Bernie, Bernie, Bernie

First off, to be quite clear, I don't like Hillary Clinton.  I don't trust Hillary Clinton, and never have.  I see Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton as well for that matter, as the very representation of the right-wing corporate takeover of the Democratic Party*.  I fear the very idea of Hillary Clinton as president, though not nearly so much so as the multitude of maniacs running for the Republican nomination.  I am not pro-Hillary or in any way inherently anti-Bernie.  And other, than that with his particular support amongst younger progressives, I may skew slightly older, I am generally exactly in line demographically with the majority of his supporters, and ideologically, if anything, perhaps a little to his left.  I like Bernie Sanders.  I support most of his economic proposals.  But....


So...Bernie Sanders.  I mentioned him a few times last year, including my praise of a speech he gave at Liberty University, in which I mentioned again his continuing failure to break out of his largely white support-base, a subject I had discussed in one of my earlier mentions of his candidacy also.  When I wrote the latter, I certainly never expected Sanders to still be running so strongly in the race by now, days away from the Iowa Caucus, let alone seemingly with a shot at winning the early primaries, if not the nomination for the Democratic Party for the presidency.

A lot of time has passed since then, there's been a lot of discussion amongst the pundit-classes about Sanders, there have been a few** debates and townhalls between the five, then three*** candidates on the Democratic side, and Bernie even found time to give a major speech on so-called 'Democratic Socialism' (in which he continued his apparent complete confusion between mainstream Social Democratic policy, and the attainment of a purely Socialist society, with public ownership of the means of production by democratic methods).  So much time, and perhaps the reason I haven't felt compelled to add anything here is that...my opinion of Sanders hasn't changed a jot.

I'm a little bit more optimistic with the polls coming out that some element of Sanders' Occupy Wall Street-style rhetoric and progressive economic policies could have a long-term impact on policy and direction for the Democratic party, but I still think Clinton will win the nomination, and I still can't see Sanders becoming president, even if he were to clinch the nomination, despite Clinton's monetary advantage, establishment-connections, and early lead in super-delegates.  And that's despite what is happening with the Republican nomination, currently being contested primarily between a far-right bomb-throwing theocratic ideologue, and an apparent out-and-out fascist.

I've watched Sanders give the same speech, the same talking points over and over and over again.  Wall Street, corruption, the one percent, only developed nation without universal healthcare, free college, the middle class, hard working Americans, economic inequality, fairness, too much money in politics, political revolution...  I've heard the breathless praise from his supporters, be they on Twitter or in independent media.  I've watched the fucking debates, I've seen the man's style, I've seen the large (mostly white) crowds he attracts, and I've heard over and over again how I should 'feel the Bern.'

Except I don't.  Never liked the slogan, never felt it six months to a year back, when his candidacy seemed a harmless irrelevancy, and still not feeling it now.  I still see an angry old white guy shouting platitudes at the audience, an aged social warrior whose lifelong-rhetoric happens to now, in his mid-seventies, match the popular zeitgeist of the post-Great Recession era.  I don't see a great leader, I don't see a future president, I don't see any evidence of this political revolution he wants, no matter how much enthusiasm he may inspire amongst college-students.  I don't see, perhaps more importantly, any evolution, even having gone through the protests and conflicts with Black Lives Matter protesters, of Bernie Sanders from a walking OWS-parody into a serious general-election candidate for the presidency.

It's almost as if he still doesn't quite take it seriously, close as he's getting, as if like Carly Fiorina on the Republican side, he were really running for a VP slot, or like Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee, just wanting to sell a book.  Almost, but not quite.  I think he must genuinely believe there's going to a mass uprising of Americans any time now in support of this great progressive revolution he keeps going on about.  Any time now.  As if almost half the country's electorate weren't in thrall to the right-wing radicalism of Tea Party Republicans.  As if in denial about his continuing inability to make inroads in support amongst blacks, and other peoples of colour.  As if forgetting the fact that older voters tend to have famously high turnout, and younger college-age voters notoriously low turnout.

