Election Open Forum
Apologies to everyone who has been concerned about 'Happy Jack'. I've been a bit low of late and really didn't realise others might be worried by absence. I'm appreciative - but also somewhat embarrassed. In truth, I lost track of time.
Many thanks to Ray Sunshine and Cressie for alerting me to this.
So, share your thoughts of the election campaign ....
Nige for PM🤣 and sorry to hear you weren't well, Jack. Hope you're feeling better now.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you've been down, Jack, but I'm glad you're back. I shall call off the search teams.
ReplyDeleteIn my area, only LibLabCon plus Reform are standing, so I shall be voting Reform. My constituency has been some flavour of Tory since the late 1700s, except on a couple of occasions where it returned a Whig and once when it elected a Liberal Democrat, so I don't hold out much hope of that changing. But I hope that Reform nationally manages to put a dent in the uniparty system. I think some of the SDP's policies are sensible, but their campaigning and advertising has been non-existent. The next five years are going to be awful.
Thank you, Lain. Yes, no rescue needed although Mrs Jack is keeping a close eye on me and insisting I rest.
DeleteAs for the election. It's tricky where I am because the Conservative lead was small at the 2019 election and SNP will win if the Conservative vote is divided with Reform.
Make sure that you listen to her. Women are very wise, you know.
DeleteI think the Cons have taken votes for granted for too long, on the basis that someone worse than them might get in. The margin between how bad the main parties are is now so small that I don't think it matters. Labour can't loose this election, so Reform splitting the vote won't make any difference to that, but it might send a message that we're tired of the status quo.
Not in Scotland they haven't 😎
Delete@Lain
DeleteGranted, but in Scotland it's the SNP that need trouncing.
Jack is back! That's today's good news.
ReplyDeleteElection? What election? Oh yes, that one, where the Tories are going to get wiped out. Well, you can't really say they haven't deserved it, can you? I'm just waiting to see what happens. Starmer is okay, as far as I can see, but I read an interesting article, I think it was in the Spectator, about the danger that if the Labour majority is as enormous as some of the polls are suggesting, it'll be hard for him to keep control over all the factions, including the Corbynites, who are apparently still around and in considerable numbers.
Starmer has no principles apart from saying wherever he thinks will get him into No. 10. He is happy for biological men to use women's spaces if they're feeling girly that day, and his constant capitulation to militant Islamist elements in his party is dangerous. Labour's proposed definition of Islamophobia, which they want to bring into law, is effectively a new blasphemy law.
DeleteThe main danger from a Labour government, however, is that they'll oust Keir within a few months and replace him with one of the Corbynites. Given how evidently weak he is under pressure, and his constant u-turns (trans rights, the environment, Gaza, Diane Abbot, tuition fees), I don't think it will be hard for them to concoct some excuse to topple him.
If this is accurate, Starmer is more radical than one supposes:
DeleteHe (Starmer) is a “red-green” follower of ‘Pabloism,’ an offshoot of Trotskyism, meaning he is committed to identity politics and green zealotry. He was involved quite seriously in an “obscure” Trotskyist pamphlet called Socialist Alternatives and was also a member of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, which was sympathetic to the British Communist Party, not in his teenage years but during his early and middle adulthood.
It was also last week revealed that Starmer ended up in Communist spy files after joining a Czechoslovakian work camp during the Cold War.
It is important to note here that when Starmer was asked by the New Statesman as recently as 2020 whether he was still a “red-green,” he responded: “Yeah.” In fact, he went on to say:
"I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind. …
The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality—feminist politics, green politics, LGBT—which I thought was incredibly exciting, incredibly important. Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully."
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/uk-labours-manifesto-conceals-starmers-radical-intentions/
The big issue we were grappling with then was how the Labour Party ..l bound together the wider movement and its strands of equality—feminist politics ... LGBT ... Broadly speaking, I think the Labour Party has done that very successfully.
DeleteHas he asked Rosie Duffield about this?
Starmer is one of those bizarre species of socialist millionaires who's quite happy to play the communist with everyone else's money, while his own wealth and prestige shelters him from the impact of his own decisions. Private jets, private schools and venison for me, not for thee - you can all get the bus, go to a failing state school and eat mealworm patties.
Don't you mean foie gras pate ... ?
Delete@lain -- "bizarre?" That sounds like every socialist in history.
DeleteBut real socialism has never been tried! Or so they tell me.
DeleteOh you're back, and there was I writing you a nice obituary 🤣
ReplyDeleteNice? Nice?!
DeleteWhat do you want? Horrid?
DeleteA better word would have been: "excellent" as befits Happy Jack.
