Needless to say I look forward to future internet threads in which I post two short, polite comments relating to policy, and you two retort with angst-ridden ad hominem attacks. Good work! Terribly fun, what?!

Out of interest, do you behave like this in real life, or just when behind a computer screen?

Thank you for explaining that you are a role model for Matthew’s “Jules Mart” character. I think Jules Mart makes a worthy successor to Dave Spart, as an emblem of some of the worst political follies of the present day. Long live Jules Mart!

1) Us political types tend to get very worked up about Iraq – we need to realise that as it doesn’t have a direct impact on the lives of most ordinary people they are turned off when we talk about it, it suggests to them we aren’t interested in what affects them directly.

2) When I debate with “libertarians” I find the experience spookily similar to prevous experiences debating with Trotskyists. The policies may be very different, the mentality is much the same.

Maybe I should buy you a pint of nice summer lager to cool things down a tad.

http://kalvis.com?PleaseGo.pdf

Help spread the word.

The Dave Sparts had simplistic little theories which sounded clever when you spouted them out complete with all the jargon words. These were the answers to everything, and when you pointed out their theories hadn’t worked in practice the answer was always that all that was needed was their application in a more extreme manner. What was most irritating about the Dave Sparts was their superior manner, they made out they were so enlightened and those of us who were more pragmatic about these things were fools who just couldn’t understand the higher level of theory they were into. However, what often caught them out was a startling lack of connection with the real world – if the real world didn’t fit into their theories, they just changed the real world.

Dave Spart is old hat. The modern equivalent, equally caught up in simplistic theorising which has the answer to everything and which makes its adherents look so clever might perhaps be called “Jules Mart”.

Jules Mart is quite clear that more free market policies are the answer to everything. Any problems with the free market are just because it isn’t really free enough. There is no problem at all in the world which couldn’t be solved by selling everything at a price and making people bid for it. Anyone who argues against is just a fool who hasn’t reached the higher stage of enlightenment of Jules Mart. And there are 19th century philosophers who can be brought in and quoted to support it, so that’s final, isn’t it?

The Iraq War was a “fringe issue”? Hundreds of thousands of people dead and continuing unrest after a crazy neo-Con adventure into the least secure region of the world. Fringe issue?

Yes.

It isn’t something that immediately affects the lives of most ordinary people in this country, and so to them it’s a fringe issue. If you really want to win votes, you have to understand that. Sure, it’s an important issue if you’re a high-minded political type, living an untroubled comfortable life, so you’ve got time to think about foreign affairs, it’s important. If you’re worried about your home and your job and how you’re going to pay the bills, politicians waffling on about Iraq are politicians who neither know nor care about you.

Why in this time of economic crisis, are the far left not riding high in popular opinion, able to say “See, we told you this capitalism lark would let you down?” Because the stupid idiots would march on Gaza and Iraq but not on people being conned into taking on huge debts just to live in suitable homes, then let down as the Ponzi-trick profiteers sell up and leave for the tax havens.

The awkward question nobody is daring to answer is this: How are the poor ever going to get any richer, unless the rich get a little poorer?

(Seriously, I tried to think of a more constructive response, but I mean, really, give me summat to work with).

The Tories are conning the voters! It is unbridled Thatcherism and free-market mania which caused the credit crunch. It was the Tories who dismantled regulation, promoted greed-is-good, let debt rip, and enriched their millionaire supporters. All Blair and Brown did wrong was to recruit a different bunch of millionaire supporters to look after, and carry on with the neocon policies.

(I’m sorry all this sounds like Dave Spart. Once upon a time under Heath and Wilson, Private Eye created Dave Spart as a blatant Marxist loony, whose wild exaggerations about the evils of capitalism were a joke. Now, they have largely become true.)

So if the Tories are deeply to blame for all our problems, and have no solution for any of them, how come they are riding high? Simple answer, it’s because they have successfully implanted two mythical ideas into the minds of the voters.

Myth 1: Because Gordon is a jerk, therefore it’s all his fault, and things will magically look up once Dave C gets a go.

