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All true, Richard. Public transport infrastructure and UK energy security, I’d add in there too.
Perhaps the referendum is intended as a useful distraction from all the above 🙂
A great agenda. Climate change is also an existential threat. I know there is a multitude of problems and agree with everything on your agenda. I also think we are failing the young. I am on the lucky side of things; came to the UK in ’81 bought a house within a year for 1.5 times salary (plenty for 1.0 times salary).
I can think of another one…
Looks like polls wrong again -just glanced at results so far, looking like a Leave decision (if you can call it that). Mostly traditional Labour areas and rural ones (like mine) voting Leave.
Andy ‘weather-vane’ Burnham doing his usual and saying that voters are angry because politicians have not been listening to voters about immigration. Another mis-analysis of huge proportions and very worrying. If Labour doesn’t get its arse in gear pronto, or a move further to the right will now be unstoppable as we hear decoy explanation after decoy explanation about the issues.
The ghastly and wretched Farage trumpeting about ‘Independance Day’-well, we’re sinking so low we’re striking magma again. No surprise to me but just an increased fear that sleepwalking into corporate, rentier fascism will be strengthened.
Labour is in NO place to resist all of this and won’t be able to. Is there a chance that Corbyn/McDonald can start to offer something more hopeful and get the real issues across as you have delineated? above, Richard ?
We can’t blame people for voting for false hope as the populace has been fed garbage and impoverished reasoning and the decline of the political sphere is now complete.
My anger toward’s the failure of the Left is crescendo-ing again. We have been let down, yet again by its persistent refusal to offer a real narrative. The narrative is there, like an open goal but the Overton Window supplicants can’t see it as they dance to the tune of public opinion that has been mis-chanelled by simplistic, black and white non-thinking.
My one hope is that if we have a triumphalist Johnson/Gove/Duncan Smith that they will realise they will HAVE to offer some improvement for the many less well off people that voted Leave -should they not do this and push for more internal devaluation/benefit cuts/ myths about ‘no-money/ rentier housing wealth syphoning then that might well be the moment the sleeping sickness ends and where will the anger go then-further Right as the Labour Party goes through a rebirthing nightmare?
I’m still comfortable that I ‘voted’ with my abstention, I could not do otherwise. It’s now a question of keeping alert and seeing what devious, disingenuous moves are made next by the political class. The underlying issues remain the same. I suspect reactions in Greece will be strong. The utter vacuousness and ignorance of the Neo-liberal project that never sees its own hubris or any writing on the wall is now fully manifest.
The result: Corporate and rentier fascism ‘B’ rather than ‘A.’
I couldn’t have put it better myself Richard and this is exactly what I have been saying for the past months. The whole thing is a subterfuge that has allowed so many to take their eyes off the ball of what is really going on. As you previously predicted Richard, the Tories will be business as usual as it’s all about staying in power at any expense. Liam Fox already back peddling for Cameron. Rome burns down and everybody fiddles. I am thinking of moving to Ireland. Do you think they will push for unity? It’s about time.
Early signs that Labour will be tearing itself apart as Corbyn will be playing up his ‘reluctant remainer’ status.
message from Momentum:
“Labour must clearly demonstrate how it will improve lives through policies that will increase wages, tackle the housing crisis, and give people a greater say at work and in their communities.
If we do not, we will not only be failing to advance the policies that will benefit working people but also could enable the populist right, who blame immigrants, not the powerful for the problems in our country. Part of the Leave campaign empowered these racist, reactionary forces, who peddle hatred and offer false hope. We must redouble our efforts to stop migrant scapegoating, focus our attention on the needs and desires of the overwhelming majority, and offer a real programme of hope for our people.
Although we will leave the EU, our movement remains an internationalist one. We must continue to work with our friends, partners and allies across Europe in the shared struggle against austerity, to tackle climate change and to build a sustainable economy with full employment for all the peoples of Europe.”
Sad-but I don’t believe Labour will manage this.
Don’t be sad, Simon. Take up active membership. If everyone who shared your doubts did that it might make a significant difference.
‘Take up active membership’ I did, last summer!
I can’t help thinking that Brexit will be so complicated and messy there will be very little time to implement any worthwhile agenda. It will provide a convenient smokescreen. Please keep it up Richard, you are a beacon of hope and sanity but very difficult to feel happy this morning.
I am not happy this morning
Mind you I am just heading for bed….
You were up all night then?
Slept for a little while
Not that much…
Still going
May wait until lunch for a siesta now
Utter unreal-garbage coming from the orifice of Tusk: ‘“It is true that the past years have been the most difficult ones in the history of our union, but I always remember what my father used to tell me ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’.”
What! Killing people (Greece)and creating intergenerational catastrophe (Spain/Greece/Latvia) makes people stronger? That’s pure Nazi ideology emanating from a neo-liberal mind set.
Staggering!
Your father was in fact quoting Neitzsche… disturbing in itself…
Did you see the BBC 4 programme on Neitzsche last night? Worth checking it out
Actually-Nietzsche meant it in a more personal, psychological way and was by no means a Nazi. he called anti-semitism ‘scabies of the heart’ and despised German nationalism.
His thoughts are much more nuanced than his image. He was a deeply humane and caring man and his misuse by the Nazis was appalling. He was a human who was honest enough to embody the contradictions in himself if we had politicians of the depth our society would be different.
Nietzsche’s mental health was poor but his vision of a materialist society that would turn life into what he called ‘a slow suicide’ has relevance today in our dumbed-down culture where intellectual and cultural life has given way the monetisation of everything.
I think he was ultimately wrong on certain issues especially the idea that ‘The Will to Power’ was a sort of bottom line for the human that could never be overcome and that the attempt to overcome it was itself another form of the ‘Will to Power.’
As a Christian Quaker, I would have to say that I live with the possibility that humans can and need to relate without power relationships but at least Nietzsche reminds us that this is a tall order!
The 17th Century Quaker, James Naylor sums up well a possibility of humans getting outside the framework of self-interest and power relationships:
“There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thoughts to any other.”
Unadulterated ‘mouth farting’ from Cameron -more impoverished non-thinking from that bastard-flagging up his ‘achievements’ in welfare reform and reducing unemployment. He then flatters himself that his party brought the country from the brink! What!
Utter farce and illiteracy beyond credibility. Moronic in the extreme. I’m glad this gross amateur has gone but we only have intellectually deficient sub-reptilian shysters to replace him.
Worrying.
As I predicted, it’s happening
“An orchestrated move against Jeremy Corbyn appears to be underway as Labour’s shadow cabinet prepares to convene this morning. There are rumours of some of his MPs preparing to sign a motion of no confidence in him and some are calling for him to resign – anonymously at this stage.
The Labour leader has just appeared on the airwaves saying the main driver for the vote for Brexit was economic instability.”
Corbyn is right there-looks like Labour will let everyone down AGAIN!!!!!!
Funny that Mike Carney has already pledged an additional £250 billion for the banks – where is the extra funding for all the other areas in desperate need (NHS, housing, education, welfare). Priorities shown as usual.
Can I add the desperate state of social care (and the contrast with the far more sensible way the NHS deals with health) to you list of problems that need sorting out?
Yes