Michael Howard & The Tao of Toy

Posted by: matthewr on 26 August 2004

You know I was genuinely begin to think that maybe with the whole starting random wars, cocking up the anti-terrorism thing and backing danegerous extreme right wing governements in north America, Blair could actually lose the next election for Labour.

Then Howard falls though a timewarp to the 80s and starts talking about imaginary bans for daisy chains and musical chairs and how it's all "political corrrectness gone mad".

I mean how can an obvisouly intelligent man be that stupid?

Matthew

Posted on: 26 August 2004 by Steve Toy

The anti-competition dogma was fashionable at teacher training colleges during the early nineties not the eighties.

Grammar teaching was unfahionable too at this time so instead references were made to "structures" in the 1995 National Curriculum for Modern Languages devised by the Tories, when Mr Howard was, er, Home Secretary.

In 2001 when the Modern Languages National Curriculum document was updated under Labour, the word "structures" was replaced by "grammar."

PC Chess: 32 grey pawns all on the same side.

Matthew,

I'm not against socialism in principle I just despise socialists without principles.

It is certainly true that today's politicians seem to be lacking in both integrity and talent irrespective of their political persuasion.

For me the greatest politicians in recent history are/were:

Kenneth Clark - whatever you think of his views on Europe and his bruiser-style this guy has intellectual clout and was a genius as a chancellor. I feel I can trust a guy who drinks whisky while delivering his budgets.

John Smith - an honest man that B.Liar may have poisoned so he could replace him as leader... Only kidding!

Tony Benn - an honest champagne socialist. At least he has principles. I agree with his views on aristocracy.

Nelson Mandella - what a statesman. He never got bitter about his incarceration.

Bill Clinton - the flawed genius. In his private life Hitler was perhaps more of a saint...

Margaret Thatcher - you knew what she stood for and she did
this country a lot of good. She was true to her own beliefs.

Douglas Hurd was a gentleman too. I've shaken his hand once...

Clement Attlee - for giving us the Welfare State and NHS.

Winston Churchill - for seeing the Nazi menace for what it was when everyone around him thought he was a fool.

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Chris Metcalfe

That would be an interesting Cabinet.

As long as Thatcher was only allowed to make the tea.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by reductionist

quote:
Originally posted by Steven Toy:
Douglas Hurd was a gentleman too. I've shaken his hand once...

I can see why you think he is both a gentleman and one of the greatest politicians in recent history.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Simon Perry

Blair will win the next election (as will Bush). The sad fact is that lots of labour supporters, both the diehards and the resigned cynics, don't care enough about what Blair has done. When push comes to shove and they are standing in the polling booth, they will vote him back in. They will use meally mouthed technicalities like 'i am voting for my MP, we don't vote for presidents in this country', or 'its better than the alternatives'.
Howard's latest comments reveal the truely dire state of the Tory party.
Why was Clinton a genius?!
Simon

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Berlin Fritz

As is commonly known in my circles Jack The Hat Straw will be the next British PM, and Bush after fuckin about big style around erection time with Bin Laden stuff () will lose to K´Golden Kerry, who'll follow in his footsteps like Blah foolowed Maggie, there's absolutely no diffeence you see dears, that's a fact you all subconsciously know, that's why nomne of you bother to vote, you just like gobbing off and ranting about it, innit.

Fritz Von Absolutevannillaiswicked

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by sideshowbob

quote:

PC Chess: 32 grey pawns all on the same side.

I much prefer communist chess, where the board is set up with the pawns at the back and the aristocracy at the front...

-- Ian

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by 7V

quote:
Originally posted by Steven Toy:
...Kenneth Clark - whatever you think of his views on Europe and his bruiser-style this guy has intellectual clout and was a genius as a chancellor. I feel I can trust a guy who drinks whisky while delivering his budgets.

I was always a big fan of Kenneth Clark, until his comments around the 1997 general election.

Before the election, KC was on TV discussing the role of interest rates in the economy. He said that the sole purpose of changing interest rates was to control inflation. I remember this because he repeated it for emphasis - four times! After the election when Gordon Brown was planning to hand control of interest rates to the Bank of England, KC came on TV again and boldly stated that this would be a big mistake because there was much more to interest rates than merely controlling inflation.

I still like the man but integrity and trust... ?

Steve Margolis
defy convention - make music

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Berlin Fritz

quote:
Originally posted by sideshowbob:
quote:

PC Chess: 32 grey pawns all on the same side.

I much prefer communist chess, where the board is set up with the pawns at the back and the aristocracy at the front...

I like Bobby Fischer recently getting nicked in Tokyo on a Yanky passport and given back to them to play with, he's not popular with the Land of the Free & the Brave ? If you don't know why, then you should ? innit.

Fritz Von Boxocchocolateslifeinnit
-- Ian

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Trevor Newall

quote:
Originally posted by alexgerrard:

Hitler was responsible for some of the worst ever crimes against humanity.

hitler was a choir boy, compared to stalin.

