Corbyn did win, what's next?

Jeremy Corbyn doesn't seem to be unconcerned about the unemployed and the homeless, like most people, and the trades unions.

The business elite in 1974 voted for a competitive common market, and not a European political Union dominated by Germany and German technology.

Corbyn is right to have doubts about Trident. It's true that the country needs to be too strong to be attacked, but Trident is not independent and nobody in their right minds is going to use nuclear weapons against a stronger nuclear power, and it costs a fortune as well.
 
Henri McPhee said:
Jeremy Corbyn doesn't seem to be unconcerned about the unemployed and the homeless, like most people, and the trades unions.

The business elite in 1974 voted for a competitive common market, and not a European political Union dominated by Germany and German technology.

Corbyn is right to have doubts about Trident. It's true that the country needs to be too strong to be attacked, but Trident is not independent and nobody in their right minds is going to use nuclear weapons against a stronger nuclear power, and it costs a fortune as well.
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Bravo!

Meanwhile, Daily Telegraph has been censured over its claims of Corbyn and antisemitism: http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/06/daily-telegraph-jeremy-corbyn-antisemite-ipso

And a most excellent attempt at distorting the facts by dear old Torygraph.

Originally describing Corbyn's speech at Manchester Cathedral as being to an audience of "hundreds", Torygraph's editorial staff quickly realised they were looking a bit silly and updated it to "thousands" within a few hours.



Bringing us neatly to another thing that has happened since Corbyn won - youth of England are standing outside a bleeding great church listening to a politician speak because it's full inside!

In the days of TV politicians, that's a change I find both refreshing and hopeful.
 
The Atheist said:
Bringing us neatly to another thing that has happened since Corbyn won - youth of England are standing outside a bleeding great church listening to a politician speak because it's full inside!

In the days of TV politicians, that's a change I find both refreshing and hopeful.
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Amen. Meanwhile, even The Sun (:eek:) is muttering about Osborne's policies, in particular the "living wage" stuff. My take on much of this is that the Tories came over all overconfident after their election win. Hubris in spades.
 
Like or dislike him, he is encouraging "adult" discussion.
That can't be a bad thing, especially if it gets the youngsters involved.
 
I suppose Corbyn has a weakness in that there seems to be nobody in the Labour Party with any banking skill, or knowledge of theoretical economics, or concept of the principles of international finance. Banking is a useful and lucrative business, but that doesn't mean we have to be run by wide boys from the Hedge Funds and currency speculator firms. They are on the side of the rich.

Politicians always were mostly either lawyers or journalists. They have little or no practical knowledge. They seem to start off as kids as political advisers and then get put in charge of finance and education and defence and housing and industrial strategy and unemployment. If the business elite and Institute of Directors are so keen on mass immigration, then I think they should pay for it, and not let it be paid for by others.
 
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Henri McPhee said:
I suppose Corbyn has a weakness in that there seems to be nobody in the Labour Party with any banking skill, or knowledge of theoretical economics, or concept of the principles of international finance.
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That's almost funny. Please check out the qualifications of the current Chancellor of the Exchequer :D

At least McDonnell has an MSc in Politics and Sociology and was " Chair of Finance, responsible for the Greater London Council's £3bn budget" for 4 years. Etc.

Maybe Cameron should employ Yanis Varoufakis? He's qualified to the teeth!
 
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Henri McPhee said:
I suppose Corbyn has a weakness in that there seems to be nobody in the Labour Party with any banking skill, or knowledge of theoretical economics, or concept of the principles of international finance. Banking is a useful and lucrative business, but that doesn't mean we have to be run by wide boys from the Hedge Funds and currency speculator firms. They are on the side of the rich.

Politicians always were mostly either lawyers or journalists. They have little or no practical knowledge. They seem to start off as kids as political advisers and then get put in charge of finance and education and defence and housing and industrial strategy and unemployment. If the business elite and Institute of Directors are so keen on mass immigration, then I think they should pay for it, and not let it be paid for by others.
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You'll have to back this up if you can. You're simply wrong.
 
MikeG said:
You'll have to back this up if you can. You're simply wrong.
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So far all I can find is this from 2010:

There are now more than 50 MPs who are qualified solicitors.
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http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/nineteen-new-solicitor-mps-enter-house-of-commons/55437.fullarticle

And this from the Daily Fail...

But the latest research reveals that working class MPs have all but disappeared from Westminster. Just 25 former manual workers were elected as MPs in 2010, compared to 98 in 1979. Almost all of them are Labour MPs.

By contrast, the number of MPs from white collar backgrounds has increased from just nine in 1979 to 84 today. The number of teachers has halved to
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175695/One-seven-MPs-real-job.html

Here's a link to a .pdf containing a breakdown of sorts over time:

www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01528.pdf

It seems to show that increasingly MPs come from a "miscellaneous" background including being career politicians.

How accurate these figures are I cannot say. If I graduated in PPE, went to work for the party of my choice as a researcher for a few years, got a job for a year in P.R. and then returned to the fold and worked my way up the political ladder, I'm not sure whether they'd classify me as a P.R. person or as an apparatchik.


edited to add......

from the 2010 intake there were 38 Barristers, 48 Solicitors and 38 Publisher/Journalists.

