ok lefties....does that mean I'm not then?

[Heathcliffscathy]

because alongside social justice I really really really care about civil liberties? because they are not 'liberties schmiberties' to me, but rather, 'there but for the grace go I'? Do you think that really leftwing stalwarts like Roy Hattersley would agree with you that civil liberties didn't count for shit compared with keeping unemployment down at all costs, however fake the stats are in real terms?

because although I believe in state intervention, in the state as a mechanism of a drive to redistribution of wealth and drive to granting opportunity to all i ALSO believe fervently in the individual, in empowering individuals to make their own destinies.

I am so fucking disheartened by the tribalism, pettiness and bloodymindedness that I've been reading on the leftie thread.

New Labour wasn't really socialist at all, rode roughshod over the rights of (the most vulnerable) individuals, decreased social mobility in this country. they needed a kick up the arse and got one. they need to reinvent and regroup and godknows they won't if David Milliband gets the leadership.

Maybe, even as a leftie you can see that to continue to attempt to spend our way out of trouble is fucked...we're in much worse trouble than we would otherwise be (and we'd be in deep shit anyway) because of this ostrich like way of governing.

coalition govt is so humanising of politicians: they can't strut about declaring how it needs to be, they just don't have the mandate...collaborative govt if that's what we have a chance of is so hopeful.

party politics is killing this country, I hope for it's swift demise. No one is all right or all wrong are they?

So stay in your red bunker, spitting on anything new, decrying and ranting about doom befalling before anything has fucking happened...but count me out for now.

Civil liberties are so important. The Soviet Union provided a welfare state, it housed people and made sure they didn't starve, but it was essentially slavery. The people were not even allowed to leave the country to see the world. There's lots wrong with our society, but at least we are, to some extent, free.

x-post Tories

political compass

Took the words out of my mouth, Policy

On asylum seekers if the children arrive with parents will they be seperated?

thetoriesaretoast, it's what biometric ID cards may be used for in the future that is worrying. Imagine if Stalin or Hitler had biometric ID cards on all their citizens, with all of their genetic code, medical histories etc.

ID cards remind me of the cow passports back home (my family run a dairy farm)

Ninja - you'll be from Ulster then? DH's dad was a cattle dealer

I said on earlier thread I didn't get hugely exercised about civil liberties, and really, that was a bit flippant. You've forced me to think about it properly, Sophable, so thanks. Of course I value our individual freedoms hugely, and we should indeed be vigilant. But what I can't stand is when people invoke the name of freedom of the individual to oppose genuinely useful social reform, whether it's something huge like the minimum wage (because of course all employers should have the right to exploit their employees) or whether it's the smoking ban. I'm very much in favour of the nanny state and don't see it as interfering with individual liberty. But that doesn't mean I don't think genuine freedoms shouldn't be protected.

I don't know for certain Ninja but I bloody hope not! Can't imagine they would.

I see what you're saying claig but tbh that's one of the strands of libertarian thought that I find unconvincing, probably because I'm essentially pro-government. The idea that a notional future UK government would use biometric information to perpetrate genocide or eugenics just seems la-la to me. Not that I have any particular enthusiasm for biometric passports, and if savings have to be made by all means start there.

'should be protected'. Got my triple negative confused.

here it is

Cows have passports ? The things you learn.

Top Tories - yes, Portillo is always interesting. Ken Clarke is avuncular and funny. Does he smoke a pipe? I always live a man who smokes a pipe. If he doesn't, he should. Hague - no. I want to like him, I used to like him, but no.

I think everyone who supports a specific party does the whole pick and mix thing to a great extent. Labour cocked up on many fronts - they haven't been blameless in defeat, and I don't think anyone would argue otherwise.

Sophable - i just think you need to adjust your starting points. The current Labour party are not left wing by my definition, or any classical definition. They are at the very best on the centre right. But, in my opinion, all three major parties in the UK are varying shades of right wing.

I find it bemusing that people consider themselves lefties on the basis of - apparently the case at Mumsnet - that they like public services. That does not make one left wing. It means you like public services, loads of Tories do too, they are all decrepit oldsters with warts so it's not surprising

I think the fact you voted Lib Dem, as did various mates of mine, is a wonky load of old cack. They are rightists - as we can now see - desperate for power. They are after all career politicians, what's the point in being one if you don't have power at some point?

Civil liberties? What are they? Black men are 800pc more likely to be stopped and searched in London than the average. You don't need an ID card for that. Have you ever been Section 44d? Then beaten up as you leave the section by loads of thug police? (Where was they very first place they used Section 44...ah! Brixton!) Didn't/don't hear many Liberals complaining about that. Private railways charging £00's of pounds to travel relatively short distances means the poor don't travel. Is that a civil liberty removed by capital...
Under the last Tory government around 50,000 pensioners a year died from the cold, Osama Bin Laden would be proud of such a hit rate, Labour reduced it to a trifling 30,000. Is it a loss of civil liberty to finally end your short life freezing to death slowly in your own dwelling?

i'm bottom left hand corner 3 squares in...between mandela and dalai lama

am proud to say i'm a leftwing libertarian!

cf I remember dimly from my Politics A-Level (Grade C since you ask) something about 'freedoms from' and 'freedoms to', and post-Enlightenment thinking being heavy on the latter. There is probably a proper term for this argument but I have no idea what it is.

aha, whilst i've been pissing about doing political compass..you've all been having interesting discussion and here you are coolfonz! i did ask!

i totally agree that new labour are right of centre.

don't agree that many of the principles in the libdem manifesto are a load of cack at all:

only sensible party about immigration, europe, nuclear/trident, regulation of banks, and CIVIL LIBERTIES! also, ONLY PARTY THAT VOTED AGAINST THE WAR AND THEREFORE THE ONLY PARTY I'VE BEEN ABLE TO VOTE FOR SINCE, AND I BELIEVE IN VOTING.

sorry to shout.

and as to your last paragraph, i think plenty of liberals have been shouting about stop and search and police abuse in detention for a long time...acktcherly.

basic right to movement (which would include transportation) and warmth in the code also agreed. they're not 'civil liberties' they are human rights...aren't the libdems the only party that believe fervently in human rights act?

i did politics at uni but was too busy off my tree on acid and speed at raves to pay any much attention....big argument for gap year (or 5) imo.

coolfonz, do the political compass test thingy...gwan...

arf, sopahble. I don't think i could be more lefty.

-7.38 for economic L/R
-6.15 nfor social libertarian

excellent site

I'm a left wing libertarian too

Well, there is a great quote about what underpins modern right wing/neo-liberal/.free market thought about freedoms.

So, Thatcher, Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman were all part of that 1970's movement "rollback". Which was openly about "rolling back democracy", came from a quote from the Trilateral Commission that there was a "surfeit of democracy" in the 1970s.

So when Thatcher got elected in 79 Sherman said (to the British people) "you now have the ultimate freedom, the freedom to starve."

i'm same highlander but other way:

-6.5 for left
-7.18 for libertarian!

You should have done MDMA, but I like your style