Although I created neither The David Lindsay Appreciation Society nor David Lindsay for North-West Durham MP, to both of which this links, I have had to set up this one for myself. In less than a day, it has picked up nearly 40 members. And could it happen? Well, "Everyone else will have said no," in the words of all the people who have suggested this to me but declined to set up this Group.
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I would caution you that most people who join Facebook groups do not do so in a spirit of sober sincerity.
ReplyDeleteI can vouch for the sincerity of numerous people in this one. The sobriety, on the other hand...
ReplyDeleteYou had to set it up yourself? I'm shocked, shocked.
ReplyDeleteStill, as I say, so many members of the other two (which I did not create) have joined it, that they both now appear as Related Groups.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't surprise me - I'd expect there to be significant crossover. After all, "Everyone else will have said no".
ReplyDeleteOh, I've already made one new Friend through it. And this is really still the first day.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I have confidence that you'd be capable of holding your own in an argument with Nick Griffin, shouldn't Question Time panellists be either national politicians or people with some sort of public profile?
ReplyDeleteYou should see if you can be in the audience and ask a question.
But they are all going to say no. People more obscure than I have been on it in recent years, apparently picked at random from David Dimbleby's high society address book.
ReplyDeleteCompared to several of them, my Telegraph and American Conservative blogs, and my articles on Comment Is Free, in The First Post, in The Brussels Journal and elsewhere, compare quite well. But that's not about how well-known I am. It's how well-known they're not. Still, though, they have been on.
Who are you thinking of? I've never seen anyone I'd never heard of on a QT panel, but I don't watch every week.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour Party has indicated that either John Denham or Jack Straw will be put up against Griffin. I think the other main parties have agreed to appear alongside him, but I don't know if they've named particular spokespeople.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, believe it when you see it. There'll be trouble, and plenty of it.
ReplyDeleteAce, well, that rather proves my point. Nothing about them stuck in the mind except that nothing about them stuck in the mind. Plummy ladies billed as charity fundraisers or whatever, their apparent daughters whose very billing escapes me, Douglas Murray, that sort of thing.
Say what you like about me, but I'd stick in the mind.
Esther Rantzen has been on both Question Time and Any Questions this year, both times specifically billed as Independent candidate for Watford. Are all Independent candidates entitled to this coverage? If not why not?
ReplyDeleteWell, I've heard of Douglas Murray - I first came across him in (approximately) 2005, and he's popped up regularly in the media since then touting various reports he's published with his pet think tank. I disagree with almost everything he says, but he's an articulate voice for a point of view, and I don't object to him being on the panel. His profile, love him or hate him, is very significantly higher than yours.
ReplyDeleteAs for the point about plummy fundraisers: well, as I say, I don't watch every week. But I've never seen anyone there I'd never heard of.
And what was either Murray (who is younger than I am) or his "think tank" before he started popping up on the telly? Just someone with no need to work because he was on to inherit that half of Scotland which will not be inherited by David Cameron.
ReplyDeleteMurray was on QT before he was famous not the other way round. It's like Thought for the Day or The Moral Maze. Not what you know.
ReplyDeleteYou dress like him.
As I say, I don't agree with him on almost anything. But he's an articulate voice for a point of view, and a punchy writer. I wouldn't put you in quite the same league as a communicator, I'm afraid.
ReplyDeleteNo, he dresses like me. I am his senior.
ReplyDeleteAce, you're just a sucker for the accent. People like you put and kept Blair in, and would put and keep Cameron in. Is it just a posh thing, or is it specifically a posh Scottish thing?
ReplyDeleteNo, he doesn't have an accent when he writes. I was aware of him as a good writer long before I knew what he looked or sounded like.
ReplyDelete(I don't know what you sound like and, until you started putting your picture up, didn't know what you looked like either. I can only comment on your writing style.)
Also, I definitely won't be voting for Cameron.
ReplyDeleteI'm very glad to hear it.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Murray's biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, but his book on neoconservatism is hilariously bad, and I honestly believe that it couldn't be published now, even a very few years later than it was.
The Axis of Evil really existed, Blair's mistake was to tell the public too much rather than too little about the grounds for war with Iraq, all sorts of nonsense like that.
A bog standard tabloid right-wing wish list is included as the chapter on a neocon domestic policy for Britain, with no relationship whatever to the rest of the book. The history of the movement is rewritten to exclude mention, not just of Max Shachtman, but to Trotskyism at all.
I've only read articles of his - I haven't read his books. Your criticisms may be fair. But the fact that he has published two books may explain why he's a more regular media talking head than you are.
ReplyDeleteWe could all do that if we didn't need to do anything else. Heaven knows, his profile is not based on the *merits* of his better-known book.
ReplyDelete