“Can anyone tell me why we can’t be utterly indifferent to the suffering of such people, when they have caused such suffering to others?”

Because we are better than that. Because the fact that other people lack compassion and humanity is not a good reason for us to lack compassion and humanity.

I do not respond to hate with hate.

I wouldn’t wish depression upon anybody.

Why do we need to wish them well?

Bercause we are better than they are.

I certainly don’t wish Iris Robinson well

It’s the first of January and you may already have won the Least Empathetic Blog Post Of The Year Award.

Is this really the tone you want to set for the new year?

You don’t need to wish her well but rejoicing in her illness is another matter.

(I think Rumbold made a similar reply yesterday to a post Sunny made about someone else over at Pickled Politics.)

Yes this seems to be the default answer. By virtue of wishing them well are we hoping to seem morally better? More compassionate?

I’m not more compassionate; I’m just not a bigoted hate-monger.

I have sympathy with people suffering mental illness; I’ve got family members with various types, and I’ve campaigned to keep a mental ward open in a city I lived in for a while. I just don’t have sympathy with Iris Robinson.

If Nick Griffin gets cancer, will we suddenly see Left-Liberal politicians (all ten of them) wishing him well? Fuck that shit. I hope they both die.

People get ill; they don’t suddenly become worthy of praise for being ill. Instead of complimenting her and sending well wishes, her parliamentary opposition should have sent her photographs of the results of the homophobic attacks in Belfast that her and her ilk encourage with their bigotry.

Is this really the tone you want to set for the new year?

What’s it got to do with setting the tone. He’s merely saying, as I did yesterday – that there’s no point pretending to wish them well when you frankly thought they were an idiot earlier.

It’s just being two-faced really isn’t it? Why the need to be like that? Just say what you’re actually thinking.

And as I said to Rumbold in reply – Dale and Montgomerie were hysterical because they don’t like me and want to see LC taken down a peg or two because of the content. It has nothing to do with their humanity – I could dig up loads of examples of their own lack of concern for lefties.

What about showing concern to the victims who suffer from Rush Limbaugh or Iris Robinson’s hate-mongering? This faux-concern and the faux-outrage in response is frankly more pathetic.

Also – isn’t Iris Robinson part of the crew that keeps abortion rights for women in N Ireland much more restrictive?

Surely you can sympathise with someone while simultaneously thinking them an evil little shit?

Isn’t celebrating someone’s poor health stooping to the level of those you despise?

There’s no need. Some on the right may think mocking those with disabilities or smearing someone as being mentally ill as valid attacks on their political enemies. I thought decent-minded people on both right and left rose above this.

If you are not particularly saddened by someone’s bad fortune why say anything?

Because it irritates me that there exists a convention that people who agree that they are evil shits should wish them well. Or that there are politicians so wholly opportunistic as to wish to appear statesmanlike by wishing their opponents well, even when their opponents are people like Iris Robinson.

What if they’ve contributed to creating a climate in which people have been hurt or died?

So you wish those whose politics you disagree with ill then and would, for example, laugh and celebrate if they get cancer?

Can’t agree.

Sunny – do you agree with the death penalty?

@13 I’m pretty indifferent. I don’t actively wish that they get ill. If they do get ill, I can’t say I’d laugh – but if Iris Robinson and the others who share her pulpit all died in a plane crash, or got AIDS or something, I sure as shit wouldn’t cry. What I’m protesting against is the tendency towards the latter reaction, regardless of who the people in question are.

The atmosphere here for LGBT people has improved, no thanks to Iris. It’s not like it was 30 years ago when Paisley ran his Save Ulster From Sodomy campaign against legalisation. It’s not even like it was 15 years ago when the Rev David Templeton was beaten to death by the UVF for being gay. Things have got immeasurably better, but there’s no point pretending Belfast is as metrosexual as Brighton.

As for Iris… you can feel the same empathy for her as anyone else, on a basic human level, the same way as you can for Brian Lenihan with his cancer diagnosis. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’s been a thoroughly negative and pernicious influence.

Mind you, her replacement will be equally reactionary. The Strangford constituency is not going to be voting for Peter Tatchell any time soon.

