Embarrassing Spectacle Of New Labour’s Dotage
How old and tired and mentally incapable New Labour now looks.
Gone are the days when anyone thought that this was a party with a future, let alone a future connected with anything like the real world or a cross on a voter’s ballot paper.
We have the embarrassing spectacle of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary (admittedly an appalling public performer even when things might be considered to be going well, if anyone can remember those days) trying to pretend that it is full steam ahead with ID cards, when the message is that they are quietly being dumped as too much of an electoral liability to be associated with, as the time between now and the next election starts to look decidedly short.
Does this sound brave, like the orchestra playing on as the Titanic sank, or stupid?
For most people, New Labour and stupid are synonyms.
John Harris, in The Guardian, says this:
Insiders reckon the loss of Peter Hain has contributed to a change of weather. The zealous James Purnell has been given his head at the Department for Work and Pensions; Caroline Flint and Andy Burnham have been shoved up the ministerial rankings; good old Hazel Blears is reportedly joining them in pushing the PM rightwards. Their agenda boils down as follows: continue the pro-private sector and “choice”-driven approach to the public services, attempt to out-nasty the Tories on crime and immigration, maintain the idea that an emphasis on “aspiration” (or “ambition”) should sit at the heart of your armoury - and reject anything proposed by the unions or the Labour left as an old-fashioned irrelevance.
Caroline Flint, Caroline Flint, Caroline Flint? Why is the name utterly insignificant and yet oddly familiar?
Oh, yes, of course, she is the one who proposed that people living in council houses should have to sign contracts in which they would give their agreement to being evicted if they ever found themselves without jobs.
And now a fully-blown cabinet minister?
Does this mean that the rumours that Gordon Brown may appoint the dead General Pinochet and the un-dead Margaret Thatcher to his cabinet may be true? Along with Peter Lilley and that smart looking young man from the National Front whose name nobody can remember, but who makes Fascism look almost respectable?
These are exciting times for everyone, except New Labour.
They seem like a party of enfeebled inmates being wheeled out into the sunshine of the old people’s home (with the secret wing for holding the geriatric criminally insane) for an afternoon of gaga conversation in which nobody listens and nobody remembers. Then, as the light fades and the chilly wind of change blows, the nurses take them back inside; but the idiot inmates have all been fiddling with their bathchairs and one by one, the wheels fall off.
How funny to think that this was once a party which people thought had new ideas.
Nah! Same old New Labour. Same old Tories in disguise. Same old Nasty Party.
For another year or so, anyway.
wuhudo!
Educating Gordon Brown, The Wisest Fool In Christendom
British people are neither impressed by nor enamoured with intellectuals, as a general rule. In New Britain, we expend vast energies of feverish excitement over the banalities of The X Factor and Big Brother (or, in the case of the latter, we once, embarrassingly, did so), but anything which requires thought, we tend to steer clear of, as if we might be infected by it and forever after be compelled to use our brains against our wills and better judgment.
Mrs Thatcher, from the outset, portrayed herself as intelligent: we were all persuaded to swoon at her mastery of facts of the Mr Gradgrind variety. Tony Blair was described as ’superficially intelligent’ and when standing alongside the normal drones and lobotomised retards of the political world, he did have a quality of twinkling artifice imitating something like intellectual animation. Of course, outside that normal context, he was just another grinning imbecile.
Much has been made of Gordon Brown’s towering intellect, along with his moral compass and clunking fist, but although he knows things, does he have the common sense to apply them intelligently? Does his compass let him down and leave him to ricochet around like a headless chicken? Does his clunking fist simply smash things he attempts to mend, when they had not previously been broken?
The Wisest Fool in Christendom was a title given to James I of England, (VI of Scotland) and The Economist has this neat little precis of what it meant:
It is not even clear what prompted the coining of the epithet, though James was certainly a mixture of opposites of every kind. In the words of Sir Walter Scott,
He was deeply learned, without possessing useful knowledge; sagacious in many individual cases, without having real wisdom…He was fond of his dignity, while he was perpetually degrading it by undue familiarity; capable of much public labour, yet often neglecting it for the meanest amusement; a wit, though a pedant; and a scholar, though fond of the conversation of the ignorant and uneducated…He was laborious in trifles, and a trifler where serious labour was required; devout in his sentiments, and yet too often profane in his language…
In short, he was a fool. Yet he was also wise.
That made him a much rarer bird than the foolish brainbox—the egg-head who, as a child, takes every prize for scholastic achievement but cannot be trusted to tie his shoelaces, or cross a road, let alone take charge of anything. Such people are indubitably clever. They are the ones who, later on in life, may work out in their heads every kind of intellectual puzzle and show off every arcane piece of knowledge. They may shine at mental long division and be able to expatiate upon the workings of machines or the writings of scholars. But of judgment—everyday, practical judgment of men and human affairs—they have none.
So, we can see that being educated in what might appear to be a perfect manner will not of necessity make you capable of doing any particular job which might be required of you. You may end up red hot on the theory of how best to change the world, but absolutely useless at seeing that what you are actually doing is smashing what is good and replacing it with something shabby, shoddy and extremely unlikely to work.
The other day in The Guardian, Gordon Brown wrote an impressive NewSpeak article about education, including this:
In a globally competitive national economy, there will be almost no limits to aspirations for upward mobility. Globalisation dictates that the nations that succeed will be those that bring out the best in people and their potential. And this is the new opportunity for Britain. Put simply: in the past, we unlocked only some of the talents of some of the people; the challenge now is to unlock all the talents of all the people.
