A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Those polls

14% Tory lead?

Well, with apologies to Neil Kinnock for leaving out one sentence of his 1983 speech, if that's the General Election result:

"I warn you. I warn you that you will have pain – when healing and relief depend upon payment. I warn you that you will have ignorance – when talents are untended and wits are wasted, when learning is a privilege and not a right. I warn you that you will have poverty – when pensions slip and benefits are whittled away by a government that won’t pay in an economy that can't pay. I warn you that you will be cold – when fuel charges are used as a tax system that the rich don't notice and the poor can't afford.

I warn you that you must not expect work – when many cannot spend, more will not be able to earn. When they don't earn, they don't spend. When they don't spend, work dies. I warn you not to go into the streets alone after dark or into the streets in large crowds of protest in the light. I warn you that you will be quiet – when the curfew of fear and the gibbet of unemployment make you obedient ... I warn you that you will be home-bound – when fares and transport bills kill leisure and lock you up. I warn you that you will borrow less – when credit, loans, mortgages and easy payments are refused to people on your melting income."

If David Cameron wins .. ."I warn you not to be ordinary. I warn you not to be young. I warn you not to fall ill. I warn you not to get old."

42 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ohh, where to start?

If Brown wins, I warn you...


... not to leave home without an ID card

... not to resist when bailiffs force themselves into your home

... not to feel sickened when Labour loses your personal information

... not to be found innocent and expect the state not to keep your DNA

... not to care about the state reading your e-mails and texts, and listening to your phone calls

... not to worry about illegal wars and illegal rendition

... not to think "maybe we shouldn't ban everything?"

... not to protest - because you are no longer allowed to

... not to give a damn about the environment

... not to expect a decent education

... not to look for a job

... not to love your country


There are so many things Labour has done to break this country - civil liberties above all - that
this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's tragic that it took an economic disaster for people to
realize that the word "Labour" is just a clever piece of marketing to pull in saps.

2:18 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawcross, the fact that most of that sounds so unbelievably lame and completely unthreatening to the average man in the street shows that Luke's point is well made.

Yes there's economic pain. But did the Labour Party bring down Lehman Brothers, the American auto industry and the whole of Iceland?

Or was it your neo-con ideology that was in power in Washington and most of the world's financial institutions?

The only critisisms of the Labour Party's economic policy that really stack up are that we didn't do enough to challenge the thatcherite free-market orthodoxy in the financial markets and we didn't do enough to reverse decades (or even centuries) of over-reliance on the City of London for wealth creation, leaving us particularly exposed to financial crisis.

If that's an argument why we should elect a group of right-wing Thatcherite city bankers to run the country instead, you must be living on another planet.

2:37 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Dave H

It may "sound" unthreatening to you - since you are, no doubt, a hardline authoritarian socialist who doesn't believe in personal freedom - but I'm willing to bet that there are enough people who do feel threatened by it to give Labour the most ferocious kicking at the next election. Not to mention the millions who will have lost their jobs thanks to Brown's incompetence.

But let's not argue now - we'll see what the voters think soon enough.

2:46 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The American people have just soundly rejected the very values Cameron stands for, so why the hell are we even considering adopting them over here?

3:33 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Blogger Merseymike said...

The loony libertarian obsession with 'freedom' above everything else is entirely unbalanced.

4:01 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawcross, I'm sure you'd rather not debate and let people vote on the basis of your misrepresentations, deceptions, and it would seem, downright paranoia. Sadly for you, we won't be letting you get away with it.

You’ve actually got no solutions, just name-calling. You haven’t said what we’ve done wrong economically, or how you’d put it right. I’m sure we’re all dying to hear how things would be so much better if only we’d been have more free market ideology.

I can understand your frustration.

After all, you’ve been waiting for some crisis to come along and threaten the government for the best part of ten years. Now that crisis has come, it’s obvious to everyone that it wasn’t caused by the overbearing and over-controlling state that you’ve been warning about. It’s patently obvious that we need more regulation of the global economy, not less.

