Cruddas on Cameron's progress

strapworld

With Kenneth Clarke back they will grow even more concerned!

But David Davis should be given a front bench role as soon as possible. Cameron must get over his mood swings on different people. The name of the game has to be the destruction of this discredited, incompetent, lying Prime Minister and his rotten Government.

You will deduce that I do not rate them at all!

Cameron needs, as Ken Clarke has proved, big beasts on the front bench. Davis takes no prisoners.

Mr Cameron, do not get complacent, bring in David Davis from the cold NOW.

Then, next month bring in John Redwood! number two to George I would suggest.

John Cruddas strikes me as a very honest left wing MP.

Faceless Bureaucrat

Fascinating that this view comes from none other than John Cruddas, a supposed siren of the Left. I have said before that Cruddas has the makings of a future (next?) Labour Leader - his comments here only reinforce that view...

Ian C

strapworld

Davis is good - when he can get out of bed in the morning. He seems to think that the party owes him a big job when he would not initiate policy development as Shadow Home Sec.

One big critcism of the Tory Party is that there is still too much unknown about what they stand for. He chose to concoct a fight that had been morally won anyway rather do the graft on the front bench. You can understand Cameron's frustration at that and it made him unpopular with his co-frontbenchers. He is not the 'musthave' heavyweight people think he is and is not a team player at the top level.

George Laird

Dear All

I have to say that New Labour made a mistake by not making Cruddas, deputy leader.

They missed a trick there, instead they elected Harman whose main claim to why she should be appointed was based on her sex.

Well, she could hardly go on her record since it contains discriminating against a man applying for a job based on the fact he was male.

As to the Tories radical agenda, I see this as flannel, the Tories have one method of "helping" the poor.

It is the stick.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

RW

George Laird, there are disadvantages to being a 19 year old student:

1) Arrogance
2) Pomposity
3) Illiteracy
4) Naivety
5) Inexperience
6) Lack of historical knowledge
7) Simplistic political analysis

I could go on. But don't worry. You'll grow out of it all one day.

J H Holloway

Yes George...

Drop the 'Dear All' and drop everything from 'yours sincerely...' onwards.

Don't they teach you at Glasgow to be snappy and to the point in your written work?

I think most of us are getting a bit wound-up by your ponderous 'contributions'.

Athesius the Facilitator

Never mind George; where's Verity. I thought she would have something to say about this article.

George Laird

Dear All

I notice that a "campaign" has suddenly spouted up.

RW writes about "simplistic political analysis", can he/she tell me why the Tories have been dead in Scotland since about 1980?

Can he/she tell me why in 29 years, they couldn't recover?

Finally, to all, you write your way and I will write my way.

If it upsets you, don't read it.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Nick Kaplan

It’s about time we on the right started to challenge the left-wing monopoly on emotive words. I think there are far more terms than the 2 mentioned (fairness and progress) that we need to challenge:

(1)Justice- Today, following the destructive socialism of John Rawls’ and his acolytes in the academic community, this word is exclusively seen to mean ‘social justice’ which is synonymous with equality. But as Anthony Flew has convincingly argued social justice is not Justice as it was always understood in the past, by philosophers like Aristotle and Hume. Instead Justice is giving people what they deserve or are entitled to; the very opposite of equality and ‘social [in] justice.’

(2) Redistribution- Thomas Sowell best summarised the fallacy here when he said “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

(3)Liberal- Real liberals i.e. those who started the tradition like Locke and J. S. Mill were strong advocates of a small state and negative individual rights. Now the people who claim to be liberals are invariably statists, i.e. closet socialists i.e. the very opposite of liberal.

(4)Rights- Currently the left assert that people have rights to X, Y and Z (invariably representing some sort of positive provision of welfare) to save themselves actually having to argue for these things. However, in the past (see the British or American Bill of Rights) Rights were essentially a negative concept i.e. you have a right to not be killed, coerced, taxed punitively etc, this is a very different concept to the leftist idea of entitlement which is the view that society somehow owes something to every individual simply for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.

(5)Education- today this invariably means social engineering rather than teaching and learning. Valuing a proper, rigours education where kids actually learn rather than being held back to make their less able counter-parts feel better about themselves, is a conservative ideal that leftists despise.

(6)Positive Discrimination- Someone really must tell those on the left that simply by sticking the prefix positive to the front of something essentially evil doesn’t make it OK. 'Positive Murder' is still murder, 'positive discrimination' is still discrimination.

(7)Far- Right- a particularly useful term that the left use to paint a picture of guilt by association. However the simple fact is that the far-right has far more in common with the centre-ground, statist/ corporatist left than it does with the actual right which favours a small state and a large society. It’s no coincidence that Nazi stands for National Socialists German Workers party, or that both Mussolini and Oswald Mosley were Socialists before becoming fascists; the collectivist assumptions at the heart of Fascism and leftism are strikingly similar. Of course we on the right understand that the truly terrible content of ‘far-right’ ideology has nothing to do with anything the moderate left believe and we have enough decency not to call these groups the ‘far-left.’ It’s a pity we can’t say the same of those on the actual left, who are a thoroughly indecent and hateful bunch.

The fact that we on the right have allowed the left to commandeer these terms has done us no end of damage. One should not neglect the power of language in shaping thought and in winning hearts and minds; on this front the left really have played a blinder.

Tim Slim

I can't say I'm too enamoured of all this use of the word progressive.

As far as government intrusiveness, legislation and regulation, size of the public sector, the political establishment, public morality, and educational policy (etc etc etc) are concerned, I might even prefer a regressive
political party.

Perhaps Verity is right.

TGF UKIP

Ah "Progressive Conservatism Project" relating to a Cameron story, says it all I thought.

