More Conservative idiocy. This time from the self-styled salon intellectuals at CapX, or to you and me the place where brain cells go to die. Chewing up bandwith in defence of indefensible class privilege this week saw Tim Worstall hail the Conservative triumph (his phrase) that are … food banks.
The actual quote is:
But this leads us to question why this is a conservative (but not Conservative) movement and system of organisation.
Malevolence or just the incompetence of the state education system in this literacy stuff?
He is just seeing what he wants to see.
It’s the Left’s Humpty-Dumpty approach to the English language. Words mean what they say they mean. As anything conservative is EVIL, then any conservative writer is also evil. You’re irredeemably damned through your sacrilegious mockery of the High Priest of left wing economic theory, therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to have words put into your mouth to justify a rant.
He’s a sociologist- you don’t expect them to be able to read, do you? That’s indefensible class privilege, reading, innit?
If you can read and assimilate facts and learning properly, how will you be able to emote?
No comments there yet, I see. Perhaps we should mosey on over there and add some. Or have all the criticisms already been deleted?
I’ve posted mine-
No comment on the meat of the story, just pointing out the author has his C’s in a mix.
Wonder if it’ll get thru moderation?
(What is it about these guys and moderation?)
You can tell a lefty by the way that they always commence a “debate” by insulting the person they are “debating” with.
Both.
Ironic that Phil accuses someone of lacking “basic intellectual honesty” in the same article as fiddling with a quote to fit his own bias.
Why, just recently there was a thread here mentioning the tens of millions of people starved to death by Communism. Yet here we have a Marxist sociologist – who we can be pretty sure has been a parasite, selfishly leeching off the workers all his adult life – extolling the virtues of Communism in the context of nutrition.
From the blog post
” You can see where this is going. If volunteers are doing a great job looking after folk, why not get rid of social security altogether?”
Quite apart from him putting words in Tim’s mouth by implying we can “see where this is going”, “not having the state provide all social security” is not the same thing as “getting rid of social security”.
I’ve got a bit of form when it comes to internet left things. I was a moderator for the defunct Commielove yahoo club 1998-2000. While there I got bored and set up the notorious UK Left Network discussion list, which I still help moderate. I was also responsible for the ‘Around the Web’ column in the Weekly Worker for 18 months and got into blogging in late 2006 at A Very Public Sociologist. I also contribute to the Socialist Unity and Union Futures blogs. I am a member of the Labour party and have recently completed a PhD looking at the life history of Trotskyist activists
[MR ECKS INTENSIFIES]
But food banks are appalling things. In a society dripping with opulence for the few and a fair standard of living for most, that there are people who must go cap in hand to their local food bank, with all the shame and anguish, is nothing short of disgusting.
I agree.
Stop being losers, you lazy, mooching, soap-dodging bastards!
Like most people, I’ve been in situations before where I worried about money, but I’d sooner rob a bank with guitars like what Judas Priest did than go to a food bank.
Completely off topic (not sorry at all).
In The Gurniad (H/T my wife, this is big news in Japan).
“Cambridge University Press blocks readers in China from articles
Cambridge University Press has blocked readers in China from accessing hundreds of academic articles – including some published decades ago – after a request by Chinese authorities, arguing that it did so to avoid its other publications from being barred…..”
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/aug/18/cambridge-university-press-blocks-readers-china-quarterly
This is one for the cognoscenti. Bastion of academic rigour, academic freedom etc. etc. caves in to Chinese Government pressure.
Bloke in Japan – From cam.ac.uk:
Today, Chinese students form the largest international group from a single country at Cambridge…
It’s all about those sweet, sweet tuition fees.
TIS. I know that. There’s nothing makes an academic squirm more than a threat to funding. These are my principles, but if you offer money I have others…..
I’m enjoying reading Alan Kendall’s gyrations defending UEA/ENV (my alma mater) selling out for climate funding.
https://cliscep.com/
This did make me smile:
‘This dud is is typical of the right. They do not present analysis and prefer instead fairy stories capable of convincing the already convinced. If Tim was confident in his arguments and believed food banks proved his dogma right, he wouldn’t have to distort the context they operate in, ignore the importance of politics, write out the experience of service users and basic intellectual honesty. Were it truth and rigour mattered more than power, this and similar nonsense would have got buried decades ago.’
Obviously a man very familiar with the likes of Richard Murphy, Owen Jones, Seamus Milne , Paul Mason, Zoe Williams etc…
Also clearly someone who saw the influence on the June election of websites like ‘Another North Korean Voice’, ‘Evolve Juche Politics’, and the DPRKanary’ – all of which place a huge emphasis on ‘The Truth’.
