Labour isn't working
Wednesday, September 24, 2008 I can't bring myself to say how many people attended last night's meeting. It was double figures, but only just, and most of them were personal friends. Clearly, Labour has no interest in how to win back the smokers' vote. Not that it matters. As Brian Monteith (left) told one trades unionist who popped his head in: "It's too late. You're fucked."
Labour's failure to include our meeting in the conference brochure may not have been the simple cock-up I thought it was. Like Forest, the Tobacco Retailers Alliance submitted details of their event before the deadline. Mysteriously, the TRA reception on Sunday night was also omitted from the fringe listings.
That's quite a coincidence. Do you think the word "tobacco" could have had something to do with it?
Reader Comments (15)
I think that just sums it all up - they are downright ignorant!
Have to say that our local town council (Lib Dems) are just as bad. On the whole I think that all the main 3 parties are! As long as they are all right, lining their own pockets, inflating their own egos, they don't give a t*ss about the electorate.
Yes, they will come begging at our doors promising us the earth near election time, but you won't see them or have the opportunity to speak to them at any other time, especially if they get into office. Promises? What promises? They will plead ignorance again, I am sure.
I cannot understand how we have allowed out local and national government to become so corrupt - the only explanation I can think of is that they have been devious in their actions of slowly eroding away any decency or democracy in politics and we, the general electorate, have just not noticed! Now, it seems, it is too late and they have us over a barrel.
Obviously, at the next elections, national and local, people must vote as they see fit and as lies easy with their own conscience. Personally, I could not vote for any of the big 3, I just couldn't live with myself if I did. The only hope I have is that many, many more people feel the same.
Remember the ripe cornfields before combine harvesters? Mowing went on in ever decreasing circles until there was only a small patch left standing. The odd small animal scuttled out and fled. As the machine finished off the field, rabbits and small creatures broke out in a desperate dash for safety, prey for anyone looking for something for the pot. When the machines had first entered the field there was plenty of room to hide. Then, imperceptibly the area got smaller.
A comparable process has happened over more than 20 years with smokers, with the first restrictions relatively small and minor in number: fewer smoking compartments in trains for example, more ban notices in loos and so on. There was always somewhere else to go but gradually smokers huddled closer and closer until the rare smoking room was thick with fug. Then they were on the street What is left but the home and the private car? And those sanctuaries are in the sights of the 'antis'.
How did it happen we ask? By stages. Little by little.Meanwhile a fashionable puritanism began to take root in the media, partly caused by the switch to new technology and the tyranny of relentless hours before computer monitors.The BBC, according to reports, banned moking in its offices and this was years before newspapers did. A new media breed began to emerge, disciplined and efficient maybe but lacking the old Bohemian, free thinking spirit.
But that spirit lives on. Here for example... Nil carborundum as servicemen used to say. And we're still here, fifty years on. We won't let them 'grind us down'.
"Do you think the word "tobacco" could have had something to do with it?"
Are you kidding, those morons couldn't even spell it, let alone know the history of it, or what it means.
They know what the word "Smoking" means. They have to learn that before they can become a fully fledged member, as it is now linked with Labour's main source of income, not forgetting waste collection of course.
Can't believe, Simon, that you ever thought that the omission was a simple cock-up - not even the inept NuLabour could get that wrong.
Rome burns while Nero fiddles; We're in a horrible mess economically with people lying awake wondering if next year they're still going to have a home and a job (or, in the case of pensioners, perhaps, even be alive) and NuLabour announces plans to... give out free theatre tickets and incentives to buy computers!
NuLab will need every vote they can get at the next election yet, despite evidence that would allow them to amend the ban without losing face, they instead make their contempt crystal clear.
I wish to God they'd do the decent thing and just sod off.
I hope that the only votes they get at the next election are the ones the MPs vote for themselves. If there is a God, NuLabour will pay for it's blatant disregard of human tolerance and be obliterated.
I hope that during my lifetime, they never get another chance to be in power.
My dad, a Labour supporter all of his life who instilled in me that Labour was the party of the people, would be turning in his grave.
Pat -
You say:
"My dad........... would be turning in his grave."
But ONLY if in receipt of the Appropriate License, I hope !
