Labour leadership

[Maurice Picarda]

Are you a labour party member maurice?

They seem to think so, because of a glitch in their supporter and member registration and management software, so I think I get a free vote. I haven't actually paid any money for membership since 1987 or so when I was in the LPYS.

 

[andysays]

I'm not prominent, but I use it. However, 'working people' means the same. Why are you bothered?

"Working people" doesn't mean the same as "working class"

Apart from the fact that the former doesn't include many non-working people who are nevertheless working class, there is a subtle (too subtle for you at least) but very significant difference between the two.

"Working class" suggests a class of people with shared interests as a result of their need to sell their labour, and even hints at the possibility of them acting as a class to further those interests. "Working people" is merely descriptive, and has none of the suggestion of shared interests or collective action.

Using the latter term, people are reduced to individuals with no connection to their fellow workers. Remember this?

There is no such thing as society, just individuals and their families

This ideology seems to have been swallowed 100% by the Labour party, who are now happily regurgitating it at every opportunity.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I've been called a lot of names as well, but good point. Happy to wade through few tonight.

If you've any background in Labour activism or local politics, you should have a thick enough skin to shrug off name-calling. You're using it as an excuse to dodge hard questions.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Apart from the blog, which is not Tory. And makes sense.

It evinces sentiments more traditionally identified as "Tory" than as Labour. It may not be a Tory blog, but it's a blog whose writer holds Tory sentiments.

Screaming 'Tory' is an easy riposte, but a poor one.

Almost as easy, and as poor, as avoiding answering questions on the grounds of people name-calling.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

do you think the people who WORK in the city on vast salaries are WORKING PEOPLE?

At what level of salary is one's job no longer work, and at what point does it become instead the voluntary and gleeful participation in oppression and exploitation? £50k? £150k? £1m? And I get that there's no such things as work in EC4, but what about Farringdon or Shoreditch?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Apart from being angry that the Tories are in power, disgusted with their moves, and utterly committed to opportunities for working class people - on top of so much else.
As I said. Easy riposte without substance.

...and apart from proffering a "Labour can't win with Corbyn", then offering a load of specious, opinion-heavy unsubstantiated crap in lieu of having anything meaningful to add to the debate.
She's not "utterly committed to opportunities for working class people", she's utterly in favour of maintaining the same broken systems that have already served the working class so badly. This is the same vein of rhetoric that Blair tapped when he lied and said "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"(my emphasis) - the only bit that got fulfilled was the punitive bit.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

This is the same vein of rhetoric that Blair tapped when he lied and said "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"(my emphasis) - the only bit that got fulfilled was the punitive bit.

You mean, apart from Sure Start centres, the minimum wage, tax credits and the EMA?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Is it just me then? I can't remember seeing a prominent Labour politician say "working class" on TV recently. It's always the more palatable "working people" and it's not an accident.

"Working people" meaning something signally different than "working class", too, as well the utterer(s) know.

 

[gimesumtruf]

Burnham is a no, no, a leave the door open privatiser, tainted with patients having to drink from flower vases, private hospital cleaners who used the same cloth for tables and toilets and MRSA. (tories can't miss )
Cooper is balls'd up, bleeding bilderberg meetings, come on.
Kendal I don't know but I'm dam sure she is blairite, spit. Blair was/is a friend of Murdoch for oozits sake. She supports some of Osbornes shit plans.

Maybe I have things arse upward but it's an impression from an ordinary punter.

 

[Favelado]

"Working people" meaning something signally different than "working class", too, as well the utterer(s) know.

See later posts

 

[ViolentPanda]

You mean, apart from Sure Start centres, the minimum wage, tax credits and the EMA?

Poor Maurice, so upset by my post that he obviously lost the ability to read.
Or, less generously, he had to refer to things I hadn't mentioned in order to boost his ideological hero.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Talking of Corbyn, would you invite Raed Salah to tea, VP? Just out of interest.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Poor Maurice, so upset by my post that he obviously lost the ability to read.
Or, less generously, he had to refer to things I hadn't mentioned in order to boost his ideological hero.

I like to think that when TB talked of the causes of crime he was referring to poverty, poor education and so on. There is, I admit, a slight worry that he was talking about original sin. But most Blairites part company with Blair on god.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'm not prominent, but I use it. However, 'working people' means the same. Why are you bothered?

It doesn't "mean the same". "Working people" refers to anyone who works (and invalidates those who are unable to), among other things. "Working class" refers to your relationship to the means of production.

 

[nino_savatte]

Talking of Corbyn, would you invite Raed Salah to tea, VP? Just out of interest.

What are you on about? Apologise for the Israeli state much, do you?