You’ve been waiting to tell people that everything will be OK if we can just cut the size of government and let the free market do its work, we’ve now got the private sector on its hands and knees begging for government help. State action is popular again.

Now to make matters worse, you’re watching the most popular incoming president in the history of the United States promising to implement the very policies that you’ve been vehemently opposing.

No, regardless of the vagaries of party politics and opinion polls, now is a very good time to be on the progressive left of politics. To quote a former president, we are on the right side of history.

4:36 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

And look where it got that false prophet back then, I’d rather stick to peddling hope like Cameron, then fear as does Gordy Mandy!

5:24 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

we are just coming out of the new labour era the yanks are just entering theirs i would wager it will end in the same disappointment that we in this country are feeling i voted labour in 1997 full of hope about the future but the future just ended up full of shit

5:49 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wasn't it Kenneth Clarke that gave Labour the economic foundation that won them two general elections.

Isn't Kenneth Clarke a conservative MP?

I can't see how you can argue that considering the fact that millions of people are losing their jobs and the benefit is tougher now than under the last conservative regime.

Please nip down your local job centre to sign on. You will see how hard it is for the unemployed under NEW Labour.

6:11 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My dear Dave H,

You have ignored every single one of my points regarding civil freedoms, and made your whole case rest on the failure of free-market economics. Now, all things being equal, I am a fan of free markets - as is the entire Labour high command - but I am not a fundamentalist - it is all too clear that it has produced dangerous excesses in this case (along with innumerable benefits during the boom, let us not forget). The economic consensus has taken a serious knock.
Now that I've conceded that, would you be so good as to explain to me why the Government has been planning ID cards for years? Taking DNA for years? Banning everything from smoking to hunting? Restricting the freedom to protest? Detaining people without trial for ever-longer periods? Why does it want bailiffs to be allowed to use force to enter a person's home? Why does it want to intercept the communications of ordinary people? Why does London have 200,000 CCTV cameras when New York has only 5,000? THERE IS NO ECONOMIC NEED FOR ANY SUCH THING.

I'll tell you why - Labour's hard authoritarian contempt for freedom. Yes, they've been "right-wing" in economics - though if they hadn't splurged billions away during the boom we'd be in a much stronger position now - but on civil freedoms they have been pure, bullying, coercive Left.

So I'm glad you want to have a debate. I dare you to defend Labour's police state.

7:16 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Blogger Newmania said...

You are joking aren`t you ? tell me this is a joke

7:26 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Luke, I'm sorry, I'm a party member, but that whole thing sounds a lot like where we're at now!

8:15 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This being the day of improbable events can anyone explain how Luke manages to turn up on a doorstep and get away with it?

8:34 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If the pundits are correct it will be interesting to see what Labour will do when unemployment hits anywhere from 3-3.4million by this time next year.

Higher unemployment than under Mrs. T - that should make a few people choke on their Chardonnay.

9:00 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Don't wish to sound rude Luke, but that post is pretty accurate in describing the current state of the country (minus some welsh windbag hyperbole).

9:02 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Has Luke not realised that pensions have taken a battering under Labour.

Worst PM

I also don't fancy being unemployed under Labour either, thanks to all the new job centre contracts.

Or about to leave university

Or the next generation of young people who are going to have to repay the billions borrowed by this government.

Or the millions of household with mortgages higher than the value of their properties.

Or the millions about to lose their homes and have bailiffs kick in their doors thanks to Labour.

9:48 pm, January 20, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Remind me again about "No more boom and bust"?

10:01 am, January 21, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawcross, as you’ve acknowledged that your economic views have been challenged, I’ll acknowledge that I’m less than happy with some of the laws which have been proposed by the government.

