Tuesday 11 October 2011

New Statesmen Required

Apparently, it matters enormously that the New Statesman has dispensed with the services of someone called Dan Hodges (no, me neither) because his Blairite period pieces had finally exhausted the patience of readers, and doubtless also advertisers and shareholders, who vulgarly insisted on living in 2011. Oh, well, the Blairobites will always have the Murdoch papers. Won't they...?

In the meantime, where do we go to read the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left's traditional electoral base? Where do we go to read the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with either or both of Russia and China?

Or to read those who recognise that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level? Or to read those who refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich?

For that matter, where do we go to read columnists from as many different corners of this country as possible: County Durham as well as Newcastle, the Marches as well Birmingham, Dorset as well as Bristol, and so on, including the less fashionable parts of London? Or that many columnists from as many different countries as possible other than America, not out of anti-Americanism, but only for the sake of a more balanced view?

Who the hell cares about the tribulations of some upper-middle-class, metropolitan media villager whose Blairism had mercifully gone out of fashion? He will only be replaced by another upper-middle-class, metropolitan media villager. No doubt, he already has been.

Dear God, I wish that Rod Liddle had become Editor of The Independent.

12 comments:

  1. I bet you do. Rod Liddle, who had promised you a column if he got the job? Rod Liddle, who had been prepared to come and campaign for your parliamentary candidacy before you got sick, which he knew would mean expulsion from the Labour Party he regularly refers to being a member of in print? Rod Liddle, who is writing the foreword to your next book? Oh yeah, that Rod Liddle.

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  2. It's a pity the Staggers doesn't ditch republican whingher Mehdi Hassan.

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  3. But he's very good on economics. A review of his 'The Debt Delusion' will feature in one of my forthcoming, in which a major publisher has already expressed a keen interest. And I haven't written it yet.

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  4. I thought Rod Dreher was writing the preface to your next book, the one that is already written?

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  5. Only the American edition. Thereby securing an American edition. The crowd around The American Conservative is as useful as it is interesting a club of which to be a member.

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  6. Rod Dreher of Crunchy Cons fame? You get around!

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  7. Unless there's another one and he now blogs for TAC.

    'Crunchy Cons' will also be reviewed in Book Three. To be finished by Easter, I have set myself the target.

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  8. The transatlantic David Lindsay, not before time. But one thing, Mr L. I tried to find your email address in the online directory and you now have one of those contact forms for scarily important people. Congratulations on the Durham equivalent of a peerage, and I hope you will have trentals said for those who have died waiting for it, buried in the avalanche of spam. But what is your university email address? Is it the same as it has been since 1998?

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  9. 1997. But yes, it is. However, it is hooked up to my Hotmail one obtainable from the profile on this site, so it is far easier just to use that - davidaslindsay@hotmail.com

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  10. Both Rods are your friends on Facebook and Liddle is a member of the Group, still traceable, in support of your medically aborted parliamentary candidacy. Could he not have been expelled from Labour for that? Oh well he wasn't so that must be alright. It is Phillip Blond, no less, who is a member of the David Lindsay Appreciation Society. His archrival for the leadership of post-liberal politics, Lord Glasman, is also your friend so you are obviously hedging your bets. But do you just have a thing for Rods, David?

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  11. His position at Durham is like those buildings that government departments own but refuse to tell you anything about. Durham, the city of High Table spooks, Catholic and High Anglican nutters, funny money from Iran and the Gulf, Palestine Solidarity Campaign conferences as official college events, a deeply dodgy Palestinian visiting postgrads programme, and David Lindsay. I got as fast as I could and I urge everyone else to do the same.

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