Wednesday, 20 April 2011

Back

With a vengeance?
Posted by at

34 comments:

  1. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 12:12

    What is it going to do?

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  2. daldred20 April 2011 at 12:31

    Hmm. In web design and usability terms, a block of text like that is likely to attract very few people - most won't read beyond the first couple of lines.

    On the assumption that it is meant to be a public recruting-orientated web page, not a blog post, you need to break it up, use bullet points and headings, and make sure elements are logically grouped.

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  3. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 12:35

    They are logically grouped, and anyone who cannot follow it is, to be put things at their politest, not the sort of person that we are looking for.

    If such people can read at all, then they can go and work for Rupert Murdoch for the last few weeks that they still can. And they can always read popbitch, which, unlike this, is aimed at them.

    Anonymous, it partly depends on the outcome of the AV referendum. But think tank work, certainly.

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  4. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 12:38

    Bullet points? Did that man just say, "bullet points"?

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  5. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 12:43

    It is, so to speak, rude to point.

    Now, on topic, please.

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  6. Frank20 April 2011 at 12:57

    I think it is a brilliant summary of the political philosophy of millions of people who did not learn our politics out of the books and lectures of men who asumed Marxism as the defining paradigm even if they thought of themselves as Tories.

    They also assumed the Communist Party and the Trots to be the mainstream Left. Either Labour had betrayed it or Labour was secretly run by it, but either way it was the "real" Labour party.

    All because they had never been politically active in their lives unless it was within one of those outfits or their student Tory counterparts. Those do not count, they have absolutely nothing to do with proper grown up politics.

    Sorry, no bullet points.

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  7. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 13:20

    It has an impressive blog roll of people inside this important trend, Blue Labour or whatever. Very now, unlike that Blairite book nobody is waiting for. Pity Lord Glasman does not have a website. Or Lord Stoddart, possibly even closer and the living link to the glory days.

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  8. Tim20 April 2011 at 13:27

    It reads like a New New Clause 4. No wonder you have not re-registered it as a party, when Ed has done his work this will be as good as the basis of an existing party, the Labour party. Will you re-join? We need you in the party and we need you in Parliament. Ed could have written this, as carefully phrased it is exactly what he is about. Come back and I guarantee you would go very far, very fast.

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  9. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 13:56

    The precise historical material of the old site has gone but the ethos is still there.

    This is still the Labourism of Bevan opposing so much as a separate Welsh Day in Parliament. Bryan Gould resigning from the Shadow Cabinet to vote against Maastricht. Peter Shore attacking Major for scrapping the Royal Yacht, and backing Canadian fishermen against Spanish ones for the sake of the Queen.

    Catholic anti-abortionists, temperance Methodists, Usdaw trying to to keep the supermarkets shut on Sundays. Foot supporting the Falklands war. David Stoddart voting to save fox hunting and hereditary peers at the same time as getting himself expelled for backing the Socialist Alliance.

    Because all the while defending and extending nationalisation, welfare, trade union power, town hall patronage and state subsidies.

    The trick seems to be convincing Ed Miliband that this is the "real" Labour that he cannot be expected to understand from his metropolitan, academic background. So he has to rely on you to tell him what "real" Labour people want. Half in and half out of the party, the details to be sorted out after the referendum.

    You might just pull it off. God help us all if you do.

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  10. Mark20 April 2011 at 14:00

    People who cannot understand something as simple as this should not be reading it and I am not even sure how they can. It is not hard. They must be stupid, or uneducated, or both.

    That would account for their Blairism, I suppose. He was also stupid and, Oxford or no Oxford, he was uneducated. Try reading his book, it is physically painful.

    People who cannot understand this link might be happier with that as they cannot know how dire it is.

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  11. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 14:06

    Hard to follow? How? The terrifying thing is that these people are in charge in the absence of electoral reform and the grammar schools. Bullet points, indeed!

    @13:56, that's right, that's what's so good about it. At least you are not one of the people who are complaining that it has no pictures or whatever. So you will have been able to read the first few words, unlike them. Some of them are even in italics, but that would have been too much for them. Not for you, I hope. But has it sunk in yet?