We had a presidential candidate running on a quite progressive series of promises (some of which he has managed to keep, some not) back in 2008, with the slogan of 'Hope and Change'.  An extraordinarily well-spoken and charismatic candidate, who united white progressives, members of the Democratic establishment, blacks and Hispanics, rich and poor, the LGBT community, the young & the older.  If Barack Obama hadn't been able to assemble the broad coalition of support he did, hadn't especially been able to achieve the historically high turnout amongst black voters, what are the chances he would have got near the presidency ?  Sanders isn't remotely the charismatic unifying figure Obama managed to be back in 2008, and a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it, whatever the pollsters may say.

The right in American politics is far more motivated, far angrier, historically more likely to turn out, and likely to represent a very solid potent political bloc, unless Donald Trump manages to somehow split the party.  The growing numbers who increasingly call themselves Independents (which would include myself as it happens) are harder to gauge, but I suspect that the majority of that growth is actually amongst Tea Partiers who eschew the label 'Republican', but would never ever ever vote for a Democrat.  As for the polling again, Donald Trump especially polls badly amongst self-identified Independents, but...people lie.  People lie about their politics all the times, especially to pollsters, and especially when it comes to matters such as race, which has become the most contentious element in the current Republican fearmongering rhetoric regarding various 'Others', such as Muslims, blacks, immigrants...

I want to believe that a President Donald Trump or Ted Cruz is a fantasy, but the longer I spend in the company of American politics, and the more I know of the American people, the less surprised, the less shocked I am when there is such amazing support for extreme right-wing demagogues.****  I really wouldn't rule out a maniac like Trump or Cruz getting elected, and, especially with a Republican Congress, and the likelihood to cement right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades to come, the result of such a presidency would be utterly disastrous for the United States, and ultimately, the whole planet.  This upcoming election frankly scares the crap out of me, even as I want to believe that Sanders' policies, if not his actual candidacy have some chance in the future of the Democratic party.  Which I desperately do.

We're still for now in primary season, but Sanders needs to be defining himself more clearly on the likes of foreign policy.  As of this moment, after all this time, I haven't a clue what kind of president Sanders would be outside of economic justice, because it's...all...he...ever...fucking...talks about.  No matter what the question, what the context, always, always, always he pivots back to his comfort zone of talking about the 99% percent versus the 1%, as if incapable of talking about anything else.*****  I get it Bernie.  I agree.  You're talking to the converted here.  But Iran, Russia, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Saudia Arabia, Turkey, China ?  The migrants ?  ISIS ?  And I'm not going to get started on Black Lives Matter and racial justice.  'Not my wheelhouse' as they say.******  The latter, not even a matter for pivoting in the near future, as GE nears, but a pivot he needed to have made months ago, given Hillary's lead amongst black and minority ethnic voters.

If Sanders is serious, truly truly serious about running for President, I'd love to see him show it.  You need black voters, Bernie, you need older voters, you need to be addressing people's concerns about foreign policy, including terrorism, need to counter Hillary's claims of superior experience with something more than 'judgement' of voting against the War in Iraq.  And you need to understand, in the United States at least, with generations of right-wing corporatist brainwashing, that saying you are going to raise peoples' taxes, but blah...blah...blah...better off in the long term isn't enough, that accusations of being a 'socialist' isn't something you can shrug off, especially as you don't seem to understand (or perhaps care) what the term even fucking means...You need to explain again and again and again, even as you try to build a case for yourself as something more than a one-trick pony, something more than a one-issue candidate.  You signed up for this shit, you brought this on yourself, and your work is cut out for you now.  This if fucking serious, and the consequences, if as the Democratic candidate, you fuck up, utterly dire for the whole world.  I was familiar with 'Occupy' Bernie's rhetoric a year ago, but you need to evolve to face the full scope of the challenges ahead of you and truly 'bring it' if you're serious about this.  I want to be convinced.  By all means, make me feel the Bern...*******



* I'm inclined to think that as for Hillary herself, she never ceased to be a Goldwater Republican (which would admittedly put her still to the left of the GOP today, so far rightwards has it slid, as Goldwater himself predicted), and merely pretended a political conversion for the sake of her marriage and her husband's political career.

