First it says that it was time to cancel my Guardian subscription: I have done that.
That absence of commissions must hurt, eh? And it’s a pretty big bet on becoming LHTD to Corbyn, isn’t it?
The reality is that all they are really offering is a version of neoliberalism with softer edges is all too apparent when the truth is that neoliberalism is itself morphing into neo-feudalism and the Labour mainstream has yet to react.
That move to neo-feudalism is happening across the world, and not just in the UK.
We’re going through the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the entire history of our species: so, where am I gonna get me some serfs?
Just doesn’t make any sense, does it?
that consensus and all that goes with it is harmful to very large numbers of people and they know it, although because there is little discussion of why as yet: the media is making sure of that.
And the Guardian is part of this plot of course.
Comments on the Guardian are largely in favour of Corbyn. Apparently, he has ‘principles’ and the others don’t – indeed they get as much vitriol as the Tories on there. The Left hate splitters more than the enemy of course.
So its hard to see what his problem is.
Still, in a battle between ‘principles’ and reality, I’d bet on reality every time.
Murphy is mad, so doesn’t count. Other Labour members and activists do, however, seem to have formed a suicide cult. Burnham, Cooper and Kendall are now “Tories”.
P.S. I thought ‘Nigel from Kent’ asked a particularly good question at the hustings
I can deal with the word neo-liberalism, as a lived experience, being used to described a shift in the operations of western corporatism. That’s fine and some truth to it even if most who bandie around the term don’t appreciate that it isn’t free marketeering.
But neo-feudalism?
Sod off you ignorant abuser of history and its terminology.
@ Rob Harris
Murphy probably vaguely thinks that feudalism is ‘bad’ and therefore to describe the current state of affairs as neo-feudalism means that it is also ‘bad’.
Oddly, given that feudalism centred around rights being granted by an all powerful landowner in return for a promise of service, Murphy’s claim that the state owns everything and in effect just grants people the right to have a bit of it in return for working hard to serve the state means that the only person advocating a ‘neo-feudal’ state is Murphy himself.
Ritchie’s first mistake, of course, was to think the graun was ‘dedicated to balanced reporting’. His second is to assume that balanced reporting can’t encompass opposing viewpoints. Though thinking about his comments policy (as posted, and as implemented) at least there’s a rare moment of consistency.
quick poll, neo-fuedalism or neo-stalinism?
@andrewc, even feudalism is too decentralised for the LHTD.
Neo-Stalinism? Good, old-fashioned paleo-Stalinism.
If now he thinks the Guardian is now beyond the Pale then they next few months are going to be very interesting and amusing.
Ritchie’s remedy for our current ills is to introduce a system here which has reduced populations to serfdom wherever it’s been tried before.
“The reality is that all they are really offering is a version of neoliberalism with softer edges is all too apparent”
Could he make it a bit more apparent? Such as with examples? I’m sure I am not alone in being perplexed by his assertion, and a little bit dubious.
Rob – I don’t think he could because he’s indulging in little more than semantic onanism.
The issue as the forthright Mr Ecks puts it is that there is a possibility, however remote, that this shit might be foisted on us. Look at UKIP and Tory voters and they are primarily 40 plus men, usually White.
The Murphyite/Politically Correct Left have total control of the education system at all levels and you only have to look at ‘Social Media’ (especially the ‘unholy trinity’ of Avaaz, Change.org and 38 degrees) to see that the ability to accept an alternative viewpoint (or even allow people to say it) or analyze second order consequences (let along think longer term) is noticeably absent from almost every petitioner or commenter. Legions of graduates of Race Studies, Womens studies, Social Policy and a raft of other disciplines which consitute entire works of fiction and a complete rejection of reality to fit their worldview are in place in the Public Sector (especially in education)and immovable by law due to their gender, race or sexual orientation. In such an environment there is a prospect, however slim that he could do better than we think. We must certainly keep up the pressure on him and those who think like him. The government should be looking at a ‘Socialist tax’ on wealthy people (And he lives in a grand house) who espouse this crap as a matter of some urgency….
I’m reminded of Emerson’s comment:
“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
He’s genuinely insane. I think he will kill someone one day over some slight, real or imagined.
He’s spent too much time playing with his train set, creating an ideologically pure environment in his shed.
What has the Graun done to deserve such a fate?
The two comments alluded to seem pretty run-of-the-mill to me. The man is clearly on a hair-trigger.
One suspects that Corbyn had better tread carefully. He has already renamed Green QE as People’s QE, only just about getting away with it.
Corbyn will need to remember that he’s just a mouthpiece.
“Interested
He’s genuinely insane. I think he will kill someone one day over some slight, real or imagined.”
Nah. Whilst he’s tough on his own website where he can control things, I suspect he’s just a fat coward in the real world.
“He’s genuinely insane. I think he will kill someone one day over some slight, real or imagined.”