Faulty logic. Yes, Gordon is indeed a jerk, but Dave C will not do better.

Myth 2: It’s the high taxing and spending, which is of course specifically Labour’s policy, that has caused all the problems.

Rubbish. Whether you agree with high tax and spend, or you don’t agree, is beside the point. The point is that it didn’t actually cause the crunch. The Tories want to pretend that it did, because it makes it look plausible that they might do better.

How can we dispel these myths?

Take on board Charles Kennedy’s famous dictum that there is no room for three conservative parties in British politics. Get rid of the lingering fundamentalist belief that an untrammelled free market economy is a viable way to run national affairs safely. Boast that we are not in thrall to millionaires and powerful vested interests. Listen to Obama’s message of hope and change, of a government that will act on the side of individuals, of a counterweight to the rich and corrupt, of a vital Green New Deal. Then act on it.

How anyone can think that the worst foreign policy disaster of the last 40 years is a fringe issue is beyond me.

Utter. Unsubstantiated. Cock.

You can say that possibly the Tories would have done it exactly the same, but that doesn’t absolve people like Brown (given his very prevalent hand in the whole issue of the economy) of blame either. There were ways to limit the impact of this, there were people warning YEARS ago of the strategies and mentalities of the banks being headed for disaster.

The people warning of disaster and suggesting strategies to avoid it were not in the Conservative Party. Brown was simply continuing with the economic strategy that his three predecessors as PM had set. If anything, the Conservative Party was urging more of it. Those who warned of disaster were generally dismissed as dangerous people who were against entrepeneurialism, wealth-creation and home ownership, and who wanted to turn the clock back to the bad old days of the 1970s.

I am not absolving Brown of blame, I am simply saying he isn’t the sole cause of it. For the Conservatives to say he is the cause of it and to promote a “resign” strategy is hypocrisy because there is nothing they can point to where they can say they warned of the problems and were ignored or where they would have done anything differently.

I blame also the stupid, stupid left in British politics, who were far too bothered with fringe issues like the Iraq war to come up with an alternative narrative and convincing criticism which would attract any support from ordinary people and would now be paying off handsomely. The only ones speaking out were a few fringe voices, Vince Cable maybe, but he was too quiet and it wasn’t made the key element of the Liberal Democrat identity. Who was willing to say in the long boom, for example, “rising house prices unsupported by real wealth production are a bad thing”? No-one – to have said that would have been to have slapped in the face all those British people who had been trained since the days of Margaret Thatcher to suppose that owning a house was one of a number of ways one could earn money while doing nothing productive. Raising concern about it meant one would get dismissed as a “communist”, as someone who delighted in the idea of people living in state controlled council housing because that meant ordering people around. I have been there, I have done that, I have had the Tory abuse poured on my head for doing it. So don’t tell me the Tories aren’t as deeply to blame for the mess we are in now as Brown.

I’m fed up and I don’ want to take it anymore… and I’ve said so on my blog!!

Like many other posters here, I also don’t think the petition will have any real impact, but if it attract a few headlines and blog posts such as this one, all to the good. It also does perhaps show him how many of us feel. Trouble is he just isn’t listening to anyone!

A Tory win at the next election (whenever that is), unfortunately, seems to me to be inevitable barring a highly unlikely result for my much hoped for LibDem victory… which, I’m afraid, is as unlikely as Chelsea being awarded a penalty last night!

Saludos!

No – it’s spot on – look at the Shadow Finance ministers in the Conservative Front Bench – not one raised any of the issues behind the current situation – and the Conservatives have always supported laisez-faire “hands off” regulation of the City – they can’t even bring themselves to back a Glass-Stegal type seperation of retail and investment banking now that the horse has already bolted!

Utter. Unsubstantiated. Cock.

You can say that possibly the Tories would have done it exactly the same, but that doesn’t absolve people like Brown (given his very prevalent hand in the whole issue of the economy) of blame either. There were ways to limit the impact of this, there were people warning YEARS ago of the strategies and mentalities of the banks being headed for disaster. They were ignored by the banks and, most tellingly, by the treasury while Brown was the chief of that particular palace.