To be annoyed at Angela Eagle playing the 'woman' card

[Cguk81]

Apparently now is the time for Labour to have its first female leader. Surely she doesn't need to be playing the 'I'm a woman card' but should instead be focusing on her skills and talent, regardless of gender.

His analysis (and I agree with it) was that Thatchers "genius" was to treat the working classes like they were middle class (homeowning being the greatest example). Because if you treat people as middle-class. They vote as middle class.

I disagree with this.

The working class have always had an element of very poor & disadvantaged who are now marginalised as the 'underclass' as well as those that may not have been educated past school level, but were skilled, motivated & ambitious.

Middle class has very Hyacinth Bucket connotations to most successful working class people & they'd be horrified to deny their working class-ness.

Tbh, that analysis of 'treat them as middle class so that they'll vote middle class' is very patronising.
It sounds like a middle class lefty pontificating on how to control the homogeneous mass of the lower classes, and I would argue that it is yet another example of somebody completely disconnected 'knowing what's best'.

I can't read the posts with loads of crossing out. What on earth is the point of writing like that ? It can be funny if one or two words are crossed out but in a serious discussion it's a waste of everyone's time.

It's not a deliberate crossing out I don't think, it's where she's inadvertently put double dashes in instead of single ones.

This is why I say it is unlikely Labour can repair itself -- because it doesn't even realise where its most serious injuries are. It's pulling itself apart over arguments about whether to bandage its leg or its arm, while repeated stabbing itself in the heart.

This is why I tried to engage with the party via their feedback forum in the run up to the GE. I wanted to have some sort of dialogue regarding their ginormous blind spots. I'm genuinely thinking now that the best thing that could happen to the LP is that they call it a day. They will never have the courage or the ability to step over their own arrogance enough to present compelling policies (or for that matter, candidates) to their traditional electorate. They don't understand themselves and it's fatal.

You know, I was thinking about Brexit last night and I feel strongly that one of the reasons for the 'out vote' was that people just wanted to test their democratic muscle because their opinions have been ignored for so long, they just wanted to check for muscle wastage. Kind of like when a child breaks a toy to explore its own strength. It's a kind of controlled rage and I totally, totally empathise with it.

Started a separate thread with this link, but it slipped into oblivion.

Worth a read - beautifully encapsulates why Labour are shit!

howtobeacompletebastard.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/how-labour-can-stop-being-shit.html?m=1

I don't see any crossings out but plenty of bold - am on android tablet. Site issue?

Me neither Bakewell and I'm on a desktop. Very strange.

Also, I could murder a bakewell slice now

I don't have any crossings out. I've been reading the thread on a android phone and a desktop.

Mango, that article is pretty spot on. Have you read the Pilger article about Brexit? That's pretty spot on as well.

Only this morning, I've had another fractious exchange with a Labour party member. I was trying to get him to see that one of the problems the Labour Party has is that people like him from very privileged backgrounds (private school, Oxbridge, multi-millionaire father etc) insist on telling traditional Labour voters what is good for them, despite having no understanding of the reality of their lives and dismissing their daily experiences.

Unsurprisingly, what this Labour member believes is good for these traditional Labour voters just happens to be the type of internationalist "progressive" politics that his cultural circles laud as the way forward for humanity. Trying to get him to see that traditional Labour voters do not necessarily share his view is downright impossible -- even after the phenomenon of Brexit and the loss of huge swathes of the Northern vote to UKIP.

You just can't talk to these people. I try and fail every time. They don't realise they are the problem, whether they are pro-Corbyn or not. They've fundamentally hijacked a party that was set up to represent a section of society that they do not belong to and never did, and are now confused as to why that section of society is now running away in droves.

I mean, what does it take to get them to realise that their beliefs are not the beliefs of their voters and that if they want the party to survive, they'd better start listening to their traditional voters and representing their points of view? These people are little more than tyrants; they grasp power to implement their own ideologies and represent no-one but themselves.

YYY Werkz!

Do you have a link to the Pilger article, please?

(I'll go hunt for it too, obvs, but just in case I can't find it).

Is it this one?

It's very good.

21stcenturywire.com/2016/06/27/brexit-john-pilger-explains-why-the-british-said-no-to-europe/

consortiumnews.com/2016/06/26/the-brexit-rejection-of-neoliberal-tyranny/

I don't agree with everything he says exactly, but I do share his view that one of the problems we have in Britain is that the colonialist and imperialist attitude of the elites never went away, it just shrank back to the geographical borders of Britain.

I also think that once you see the political elites as still having this colonialist/imperialist mentality, it explains both Blair's wars and the strange obsession with political multiculturalism as a set of political policies that promote cultural and social difference.

It was Hanif Kureishi, the novelist, that first alerted me to this notion after I saw an interview that he had given in the 1970s. As far as I know, he was the first person to suggest that the British elites were reacted to the loss of the empire by recreating that empire within the borders of Britain itself, and were using immigration and multiculturalist policies to do so.

She is a simpering, egotistical, ineffectual embarrassment.
I make this claim as one of her constituents and a member of the Labour Party.

It is no great secret that she has had designs on the leadership since Corbyn was elected leader, she has privately inferred as much to her supporters.

The whole party is in a state of flux but she is certainly not the one to provide a remedy.
I shall never again vote for her as my MP, never mind as leader of the party.

Perish the very thought!

It's bizarre that she would be so self unaware to believe that she presents herself as leadership (of anything) material. Still, if Corbyn got the job......

You see Tigger, disparage Corbyn all you like but he at least has principles and a modicum of both intelligence and dignity.

Eagle is wholly devoid of all of those attributes (and then some). If she thinks that being in possession of two X chromosomes obscures this fact then I'm afraid she's sorely mistaken.

I don't think he's got much dignity but I do see your pony, and absolutely agree with your second paragraph.

As well as seeing your pony I see your point.

I'm seeing large chunks of text in two of Werkz's posts that have been scored through - I'm on iPhone. Sorry if my disgruntlement was due to a problem with my phone, but it hasn't happened before.

I'm iPhone as well footle, I see it quite a lot on posts.

It's the double-dash thing; I think on other phones & stuff the crossing out only happens if you do the double-dash immediately before & after words with no spaces.
iPhone it seems to ignore any spaces & it reads with a crossing out.

The Eagle has floundered.

I do see your pony

We need more ponies in politics. If there were more ponies, things might make more sense (and be nicer to look at).

VOTEZ 4 PONIES!