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  12. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 14:14

    They never had the teachers that we had, David. Tragically, their parents probably paid huge fees or house prices, unlike ours. If they had grown up where we did, then they would understand this ethos perfectly.

    The blog roll does illustrate how major a force this way of thinking has become after the collapse of their New Labour rubbish. Officially connected or not, all working in the same cause, all part of the family. When I say New Labour rubbish, I include David Cameron in that. See, I am a regular reader. A lot of people who knew you at school are, I expect that you knew that.

    In The Broken Compass and then The Cameron Delusion, Peter Hitchens asked where right-wing Labour had gone. I know you do not like to be called right-wing, but we both know what he meant. Now we both see that he has his answer. Follow this link and follow its links, including back here. Google Blue Labour.

    What he calls right-wing Labour is now the hotest ticket in town. No one has done more to make that happen than you. We always knew that you would be a very great man.

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  13. Steve20 April 2011 at 14:29

    The simple stuff is at the very top, just under the title. Can they not follow that? It's only five words.

    Keep up the good work.

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  14. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 14:34

    But it has commas in it.

    Don't worry, I will.

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  15. I want Gillian Duffy as my nan20 April 2011 at 15:03

    I'll do it in their beloved bullet points, which of these do they hate most of all, and why:

    the Welfare State?
    workers’ rights?
    trade unionism?
    the co-operative movement and wider mutualism?
    consumer protection?
    strong communities?
    conservation rather than environmentalism?
    fair taxation?
    full employment?
    public ownership?
    proper local government?
    a powerful Parliament?
    the monarchy?
    the organic Constitution?
    national sovereignty?
    civil liberties?
    the Union?
    the Commonwealth?
    the countryside?
    traditional structures and methods of education?
    traditional moral and social values?
    economic patriotism?
    balanced migration?
    a realist foreign policy?
    an unhysterical approach to climate change?
    a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State?

    I know that you hate all of them. I know that that last one is a bit long and complicated for you. I know that you do not know what some of them are although you do know that you hate them. But which one do you really, really, really hate most of all, and why?

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  16. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 15:27

    Love the list of everything Blair and the Blairites were against. This looks like the sort of friendly critic/critical friend that Ed's government is going to need. So do you.

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  17. Unknown20 April 2011 at 15:28

    May I humbly suggest you add the 'Distributist Review' to the blog roll on the BPA site?

    (Even if it is an American publication.)

    Keep up the good work.

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  18. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 15:29

    Will do. Tellingly, there are three American sites on the blog roll already.

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  19. Pingu20 April 2011 at 15:44

    public ownership?
    proper local government?
    a powerful Parliament?
    the monarchy?
    a base of real property for every household to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State?

    If you're worried about an over-mighty state, you might be less than enthusiastic about public ownership, proper local government, a powerful Parliament and a monarchy. These things betoken a very mighty State indeed.

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  20. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 15:53

    But not an over-mighty one. Not if balanced by a base of real property for every household. Which they in turn balance, of course.

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  21. Mabel20 April 2011 at 15:58

    Look forward to reading the think tank stuff and your own forthcoming books reviewed in the Catholic Herald now that it has had, um, a change of personnel at the top.

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  22. Cuthbert Bede20 April 2011 at 16:18

    We all know where they will not be reviewed, in the Journal of Drug Pushing and Child Porn Studies. We know who they are.

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  23. Bernard Gilpin20 April 2011 at 16:42

    A bit unfair still to be calling it that. After it made the mistake of taking on Mr Lindsay, there was one hell of a clear out there. It now seems to be largely staffed by his fan club.

    Sorry, off topic.

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  24. Cuthbert Tunstall20 April 2011 at 16:49

    To bring the discussion back on topic, that sorry little tale for the stupid adolescents in question does give an insight into the shadow side of this sort of politics. The right-wing Labour machines in places like the North East need to be avoided in this very welcome revival.

    Not, I must add, that the stupid adolescent did not deserve everything they got. My, how Durham laughed. But I believe that Mr Lindsay was in hospital all that week. His crew, posse or what have you had acted on his behalf during his incapacity. Acted to gloriously devastating effect.