I can easily see him as a Lavrentiy Beria or Himmler in a leftist government- an arrogant and uncaring apparatchik convinced of his own rightness, ‘sadly and with regret’ ordering the round up of opponents.
He’s the French collaborator, circa 1942. He’s got the swastika, the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes all ready for whomever is in power.
Well, I kind of sympathise with the Labour/Old left. A Labour Party that can’t vote against swingeing welfare cuts doesn’t have much point in existing, does it?
Given a choice between free markets and socialism, I’ll choose the free markets. Replace the free markets with “neoliberalism” in that choice and… hmm, I really don’t know. There certainly isn’t much use in a democracy in two “neoliberal” parties.
Depends what you think “neoliberalism” is, really. It’s all Greek to me.
I kind of sympathise with the left-wing Labour people, too. The ultimate aims are mostly laudable, I just disagree with the means of getting there (and a lot of the axioms they seem to assume, and so on).
I wonder whether Corbyn getting in would lead to a split between the socialist types and the more centrist ones. I kind of label them in my head as the anti-establishment group, which will object to anything that is currently in place or that gets put in place (even if they formerly agitated for it), and the “We’re not the Tories” centrist bloc. The Greens seem to be quite similar to the former, but I think that there’ll always be a separate Green party for historical reasons.
So we’d have a spectrum of
– Socialist “Everything you’re doing is wrong! Let me have a go” Labour party
– Green “We’ve got some great ideas, and one day we’ll join them up” party
– Scottish Nationalist “Look, if you’re Scottish you clearly support us, if you’re not then why am I talking to you?” Party
– Centrist “Aren’t the Tories nasty? Our policies will be so much nicer – when we’ve worked out what they are” Labour party
– Liberal “That’s a good idea in principle, but maybe you should tone it down a bit?” Democrat party
– Tory “Sorry, did you say something? I’m a bit busy” party
– UK Independence “We’re better conservatives than the Tories” Party
Which I think has something for everyone 🙂 Neo-liberals, Marxists, people who want radical change and don’t care what it is, people who are broadly OK but would like a couple of things fixed, people who want radical change but not quite yet as I’ve got an essay to do…
Some even more deranged communist will seek to lead the Labour party, at which point Corbyn becomes ‘a Tory’.
Van_Patten
You mean the black lesbian anti Nazi chariot users aren’t a shoo in? heavens to Betsy
Unfortunately for Ritchie, Hornby never made models of any trains from the USSR, so he is having to make do with supporting Corbyn from the safety of his garage instead.
Comments on the Guardian are largely in favour of Corbyn.
However, above the line the balance is overwhelmingly anti-Corbyn. Just in the last few days they’ve wheeled out Tony Blair, Alastair Darling, Suzanne Moore, Nick Cohen, Anne Perkins and Andrew Rawnsley to rubbish Corbyn. Given the Guardian’s usual ultra-left stance on identity politics and the like, I think a number of readers are somewhat surprised that the paper is rushing to put the boot in to the only genuinely left-wing candidate in the race.
So what became of his Q&A with Corbyn yesterday?
“Andrew M
So what became of his Q&A with Corbyn yesterday?”
It joins a long list of events he claims to have been invited to but in the end it didn’t happen as he claimed it would.
It’s alongside the list of important people who regularly consult with him but whose names he can’t mention…..
I’m not sure if he’s a complete fantasist or just a cynical liar.
If Mr. Ritchie didn’t exist (and are you sure he’d not a product of your fertile imagination, Tim?) it would be necessary to invent him as some sort of horrible example.
I’m not surprised Ritchie has stopped reading the Guardian. The Morning Star is far better suited to him.
@IanB
‘Well, I kind of sympathise with the Labour/Old left. A Labour Party that can’t vote against swingeing welfare cuts doesn’t have much point in existing, does it?’
I don’t think I sympathise with them. The clue (to Labour) is surely in the name; they were supposed to be a party for workers, not layabouts.
I am not saying all people on the dole are layabouts, far from it. But a significant number are.
I might even vote for a Labour Party myself that sought to find some way of improving the life of ordinary people who were trying their best to provide for their kids.
But I can’t find it in my heart to give a flying fuck about a bunch of careerist Trots, fly-by-nights, liars and opportunists who just want to take money from those working people to spread around as porkin order to get themselves elected to jobs and salaries that their personal merits would otherwise not allow.
@AndrewC
‘Nah. Whilst he’s tough on his own website where he can control things, I suspect he’s just a fat coward in the real world.’
I’m not saying he’d take many people on in a fair fight, but I can see him laying in wait one dark night to stab someone in the back for saying or doing something against him.
