Bollitics: VT General Election Poll #2

[Reality]

...

p.s. I think I know what his reply will be. :winkold:

I actually think Marx got far more right than he got wrong. There aren't many better paeans to capitalism, IMO, than Das Kapital.

Chuckle. Yep. :winkold:

It has always interested me how people claim to be Marxists and then propose/support all manner of government interventions along the lines of the New Deal or the recent bailouts that have the effect of keeping the capitalist machine ticking along. Marx was fairly adamant (and I pretty much totally agree with him) that capitalism, left to its own devices, would eventually give the workers control of the means of production and cause the state to wither away.

Interestingly enough, I would say that Marx was also absolutely correct that the USA would be the first country to reach that point. The recent actions of the Democrats notwithstanding, the USA is still probably the closest to the Marxist utopia (which I do consider to be a libertarian utopia), which can be achieved by elevating the workers to bourgeoisie and capitalists.

The error that Leninists, Stalinists, and social democrats make is in thinking that the State can be an effective agent of the people/workers.

Smith, Ricardo, Marx, Hayek, and Schumpeter would agree on far more than they disagreed on, IMO.

There is no way any Marxist could support the New Deal, or any form of welfare for that matter.

How exactly would the workers gain the means of production via capitalism today? He also said the workers would realize that they were being exploited one day and have a revolution to otherthrow the powers of capitalism. All this comes about when man realizes that he has been taken from his true nature - to work on the land. Man will realize that he has been alienated from his true spiritual nature. That isn't going to happen. That was key to the otherthrow of Capitalism, as he quite so clearly states in the Communist Manifesto, and even in his early writings the concept of alienation was key to early Marx.

Capitalism as we know it today is not going to make millions of people realize they should be working on the land, as not many people work on the land to give a damn anymore. All that is down to globalisation, whether you like it or hate it.

[Condimentalist]

Capitalism as we know it today is not going to make millions of people realize they should be working on the land, as not many people work on the land to give a damn anymore. All that is down to globalisation, whether you like it or hate it.

Not sure that I'd put it down to globalisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse

[peterms]

...By preventing an investigation into these sleaze ridden fcukwits and the susbsequent allegations about Mandleson, Adonis and gawd know who else?

Fascinating to see Mandy commenting that

"It's extremely disappointing and it's very sad and altogether rather grubby".

I thought it was the yanks who didn't do irony. How quickly does he forget his own past history.

Was it Hoon who said he had been taken in by the deception because the company "had a website and everything"? That might shed some light on the degree of credulousness with which the Cabinet scrutinised the dodgy dossier when taking us into an illegal war.

[Awol]

...By preventing an investigation into these sleaze ridden fcukwits and the susbsequent allegations about Mandleson, Adonis and gawd know who else?

Fascinating to see Mandy commenting that

"It's extremely disappointing and it's very sad and altogether rather grubby".

I thought it was the yanks who didn't do irony. How quickly does he forget his own past history.

Was it Hoon who said he had been taken in by the deception because the company "had a website and everything"? That might shed some light on the degree of credulousness with which the Cabinet scrutinised the dodgy dossier when taking us into an illegal war.

I'm in total agreement Peter. The question the media seem to be missing is that if no investigation into potential wrong doing in public office is actually required, why have these people had the whip withdrawn at all? Scared at what else will actually come out is my guess, Westminster appears to more rotten than even the total cynics imagined.

Somehow, we need a total clear out but how do we achieve it short of heading south with torches and pitchforks?

[Richard]

I think it would be interesting if there was a "None of the above" option on your voting slip

[blandy]

So do I Richard.

It would be even more interesting if "none of the above" won. What would happen then? Either in a seat, or overall.

Any ideas/suggestions? (anyone)

[snowychap]

So do I Richard.

It would be even more interesting if "none of the above" won. What would happen then? Either in a seat, or overall.

Any ideas/suggestions? (anyone)

Would we get Monty Brewster as PM?

[Reality]

So do I Richard.

It would be even more interesting if "none of the above" won. What would happen then? Either in a seat, or overall.

Any ideas/suggestions? (anyone)

Would we get Monty Brewster as PM?

OH, if only. Even the thought of living in such a world.