I’d feel more sympathy for Lenihan than for Iris Robinson. I’m not saying there’d a sliding scale of sympathy on the basis of whether or not someone agrees with me, but to the best of my knowledge, Lenihan has never made it his business to get into the papers for being a bigot in the name of the Almighty.

Well, that’s true. If something happened to, say, Willie McCrea I wouldn’t be celebrating it, but nor would I suddenly start talking about what a great parliamentarian he was and how keen I was to have him back.

Actually, Chekov over at 3000 Versts had a reasonable take on Iris from a liberal unionist viewpoint. But he’s not a professional politician, so the etiquette doesn’t apply.

So once again the right wing trolls , who are always on here giving lectures on civility , are now forced to defend a right wing piece of shit because she has , oh dear…………… depression.

No doubt our troll friends would have been on here 60 years ago defending Hitler, and Mussolini for getting the trains to run on time. Brown shirts never change, they just change their party affiliation.

Something Ian Dale should think long and hard about. He supports, and carry’s water for people who would like to build a bonfire and place him on the top of it.

Perhaps her illness played a role in her particularly disgusting condemnations of homosexuality. After all depression can impair cognitive function and radically alter perspectives on reality. I find that the more strident bigots I’ve encountered nearly always suffering from sort of neuroses.

I’d saycalling her a great parliamentarian is a step too far. She hasn’t actually made any nice contributions to political life. But wishing her well seems decent.

The bottom line is: Love your enemy. Turn the other cheek.
But only for those of us who believe that life is really about caring for other people (and other beings in general, in fact), regardless of whether those people care for us too.
In other words: the dividing line here is in the end a spiritual one, not a political one, and not even a practical/pragmatic one.
It would probably be a good thing for humanity as a whole if various people were simply to drop dead. But actively wishing death or morbidity upon them is cancerous. We will not build a better society by mirroring the hate for others that those we are inclined to hate feel for those they actually do hate. Only by regarding without nausea our fellow human beings. It’s very challenging, but it is possible.

@Sunny

He’s merely saying, as I did yesterday – that there’s no point pretending to wish them well when you frankly thought they were an idiot earlier.

How does thinking someone an idiot translate into celebrating their death or wishing them severe illness? It doesn’t, does it.

Which means – unless your mind works along a succession of non sequiturs, which is plausible – you’ve missed something out of your explanation. What might that be?

I presume you think this might play well politically. It won’t.

I think those of us on the Left should take more care to distinguish between the moral and the intellectual.

We should be able to defend our political positions rationally without claiming to be morally superior to those who disagree with us.

I don’t agree with much Iain Dale says or writes, but I don’t think that makes him an “evil shit”. Ditto Iris Robinson. There are, of course, evil shits – Hitler was definitely one, and Stalin another. Their evil shittiness didn’t depend on their political position.

You can’t generalise along right-winger = selfish evil shit/ left-winger= nice person.

I used to work on a left-wing publication and that was a nest of vipers. A fellow lefty friend was the odd man out at the Daily Torygraph (some years back) and said the people there were surprisingly kind.

Reading this article very neatly demonstrates why I, as a Conservative, hope that the ideas that are expressed here come to predominate in the Labour Party, when it goes into Opposition.

[20] “Perhaps her illness played a role in her particularly disgusting condemnations of homosexuality”.

I’d be surprised Nick – I suspect IR was exposed to this kind of bigotry both within her home, and the wider community she grew up in, and it was these experiences that formed the basis for her strident views about sexual orientation/preferences.

It is also possible that she is a repressed lesbian herself, so her depression may be related (in part) to a denial of her ‘true’ self.

Either way, I do not think it is unreasonable to draw attention to the convention of phony backslapping once a queasy politician has been put out to grass?

‘So once again the right wing trolls , who are always on here giving lectures on civility , are now forced to defend a right wing piece of shit because she has , oh dear…………… depression.’

Sally, you are a fucking idiot and every time you post you show yourself up as stupid and repellant.

Not rejoicing in someone else’s suffering does not make us ‘right wing trolls’.

I assume your ‘oh, dear’ and elipses are to indicate you think depression is trivial?

