I’ve had a bit of a back seat from all this politics boobah for a while, a bit bored, a bit demoralised. Time to gather ones thoughts if you will.
The left needs a solid SA certified boot up its arse to the fourth lacehole. Here we stand with countless amounts of economic data at our disposal to support our arguments and what do we do? Don’t bath for a few months and go on a demo about nucular power with paint dawbed signs and dogs on strings with the same old bollocky “2 4 6 8″ chants whilst bonging up a dooby and saving some whales.
I am as economically lefty as they come, and pretty bloody libertarian to boot. I care about people. I don’t give a shit about:
Animals
Nuclear power if it’s economically feasible
Global warming if there is no catastrophe
I do care about:
Equity of rights and opportunities regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, any other label you can emboss on a strip of plastic that is bound to slice under your thumbnail when you peel the backing off. You know the drill, the higher taxes, more services kind of thing that we all know and love.
The right has its fair share of ditzys what with god and all that, why can’t the left shed itself of all its baggage and get respectable? And have a bath. I’m the pommie, I can channel your filth.
Flute, people exist as part of the Earth system. We are not separate from it.
“The left needs a solid SA certified boot up it’s arse to the fourth lacehole.”
I’m doing my best and don’t expect Santa Claus to show up more then once in a lifetime.
Bollocks.
“Flute, people exist as part of the Earth system. We are not separate from it.”
What are you up to Sacha?
You are trying to incite me aren’t you?
Oh wait a minute.
You haven’t seen my essays on personification and its right and wrong uses in science.
Sacha, that has bugger all to do with economic collectivism.
Onya Kim. Now you’re speaking my language.
Understand the sentiment entirely but feel you’ve got a bit of a strawman there.
Whales are a bi-partisan jingoistic issue these days.
Nukes is interesting and agree that the ALP need to actually think a bit before recycling 80’s policy.
Global warming - well maybe it’s only an issue because global catastrophe is what we’re exactly what people are worried about. Not because they’d rather it in the main - mild with a chance of rain.
Plenty of dooffer posters and chants at the recent IR marches btw. Trad ALP ain’t exactly Saatchi and Saatchi.
Yes yes yes and some time ago the earth was the centre of the universe as well and people were put in jail if they said otherwise….now why do you privilege the human race above the earth and other species, as if that is some sign of good sense and somehow that gives the left credibility - but if you so choose to persist in looking good for the loony right - at least consider that in order to support we walking gods, we actually have to look after the back yard and not crap all over it if we want a reasonable place to live in, and we may wish to consider the other species who also have equal right to the resources of the planet or if we dont care about that, think - they feed us - they need to be cared for even if only for our healthy sustenance. And because all things exist in an exquisite equilibrium, upsetting that, ultimately upsets us. We wouldnt want that, being the centre of all things and all. All these things feed back into our wellbeing ultimately.
Hey Flute,
” I’m a pommie I can channel your filth ” But can you channel squawking PanelbeaterBirds?You can!Then channel the thing back to the North Pole.
It’s pretty obvious that there are real issues about climate change which go to economic opportunities and distribution, just as we’ve had serious debates here about nuclear power. But what do you offer to the discussion, flutey? Dissing people, saying you don’t “care about things”, and dismissing stuff you think aren’t respectable. If you see yourself as being part of the left, you’ve just kicked a few big own goals. If you don’t, then perhaps you could stick with your initial assessment that you’re “bored” with “this politics poobah”. Instead of lazy and self-defeating complaining.
Catnip, you misunderstand me. The right are evil for a whole bag of oppresive reasons that would take too long to state, and I have at various times written about their derrings do. But when you say other species have equal rights to the earth as homo sapiens you are going down the looney tune belief above reason shit pipe that the right have already greased with intelligent design.
Babbs, nowt wrong with a good ole protest. In fact the IR ones have been pretty good. Normal people worried about their futures (with a nice bit of union backing).
Flute “I do care about:
Equity of rights and opportunities regardless of socioeconomic status, race, gender, any other label you can emboss on a strip of plastic that is bound to slice under your thumbnail when you peel the backing off.”
Is the support and use of quotas and positive dicrimination a weakness of the left ?
