A cocaine addict with a
predilection for prostitutes is rather closer to the top of British finance
than Paul Flowers (whom Ed Miliband has met only once, and whom Ed Balls has
never met) ever was, or was ever going to be. Any chance of some inquiry into
that?
No, Peter Oborne, Labour politicians are
merely far more likely to be prosecuted, all the way back to Poulson and
beyond. In addition, the Police
and the CPS, having read the papers and listened to the BBC, were expecting a
Conservative majority government, and they wanted to be on the right side of
it.
It remains perfectly legal, and it used to be a point of honour on the part of the British media, to report major ongoing court proceedings. But no one would ever guess that at the moment.
And dear old Oliver Kamm has been perfectly frank about Flowers. He tweets that, "The Co-op Bank has better claim to be an ethical bank now, in hands of hedge funds who know how to devise a costed business plan for it," as if it had never had one before. He himself is a former, if former, hedge fund trader. We all know what that "costed business plan" will be.
Kamm also tweets that, "Not greatest scandal of Rev Paul Flowers but is also inflammatory anti-Israel campaigner. Called Israel "renegade" in Guardian letter 1982." In 1982, the year after the Osirak attack, Israel's renegade status was the position of, among others, the Reagan Administration and almost every member of both Houses of the United States Congress, which at that time contained many of the most hardline Cold War hawks and Evangelical Protestants ever to have sat in either of them.
This was a hit. A planned hit. This was, and is, about taking out mutual provision of financial services, about taking out the Co-operative Party, and about taking out any criticism of any action of any sufficiently hawkish Israeli Government, be that criticism from the Co-op, from the Methodist Church, or from anyone else.
But with Paul Flowers gone, this can and must be resisted to the last ditch.
It remains perfectly legal, and it used to be a point of honour on the part of the British media, to report major ongoing court proceedings. But no one would ever guess that at the moment.
And dear old Oliver Kamm has been perfectly frank about Flowers. He tweets that, "The Co-op Bank has better claim to be an ethical bank now, in hands of hedge funds who know how to devise a costed business plan for it," as if it had never had one before. He himself is a former, if former, hedge fund trader. We all know what that "costed business plan" will be.
Kamm also tweets that, "Not greatest scandal of Rev Paul Flowers but is also inflammatory anti-Israel campaigner. Called Israel "renegade" in Guardian letter 1982." In 1982, the year after the Osirak attack, Israel's renegade status was the position of, among others, the Reagan Administration and almost every member of both Houses of the United States Congress, which at that time contained many of the most hardline Cold War hawks and Evangelical Protestants ever to have sat in either of them.
This was a hit. A planned hit. This was, and is, about taking out mutual provision of financial services, about taking out the Co-operative Party, and about taking out any criticism of any action of any sufficiently hawkish Israeli Government, be that criticism from the Co-op, from the Methodist Church, or from anyone else.
But with Paul Flowers gone, this can and must be resisted to the last ditch.
""Paradoxically, I believe that it is Labour’s belief in its own higher morality – what Bertrand Russell called the “superior virtue of the oppressed” – that has led to its downfall. Our two major political parties have emerged from rival philosophical traditions. Labour hails from the progressive school, which is fundamentally optimistic about human nature, but believes that our humanity is thwarted and twisted by social institutions. Conservatives are the opposite. They are pessimistic about human nature, and believe that life can only be conducted within the framework of existing institutions and the rule of law""
ReplyDeleteOborne is most certainly on to something there. Particularly his comment on "the superior virtue of the oppressed" (the justification for almost every tyranny of the 20th century).
Idealists and progressives (people who believe in their own goodness and that of their ideas) are always the most dangerous and immoral of people.
When you believe that you are inherently good, then you are above the law-and any means at all are justified by the noble ends you seek. Worse, when you believe that it is law, morality (and even a free press) that is corrupt, rather than human beings, then those laws, morals and restraints no longer need apply to you.
This passage about the Blair Government rings very true indeed.
"" Consider the deliberate deceit of the British public over immigration, Europe and the economy. Above all we should consider the readiness of that government to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction ahead of the disastrous Iraq invasion. This stemmed from what one can only call an intellectual tolerance of fabrication""
It is all rubbish. Tories are just exposed less often, prosecuted or otherwise disciplined far less often even when they are exposed, and given far more lenient punishments, if any, on the extremely rare occasions when anything is done about them. It really is simple as that. Perhaps no one expects any better of them?
ReplyDeleteYou are completely and utterly missing his wider point-all humans are capable of fraud, but the Left tolerate this kind of thing among fellow "comrades" because they believe they are so good that the rules need not apply to them.
ReplyDeleteJust as totalitarian Cuba's state radio station is still (hilariously) called "Rebel Radio, while China's repressive Communist military machine still calls itself "the People's Liberation Army"...even when in power, the Left sees itself as "the cavalry of the oppressed".
And can justify anything it does, on that basis.
The very different philosophical traditions behind the Left and the Right, (which Thomas Sowell brilliantly explores in the book Oborne quotes) explain a great deal.
The exact oposite of the truth. It just that no one expects any better, not necessarily of the Right anywhere, but certainly of the Tories.
ReplyDeleteFurther to my last comment-of course, being "fundamentally optimistic about human nature" (as Oborne puts it) has been the defining feature of the idealist tyrants of the Left, ever since Burke's time.
ReplyDeleteBurke believed humans were so corrupt that universal suffrage democracy, combined with a self-righteous arrogant belief in the inherent goodness of those who claim to represent "the popular will", would form a deadly combination that would herald the dawn of tyranny.
Or, as Burke wrote; ""A perfect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world""
He wrote particularly scathingly of those Leftists of his era who claimed the right to seize private property (often from wealthy landowners) for 'the common good'.
That way, as he rightly saw, lay the road to tyranny.
It has always been the fundamental division between Left and Right.
No, it hasn't.
ReplyDeleteCome back in 20 years, when you have read anything.
It always has and always will.
ReplyDeleteI've read Burke-which is very obviously more than you have managed.
Where to begin, dear boy? Where to begin?
ReplyDeleteThere's really no need to be rude because you disagree with someone, Mr Lindsay. It's a very left-wing trait.
ReplyDeleteWhy not "begin" with Thomas Sowell?
First anti-war American conservative I ever read and (judging by Peter Oborne) he also has fans among the Right over here.
I am no stranger to Thomas Sowell.
ReplyDelete