banana

Many sensible people wouldn't be able to stomach reading the speech that
Blair made to the New Labour party conference, and certainly wouldn't be
able to watch the drugged-up marketing-guy former barrister strut his
stuff on the TV.

So here's an abridged version of the speech, with comments. For the
unexpurgated, uncommented version (in two parts, like Andrew Axelsen's
bum) see:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2003/story/0,13803,1052752,00.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2003/story/0,13803,1052843,00.html

***BEGIN ABRIDGED SPEECH WITH COMMENTS***

I've had plenty of advice over what I should say in this speech. Some of
it I have even asked for. One suggestion was leading you all in chorus
of "Always look on the bright side of life."

[comment: this means: 'politics is about marketing, are you in or
out?']

So what do we do. Give up on it. Or get on with it? That's the question.

So why is it so tough?

[comment: anyone else notice this is meaningless, with the 'it'
undefined?]

[...]

The original Conference title read "Fairness For All". We changed it to
"A Future Fair For All".

[comment: see above on marketing]

People ask me if I am surprised that things have got so tough. I say I
am surprised it has taken so long.

[...]

But now I've hit the rough patch, its time to try again.

[comment: how's the fraud trial of Cherie's accountant Andrew Axelsen
going? She lied about his being her accountant, got caught out, did
her Gloria ***nor act for the punters, and all of a sudden, no more
mention in the media about his coming trial]

By occupying the centre ground, by modernising, by reaching out beyond
our activists, we helped turn the Tories into a replica of what we used
to be. A narrow base. Obsessed about the wrong things. Old fashioned. In
retreat.

[...]

No wonder they keep trying to reinvent themselves.

[comment: this basically means 'we are the Conservatives now']

From cuddly Conservatives to compassionate Conservatives to caring
Conservatives. When are they going to realise it's not the first word
that's the problem, it's the second.

[comment: see above on marketing]

But one thing they have succeeded in. As they always do. Right from the
beginning of New Labour they set up the eternal false choice of
progressive politics. That in Government we either revert to the past;
or we stand for nothing. That we are either incompetent or compromised.
That if policy is modernised, belief is betrayed. And it plays to our
own fears. Yes, New Labour a clever piece of marketing, good at winning
elections, but hollow where the heart should be.

New Labour for me was never a departure from belief. It is my belief.
The just society in which each person is a full and equal citizen of our
land, irrespective of birth, class, wealth, race or ***. Where through
solidarity we build a society in which collective strength compensates
for individual weakness.

[..]

In the first phase of our transformation, we took the millstones off our
neck. We became a Party of economic competence, strong on defence,
concerned on law and order. And we won power. And then in our first term
we recovered the credibility to govern. We laid foundations.

But now, is where we show whether we have the mettle not just to be a
longer or even a better Labour Government than those that went before
us, but whether we usher in a political era where progressive politics
is to the 21st century what conservative politics was to the 20th. I do
not just want an historic third term. Our aim must be an historic
realignment of the political forces shaping our country and the wider
world.

[comment: what, even more beltway wonks at the LSE?]

Over the coming months, I want our Party to begin a new discussion with
the people of Britain. Across major policy areas the Government will
publish a prospectus, discussing the progress we have made and the
challenges our country still faces. We should have the confidence to
open up the debate, be honest about the challenges, lay out the real
choices.

[comment: e.g. should it be fingerprints and iris scans, or should it
be iris scans and fingerprints? Your choice, sheeple!]

But this must not just be a discussion between us. Because if we want a
Government in touch with the Party, we must have a Party in touch with
the people.

And so let us make this the biggest policy consultation ever to have
taken place in this country. The Ministers from me down, our MPs out in
every constituency hosting discussions that engage with the whole
community.

[...]

In the economy of the 21st, knowledge, human capital, is the future and
fairness demands it is open to all.

But a big challenge faces us. As our children are helped at every stage
to learn - we are going further than any country in Europe in turning
higher education from a privilege for the few to a right for the many.
But how do we finance education through life and also get more children
into university education that competes with the best in the world?

To pretend it will all come from the taxpayer is dishonest. It won't and
it wouldn't be fair if it did.

[...]

And yes the Tories have an alternative to student fees. To cut money
going to universities by cutting student numbers. 100,000 fewer
students. Is that fair? Who do you think will be the students cut? Their
children? And when the universities need more money, do you think
they'll raise taxes? No, they'll cut numbers again, when our very
economic future depends on us developing people's potential not
squandering it.