Sacha
I’m pragmatically concerned about the environment.
It’s one thing to worry about crapping in your own nest but like flutey, I really don’t give a toss about Bambi either.
You’ve always struck me as one of the most sensible people in the blogosphere.
I hope you’re not going to go all Gaia on us with this
‘people exist as part of the Earth system’ schtick:-)
And you misunderstand me. I say, and said, if it galls you, this idea that animals may have rights, and that in our (your) hubris we (you) think they are meaningless (I dont give a shit about animals was the quote? - noice) then at least think on how their wellbeing may contribute to the ultimate economic wellbeing of which you are bleating on about yeah? Geez
Guys - read between the lines - Flutey has a point. Its waay to late to go back to the stone age as the more extreme green/left elements seem to want us to do (respect guys, but thats often how your agenda comes across).
People arent interested in giving up their 21st century comforts - what we have to do is find ways to allow them that, but in a sustainable way. This means becoming economically literate and arguing in that kind of language.
The good news is that the weight of real evidence is actually on our side - the economic modelling does exist and the technology is deliverable.
All the right tend to have is religion and other forms of superstition to back up their arguments…
“All the right tend to have is religion and other forms of superstition to back up their arguments… ”
And don’t forget the mystery of the MARKETS…the free MARKETS…
Kim, there are a couple of things that worry me about the nuclear debate from the left standpoint.
1) A blind NO. Now I don’t know nearly enough about this stuff to ideologically say no. The UK, France and plenty of other places run on the power. Is it right for Australia? I don’t know. It probably isn’t, but that is a gut feel based on no solid evidence whatsover.
2) The feeling that if Australia supplies the world with uranium, it should look after the waste. If Australia can make a safe quid out of it then fair enough, but the two are not morally linked. No one asks the Middle East to plant a shit load of trees to absorb all the CO2 produced by their oil.
The rest of your stuff about questioning my leftism and “own goals”, well instead of writing a couple of paragraphs of no point, try just saying “dogshit”. It takes less keystrokes and makes the point succinctly.
Self-defeating? No, I’ve already lost.
Like dont feed cows their own kind and WE dont end up with mad cow disease.
Like nuclear energy is not efficient but uranium sure sells well.
Like dont cut down trees and the earth gets to breathe for a bit longer thereby sustaining we godlike creatures.
you get it non? be pragmatic if you cant bleed for the animals, or chain yourself to trees, it wont hurt
intelligent design - oh puleez.
Look, flutey, I don’t have any preconceptions either way on the nuclear issue. But I don’t think we get anywhere by saying “I don’t give a shit about it”. And if you think that things like peak oil and climate change don’t have an effect on economics, and social justice as well, you need to think again.
boredinHk, you’ve given me an excuse to win Kim back matey.
Are birds dumber than blokes?
No
How come only 1.3% of executive directors in Australia are women?
Aren’t women as capable as men of being executive directors?
Then there must be an inherent prejudice in “the system”. There is already a quota system in place. 98.7% blokes, 1.3% women. People are already being hired into those positions because they are blokes. Therefore, lets redress the balance somewhat.
But I’ve said all this before, and its a given that the right are more stupid than a possum fart. This is about the left.
Keep trying, Flutey
Kim, look again at what I don’t give a shit about and under what circumstances. You are getting your ideology all confused with what I am saying.
No argument about disadvantage - I was wondering if you felt the sometimes clumsy mechanisms used to redress the imbalances are crudely explained and perhaps imposed in a way easily exploited by the right ?
The split in the UK during the 1980’s between the miners and the likes of Ken Livingston comes to mind . Islington Council and its allies like Barmy Barney Grant alienated so many people and were tabloid fodder for Murdoch .
I’ve looked again:
Billmon.
Catastrophe could mean all manner of mishaps couldn’t it Kim?
flutey, I’ve edited “fuck” out of your post - we’ve got problems at the moment with the site being detected by sysadmin bots and various censorship software programmes as “not safe for work”.
“Not safe for work”? Jeepers, that would be doubleplusungood.