[Awol]

Any ideas/suggestions? (anyone)

People (as in Independent candidates) within the constituency can nominate themselves if they get *plucks at thin air* 100 genuine signatures of support. There could then be a series of public meetings facilitated by local media using TV and Internet, with each candidate saying why they were standing and what they stood for. I'm sure a system of wittling down the candidates could be devised, until a realistic number remained to actually take a full vote on. At least you'd get real, competent and honest people in positions of government, instead of politicians.

It would require Joe Public to actually get involved though.

[snowychap]

From here:

Stephen Byers getting caught peddling influence is like Telly Savalas getting caught peddling hair.

[leviramsey]

Candid Camera for the Westminster clique

No-mark ex-ministers and MPs no one has ever heard of pretend to be important in order to get a bit of cash. This, if the media and political class’s reaction to Sunday’s revelations is any indication, is BIG news. Not as big as Watergate. Perhaps a bit smaller than the MPs’ expenses scandal. But nonetheless big news, perhaps on a par with those revelations several years ago that former deputy prime minister John Prescott had two Jaguar cars. Outside of the Westminster cocoon, however, such revelations are unlikely to trouble anyone’s sleep – in some cases, they may even aid it.

Soporific probably isn’t what the investigative team from Channel 4’s Dispatches programme and The Sunday Times aimed for when they set about creating what looks like little more than Candid Camera for the Parliament Channel. No, they were hoping to show just how wretched and corrupt our political class is – which might indeed be revelatory if you missed cash for questions, cash for honours, cash for peers, cash for amendments, the MPs’ expenses scandal, the endless funding allegations and many, many more seemingly dodgy dealings. In fact, given the litany of scandal over the past 15 years, a headline running ‘Exposed: MP with principles’ would be far more shocking.

Clearly unperturbed by the deadening ubiquity of parliamentary scandal, the corruption-hunting journalists set up a fictitious US-based communications company called Anderson Perry, and, more vital still, secreted a camera in some pot pourri. They then invited a selection of cross-party MPs, including several Labour ex-ministers, to discuss how Anderson Perry might best lobby current ministers and civil servants – in return for any assistance, the MPs would receive a fee. Given that those interviewed by ‘Anderson Perry’, a mixture of has-beens and never-will-bes, were all standing down as MPs at the upcoming General Election, the prospect of some cash for contacts probably seemed pretty attractive. Which is probably what the journalists had wagered on.

Still, the journalists probably hadn’t quite reckoned on the bragging buffoon that turned up in the form of ex-transport secretary Stephen Byers. He boasted about his friendship with ‘Tony’ – or ex-prime minister Tony Blair as the rest of us know him. He boasted about how he supposedly engineered a deal with the current transport secretary Lord Adonis on behalf of National Express (securing them a stern rebuke rather than a multimillion-pound penalty for dropping the loss-making East Coast franchise). And he boasted about how he won an alteration to the food-labelling system from business secretary Lord Mandelson at the alleged behest of Tesco. But most of all, he just boasted. ‘I am the man who can put you in touch with important people like Tony or Peter or that Adonis chap’, he was effectively saying. ‘I’m like a cab for hire – at £5,000 a day’, he literally said.

Byers wasn’t alone, he was only the most quotable. Former defence secretary Geoff Hoon offered to lead delegations to ministers, stating that he wanted to make use of his knowledge and contacts in a way that, ‘frankly, makes money’. Former health secretary Patricia Hewitt was at it too, suggesting ways for companies to get in contact with ministers. That was about the substance of it really. They have all since denied doing anything wrong, with Byers going so far as to claim that he was really just making stuff up to show off. Good Labour comrade that he is, education minister Kevin Brennan backed Byers up, confirming that, yes, Byers was indeed a delusional irrelevance: ‘The idea that Stephen Byers would be able to change government policy by being paid the sort of money he was asking for is frankly ludicrous.’

Unfortunately for Byers, Hoon and Hewitt, while they may not have broken any current parliamentary rules or ministerial code, their folly has annoyed and/or delighted colleagues. So no sooner had last night’s Dispatches programme finished than the Parliamentary Labour Party suspended them on the grounds of bringing the party into disrepute. Rumours have since been circulating that many in the Labour Party still even partially loyal to prime minister Gordon Brown are far from disappointed to see the back of Hoon and Hewitt, the impotent duo who tried to depose Brown earlier this year, and the bumptious Byers, a man Prescott repeatedly referred to as that ‘Blairite outrider’.