However, I think that the way you present some of the issues is bordering on the paranoid. I just don’t feel that the civil liberties I enjoy will be infringed if the police have my DNA on file, or if someone knows that I sent an email at 5.57pm. If for some reason the police were corrupt and out to get me, it really wouldn’t matter whether my DNA was on file or not.

I hate to question your objectivity, but would you have been so vehemently against ID cards if they were being proposed by Prime Minister Michael Howard? I assume you were campaigning for the pro-ID card Howard to be PM a few years ago? Was he a member of the ‘pure, bullying, coercive Left’?

Some of your other points are just bizarre or trivial.

Bailiffs have always been able to use force to enter someone’s home if in possession of a court order and in the presence of a police officer. I’m not aware that we’re proposing any significant changes to the way they work.

Yes some personal data has been lost, but that’s not a failure of policy, just a cock up. (It’s not as if this is new or unnecessary data, the same would have been available under other governments)

You don’t like the hunting ban. OK yes, Labour is against the freedom to tear apart small animals for the sake of sport. You’ve got me there bang to rights...

On CCTV, I have yet to see a leaflet or communication put out by any political party or independent that calls for less CCTV. No doubt you’ll be able to tell me who these civil liberty-defending slayers of New Labour authoritarianism campaigning against CCTV are so that we can vote for them?

11:46 am, January 21, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"So I'm glad you want to have a debate. I dare you to defend Labour's police state."

Dear, Dear Shawcross.

If this was a police state you would not be able to post what you just did. Real Police States take people off the streets for opposing the govenment and then disappear them. Real Police States do not have elections. Real Police States do not have a free media. Real Police States do not have opposition members of parliament. In short - and I will put it in really, really easy language for you.

YOU DO NOT LIVE IN A POLICE STATE.

If you are really interested in what living in a Police State is like, please feel free to speak to anyone who lived in Eastern Europe before the wall came down, anyone who was the "wrong sort of Muslim" in Iraq before Saddam fell, anyone who lived in Chile under Pinochet, anyone who lives in Burma, North Korea now, or lived in the Phillipines under Marcos.

Now, we have dealt with this nonsense about a Police State, to turn to specifics.

I have absolutely no problem with an ID card at all. It is a bit of paper that tells people who I am. It will reduce benefit fraud. It will reduce electoral fraud. It will make it easier for the Police to ensure they are speaking to the right person. It will make it easier for access the plethora of private and public sector services that ask for photo id.

If bailifs have a court order and are accompanied by a police officer then they have the right to enter your premises. If you resist by force, you are breaking the law and endangering the people who are upholding the law. Appropriate force is therefore legitimate in upholding the law.

Losing personal information is not something that is taken lightly, and is hardly Government policy? And, you may have noticed, that most examples of losing personal data is by er, private sector firms working for the government. And this has been going on forever, just now the Government actually takes notice of it, and publishes it, and then tries to do something about it. Under the Tories, data loss was secret.

I think all children should have their DNA taken at birth. And everyone should give an example of their DNA to the state. Why? Because it only becomes an issue if you break the law. It is almost impossible to avoid leaving DNA at a crime scene, so imagine how many more murders, burglaries, rapes etc the Police would clear up if they had access to a complete database of person specific DNA - but then I suppose you would not able to write to the Telegraph complaining about how little crime is solved.

Do you honestly believe that the State has not been listening to, and reading your e-mails and telephone calls since it was technically possible to do so? What do you think GCHQ actually does? Why do you think Thatcher banned them from having a Trades Union? They scan the electronic and audio waves for key words that help them track terrorists. What do you think alerts the Security services to possible attacks, Darren Brown?

Of course we worry about illegal wars and illegal rendition. But I have to say using force to remove a dictator who put people feet first into plastic shredders was a good thing to do, illegal or not. And, please, provide me with some concete detail about illegal rendition?