Good thing there are ’sysadminbots’ working overtime to protect me, so that I am ’safe’ at work, here at the asbestos/plutonium/cholesterol-canning factory!
It seems we’ve already begun to live in a bad science fiction movie, but where are the giant robots? Where are the death beams? Where are the damn domed moon colonies?! All we get are sysadminbots?
I, for one, demand my money back.
Oh for fuck sake.
Deal, dude. You can say it in comments but keep it off the front page.
Censorship Mark? Not cricket.
Flute,
The whole point of the concern surrounding global warming is that there is a serious risk of catastrophe. For instance, there is a possibility - only a possibility, but a real one - that the Gulf Stream might stop flowing within the next century. That’s enough to send northern Europe back into an ice age.
And if that’s not enough to make you sit up and take notice I don’t know what is.
I’d much prefer it if there were no limits on what could be posted, but I also think part of the point of having a blog is so that people can read it.
The London coal fog of 1952 directly killed more people by an order of several maginitudes larger than nuclear power has ever done so.
And if the relationship between us and the animals we’re trying to protect was reversed, they would show us no mercy at all, especially the big carnivores.
But why us particular primate species now rule the planet is because we were smart and adaptable enough to move from instinctive, conditioned and biologically triggered behaviours into developing shit like logic, the scientific method and humour. And so we invented civilistion to make daily life better than what nature initially handed us.
Bear with me, I do have a point here. Opps, I dropped it on the sticky carpet. Just a minute. Ah ha, found it again.
OK, the right/libertarian/low Whig view is that high animal spirits and energy got us this far so why choke ‘em off? The left/socialist/high Tory position is that let’s work together to grow a better garden that will feed us all.
And the reality is an ongoing an evolving compromise kept alive and vibrant by the tension between these two polar view points. That’s why us apes rock this world. Opposable thumbs are not just a category killer competitive advantage
but a good metaphor as well.
Now I’ve complety forgotten my original point, not least beacuse the iTunes random shuffle on my iMac is playing Uffa Fox’s Single Bed right n-n-n-now.
Also Roger Federer has the best whipped cross-court on the run forehand I have ever seen. Even better than Rod Laver at his peak.
Oh yes, now I remember what I set out to crap on about. The self-worshipping left should dump its pompous prescriptions and the self-stimulating right should ditch its archaic certainties.
Besides most of the sentient biomass on this planet has not two but six legs.
And did I mention Federer also has best court coverage skills since Agassi?
As you were.
I didn’t think it was a blind no. I thought it was just a no until certain problems have been fixed. For instance nuclear waste treatment as opposed to let’s bury it and hope the problem goes away.
Personally I’m all for this, with one proviso. Secure storage of nuclear waste isn’t cheap and the times involved before the waste becomes safe is in the order of millenia (some up to 50,000 years or more). So this means that we have to cover that cost. Now base rate of $1/kg sounds fine by me, and of course we’d have to take inflation into consideration so let’s add an anatocism of 1% (I’m an optimistic about our economy =) to that for every year of storage. Let’s take a worse case scenario and say we’ll store it for 50,000 years. So that would come to roughly…well why don’t you just hand over everything your country has, does and ever will own now and call it even. Payment up front of course.
I’m with Nabs, Flute, Mark, Kim, and just about everyone else on this thread.
I think there’s a point in there somewhere if everyone would cool down a bit and thinks about it.
I think the left needs to stop mixing messages. We give the right easy shots because for the most part we like to let people play out their arguments, and tend to believe that intellectual diversity leads to good collective decision making (well at least I do).
“How come only 1.3% of executive directors in Australia are women?
Aren’t women as capable as men of being executive directors?
Then there must be an inherent prejudice in “the systemâ€?.”
There’s your problem in a nutshell. You assume we’d all love to be executive directors. Well of course we’d all like the remuneration bit, but do we all want to be the dreadfully focussed overboarder that winners require to get to the top of their field? I think the answer should be as obvious as women in sport. Perhaps women’s ability to multitask well makes them less amenable to the fanatical focus and channelling required and then there’s the kids. Each one takes a minimum 6-12 months away from the relentless grind to the top. Perhaps women have a better sense of priorities than your harsh judgement of them and their ’system’ as you put it so arrogantly.
