The true face of the compassionate modern tories

simonmagnus Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 11:54:15 AM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Just scratch the surface of the new inclusive multi cultural tories and you will find something much darker lurking beneath.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7497097.stm

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The true face of the compassionate modern tories | 22 comments (22 topical)

Some perspective please... (#1)

by Floating voter on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 12:48:32 PM GMT

He is right in one respect - it used to be a very, very common expression - right up to 10 or 15 years ago. Almost everyone used it. I heard it used in staff meetings, in pubs and clubs, etc. Most people meant nothing racist by it - it was an idiomatic expression meaning that something was out of kilter.

Things change. What was acceptable becomes unacceptable. The "noble lord" is obviously an example of someone who doesn't change fast enough. It was stupid and he was right to apologise, but your inference that because he said this all tories are evil is reading too much in to it. By your reasoning all childminders are in the  "thought police" and I don't believe that either.

 

 


Re: The true face (#2)

by Prbo on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 01:55:48 PM GMT

Are you suggesting, Simon, that his slightly ill-judged phrase shows that he's someone who thinks that black people are second-class beings, and therefore a racist?


Re: The true face (#3)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 02:31:27 PM GMT



[ Parent ]

Re: The true face (#4)

by Floating voter on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 03:11:31 PM GMT

Actually, most of them make no judgement one way or another - they just report the facts.

Only two of these stories are recent, the others are years old. 


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face (#5)

by Prbo on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 03:16:45 PM GMT

Simon, could you define for me please what you believe racism is?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#6)

by NB on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 03:21:47 PM GMT

This guy is 73!!  Ideas of acceptable language change a lot over time.


Re: The true face ... (#8)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 04:47:38 PM GMT

You are probably right but to say this in the house of lords is just plain stupid and lets not forget it was one of his TORY collegues who asked him to reword his comments and he even admitted he had left his BRAIN at home which doesn't fill me with much hope,i think these dusty old men should be turfed out of the lords altogether if they can't even be bothered to engage the brain beofre they start making law on behalf of the people.
Whats also gauling is how the torys cry we we call them toffs but its perfectly alright for the torys to call people lazy and fat and now niggers i mean c'mon the days of torys and wigs are long behind us and don't forget the next U.S. president could be a BLACK man and how do you think he would look upon us if he were to hear that lawmakers in this counrty still used that sort of outdated unacceptable language?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#10)

by Prbo on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 05:13:09 PM GMT

Simon, who was this Lord deriding when he used the phrase?  Was he calling a specific person a nigger as a racist insult?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#13)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 05:24:18 PM GMT

splitting hairs ...

to argue about very small differences or unimportant details.
Ring any bells Prbo :oP


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#15)

by Prbo on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 06:24:11 PM GMT

Lol!  You're deliberately missing the point and avoiding answering the question.  There is an enormous difference between someone using a phrase which might be questionable, but not referring to anyone in particular, and someone deriding another person for their skin/colour/race etc, which is racism.

Was this Lord, in using this phrase, condoning the idea that different people can be criticised/abused etc because of their race?  If not, how can he be 'racist'?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#16)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 07:03:00 PM GMT

If gordon brown said it what would you think?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#17)

by Prbo on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 09:27:01 AM GMT

I'd see it as a silly mistake, and I wouldn't say that he's racist, and I wouldn't heap personal abuse on him.

What about your response to my questions...?


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#11)

by Floating voter on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 05:20:02 PM GMT

" ... but its perfectly alright for the torys to call people lazy and fat..."

Please.... get it right, they are not calling LABOUR supporters fat and lazy, they're calling fat and lazy people fat and lazy.

 

"... is how the torys cry we we call them toffs  ..."

Also, you would do well to remember that not all toffs are tories - how many millionaires are in the cabinet? How many top labour people are related to various minor royalty (you might want to talk to the niece of the Earl of Longford - Ms H Harman). How many working class people are in the cabinet?

Generalisations are very unsafe. 


