The Green Party

[threespires]

As ever, you play within the system and nothing more and so far, only the Tories and Labour do that, even if it’s a choice of a shit sandwich with rad or blue sauce on it for the majority of us.

I think the issue we have now though is that playing within the current system is becoming increasingly unsustainable for a growing number of ordinary people. There was a period (maybe 2 - 3 decades) where there was a compression of inequality and/or sufficient growth to ameliorate any widening gaps. In that period the two party nobody rock the boat too much approach worked ok because even if there was a swing in policy focus between capital and labour, based on the colour of the government, as long as no one took the piss too much then things could continue to function. We've probably had three decades now where that equilibrium has continuously eroded in favour of a more aggressive form of wealth concentration. In the absence of sufficient growth to mask that issue, people are becoming increasingly unhappy and seeking responses beyond the two traditional parties, at both ends of the political spectrum.

If the appetite for the British people to continue to eat the shit sandwich you mention continues to decline then it won't be same old same old; we're going to end up with significant social unrest.

Do I think Polanski is the answer to the problem? Well firstly to me that's the wrong question driven by a dysfunctional personality focused political culture where the ability of someone to eat a bacon buttie somehow becomes material.

But more meaningfully do I think the policy direction he's taking the Green Party in is the answer? That's a mixed picture for me at the moment; however I do think under him they are broadening the discussion into necessary areas that the two main parties currently still want to avoid. I understand why they want to avoid them and I recognise the challenges involved in moving away from some of the orthodoxy of the last few decades. Unfortunately our trajectory means we can no longer bury our heads in the sand so he and the new iteration of the Greens, warts and all, imo have an important role to play in that debate.


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[Palerider]

I think the issue we have now though is that playing within the current system is becoming increasingly unsustainable for a growing number of ordinary people. There was a period (maybe 2 - 3 decades) where there was a compression of inequality and/or sufficient growth to ameliorate any widening gaps. In that period the two party nobody rock the boat too much approach worked ok because even if there was a swing in policy focus between capital and labour, based on the colour of the government, as long as no one took the piss too much then things could continue to function. We've probably had three decades now where that equilibrium has continuously eroded in favour of a more aggressive form of wealth concentration. In the absence of sufficient growth to mask that issue, people are becoming increasingly unhappy and seeking responses beyond the two traditional parties, at both ends of the political spectrum.

If the appetite for the British people to continue to eat the shit sandwich you mention continues to decline then it won't be same old same old; we're going to end up with significant social unrest.

Do I think Polanski is the answer to the problem? Well firstly to me that's the wrong question driven by a dysfunctional personality focused political culture where the ability of someone to eat a bacon buttie somehow becomes material.

But more meaningfully do I think the policy direction he's taking the Green Party in is the answer? That's a mixed picture for me at the moment; however I do think under him they are broadening the discussion into necessary areas that the two main parties currently still want to avoid. I understand why they want to avoid them and I recognise the challenges involved in moving away from some of the orthodoxy of the last few decades. Unfortunately our trajectory means we can no longer bury our heads in the sand so he and the new iteration of the Greens, warts and all, imo have an important role to play in that debate.


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Good post that mate. The underlying (desperate) message I got was that you are looking for a party to whom you could give your vote with confidence? I think many of us are in that queue!

 

[Bluesince1979]

Good post that mate. The underlying (desperate) message I got was that you are looking for a party to whom you could give your vote with confidence? I think many of us are in that queue!

We are all looking for a party to vote for.

Lab/con have fucked it up. Social media has helped point that out where as before we only had the biased newspapers telling us how good/bad it was

But when the choice becomes green/reform it shouts loudly how fucked politics is in this country.

 

[Palerider]

We are all looking for a party to vote for.

Lab/con have fucked it up. Social media has helped point that out where as before we only had the biased newspapers telling us how good/bad it was

But when the choice becomes green/reform it shouts loudly how fucked politics is in this country.

Pretty much.
I think what is to be decided is, do we just have inept political parties? or are our problems just too difficult to be solved?

 

[Gray]

We are all looking for a party to vote for.

Lab/con have fucked it up. Social media has helped point that out where as before we only had the biased newspapers telling us how good/bad it was

But when the choice becomes green/reform it shouts loudly how fucked politics is in this country.

The country needs to get back to the values that made it great, too much pandering to minority interests at this moment in time.

 

[Don Karleone]

Any reason why the guy he attacked earlier in the day is barely getting a mention?

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

Any reason why the guy he attacked earlier in the day is barely getting a mention?

Probably in the wrong thread.

 

[Don Karleone]

Probably in the wrong thread.

The other thread got deleted. It's alright, I know the answer anyway.

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

The other thread got deleted. It's alright, I know the answer anyway.

Sorry, not sure of the answer.

WRT the Greens, I’ve been asking myself why Polanski would do something so stupid by trying to undermine the police? I did think he was quite an intelligent person and would stick to opinions that would not be so controversial. But here we are.

 

[Don Karleone]

Sorry, not sure of the answer.

WRT the Greens, I’ve been asking myself why Polanski would do something so stupid by trying to undermine the police? I did think he was quite an intelligent person and would stick to opinions that would not be so controversial. But here we are.

He's gone down in my estimations for apologising.

 

[threespires]

Pretty much.
I think what is to be decided is, do we just have inept political parties? or are our problems just too difficult to be solved?