Unlicensed cadaver-turning is a MAJOR problem in our society - and needs to be tackled with Boldness, Vigour, and Determination.
We in the Labour Party will not hesitate.........(Applause, Stand, All Stand)
Meanwhile a fashionable puritanism began to take root in the media, partly caused by the switch to new technology and the tyranny of relentless hours before computer monitors.
The internet is puritanical? I think not. It's rather anarchical, if anything. It's only the mass media, who broadcast one way - no answering back - that can enjoy the luxury of lecturing people. And the mass media are in long term decline. These puritans will soon have no platform from which to launch their vile campaigns. Swap your television for an online computer, and choose the news you want to read.
Newspapers are in terminal slow decline and currently hundreds of jobs are going in the industry. I think people are getting clued up that there are other places they can go to read news they want to hear not news that bullies them to despair.
Newspapers must begin to take sides with the people who read their papers rather than the establishment that oppress them or I predict that in 10- 20 years time, very, very few, if any, will exist outside of the web.
"I cannot understand how we have allowed out local and national government to become so corrupt - the only explanation I can think of is that they have been devious in their actions of slowly eroding away any decency or democracy in politics and we, the general electorate, have just not noticed! Now, it seems, it is too late and they have us over a barrel"
One problem is that Nulabour have created a client state of public sector job dependancy and state benefit dependancy and while this exists people will not vote out of office the hand that feeds them, especially in the current economic situation.
The other problem is that children now rule the roost and have more power than the voting adults. The government have used children to pray on people's consciences, hence the excuse for the smoking ban and of course the government are encouraging girls to breed like rabbits by showering benefits on any underage teenage girl who puts herself about a bit. I call it government sponsored child prostitution. They are trying to groom potential labour voters.
Another way of using children is the government's "green policies", gain using children to play on our consciences. There was an advert which (thank God) they don't seem to be showing now for Persil, which really got my back up. It had this kid with the most awful twee Welsh accent going through a picture book, going on about how this bottle was smaller so it would take less space on a lorry, thereby using fewer lorries, thereby making less "carbon emissions". What really annoyed me about the advert was the end bit where the kid says "It's every child's RIGHT to live in a NICER world".
So much for children being seen and not heard!
Just a little aside Sylvia, on the subject of 'human rights'. People seem to think they are born with them, some kind of mystical gift. Here is a good example of human rights. Under human rights legislation, a prisoner is entitled to a towel. In a certain womens prison, there are women who tear it into strips, make a ligature, tie it to the bed, the loop round their neck, and pull away from the bed to make the loop strangle them. Prison Officers are alerted, rush to the cell, free the prisoner, who is looked at by a prison nurse. After a few hours, the prisoner makes a request, can she have a towel. She has to then be issued with one, why? yep, you guessed it, 'human rights'.
Maybe if a prisoner had more human rights than to be given a towel, they might not want to kill themselves and relieve the misery of a sub-human existence.
You know, I don't know what went wrong with New Labour! Before Blair, I always thought of the Tories as 'the party of social injustice', yet Labour as being ideologically sound but misguided in method. I'd always thought that there ought to be Blair's 'middle way'.
I have to say that in 1997 when Blair was up against Major, for the first time I voted Tory, and for the most irrational of reasons: I saw in Blair a careerist who, to me, exuded insincerity and the smile of the charming opportunist. I'm sorry to say that I haven't been proved wrong.
I think that Labour's tragedy was in losing John Smith. who seemed to me to be a sensible, intelligent and very decent man who might well have found a 'middle way'.
Pat, I always enjoy reading your comments, and this is maybe not the place to discuss the prison service. I hope your comment was not a personal attack. I fully support a civilised community having a charter of human rights. I was speaking about the abuse of human rights. If a person is in a secure environment and for whatever reason is a suicide risk, then it seems innapropriate to use the human rights issue to keep giving them something which they are going to use unsupervised to make another suicide attempt.
I second that Joyce what you said about Blair. When I saw him for the first time in 1997 with that ricktus smile I had the feeling that something alien had arrived amongst us, something unreal and false about him. I couldnt understand why I felt like this but ten years later it all became crystal clear.
Labour are finished in my opinion.
It's nice to hear a member of Labour talking sense for a change, we have had so much crap since Labour changed their name to New Labour.