned in the OP - and while it is refreshing in challenging the distance between the american left and the working class, it persists with their arrogant false dichotomy; namely that the poor vote against their interests - presumably by favouring (the window dressing) morals of the republicans over the economic policies of the democrats.

to me this suggest two obvious but never discussed points -

- perhaps not every voter is as selfish as the middle class left presume

- much more crucially; if a party claims to represent the working class; why force this choice upon them? why not give them what they want, which in different flavours on either side of the pond, is nevertheless common - a socially conservative, redistributive state. until that happens, the 'progressive' left, have no more claims to represent the overall interests of the average sort, than the liberal right.

the whole thinks fecked m'lad. there is immense selfishness in social liberalism which sits at odds with its socialist claims. i marvel at the way that, while people of the left blither on about crime being inevitable in capitalist societies due to the 'endemic violence of the system' they can simultaneously fail to see a far more obvious connection between a dissolution of mutual respect and a society that condones industrial scale abortion and assaults on every pillar of the fabric of society. you simply cannot expect to conditionally devalue life and interpersonal commitment and also expect it to prosper in contexts that suit you. i've little time for karl marx, but i know he'd have ripped through the follies of the modern left in this area.

you may switch off now, and think i've jumped the shark into reactionary blether, but thats what i think; whatever you feel is right or wrong, one things for sure - partisan positions of our day are very inconsistent.

it maddens me though; i know i've cultivated an image of right wingness here, but as i've always maintained, this is largely due to challenging the disgusting acceptability of condoning the brutal inhumanity of far left regimes, withoutsimilar right wing fodder to pop at and balance things out. in actual fact i'm as ambivalent about capitalism as the next man - the difference is i don't want to destroy it till something less shit is identified. tragically i dont believe that has happened and nor is likely to be anytime soon, and in the mean time, i think all the anti-capitalism cant amounts to nothing more than nihilism.

in a nutshell - the left has been utterly perverted by selfish middle class wankers of the 1960s onward, seeking to legitamise, normalise and politicise every appetite of their own, while salving themselves with a perverse admiration for authoritarian thugs who represent the very opposite (as long as they're at a safe distance). the right meanwhile, has unleashed the rationalist genie with savage results. the final irony being the left like to rabbit on about rationalism while behaving in any way but, while the right are less enamoured by it's remorseless logic in principle, but in practice are it's midwife. in either case i'll excuse the hardcore commies on one hand, and the randian fundamentalists otoh; they at least know where they're at. in mitigation though, they are total ****s.

ps - had a few shandys between the last post and this, so apologies in advance for 'loss of focus' (or indeed, the plot)

[O'Driscoll]

You should drink shandy more often! some of the above post is classic. Not that I agree but it has made me think!

three things I will pick up.

1. People being obliged rather than through force to be part of the wider society (I think thats what you meant)

Sometimes its better not to have choice at all, this has been known since Moses time. People are flawed and we make some really f****d up choices. There would also be rogues, big ones like News International, who would ignore obligation.

2. The left since the 60's and their selfish desires being politiicsed and fullfilled.

Funnily enough I kind of agree, there have been some total w*****s amongst them, but on the whole they were well meaning. Personally my Socialism owes more to 1945 than 1968, in that i believe that before we chase after all kinds of single issue identity matters we should ensure that there is a standard below which people are not allowed to go. In other words deal with poverty first.

3. Protestant counrty? Protestant values? I think the kind of liberal collectivism you espouse is more akin to Catholic Europe. But where the Proddie tradititon has been successful politically is in the more interventionist Scandinavian countries. I think the UK and Scotland are both Christian in their traditions with a hint of Judaism and politically there is no need to make a Catholic Protestant differentiation.