Please note that this only looks at the major parties.
 
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Cameron accuses Jermy Corbyn of supporting terrorists. I don't think you can be too definite about this sort of thing. Mrs Thatcher once described Mandela as being a terrorist, though Mugabe probably was one. The Stern gang in Israel was once described as Jewish terrorists, though members of that gang subsequently became Israeli prime ministers. Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus in the !950's was always mentioned as a terrorist, and he later became leader of Cyprus. Similarly the Mau-Mau in Kenya.

It was Tony Blair who came to some sort of an agreement with the IRA to pardon the 'on the run' IRA gangsters for known murders, including the killing of soldiers and horses at Hyde Park. Cameron is a Tory Blairite.
 
Well, Cameron plumbed a new depth at the Tory conference today, cherry-picking a few words from a Corbyn interview to give the impression that JC thought Bin Laden's death was "a tragedy". Quote:

You only really need to know one thing: he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a “tragedy”.

Which, of course, isn't what JC was saying at all. I wonder if this will come back to haunt Cameron? No doubt he has said a thousand things that could be misrepresented in the same way.
 
Very interesting the way Cameron has chosen to make statement after statement about a man who cannot possibly win an election...

Methinks he doth protest too much.
 
GlennB said:
Well, Cameron plumbed a new depth at the Tory conference today, cherry-picking a few words from a Corbyn interview to give the impression that JC thought Bin Laden's death was "a tragedy". Quote:

You only really need to know one thing: he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden was a “tragedy”.

Which, of course, isn't what JC was saying at all. I wonder if this will come back to haunt Cameron? No doubt he has said a thousand things that could be misrepresented in the same way.
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Well, it actually was what he was saying. The misrepresentation stems from those who deny his meaning. In an interview on Press TV for an Iranian audience (as you do) he stated the killing of Bin Laden was a tragedy and equated it with '9/11'. The idea that the death of a mass murdering terrorist is a tragedy simply because a legal trial would have been preferable is laughable. This country is crammed with people who respect the rule of law yet vanishingly few would describe the killing of Bin Laden as a tragedy. This was Corbyn flaunting his anti-British credentials to his West-hating friends in the Middle East, pure and simple.
 
GlennB said:
I wonder if this will come back to haunt Cameron? No doubt he has said a thousand things that could be misrepresented in the same way.
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You say that like his opponents wouldn't misrepresent anything he says so long as he doesn't misrepresent anything anyone else says.

That's a very charming notion of how politics operates. But somewhat akin to belief in the tooth fairy.
 
baron said:
Well, it actually was what he was saying. The misrepresentation stems from those who deny his meaning. In an interview on Press TV for an Iranian audience (as you do) he stated the killing of Bin Laden was a tragedy and equated it with '9/11'.
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The maths of compound pendulums is 'difficult'. Resolving the situation in Syria is 'difficult'. Using the same word doesn't mean I'm equating those things in any way, shape or form.

And this is why Cameron's soundbite rhetoric stinks.
 
GlennB said:
The maths of compound pendulums is 'difficult'. Resolving the situation in Syria is 'difficult'. Using the same word doesn't mean I'm equating those things in any way, shape or form.
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9/11 was bad. Trapping my finger in the door was bad. But if I bring up my sore finger when talking about 9/11 I'd suggest I'm either the world's greatest hypochondriac or I'm downplaying a terrorist tragedy.

In any event, it's not the equating aspect I'm criticising here, although it is certainly worthy of that. More the fact that he blatantly said that Bin Laden's death was a tragedy and his apologists have tried to make out that he didn't actually mean it was a tragedy, just that... well, it wasn't desirable. Sure, like it's so difficult to make the point that something is undesirable without calling it a tragedy.
 
Ah, Corbyn just can't catch a break from his terrorist fraternizing days:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pol...rbyn-and-John-McDonnells-close-IRA-links.html

Part of the article:

Mr Corbyn was general secretary of the editorial board. He wrote the front-page story in the same issue of Briefing.

The same edition of Briefing, for December 1984, carried a reader’s letter praising the “audacity” of the IRA attack and stating: “What do you call four dead Tories? A start.”
 
Giz said:
The same edition of Briefing, for December 1984, carried a reader’s letter praising the “audacity” of the IRA attack and stating: “What do you call four dead Tories? A start.”
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That's truly pathetic.




Four thousand would be a start. Four isn't worth counting.*



*Using the reverse method for counting the dead from the Great Fire of London.
 
baron said:
9/11 was bad. Trapping my finger in the door was bad. But if I bring up my sore finger when talking about 9/11 I'd suggest I'm either the world's greatest hypochondriac or I'm downplaying a terrorist tragedy.

In any event, it's not the equating aspect I'm criticising here, although it is certainly worthy of that. More the fact that he blatantly said that Bin Laden's death was a tragedy and his apologists have tried to make out that he didn't actually mean it was a tragedy, just that... well, it wasn't desirable. Sure, like it's so difficult to make the point that something is undesirable without calling it a tragedy.
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Except that he didn't. What he said was that it was a tragedy that OBL had been killed rather than being put on trial.

Hard to disagree, unless you are someone who thinks extra-judicial executions are the way to conduct justice.
 
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