[...]

And the Lib Dems? They say they will spend more and it will all come out
of raising the top rate of tax to 50 per cent. Except that extra
university funding is not all that's to come from the top rate taxpayer.
They have commitments to spend more on forty different items running
into billions of pounds.

All this from the top rate taxpayer. We used to have that policy.
Remember squeezing the rich 'til the pips squeaked? Except in the end,
it wasn't only the rich that were squeezed; and it wasn't the pips that
squeaked, it was us.

[comment: basically he's saying charge the poor, don't tax the rich,
oh and get students from working class backgrounds in as much debt
as possible]

We can be proud of the new money in our schools and health service,
proud that this year, last year and next year spending on health and
education is rising faster here than in any other major country. 55,000
more nurses. 25,000 more teachers. 80,000 more classroom assistants.
Tremendous.

[comment: tremendous bollocks, of a typical rally-the-gauleiters kind
so beloved of those who write speeches for politicians. Take a look
at potato-crisp consumption and the size of the gambling industry to
get a handle on 'health' and 'education' in the UK]

And what progress it was in the 1960s when the comprehensive ended the
division of children into successes and failures age 11. What a
breakthrough in 1948 when the NHS gave people, who used to scrimp and
save and fret to pay, care free at the point of use.

But progress in the 21st century demands more, much more. Teaching
tailored to each child's ability. A Health Service that brings the
benefits of new genetic knowledge to everyone, not a lottery. The
patient not at the convenience of the system but the system at the
convenience of the patient. And because the world changes we have to
change. No longer "one size fits all". Recognising that in the 21st
century you can't run a personalised service by remote control.

[comment: what shitty verbiage for basically giving away land and
insurance payments to the banks, insurance firms, and drug pushers.
Anyone who thinks health is going to improve is living
in cloud cuckoo land. As for building hospitals, sure, they're for
this if it helps the cement and drugs cartels. In actual fact, much
useful health treatment could be dispensed in a cowshed without ill
effects]

That's the reason for change. Not to level down but to level up. Not to
privatise but to revitalise a public service we all depend on.

[comment: when they say they're not doing something, very often
that's exactly the thing that they're doing]

I don't want the middle class fighting to get out of the state system. I
want them fighting to get into it but on equal terms with working class
patients and children. That's what the founders of socialism dreamt of.

[comment: socialism means the end of classes and the State. It didn't
have 'founders' like IBM or the Rockefeller Foundation did]

And when I read a resolution saying Foundation Hospitals are opposed by
an alliance of the BMA and the House of Lords, and yes Tories and Lib
Dems too, what are we: a progressive party? If we had listened to that
alliance, we would never have had an NHS in the first place.

[comment: hardly a justification for the oncoming stage of
privatisation, for which all the proffered 'justifications' seem to
be negative, of the type 'one size doesn't fit all' and 'you can't
run a personalised service by remote control'. Boil this filth down
and it reveals itself for what it is: the fanatical praising of
'market choice', à la Tory party conference circa 1986].

And of course the criminal justice system with its rules and procedures
was a vital step of progress when poor people were without
representation unjustly convicted by corners cut. But today in Britain
in the 21st century it is not the innocent being convicted. It's too
many of the guilty going free. Too many victims of crime and always the
poorest who are on the front line.

[comment: i.e. reduce still further the rights of the defendant,
dressing this up tabloid-style with the assumption that any 'defence'
by an accused person is an affront against the victim of the crime].

And its great we've made a start on reform with record numbers of police
officers.

[comment: oh for ****'s sake!]

But I tell you. We will not hit organised crime until we treat them with
the ruthlessness they treat us.

[comment: 'organised crime', eh? A reference to Lord Levy's pals in
Kazakhstan? Or the music industry? Or a reference to the owner of the
money that Cherie's accountant was accused of laundering through UK
public-sector grands projets? Or is it the offences in league with
Berlusconi, allegedly committed by the husband of Tessa Jowell, the
minister responsible for the UK gambling industry? Not to mention
that Berlusconi himself has been represented by Cherie's colleague at
Matrix chambers, nor that the Blair family's private money is run by
the number one UK law firm in the gambling industry]

We won't tackle crime if we bail drug abusers back on the streets
without treatment. And we cannot say we live in a just society, if we do
not put an end to the anti-social behaviour, the disrespect, the conduct
which we wouldn't tolerate from our own children and shouldn't have to
tolerate from someone else's.