When those of us who suffer from mental illness say we wouldn’t wish this on our worst enemy some of us actually fucking mean it.

Reading this article very neatly demonstrates why I, as a Conservative, hope that the ideas that are expressed here come to predominate in the Labour Party, when it goes into Opposition.

You guys say this so often it almost feels like you’re too scared that lefties will develop a backbone and start becoming aggressive that right-whingers have always been. And then people like you and David Jones and Guido Fawkes start lecturing lefties on what will destroy the left – as if you cared in the first place.

Well, it’s your party, not mine. But the future of the Labour Party is
of interest even to people who aren’t sympathetic to it.

I just don’t see anything in your message that would appeal to centrist voters.

@Sunny, as I’ve said before I’ve only ever voted Labour and have been a Party member twice. I’m torn this election: I think we need a change, I don’t trust Labour to cut public spending enough, I am very interested in Gove’s education suggestions, but I have a good Labour constituency MP.

lefties will develop a backbone and start becoming aggressive

Developing a backbone becoming aggressive, Sunny.

should have read ‘is not the same as ‘ becoming aggressinve, of course.

@21 – Loving thy enemy and turning the other cheek is all very well, Rupert, but there have to be limits, or situations to which this approach is not applicable. Otherwise what are we but quiescent pacifists?

I don’t regard Iris Robinson with nausea. What I regard with nausea is the social convention outlined above, on the part of her political adversaries, a situation which only arises because she’s such a pathetic excuse for a human being.

“Reading this article very neatly demonstrates why I, as a Conservative, hope that the ideas that are expressed here come to predominate in the Labour Party, when it goes into Opposition.”

Oh look, a concern troll. Priceless when they start giving advice. Because of course they have the interests of the Labour party at heart (not)

But remember these are the same people who come on here every time a Labour politician does or says something unpleasant and demands they be saked and driven out because civility is sooooo important to them.

“Sally, you are a fucking idiot and every time you post you show yourself up as stupid and repellant.”

As if I give a flying shit what you think.

“Not rejoicing in someone else’s suffering does not make us ‘right wing trolls’.”

It does in this case. Because you people are the worst hypocites you will ever find in politics. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.. The character of the bully. Whch of course is what most tories are……. jumped up bullies.

‘It does in this case. Because you people are the worst hypocites you will ever find in politics. You can dish it out but you can’t take it.. The character of the bully. Whch of course is what most tories are……. jumped up bullies.’

What do you mean ‘you people’?

Sally, I ‘d be perfectly happy to see the Labour Party go the same way as the Liberal Party after 1924. I’m not in any sense “concerned” about it. I’m interested in its future, however.

But, I think you should read through this article, and ask yourself whether the sentiments expressed here are those that will help Labour in Opposition, or hinder them.

I just don’t see anything in your message that would appeal to centrist voters.

I didn’t realise our sole aim should be appeal to centrist voters. Funny how you concern trolls don’t turn up on right-wing blogs to say that when Daniel Hannan pops up.

Please – this is not a website or blog who’s sole aim is to win over centrist voters. I don’t know why you’d think that unless you’re doing some bizarre pretend concern dance like Guido Fawkes is.

@Sally :-

the interests of the Labour party at heart

Because the Party is the people, I take it?

“What do you mean ‘you people’?

TROLLS

This woman was quite happy to use her position to attack those she did not agree with in a most disgusting way, and now she is suffering and we are all supposed to feel sorry for her.

Funny, Tories quite like lecturing statements like ……“you reap what you sow. “

on right-wing blogs

This is a Left-wing blog then, is it? Because it seems to define itself not in terms of a well thought-through set of Left-wing principles but by enmity, spite and opposition for the sake of it:

pointing out the enormous privilege of the individuals composing the Cameron clique and Tory upper echelons … should all work

Nothing like a reasoned argument, @Sunny, eh?

This is a Left-wing blog then, is it?

Thanks David, but when I need editorial advice and guidance from you I’ll be sure to ask it. Why not instead offer your wisdom to others in the meantime.

I do find it amusing how many people come here purely to lecture us on what we should be publishing and how to become popular and win elections etc.

