I disagree with Andy Newman about plenty of things.
But he annoys all the right people.
Small-mindedness, narrow-mindedness,
closed-mindedness, communalism, sectarianism and factionalism are urban,
metropolitan, secular, socially liberal, white and upper-middle-class vices no
less than they are vices of anywhere or anyone else.
Indeed, whereas the
anti-war and anti-cuts movements speak for the huge majority of the population
when they are permitted to speak at all, the ostensibly left-wing criticism of
them articulates urban, metropolitan, secular, socially liberal, white and
upper-middle-class small-mindedness, narrow-mindedness, closed-mindedness,
communalism, sectarianism and factionalism.
Specifically, at the moment, it is articulating them against Andy Newman. Nick Cohen and the Harry's Place crowd: the constituency of Chippenham, doubtless devastated by the cuts and looking with dread at the cake-icing privatisation of the Royal Mail, awaits your alternative candidacy.
Put up.
Or shut up.
"anti-cuts movements speak for the huge majority of the population".
ReplyDeleteWrong. They certainly do not speak for the vast majority of those left with nothing at the end of every month, after they've paid the enormous tax bills levied upon them by a greedy, wasteful, remote state which spends it on things which the majority of the population don't approve of (the EU, abortion, people who choose to have kids outside of marriage, bloated bureaucracies, quangos, gold-plated pensions for specially privileged public-sector workers etc).
If you're against cuts, then you're for high taxes-which no hard-working person supports.
The anti-cuts protesters speak for those who feel entitled to other people's money.
They certainly don't speak for the millions of poor people who have to pick up the tab.
You have never met any "poor people". They are picking up the tab, all right. For your lot.
ReplyDeleteAnd they know it. Owen Jones is being invited to address large and rapturous crowds in places with no Labour Councillors, never mind MPs, for the time being, and in some cases of which he freely admits that he had never previously heard.
Predictably, then, Labour is so far ahead where it matters most that Lord Ashcroft is going to address the Fabian Society at next week's Labour Party Conference. Read that over until it sinks in.
I am one of them-or, at least, i grew up as such.
ReplyDeleteThey are, and have been, picking up the tab for your lot. and demonstrably so.
What do you think working people make of the fact that the entire annual income tax receipt is spent on welfare?
Today's poll shows Labour's own supporters hate Ed Miliband.
You can imagine what everyone else thinks of him.
If Jones was popular, he wouldn't be writing for a severely loss-making paper that nobody buys or reads.
Its circulation figures are hilarious.
Think about it.
Further to my last post.
ReplyDeleteIt is demonstrably the case that the high taxes levied on the poor go to pay for your lot-they certainly aren't the product of Right-wing policies.
Which is proved by the simple statistical fact that the entire product of our annual £167 billion income tax goes on welfare.
You just don't know what you are talking about.
AS I said in my last post-if Jones was popular, his newspaper wouldn't have such pathetic readership figures.
Oh, he is bigger than that now. He has to draw a salary from somewhere, and The Independent very kindly provides him with one.
ReplyDeleteBut most People's Assembly readers are not readers of that newspaper, I wouldn't have thought.
You can't argue with the crowds that he and it pack in, and with the sheer range of places participating. Nothing else in British politics today is remotely comparable. It is a phenomenon.