 |
| |
|
|
Lazarus and the Gimp
|
 |
Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:26
|
|
The Tories, Britain's Conservative Party, have traditionally been the bastion of right-wing politics in drizzly old Britain. It used to be a sort of musty and mildewed conservatism, all knotted up in the class structure and concepts of how the world would be a better place if everyone just jolly well knew their place and behaved themselves. It was spiritually akin to a damp old tartan travel blanket that smells of biscuits.
The trouble was that once that had been blown away by the abrupt lurch to Thatcherism, they lost the plot. They've been wobbling across the political spectrum like a drunk toddler in platforms ever since. Under Major (who started as Thatcher's darling but ended up on the left of the party) the pro-EU stance caused massive divisions between left and right wings that resulted in them finally losing power in a crushing defeat.
William Hague then attempted to make headway against an overwhelming Labour majority by going for single anti-EU issues. This meant that the Tories became almost entirely defined by the issue that was still causing the biggest divisions within the party- a bit like a "Miss World" contestant happily showing the cameras her weeping herpes lesions. It really didn't help that Hague, lacking Major's debating skills (despite his image as a wimp, Major was a formidable Parliamentary infighter), attempted to adopt a bluff and hearty "common-sense-man-of-the-people" that left him displaying all the charm of a verrucca. Result? Another landslide victory for Labour.
Next, Iain Duncan Smith took over. For a bizarre few months it looked like the Tories were turning into the Labour Party, as they attempted to botch together a cuddly and caring image. This was in spite of the fact that IDS was a noted hard-right pro-Thatcherite, as were most of his power-base? Did it work?
Did it ****.
So then they tried "Stealth politics". This appeared to consist of keeping as low a profile as possible, in the hope that the Labour Party would join the KKK en masse, or that Blair would announce that he really fancied the idea of skull-****ing orphans. I have never known a major opposition party become so anonymous- in contrast the Liberals started resembling media whores on Angel Dust.
Now they're attempting to lurch back to the right. Unfortunately, it's all going horribly wrong.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/cons...,901263,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2791521.stm
Put bluntly, the Tories have always been the party of schemers and plotters. They've tended to shy away from open conflict of the type that used to tear Labour apart, and have instead gone in for Macchiavellian smear tactics behind closed doors. In the absence of any clear direction, they're tearing themselves apart. Here are the key figures.
Iain Duncan Smith
Odd, Buddha-esque little man who would fade into the background even if he stripped bollock-naked and tied flashing neon lights to his tackle. Like his predecessor, William Hague, IDS was chiefly elected because of one key factor- he wasn't Ken Clarke. Hard-right by nature, he appears to have nowhere near the levels of charm and character to win over the unconvinced- he's hopelessly uncharismatic. He's also been too inconsistent to persuade the purists. Unelectable to anyone valuing consistency and/or strong leadership.
Ken Clarke
Rumpled and wrinkly buffer, like your disreputable uncle who used to get bladdered on sherry and try to look up your sister's skirt. Steadfastly championing the pro-Europe left wing of the party since Major's days, which means that to many of the Tories he is the seed of the devil. Highly influential, and charismatic with it, but any Tory party with him in charge would instantly split in two. Unelectable to anyone holding the traditional Tory views that "Europe" is a euphemism for "Sausage-eating Commie perverts".
Michael Portillo
Ludicrous, quiffy-haired and rubber-lipped clown, noted for his towering vanity. Imagine a cross between Mick Jagger and Mussolini and you're getting close. Unashamed political whore who would happily sell Britain's entire population of under-5's to vivisectionists if he thought it would get him a shot at the PM's job. Missed out on the leadership race in 1997 because he'd lost his seat (Ha ha ha), lost in the 2001 challenge because everybody hated him (Ha ha ha). Is now putting the boots into IDS in the hope of (bizarrely) becoming deputy leader under Clarke. Unelectable to any "traditional family values" Tories who object to the fact that he used to touch other men's bottoms. Everyone hates him.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit
Nasty old coffin-dodgers. Both occasionally removed from their vats of formaldehyde to noisily suggest that whoever the Tories have as leader would be a disaster and that we might as well start building statues of Lenin around the country. Unelectable to anyone with a memory.
So where does that leave them? Blair is more vulnerable now than he's ever been, but just at the point where they should be attacking him, they're fighting each other. They're also cursing the fact that to attack Blair's pro-war stance to capitalise on the dissenter's votes would probably result in Thatcher or Tebbit calling them a big bunch of poofters.