** Thanks Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.  Not trying to rig the electoral process in favour of your bud. and presumptive front-runner...at...all...

*** Who are we kidding, this is a two-person race, and long has been.  Not fair, and largely a result of media-bias, but what can one do ?  Now, if only we could combine Clinton's tenacity and political acumen, with Bernie's principles, and O'Malley's personality and good looks...Damn, that would be a fearsome candidate indeed...

**** Yes, I could and would say much the same of many European countries.

***** Oh, and climate change.  We should deffo. do something about that.  Millions & millions of green jobs sprouting magically out of the ground.  A Yuuuge economic opportunity...

****** Fucking hate the expression, but seems to be the phrase du jour, at least in US culture.

******* All this said, who would I be supporting, if I were in the Iowa caucuses or New Hampshire primaries ?  Absolutely, it would be Bernie.  But I'm not the one that really needs convincing.  My support or lack thereof doesn't matter a whit.  As I said earlier, a coalition of young college-age progressives and white progressives simply isn't going to cut it.  A focus on economic inequality isn't going to do it either.  The brief half-hearted reaction to Black Lives Matter is the only time I've seen any willingness on behalf of Sanders' campaign to even try to expand beyond his core economic message.  It he wants to go all the way, it just isn't enough.




Update: Hoped to post this earlier, and almost seems inappropriate now (morning of 2-2-2016) when the result in Iowa is neck-and-neck with Hillary, but the video in question wasn't available when I checked previously.  There's much to praise about Sanders' perfomance in this interview for MSNBC, but Sanders' response to Hayes' question at 4'32 on foreign policy is a perfect example of what I was talking about.  Hayes provides Sanders an opportunity to answer the sceptics on his foreign policy credentials, and even hands him on a platter a specific topical subject: the current Saudi assault on Yemen.

Here, Sanders could have gone into detail on his opinion regarding, and proposals for dealing with that particular conflict, or any other that took his fancy.  Hell, all he really had to do was show an awareness of the situation, and he could have given us just about any generic politician-speak (oh, it's a terrible tragedy what's currently happening in Yemen...blah blah blah...complicated situation...blah blah blah diplomacy...blah blah talk with our enemies...blah blah maintaining relations with allies...blah blah).  Instead, he segues from telling us how serious an understanding of foreign policy is for any would-be president ('life and death stuff') to retreating yet again behind the defence of his 'judgement' compared to Hillary Clinton's on the vote to go to war in Iraq.

Chris Hayes is about as friendly an interviewer as could be imagined for Bernie here, and he handed Bernie a perfect opportunity to prove himself on foreign policy.  I'm sick of hearing about the Iraq War vote already.  What about Yemen ?  What about the South China Sea ?  What about Boko Haram, say ?  Pick one, not 'the many many crises that exist all over the world', dammit.

I want to believe in ya Bernie, but I've been burned before, and I'm no political naïf.  Your answer here wasn't Donald Trump-level bad, but it was similarly insubstantive.  At this stage of the campaign, your supporters, and your country deserve better.

AJ+: Young Swedes React To U.S. Democratic Presidential Debate

C'mon AJ+, surely you could have found a few fascists even in Sverige ?

Wonders...What reason might Al Jazeera's backers have to encourage a Sanders presidency ?...Feel the Bern !

The New Statesman on Robots & Capitalism

Laurie Penny:

Do androids dream of a three-day week? This week, Professor Stephen Hawking weighed in on the topic that’s obsessing technologists, economists and social scientists around the world: whether a dawning age of robotics is going to spell mass unemployment. “If machines produce everything we need,” Hawking wrote in an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit, “everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared – or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution.”

