A democratically elected leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, who got almost 60% of the votes, is “a serious risk to our nation’s security”.
Quite apart from what, I feel, must be blatant contempt of Parliament, is this not the sort of rhetoric used by single party states against anyone who dares to defy the divine leader?
Mind you, with Blair and New Labour, I suppose that we effectively had that, so maybe they mean that the existence of a viable left-wing party is a threat to the Bullingdon Clique’s plans for a Georgian Revival.
With regard to re-opening the coal mines, it’s probably not feasible now, and the age of coal is on the way out in the UK, but closing the pits wasn’t about moving away from a dirty fuel and an industry that destroyed its workers’ health and lives. It was about destroying communities and company towns that dared to stand up to the government, and shifting to imported coal mined by child and slave labour, whilst the coal barons kept on making money.
Regarding this coal business, it’s worth listening to what has actually been said by Mr Corbyn on the matter. The media are extremely keen to try and pick holes in his policy package and they have used his supposed advocacy of re-opening the coal mines as a bat to try and smash his “green credentials”. In reality, this is what he’s said about the suggestion:
“The last deep coal mines in South Wales have gone but it’s quite
possible that in future years coal prices will start to go up again
around the world. And maybe there will be a case for what is actually
very high quality coal, particularly in South Wales, being mined again.
But if there’s to be substantial coal fire generation it’s got to be
clean burn technology, it’s got to have carbon filters on it, it’s got
to be carbon neutral.
“I’ve looked at it, I’ve discussed it, I’ve heard about it. It’s
complicated. At one level it looks very expensive. But the advantages
also look quite attractive.
“But the principles have to be that we’re protective of our
environment, guaranteeing affordable energy supplies for everybody, and
we’re not ripped off by big companies.”
I am personally slightly sceptical as to the efficacy of “clean burn” technology - and I also have concerns about the environmental effects of mining/transport/waste - but as you can see those concerns are shared by Jeremy Corbyn as well.
It is also worth pointing out that while use has dropped quite dramatically in recent times, we are still using large amounts of coal. The UK used 49 million tonnes of coal in 2014 according to Carbon Brief estimates, including 38.4 million tonnes in power stations - most of it imported from Russia. Coal-fired power stations make up about 30% of the UK’s electricity generation. I expect that it would primarily be to replace the coal we already import that some South Wales mines might be opened up again, if doing so would prove economical.
More on current status of UK coal mines from Wikipedia:
Coal mining employed 4,000 workers at 30 locations in 2013, extracting 13 million tonnes of coal. The three deep-pit mines were Hatfield and Kellingley Collieries in Yorkshire and Thoresby in Nottinghamshire. There were 26 opencast sites in 2014, mainly in Scotland. British coal mines, achieve the most economically produced coal in Europe, with a level of productivity of 3,200 tonnes per man year. Most coal is used for electricity generation and steel-making, but its use to heat homes has decreased due to pollution concerns. The commodity is also used for fertilisers, chemicals, plastics, medicines and road surfaces. Thoresby Colliery closed in July 2015.
There was a thing in the most recent Private Eye (most recent that I’ve received, anyway, takes a while to get here), comparing what Corbyn has said on issues with what the newspapers have reported he’s said.
The world has changed a lot in 32 years in case you hadn’t noticed. Corporate media no longer has such a captive audience for a start.
It’s still the case that, on a Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn might say he doesn’t plan to have any more kids, and the Daily Mail will turn that into a Monday morning headline of “Corbyn wants to massacre all first born children”.
The national breakfast TV and radio shows will run with that in their news headlines, with the denial being added whenever the Labour Party gets round to issuing a it (somewhere 7.30am and 8.30 via an interview on Radio 4’s today programme).
Then the mid-morning radio chat shows will debate the pros and cons of massacring first borns, with a short disclaimer that Corbyn denied ever said it.
Elsewhere, the music radio DJs and local radio DJs will run with a “would you believe what Jeremy Corbyn said?” for the rest of the day, as they’ll have written their scripts by trawling the newspaper articles earlier in the day.
On the Tuesday, the columnists in the newspapers, the “Glendas”, will do their opinion pieces on why massacring first borns is a bad idea.
Social Media doesn’t stop this yet.
With Corbyn’s more radical agenda, and without a really slick rapid rebuttal unit, I suspect we’ll see more of this type of “news” items up to the next election.
I see your argument, and agree that there’s a lot more mud-slinging to come, but would say that social media has a lot faster and more effective rebuttal system than you give it credit for. This is almost certainly true of the younger generation, who seem to be politically mobilising on an impressive scale. The oldies who are more trusting of traditional media may fall into this trap a little easier, but I’m still doubtful of this, as they’ll be feeling the austerity pinch as hard as anyone, and even they’re fairly tech’d-up these days. It’s also been shown, especially in this campaign, that faeces-flinging has the opposite effect of what it was supposed to achieve. Besides, things like nationalised utilities were the status quo back in Michael Foot’s day, so that’s hardly an extreme-left agenda Jeremy Corbyn has, and the older generation know that full-well.
