Accentuate the differences

Rhoda Klapp

David, if you have to point out the differences, if you have to write essays and spin and delineate and debate the differences between parties all going for the centre ground and purposely ignoring any issue where they might have to actually take a stance, then there are really no differences at all, just three indistinguishable bunches of chancers all out for their own ends. Us and them, you might say. Why do you have to keep playing this daft party tune when it is plainly unimportant. Do we need to have an English Spring before you get a bloody clue?

Verity

"three indistinguishable bunches of chancers all out for their own ends."

In a nutshell. Yes.

Verity

The difference in the photo is, every other woman wore a hat to the Royal wedding except chippy Samantha Cameron. This is a move I would have expected from Cherie Blair. But then, Cherie Blair doesn't have a tattoo, either, so she is possibly considerably more conservative than the charmless Samantha Cameron.

REPay

The positioning concerns of politicians are all well and good. However, some of us actually want to know how problems like how do we get a sustainable, high performance NHS and Education Service. No wonder people are turned off politics...If so much effort goes into positioning no wonder we never seem to get robust solutions to real problems. At least politicans can't keep throwing our money at the problems given the current state of public finances.

AAE

What exactly is a 'community'? How does one join one? How would a 'community' enter the market place? And how would a 'market place community' know that it is successfully serving its particular 'community' in an inclusive and non-discriminatory way? If a family, let's call it Sainsbury, were to start a food store say, and lots of members of the local 'community' were to spend their money there, is that the sort of idea that might work?
Is it beyond the imagining of the likes of Philip Blond and Dave that the best way to recapitalise the poor is to stop taxing them every time they move? Can't they see that the state 'empowering' us is still a form of state control?
Perhaps the best idea, and one which surely embodies all the tenets of the Big Society, is to stop this grotesque state confiscation of so much of our money and let us decide for ourselves what we want to do with it. How empowering would that be? In short, SOD OFF THE LOT OF YOU!

Publius

Wot Rhoda and Verity said.

Plus, why no comment about Glasman's 'Blue Labour' opposition to globalisation and immigration?

BTW, Verity, I realised this weekend that I just don't believe a word Cameron-Heath says any more. Sad, ain't it.

Magnolia

All three main party leaders are Oxbridge educated and married to women who are also highly educated with high ranking careers.
They may be wives/mothers and husbands/fathers but none of them are housewives or househusbands.
Their individual family incomes (regardless of savings) from earnings alone will be huge when compared with most families.
They cannot help but be remote because their individual lifestyles are part of the problem.
The truth is that they don't need all that money to have a good life and a happy time.
At that level of income a lot of it will be spent on discretionary items like designer clothes and Champagne.
I'm not such a kill joy that I can't see merit in either of those things for both purchaser and producer but the truth is that the people who make the clothes and make the wine probably need their job to live and those couples will probably both have to work to pay for essentials as well as 'extras'.
Is it time for Conservatives to try to embrace the idea of a 'family wage' as an idea (not as a right) but as an aspiration for society and lifestyle and could we generate the kind of economy and society that would make this in any way possible before this assortative mating results in the kind of inequality which leads to revolutions?

Verity

AAE - then who's going to pay for all the non-contributors and foreigners to be treated on the NHS, and for all the disabled children born from islamic first cousin marriages, who will be passengers on The Good Ship NHS for life?

My advice - blow the NHS and the BBC up on the same day and free yourselves from the career-patterning politicians.

ollie

Why can't politicians just leave people to sort themselves out?

Labour will never ever abandon the state as a means to social engineer, no way, no how. There is no other purpose for the Labour party to exist other than the expansion of state and government.

Alan Scott

Verity:your concern with hats says it all. You need topping off?

EC

If you think that you might need some more, then don't shoot the guy that sold you the ammunition.

Axstane

Lucky for Verity - they might have had a different photo and she would not have had a chance to put in one of her perpetual cheap jibes about the appearance of a Cameron.

Verity would make the most boring dinner guest since Mary Whitehouse, also a monomaniac.

AAE

Verity

Mmmm! Maybe we've stumbled upon a gift which will just keep on giving!!!

