Speaking as someone who wishes Labour ill I am very happy to see Gordon Brown continue and would be nervous about Milliband . As for Tony Benn , he is an old loon who were he not in posession of old money would be scoffing Tennents extra strong on a Park bench.

Presumably scoffing in between his stints as a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. Which particular academic establishment is bidding for your services currently, newmania?

An Audience With Tony Benn 23/10/08 2.30pm(?)
Grand Theatre, Dingletown.

Up for it?

2.30pm? Shurely shome mistake? Anyway, Thursday's are UEFA Cup nights... we might be in Spain or Helsinki.

Tony Benn is a an important academic /sad old loon
Tracy Emmin is an important artist/posturing low life
Vic Reeves is a funny comedian/boring drunk

You pays ya money and you decide the latter is true and Newmania ought to be Professor of being right about everything. Am I right ? Course I am.

Surely that should be 'quaffing' not 'scoffing', and Tennants Super instead of extra-strong. Trust me, I'm a student and I know these things.

Also, whether you're a Bennite, a Brownite or a Tory turd, what was there to disagree with in that clip? Seems like common sense to me

"note - you'll have to endure some gruesome advertising feature first".

Four times I pressed the play button and saw the same advert, no Mr Benn in sight...

Must be your computer, John, because I've just hit the link and it played.

Oliver Letwin talking complete shit in the Independent. At least he isn't personally offensive like Gove.

asquith said:. At least he isn't personally offensive like Gove.
That guy looks like and sounds like Archie Andrews the ventriloquist dummy from when radio was king. http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/radio/archie.htm

Newmania,

Further to the comment I left on y'blog, you may be interested in these observations by a man of culture:

http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2008/08/art.html

I think there is an element of self parody in that post Asquith but in general the left have been repsonsible not only for the spiritual death of the nation but its artistic nadir as well. There will never be a state poet.

It played today after only one advert. I was tickled by New Labour being Maggie's greatest achievement.

Unfortunately, he is behind the times. Miliband has something of the Black Knight about him rather than White Knight...

Who is this Newmania person? He scatters his deluded rantings about like punctuation marks in this comments section and not once has he offered anything that even vaguely makes sense.

A cross-section of culturally significant lefties could include:

Graham Greene, Laurie Lee, Dennis Potter, Tony Harrison, WH Auden, George Bernard Shaw (Nobel Prize for Literature 1925), Bertrand Russell (1950), Harold Pinter (2005), Doris Lessing (2007)

and then deeper on into popular culture, with people too numerous to list. As you are seemingly completely unaware of a radical/ literary heritage that goes back beyond even the romantic poets, particularly Byron, Shelley and Blake (and playwrights like Sheridan), maybe you've spent too much time making money to learn anything? Cretin.

newmania: "There will never be a state poet."

So what is the Poet Laureate then? We've had that post for over 400 years, and it's a crown appointed poet who is commissioned to compose for state occasions.

Historically it has been conservatives who have tried to stifle creativity, through censorship. However, it would take a very blinkered partisan moron to suggest that any one political tradition has 'killed art'.