But, beyond the extent to which this grubby episode fuels the gossip and intrigue of the courtly cliques at the Palace of Westminster, the big problem with revelations such as these is that they don’t really reveal very much. Yes, lobbying, which in itself is only the act of trying to argue your case with policymakers, can have murky depths (although not that murky – as chancellor Alistair Darling pointed out, ‘there’s no need to hire lobbyists if you have something to say; just make an appointment and say it’). And yes, the political class, particularly the demob-happy brigade about to exit it at the next election, is so lacking in political principles and ideals that its individual members find it difficult to believe in anything beyond their own self-interest. But does a journalistic sting casting further aspersions on MPs’ behaviour really help matters? If anything, the exposé of Byers, Hoon and Hewitt and others too irrelevant to mention as puffed-up desperadoes merely makes things worse, entrenching an already existing cynicism towards all things political.

However, what is revealed by this tawdry affair and more importantly the tedium it provokes, is the debilitating effect the obsession with sleaze has had on British political life. As we have noted on spiked before (see Sleaze: time for some adult debate, by Mick Hume), following Tory MP Neil Hamilton’s cash for questions mess and minister Jonathan Aitken’s conviction for perjury, sleaze became the defining political issue during the dying days of John Major’s Tory government in the mid-1990s. So eagerly did Blair’s New Labour seize upon sleaze as an election-winning issue that it became a key part of their 1997 manifesto in which they pledged to ‘clean up politics’ and ‘reform party funding to end sleaze’.

In doing so, however, they narrowed the focus of political debate. What was important in New Labour’s post-political era was less the ideas of a political party than the behaviour of its members. Given the difficulty of maintaining a life untainted, the whiter-than-white, anti-sleaze posture became a rod for the New Labour government’s own back. Whether it was Bernie Ecclestone’s donations to New Labour in the late 1990s or former home secretary David Blunkett’s undeclared directorship of a bioscience company in 2005, New Labour has frequently been brought low by the very behaviour it so cynically sought to politicise during its years of ascent.

And this is the other side to the infernal anti-sleaze crusade in contemporary British politics. With every scandal and every subsequent attempt to clean up politics, from the establishment of the Committee on Standards in Public Life at the time of the first cash-for-questions scandal in 1994 to the self-flagellating rounds of inquiry and report into the expenses fiasco, the focus on combating sleaze has led the media to go looking for it. And in a way, it’s difficult to blame journalists here: when appearing to be utterly without stain is the centre of political life, little wonder journalists go hunting for dirt. That, after all, is politics right now. But just weeks away from a General Election, the continuing degradation of political and public life is still dispiriting stuff.

As this latest scandal breaks noiselessly over the public, the real consequence of political and media elites’ sleaze obsession becomes clear. Reduced to who’s done what with whom, parliamentary politics appears to those beyond SW1 as little more than office politics. And as everyone knows, office politics is rarely of interest if you’re not working there.

[Reality]

What a corrupt Parliament it really has become.

[wiganvillain]

a headline running ‘Exposed: MP with principles’

never going to happen is it

[avfc89]

Labour for me.

[tonyh29]

Gordon Brown announces key Election themes

1-Find a suit that fits

2-not thump anyone for a month

3-Stephen Byers to be made ambassador to North Korea

the first TV debate kicks off tonight , according to most Osborne is the weak man at the table tonight so it will be interesting to see how ti goes ..

problem is to a degree is will the debate really work ... I doubt Darling is going to say anything that is going to change my mind about him and likewise the labour supporters on VT might as well post their reviews of Osborne now as they will already have decided that he was bumbling , incompetent and out of his depth and best suited for the part of a British Officer in a Mel Gibson film

[Rodders]

what channel is it on tonight?

[Demitri_C]

theres a tv debate tonight? what channel? is it between brown-nose, cameron and the lib dem leader (shows how well he is doing i dont even remember his name)

[tonyh29]

Ch4 20:00

Osborne - Darling and thingy from the thingy party

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

It's a chancellors debate, it'll just be a bunch of clearings in the woods sitting round discussing how big a clearing in the woods eachother is whilst pretending to give a **** that we are all skint and desperate for a bit of dosh.

[Chindie]

Odds on George Osbourne coming across like a complete twunt?