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Blimey Seumas

He’s, err, actually saying that Venezuela is the way to go:

The big exception to the tide of inequality in recent years has been Latin America. Progressive governments across the region turned their back on a disastrous economic model, took back resources from corporate control and slashed inequality.

28 thoughts on “Blimey Seumas”

  1. Seams Milne plucks statistics to tell lies. He is suggesting the WORLD has become more unequal. He is trying to suggest that capitalism has pushed Africa into poverty. We are left to infer that Africans’ incomes have DROPPED under $2 a day. In gave they have RISE from under $1 a day. Coupled with population growth (in fact a sign here of increasing wealth) and you have the opposite picture. And of course it just doesn’t do to give China or India a mention. Because even Milne couldn’t construct a false tale around them.

    Incidentally, I did once attend a meeting where the speaker did indeed try to construct a story of China’s embrace of markets actually causing poverty levels to rise.

  2. that man embodies everything that is wrong with the Guardian

    why can’t we have a better left wing news paper

  3. And Evan Davis will be in Davos, hosting a debate on the BBC World Service on Sunday on the 1% owning 50%.

    The Pollyteriat is losing its brains.

  4. I’m looking forward to Seumas’s future articles. Perhaps I can help him with the titles?

    – “Toilet paper is unnecessary – a sore bum is essential so you can feel the proletariat’s pain”

    – “Queueing is great – the periods of peace allow for some meditation, the fighting over the last loaf provides exercise without paying some evil capitalist gym owner money”

    – “Speeches are good for you – it’s a well known fact that 4 hours of Marxist lectures save on heating bills”

  5. ‘why can’t we have a better left wing news paper’

    You mean “why are lefties such loathsome ignorant cunts?”

  6. ‘why can’t we have a better left wing news paper’

    There’s always the soaraway Daily Mirror. It’s always amusing how Guardian readers like to sneer at the Sun and its readers but seem to have a blind spot with the DM. I mean, today’s

    ”Katie Hopkins flashes bare bum on Celebrity Big Brother”

    is sooo superior to the Sun’s output.

  7. The communist view is that one should feel good about not having something if no one else has it either. Really.

    Nirvana will be achieved when no one has anything. Joy is having nothing.

  8. Wow, and the lunatic economic creationists and various assorted moonbats are out in force on the comment thread over at the Grauniad.

    I don’t really understand why Stalin Milne’s brand of Soviet denialism is not treated the same as David Irving’s. It’s equally pernicious.

  9. I really wish that people in the UK who love Maduro could some how swap their UK passport with a Venezuelan who doesn’t.
    Although somehow I doubt many would do that.
    (Same goes for people who want Sharia law they could get a Saudi passport while we get a liberal Saudi).

  10. Abacab/Rob

    There was some speculation on newsgroups during early days of the internet (mid to late 90s) about Milne (and indeed several other current Guardian journalists)having links with the Soviet bloc – from recollection it was alleged he was classified as a ‘sympathizer’ or ‘agent of influence’ by either the DS or StB (the Bulgarian or Czech intelligence services during the Cold War) I hasten to add speculation is of course not proof and he is not specifically mentioned in any files I have been privy to (a long story). Time permitting I will see if a Deepweb search can dredge anything up.

  11. Seumas links to another Grauniad rant which links finally to a World Bank report which states that the proportion in Sub-Saharan Africa living on less than $2 a day is at its lowest-ever level – below 50%!
    It then says the absolute number has increased but *not* doubled. The increase is because fewer babies have died so there are more mouths for each worker to feed – the population has more than doubled; also land area unchanged, so less farm produce per head, more unemployment in South Africa because the two mining unions are fighting each other.
    Capitalism is evil, increasing the number living in poverty because it keeps more babies alive!

  12. Having watched Brian Cox on “Horizon”, which used to be a programme about science and is now a green propoganda lecture delivered by a professor with a GCSE in “science” (we can treble the amount of energy in the system but it won’t result in any heat increase in the system as long as we don’t produce any “carbon”) I now realise a truth.

    You can’t have socialism, communism or greenism without have capitalism and markets beforehand. Something (and it will fucking absolutely not be any of the above) has to produce the wealth and only then can the other isms be created in an attempt to massage it in a particular direction.

    Thus the above isms are doomed to failure, As, of course, has been proved time and time again in Real Life…

  13. If you think the Grauniad is bad then don’t go to the Staggers.

    Jesus there are some certifiable windowlickers there….

  14. Talking of certifiable windowlickers, I see that Mr and Mrs Polly Twaddle have a book coming out in a week or so.
    “Cameron’s Coup, a Reversal of Social Progress”

    Dear Guardian reader.

    What has David Cameron ever done for us?

    He promised improved living standards…endemic levels of low pay mean that millions of families are worse off today than they were before the recession. He said the NHS was safe with the Tories …average waiting time for a GP appointment is now 13 days. Asked why he wanted to be Prime Minister, David Cameron said, ‘Because I thought I’d be good at it.’ He wasn’t.

    Polly Toynbee and David Walker are back, with their trademark wit and incisiveness. Blending polls and statistics with moving human stories from Taunton to Teeside, Cameron’s Coup shows the alarming reversal in decades of social progress.

    This is essential reading for anyone who cares about their country.

    John O’Farrell speaks highly of it apparently, but then he would because he’s an arse.

  15. Bloke in Costa Rica

    A Venezuelan mate of mine says that no matter how bad a picture the media paint of Venezuela at the moment, the reality is worse. People just go…missing. The bodies don’t even turn up usually, but if they do the evidence of what the last moments of the victims must have been like is apparent and horrifying. Everything is cracked, broken, fucked. It’s brimming with oil and has massive hydroelectric capacity and still the lights go out. You can just about scrape a living if you have access, somehow, to dollars but otherwise a ruinous proportion of your time is spent merely acquiring the means of subsistence. Ho Chi Milne should be stripped of money and possessions and dumped in the middle of San Cristóbal. That’d learn the fucker, for the brief and incident-filled remainder of his worthless life.

  16. BICR,

    Yes, my Venezuelan friend is always saying that we Brits don’t know how lucky we are, able to get roaring drunk and stagger home. She says you never go out drunk in Venezuela because, if you don’t have your wits about you, you won’t be seen again.

    It’s the little things we take for granted.

    According to the same people who think Venezuela is just peachy, banks — who have given this exile a living — are evil.

  17. The Guardianistas typical response to your Venezuelan friends is to accuse them of being evil capitalists who have fled because they can no longer oppress the poor in the paradise that is ChavezLand.

  18. Luis Enrique,

    “why can’t we have a better left wing news paper”

    Because “left wing” (as in big state) is pretty much an intellectually dead ideology. Look at every single example where the state thinks it can run things that belong in the market better than the market, from the British Film Council to the Medicare website to Soviet tractor factories and toilet paper prices in Venezuela.

  19. Crucial for the spectre of Venezuela to be linked to the Green Party’s ideas for the UK. If we allow the likes of Milne, Murphy, Reed, Jones, Toynbee et al access to the levers of power and to implement their nationalization program there will be similar tales to the ones so graphically outlined by the superb bloke in costa rica…

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