Your examples of banning everything appear to be hunting and smoking. Labour has not banned smoking, I know because I smoke, sometimes in the full view of a police officer! And hunting, sorry, bang to rights on that one, banned posh people from dressing up in their best Pantomime costumes and then charging around the countryside as if they owned it in order to kill a defenceless animal and then smear its blood on some red faced 10 year old. The problem is?

Yes, you can protest. To say you can't is a lie, pure and simple.

John Prescott was delivering a deal in Kyoto whilst David Cameron was still running around looking for a seat and spinning for Carlton TV, so don't talk to me about the Tories being the party of the environment.

Decent education? GCSE results up, A-level results up, more people in Higher Education than ever before, less people leaving school with no qualifications than ever before, rising up the international league tables for teaching maths and science, new schools and school buildings in every town in the UK, and more and better provision for early years education, free to the parents, than ever before. So, you are wrong.

Not to look for a job. Labour has seen more people in employment in this country than at any other time in the nation's history, and there are still 500,000 vacancies in the country even in this recession. Don't make me laugh.

I support Labour, I love my country, I will defend my country against foriegn invaders if necessary. Nobody, nobody, in the Labour Government has ever suggested loving your country is a bad thing, and anything other than admirable.

There you go SHawcross. No Police State, and every single one of your supposed criticisms defended and dealt with.

12:43 pm, January 21, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawcross, which one of the following are you?

A. Rapist.
B. Murderer.
C. Thief.
D. Serial sexual abuser.

You sick, amoral fuck.

Why in God's name would anyone object to their DNA being on the database if they're INNOCENT.

Only the guilty have anything to fear from a national DNA database.

So the cops take your DNA. SO FUCKING WHAT?

Here's some advice for you: don't rape anyone, don't murder anyone, do not commit any crime, and YOU WILL HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT.

Understood?

Now FUCK OFF you CUNT.

3:03 pm, January 21, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@Proudly Voting Labour (and Dave H on the first point)

You say we "do not live in a police state".

We most certainly will if people like you are too blind to understand the creeping totalitarianism of the Government. They want to control where people can go and what they do; they want to know who people contact and what they say. They want to limit freedom of speech and of protest. These are all INCREMENTAL STEPS towards a police state.

It must be resisted - because otherwise, one day you'll wake up and find that you are indeed living in one.


Michael Howard once considered ID cards - then he CHANGED HIS MIND. How sad must you be that Michael
Howard is MORE LIBERAL THAN A LABOUR HOME SECRETARY?



1. ID cards are a colossal database, NOT just a piece of paper. That is the real danger.

2. An Englishman's home has been his castle for 400 years. Under Labour, it ceased to be so.Why change a fundamental protection of a free society?

3. It is not up to YOU to tell anyone that they must give the state their DNA - it should be utterly voluntary, except in the case of serious criminals who have been found guilty in a court of law.

4. So? This makes it legal, and massively open to abuse. It's an invitation to spy on and control the civilian population, not terrorists.

5. It was a disaster that will undermine Britain's security for a hundred years. It was not just
illegal - it was bloody stupid.

6. The problem is that the state should be guaranteeing human freedoms, not restricting
them. Next!

7. Not without informing the police. Not without PENSIONERS BEING ARRESTED UNDER ANTI-TERROR LAWS AT A LABOUR CONFERENCE.

8. Heathrow, anyone?

9. And yet universities need to run remedial classes for freshers; and yet knowledge of the English
language is abysmal; and yet the underclass has never been so hopeless. I happen to know
something about real education; Labour most certainly does not.

10.Let’s have this conversation on jobs in a year’s time.I’m willing to bet it will make the early 80s look like a golden age.

11.Labour has refused to allow the British population a vote it PROMISED on the EU Constitution. The people entrust their power to Parliament for five years, and
then they take it back at a General Election. Except
Labour has given a large chunk of it away to Brussels.

Labour' insane support for multiculturalism has been
such a catastrophe that even Government ministers have
admitted it was a mistake.