As technology advances, the question is no longer whether or not robots are coming for your job. The question is whether or not you should let them take it. 

...

We’ve seen this pattern before. In successive waves of technological innovation from the industrial revolution to the automative leaps of the 1950s, millions of working people found themselves replaced by machines that would never inconvenience their owners by getting sick or going on strike. This time, however, it’s not just working class jobs that are threatened. It seems that Robespierre was right – it’s the prospect of angry unemployed lawyers and doctors that really prompts the elite to panic, or at least to produce urgent hardbacks and suggest to major news outlets that wealth redistribution might not be such a bad idea after all.

There is little to argue with in Kaplan and Ford’s basic predictions. Whatever happens, it seems that by the time most of us reach retirement, machines will be doing far more of the jobs that nobody really wanted to do in the first place. In any sane economic system, this would be good news. No longer will millions of men and women be stuck doing boring, repetitive, often degrading work for the majority of their adult lives. That’s fantastic. Or it should be. Did you really want the job those thieving android scabs are about to take from you? Wouldn’t you rather be writing a symphony, or spending time with your kids, or plucking your nose-hair? All else being equal, don’t you have better things to do than spending most of your life marking time at work to afford the dignity of not starving?

All else, however, is very far from equal – and that’s the problem. Technology is not the problem. The only reason that the automation of routine, predictable jobs is not an unmitigated social good is that the majority of the human race depends on routine, predictable jobs, and the wages we get for them. The rioting textile workers who smashed their weaving machines in the eighteenth century did not do so because they simply loved working twelve-hour days in dangerous, dirty conditions. They did it because they had been given a stark choice between drudge work and starvation. Two hundred years after the Luddite rebellions, most of us, when you get down to it, would not work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for forty years if we had a choice – but the necessity of earning a wage gives us no other option. In fact, advanced automation should for some time have made it unnecessary for any of us to work more than a handful of hours a week, as originally foreseen generations ago by thinkers like John Maynard Keynes – but somehow, most of us are working longer hours for lower wages than our grandparents.

The problem is not technology. The problem is capitalism. The problem is that in order to sell seven billion people on the necessity of globalisation, we’ve created a moral universe where people who do not work to create profit are considered less than human, and used as surplus labour to drive down the cost of wages. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single parent, an unemployed veteran or an unpaid intern – the logic of late capitalism grants you no right to live unless you are making money for someone else. If our economic system defines the basis of human worth as the capacity to do drudge work for someone else’s profit then the question that has troubled science fiction writers for a century is solved: not only are robots human, they may soon be more human than us. ...

No comment needed here really.  I had some shit written for another recent post from the New Statesman (regarding the absurd Tory policies on housing as it happens), but in this case, I don't disagree with enough of anything in this piece to even attempt a commentary.  Just read it if you haven't already.*


* Steph's take here, since I featured her cartoon: http://skewednews.net/index.php/2015/08/31/robots-step-aside-gravediggers-capitalism-still-flesh-blood-workers/

Jeremy Corbyn is Either a Brilliant Troll or a Total Twat

The ‘Right To Buy’ policy that lets council tenants buy their homes at a big discount should be extended to the tenants of private landlords, a Labour leadership contender has said.

Jeremy Corbyn said Labour needed to go further in tackling the housing crisis and that extending Right To Buy could help more people find a secure place to live.

“We know that Generation Rent faces an uphill struggle simply to get into long-term housing. We have seen some good ideas from Labour to establish more secure tenancies for renters. Now we need to go further and think of new ways to get more people into secure housing,” he said.

“So why not go with Right to Buy, with the same discounts as offered by way of subsidised mortgage rates, but for private tenants and funded by withdrawing the £14 billion tax allowances currently given to Buy to Let landlords?

“I believe this idea could open up the possibility of real secure housing for many currently faced with insecurity and high rents.”