[...]

Changing the law on asylum is the only fair way of helping the genuinely
persecuted - and its best defence against racism gaining ground.

[comment: so much for 'education education education'. None of that
now. That's just for wimps. Labour policy now is 'keep the poor
foreigners out, especially if they're not white-skinned, or they're
Muslims'. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of well-heeled
bourgeois who've come to the UK from Hong Kong since 1997 - they're
'wealth producers' presumably?]

We have cut asylum applications by a half. But we must go further.

[comment: some of this has been achieved by having Brit officials at
Prague airport turning back anyone they think is Romany, turning them
back so that they can continue to be victimised by the extreme and
widespread racist oppression in the Czech republic]

We should cut back the ludicrously complicated appeal process, de-rail
the gravy train of legal aid,

[comment: easy to say if your wife's law chambers has clients such as
Berlusconi, who presumably pays his bills with money that's squeaky
clean compared to payments made from the Legal Aid Board; and if your
brother Bill Blair QC is a top commercial barrister. 'Gravy train',
indeed!]

fast-track those from democratic countries, and remove those who fail in
their claims without further judicial interference.

And in a world of mass migration, with cheaper air travel, and all the
problems of fraud, it makes sense to ask whether now in the early 21st
century identity cards are no longer an affront to civil liberties but
may be the way of protecting them.

[...]

I remember when our journey to Government began.

[comment: what, the 1993 Bilderberg conference in Greece? And when
was it, again, that SIS officer Jonathan Powell got seconded to
'oversee renewal' in the Labour party?]

Here in this Hall in 1985, with Neil Kinnock, here with us today. And,
of course today it seems, absurd, doesn't it? Militant, Arthur, all that
nonsense.

[comment: imagine the gall of this piece of shit! I hold no brief for
MI5-controlled Trots or for Stalinists such as Scargill, but what
this s***bag Blair is really pouring shit on is the miners' strike.
Let the s***bag come and tell the devastated heroin-ridden
ex-communities of West Yorkshire that the miners' strike was 'all
nonsense'!]

And what I learnt that day was not about the far left. It was about
leadership. Get rid of the false choice: principles or no principles.

[comment: "Get rid of the false choice: principles or no principles".
Sometimes one gets the impression that for all the marketing
bollocks, the quality of marketing work that gets done for
individual politician's speeches is very much inferior to the quality
bought by, say, Coca-Cola or BP. (On the other hand, part of
political theatre in the UK is currently structured into two or three
bunches of braying asses supposedly being cynical about each other's
claims - even if they all share the fact of being on the extreme
right - when one cannot rightly say the same about the media coverage
of, say, the computer, car, or medical sectors, coverage that is
similarly wholly determined by the efforts of public relations
departments. Or maybe the awareness of the person in the audience
who listens slavishly to a politician is genuinely less than that of
the idiot who watches a Coca-Cola adverti*****t and decides they need
to go out and buy some brown additive-flavoured piss? I mean, I ask
you: 'get rid of the false choice: principles or no principles' - was


matter?]

Replace it with the true choice. Forward or back.

[comment: ever get the idea you're being taken for a fool? 'Let's
have none of this "principles or no principles" nonsense! Which way
does the arrow of time point - to the future or to the past, that's
the question!' General election turnout fell by more than 10% of the
electorate between 1997 and 2001 - from more than 70% to less than
60%. One hopes it will fall further - lower than 50% would be great!
- but one fears it won't (what with voting in supermarkets and stuff
[1]), and that even if it does, they will fiddle the figures so that
it appears to have risen.

(1) Home Secretary David Blunkett has already read a script
saying that the government should consider offering lottery prizes or
leisure discounts as a prize for voting. See
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4265261,00.html>]

I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.

[comment: or in the words of one of his predecessors: 'You turn if
you like. The lady's not for turning']

To stride forward where we have always previously stumbled. To renew in
government. Steadfast in our values. Radical in our methods. Open in our
politics. If we faint in the day of adversity, our strength is small.

