Wednesday 11 April 2012

Past Hope?

A comment earlier this evening has taken issue with my latest book's presentation of Rod Liddle's denial of the Editorship of the The Independent as the end of all hope of a platform for our position.

I compare it to the passing over of Mel Bradford for the Chairmanship of the National Endowment for the Humanities, a pivotal moment in the emergence of paleoconservatism as against neoconservatism. Hence, among other reasons, my description of the position for which I seek a hearing as "paleo-Labour".

But I am instead told that that end of all hope really happened when my Telegraph Blog was cancelled. I have never seen it that way, but I am beginning to wonder. As my interlocutor put it, that was the only platform that the Officials have ever given us Provisionals, and we shall never have another one, so we are just going to have to get on with it for ourselves as best we can.

If there is any hope, then it is the fact that half or more of Fleet Street and the broadcast news media are going to be banged up once Leveson reports, perhaps creating a gap to be filled. But I am not hopeful. Are you?

13 comments:

  1. You have been subjected to a level of abuse without parallel in the British commentariat. It is no wonder that you will no longer have anything to do with the MSM, and that you now look forward with such glee to the time when they are all carted off to prison.

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  2. Why would you never stand against Pat Glass? Does she agree with everything we stand for politically? She has never said anything remotely along those lines.

    If Alex gets in up here next year and agrees to be your agent, will you put up in 2015? That really could be enough to get you in, especially if he brought his old DI allies to swing behind you. As someone said on an earlier thread, you would only have to be the first past the post.

    Five years later than you should have had it, but better late than never. You belong in Parliament. Everyone knows it. Why the hell would you stand aside for someone whose main selling point last time was that she did not want the job?

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  3. Pat is a good constituency MP who is also doing important work on the Education Select Committee and in the field of youth transport.

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  4. And you wouldn't be a good constituency MP who also did important work at Westminster? Look, I know she and her husband are your friends and neighbours, but you are buying into everything you are normally against. We need our people in Parliament, and most of all we need you. You have been the great lost hope for far too long.

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  5. Damian Thompson is the most evil man in the world. Oliver Kamm comes a close second, but Thompson has the edge.

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  6. Oh, I wouldn't like to try and call that one between them. They are both vermin.

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  7. If pushed for an occupation, David Lindsay would normally tell you that he was a journalist. But he loathes the press. Really and truly hates them. Work that out.

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  8. No, I just really and truly hate Oliver Kamm and Damian Thompson. But then, who doesn't?

    On topic, please.

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  9. 'Hate', 'vermin', what has happened to the Christian commandment of love thy neighbour as thyself?
    I am surprised that someone who publicly (and commendably) defends Catholic teaching and values would come out with such comments. By all means disagree with someone but 'hate' and 'vermin' seem out of keeping with much of what you stand for. The satisfaction of being proved correct should be sufficient vindication, whereas resorting to abuse does take the shine off things a little.

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  10. I don't see what you have to apologise for to that Thompson creature.

    Let me add that doing a lot of community glad-handing at the weekends, maintaining on office in the constituency's main town for a change and even skewering Michael Gove from time to time are not the same thing as being one of the most original and important political thinkers of your generation and by far the most original and important ever to have come from round here.

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  11. As I just written elsewhere:

    "As for Thompson, he illegitimately occupies the position in the national debate that rightfully belongs to an orthodox Catholic, using it to promote neoliberal economics, neoconservative foreign policy, and his own lifestyle, none of which is consistent with Catholic Teaching. The second of those includes, at least as a consequence and sometimes as more than that, the genocide of the ancient indigenous Christians of the Middle East. So I leave it to them, and a lot of them seem to read my blog, to deal with him. There must be a London branch of the Phalange, or of the Marada Brigade, or of something like that. His home address is in Who's Who."

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  12. You are not a journalist, you are a writer.

    You are not a politician, you are a statesman.

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