“Then there must be an inherent prejudice in “the systemâ€?.â€?
There certainly is. When are we gonna see as many incompentant women in powerful positions as there are incompentant men? That’s my yardstick of sexual equality.
After all, Bronwyn Bishop didn’t become Speaker.
The left do need to get up to pace with using the price mechanism rather than the quantity controls in order to achieve better socio-economic outcomes. Their attraction to the latter is a fatal one. You can be a market green, but its all in the constitution of the marketplace. We’re a long way from there at present.
If we didn’t still have some Leninist lead in the saddle-bags we would have won this race decades ago. The average person thinks ‘ Left’ and they think line of loony losers running from Jacobins through Leninists to the mobile megaphones with idiots today. Ditch the bourgeois managerial disaster that is Marxism and we might have a chance. Actually come to think of the left is terminally lame and needs to be put down. Thanks for yr help with that.
Leftists are all lamers and losers.
It’s sad when commentators/bloggers/writers on the Left attempt to prescribe what are the “real” issues and which ones are just noise.
It’s especially sad when I find the Flute doing it.
Shades of the controversy a couple of months back when some of the US Dems supporters said they should drop abortion/choice as an issue because it was just wimmin’s stuff.
Nuclear power if it’s economically feasible
That is not the only criterion and you know it.
Oh, and the straw-lefty - unwashed, of course. I still go on the odd demo, I’m 49, and I take care to wear my business suit to confound the critics.
Let me diagnose a problem with the left: we give too many free kicks. Catch someone on the right lampooning Janet Albrectsen or Paddy McG as Flute has just lampooned protesters.
I like the frisson between great benefactor and upstart poster back there…
‘But you said I could write what I want, I have a note in my wallet’.
‘Circumstances have changed, workbots have voted.’
I want to know how barramundi fishermen fit into the far left model.
Oh and that rights based stuff you allude to? The party room has already decreed that the marginals don’t want to hear it.
Remember refugees, remember gay marriage?
We are now fighting over people’s wallets, the only thing australians give a flying fuck about at the moment.
So it goes.
Why is being respectable so important to you Flute? Maybe you just getting old and conservative.
Helen, I would never drop the abortion line. That falls squarely under equity of services. I’ve been to many demos myself wearing business attire, but who gets the media attention? Hedgehog and Charity, the feral love ponies from the enchanted forest. Now out in the real world when someone sees that on the news are they going to think, mmm, I reckon those lefties have a point?
Of course I would prefer the alternative of seeing Peter Hendy in dreadlocks and a tie dye poncho.
Getting irritated at LP again. Why do I do it? keep going keep going. scroll down scroll down. Ahah thank christ, Nabs with a point no less, and a good one. Especially the bit about us bi-ped destroyers of all natures’ good actually being in the minority.
You have a valid point too flute, buried beneath those cruel anti-animal words, but take three deep breaths. Armaniac you win. You’re right. Little Johnnie Howard has turned us all into caricatures of himself, we care way too much about the fucking economy and big business. Feel the John Howard in you and repent. (Before during and after a visit to the exorcist) hopefully coming soon). At this point I don’t care who ELSE it is just so long as its not Howard, I am so over my inner John Howard.
Like it or not, the world runs on economics. There are so many good models and cases for a social democratic style of dishing out the wealth that are not pursued by the ALP. Instead we now accept that budget defecits are bad and the future fund is good. Bad economics. The left has to regain this ground by putting forward sustainable arguments, and all the touchy feely emotion in the world will not amount to a hill of magic beans.
The only way for the left to win government is to do what they have done in the past.
go to the right!
This is not the sort of commentary I’d come to expect from LP. Flute is stereotyping the Left, which is not a homogeneous group, and then knocking down straw men.
Let’s see if flute cares about his insular politics when the earth is burnt to a crisp.
[link]
As for not caring about Bambi, Jason, I see that as pathologically insular. A mark of maturity is when we don’t see ourselves as the centre of the universe.
It seems to me that Leftism to flute is a doctrine, not something he has come to by extending his intellectual and heart capacity. I can’t see how this post has been productive in any way, other than promoting Alan Jones - style stereotypes.