I just meant to illustrate that we’re conflating two separate concepts. Perhaps ‘True Centre’ should be named ‘Centre Ground’ and the midpoint between main parties should be considered ‘Middle Ground’ AKA ‘The Fence’?
Five years ago it looked like the Lib-Dems were going to fill that role (but with not as extreme views as in the US), but now it looks like the libertarians were the left wing allies of Charles Kennedy and the right wing Orange Book Lib-Dems are barely distinguishable from the more libertarian leaning Tories.
My problem with Curtis (and it’s not the easily parodied style) is that the story is always the same: Academia discovers/invents new way of thinking. government/industry/military uses the new knowledge to control global events. Now look at the mess we’re in.
In Century of the Self, it was psychoanalysis. In Power of Nightmares it was the idea of a phantom threat. In Machines of Loving Grace it was computing. etc.
In each of his films, he gives a single idea complete explanatory power and excludes all others. This makes each film on its own very compelling as he goes from A to B to C to D to E to Today without missing a beat. But he can only do this by being very selective about his sources, events, people and places.
As soon as you watch more than one or two of his films you realise that they don’t fit together at the edges. If computing and algorithms have been governing the shape of global events for 50 years, then how could psychoanalysis be having a similarly leading role?
He is a superb film-maker. Mute the commentary and the films are still works of art. He’s also right about many things. Governments do threaten us with phantom forces to keep us scared. Corporations do study subconscious behaviour in order to sell us things. I just don’t think his monopolar approach to storytelling is very useful when examining a multipolar and chaotic world.
In the event of a nuclear strike destroying the British government, the commanders of UK nuclear submarines will open a sealed evelope contained in a safe in their submarine control room. Inside is a message from the PM telling them to either:
retaliate with nukes
not retaliate
use their own judgement
hand over control to an ally (e.g. the US or Australia).
Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions: Owen Smith
Shadow Secretary of State for Defence: Maria Eagle, FT said Gloria De Piero but were wrong Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government: Michael Dugher
The UK’s original bomb program, Tube Alloys, was merged into the later Manhattan Project (Tube Alloys developed the technology that became Fat Man), and then resumed after the war when the US stopped sharing. The UK built and tested its own bombs, and subsequently H-bombs, in the 1950s, and at that point the US agreed to resume R&D cooperation, since the Soviet Union had already stolen all America’s atomic secrets anyway.
The UK’s current warheads are a product of that R&D sharing (which is why, unlike France, it hasn’t had to make any test kersplosions since the fifties), but supposedly they are made domestically. I mean, you could easily believe that they’re basically American warheads with a picture of the Queen drawn on them with magic markers, but they don’t provide details of that stuff.
Don’t they know that if they callously wipe out all the bacteria that keep the body politic healthy, all they’ll be left with is a bad case of C. Diff?
Deputy leader: Tom Watson
Shadow first secretary of state and shadow business secretary: Angela Eagle
Shadow chancellor: John McDonnell
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury: Seema Malhotra
Shadow home secretary: Andy Burnham
Shadow foreign secretary: Hilary Benn
Opposition chief whip: Rosie Winterton
Shadow health secretary: Heidi Alexander
Shadow education secretary: Lucy Powell
Shadow work and pensions secretary: Owen Smith
Shadow defence secretary: Maria Eagle
Shadow Lord Chancellor and shadow justice secretary: Lord Falconer of Thoroton
Shadow communities and local government secretary, and shadow constitutional convention minister: Jon Trickett
Shadow energy and climate change secretary: Lisa Nandy
Shadow Commons leader: Chris Bryant
Shadow transport secretary: Lilian Greenwood
Shadow Northern Ireland secretary: Vernon Coaker
Shadow international development secretary: Diane Abbott
Shadow Scottish secretary: Ian Murray
Shadow Welsh secretary: Nia Griffith
Shadow environment minister: Kerry McCarthy
Shadow women and equalities minister: Kate Green
Shadow culture, media and sport secretary: Michael Dugher
Shadow minister for young people and voter registration: Gloria De Piero
Shadow mental health minister: Luciana Berger
Shadow Lords leader: Baroness Smith of Basildon
Lords chief whip: Lord Bassam of Brighton
Shadow Attorney General: Catherine McKinnell
Shadow Minister without Portfolio: Jonathan Ashworth
Shadow housing and planning minister: John Healey
I would do wiki links to them but I need to take a break
I’m not sure what point your making with that wikipedia article, it shows how there are various types of governmental systems involving presidents and categorises the differences. If a system has a president, it has a president.
I’ve yet to see a detailed proposal on how Corbyn would structure a republic, so it’s unsure which category his ideas would fit under.
Corbyn of course, realises it’s politically infeasible to attempt it now, but unfortunately for him he’s too honest - he should never even have mentioned it (he probably never thought he’d be leading the party though!), the Tories will be able to successfully use it against him regardless (just as they will with many of his other positions, regardless of the nuances of his argument).