 

[ViolentPanda]

As I've explained in a previous post, it's symbolic of the Labour leadership's fear of the word class. They're so scared of being portrayed as champions of the working class, that they can't use the word, and have to find a more anodyne substitute.

Once the party of the Labour movement has a policy of not using the word class, it's in all kinds of identity crisis.

TBF, it's harder to be "champions of the working class" when you're actually a privileged elite, and when the majority of those MPs that "came up the hard way" are ignored by the Oxbridgers

 

[Maurice Picarda]

What are you on about? Apologise for the Israeli state much, do you?

From time to time.

But most pro-Palestinians get slightly embarrassed by Hamas folk when they are on record repeating blood libels. Corbyn, not so much.

Just wondered where VP stood on Salah.

 

[Pickman's model]

At what level of salary is one's job no longer work, and at what point does it become instead the voluntary and gleeful participation in oppression and exploitation? £50k? £150k? £1m? And I get that there's no such things as work in EC4, but what about Farringdon or Shoreditch?

potentislly £25k or so, however much cops start on.

 

[nino_savatte]

From time to time.

.

Yeah, I figured as much. Did you get a kick out of thousands of Palestinians and Gazans being killed?

 

[Maurice Picarda]

potentislly £25k or so, however much cops start on.

Wow. And, to be clear, you're not defining the working class here, you're defining working people?

 

[SpookyFrank]

You mean, apart from Sure Start centres, the minimum wage, tax credits and the EMA?

Sure start centres have been closing all over the place, the minimum wage has been allowed to fall way behind the cost of living, tax credits are mostly just a subsidy for low-paying employers and EMA is long gone. All of which is a result either of Blairite policies or of Tory policies the blairites wholeheartedly support.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

Tory policies the blairites wholeheartedly support.

That's quite straightforwardly not true. It's beyond even being a lie. I'd call it a smear.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Maybe I have things arse upward but it's an impression from an ordinary punter.

No I think you've got the idea. Kendall's hook is that she's not tainted by the mistakes of the previous labour government, as if she'd have done anything differently had she been involved.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I like to think that when TB talked of the causes of crime he was referring to poverty, poor education and so on. There is, I admit, a slight worry that he was talking about original sin. But most Blairites part company with Blair on god.

Let's take just one of the things you mentioned - surestart centres - and see what links there are to "the causes of crime" (there are a few, but they're weak unless you believe party position papers of 10-20 years ago):
1) The link between hunger/malnourishment and cognitive development.
2) The link (or lack thereof) between poverty, surestart centre use, and crime.
3) The link between poor education and crime.

1) While surestart centres make some difference in terms of providing nutritious food for a single meal, that has a weak effect on maximising cognitive development. Providing the means to access nutritious food in every meal has a much stronger effect, and yet your heroes never tackled "food deserts".
2 and 3) There's no extant evidence that surestart manifested any effect on the causes of crime. Most positive evidence is in regard to the effect on classroom disruption, but there's been little positive research showing that better classroom behaviour led to better educational attainment.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Talking of Corbyn, would you invite Raed Salah to tea, VP? Just out of interest.

I'd invite Salah and/or Netanyahu to tea if I thought it would help solve even a fraction of the problems of Israel/Palestine.

 

[Pickman's model]

Wow. And, to be clear, you're not defining the working class here, you're defining working people?

no, i'm not defining anything. now returning to your admiration for blair's legacy, do you think your admiration widely shared by those on the recieving end in eg iraq and afghanistan?

 

[SpookyFrank]

That's quite straightforwardly not true. It's beyond even being a lie. I'd call it a smear.

Labour are overtly pro-austerity. They've never allowed themselves to be drawn on which cuts they would have made or not made relative to Osbourne, but they certainly weren't planning to raise the minimum wage. Balls hilariously promised to raise it to 8 quid an hour by 2020, which would amount to a real terms cut in the minimum wage.

 

[Maurice Picarda]

I'd invite Salah and/or Netanyahu to tea if I thought it would help solve even a fraction of the problems of Israel/Palestine.

Noble of you. And would you say to Bibi, as Corbyn did to Saleh: "I look forward to giving you tea, because you deserve it"?

 

[xslavearcx]

It doesn't "mean the same". "Working people" refers to anyone who works (and invalidates those who are unable to), among other things. "Working class" refers to your relationship to the means of production.

Although jim Murphy started using the term "working class" up here as synonym for what labour elsewhere were using the term "working people"... Obviously a cynical move to give those politics a more socialist clothing but clearly did not work

 

[ViolentPanda]

Noble of you. And would you say to Bibi, as Corbyn did to Saleh: "I look forward to giving you tea, because you deserve it"?

I'm unaware of the context of Corbyn's utterance, but I believe that most people, even Tony Blair, deserve a cup of tea.