Mr Corbyn said he would be launching a consultation on the policy over the summer as part of a package of new policies to solve the housing crisis.

The Conservatives are committed to extending Right To Buy to the tenants of housing associations – which are private, not-for-profit landlords. 

If adopted, Mr Corbyn’s proposed policy would extend the same scheme to for-profit private landlords.

Right To Buy has previously been criticised by housing campaigners who say it has depleted the council housing stock and transferred it into the hands of private landlords.

Across London well over a third of one-time council homes are now rented privately to tenants – often at rents far higher than would be collected by local authorities. 

Okay, so you disagree with the policies of past governments who sold off council-housing at discounted rates under right-to-buy-schemes.  Because they reduced the stock of social housing, without any real plan to replace them for those who can't afford to buy a home.  I get that entirely.  It's understandable to say the least.

And you've floated plans in the past about allowing councils to have the 'right to buy' back properties left empty for more than six months.  A little more debatable, but I see where you're coming from.

After all, how many flats, houses, and entire buildings in Britain are currently empty having been bought up by largely foreign speculators, many billionaires or multi-millionaires, purely as strategic investment-hedges ?

And so now you want to go after small-time landlords, and forcibly deprive them of rented properties that for all you know may represent their primary income ?  Properties that are currently rented.  That currently house families.  To give them the 'right to buy' the properties at the expense of the previous generations who obtained the properties under past evil misguided 'rent to buy' policies.  Are you nuts ?

I mean, I know the reason you're being allowed the farce of participating in the leadership race for Labour is that you and what you are seen to represent is discredited, and rejected, but I would hope that as a political leader, you were genuine, were honest in the undertaking.  In which case...are you nuts ?  This is the opposition's dream come true, whether we are talking your (at very best) centre-right opponents in your own party, or the right-wing assholes in the Conservative party.

Maybe you're really talking not about ordinary landlords, but about the ownership of vast swathes of rental property by large corporate interests.  As if they wouldn't rather re-develop or sell off property rather than micro-manage individual units.  Even then, going after them, and threatening to take their property, would look bad to a very large part of the electorate, smacking as it does of old-school socialism.  As in actual socialism*, as opposed to the current schoolyard-taunts of referring to anyone slightly marginally to the left of the current ruling parties as 'socialist', because 'nah-nah poopy head'...

You could reform these policies in ways that encourage the restocking of social housing, and take other steps to build up the housing-stock generally, but instead, your proposal is to forcibly take the properties from people who obtained them (one would hope) legally and fairly, without them having any say in the matter of suddenly being deprived of what could be a massive personal investment.

I see on LabourList that some commentators think this is a brilliant 'tongue in cheek' move that will somehow shame the Tory's own 'Right to Buy' policies.  For their own sakes, I hope they are joking too.

Oh, and if the argument is that the rents are too high -- in London that is...not that your policies are likely to be exclusive to London -- Well, why are they too high ?  Is it that the landlords are just greedy ?  Or is it that the lack of investment in new housing-stock, the continuation of 'right to buy' policies, the flood of economic migrants, the empty investment-properties and the rest of it, have driven up both the (inflated) valuation of the properties and the expenses of the owners whether that be in the form of taxes and/or their own living expenses, such that they have no choice but to raise the rents ?

I honestly don't know for sure.  Does Corbyn ?


* And if embracing actual socialism is what Corbyn is genuinely doing, then more power to him I guess.  As someone whose own politics would be at least ever so slightly to the right of his if so, I still reserve the right to call him a twat.

Last Words on Labour for a While...I Hope

Lots of people giving (mostly unwanted) advice to the Labour Party in the UK Media.  So I'll join the club and throw in my two penneth...Just make up your fucking minds already.

Are you the party of the working classes or not ?  Are you a socialist party, a social democratic party, a liberal party, or, as all the evidence would suggest, a wolf in sheep's clothing: a Right-wing party pretending at still having some vague slightly left-of-centre connections.