[ Parent ]

Re: The true face ... (#14)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 05:28:18 PM GMT

splitting hairs
to argue about very small differences or unimportant details.
for you too floater .. howdy ho


[ Parent ]

compassionate modern tories (#7)

by AngryVoter on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 04:47:29 PM GMT

Hardly any worse than some of the anti-semitic comments found over on yonder red benches, personally.

 

And I say that as I find both kinds of talk abhorrent.

Mind, at 73 I think folks are being a bit... harsh I suppose.


Re: compassionate modern tories (#9)

by simonmagnus on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 04:51:36 PM GMT

Actually we have lots of friends who are isreali,its the whole Idea of zionism that fair minded labour members don't like,that fact is in any other walk of life you would be barracked or sacked even at 73 for those sort of backward thinking comments.


[ Parent ]

Re: compassionate modern tories (#12)

by e10rifles on Wed Jul 09, 2008 at 05:20:31 PM GMT

Hardly any worse than some of the anti-semitic comments found over on yonder red benches, personally.

Example?


[ Parent ]

Re: compassionate modern tories (#18)

by Prbo on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 09:30:13 AM GMT

Ken Livingstone could provide a whole book.  Quite apart from his comments to Oliver Finegold, I recalled his comments to two Jewish Iranian property developers bidding for Olympic projects.  He said they should "go back and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs".  It sounds remarkably similar to a comment attributed to a certain former aide to the current mayor, who promptly resigned once he's said it.  Interesting...


[ Parent ]

Re: compassionate modern tories (#19)

by e10rifles on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 10:54:22 AM GMT

Doesn't sound anti-semitic to me at all. Sounds if anything like an off-hand criticism of the Iranian regime. Is that the best you can do?


[ Parent ]

Re: compassionate modern tories (#20)

by simonmagnus on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 11:26:15 AM GMT

Oliver finegold worked for the standard which in turn is owned by DMGT which is the daily mail group,the daily mail was taken over by  lord rothermere in 1922,in 1934 rothermere wrote and article which cried out , "Hurrah for the Blackshirts",  in which he praised Mosley for his "sound,commonsense, Conservative doctrine",
Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both benito mussolini and adolt hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939. During this period, it was the only British newspaper consistently to support the German NAZI Party,Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler on many occasions. On 1st october 1938  Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain.
In 1937, the Mail's chief war correspondent, George Ward Price, to whom Mussolini once personally wrote in support of him and the newspaper, published a book, I Know These Dictators, in defence of Hitler and Mussolini.
Now if you can't see the same irony that ken saw with finegold working at a formally nazi supporting paper then you must be one of those three brass moneys or maybe just ashamed of your beloved partys grubby past and when will you admit you are a stooge for CCHQ Prbo my selective reading friend.


[ Parent ]

Re: compassionate modern tories (#21)

by jkitleft on Thu Jul 10, 2008 at 04:42:50 PM GMT

Thank god someone said it. Ken is really, REALLY not anti-semitic.

The worst thing he ever did was meet a nasty little Islamist thug. But Ken condemns both sides of the violence in Israelistine. And who can disagree with his statement that he was looking forward to the day that the Saudi royal family were "swinging from lampposts"?
He condemns Muslims who refuse to comply with gay rights legislation.

As for the notion that he is anti-semitic, it's laughable. Who was his deputy mayor? The daughter of a holocaust survivor.

He compared a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. Crude? Yes. Anti-semitic? Don't be silly. You would have thought from the Standard's campaign against Ken, that Ken had singled out a random Jew to compare him to a Nazi.

It's rediculous to take the Melanie Phillips line and say that if you are critical of Israel, you are an anti-Semite. Why not concentrate on the more blatant forms of anti-semitism, which are rising in today's society. People sneer about it, and wonder why as a non-Jew they should care. I have to listen to anti-Smetism constantly, not anti-Zionism, because there are some Islamic fundamentalists at the school I go to.

It is not as simple as Israel is hated by anti-semites and hostile arabs, and that is why it hasn't succeeded in the eyes of Western sceptics. If you remember, it was socialists who originally were most supportive of Israel.

