What both offer is, of course, populist politics. This is largely devoid of meaningful policy content, because those leading both movements know that populism works best when it cannot be nailed down to a position
If anyone could ever nail down the P³’s opinion on anything for losing enough to be able to analysis it…..
What I find extremely entertaining is that this is a man
– Who wants to steal all private savings and private pensions above a certain arbitrary level to fund the state’s expenditure
– Who wants to nationalise bank reserves with a view to the state directing expenditure
– Who advocates mass nationalisation of almost all private economic activity in the country
– Advocates all future savings be directed to the state run bond scheme
And he is ‘opposed to fascism’?
Truly his knowledge, and his self awareness has no beginning. Busy afternoon so will have to delay fisking the whole post, but his accusations of misogyny are slightly entertaining given his contretemps with the Oxford Centre for Business taxation and his anger at the BBC when they ‘passed him over’ in favour of a younger female economist…
That said – looking at the Telegraph today you are reminded of the following quote – certainly the phrase ‘the worst are full of passionate intensity’ is a phrase that could describe Murphy to a tee. Could his hour be coming round at last?:
‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
….. somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Ely to be born?’
Has anyone tested the water in Ely?
Spud has his audience of course. I am reminded of the quote from Mckay’s “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”
During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed,
The happy truth is, of course, Spud’s an unpopular populist.
I wonder if anyone has ever decked the cvnt. The odds of that are surely shortening given the recent exponential increase in his inflammatory blogs and comments labelling everyone who votes Tory or who disagrees with him as a fascist.
Perhaps it’s Post Traumatic Dachau Visit Syndrome.
Bravefart
Still hunting for the Story regarding his altercation in a Downham Market pub which caused his pubwatch ban in the town – don’t believe it escalated to violence but it was quite heated!
Lest we forget he is ‘A proud Quaker’ after all
During seasons of great pestilence men have often believed the prophecies of crazed fanatics, that the end of the world was come. Credulity is always greatest in times of calamity. Prophecies of all sorts are rife on such occasions, and are readily believed.
Such is covid-mania
Definition of populist: Harper’s Law.
asiaseen:
..and the Great Green Witchcraft…
It’s the first time of heard of anyone getting a blanket ban in a town. It’s a pretty serious step. Publicans wouldn’t do that lightly. Too often it’ll be six of one & half a dozen of the other, specific to the particular pub. The landlord & the punter rub each other up the wrong way. Guy can be well behaved under other roofs. I’ve heard of LVAs putting people on caution lists for likely to get drunk & violent. Sort of thing might provoke a warning if they look like heading that way. Asshole customers are part of running a pub. But you ban people, you might lose other customers with them*. You’re in business to make money. Hard in enough to get people in your pub in the first place.
*Not saying I’d expect that in the Tosser’s case. General sigh of relief, more like it.
Isn’t populism the whole point of democracy? I always felt that the idea that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time acted as a safeguard against the worst excesses of bad government as long as the masses could vote them out.
Oh.. we’d love to nail him down….
Easy.
Democracy (good!) is when the people want things the elites agree with.
Populism (bad!) is when the people want things the elites don’t agree with.
Q.E.D.
Indeed Peter.
We need a new politics where policies have to be both acceptable to the masses – a Commons to represent them perhaps
And also acceptable to the elites – some Peers to represent that group perhaps.
Worked well when UK had it. USA had a better version until the 17th amendment(ish)
@BIS, re the pub ban this is from the Ely Standard in 2014:
The body responsible for keeping troublemakers out of Ely pubs and bars says it has adopted a new zero-tolerance approach to bad behaviour.
Ely Pubwatch has recently relaunched itself and is now making sure all landlords and pub staff are sharing information with each other and with police to keep nuisance drinkers and louts away from the city.
As part of its new, tougher stance, the scheme has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to people who flout the rules – banning them from not just one premises, but all premises that are members of the pubwatch scheme.
I don’t know how many pubs in Ely were in the pub watch scheme in 2014, probably all of them in a town like that, but I can think of one person who was really starting to hit his straps around then who might certainly have fitted the description of ‘nuisance drinker’ and even, depending on one’s point of view, a ‘lout’.
I don’t understand why the ICAEW (or even the Universities that he is associated with) have not sought to challenge his abusive behaviour, let alone his ongoing ignorance on almost every topic he tries to blog about.
Surely there must be some professional conduct standards for an ICAEW member, even when they are not speaking in an ICAEW capacity?
@Interested
Sounds like a load of aspirational bollocks to me. Pubs compete for different parts of the drinking public. The pub with the widescreen TV competes for the football oiks. The one with the framed prints on the wall the cardigan mob. What’s acceptable in one isn’t in another. The benchmark would have to be the most tolerant pub. The scruffy one down the side street serves alkies & junkies with personal hygiene problems & incontinent dogs. Maybe he’s not even welcome in there.
Why the informal LVA meeting telegraph actually works.
The only bloke I know who was banned from all the pubs in my town was Brian, due him being a bit of a savant and able to consistently relieve the pubs general knowledge quiz machines of their jackpots…….
@ BIS I don’t make the rules