| Author |
Message |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, December 04, 2008 - 3:39 pm: | |
Gobble gobble.
They have never more resembled turkeys lined up for slaughter on their plush Commons perches than they do at the moment.
Ok which way are they going to vote? Which door will they file through?
I wish I could say something more but I know cheeze about peanuts really. Gobble.
Anyway a piece of clear evidence at least about one of them: Cameron "What a lightweight!" Cameron thinks it sensible to rave on about his anti-Europe leanings to Obama when Obama has just been to a US election kind of rally in Berlin and finds anti-Europeanism incomprehensible. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, December 05, 2008 - 9:15 am: | |
It is a general failing with much argument that it is initiated and conducted in such a way as to make its participants comfortable, far more than to actually sort anything out or to be practical or real. Whatever the ostensible issue being contested in the argument, when it doesn't stretch past this basic need for finding a way to make oneself at home amongst things, it fails to be anything other than a self-serving hare. I can't say that I am not guilty of this myself. I frequently am. I will scream and shout at someone - certainly over a real issue, and certainly there is plenty of justice in my screaming and shouting - but at base, really the reason that underlies my argument and that makes me pursue it with such vehemence, is that the problem that I see in front of me threatens my sense of comfort, my need to feel at home amongst things. One can see this too with MPs and the constant erosion of our rights and the slow invention of the police state that is taking place - the basic problem for these MPs is not that rights and freedoms are being eroded, but that events are impinging on them in such a way as to make them feel uncomfortable. That makes them angry, and it makes them panic. In the meantime, like a bunch of turkeys, sitting comfortably in their pen, complacent and at home, they vote for Christmas. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 08, 2008 - 12:44 pm: | |
What's the point of having an opinion after all? My father has a warehouse plus aircraft hanger full of them, many negative, many more negative than that, and the vast majority even more negative still. He defines his own world. Sorts things out. Shoots down the opposition dozens of times over a day. But one has to ask in the service of what cause? He is very good at making people feel ashamed through a kind of primal vehemence. In his pursuit of of the goods of civilisation he remains deeply primitive while yet at the same time showing an honourable intent. But it is all just opinion. Not strategy. No war can be fought on the basis of simply being right. Life is not a playing field. Each gesture has to be strategic. |
iotar
Username: iotar
Registered: 6-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 08, 2008 - 2:24 pm: | |
On opinions:
I seem to find myself ranting several times a day about things that I disagree with, things that I dislike, things that I do not believe in. I'm spending increasing amounts of time throwing handfuls of words at these things in the belief that it somehow incapacitates or cripples them, or at the very least ruins their day.
I think I might start a list of things that I actually believe in, agree with or love. Y'know, just to check that the list has more items on it than I can count with both hands.
MJP: through some lazy misreading I thought that you were telling us that yr dad has an aircraft hanger full of turkeys. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 08, 2008 - 3:16 pm: | |
There is someone on planet Earth with an aircraft CARRIER full of turkeys but I think his name is George W. |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Monday, December 08, 2008 - 3:19 pm: | |
(That's the point of this argument. The nearest thing we have to an aircraft carrier full of turkeys is Parliament. (Flying along on its turkey pinions.)) |
mjp
Username: mjp
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, December 09, 2008 - 10:42 am: | |
Ah the failure to make sense. The information of sil-ence.
At the moment in our Parliament an increasingly embittered, uncooperative opposition, shouts to get its opinion across, the Speaker is treated by contempt even by some members of his own party, a still born investigative committee (without opposition members, therefore meaningless) is scheduled to investigate the Green fiasco. It could have been conducted differently. And so it goes. The parties need to cooperate.
I have no sense of what strategy would be best, of what should have been adopted to avoid this idiotic vision of affairs beyond the idea that it is usually bad policy to try to defend yourself, especially when people are very very angry with you. Don't defend yourself: agree with them. Say, "Yes I know; it's terrible. I'm sorry." Defending yourself just puts you further in the wrong - in their eyes anyway. It all becomes impossible.
This sort of advice (I mean it kindly) should especially be taken to heart by the Home Secretary. It is an invidious brief to start with. But what is very noticable with successive Labour Home Secretaries is that all too rapidly after entering office they seem to be exactly the same as the Home Secretary before. In fact impossible to tell apart. It's the "The police are doing a sterling job in difficult circumstances" syndrome. And I think the basic reason is that it is because straight after Day One (on Day Two) they start to do nothing but use their time to defend themselves (to defend The State). And then proceed to institute this nothing else, after that, with due haste. Nothing pings but the sound of rocks bouncing off castle walls to tune our ears.
So, a primary strategy: adopt the information of silence. |
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