Man, there’s a ton of ways out of this maze.
One of them involves doing what Flute says - strip all the (self-defined) dross - but as others have alluded to I reckon that involves selling out and giving in as wella s abandoning important issues. Not only to John Howard and his Caricatures but to the Media who focus on Hedgehog & Charity (or whatever provides them with an angle- imagine a protest where 75% of protestors wore suits or were showered, well groomed and in the buff.)
Another possible way out involves focusing on democratic reform, chipping and chipping away until we get to the point where what voters actually base their decisions on vaguely approximates what actually is reality and what actually is important!!
A third one involves a complete rethinking of what left means and what the left-right dialectic means, or more accurately what unnecessary crap the terms bring into the world. As Obs notes (but also absolutely not as Obs notes) economics needs to be questioned as well. A couple of you guys have mentioned this watertight case for an economic alternative….what is it?
It’s a serious issue, but Flute, you come across as having an overriding beef against Greenies. Am I wrong or is there anything else important you would add to your don’t give a shit list?
Well said Weathergirl. I am also at a loss to see what you were trying to actually achieve with this post Flute.
The most pointless and empty article I’ve seen posted on LP. I can’t believe so many actually dignified it with a response.
The main problem with the Left is its postmodern schizophrenia. With the final abandonment of Socialist aims and marxist ideology, the Left has never been able to find its “soul.”
All the old Leftist intellectual horsepower migrated to the parlour game of postmodernism and identity politics. The Rainbow politics of the past 15 years has just been tragic, and will keep leftists out of power for eternity.
Ah, but LQ, thats exactly the point. There is not one ’soul’ but lots; not one grand narrative but many :-6
If the price of recognising freedom and equality is to remain out of power for ‘eternity’, I will face it with sad resignation. Unless you mean actual eternity in which something needs to be done. But of course, if we raise our eyes outside of this sunburnt land, or even away from the hallowed halls of Canberra, we see that this is not the case.
Equality? YUK! Dude, somebody had better let you know that the Berlin Wall came down quite a while ago. If you’re selling ‘equality” it will be a lot longer than eternity before anybody will buy!
So what did the cracking of the Berlin Wall signify, LQ?
The victory of inequality? Well, there’s some truth to that.
BTW, whats your prescription for the soul of the left? And does it correspond with Flute’s original post at all?
Michael G
I am actually attracted by some of Latham’s necon ideas, particularly in seeing the state rather than a mere provider of services, but as an ENABLER. I believe very strongly in government’s spending money to take some of the bumps out of life, but I also have a very strong belief that passive welfare is corrosive not just for the individual, but for his/her family and friends and society as a whole
Don’t disagree LQ.
Golly, what’s this? A crack in the LP collective’s carapace?
Onya, flute.
“This is not the sort of commentary I’d come to expect from LP.”
No, but it’s good to see some heterodoxy for a change.
Newsflash from Rob: OMG! Diversity of opinion on the Left!
Having said that, I think the tone of this post is unhelpful. I couldn’t agree more with Helen:
Yes, but it seems a tad unwelcome here, is my point, Kim.
Besides (ref Helen’s quote), I’d have no difficulty lampooning Miranda Devine’s less considered outbursts — eg her very strange attitude towards Schappelle Corby.
Now that Rob’s discovered this thread (returning gingerly to LP after his tarring and feathering a few weeks ago), let’s time the response from Tim Blair et al.
I think Flute makes a good point if you can get past his acerbic manner of expounding it. But that’s just textbook Flutey, isn’t it?
In short, I’m not sure all the otherwise bright young kids wearing Chairman Mao and Che t-shirts and advocating some sort of communist revivalism are really doing the broader left much of a service.
I must say, I do bathe regularly, sometimes twice a day even.
Yes, Guy, but Maoists etc are on the fringe, aren’t they? It’s like saying, “I don’t think all the neo-nazis and skinheads are doing the right much service.”
I’ve been busy elsewhere and elsewise, wg.
Weathergirl, they are absolutely on the fringe, but sometimes it doesn’t seem this way to people who don’t have a good understanding of the broader spectrum of opinion within the left. (e.g. the average person)
And I’ll second Naomi’s comment.
