A very good after-dinner speaker, in my experience.
But previously noted for bragging about directing the Police to arrest people in the middle of the night.
Reid was a Communist Party activist deep into his adult life, well before the fall of the Soviet Union, and he has never expressed the slightest remorse. At Stirling University, when the Communist Party ran the Students' Union (with its large cash turnover), Reid was its enforcer. As he later was for Neil Kinnock, and then for Tony Blair, whom he clearly wished to succeed as Prime Minister.
Furthermore, Reid claims that New Labour reflects what he sees as the "fact" that Britons are now (among other things) "better off", "better educated" and "less deferential" than in the past. What planet is he living on?
First, only a generation ago, a single manual wage provided the wage-earner, his wife and their several children with a quality of life unimaginable even on two professional salaries today. This impoverishment has been so rapid and so extreme that most people, including almost all politicians and commentators, simply refuse to acknowledge that it has happened. But it has indeed happened. And it is still going on.
Secondly, well, where to begin? Britons at large, including graduates and even PhDs (such as Reid), are simply not the best-educated that they have ever been, or even especially well-educated at all. All the paper qualifications in the world cannot disguise this fact, which is only too horribly obvious to anyone who so much as walks down a street in Britain today, never mind to anyone who goes in search of intelligent and informed conversation here.
And thirdly, the extraordinary deference shown to the opinions of ageing rock starts and such like indicates that the generation now running things is actually much more deferential than was or is that of its own parents or grandparents, and is quite possibly the most deferential ever, but merely chooses to defer to different (and, frankly, less deserving) people.
Be afraid.
Be very, very afraid.
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Well of course Reid is right on all three of these things.
ReplyDeleteIncome.....well clearly the amount of gadgets from ipods (whatever they are) to dishwashers and car ownnership indicates that people ARE better off.
The paper qualifications which you dismiss is the very evidence that people are better educated.
With 50% of kids at university and only 18% of jobs "needing" degree type eduation there is plenty of evidence to suggest that people are actually over-educated.
As for deference...the very fact that people are deferential to ageing rock stars is evidence of the fact that they are less deferential (or sycophantic) to others.......churches, politicians, journalists, the professions, monarchs.
As for Reid himself......well clearly a foul mouthed, rude and incompetent individual.
I understand he can sing several "rebel" songs which may or may not be a suitable qualification for Prime Minister.
I should perhaps declare a slight interest here.
I have met him.
I liked him.
I dont take his communism too seriously......a refuge for social misfits before they grew up. A bit like the Green Party in 2009.
But he has never said sorry for it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Greens are not the paid agents of any enemy power.
I suspect the Greens are paid in garden produce by enemy powers.
ReplyDeleteI dont feel he should apologise for previously being a Communist. On the other hand, apologising for the quality of the buffet he served might be a more legitimate cause for oncern.
The Communist Party (then) and Green Party (now) are little more than the bed and breakfast party for young people.
They all grow out of it.
Really?
ReplyDeleteOr do they just change tactics?
And Reid was still in the CPGB deep into his adult life. Some New Labour types didn't leave it until it dissolved itself, a very few years before the rise of New Labour.
You say "member of the Communist Party" like it was a bad thing LOL
ReplyDelete