So no - I don't think your points are unanswerable.


@ brian treagus

Oddly enough, I'm none of those things. I just happen to believe in freedom - even for totalitarian scum like you. Is your IQ even in double digits? You sound like you enjoyed the fruits of Labour's educational reforms!

5:23 pm, January 21, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You gutless piece of shit.

I hope for your sake you or anyone you know aren't raped by someone who would've have been caged had their DNA been on file.

Liberal pervert-defenders like you should be shot.

Prick

10:51 pm, January 21, 2009

 
Blogger Luke Akehurst said...

Less swearing please or I will turn on comment moderation.

11:07 am, January 22, 2009

 
Blogger anonymous said...

Shawcross, my mum grew up in communist Poland and didn't want to join the communist party. She was put under a terrible amount of pressure and it always shocks her dinner guests when she talks about the bad times.

She came to this country because of the freedom she would have here and she continues to cherish that freedom.

I reckon that she would be extremely hurt if she heard that you compare this country and your life to the hell she lived under.

I agree with proudvotinglabour and also say that you should be grateful for the freedom of speech that you have in this country today.

11:41 am, January 22, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@anonymous

With respect, that is an extraodinarily poor argument. When your mother came to this country, then indeed, we had freedom. 11 years of Labour have broken freedoms that have lasted for hundreds of years.

If you had any respect for her
you would campaign against Labour's daily progress towards
a police state.

I mean that will all sincerity. If you don't believe me, look up the 3,000 new imprisonable offences Labour have created in the last ten years; look up the new spying law Jacqui Smith is bringing in in March; look up the number of innocent people whose DNA is being held for no reason; look up the horrific database that will back up ID cards - and it is YOUR responsibility if the data is wrong! Look up the use of terror laws by local councils to spy on the public.

For God's sake, open your eyes!

p.s. Luke - I think you'll find that all the swearing has come from the delightful Brian.

12:43 pm, January 22, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Notice how Tory rent-boy Shawcross has refused to answer any of my points; is it any wonder one resorts to swearing when confronted by such amoral low-life?

Just to repeat: a woman is raped; her attacker's DNA is on the database (for arguments sake, he was arrested for something entirely unconnected - something for which he was never convicted - and the DNA was kept on file). He's arrested, convicted and jailed.

Who knows how many more women would have been raped or murdered had he not been caught?

By destroying the DNA of "innocent" people, you are giving them a licence to go out and rape, murder, torture, rob and assault.

Only a deceitful, despicable cretin like you would object to the DNA database being maintained.

1:29 pm, January 22, 2009

 
Blogger anonymous said...

Well Shawcross, it is barely worth arguing with a daft brush like you, although for example, I can't imagine that there are many gays and lesbians who feel more restricted in their lifestyles than they were eleven years ago; quite the opposite I expect.

The new laws support the fact that people should have freedoms so long as they don't curtail the freedoms of others. I can now actually open my eyes in a nightclub on a busy Saturday night because there isn't a mass of cigarette smoke stinging them like crazy.

2:46 pm, January 22, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, I tried. And for your information, I am a libertarian long before I am a Conservative. Now I know that people who continue to support Labour are actually willing authoritarians, rather than misguided ones.

A last couple of answers:

Brian: Rape is a terrible crime;
BUT curtailing the freedom of tens of millions to improve the conviction rate of hundreds is insane. The police will just have to use traditional means to do their job. Or were no rapists ever caught before DNA was discovered?

anonymous:

Your response ignores all my points. How is Jackboot Smith's spying law fair? So if Labour has made life better for gays and lesbians it doesn't matter how badly they treat the ENTIRE populations, where gay or straight?

I will cheer when your vile party is annihilated - but apart from that, my best wishes to all of you in this brave new world.

p.s. the guardian has an excellent piece from one of the terror victims of 7/7 - you know, the sort that certain Labour bloggers wanted to use in a propaganda campaign to curtail civil liberties:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/video/2009/jan/22/rachel-north-civil-liberties.