700,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land. But the Protocols of the Elders of Zion Islamic Jihad coalition won't realise that ethnically cleansing 5 million Jews isn't the right way of compensating this. Jihadists aren't interested in 1967 boarders. They want a Jew free Palestine. But the vast majority of Palestinians and Israelis want a Bethlehem peace agreement.

Credit to Bush (god how I hate saying that sentence), for being the first president to mention the words "Palestine" and "state" in the same sentence. And one of Blair's finest foreign policy positions, was his commitment to a Palestinian state. I wonder how much the NI Peace Process influenced this view. If Blair ever had a commitment to his fellow members of the Socialist International, it is to the Israeli Labor Party. Blair, Levy, Mandelson etc. hate, and are hated by, the Likud right.

We should be at the centre of the peace process. Because British people were slaughtered by Zionist terrorist organisations, to provoke withdrawl from Palestine. They killed 28 Brits in a hotel in the '40's. Irgun has a director of military operations, who is the father of the Israeli foreign secretary, Tzipi Livni. It has important lessons about how futile bombing terrorists is. It isn't desirable, but it is the best way of gaining peace to negotiate.

If we don't negotiate, we exacerbate a dangerous cycle. We need to negotiate with the Iranian mullahs. But we must also encourage the Syrian offer for peace, in exchange with the Golan Heights, which will only help negotiations with Iran. Syria would have to stop funding Hezbollah, and now Iran's main Middle-Eastern ally is gone.

Whatever you think of the Palestinian side, it can't be right that Israel ends up bombing houses, instead of terrorist camps, and it is justified by Ehud Olmert:

"I want no one to sleep at night in Gaza. I want them to know what it feels like."

When you are in a cabinet with Avigdor Lieberman, it is hard not to make statements like that. To give you a clue of how deranged Israeli PR is, it would be the equivalent of Brown and Clegg allying with Nick Griffin in a cabinet.

We cannot ignore Hamas because of their ideology. I don't like Catholic and Protestant extremists like Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, but Sinn Fean and the DUP needed to shake hands for there to be peace. Hamas is the democratically elected government of Gaza. I ddon't like it, but they have said they are willing for peace. What kind of message do you think it sends to the Palestinians that electing pragmatists like those in Fatah will get nothing but a few lifted roadblocks?

I don't like the fact that Qassam rockets are being fired. But, they are fired in retaliation for IDF assassinations, and it is no justification for humanitarian onslaught. Why is there violence in Iraq, because young men are unemployed and are being exploited by Islamists. Why is there violence in Afghanistan, because we are purposely destroying the income of farmers, who are then exploited by jihadists. Why is there violence, minimal compared, to that of the IDF, in Gaza? Because 85% have no work, and there is no concrete, the price of flour has soared, the hospitals have no power, repairs to sewage systems have stopped.

I would love to love Israel. It is a beacon of female and gay equality in a sea of Middle Eastern misogyny and gay bashing. But then you see the state of Palestinian water systems, and the fact that sewage from Israel is pumped onto Palestinian land, and it dampens this liberal democratic parade.
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[ Parent ]

Re: The true face of the compassionate tories (#22)

by aneurin on Fri Jul 11, 2008 at 01:18:22 AM GMT

As soon as I heard that a Conservative Peer had uttered the phrase "nigger in the woodpile", I mentioned to a friend of mine that it wouldn't be long before someone placed a post on Labour Home suggesting that this phrase revealed the true dark underbelly of the Conservative monster. He thought no one could be quite that silly. Thanks, you've just won me a tenner!

I can remember that my mother (an almost life-long member of the Labour Party as it happens) used the same phrase a number of times. Where she alive today she would be six years older than the 73-year-old Lord Dixon Smith. It's a generational thing, and we should allow OAPs, and yes even those who accept the Conservative whip, certain latitude in coping with the changing times, especially if they realise their mistake and apologise minutes later.

It is all really of no significance whatsoever.


The true face of the compassionate modern tories | 22 comments (22 topical)