More from this source please Tim – it’s symptomatic of the Left’s complete intellectual bankruptcy….
@V_P
It’s more than just indication of intellectual bankruptcy- I’d see that as them trying to solve Robles and failing- it’s that they aren’t trying even. They are just endlessly defending the statue quo, and often because they reflexively judge any proposal for change as ‘evil Tory/Blairite deconstruction of the welfare state’ (TM).
This chap cannot bear to acknowledge inherent shortcomings in the existing provision, declaring all deficiencies to be the result of external factors.
Robles=problems
Statue=status
“Robles=problems”
Dammit. I thought I was 10 seconds away from expanding my vocabulary, then I saw the correction.
” I’d see that as them trying to solve Robles and failing”
http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0016-71692010000200003
And there woz me finking he was a Mexican bandito. Jus’ shews wot edukashun does for yew.
A friend went to a black lives matter meeting and was told he couldn’t talk unless he admitted he was racist, says all you need to know about the level of debate
But there is a truth in that comment. Tim does ignore everything but the fact that food is accessible if you beg for it.
He has no wider argument and no desire to think the problem through.
Just equations based on ideology.
More rambling cockrot Meiac.
Food is given if they ask. Somehow I don’t think the “poor” have to do a little dance to get their sammich. That’s better than the Sally Army where they had to sing hymns and listen to sermons to get their nosh.
The issue has been thought thro’ chum. There is no vast well of starving in this country. Food banks are an arm of sanctimonious leftist posturing. While the less well off are badgered by middle class health commissars about “obesity”.
As has been pointed out countless times a large % of the needy will be freefooding to help expand their recreational substances budget. Most of the rest are between cheques from the bungling welfare bureaucracy.
“More rambling cockrot Meiac”
Hardly rambling, it was a concise point.
“As has been pointed out countless times a large % of the needy will be freefooding to help expand their recreational substances budget”
As always, Ecks, you show yourself up as a clueless, bitter old man with absolutely no grip on reality. Stick to your defence of fascists, that’s why people like you so much here.
NAZIs must be defeated.
It is not brave, radical or original to support racists, and anti semites.
Stick to your defence of fascists, that’s why people like you so much here.
I can’t speak for anyone else here, but I despise fascists for their worship of state power and their enthusiasm for socialist economic solutions. They share these views with the rest of the left – including you, I imagine.
I also despise all of those who are obsessed with racial politics: on this matter, no useful distinction can be made between the neo-Nazis (all 5 of them) and a large part of the left in most anglophone countries. I guess that group also includes you.
It is not brave, radical or original to support racists, and anti semites.
Quite so. But where does that leave the Labour Party these days?
@ Richard Bonner
That is what Tim is all about. The German ones were defeated 72 year ago but Tim is campaigning against totalitarians who are trying to use the apparatus of the state to pursue their selfish ends [there were a few naive Communists who were trying to help the poor but Stalin had them shot].
Tim also opposes the most violent (in terms of the destruction that they hace wreaked on racial minorities) racists currently in power Robert Mugabe a Xi Jing-ping
Anyone else detecting an increase in the number of low intensity thinkers recently?
Hmm, possibly, but I was most interested to read Mary Barnes link to Inverness CT’s 1-1 draw with Greenock Morton on Saturday afternoon.
Jesus Christ: He has no wider argument and no desire to think the problem through.
Well that suggests that you have “thought the problem through” and reached some trenchant conclusions so it’s rather ungenerous not to share your insights.
It might be worth considering in your answer the basis on which you fed 5000 with five loaves and two fishes – to my way of thinking that was a pretty resounding argument for and an early example of food banks.
@TMB
Genius
Meiac–or “Jesus” as he styles himself–is a headcase. He is able to maintain the semblance of sanity in short bursts and specialises in asking massively general questions that skim over the surface of what the topic is. Cos he has no real understanding of the issues.
Tho’ he likely is a foodbank client.
Richard Bonner- (1902-1997?) shows an even more superficial love of bog-standard leftist labels which were crap to begin with and have been massively debased by the overuse of leftist hacks like himself.
Fascism IS socialism Mr Bonner. Keep saying it until you believe it. If you can internalise leftist bollocks that way you can do the same for the truth.
Did you and Meiac meet on the ward?
equations based on ideology
You mean like fascist maths? Or feminist trigonometry?
“Keep saying it until you believe it.”
uh huh.