[comment: I looked this up. It comes from the 'Bible', Proverbs
24:10. Dunno whether it's a fave of the 'Christian Socialist
Movement',
http://www.christiansocialist.org.uk/publications/books.html#blair
or maybe it came up in the 'thoughts on draftus Mandelsonicus' that
came back from Ambrosden Avenue?]

And ours isn't. We have the strength, the maturity, now the experience
to do it.

So let it be done.

[comment: a-kerching-men! Does Harry Enfield impersonate Tony Blair,
or does Tony Blair impersonate Harry Enfield?]

***END ABRIDGED SPEECH WITH COMMENTS***

--
banana "You know what I hate the most about you Rowntree? The way
you give Coca-Cola to your s***, your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, then expect us to lick your cold frigid fingers for the
rest of your cold frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)

zeronic

What do you reckon to John Smith's death? Convenient or what?

--

best wishes etc,

Zeronic AT uk2 DOT net

banana

In article <3F7ACC66.BF1A45EF@sig.for.email>, zeronic
<go.look@sig.for.email> writes

Could be. I know he'd had a heart attack before, but why then was he
leader? But 'as a stopgap' would be a reasonable answer. He too was a
Bilderberger - indeed he had been on the steering committee. I once met
someone who knew him, apparently he drank like a fish.

--
banana "You know what I hate the most about you Rowntree? The way
you give Coca-Cola to your s***, your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, then expect us to lick your cold frigid fingers for the
rest of your cold frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)

howard beale

Didn't stop Cheney


I've met both Margaret Thatcher and Jeremy Thorpe. Nothing to be proud, but
as you're name dropping...

zeronic

Hmm... a quick search found this:

"Neurological research found the brain to have specific frequencies for
each voluntary movement called preparatory sets. By firing at your chest
with a microwave beam containing the ELF signals given off by the heart,
this organ can be put into a chaotic state, the so-called heart attack.
In this way, high profile leaders of political parties who are prone to
heart attacks can be killed off before they cause any trouble.

Neil Kinnocks' Labour Government was allegedly cheated out of an
election victory by postal vote rigging in twenty key marginal seats.
When a new even more electable Labour leader was found, it is rumoured
that John Smith, the then Labour leader, was prompted to have a fatal
heart attack, while walking in the country with his family, by means of
a concealed microwave device which operated on the Vagus nerve to bring
about a massive heart attack...."

http://www.totse.com/en/conspiracy/mind_control/mindcontrolint170327.html
---------------

The info about walking in the country appears to be inaccurate, going by
this BBC report:

"The Labour leader John Smith has died in St Bartholomew's hospital in
London after two serious heart attacks.
The 55-year-old leader of the opposition suffered his first attack at
his central London flat.
He had a second heart attack in the ambulance on the way to hospital and
was pronounced dead at 0915 BST."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/12/newsid_2550000/2550803.stm

--

best wishes etc,

Zeronic AT uk2 DOT net

banana

In article <blfenk$a88$1@hercules.btinternet.com>, Howard Beale
<howard@REMOVEmad-as-hell.com> writes

:-) What's the goss then?!

And Princess Diana too or was that a joke? :-)

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=xVVv9.9816%24cP3.19858%40news.iol.ie

But on a serious note: a friend of mine some years ago had a family member
who in my friend's view may well have been murdered in a hit-and-run
operation the day after he'd spurned an unwanted ***ual advance from
Jeremy Thorpe.

--
banana "You know what I hate the most about you Rowntree? The way
you give Coca-Cola to your s***, your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, then expect us to lick your cold frigid fingers for the
rest of your cold frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)

banana

In article <3F7B4C25.AC5D01AE@sig.for.email>, zeronic
<go.look@sig.for.email> writes


Sure - no doubt that his murder was a possibility and the technical means existed.

Certainly there was massive Tory cheating in the 1992 general election,
and rigging of court hearings in the aftermath. (This was reported in
the 'Guardian' at the exact same time as the MAF 'cod fax' affair which
led editor Peter Preston to be 'kicked upstairs' and at least one Tory
to read a script saying he ought to be dragged to the bar of the House
of Commons to explain his wicked behaviour in sending a fax with a
parliamentary letterhead on it, ahem). I find it hard to believe that
the insiders nearly got stuffed by a result they didn't want, but one
thing to remember is that unrest in top-brass armed-forces circles was
being mentioned as a possibility in the eventuality of a Labour victory
1992, and even if this didn't mean what it said it meant, it still must
have meant something. The 'Sunday Times' published an artist's
impression of a hypothetical 'protest' by navy officers at, IIRC,
Faslane base in Scotland. It is not so far from this sort of thinking to coupism.