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  25. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 16:53

    30 years ago, a supposedly "moderate" new party was set up, not by or for us, but specifically against us and our reviled industrial and municipal machines, as if they, with their endless ties to the wider communities that they very largely defined, were somehow the problem.

    That party duly sank like a lead balloon, having left the Labour Party to be taken over by those who went on, 15 years ago, to create what they also intended to be a new party, once again defined specifically against us.

    When will it be our turn? When we can be bothered to take it, that's when.

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  26. daldred20 April 2011 at 19:04

    Well, if you're not interested in the way people read on screen - and there's an awful lot of evidence that regardless of interest or intelligence, there is a markedly different reading pattern on screen from on paper - then I suppose it's up to you.

    But I'm considerably less likely to have much regard for someone who considers the evidence and the needs of on-line readers so irrelevant. Something which looks like an illiterate teenager's facebook rant isn't going to impress many people.

    But then I'm just a web professional, whose job involves understanding these things. That sort of expertise evidently isn't something your party wants.

    It seems strangely out of line with purported Christian principles to act with such total disdain for the average reader, and foolishly out of line with any pretence to democracy to refuse to make your statements accessible to an able - let alone a disabled - audience. I guess those with visual or lexical difficulties aren't good enough to be interested in your party.

    Your problem, I guess.

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  27. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 19:10

    No, very obviously yours.

    And just as obviously not anyone else's, if you read the rest of this thread.

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  28. Anonymous20 April 2011 at 19:11

    How much time does David (not DL) spend reading teenagers' Facebook pages?

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  29. James20 April 2011 at 19:18

    You have thoroughly annoyed your namesake by suggesting that the website is not the end in itself. Techy people are odd like that. No, other David, original literature is not written to serve websites. Websites are there to serve it.

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  30. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 19:20

    He has not said whether or not he agrees with it, which is what matters. There is no way that he cannot read it, so I don't see why he expects other people to be unable to read it. But that is in any case the wrong question.

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  31. Frank20 April 2011 at 19:43

    Whoever those teenagers are, they are frighteningly well-informed. Little William Hagues or David Milibands in the making. What a horrible thought.

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  32. David Lindsay20 April 2011 at 19:51

    Not if these are their views. One of the sites both on my blog roll and on the BPA's belongs to someone who will still be in his teens until July of this year. He is an enthusiastic convert to Blue Labour from UKIP.

    That is the rising generation of political activists, and those are their views, formed only ever by real life political participation such as that in which I certainly engaged as a teenager.

    But are they David's views? He really ought to tell us. After all, the views are the point.

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  33. daldred21 April 2011 at 14:41

    Are they my views? Well, in that the invitation is to those who subscribe to 'any or all', and I subscribe to more than one of them, then yes.

    In fact, I'd subscribe to most of them - but your wording leaves it entirely open to people who subscribe to hardly any of them to say they are part of this. Given that this includes 'national sovereignty' and 'the countryside', the whole of UKIP will be in there. And I don't really want to be part of something designed to attract UKIP.

    So I agree with most of what you identify as things, but the message I get from the way you put it is that you're happy to be aligned with UKIP, and indeed various even more unsavoury elements of the political structure; that you have no concern for the disabled or even those who have normal web reading habits (so you're behind the times and uncaring), and that according to the comments on here, you're simply bloody arrogant as well.

    So whilst your aims might get my interest, your means of communication of them carries so many seriously negative messages that it puts me off completely.

    And the debate here implies that this is not simply a rush job which needs some getting right but has the basis of something good in there; instead it's a deliberate policy of disrespect.

    Good luck to you; but your attitudes belie your purported aims, and I'll have nothing to do with it. We have enough in the way of arrogant and uncaring people in politics.

    (Do I read teenager's facebooks? I have a number of teenage friends on Facebook, yes; why not? We have teenagers in my family, and in my church... The ones I had in mind as comparatives, though, were those who make it to Failbook, which anyone can read).

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  34. David Lindsay21 April 2011 at 16:24

    "your wording leaves it entirely open to people who subscribe to hardly any of them to say they are part of this"

    Yes, a broad-based movement. Respecting each of these concerns even without necessarily agreeing with all of them.

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