But being intrigued I followed Jaems' link and found straight away that "The Project" does indeed have an "Advisory Board" featuring some very predictable names such as Mr Polly, Clevinger Willetts and Finkelstein - but who's THIS?!

FRANK FIELD!

Yes, indeed, and why wasn't that the headline for this piece and why hasn't Franks' appearance on the Advisory Board of the Progressive Conservatism Project, not yet made the national media.

Is Frank easing his way across?

PS What would really merit Coffee House headlines, though, would be Cameron's name coupled with a "Conservative Conservatism Project" - as if!

Nick Kaplan

It’s about time we on the right started to challenge the left-wing monopoly on emotive words. I think there are far more terms than the 2 mentioned (fairness and progressive) that we need to challenge:

(1)Justice- Today, following the destructive socialism of John Rawls’ and his acolytes in the academic community, this word is exclusively seen to mean ‘social justice’ which is synonymous with equality. But as Anthony Flew has convincingly argued social justice is not Justice as it was always understood in the past by philosophers like Aristotle and Hume. Instead Justice is giving people what they deserve or are entitled to; the very opposite of equality and ‘social [in] justice.’

(2)Redistribution- Thomas Sowell best summarised the fallacy here when he said “Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

(3)Liberal- Real liberals i.e. those who started the tradition like Locke, Milton and J. S. Mill were strong advocates of a small state and negative individual rights. Now the people who claim to be liberals are invariably statists, i.e. closet socialists i.e. the very opposite of liberal.

(4)Rights- Currently the left assert that people have rights to X, Y and Z (invariably representing some sort of positive provision of welfare) to save themselves actually having to argue for these things. However, in the past (see the British or American Bill of Rights) Rights were essentially a negative concept i.e. you have a right to not be killed, coerced, taxed punitively etc, this is a very different concept to the leftist idea of entitlement which is the view that society somehow owes something to individuals simply for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.

(5)Education- today this invariably means social engineering rather than teaching and learning. Valuing a proper, rigours education where kids actually learn rather than being held back to make their less able counter-parts feel better about themselves, is a conservative ideal that leftists despise.

(6)Positive Discrimination- Someone really must tell those on the left that simply by sticking the prefix positive to the front of something essentially evil doesn’t make it OK. Positive Murder is still murder, positive discrimination is still discrimination.

(7)Far- Right- a particularly useful term that the left use to paint a picture of guilt by association. However the simple fact is that the far-right has far more in common with the centre-ground, statist/ corporatist left than is does with the actual right which favours a small state and a large society. It’s no coincidence that Nazi stands for National Socialists German Workers party, or that both Mussolini and Oswald Mosley were Socialists before becoming fascists; the collectivist assumptions at the heart of Fascism and leftism are strikingly similar. Of course we on the right understand that the truly terrible content of ‘far-right’ ideology has nothing to do with anything the moderate left believe and we have enough decency not to call these groups the ‘far-left,’ it’s a pity we can’t say the same of those on the actual left, who are a thoroughly indecent and hateful bunch.

The fact that we on the right have allowed the left to commandeer these terms has done us no end of damage. One should not neglect the power of language in shaping thought and winning hearts and minds; on this front the left really have played a blinder.

Nick Kaplan

George Laird; I don’t know why you think the death of the Tories in socialist Scotland somehow adds to the complexity or accuracy of your analysis. The fact is the Tories were strong in Scotland up until about 60 years ago, however, when they gave up support for the British empire, which was in fact largely a Scottish Venture [where do you think David Livingstone came from?], the Scots no longer saw any interest in voting for them and turned instead to the party that promised them money from England (particularly through the Labour created Barnet formula) as an alternative to the wealth they had made from trade within the empire.

Now that the state is by far the largest employer in Scotland it’s no wonder they keep voting for Labour who will carry on paying the Scots for their votes by creating new jobs for them regardless of the cost to the productive parts of the economy. Adam Smith must be turning in his grave.

Yours Sincerely

Nick Kaplan
The Campaign to get George Laird to grow up and stop writing such nonsense.

Sam Armstrong

George Laird says: "As to the Tories radical agenda, I see this as flannel, the Tories have one method of "helping" the poor. It is the stick".

The stick, in this day and age of boundless human rights, free money and irresponsibility WOULD in my opinion be radical.

Verity

Bravo TGI UKIP and Nick Kaplan! Both comments extremely well observed and conveyed. (BTW, Nick, I don't "have enough decency not to call these groups far-left". I call them "far left or far-lefties" all the time. Repetition works, as Labour has found. Repetition can be a dirk.) Speaking of terms of opprobrium, I am glad the term "the loony left" has dropped out of usage. I always thought it sounded too endearing. The Edinburgh social services cow who took a four and five year old brother and sister away from their loving grandparents, who they love and feel secure with, to give them to a male gay couple are not "loony left". They're not even far left. They are foaming rabid.

Have you noticed? They get bolder.

George Laird

Dear Nick Kaplan

"The Campaign to get George Laird to grow up and stop writing such nonsense".

Perhaps Mr. Kaplan it is you who should grow up.

Your attempt at mockery is hardly inspired genius, where is the flair and style? This is the problem of right wingers such as yourself, limited ability, just copying everyone else.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

George Laird

Dear Sam Armstrong

"The stick, in this day and age of boundless human rights, free money and irresponsibility WOULD in my opinion be radical".

Do you not know that the poor have rights on paper but cannot access them in reality?

That is why Cameron is talking about broken Britain all the time.

A right is not a right unless it can be freely accessed.

Miyamoto Musashi in the 16th Century wrote that a weapon is useless it can used too.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University