Lefties 9: This will succeed through its success

[taffetacat]

Is everyone on Twitter now?

yeah, fuck the (only party who didn't vote for the war) libdems proles, because granting anonymity to those accused of rape is just so heinous when you compare it to killing millions of iraqis isn't it?

WTF?

the libdems are unashamedly about freedom and human rights. both parties in rape trials should be granted anonymity. their policy on rape crisis centres has been mentioned by you as not enough, why? why isn't aiming for 15 new centres exactly the broader policy on ameliorating conviction rates that you're asking for?

makes absolutely no sense to me that you're dismissing that.

Sophable .... you are like a one-woman outrage-grenade!!

Surely Prolesworth is allowed to express indignation at one thing, without that indignation immediately being collapsed into support for another?

By that logic we would never be able to express delight/indignation at anything piece by piece - we'd have to sign up for support of "our" (!) party without permission to criticise/praise any individual piece of legislation/policy/etc. on a piece by piece basis.

It's important that we are allowed to hop about in our criticisms/praise. Anything else is quite "tribal", and it closes down the possibility of meaningful debate:

"Oh you can't criticise this, because you agreed to that ... you thought x was good, therefore you have to say y is."

Erm, no, we don't. And it's important we never allow ourselves to be conned/coerced into doing it or to allow others to misrepresent our assent to "x" to imply our endorsement of "y".

I don't know why, but you do seem very keen on trying to represent the multiple, and quite fragmented voices of "lefties-who-are-pro-bits-of Labour-policy" as a univocal mass, and sort of herding us into a massification-without-dissent that we are quite keen to escape. It's odd.

That's really silly Sophable, just because the Libs did A which was arguably the right thing to do, doesn't make it automatic that when they do B which might be the wrong thing to do, we all have to sit like nodding dogs saying "ooooh, well A was right, so B must be.".

Have just read that back (my last post) and it sounds a lot more negative than was intended.

I really do love and appreciate your commitment to inidividuals, sophable, and the fact you insist on remembering the cost of the war. That is very, very valuable. The fact that it happens "elsewhere" means that people can tune out, if they wish. Which is obviously not an option for those in Iraq, or directly touched by those events. I really admire your insistence on on remembering.

So when I posted that last, in my head, it's against a background of all the above, which you would know if we were sitting together, or talking, or whatever. But of course, it gets lost when it's an individual post on a website.

Evening all,

Plumps up cushions...tidys up a bit...

Sure Start: The nice thing about the Surestart centre that I am most familiar with is that it has grown and changed and tried really hard to reach "hard to reach audiences" in what is a deprived area. And yes there are a lot of middle class professionals using it...alongside a lot of people who aren't mcprofs. It's nice. It's useful to us all. And we mix. The centre is acting as a proper community centre the responds to need. There is no stigma attached to going there. It is actually a demonstration of how the state can foster society. Imho.

How have I completely missed SureStart? I know so little about it and it never crossed my radar at all when my dcs were small, late 90s-early-noughties.

sorry for outrage bombing!

i was harsh proles, but fuck the libdems was harsh, but i see you see that!

thanks for thoughtful posts animula, feedback noted and taken in.

and proles am genuinely interested in why the rape centres don't seem to count for much to you? that was real question not rhetorical one.

Eleison: Yes, you were destined to just miss the window of opportunity with Surestart.

Weirdly, I wrote a dissertation on single parents (the legislative and rhetorical representation of ...) in 1997-8. I covered the turn from Conservative to New Labour and had to scrabble around at the deadline, stuffing in bits about the New Deal for parents and fledgling Surestart, which was still pretty nebulous. And then it was rolled out in small areas. I think I attended an early one in London Fields when ds was about 4 .... And maybe received a Surestart bookbag in Brixton when he was 2.

So I think you would totally miss it.

Which is odd, yes? It just shows that the early stages of motherhood/parenthood are a kind of network, and take place slightly away from other sorts of lived networks ... of later parenthood, and the social lives of persons-without-children ... .

sophable - Phew. v. glad didn't cause offence.

Nymphisseeingstars- my observation so far is is that Andy Burnham has the shallowness of himbo

Not a contender then really.Looking more like an Ed isnt it.

Oh bother, I wish I had heard that. It is challenging that there is someone who is in some respects admirable (anti-iraQ war and stand against authoritarian response to terrorist threat) but in other respects a bit nauseating.

Is big bro stealing Ed's best hoodie with his talk of rebuilding the movement and making a third of cabinet female??

Re-invigorating party democracy seems so important: can that be achieved without returning some sort of sovereign policy-making role to the party conference? Who wants to be in a party that is just a machine for electing MPs? All the real activists go into interest-group politics these days it seems.

Hello chaps

I posted on why I think the rape anonymity thing was chosen as the Coalition's thrust.

FIRST thrust. Not thrust on its own, that would just be weird.

GAAh.

Here it is: the Coalition's first thrust