Tag: Bad logic

Lurchwatch #1

For about six years, roughly traceable to the point when the hold of Tony Blair over his party and MPs began to seriously weaken, MPs and media commentators have been warning against a ‘lurch to the left‘. Lurch, lurch, lurchy lurch. Try Googling it.

Inspired by earthquake geology, I figured that plotting these tremors might help pinpoint the coming Spartacist cataclysm we solemnly face. Only vigilance of a type that makes Joe McCarthy look measured and reasonable can save humanity. And especially those bits of it who unfortunately just earn too much to pay their tax like the rest of us.

So I’ve decided to keep an eye on this one.

Though this annoyingly lazy journalistic choice of lexis started off being used against those associated with liberalish-lefty-semi-labourites Compass, the purported culprits have been… well, pretty much anyone who isn’t widely accepted to be a tribal Blairite.

Since those hallowed words were first penned, the field of inclusion in the lurchers’ first 11 has widened significantly. Even unto the founding minds of New Labour, and their most avid disciples.

You know, people who gave loads of money to investment bankers, and that. Pinkos.

So I thought I would start of with this peach from Peter Oborne’s sub-editor, and follow, quick fire style, with another, like the chatter of an illicit American M16 in the sweaty hands of a ‘centrist’ Nicaraguan Contra death squad.

Until we are drowned under relentless waves of crypto-communist Labour moderates, or hacks stop pumping out this tired, empty nonsense –

KEEP LURCHING, COMRADES.

Posted on by Tom Miller

Mandelson, which Mandelson?

Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson described it as a “Blair plus” manifesto and denied Mr Brown had had to be converted to his predecessor’s public service reforms: “He invented New Labour with Tony Blair and myself and others.” -12 April 2010

Peter Mandelson has waded into the Labour leadership contest by criticising Ed Miliband for producing a “crowd-pleasing Guardianista” general election manifesto – 19 September 2010

I’m not sure which himself his Lordship prefers, but I think both of them will succeed in pushing people towards Ed Miliband. He’s worked wonders for Ken Livingstone’s campaign already.

It’s precisely tired, overexposed and evidently confused figures like Mr Mandelson we need to see a bit less of in the Labour Party. Clear the decks, start fresh. Move on.

UPDATE: Former Compass Youth Chair, poet and renaissance man David Floyd points out via facebook that:

“What Peter Mandelson amusingly calls a ‘crowd-pleasing Guardianista’ manifesto did not gain the support of The Guardian at the last general election. They backed the Liberal Democrats.”

I would also add that as well as failing to please the Guardian, it also failed to please the crowd, which by definition is rather larger than the Graun’s readership…

Posted on by Tom Miller 1

Recession – truth be told

Interesting to see ConservativeHome using the morning to slap Vince Cable down. Even more interesting to see them outline the ‘specific pattern the crash took’:

  1. The requirement and arm twisting in the US for banks to lend to poor risks.
  2. Weak personal bankruptcy law in the US.
  3. The scandal of the mass government underwriting of mortgages through the securitisation process in the US.
  4. The encouragement through the tax code for banks to finance themselves through equity and not debt and the regulatory encouragement for insurance companies and pension funds to invest in debt instruments – a further spur to securitisation.
  5. The successive bailing out of financial institutions in the US.

So why does ‘it’s all Gordon Brown’s fault’ not get in after the election?

Posted on by Tom Miller 1