WATCH IT AND WEEP!

3:24 pm, January 22, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You just don't get it, do you Shawcross you old perv!

In what possible way does it curtail one's freedom for the police to have a copy of one's DNA?

The only "freedoms" it curtails are the "freedom" to rape, the "freedom" to murder and the "freedom" to commit crime.

You may describe the desire to "improve the conviction rate" by merely "hundreds" as "insane" but believe me, those additional rape and murder victims whose lives would've have been saved will not share your deranged beliefs.

Shawcross: defending degenerates since 1951!

4:01 pm, January 22, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Shawcross, the fact that most of that sounds so unbelievably lame and completely unthreatening to the average man in the street shows that Luke's point is well made

David H - Are you alleging that compulsory ID Cards, the surveillance database, government, a universal DNA database are popular? There are majorities against all of those policies. They are really bad ideas. But I guess for tribal Labourites they'd only be bad ideas if the Tories were proposing them. At the time of Kinnock's speech I can remember the right saying much the same as you, that such things were not a concern to the 'average man in the street' who works hard and obeys the law.

11:28 am, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The loony libertarian obsession with 'freedom' above everything else is entirely unbalanced

Tribal Labourite Lie Number 1. It is only libertarians who oppose our attacks on civil liberties. Strangely, I seem to remember a Labour party that opposed compulsory ID Cards. Did I imagine that?

11:32 am, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In what possible way does it curtail one's freedom for the police to have a copy of one's DNA?

You'd better ask the justices of the European Court of Human Rights who voted 17 to zero that the UK's policy of retaining the DNA sample of unconvicted person was in violation of the article 8 of the ECHR.

One might also add that your assumption that anyone who opposes a universal NDNAD is a 'perv' is sufficient reason in itself for opposing such a policy.

The only "freedoms" it curtails are the "freedom" to rape, the "freedom" to murder and the "freedom" to commit crime

This sentence does truly prove that the Labour party is now the stupid party. I am not on the DNA database. Does that mean that I have a licence to rape or to commit murder? Of course it doesn't.

It is instructive that you argue you case in such an hysterical and emotive way. No doubt it appeals to those with an IQ of 60. The reality is that when HMG was required to prove *rigorously* why it needed a blanket retention policy it was unable to do so. Your dream of a universal NDNAD is not kaput.

Joy and kisses.

11:40 am, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Now I know that people who continue to support Labour are actually willing authoritarians, rather than misguided ones

There are quite a few of us ex-Labourites around, who are throughly dismayed by the right wing authoritarian policies now being pursued by the Labour party. As someone well to the left of the modern Labour party I can at least claim consistency in that I opposed the Thatcher government's attacks on civil liberties. I don't remember too many libertarians protesting in those days.

11:49 am, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just to repeat: a woman is raped; her attacker's DNA is on the database (for arguments sake, he was arrested for something entirely unconnected - something for which he was never convicted - and the DNA was kept on file). He's arrested, convicted and jailed

Unfortunately for your side of the argument, HMG was not able to adduce any evidence of such a scenario happening in practice, or certainly not in sufficient numbers to justify the holding of millions of profiles of innocent people. There have been well publicised cases of DNA being taken at the point of arrest, being checked against the database of samples recovered from crime scenes and a prosecution proceeding. But those cases did not depend on the retention of the sample. The practice of taking samples from those arrested for recordable offences will continue even after the government has amended the legislation to bring it into line with the ECHR.

12:00 pm, January 24, 2009

 
Blogger Merseymike said...

I'm hardly a 'tribal Labourite' as anyone who reads my contributions here will realise.

I simply think that SOME of the libertarian obsessions are wrong, and I think many of their assumptions are based on exaggeration. In particular, the outcry about ID cards which many European countries have and which cause no problem at all.

