I have just received some stern advice from our Labour Group Executive pointing out that councillors using blogs and other social media should refrain from personal abuse about other people, particularly their political opponents.
As I am always careful to observe the warnings from my senior colleagues, I will obviously avoid reproducing the protest placard at the bottom of those on this page in today’s Guardian.
Oh what a good boy I am.
There is usually an exception to the rule. For example, in the case of David Duff?
I see the ‘Jailhousemurderer’ still hasn’t quite mastered this ‘wit’ thing!
Yes, something you obviously have in common.
Actually, I think wit is one of my strong points. On the other hand, David Duff still cannot tell fact from fiction. I seem to recall Bob once before saying he would refrain from going on the attack, and it did not last too long. I think that it is easier said than done. Another exception to the rule must, of course, be Paul Staines.
A nappy New Year duffers.
Thank you, and I hope your bad dreams ease off – nah! just realised, you wouldn’t be likely to have any. Still, I hope on Christmas Day you raised a glass to absent friends.
Perish the thought that Labour Group EC Members are “sensitive souls” who are easily shocked! Then I do detect a little “nanny State” advice from sources like the LGA!
However I am not a Councillor!!
And were you still one, comrade, I have little doubt you would have paid it scant regard.
I presu,umrn thathat they would not hasve appyovrd of this then ?
“That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. But I warn you they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were. ”
Nye, The good prophet
GW
o Speech on 3 July 1948 at the Bellevue Hotel, on eve of the entry into force of the National Health Service
Hi Bob; Belated Seasons Greetings, haven’t had any time on your site for the last couple of weeks, due to the introduction of the 1st grandchild and the festive season, hope to remedy that in the coming weeks and months seeing as how the outlook economically and politically looks even bleaker than last year. Glad to see your’e back in socialist mode, despite communications from your Labour Group Executive; that quote of Anuerin Bevan’s,provided by GW(God Bless His/Her cotton socks), should be tatooed on to the forehead of every Labour Party office holder/Councillor/ M.P. throughout the length and breadth of the land. Must admit that I was getting a little concerned when I saw a post a couple of weeks before Christmas that looked like you were cuddling up to Tebbit, I had to rub my eyes, and pinch myself a couple of times, in fact I started to imagine that there was another Proportional Representation referendum campaign starting up again, and within a couple of posts you’d be lining up with Cameron and Osborne again, just like you did last spring.
Have you noticed that with the onset of the New Year, and all the problems we are bound to be involved in fighting the Tory-led Coalition government’s slash and burn policies the campaign against Ed Milliband has been intensified, one of the Bliarite vermin, Tim Allen(no relation, thank God) led with an article in the Guardian attacking his leadership, and then yesterday one of your comrades from your neck of the woods, Liam(No money left) Byrne with another article in the Guardian telling us how we will have to abandon Beveridge and the Labour Party’s concept of the welfare state from its inception. If anything has to be abandoned, surely it has to be the poisonous bunch of Bliarites, many in the shadow cabinet, who have never accepted that David Milliband was defeated in the leadership contest. This pack of carpetbaggers, careerists, opportunist, snakeoil salesmen/women were prepared to have for a leader an ex-Foreign Secretary that should/ could be arraigned in the International Court of Justice for Britains role in rendition of people to country’s where they could be tortured to obtain confessions of suspected terrorist offences, and when they knew there was no chance of a trial or conviction in any U.K. European Union or U.S.courts. For me personally, there was an even stranger article attacking Ed Milliband, in the Daily Record by George Galloway, saying Ed is another Michael Foot, and weird, to boot. I hope that George isn’t trying to slither his way back into the Labour Party, in Scotland or anywhere else, but it does look like he is succumbing to the Labour Party’s favourite pastime of attacking a progressive leader, maybe George is missing the stage of parliament, or even fallen prey to that fateful disease that has affected so many progressive Labour Party members since its inception, careerism and opportunism.