We should welcome the news that she has stepped down since her views are incompatible with modern politics. Hopefully decent politicians will replace her and others like her, but I won’t hold my breath. I also hope she makes a speedy recovery from depression and homophobia. I know a psychiatrist who could help her with both clinical conditions.

“I didn’t realise our sole aim should be appeal to centrist voters. Funny how you concern trolls don’t turn up on right-wing blogs to say that when Daniel Hannan pops up.”

If this blog just exists so that left winger can agree with left winger about how awful the Right is, then that’s fair enough.

But (correct me if I’m wrong) I thought that trying to influence events so that Labour (or other left wing parties) could win was one of its purposes.

“But (correct me if I’m wrong) I thought that trying to influence events so that Labour (or other left wing parties) could win was one of its purposes.”

But seeing as you are a tory, what the fucks that got to do with you?

43 Given that I would prefer never to see the Labour party in government again, it has everything to do with me.

Given that I would prefer never to see the Labour party in government again, it has everything to do with me.

That’s right – and since I would prefer, and actively want to work towards destroying the right and the Conservative movement/government – our main aim is to build a cohesive left movement and point out what is wrong with the Right.

When I want to advocate something that will appeal to centrist voters, I’ll say it. Most of the time however I make the case for centre-left policies and ideas.

What’s it got to do with setting the tone. He’s merely saying, as I did yesterday – that there’s no point pretending to wish them well when you frankly thought they were an idiot earlier. It’s just being two-faced really isn’t it? Why the need to be like that? Just say what you’re actually thinking.

“I’m just say what I think” – the classic excuse for people who are rude and inconsiderate. I happen to think that there is such a thing as a “time and a place” to say things. Saying that Rush Limbaugh falling ill is like a Christmas present is certainly not the time and place. Perhaps if you feel that way then you wait until he’s better.

I may loathe Gordon Brown but I wouldn’t wish ill on him or his family, and in the event that he did fall ill I would wish him a speedy recovery. This is because I disagree with Gordon Brown the politician, but behind that there’s also Gordon Brown the husband and parent.

You make no secret of the fact you don’t like Cameron, but how did you react to his son’s death?

I personally didn’t care. It’s not that I’m indifferent to the death of a child, but I only have so much room for caring, and what with Michael Jackson and Tony Hart all dying this year, my 2009 stock was reserved for other things.

As for this time and a place to say things, you’re entitled to that view. We respectfully disagree.

Lol. What’s the biggie?? The amount of people I wish death on! Esp mental politicians who spew vile hatred every time they open their mouths. Assholes. I couldn’t care less she has depression. Silly cow.

The amount of young people who kill themselves because they find out they are gay or the number who are killed because they are gay and this stupid cow with her crazy flock are the instigators! Urgh! Makes my blood boil.

I bet she’s happy about what is happening in Uganda.

And all the people who are commenting and saying that we shouldn’t wish bad things on her because she could be a parent (poor kids, lets hope they aren’t at all different!) and is a human being are full of it.

You go say that to Matthew Shepard’s mother or say that to the parents of that liverpool kid who got killed because he was gay today. I dare you.

I remember reading (not that I would foget) reading the Shock Doctrine and Naomi Klein was asking these asshats after they messed up with Chile if they feel bad for what they did and they were like, ‘no, it’s not our fault’.

Same with that prick Tony Blair and saying that he’d take us on a war to Iraq again!! I wouldn’t care if he died. If that makes me bad. Than I am a bad, bad, bad person but tell you what I don’t have blood on my hands and would never dare to be like any of these people nor this lady because it’s just f*cking cruel.

@ 20
“Perhaps her illness played a role in her particularly disgusting condemnations of homosexuality. After all depression can impair cognitive function and radically alter perspectives on reality. I find that the more strident bigots I’ve encountered nearly always suffering from sort of neuroses.”

You will have encountered a great many people who have depression, but not known it. But then hey – that wouldn’t have made such a great comment would it? (For ‘great’ read ‘fucked up’ – I obviously can’t cope cognitively with writing a comment, what with my depression and all).

Do all the “strident bigots” you encounter wear labels that they are neurotic or do they helpfully tell you?