Comments on: Rejoice at the complexity!

By: Malcolm

Malcolm — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:07:57 +0000

Also, although the article is mainly about the Democrat Party, it still does discuss social liberalism, and thus isn’t entirely irrevelent.

By: Malcolm

Malcolm — Wed, 12 May 2010 11:07:10 +0000

Just read the Orange Book. It openly adovocates the gradual privatisation and marketisation of the NHS. You make an artificial divorce between party, leaders, manifesto and members.

As well as that, Social Liberalism itself is a right wing ideology even if the majority of Lib Dems held onto it (which I highly doubt considering the major support for the Orange Book and free markets espoused by the past umpteen Lib Dem leaders). The creation of the NHS by Labour and the progressive reforms by the Liberal government of 1906-1914 were merely concessions to allow for the continuation of capitalism. Sure, they made massive impacts on society, but they were done without much being done to restrict the power of big business or change the mode of production from capitalist to socialist. The evidence for the changes being done to ensure capitalism’s survival are especially obvious for the government of 1906-1914, as they had to make concessions due to a rising threat of revolution in Britain at the time. Anyway, the concessions, like Labour concessions in the past, were made at the same time as the Liberal party (dominated by Social Liberals at that point) was engaged in helping brutally oppress the Irish and harm the cause of women’s rights and in the sabre rattling that eventually lead to the butchery of the First World War. And the current LibDems aren’t any better, considering that most of the party supported the imperialist invasion of Afghanistan and have in the past supported other imperialist adventures, such as the illegal invasion of Yugoslavia, sending troops to Somalia and other such heinous crimes. No left wing party can support such imperialist adventures, yet the majority of the LibDems did. Combine this with their current love of free markets and you hardly have a party of the left. At best you have a centre right party.

Not all progressives are left wing. Some are just less right wing than the Tories and are only doing progressive things to ensure the survival of regressive things.

By: Wayne Davies

Wayne Davies — Wed, 12 May 2010 05:45:03 +0000

You are right of course. The post-election foot-stamping by UK newspapers and air-headed TV ‘journalists’ betrays an inability to engage in meaningful debate. I guess this is why I and many others haved turned to blogs.

By: DebaterGirl

DebaterGirl — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:20:17 +0000

Another reason to be cheerful…a new generation is taking over. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion about the major transition between generations we are witnessing in the leadership of our country. After years of Baby Boomer Prime Ministers, and a Boomer-dominated Parliament, we now have a new generation in charge: Generation Jones…the previously lost generation between the Boomers and Generation X. We’ll probably have a GenJones PM in Cameron, or ultimately in David Miliband or Jon Crudas and Parliament now as more Jonesers than Boomers. Similar transitions have happened in other Western countries and it provoked a lot of media interest. In fact, it got so much media buzz after Joneser Barack Obama came to power that the associated Press labelled Generation Jones as the #1 trend of 2009.
This commentary about GenJones in The Independent last week has a very interesting take on the meaning of Clegg and Cameron’s identities as GenJonesers: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jonathan-pontell-cleggs-rise-is-the-sound-of-generation-jones-clearing-its-throat-1961191.html

I also found this site worth looking at to get a quick sense of GenJones in the UK:
http://www.generationjones.org.uk/

By: Small Beds and Large Bears » Blog Archive » Here comes everybody, voting how they want

Mon, 10 May 2010 19:56:42 +0000

[...] political commentators than me (and probably ones with more time on their hands) like Obsolete and Anton Vowl have already digested much of the results and have largely pre-empted much of the points I might [...]

By: Julia Smith

Julia Smith — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:22:15 +0000

People are engaging with it as well, over the weekend and in work this morning it was all we could talk about – and not everyone I spoke to was a politics junkie.

Isn’t this the way it’s supposed to be?!

By: George W. Potter

George W. Potter — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:02:14 +0000

I think you’ll find we most definitely are the left. For one thing the link you posted refers to the Democrat party in the states so it’s completely irrelevant to the subject in hand. For another, the vast majority of the party are social liberals (i.e. lefties). The majority of the party associate themselves with Labour more than the Conservatives. Of course, it’s always hard to place a party on the left or right given the complexities of modern politics and I will grant you that the current party leadership represents the Orange Booklet Liberals who are indeed further right than most of the party. However, the majority of the party is social liberal and that is why we are described as a social liberal party (sayeth the wikipedia).

However, I will agree that we are not a traditional left party. Nor are we a traditional right party. We are Liberals. Modern Liberals to be precise since we have moved on from classical liberalism. We are less authoritarian than Labour and more concerned with social welfare and proper economic controls than the Tories. But if you have to describe us on one side or the other of the political spectrum we are to the left. Would a party of the right really proposed the NHS?

By: James

James — Mon, 10 May 2010 09:26:28 +0000

I think this is one of the things that frustrates me about the press; They’ve got all this power, all these trained journalists filling all these pages with stuff that people will happily sit and read. They could use a few of these pages to explain the current situation (or indeed any situation) which can’t be boiled down into a snappy BREAKING NEWS ticker on Sky, a BBC News Alert text or maybe even a package on the TV news where they often seem to prefer to fling dozens of condensed stories at us over and over (or, on rolling news channels, follow a car with a helicopter while pundits try to guess what’ll happen next). Newspapers are in a special position. People will sit there at lunch, or on the train, and pore over them. There’s no producer barking at them to move on to the next story, no 140-character space limit. They could go into stories in amazing detail and do wonders for our understanding of the world.

But instead they seem to think “Fuck it, someone didn’t get their bin collected yesterday because they left the lid open. Phone the Taxpayers’ Alliance, that’ll fill a page”

By: martin arnold

martin arnold — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:52:59 +0000

Are you talking to me or Nick Clegg?

By: Banner

Banner — Sun, 09 May 2010 14:36:38 +0000

“I think these journos know that trying to explain complexity to the majority of the British public is simply a waste of time and effort.” This attitude, though, is profoundly depressing and cynical. And it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you treat the public like idiots and only give them a simplified version of the truth, then that’s all they’re going to have the chance to understand. If you give them the complex reality, then sure, many people might not bother to read it, but some people will, and maybe more people will gradually become more informed.

If, as a journalist, you start with the notion that the majority of the public are monkeys who it’s not worth trying to inform, then I think you’re in the wrong profession. (That’s not a personal attack on you by the way – just a general opinion that journos ought to respect their readership enough to actually report the news thoroughly and responsibly.)