Indict Rupert Murdoch

[Limehouse]

Limehouse, it's nice to hear a liberal calling for tougher punishments!

Who are you calling a liberal! I'm a socialist!

Actually I am quite tough on criminality but I think that the punishment should include rehabilitation.

[Phil H]

I am sure the majority of NOTW readers do not support the actions of these people and had they been aware of their actions they would have stopped buying the paper.

Frankly, I doubt it.

We have always known the Sun invents stories. Liverpudlians certainly have shown their sustained opposition (since Hillsborough). But the NOTW remains the best selling paper in the country and I hear a double size print run has been ordered for the last edition?

boycott it - nah! Not our working classes. They can be worked up into a spurious anger, but wouldn't recognise corruption - or do anything about it - if it was staring them in the face.

Phil

[Limehouse]

I am sure the majority of NOTW readers do not support the actions of these people and had they been aware of their actions they would have stopped buying the paper.

Frankly, I doubt it.

We have always known the Sun invents stories. Liverpudlians certainly have shown their sustained opposition (since Hillsborough). But the NOTW remains the best selling paper in the country and I hear a double size print run has been ordered for the last edition?

boycott it - nah! Not our working classes. They can be worked up into a spurious anger, but wouldn't recognise corruption - or do anything about it - if it was staring them in the face.Phil

I think that's very unfair and a tiny bit arrogant Phil.

Surely a good number of those Liverpudlians showing their sustained opposition are working class?

[Robert]

Hi Phil

Well, I am doing something about it. And my way of doing something about it is, to refuse to vote for spivs.

[Phil H]

And my way of doing something about it is, to refuse to vote for spivs.

And what, Robert, is a "spiv"?

Surely a good number of those Liverpudlians showing their sustained opposition are working class?

Probably all of them, and if you read my post THAT was the honourable exception.

But by and large my judgement of the English "mob" remains what would have been that of any civilised man at the time of the Gordon Riots - that the working classes are almost entirely self-interested, under-educated, uncivilised (almost animal like most of the time); brutish, disinterested in "facts" or affairs, immoral, drunken, easily led and uncontrollable.

Believe me, I have to mix with them on buses, in shops and so on - I see the way they bring up their chioldren, the smoking, hawking, spitting, crude language, lack of manners, the level of their conversation and the way they carry themselves and I am sickened. I note the TV programmes that they enjoy - reality TV and "soaps" and I shudder. All the moneyspent on educating them and providing public services and that is the level we reach - the level of low-life in a pond.

They are entitled to it but don't ask me to condone it.

And they wouldn't know a moral or an ethic if it danced naked on their beds. All this about phone-hacking has onlyroused them because a sentimental angle has been found - involving the tragically deceased. Otherwise they wouldn't have looked up from their tabloid or the latest episode of "Eastenders", heaven help us!

Somewhat exaggerated to make my point (but not by much),

Phil

Phil

[Limehouse]

And my way of doing something about it is, to refuse to vote for spivs.

And what, Robert, is a "spiv"?

Surely a good number of those Liverpudlians showing their sustained opposition are working class?

Probably all of them, and if you read my post THAT was the honourable exception.

But by and large my judgement of the English "mob" remains what would have been that of any civilised man at the time of the Gordon Riots - that the working classes are almost entirely self-interested, under-educated, uncivilised (almost animal like most of the time); brutish, disinterested in "facts" or affairs, immoral, drunken, easily led and uncontrollable.

Believe me, I have to mix with them on buses, in shops and so on - I see the way they bring up their chioldren, the smoking, hawking, spitting, crude language, lack of manners, the level of their conversation and the way they carry themselves and I am sickened. I note the TV programmes that they enjoy - reality TV and "soaps" and I shudder. All the moneyspent on educating them and providing public services and that is the level we reach - the level of low-life in a pond.

They are entitled to it but don't ask me to condone it.

And they wouldn't know a moral or an ethic if it danced naked on their beds. All this about phone-hacking has onlyroused them because a sentimental angle has been found - involving the tragically deceased. Otherwise they wouldn't have looked up from their tabloid or the latest episode of "Eastenders", heaven help us!

Somewhat exaggerated to make my point (but not by much),

Phil

Phil

Have you ever read E P Thompson Phil?