Cynic

"Do we need to have an English Spring before you get a bloody clue?" I'm afraid we do, Rhoda - we need to get organised!

Austin Barry

Unhappily, we, the Great Unwashed, are like Mark Oaten's head: exposed, short on protection and covered in, er, political residue.

It's probably time to call in the military: a new Cromwell is required.

Boudicca

At the next election, the voters will have even less real choice than at the last one. All 3 main parties have basically the same policies, with a variation on titles to give the appearance of choice.

They will argue incessently about minor details of difference in order to pretend that when they are offering is the only solution to the nation's problems and, as usual, schools n hospitals will be the major areas for debate. This isn't because they are the most important issues facing modern Britain or even because policies are widely differing - it is because they are about the only two areas of British life which aren't yet governed by the EU.

Everything else - defence; foreign policy; immmigration/asylum; economic policy; business/employment conditions; welfare; universities; foreign aid; transport; farming/fisheries etc etc the EU either control or significantly affects.

So - voters will have no choice. No wonder they're apathetic.

Unless they vote UKIP, of course. Then they'll get their country back and future elections will be worthwhile.

Austin Barry

Verity:

"But then, Cherie Blair doesn't have a tattoo.."

Well, what happens in chambers stays in chambers, as we silks like to aver, but I don't think I've ever seen a finer, more intricate rendition of Magritte's 'In Reference of Rene'.

FvH

I think the point about decontaminating polluted brands is spot on. That's what these ideas are for.

The real politics remains the same

Labour for the working class and the public sector middle class asking for more public money

Tories for professional, self employed and senior management looking for lower taxes and less public spending

There remains 10% if the electorate who float between the 2 depending on the economic climate at election time

Scotland is interesting where the SNP have surged through the middle on a "competency" platform

Amanda

My first response is this: there is no such thing as the suspension of ideology because there is no suspension of politics -- ever. And 'ideology' is just the word some of us give to the fact of 'political conviction' and 'a set of political beliefs'. That will never be done away with, as long as there are humans to hold them.

My second reaction was: 'yuck'. I can't stand the misleading over-intellectualizing of reality. Especially in the realm of politics, which is a dangerous place to play in.

Frank P

Austin Barry (10.26pm)

Well, after that cryptic comment I'm not sure that I know any more about Cherie Blair, but I certainly found out a great deal about René François Ghislain Magritte.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGCCGHmIlRg

Thanks Austin. Education is a wonderful thing and it's never too late to enjoy it,

Fergus Pickering

I don't thinj, Fvh, that you understand about the SNP. The most important thing about the Scots is their hatred of the English. Without it they would have no national identity. It has nothingg to dowith 'competency' at all. And oif course if, when, they become independent it will be a disaster for them. What will they do then? They will be left to contemplate what they really are.

REPay

FvH - a lot of the middle class are public sector employees who vote Labour and talk as though they were selfless but they too would like more public money but don't have to strike for it.

FvH

FP - there may be some hatred by the big SNP gains this time were achieved by their perceived competency vs the rest

RePay - that's what I said (middle class public sector are Labour through self interest and self preservation)

Baron

David, here goes another eye-catching, probably less meaningless opening by Baron:

This is an age of lies, not of truth, the age of pap, not of substance…

You like? And I tell you another thing, you ask a man on the street ‘ you resisting the caprices of capital’ he’ll tell you to get stuffed or worse, you ask some more about the ‘recapitalization of the poor’, and you’d be lucky not to get your balls squashed. You don’t believe me, you go ahead, get closer to the unsophisticated unwashed for once.

J Wright

Thank you Rhoda,you have given me a reason to renew my subs.

Jeremy Poynton

"Communities must be organised"

How? By force? This reminds me of Hazel Blears' constant references to "What the people want". Somehow, she claimed to know what the people wanted, and then, would tell them.

I S

Meaningless piffle. Organise communities - try herding cats.
Which community do I belong to? What about competing interests within such communities?
Very cosy photo though - all its needs is Fraser drooling.
Fergus - SNP were rewarded by the electorate for their reasonably competent government so far, plus the correct perception of Labour being a party of numpties led by a dud.

gowster

Jolly good piece.