This is only an opinion based on the enormous ego, vanity, prickliness, arrogance and stupidity evidenced by his public pronouncements, which make him appear a giant narcissist with a hair-trigger temper and an inability to brook any dissent, in a permanent low-level rage about his own failure to be recognised for what he believes to be his great intellect, and about everything that he doesn’t understand ie most stuff.
I can quite imagine in a few years’ time his blog being picked apart in the papers, with lots of why-oh-why pieces about how-come-we-didn’t-see-this-coming and in-hindsight-it-was-all-so-predictable.
Well, it was and I did.
Of course, we can all be misconstrued in writing; he might be a lovely man really, for all I know, and the whole thing is just a giant joke.
Ian B,
“Well, I kind of sympathise with the Labour/Old left. A Labour Party that can’t vote against swingeing welfare cuts doesn’t have much point in existing, does it?”
But they aren’t “swingeing welfare cuts”. The biggest cut is to London welfare benefits, which seems like an excellent idea to me as these mostly act as a subsidy to London landlords or to low value employers who will have to move out of the city. The next biggest cut is sending a signal to people that they should be stopping at 2 kids unless they feel pretty flush. Again, an excellent idea. I’m against cutting benefits for under-21s, though.
The thing with Labour is that it was once about the working man. Not people living on the dole, but working people. People who would consider you a scumbag if you were unemployed and didn’t take a job you could do. In hindsight, Norman Tebbit’s On Your Bike speech was the greatest trap ever laid, because all the Hampstead Liberals ran with how appalling it was for years, turning many working people against them. The people I know who are the most savage about unemployed in this country are people who either grew up poor, or are low earners.
@ Interested
Well, he’s threatened to take me to court for libel on a couple of occasions (via my posts on his blog). I sent him my name and address and where to serve….and am still waiting, unsurprisingly.
Call him out on any of his threats (or indeed his predictions – I’ve offered him a few bets as well) and all you get is the sound of tumbleweed. Ultimately, he’s a coward who only throws his weight around in a space that he controls absolutely.
@Anne Hathaway’s Pointy Elbows
‘The thing with Labour is that it was once about the working man. Not people living on the dole, but working people. People who would consider you a scumbag if you were unemployed and didn’t take a job you could do. In hindsight, Norman Tebbit’s On Your Bike speech was the greatest trap ever laid, because all the Hampstead Liberals ran with how appalling it was for years, turning many working people against them. The people I know who are the most savage about unemployed in this country are people who either grew up poor, or are low earners.’
Funnily enough, I’m just reading the memoirs of working class football hooligan-turned-barrister Gary Bell QC, in which he makes precisely this point, about growing up in a Nottingham pit village:
@Tyler
Watch for fat men lurking in the shadows, that’s all I can say!
He’s not fat, so much as pudgy and piggy-eyed.
Somehow far worse in my opinion.
“Well, he’s threatened to take me to court for libel on a couple of occasions (via my posts on his blog). ”
He wanted to sue you for libel for posts on his own blog that he has to approve before publishing??? Brilliant!
I just posted this over there. Bet you it is moderated to the trash basket …
Bit ungrateful of you to cancel your Guardian subscription.
After all they launched your career as a tax guru when they published your articles on how to avoid taxes.
Sam Jones
“I’m not surprised Ritchie has stopped reading the Guardian. The Morning Star is far better suited to him.
Ms Queef has suggested precisely that to him on the thread in question.
I don’t understand why this is so bad. Murphy’s changed his mind.
After all, you would hope that a doctor, say, would be able to state from experience what is wrong with a particular procedure. Or a journalist whistling about phone-hacking; a director raising the case when there are gross misappropriations etc.
Murphy understood how to use loopholes, he now doesn’t like them. Grow up.
He’s heading rapidly towards full tinfoil hat territory.
Arnald,
I’m sure you’re right that he’s entitled to change his attitude.
However, it will be interesting to see if he still supports the Graun over its tax affairs.
“So what became of his Q&A with Corbyn yesterday”
Richie: Can I come along?
Corbyn: No
That was the Q&A
Rob – hee hee.
I’m sure there’s more to this Murphy subscription cancellation than meets the eye. It doesn’t make any sense to me unless, for example, a promised or expected regular paid gig as a polemical columnist has not materialised for Murphy and this has piqued him.
Still, that will presumably cut down on the circle jerk of references between the mutual masturbation society that includes Toynbee, Murphy and……… oh fvck – sudden need to vomit
“Arnald
Murphy’s changed his mind”
Indeed he has. Having himself taken advantage of every tax advantage he could over the years, he now claims the moral high ground in saying that they all ought to be stopped.
He’s used dividends to avoid NI, paid CGT at low rates on the disposal of his business and moved businesses out of the UK to save tax. All now morally reprehensible.
He demands tax transparency, except where it would affect him.
He reminds me of a survivor of the Titanic, sat safely in a life boat and extoling the virtues of swimming to those in the water around him.