ISTR his driver was said to have found him at one of his homes after
this heart attack.

The author of the article appears unaware that Thatcher started working
with MI5 (and SIS) before being elected in 1979 (meetings at Hambros
bank). What gets forgotten is the context of Labour's election in 1974 -
this was specifically because the bosses had decided they had to make
concessions to the miners and that it would be better for them if an
official 'government' other than Heath's Tory one did so. (Heath Much of
the UK part of the bourgeoisie hated Wilson just as much of the American
part of the bourgeoisie hated Roosevelt. There followed income/prices
deals backed by the unions (and bosses) which were unfortunately
successful in putting the hopes of 1968-1972-1974 into the distant past.
Labour did a successful job. The 'winter of discontent' in 1978-79 was
(again, unfortunately) far less than it was cracked up to be. Something
like the Pentonville Five struggle in 1972 was capable of reaching the
point where May 1968 left off, and going further, but only the most
unrealistic of optimists would say this in retrospect about the 'winter
of discontent'. Sale of council houses and bob's your uncle, the miners
and others were smashed within a few years. My point in saying all this
is that Labour politicians were put in for a few years to do a job, the
insiders knew they were only appointing them for a few years. 1992, well
I dunno really, Smith was backed in the 'Financial Times' - maybe the
truth is the insiders unlike in 1974, 1979, 1983, 1987, 1997 and 2001,
left it 'open' who would win, but I doubt it very strongly, because why
should they - they employed all the 'major' figures on both 'sides' and
those who run puppets run 'em the way they want. Kinnock's a trusty
little house-servant, his son's an SIS officer under 'British Council'
cover apparently. Neil and Glenys are so ****headed as to pose for a
photograph in a re-enactment of Holbein's 'The Ambassadors' photograph,
you'd never catch a Rothschild doing that. Er, where was I? :-)

--
banana "You know what I hate the most about you Rowntree? The way
you give Coca-Cola to your s***, your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, then expect us to lick your cold frigid fingers for the
rest of your cold frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)

howard beale

I was only a kid at the time, and don't really remember much. The main thing
I recall was watching Thorpe strutting up and down the commons floor, as if
he owned the place

A joke, although my late father did tell me he knew Princess Margaret. Randy
bugger he was


Interesting. But considering the balls up made of a certain similar type of
incident he was found innocent of, would he have been capable of arranging
such a quick and successful kill?

banana

In article <blhpkh$dvu$1@hercules.btinternet.com>, Howard Beale
<howard@REMOVEmad-as-hell.com> writes


<snip>

Dunno but the guy's family members believed so. The speed needs to be
explained but if he had done it before... With the Norman Scott job,
Clockwork Orange destabilisation against Thorpe probably played a role
in the 'bungle'.

Some believe Thorpe's wife Caroline was murdered too - died after
supposedly 'falling asleep' at the wheel of her car.

One lawyer who was also an MP boasted about how young males abused by
George Thomas - later House of Commons Speaker, 'Lord Tonypandy' - were
'talked to', in one case being 'given money to go to Australia'.

On Dunblane: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=Sxkeb.818%24gc1.393973%40newsfep1-w in.server.ntli.net
or <http://tinyurl.com/piby>

--
banana "You know what I hate the most about you Rowntree? The way
you give Coca-Cola to your s***, your best teddy-bear to
Oxfam, then expect us to lick your cold frigid fingers for the
rest of your cold frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)

howard beale

They could well be right. Only the Scott fiasco would make me that bit
cautious on it, but who knows? There was a lot at stake


Wasn't she observed shaking or moving her head, just before the accident, or
am I thinking of someone else?

That kind of stuff really pisses me off. I had a preditor chasing after me,
when I was a ****ager. Nothing happened, but boy, do they have the power to
get into your head. I was really surprised when that chap who stabbed
Savident got jailed. Similar thing hapened to an Irish politician, and was
covered up. (or at least was still out of the media when I left) These
bastards have far too much power to keep things covered up. Jonathan King,
and that Denning... tip of the iceberg

Interesting