Nope.

A genuine mistake, pointing it out just makes you look bad.

Bullseye.

Can we look further and suddenly find that the country has been run for the benefit of the same few wealthy and influential groups for ever and ever? Please?

I was so surprised I had another cup of tea and watched some more crap telly.

Argh! Grammar school. “Your,” not “you’re”.

Its like a tick sometimes.

As some of you will already be aware, few of them would be my personal choice for a Tory front bench.

“Labour has tested absolutely to destruction the idea of oligarchic politics, that all that matters is winning over the media and other opinion-formers in London, pandering to what newspaper editors think is the “political centre”, and drawing ideas from a few thousand politically engaged people in think tanks, pressure groups and suchlike, all from very similar social backgrounds, while making sure to use marketing techniques to win over more customers than the next leading brand.”

I dunno, it seems to be working for D. Cameron

Best say goodbye to the future Conservative frontbench then…

I wish.

All in favour of removing career politicians with no life experience from politics, by the way.

Best say goodbye to the future Conservative frontbench then…

No. Social change comes from giving people the conditions to organise themselves, and trusting them to do so.

All in favour of removing career politicians with no life experience from politics, by the way.

“Public funds totalling £500 million a year are being spent on an army of at least 29,000 professional politicians in the UK, according to new figures.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/8605308

That compares with an electorate in Britain of about 44 millions.

There is nothing especially new about the public’s low and diminishing regard for politicians. This news report is from 2002, long before the recent hiatus over MPs’ expenses:

“Doctors and nurses are among the most respected of professions, according to a BBC poll.

“Being an MP is the least respected profession in the country. MPs ranked just below estate agents, government ministers, lawyers and journalists, according to the poll by BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2014128.stm

Sorry you think so, Don. Your article seemed to me to be about the contempt for ordinary people demonstrated by today’s political and media grandees. And in particular by members of this Labour government whom you rightly censure for their ‘oligarchic politics’. I think the de haut en bas manner many of them adopt towards underlings and servants provides concrete proof that you are onto something here. The question is whether it is remediable by shifting towards a more popular, bottom-up style of politics, or is incurable – symptomatic of a moral/psychological morbidity brought about by jettisoning traditional values. You (and, indeed, David Cameron), I suspect, plump for the former. I believe the latter is more likely.

I think you’ve wandered onto the wrong site. Don’tcha know it’s all about selling a successful ‘narrative’ these days and that the ‘narrative’ need not relate to reality?

He’s not alone. It’s what generally happens when socialists gain power or authority. Robert Maxwell was a bastard to work for too. In his later years he took against lavatory paper, finding even the puppy softest variety too abrasive in his over-sensitive crack. He began to use white hand towels to wipe his arese, and instead of binning the used ones, he’d toss them on the floor for the maid to pick up.

That’s the abiding problem of the Left: no sense of noblesse oblige.

*Too much of what the Fabians do at times amounts to a bourgeois talking shop for how to manage the capitalist system. They’ve patronised other organs of the British labour movement.It can come perilously close to the attitude ‘We know and we’re the bright ones.Don’t you plebs bother yourselves with thinking too much,we’ll do that for you,and you you follow what we say”. Now thought and intelligent debate is necessary, but that debate cannot be a closed-shop, and must encompass a very wide spectrum,including views contrary to those of the technocratic,managerialist,neo-liberal self-serving elites.