Right now, the Tories are a joke. It's hilarious. If there is a God, he must really hate them, and he's laughing his arse off. There's a chance that at the next election they'll lose even more ground and fall to third place. It's poor form to gloat, but I'm afraid I can't resist it.
Hee, hee. Gloat, gloat, gloat.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
MRT144
|
|
Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:26
|
|
on the larger scale, does god really hate political orginizations? i mean really, i cant imagine god plotting the downfall of some brit political party with all there is in the universe.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
DinoDoc
|
 |
AECCP loves Democracy
Sep 1999
time: 23:26
|
|
quote:
Originally posted by Agathon
Thatcherite politics have been completely discredited in every English speaking state other than the United States. |
quote:
A Rustproof Iron Lady
By Timothy Congdon
-- Journal of the History of Economic Thought, , Vol. 24, No. 3, September 2002, London
How will history judge former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s changes to British public policy in the 1980s? It is already clear that 21st-century commentators will be kinder than her contemporaries were. When the Conservative Party lost the general election to the Labour Party in 1997, The Independent newspaper carried the banner headline, “Everything has changed.” In fact, surprisingly little changed. Labour did not reverse Thatcher’s most distinctive reforms: privatization, reduction of trade unions’ power, and elimination of subsidies to inefficient industries. Neither did it reintroduce exchange-rate controls or the price and incomes policies her government scrapped in 1979.
Rather, the Labour government maintained existing income tax rates and endorsed Thatcher’s macroeconomic framework, wherein both monetary policy and a prudent fiscal policy were aimed at combating inflation. Astonishingly, newspaper columnists now refer to Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair as “Thatcher’s heir,” and he does not seem embarrassed by this description.
The September 2002 issue of the Journal of the History of Economic Thought carries a set of articles on “the political economy of Margaret Thatcher.” Given the extent of acceptance by former Thatcher opponents, the papers seem curiously dated and negative in tone. Roger Backhouse, a Birmingham University economist, provides the least hostile assessment. Many British economists in the early 1980s thought both Thatcher and her monetary approach to inflation were mad, and 364 of them wrote a letter to The Times in 1981 saying as much. Backhouse is more balanced. He sees the radical post-1979 changes as an intelligible response to the policy failures and macroeconomic instability of the 1970s. He also welcomes the increasing productivity of Britain’s manufacturing sector during the 1980s.
But his discussion of monetary policy—supposedly such a crucial area of what Thatcher wrought—is too close to the conventional wisdom. It is therefore uninteresting and largely wrong. Backhouse argues that the government abandoned money supply targets because of the difficulty in hitting them. This comment is reasonable, but he is quite wrong to say that “monetary aggregates lost their significance.” As Geoffrey Howe, Thatcher’s first chancellor of the exchequer, noted in his own memoirs, the money targets were met in his last year as chancellor (1983), and inflation rates had come down as planned. Unfortunately, when Nigel Lawson (Thatcher’s second chancellor) dropped the broad money target in late 1985, money supply growth in the following year accelerated sharply. Thatcher famously insisted that she was “not for turning.” But the sad fact is that Thatcher—or, at any rate, her ministers—did make a U-turn, allowing rapid money supply growth and therefore stimulating a silly boom and causing inflation to rise to 10 percent in 1990.
The tragedy of monetary mismanagement in the late 1980s can be seen as a sequence of squabbles between Thatcher and Lawson. But it is better interpreted as the revenge of the 364—that is, a complete lack of understanding among British economists of how money supply and the economy interact. Backhouse also misses this connection.
In another article, Joel Krieger, a Wellesley College political scientist, looks at Thatcherism from a sociological standpoint. Krieger seems nostalgic for the representation of trade union and senior business people in the high-level corporatist bargaining seen in Britain in the 1970s. Perhaps he thinks that the centralized determination of prices and incomes is the best way to bring down inflation. Someone needs to tell him that no one of any political significance in Britain today—including Blair—shares this nostalgia. For all the problems of the 1980s, those years proved Thatcher was right on one point. Monetary policy, not incomes policy, is the right way to control inflation. |
http://foreignpolicy.com/issue_janf...gns2.html#brits
|
|
| |
|
|
|
MRT144
|
|
Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:26
|
|
if you claim tory do you get a free pair of union jack boxers agathon?
|
|
| |
|
| |
All times are GMT. The time now is 05:26.
Apolyton Time is 00:26. |
top of page
|
| archivepost |
|
Forum Rules:
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
|
HTML code is ON
vB code is ON
Smilies are ON
[IMG] code is ON
|
|
|
|
|
|
23-02-2003 19:31
|