If we take our minds away from Ed’s percieved shortcomings, unless there is a catastrophic collapse within the coalition, and Clegg is bound up with Cameron until 2015, my perception is that between Carlisle and Newcastle in the north, down to Colchester and then across to Bristol, there are 60 to a 100 constituencie’s that have a majority of between 500-1ooo votes majority(better organised and equipped people than me can check the facts on the numbers).With how the economy is going, unless the Euro zone really collapses this year and Cameron can pull another stunt in Brussels like he did before Christmas it will be suicide for him to call an election in the next 12 months, there are enough people suffering in these constituencie’s with tiny majoritie’s to deprive Cameron of a majority and also slaughter the Lib/Dems, and send Clegg and Huhne to Brussells and Cable to the House of Lords.
Regarding your photo’s and matching the protests, I think no.4 are Birminghams 2nd team supporters showing their feelings after Swansea gave their team a football lesson at Villa Park the other day.
Gerald, So glad to see you back! I was fearing you had done something drastic with the carving knife after Barnsley’s finest had handed out a real drubbing to dirty-also-rans Leeds on New Year’s Eve. Interestingly, I went down with a nasty attack of Montezuma’s Revenge on New Year’s Eve… but it looks like you had the opposite because Barnsley put the shits up you.Still, you remain just above the mid-table mediocrity enjoyed by our more illustrious neighbours (snigger) although that doesn’t look likely to last.
I did agree with some of Tebbit’s views on the undemocratic nature of the European Union. Like the idiot Elsby, you make the fundamental error of thinking that because someone has a common cause with someone on a single issue, you must therefore be their political equivalent in all aspects. A concept so stupid I would have thought it beyond you, but clearly I have over estimated your ability to grasp these things. Hitler was a vegetarian doesn’t = all vegetarians are Nazis – just to make it easy for you.
I think Miliband has disappointed in some respects, but most opposition leaders do. He is trying the Blair route, I suspect, of promising little in order to avoid putting up soldiers of fortune for the Tory media to feed upon. Galloway is amusing, but a bit of a pantomime act Stalinist. I’ve mentioned elsewhere Chris Mullin’s book, and here’s a lovely passage from a visit to Vietnam he did with George.
He’s all yours!
Bob; No need to worry about any damage I might have done to myself with a carving knife, wouldn’t know what one looked like, thats the wife’s property, and duty on Christmas Day and New Years Day, I’m either in the pub or club, or negotiating or wending my weary way home.
For the last couple of seasons Iv’e always realised that the highest placed team in Yorkshire have struggled against Barnsley, and have been on the recieving end of a couple of thrashings from them, just like Birminghams 2nd team does against any decent Premier League team, and as I pointed out, the novices from Swansea giving you a football lesson in your own midden. We at Leeds know that “Larry” Grayson has taken the team as far as he can and the “Robber Baron” Bates has told him that he’s out if he doesn’t get promotion this season, and frankly, I can’t see it happening, much as I would love to see us go up. But in the meantime I’ll just continue to pmsl at Birminghams 1st team’s ex-managers’s attempts to keep your team in the premiership. Sorry to hear about your attack of Montezuma’s Revenge on New Year’s Eve, but I must say that it’s a change for it to be leaveing your rectum, when your’e on about football and electoral reform, it usually comes out of your mouth.
Your’e right Bob, errors I have made and more than I would care to think about have been fundamental, but I hope that Iam never on record as having agreed on record with that Donald Duck of one of the most vile, reactionary, anti working class rabid Torie’s, Tebbit. For the record, I opposed the entry of the U.K. into the then Common Market, and worked for a No vote in the 1975 referendum, and have always argued that the British M.E.P.s should have been fighting for a meaningful and democratic assembly in Brussels, and democratically accountable European Commision, and I am quite sure that if I wanted to find somebody to agree with or quote in support of opposition to the E.C. I wouldnt have too far to search in the Labour Movement, or on the left, instead of somebody like Tebbit, who if it was possible would make Thatcher look like a human being.