Either:

1. Just join the Tories already and have done with it.
2. Embrace fully your nominal socialist roots (and yes, quite possibly electoral oblivion)
3. Join the Lib-Dems in trying to resurrect the party of opposition that once was. *
4. Create an entirely new political party...or
5. Resign from politics and shut the fuck up.

You already shat all over multiple generations of Labour-supporters in the Blair/Brown era.  Now you seem determined to convince a new generation of an ever-more vague 'middle way' in which you  from day-to-day somehow represent some hypothetical slightly left-of-whatever-the-Tories-currently-espouse politics, and, you know what....it will fail.  You will fail.  It is pointless.  You, increasingly, are pointless.  If you don't like the name of your party, change it; Or better yet, just change parties.

For Jeremy Corbyn, choice two would seem obvious.

For the rest of the candidates for leadership, were they honest, and not terrified at what that might do for their careers, I'd guess at choice one for the lot.  Were they decent human beings, perhaps choice five.  Were they truly committed to principles rather than political power, maybe choices three or four.

Oh, and for the record, no, I am not a Labourite.  Poor Ed is the closest I ever came, and at this rate, the closest I ever will.  And my personal choice of those I posted above, would...I have to say, however reluctantly, be number three.  The forces of (to use slightly inflammatory language) anti-fascist resistance in British politics have been divided for far too long.  And the term 'fascist' is looking ever less hyperbolic what with the hyper-nationalism, the constant othering of minorities, the renewed snoopers' charter, the indefinite detentions, the torture, the endless war, the corrupt corporate influence, the abuses in the name of the so-called 'war on terror', and so on.

There.  Said my fill.  Now, I'll shut up.**


* Actually, attracting the generally populist but anti-immigrant-supporters of UKIP might be your biggest challenge in said hypothetical coalition.

** Well, on just that subject, obviously...

MP Follows Official Protocol Shock Horror

Labour's Andy Burnham derided over cringeworthy sign off to Prince Charles’ spider memos

The former health secretary was writing a letter to the Prince of Wales thanking the royal for congratulating him as a newly-appointed minister.

But he ended the note with the hand-written flourish: “I have the honour to remain, Sir, your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.”

The sign-off appears to be following ministerial protocol, with fellow former health secretary John Reid using the same wording when he wrote to the prince.

However, Yvette Cooper, the former planning minister, signed off her letter to the royal with the simple phrase: “Respectfully yours.”

As the fight for the Labour leadership hots up, Mr Burnham, a frontrunner in the race, has been derided for his obsequious reply. 

One commentator said the sign-off spelled the end of his leadership campaign, while others agreed it had severely damaged his credentials as a leftwing moderniser. 

Others on Twitter accused Mr Burnham of “sucking up” to the heir to the throne, while another tweeted: “Your most obedient servant? Thought better of Andy Burnham #socialism”

Just curious, but what would be the appropriate 'left-wing' or 'socialist' protocol for addressing the future monarch ?  Surely Yvette Cooper's 'Respectfully Yours' is also excessively fawning and deferential towards the evil institution that is the monarchy.  Respect ?  Why should she respect Charles ?  He's a fascist figurehead surely ?  A greedy aristo. mooching off the labour of hardworking Brits.

How about 'I fart in your general direction' ?  Too mild ?  'Go fuck yourself you royal cunt !' ?  Maybe he should have smeared the letter in his own faeces ?  There must be a guide out there somewhere...

Andy Burnham

So, this is the guy that Labour seemingly expects to lead them into the next elections huh ?  Because one generation lost to Tory-in-all-but-name Tony wasn't enough ?

Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to be the next Labour leader, is to argue that his party should value entrepreneurial businessmen and women as much as nurses and teachers.

The shadow health secretary, who is the favourite for the leadership, over Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, will promise an audience of business leaders on Friday that he would improve Labour’s reputation on the economy and ensure it values the contribution to society made by those who run companies.