@ Interested
Can’t say I’m too worried. he’s too much of a coward to do anything other than block a few posts and write some ad hom diatribes.
@ Don John
Was better than that. Told him he was wrong. Proved it with evidence. Then accused me of libel. Then blocked me when I pointed out that it’s only libel if it’s not true….He doesn’t understand the law. In his mind libel means something that someone says that makes him look like an idiot.
The best ones are always when you get him directly contradicting evidence, then tying himself in knots contradicting himself!
At first I used to do it to actually try and prove a point, and prove him wrong. I soon realised that he will simply never acknowledge defeat on any level (how is that for an ego of iron) and I took to baiting him for sport – see how long it takes to get posts blocked.
Even now, he’s very quiet over how his ‘grants’ are taxed. Why not ask him about them. I’ve tried but he never gives a direct answer.
As his ‘chief sneak’, Arnald, you could try asking. he might let you know.
@ Arnald
Note that Ritchie will defends Hodge/Guardian etc on their tax avoidance. Only attacks entities he doesn’t like. Rather a lot of hypocrisy there don’t you think?
He’s also been challenged repeatedly on his own tax affairs – only saying he pays all the tax that is due. Probably the case, but the rumour is that he avoids the tax on some of his income – meaning he is doing far better on his approx. 65K GDP income than someone on the same paying tax via PAYE. If he has nothing to hide, why not simply publish?
I liked his take on the Mrs Batmanandrobin affair which seemed to be that because we don’t know why HMRC let them off we mustn’t comment on it. So much for the transparency he usually demands. Why not just say Nigerian Sofas are tax exempt and be done with it?
If Murphy wants to see genuine neo-feudalism in action he should take a look at Venezuela, where the State is very Courageously™ commandeering agricultural production. This is why I refuse to have ‘grudging respect’ or ‘a soft spot’* for people like Murphy and Corbyn. Yes, they might genuinely believe in their policies, but their policies are evil.
* stealing a line from elsewhere: I actually do have a soft spot for Murphy. It’s in the middle of a bog in Dartmoor.
@Arnald
Murphy is not inconsistent. To know his opinion you only need to know who is paying him for his opinion.
“Why not just say Nigerian Sofas are tax exempt and be done with it?”
What’s a (capitalized) “Nigerian Sofa” when it’s out and about? Is this an in-joke I must have missed?
It’s the Batmanghelidjh Kids’ Company woman who dresses like a barrage balloon designed by Laura Ashley.
Just googled. Large, brightly coloured balloon indeed.
Bloke in costa rica
Spot on – Worth calling out that his policies are not simply misguided but actually profoundly evil – I use North Korea as the exemplar of the ‘Curajus State’ but Venezuela is even better in many ways. Evil and dangerous most certainly!
Ah, but Venezuela/Cuba/ would be a paradise if it weren’t for the intervention of the U.S./neo-liberals/Jews/Illuminati.
I never did understand how the Labour party went from a party for men (by and large) who slogged their guts out in mines, docks, steel works, ship yards and on railways went to being a party for middle class office workers and people who get paid for doing nothing.
I mean socialism was understandable when a coal miner covered in coal dust could see the mine owner being driven out of the gates in his chauffeur driven Bentley. Its somewhat less explainable why the man who gets up at six to work in a warehouse for £8/hr should be paying taxes to allow his neighbour to stay in bed ’til 10 with his ‘bad back’, have a round of subsidised golf at the council owned course, a couple of pints in the local afterwards, and then home to the big match on his big screen TV.
“I never did understand how the Labour party went from a party for men (by and large) who slogged their guts out in mines, docks, steel works, ship yards and on railways went to being a party for middle class office workers and people who get paid for doing nothing.”
It was the rise of “Fatcher” that did it. When Labour realised it couldn’t take the indigenous working class vote for granted, it turned its back on them and has tried since to build a voter base on those same sdaid middle class public sector workers, immigrants and doleys. Seeing as only TB has won an election since, and did so by being a world class sociapthic lying cunt, we can observe that they are going to continue to have trouble winning elections until they find another wanker like TB.
Presumably Arnald is Murphy?
Perhaps our host could contrast IP addresses.
No, Arnald is Arnald, real bloke in Guernsey called Laurence apparently.
*Lawrence
“I never did understand how the Labour party went from a party for men (by and large) who slogged their guts out in mines, docks, steel works, ship yards and on railways went to being a party for middle class office workers and people who get paid for doing nothing.”
It began in the 1970s. Lots of young graduates from the new universities created in the sixties, joined their local Labour Party (particularly in London) and colonised it. Bernard Donoughue used to write about his own local branch and exactly this process.
Labour was internationalist and deeply loony long before Fatcher entered stage left. The (in)famous Wembley Conference in 1980 simply could never have happened if Fatcher was the cause and stimulus.
Beg pardon, it was Jan 1981. Close.