TN

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by JonR

quote:
Originally posted by Trevor Newall:

hitler was a choir boy, compared to stalin.

TN

Yes but we conveniently, shall we say, 'overlook' Stalin's crimes because during the war he was on 'our side'......

Who ever said reality was simple...

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Tim Jones

quote:
Tony Benn - an honest champagne socialist. At least he has principles.

Steve - sorry, but Benn is one of those politicians whose piety and 'principles' know no bounds outside office, but a disaster area in power. As a minister in the 70s he just couldn't be bothered to do any work, pursued pet projects, and was so incompetent that his civil servants quietly ran his Department without reference to him.

The rest of your list is contradictory, sentimental horse poo. Attlee laid the foundations for a social democratic consensus that, when managed by the likes of Benn, brought the country to its knees in the 70s, only to be 'saved' by the radical surgery of Thatcher. Had Smith survived to make the same kind of compromise between Labour and the middle class that Blair did, I suspect you would feel very differently about him now.

Tim

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Berlin Fritz

At least Benn flew Spitfires when it was required of him innit.

Fritz Von Biggintrains

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Matthew T

quote:
Originally posted by 7V:

I still like the man but integrity and trust... ?

Sorry? We are talking about politicians aren't we.

Matthew

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

quote:
Hitler was responsible for some of the worst ever crimes against humanity.

Clinton had an extra-marital blow job.

And Hitler was the saintly one? How?

I'm glad you picked up on the irony Alex. Well done!

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

quote:
Before the election, KC was on TV discussing the role of interest rates in the economy. He said that the sole purpose of changing interest rates was to control inflation. I remember this because he repeated it for emphasis - four times! After the election when Gordon Brown was planning to hand control of interest rates to the Bank of England, KC came on TV again and boldly stated that this would be a big mistake because there was much more to interest rates than merely controlling inflation.

I think KC was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place on the issue of autonomy for the Bank of England.

As Chancellor, with his closer ties to, and regular consultation meetings with Eddy George, low inflation did appear to the sole criterion on which to set interest rates.

A fully independant BoE was the next logical step and eventually he may well have taken that step himself had the Tories won in 1997.

Unfortunately the new Labour Government had stolen his thunder, so to speak, when independance for the BoE still wasn't Tory policy.

The only other criterion for setting interest rates would be short term political leverage over the economy where an artificial and unsustainable boom would be created just before a general election.

I take KC's later comments to be a reference to this and the apparent contradiction was perhaps more a case of his stance being at odds with the official line of his party at that time - he was certainly not in favour of short-term gain resulting in boom and bust.

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

Irony and humour are not quite the same Alex.

It is no laughing matter.

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by matthewr

Chapter 6 : Being Alanis

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

Eh????

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by JonR

Errrr.....Alanis Morrisette...'Ironic'...???

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Berlin Fritz

Oh for a Blustery Day then they'd all blow orf !

Fritz Von Innittigger

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Kevin-W

Quote from Matthew: You know I was genuinely begin to think that maybe with the whole starting random wars, cocking up the anti-terrorism thing and backing danegerous extreme right wing governements in north America, Blair could actually lose the next election for Labour.

Then Howard falls though a timewarp to the 80s and starts talking about imaginary bans for daisy chains and musical chairs and how it's all "political corrrectness gone mad".

I mean how can an obvisouly intelligent man be that stupid?

The complete intellectual bankruptcy of the Tories has been demonstrated over the past couple of weeks by their pitiful attempts to rally public opinion (or at least the Mail/Express-reading section of it) with two campaigns – the one on “political correctness” which Matthew mentioned; and the other, on “human rights legislation” and the “compensation culture” which results from said legislation.

Is it just me, but isn’t the idea of human rights quite a good thing? I mean, the right to life, the right to privacy, to freedom of movement, etc? Isn’t it quite a good thing to have those principles enshrined in law? In fact, the amount of compensation paid out in human rights cases is quite small, and not very much higher than in the days before the Human Rights Act. Similarly, the more extreme cases that get trumpeted in the reactionary Press usually get thrown out.

As for political correctness, this started off because some people wondered if it might not be quite on to call blacks “niggers” and so on. Quite a reasonable thing to think, wouldn’t you say? Most of those headlines about banning Xmas and black bin liners usually turn out to be false, or a mistake by some over-zealous official that nine times out of 10 gets corrected/reverssed very quickly.

Contrary to what Howard and his dimwit cronies may think, Blighty isn’t creaking under mountains of human rights red tape or the heinous bonds of political correctness.

Still, I had to laugh at their ineptitude, although those that want to fall for it will undoubtedly do so.

Kevin (Cornershop: Slip The Drummer One)

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Kevin-W

Quote from Steven Toy: Bill Clinton - the flawed genius. In his private life Hitler was perhaps more of a saint...