[Natalie Severn]

Thuggery Leads From The Top........

[B]


But by and large my judgement of the English "mob" remains what would have been that of any civilised man at the time of the Gordon Riots - that the working classes are almost entirely self-interested, under-educated, uncivilised (almost animal like most of the time); brutish, disinterested in "facts" or affairs, immoral, drunken, easily led and uncontrollable.


Phil

Is there any more disgusting spectacle from last week's news than the sight of former Bullingdon vandals queuing up to denounce the looting of their London club house?

"Thuggish" cried Boris Johnson."Unacceptable... violence and destruction" bellowed David Cameron. Both of whom spent their student days vandalising restaurants and scarpering before the arrival of the police.

While Zizek speaks of a "speculative identity" between those perpetrators of the "objective violence" - structural damage enacted upon on the people and state infrastructure through budget cuts to welfare and education - and the "subjective violence" of physical destruction directly enacted against persons and property; here there is no need for speculation. They really are the very same people. The same people who would hire out restaurants in order to smash them up, throwing money at the owners as they leave; the same people who now ransack higher education and benefits provisions in order to line the pockets of their friends in high finance.

What is so "unacceptable" to Cameron is clearly not the so-called "violence" and property damage - how can it be when he has as good as admitted to the thuggish behaviour of his own student days, all the while dismissing it lightly as mere drunken japery? No, what they object to is that this vandalism is not a mere jape, a prelude to flaunting one's wealth, all the while cravenly keeping one eye on any possible damage done to one's own future career; but direct action targeted towards a cause that transcends the people who fight for it, a cause for which those people are willing to sacrifice their own interests to defend

[Natalie Severn]

re above post on thuggery

The specific source for the above quote is here:

http://thebombparty.blogspot.com/2010/11/stop-shaking-tyrants-bloody-robes-in-my.html

But a google of Bullingdon Club will give plenty more information on our Hurrah Henry's idea of property vandalising in Oxford and plenty other their other thuggery is in the public domain......

[Robert]

Hi Phil

Have a look at the MPs expenses scandal.

[Robert]

Phil, I suppose it's lucky that this English "mob" managed to win two world wars, or it would have no redeeming features at all, apparently.

[Limehouse]

Has anyone read The Moral Economy of the Crowd in the Eighteenth Century? E P Thompson makes a good case for the behaviour of the crowds concerning the corn riots.

What about Peterloo? Were the working classes rioting? No! Were they aggressive? No! What did they get for organising a meeting to campaign for the vote? They got a very violent and uncalled-for response from the military. What were they doing just before the horses and swords cut into the crowd? Why - they were singing the national anthem!

I'm sorry you have to mix with people like me on the buses Phil. I am sorry that my freedom to watch Coronation Street is so offensive to you. Don't worry though - I'm well scrubbed since we moved all the coal out of the bath last week so if you do end up sitting next to me on the bus I won't smell too bad.

[jason_c]

Phil, I suppose it's lucky that this English "mob" managed to win two world wars, or it would have no redeeming features at all, apparently.

Nothing a good old dose of Paternalism wouldnt fix, apparently. Sir Robert Anderson would be proud of the amount of paternalism shown in this thread.

[Errata]

Phil, I suppose it's lucky that this English "mob" managed to win two world wars, or it would have no redeeming features at all, apparently.

I swear to you, this is not American swaggering. This is trying to distinguish between what is taught on this side of the pond and on that side.

Were you really taught that the English won both wars, as opposed to being on the winning side? Clearly we were taught that the Americans won the wars, and the notion was reinforced by the timing. As a thinking adult, I came to the conclusion that both the English and the Americans were necessary for victory. But I am curious what you were taught.

It's like we call it the Revolutionary War, and you call it the War of Independence, and one would think it would be the other way around.

[Robert]

Hi Errata

No, of course we're not taught that Britain did it all on her own. The chief credit for the defeat of Germany in WW1 goes to Britain and France, with America influencing events at the end. In WW2 the Americans entered one third of the way through. They played the leading role in the defeat of Japan. The biggest factor in the defeat of Nazi Germany was the USSR.

I would use the term "revolution" for an internal event, e.g. the French and Russian Revolutions. Since the Americans were creating a new nation, "War of Independence" sounds right.