1:38 pm, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think many of their assumptions are based on exaggeration. In particular, the outcry about ID cards which many European countries have and which cause no problem at all

Well Merseymike, were you an Asian or a Muslim in France, or a Turk in Germany, you might have a rather different perspective on the harm caused by compulsory ID cards. But I guess for a modern Labourite, tribal or not, introducing a system of bureaucracy that is proven to exacerbate racial tensions would be of little concern.

2:40 pm, January 24, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Lets get at least one thing straight - the state only remains as a functioning entity if the debt it issues is bought by banks, thus the survival of the state is linked to broadly following what is acceptable policy for 1. Large financial instituitions themselves 2. The associated markets and 3.Big Capital in general. A lack of confidence in the states class loyalties/fiscal policies leads to runs on currencies, military coups, capital flight etc.

Therefore-1. The labour state, or the tory state are fundamentally the same in their function and the requirements put upon them by actors more powerful than the state. 2. The state cannot be used to advance a working class agenda. 3. Gladstonianism is in normal times the limit of the bourgeois Liberalism allowed. 4. In tough times in order to prevent the failure of the state itself anti-working class policies must be taken that are broadly/exactly the same regadless of the party-state coloration at any one time in order to restart a cycle of capitalist accumulation through mass unemployment, taxation to guarantee the state pays its creditiors, cuts in state expenditure etc etc etc. There is no choice as to whehther the labour or tory or whichever state does this, it has no choice.

This is exasperated, in my view,by the fact that the streams of surplus value from sections of the working class in other countires that Britain parasitically lives off via the posistion of the City of London will be a lot harder to come by now that Britains role as a massive offshore hedgefund wing of the US is potentially going to collapse, only increasing the current balance of payments crisis.

7:01 pm, January 24, 2009

 
Blogger eeore said...

You've got a cheek.

What about the rhetoric from James Purnell?

And actually you overlook the Tory claims, which occasionally bubble to the surface, that they intend to make treat all welfare claiments as individuals: which at a stroke would do more to improve family life for the disabled than any other single measure.

I realise you are partisan, but I didn't realise you were dim as well.

1:34 am, January 25, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear, dear me Stephen, you really do not have a clue do you?

Let me spell it out for you very clearly:

You're not on the database. You go out and rape or murder someone. You aren't gonna be caught straight away.

You're on the database. You go out and rape or murder someone. The police match your dna to that on the victim. You're caught straight away.

Simple enough for you?

Or are you so far up your liberal deviant-defending arse you can't see right from wrong or fact from fiction.

One is left with the impression that you can only aspire to an IQ of 60...

3:37 pm, January 26, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I see that Brian Treagus resorts to the juvenile name calling that is typical of those who defend a universal DNA database but lack a cogent intelligible case for one.

To wit:

"Or are you so far up your liberal deviant-defending arse you can't see right from wrong or fact from fiction"

In your frothy ill-informed indignation you appear to have forgotten that the UK government lost its case in the ECHR 17 to zero. The reason it lost was because its argument was much like yours, just less angry and hysterical, but of similar low intellectual content. It was not able to demonstrate that the retention of DNA samples was effective and proportionate. I am sorry if rational arguments offend you. Actually I am not. Angering silly stupid people like you is my hobby.

12:04 pm, January 31, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's pointless arguing with perverts like you.

You fail to answer any of my points. Not one single one.

You're scum.

SCUM.

I just hope for your sake, sometime in the future, that you or anyone you know aren't murdered/raped/abused by someone who would've been caged had the DNA database not been destroyed.

5:48 pm, February 02, 2009

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It's pointless arguing with perverts like you

You're scum

SCUM

And thus rests Brian Treagus's case for the universal DNA database. Angry, hysterical and intellectually incapable forming a coherent & cogent argument. And you still can't work out why you lost! You could not make it up ;-)

11:14 am, February 07, 2009

 

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