All the candidates have now talked of the need to champion wealth creators in a significant change in tone from Ed Miliband’s rhetoric about standing up to corporate vested interests.

Because of course, business-interests have been so horribly under-represented in government the last several decades, whilst we endlessly coddle teachers and nurses, and pay them such outrageous wages.  All hail the 'wealth-creators' ! (™ Fox News)

Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has made a surprise move to assert his independence from the trades unions by saying he will not take any union cash to fund his Labour leadership campaign. Burnham made his announcement as one of his chief rivals, Liz Kendall, tried to seize the mantle as the change candidate and new Labour MPs expressed their concern that the nomination process may narrow the field to two before the party has had a chance to hear the start of a debate.

Burnham has been labelled in some quarters as the unions’ favoured candidate, but he said: “I am not going to take any money from the trades unions in this leadership campaign. No money has been offered, but if it was, I would encourage it to be given to the Labour party to assist the rebuilding after the election. But I am actively seeking the support of individual trade union members and am pleased they have a bigger say in this contest.

“I am aware that, whatever the result of this contest, the party must come out of this well. I am going to be my own man. I am independent and will make my own judgments. I make no apology for our historic links with the trades unions

No idea why he would be the 'union's favoured candidate', but if they had any sense, they might note the use of the word historic.  As in, time to put it behind us, part of our ancient heritage, something we'll acknowledge quietly, but obviously something that has no place in this modern century of glorious capitalistic ascendancy.

He will say Labour should not have been running a deficit before the financial crisis hit, and will promise that as prime minister he would eliminate the deficit if the Tories fail.

But his admission that the party made a mistake is sure to raise eyebrows – Mr Burnham was Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 and 2008, when the crisis hit.

Words fail me.  You do realise that letting your party be blamed for the (primarily US-caused) global economic crisis, is one of the reasons you lost the last election, don't you ?  And you think more austerity will 'eliminate the deficit' perhaps ?  By the year, erm...2300 maybe ?

Andy Burnham, the Labour leadership candidate, is planning to resurrect plans for what critics have described as a "death tax" to pay for people's care in old age.

Friends of Mr Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said that will return to the idea of a system where social care is funded by imposing a tax on estates when people die.

The plans have been criticised by the Conservatives as a "death tax" but characterised by Mr Burnham as a "social insurance system".

He has previously suggested that the current system is unfair because it penalises people who become ill and need care in old age. He has said that it means the most vulnerable in society pay the most and described it as a "dementia tax".

Oh, you 'ole socialist, you !  Taking money from people when they're dead and can't fight back is always a winner.  Of course if you wanted a 'social insurance system', you could always, oh, I don't know...use regular taxation...income tax say...while people are...actually still alive.  We could even...stay with me here...have a 'progressive' tax, whereby people are taxed according to their ability to pay.  From each according to his ability, right ?  Radical, huh ?

This post is titled Andy Burnham, but realistically, any of the candidates' names would probably fit just as well.  What it comes down to is this: Labour's leadership are professional politicians who happen to have ended up playing for 'Team Labour', 'Team Red' if you will.  'Team interchangeable meaningless label.'  But they don't actually believe in their own brand.  In fact, they're embarrassed by it.  And...It shows.  And if they don't buy what they're selling, then the voters certainly won't either.

Taking bets now for another Tory win in 2020, in the by-then rUK, consisting of an uncomfortable alliance of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, surrounded by and barely tolerated by the European Union.

I Just Can't Not...

Hadn't meant to post any videos for a bit, and didn't mean to bump the thing regarding the cops in Baltimore, but, then, I realised what day it was, and...I just can't not.  Not meant as any particular political endorsement and all that, but...as said, I just can't not.  Certainly not so long as the political spectrum remains so ridiculously tilted to the right in the western world, as it has been throughout most of my life.  Fuckin' Commies.  I hate them somehow less than than the other tossers.  But would that we had better alternatives...