Steven, I know this was a rather weak – even for you – stab at irony, but you should try and get your facts right and draw up analogies that make sense.

If you had read Ian Kershaw's magisterial two-part (and damn near definitive) biography of Hitler, as well as the latest research on the monster, you would have known that Hitler seems, as an adult at least, to have had very little interior life, let alone a personal life. After about 1920, Hitler's entire existence was taken up with what he believed was his destiny, and later, with affairs of state. It all probability he had no great sexual drive (or sublimated his libido to such a degree that it ceased to exist) and may have well died a virgin. Whereas Clinton enjoys a very rich interior existence and a doubtless very active personal life.

You're comparing a potato with a stapler.

Kevin (Cornershop: Spectral Mornings)

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Kevin-W

quote:
Originally posted by JonR:
quote:
Originally posted by Trevor Newall:

hitler was a choir boy, compared to stalin.

TN

Yes but we conveniently, shall we say, 'overlook' Stalin's crimes because during the war he was on 'our side'......

Who ever said reality was simple...

It is currently rather fashionable – partly, I think, thanks to Simon Sebag Montifiore's recent book – to compare Hitler with Stalin, and for the latter to come off worst.

These arguments are usually based on the assumption tthat Stalin "killed more people" than Hitler – which, is, in a sense, perfectly true. But certainly Mao Zedong and perhaps Genghis Khan and maybe Tamurlane killed more than either.

But it's not about numbers. What's the difference between six million and 20 million? Not much, if you're not affected, and not much if you are. Statistics don't bleed, as Arthur Koestler once neatly put it. It's about morality.

The reason why many people (myself included) regard the Nazi genocide against (principally) the Jews (but also Slavs and gypsies and other minorities) as the worst crime in human history is not because Stali was on our side in the war (he wasn't always!), or because China has such a large population that nobody's going to miss 40 million, or because Genghis and Tamurlane died such a long time ago. It's because these four tyrants killed people for gain, or because they got in the way, or because it was - in their eyes - politically expedient to do so.

The Nazis killed six million Jews and millions of Slavs simply because of who they were. They denied them any right to exist because they were Jews or Slavs, and for no other reason. Even Stalin, notoriously cold-blooded when it came to despatching enemies or those for whom he had no further use, never did that.

Added to this is the fact that the Nazi genoicide was run like a company. This was mass murder as an industrialised process, with a bureacracy, quotas and even by-products. It had never been done before and nor has it been replicated (not in Stalin's Gulags, or during the Cultural Revolution, or in Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields), thank goodness.

I appreciate that these differences are extremely subtle, but they're important - and they aren't just aesthetic, either, they have, I believe, considerable moral force.

Kevin (BBC World Service)

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

quote:
If you had read Ian Kershaw's magisterial two-part (and damn near definitive) biography of Hitler, as well as the latest research on the monster, you would have known that Hitler seems, as an adult at least, to have had very little interior life, let alone a personal life. After about 1920, Hitler's entire existence was taken up with what he believed was his destiny, and later, with affairs of state. It all probability he had no great sexual drive (or sublimated his libido to such a degree that it ceased to exist) and may have well died a virgin. Whereas Clinton enjoys a very rich interior existence and a doubtless very active personal life.

The point I obviously didn't make very well is that Hitler was a saint in his private life but was a monster of a dictator. He sublimated his libido so as to channel his sexual energy into hatred of Jews, Slavs and Gypsies.

Clinton OTOH had a healthy libido that resulted in his extra-marital affairs. In contrast, in public office he was an excellent president managing a very robust US economy and his foreign policy was certainly considered with greater insight than that of his successor, who, like Hitler, is sqeaky-clean in his private life.

This is why I prefer politicians who have vices in their private life - they are less likely, so it would seem, to abuse their positions of power.

The guy who is a bit of a git in private is more likely to be a saint in office, and the saint in private is the Devil in office.

Everyone is human and we all have to exorcise our demons somehow.

I like Kenneth Clark partly because he enjoys a drink and he smokes. Winston Churchill was the same.

The American voters need to learn this concept fast so as to get their priorities right where choosing a president is concerned.

Presidents should be impeached for what they do in office not for what they do in private.

As I said,

In his private life Hitler was perhaps more of a saint...

...so that in his public life he could be more of a total monster.

Regards,

Steve.

Posted on: 27 August 2004 by Steve Toy

quote:
I appreciate that these differences are extremely subtle, but they're important - and they aren't just aesthetic, either, they have, I believe, considerable moral force.

Hitler wanted to wipe out an entire race; Stalin wanted to wipe out the entire peasant class. The difference is indeed very subtle.

Stalin sent the most productive peasants to the Gulag (on the pretext that they'd been keeping a litle of their harvest back for themselves - and this constituted an act of capitalism) so the rest would then starve.

Hitler was driven by racial hatred, Stalin was motivated by cold-blooded expediency.

Which is worse?

Regards,

Steve.