We have very good reasons to be concerned about climate change and nuclear energy. But to borrow the words of PJK, the average punter needs to be reminded that agreeing with the left does not necessarily mean you need to be a Balmain basket weaver whose idea of economics is wider nature strips, more trees and eat your own shit.
As I ride to work and play sport regularly, daily washing is essential.
I’ve never really got the whole hand-wringing stuff about how other people present themselves, or people crying when the media misrepresent your ideas. This game is for keeps, do you expect them to play nicely?
As a sports psychologist once told me - ‘control the controllables’, ie. you. Don’t expect other people to represent you, whether they be politicians getting a free ride on factional loyalty or people who would try and tell you that Comrades Lenin and Trotsky are generally misunderstood saints.
As for the whole anti-green thing, I feel like I’ve stepped into a time machine to a date before I was born. Just because there are some flakes within the green ‘movement’ doesn’t change the reality that ecological issues generally affect the least autonomous and poorest people first.
My point, though, is that flute is doing exactly what he argues against. He’s mischaracterising it. When he says
He’s not shedding the baggage himself. No-one I know on the left fits his characterisation. The only time I ever come in contact with these people is at marches or community events, and they’re the minority. I’ve also been to corporate events where reasonable conservatives cringe at far-right nutters’ views. So what’s the point, here?
“Sacha, that has bugger all to do with economic collectivism.”
My reading of the post was that you were saying that a human-centric focus is the way to go - which is a mistake.
Naomi, I agree it’s much easier to have a radical wardrobe than a radical mind.
We shall wear our lovely cashmere knits, and we shall triumph!
I like having a radical wardrobe, but not the sort Flute is thinking of.
Hold on — Are we (TEH LEFT) feral hippies in kombie vans or are we self-obsessed bourgeous latte drinkers?
My wardrobe is as boring as they come, but I wouldn’t want to think that people ought to be dismissed for dressing differently, just as I do not believe that I should be dismissed for eating differently from the majority.
It is pseudo-radical tactics that bother me - such as the people that join in protests in order to enjoy a bit of property damage or street violence. I am also frustrated by those people who try to highjack single-issue protests with a shopping list of their own agendas thereby alienating many of the participants who come out because to support a carefully managed consensus, and boring the rest of us to tears (Socialist Alliance members tend to excel at this tactic).
What about feral hippy soy latte drinkers in cashmere knits, Kate?
Flute, you should consider becoming a vegetarian. That may solve your anger problem.
I think Cristy has helpfully identified ‘Lefties’ who are not necessarily members of The Left.
For example - the anti-War marches in the UK (and i am sure they were the same in Australia). Sure, there were plenty of people marching because they were genuinely concerned/upset/pissed off about the UK being part of ‘The Coalition of the Willing’. But there were also a lot of people waving flags and banners protesting issues very tangentially associated with the invasion of Iraq, if at all. And then there were those who marched because:
“It looks like it might be fun. And if it’s boring, we can just duck into Starbucks.”
“Well, it’s the Woodstock of our generation, innit?”
“Well, everyone else is…”
Like the Che shirts and the hippy sandals, it is easy to attach yourself to the trappings of a lifestyle without burdening yourself with the philosophy.
So what do we do? I think the only thing we (as in The Left) can do is be as reasonable, pro-active and sensible as possible, so people will see we are different than those who are play-acting, or just barking mad.
I thought Flute’s point was to use the word “bollocky”, tell us what he doesn’t “give a shit about” and tell protesters to “have a bath”.
Perhaps he’s come up with some actual arguments in comments, but the post itself is bollocks. If you’ll excuse my saying so.
Yes Naomi, I think you understand where I’m coming from. In fact its heartening to see quite a few fellow lefties I respect catching my drift.
I take it the rest are the sort of lefties you don’t respect because we disagree with your omnipotent pronouncements about what the left is and how it should look, act and think?
What every othodoxy fears and abhors more than anything, more than the apostates and revisionists, are the ‘false brethren’ (and sistren?). Welcome to the boot, flute. We’ve all been there.