Not a bad riposte about Galloway, Bob; but can’t you pick your subjects to use in your riposte’s. Chris Mullin, one of the best investigative and campaigning journalists of his generation, the Birmingham 6 would still be languishing in gaol if it hadn’t been for him, and editor of Tribune for many years and always regarded as a man of the left, which obviously helped, if not guaranteed his selection as M.P. for Sunderland South?Then when he gets to parliament a complete disapointment, very little involvement with the issues on wich the left was fighting, in fact didn’t he vote for the Iraq war?(I’ll apologise if Iam wrong on that one), haveing read his “From The Foothills” and I think he published a volume before that, to me the recurring theme is that all he wants is ministerial office or chairmanship of a select committee, no wonder he never seemed out of place in the company of Paul Boateng, Keith Vas, “Bomber” Short and Lord Parasite of Prescott. At least Galloway was prepared to stand up and be counted and provide a left alternative. As I mentioned Lord P. of Prescott, it brought to mind an article I read in the Guardian a couple of years ago, Prescott responding to a critical quip from Mullin in one of his volumes quotes a security guard pointing out his concern about a tramp hanging around in the foyer of the departmments offices,Prescott puts the security guard at ease by saying ” Oh, don’t worry, thats not a tramp, It’s Chris Mullin, the member for Sunderland South, my newly appointed junior minister”
One thing we can agree on Bob, is that all Labour leaders disapoint, wether in opposition or government, even more so in government. Presumably we both remember the heady days of Wilsons leadership of the opposition from 1963 to entering Downing St. in October 1964, when Labour looked like a socialist party in those days, then discovering the routine economic crisis bequeathed to them by the Torie’s and then the routine disillusion at Labours attempts to solve the crisis on the backs of the working class. As you have said on here before, there is a possibility that Ed Milliband may turn out to be a little better than his predecessors, and while he may not have the most vibrant personality he does come across as sincere and, hopefully realising that we have to find a different way out of this crisis than what Bliar/Brown allowed. As this ferocious crisis bites even fiercer I think people will come to realise the difference between a Bullingdon Club P.R. conman with a nice smile and his axe wielding chancellor and their flea-bitten lapdog Clegg, as opposed to a decent guy who is trying to find a solution with less pain, but still in a capitalist framework(Oh my God,I’m beginning to sound and write like a social democrat! Help) But it doesn’t alter the fact that Ed Milliband as well as having to fight a vicious campaign of distortion and vilification from the Tory led Coalition and the yellow media, he is also having to ward off a campaign to replace him by the Bliarites and other 5th columnists, who are happier to fight their own leadership than fight the Tory led Coalition Government.
So, if I read that right, you agree with what Tebbit says… but it must be wrong because Tebbit said it, and because I agreed with him (the same as you did) I am supporting the rabid Tory right whilst you remain a shining beacon of the socialist left.
Well, thanks for that gerald, I’m much clearer now.
You are correct, Chris Mullin did vote for the Iraq war, but I don’t think that in any way devalues his observation that Galloway is a bit of a puffed up, pompous prick, and that was the only reason I mentioned him.
You appear to have a sort of Marvel comics view of folk. So they are either 100% heroes to the cause of socialist purity… or worthless pieces of capitalist flotsam. So Mullin is condemned to the fires of hell for voting in favour of the Iraq War… and Ed Miliband is deified because he wasn’t in parliament in order to do so… (we can conveniently ignore the fact that he never voted once for any of the 10 resolutions calling for an Inquiry into the war). Actually, I voted for the young fellow, although only because the others weren’t much cop, but I don’t feel sorry for him cos the big boys are saying nasty things about him behind the bike sheds. Get a grip man!
The only good thing to be said for most of your political approach is… your football analysis is so pathetic. But then, so long in the lower reaches of the leagues, you must struggle to remember what life is like in the top flight. Still, you’re right about one thing. Grayson has taken that shower of shit as far as could reasonably be expected. Get your roadmaps out. Hartlepool is North.
Bob; I’ll try and break the habits of a lifetime, and keep things short and sweet.
With your comment on my point on Tebbit, I thought poor old Gary Elsby had taken over your blog, that’s how much sense it made to me, just a poor old common or garden plasterer(retired) Were I even tempted to think of anything that I could say that would look like I may be agreeing with Tebbit in print or any other form, I would always try to bring to mind, and it wouldn’t be too difficult, his kind and warmhearted and heartfelt message to Tom Litterick(one of the few left M.P.s that your neck of the woods has produced)on returning to the House after a massive heart attack: ” Go and have another heart attack”. Possibly you aren’t old enough to remember that.