DeleteWell if I ever have to write one, I'll send you a copy for approval 😂😂😂😂😂
DeleteHappy to receive a draft now. I can help with the editing!
Delete'Short' would be a better word ☺️
DeleteSpeak for yourself ... Oh, you are!
DeleteHJ all in God's good time!
DeleteExcuse me. I'm not short, I'm efficiently built. I am to the western physique as the iPhone is to ENIAC.
Delete@ Clive
DeleteWell, I've already planned my funeral songs and readings. Plus, letters to my loved ones.
@ Lain
Yeah, that's what folk in Essex call a "short-arse" 😎 Not HJ, of course 😈
Speaking of tallness, perhaps a snippet of yer actual (and very odd) The Who song Happy Jack will be sung then!
Delete"Happy Jack wasn't tall, but he was a man;
He lived in the sand at the Isle of Man.....
And they couldn't prevent Jack from feeling happy..."
Yeah, but that's Essex, innit? 😊
Delete"Happy Jack" is an excellent song!
DeleteNot voting for any of the chancers. A sadder bunch of incompetence and idiocy it's harder to imagine.
ReplyDeleteAnd I will prophesy that Starmer will be a hated PM before a year is out
I have just one thing to say, if you can, get out while you can. Barring a miracle,this country is going to be f@#£ed
ReplyDeletehttps://gript.ie/thade-andy-woke-capitalism-robs-you-blind-while-the-left-cheers-them-on/
ReplyDeleteA comment not on the election as such, but more on the "choice" you have between Tory and Labour. I can't really say Reform would be any different, but if the analysis is right, I imagine there's nothing to be lost by shooting in the dark and taking a chance on them.
Yes, Jack has been AWOL for a while; one hopes and prays that whatever issues he has had have been resolved somewhat.
ReplyDeleteUK election? Crisis What Crisis?
I'd also vote for Nige. Any chance of the Tories standing down some candidates like he did for them recently? Thought not.
We have also had elections over here in Romania, with the family-oriented (and irredentist) AUR party now considered by many traditionalist Christians to be the only one that can represent them, and they boosted their EU parliament seats. (Thank heavens that all voting here is still done on paper and on the day.) Our presidential election is in the autumn.
I just got back from the outdoor Pentecost service at the Orthodox cathedral here, beautiful and well attended, most people happily standing for up to 2 hours in the early-evening Transylvanian summer heat approaching 30°C.
Yes, I'm back.
DeleteThe Orthodox Church allow you to hold services in their cathedral. That's good news.
Good that you're back - Mrs Jack is clearly doing a good job!
DeleteNo, I'm fairly sure that the Orthodox Church only hold Orthodox services in their cathedral. I can't imagine that I would be barred from entering. And this one was outdoors anyhow.
Ah ... I misread you.
DeleteMrs Jack can be fearsome at times!
No worries, one guessed that there was probably a misunderstanding!
Delete(The Orthodox Church in Romania still has - nominally, at least - a very high percentage of adherents, and - for what it's worth - it managed to keep its doors open more than in any other country in previously interesting times... I dare say that Lain can provide more info).
Thank you, Jack, for your post upthread about Starmer being a “red-green” follower of “Pabloism”, two terms that are both new to me. I said earlier that he seems okay to me, but now I’m not so sure. The Communist Party connection doesn’t worry me much, but the identity politics business does. I had assumed he was too intelligent and too perceptive to be taken in by any of that crap.
ReplyDeleteArticles in Wiki outline "Pabloism":
DeleteSocialist Alternatives was the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT), a formerly Trotskyist Pabloite group based in Paris.[1]
Being a small group in the UK, it was best known for the Marxist magazine of the same name partially edited by Keir Starmer from 1986 to 1987.[2] The magazine is believed to have been produced by the Pabloist International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (IRMT)[3] and advertised its events and publications, although one of the authors identified it as being an outgrowth of the Socialist Society connected with Ralph Miliband and Hilary Wainwright.[4] Paul Mason has called it a "Trotskyite front magazine",[5] although this is disputed.[4] The French Trotskyist journalist Maurice Najman was also cited as a key supporter.[4] ...
It was described by the left wing magazine Chartist as "the human face of the hard left".[7] Peter Hitchens described Socialist Alternative's "preoccupation with sexual politics and green issues" as presaging the politics of all today's major British politicians.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternatives
@Ray - this is a good short summary of Starmer's positions.
DeleteThe dizzying dishonesty of Keir Starmer.
https://youtu.be/ufKBmYqkCP4
Anyone placed any bets on the date of the election or the outcome in particular constituencies?
ReplyDeleteWhat a nonsense!