This will require a richer view of the equality of opportunity we seek. Opportunities to acquire education and skills must now be lifelong. We must recognise that human potential expresses itself in different ways over time and across a wide spectrum of abilities, aptitudes and talents. These cannot be determined simply by IQ testing carried out once and perhaps too early. Fulfilling the demands of a global jobs market requires us to nurture and develop creativity, interpersonal skills and technical abilities, as well as analytic intelligence.
In essence, all it said was that children are economic units to be exploited by the state for nothing other than their earning capacity in the wonderful new global economy. They do not have to be good, rounded, properly developed people; simply ruthless money-making machines.
Needless to say, nobody who responded to Gordon Brown’s article agreed and he received the usual kicking meted out to idiot politicians trying to sell their deceitful claptrap.
Then, on AOL News, we have this:
Ministers are treating school pupils as if they were business products to be managed rather than children to be educated, an Oxford University study has suggested.
The Nuffield Review of 14-19 education said the Government’s aim of boosting the British economy was overshadowing the true role of schools in young people’s lives.
Businesses increasingly run state schools and can even award their own A-level equivalent qualifications, as in the recent case of McDonald’s.
The lead author of the report, Oxford’s Professor Richard Pring, said: “The changes at 14-19 are too often driven by economic goals at the expense of broader educational aims.
“This is reflected in the rather impoverished language drawn from business and management, rather than from a more generous understanding of the whole person.
“We need to give young learners far more than skills for employment alone, even if such skills are key to the country’s economy.”
The Nuffield report said the broader aims of education were neglected, there was a “risk of damaging the values that define an educated and humane society”.
It criticised the use of terms such as “inputs”, “targets” and “curriculum delivery” in education.
“The boundaries between running a school and running a business can easily become confused,” the study said.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families dismissed the report. “This depressing view of education is simply not one that we recognise,” he said.
So, who are you going to believe? A scholar or a lying halfwit politician?
War On Terror Becomes War Of Words
We should all choose our words carefully, if only to avoid confusion and to make sure our message is interpreted correctly.
As an example, we should no longer, according to government diktat, use the phrase War on Terror, as this has connotations of violence and, er, terrorism.
The problem is that War on Terror is a catchphrase which sticks in the mind like an advertising slogan and governments are full of such straplines when they launch initiatives which they think will work and lodge in the collective consciousness of the public at large. Think of “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime” or “Education, education, education” or “moral compass”.
You don’t hear those bandied about much now. Is that because they all failed?
It is only when the, shall we say, ‘crusade’ starts to unravel that governments want to change their advertising campaign. War on Terror has been replaced, but the problem is that nobody can remember by what. Something like “Telling off Mr and Mrs McNaughty” or “Wagging the finger if disapproval - but with no connotation of blame”. Something catchy like that.
So, it is with no great reaction of surprise that the government publishes an advisory pamphlet on how to deal with terrorist suspects in the continuing War on Terror. The document has been delivered to “key delivery partners” as part of this new strategy.
You might think that “key delivery partners” means people who drive around in vans helping to get you back in your shop or office when you have locked yourself out. In short, a mobile locksmith. Not a bit of it. In government newspeak, this simply means agents of the state.
Anyway, people like the New Britain state police, in their black shiny uniforms which make them look like a Darth Vader impersonators convention which has got lost, will no longer be able to shout “On the floor, terrorist scum, before I blow your brains out!” to an elderly man who mumbles “Nonsense!” at Jack Straw at a New Labour conference.
No, the state stormtroopers are to avoid words and phrases like “jihadi fundamentalist” and “Islamist extremist” (always assuming that they use such sophisticated words anyway) and “scum” because these might be construed as a “confrontation/clash between civilisations/cultures”. It does not, for example, mention Tony Blair’s phrase: “the crescent (which is like a cross to Muslims) of evil”.
The information pack, created by the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government says: “This is not intended as a definitive list of what not to say but rather to highlight terms which risk being misunderstood and therefore prevent the effective reception of the message.”
A government spokesperson also adds:
“The pack is the first of a series of communications intended to brief partners about recent work to develop the ‘prevent’ strand of the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy and help them to identify further contributions they can make to this agenda.
“The ‘prevent’ strand relies on all sectors - public, private, voluntary and community - working with central Government in its aim of stopping people becoming or supporting violent extremists.
“Coherent and effective cross-Government communications are important in relation to countering terrorism. Language is part of this work.”
The document also states:
“No perceived grievance can justify terrorism. But where concerns are legitimately expressed then we must be prepared to debate them.
“We are committed to better explaining existing policies, such as the UK’s foreign policy, refuting claims made about them in the language of violent extremists.”
So, you can expect a government document soon which will explain why New Britain, a secular state, was taken into an illegal war by a Christian fundamentalist in order to extend the oil colonies of America and as a crusade against non-Christians.
Oh, and while you are at it, knock together something to explain why New Britain allowed illegal CIA extraordinary rendition flights to land in Britain, thereby making the British government complicit in torture and human rights abuses and why MI5 allowed people they knew to be innocent to be tortured in ghost prisons and at Guantanamo Bay.
In plain English, so that even George Bush stands a chance of understanding at least some of it.
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