It’s often been said that I have a comical side to my nature, but again I didn’t think you were old enough to remember Capt. Marvel, who knows, you may even remember the ” Eagle” and Dan Dare? My point about Milliband was that there is a campaign by the reactionary Blairite faction in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the party at large to replace him because he beat their choice and Blairs an0inted nominee for leader of the Labour Party, his brother David Milliband, and being the eternal democrats they have always been, theyr’e determined to reverse that decision in their time honoured way of avoiding a ballot, and working against and undermining him, oblivious to the carnage the Tory led Coalition is wreaking throughout the economy and the country. Yes he isn’t the most charasmatic personality, but, other than Balls, he was the best of that bunch, and again I always thought that we were more interested in policies than personality’s and looks. And also, lets not forget, had D. Milliband had the misfortune to win, the media and the Tory’s were preparing to slaughter him with that photograph of the Banana. Were I a member of the Labour Party(and thank God I’m not Sir) I would have voted for Balls, with Ed Milliband as my 2nd choice.
Sorry Bob ,I’m a bit too long in the tooth to get carried away with the romantic revolutionary notions of socialist purity, plus I used to believe in, and work for the election of all those Tribunite and left Labour M.P.s and councillors, and while being fully aware that they weren’t worthless peices of capitalist flotsam(I left those sort of denunciations to the Trots) I became disillusioned and cynical after seeing the performances of these characters when they arrived in the Council Chamber or the Houses of Parliament, once they’d acheived their Holy Grail; it may surprise you that I was always an advocate, never mind supporter of the C.P.s policy of left unity, and the desire for a(hopelessly optimistic and unacheivable policy of a) united front. The C.P.s maxim being; yes we know that they are opportunists and careerists, these Labour lefts, if they weren’t they would be members of the C.P. but we have to work with the tools wev’e got.
Surely Bob you have realised that football is entertainment(and there wasn’t much more entertaining site than watching Swansea showing Birminghams 2nd team how to play football and dont worry, I wont need to set my satnav, if I had one, for Hartlepool, but be careful, you may have to set yours, presuming you have one, for Hull,Ipswich or Burnley, or even more delightful, Elland Road) and politics is politics, and while politics should never be humourless the two shouldn’t really mix. My team may have been out of the Premier League for a couple of years, and in their absence I’ve always had a bit of time for Arsenal and Wenger, imho the best manager in British football, and in Scotland the 1st British team to win the European Cup, the glorious, all inclusive Glasgow Celtic. So therefore, as with politics, I think I can make an objective analysis of football. Whoops, I’ve not gone and broke my habit of a lifetime.
Bloody Hell. Elsby is incoherent, but at least he’s usually bleedin’ brief about it. You’re not seriously expecting me to read your version of War and Peace.
Bob; Iv’e never read War and Peace, only saw the film version with Rod Steiger part way through, and even though you might not have even thought about it, and ,more than likely the thought never even crossed your mind, but unlike Harold Wilson, I never even got as far as the 1st page of Das Kapital, shame on me as an adherent of the old maestro himself. Iv’e just had a trawl through my posts on this thread and your replies to them, sorry, but for the life of me I can’t find any incoherence, longwinded, maybe boring, as politics often can be, but nowhere can it be related to the unfortunate Gary Elsby’s rambling tracts, brief or otherwise, where there may have been a mistake, it has been to reply point for point to the replies or criticisms you have made, no complaints, thats what politics and debate is, or should be all about, but as I make the mistake of replying point for point, you make the Mandelsonian/ Machiavellian trick of ignoring most of the points that I,and more than likely all your other posters on here make.I’m beginning to think that you taught Mandelson.
See Birminghams 2nd team have just about found their level in thr F.A. Cup.
Gerald, it might make it easier if you tried things like paragraphs. I just can’t be arsed to punctuate this stuff as well as read it. It’s like reading Kerouac’s early draft of On The Road.
Good job you like Arsenal, at least you’ll still have an interest in the Cup after Monday.