Whatever, Rob. You’ll be blaming Kim for all the crimes of Mao next
I don’t at all disagree that there can be a debate in the public sphere about economic or other focuses, and I’m probably more in the economic camp, but I think it’s important not to define that narrowly but in terms of social justice objectives - and there are huge ramifications there in terms of climate change issues for instance.
But what is important is that we don’t play to stupid stereotypes about people on the Left who disagree - “have a bath”, “bonging up a dooby and saving some whales” etc. and that the argument is supported by, well, actual argument.
In defence of Flutey, there is some mind boggling nonsense that goes on in some parts of the Green Left. I recall one of the Greens Yarra councillors Gurm Sekhon expressing his dismay at some Green Branches that refused to hand out How To Vote cards since it hurts the bloody trees.
I also copped boos and hisses from some of the dumber Green elements when I pointed out that I have spent most of my working life in the Defence Department.
Now of course most Greens are very sensible people. However a small element of my fellow party members remind me of Tim and Debbie from the old ABC comedy “Australia, Your Standing In It”.
What a show.
Kim, OK lets keep the left divorced from reality in a touchy feely bubble that appeals to no voters except themselves.
As for using the word “bollocky”, well I think it has a bit more gravitas than posting a few shaved muffs on the blog.
Meowwwwwwwwr!
And flutey isn’t even one of the cat gravatar people!
I don’t consider myself a member of the Left. And you might think I’m saying this just to sow more discord amongst my political opponents.
But seriously, as a Whig, I would like the Left to be better because I hate the Tories more. What Flutey is doing here is shock treatment. He is on the level with George Orwell who scoffed at the ’sandal wearers and bearded fruit juice drinkers’ that started infesting the Left. I would like a Left that returns to secular humanism and the technophilia and rationalism of Marx and rejects Valley-girl relativism and throws out the cultural studies/pomo/identity politics/Gaia-Earth-mother claptrap. I think that’s what Flutey wants too.
a small element of my fellow party members remind me of Tim and Debbie from the old ABC comedy “Australia, Your Standing In It�.
And of course, Liberal and National party members, not forgetting the Family Firsts as well, are all paragons of intelligence and cultcha.
Mwahaha.
(It’s a dark and stormy night. A group of people are going to The Left, a hip bar just off the High street. When they get there they’re refused entry. “No, you can’t come in. Not with those shoes” the bouncer says. “Aw, come on mate” they plead, “it’s freezing out here.” “Management says only orange shoes with blue laces tonight, sorry.” Unfortunately, only a few people in the city actualy own a pair of orange shoes with blue laces. The bar doesn’t sell enough drinks and goes under. There’s a moral to this story.)
There are a lot of things I don’t care about either (pickles, people under the age of 15, fashion trends), but I know imposing my preferences on others isn’t going to help anyone.
Diversity and plurality is what the Left (if it can ever be defined as an homogenous group) is all about, isn’t it? There’s plenty of room for everyone?
“Diversity and plurality is what the Left (if it can ever be defined as an homogenous group) is all about, isn’t it?”
Yep, and that’s why Flutey’s views are just as welcome under the big tent of the Left as yours.
But why do you want that Jason? Is your prescription simply aimed at having a decent opposition? I don’t know that this is the most sensible path for the ‘left’ to take. Me, I don’t really think shock treatment is the answer, and even if it is, I’m not convinced the right things are getting shocked around here.
I think the point made up the thread about these ‘ferals’ being an image problem more than anything is the crux of this. Sure the ‘left’ have issues of substance, but they shouldn’t be confused with issues of style.
“But why do you want that Jason? Is your prescription simply aimed at having a decent opposition?”
The more sensible people in positions of political influence the better, Michael. I don’t care if some of them don’t share the same views on economics as me as long as we agree on the really important fundamental stuff - secular humanism, rationalism, let’s not get in the way of progress (none of this luddite bullshit that comes from the new left), unqualified social libertarianism (no kowtowing to sensitivities via vilification laws, which the identity politics left are really into), etc
Sorry, Jason, can you elaborate on what “luddite nonsense” comes from “the new left”? I’m not sure I understand what or whom you’re referring to.