I think we have some very difficult problems exacerbated by an inept political system and environment increasingly manipulated by bad actors. I don’t believe any problem is unsolvable but ours are deep seated and if not intractable then certainly very complex to fix. So, being deliberately simplistic, I think they get ‘fixed’ one of three ways:

• We get lucky – by which I mean important and scarce/valuable but (miraculously for us) easily extractable natural resource lucky. Seems unlikely.
• We have some sort of hard reset – choose how apocalyptic and or global that looks. Arguably the most likely thing to happen?
• We accidentally stumble into PR but by implementing it intelligently it provides a vehicle through which we can reverse the decline in our both politics and situation.

What I mean by the latter is that we end up with a hung parliament where the price of coalition exacted by one of the partners is Proportional Representation. Let’s assume (big assumption!) we have some sane people involved in its implementation. Because we are very late to the party on electoral reform, we can look at its execution elsewhere and implement some reforms really intelligently including mitigation of some of the challenges of PR. We therefore end up with a set of PR ‘plus’ reforms deliberately designed to (a) include devolution of more everyday ‘keep the lights on’ power to the regions thereby (b) freeing up central government to focus and act more strategically, this aided by the fact that the effort and time needed to form working coalitions actually works in our favour because it slows things down (which we are less worried about cause we've already devolved BAU to regional functions) and results in better policies that have been challenged from a number of perspectives and that a broader set of the population can get behind or at least live with. This also makes us (c) less susceptible to the actions of external bad actors because we no longer have a winner takes all system and it diffuses the level of influence these bad actors can have; we are also (d) less tethered to the short-term political cycle because being in power in any given parliamentary term takes on a somewhat different meaning than today and requires politicians with a different set of skills.

Clearly this is a rather idealised view of the world, and the reality is a more complex series of trade-offs e.g. we swap (illusory?) short term stability and political speed for more stable and broadly supported change. Sounds like hard work but in the absence of a lucky break option1, I’d prefer it to option 2!

Anyway in the absence of any this I'm going to keep my spirits up by going for my Friday chippy tea; just a shame it's going to cost me an arm and a leg!

 

[Ban-jani]

He's gone down in my estimations for apologising.

Apologising was the right thing to do. The police officers saved lives and are heroes, it was a disgrace in the first place to retweet that nonsense.

 

[Gaylord du Bois]

 

[Don Karleone]

Apologising was the right thing to do. The police officers saved lives and are heroes, it was a disgrace in the first place to retweet that nonsense.

Yeah, I disagree. I'm obviously coming at it from an entirely different angle than you, but I assumed that he'd learned from the Corbyn era not to give them an inch.

 

[Ban-jani]

Yeah, I disagree. I'm obviously coming at it from an entirely different angle than you, but I assumed that he'd learned from the Corbyn era not to give them an inch.

I’d be interested to hear you expand on what you disagree with and why? I’m a believer in good faith debates so it’s more of interest rather than trying to trap you into an argument.

Apologising is done too much these days. People say things they mean and then retract it, when we all know they don’t mean to. However on this occasion, there’s two officers that could be smeared for doing their jobs, with bravery, so it’s right to apologise and I’m glad he did.

 

[Don Karleone]

I’d be interested to hear you expand on what you disagree with and why? I’m a believer in good faith debates so it’s more of interest rather than trying to trap you into an argument.

Apologising is done too much these days. People say things they mean and then retract it, when we all know they don’t mean to. However on this occasion, there’s two officers that could be smeared for doing their jobs, with bravery, so it’s right to apologise and I’m glad he did.

The guy was already incapacitated. I don't agree with kicking mentally ill people in the head.

The fact that he called it an antisemitic attack as well is doing my head in. Three people were attacked, which is being conveniently glossed over by our fearless media. Still, it gives the Government an excuse to crack down even more on the protests.

 

[Postman Pep]

Any reason why the guy he attacked earlier in the day is barely getting a mention?

Didn't even get a mention at the vigil ....

It's alright, I know the answer anyway.

Is it Muslims don't count .... imagine that as a book title?

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

He's gone down in my estimations for apologising.

Opposite for me, an apology was needed.

 

[Ban-jani]

The guy was already incapacitated. I don't agree with kicking mentally ill people in the head.

The fact that he called it an antisemitic attack as well is doing my head in. Three people were attacked, which is being conveniently glossed over by our fearless media. Still, it gives the Government an excuse to crack down even more on the protests.

But as professionally experienced people have confirmed, he’s not responding to the requests to drop the knife so he’s not incapacitated. He still had hold of it and refusing to obey the command to release it. He’s trying to murder people and they are trying to neutralise the threat, shooting him would have been within normal protocol at the time but they didn’t have guns, thankfully as I want him to stand trial.

He was on the prevent watchlist and there were concerns about him prior to the attack. A terror group linked to Iran have claimed involvement. Whether the latter part is true we will see but he’s travelled to that synagogue to specifically attack people leaving it.

The man he stabbed earlier was in Southwark, which is nowhere near Golders Green, so I don’t think there’s much doubt he specifically travelled there for his targets.

The reason he stabbed the other poor bloke earlier will come out in the wash, maybe it was a separate argument that triggered the loon?

With regards to it being in the news, an attack on people because of their race and religion, being caught in broad daylight on someone’s iPhone, is going to grab news. Stabbings happen in London all the time and don’t make the national headlines, but it’s the motivation that makes it more newsworthy.

The first stabbing in Southwark is being reported on more as the details emerge and they realise it was the same person.

My view is protests should be allowed. I’ve just walked past a bunch of actual communists in St Peter’s Square in town earlier. I chuckled at their naivety but good luck to them, they’re allowed to protest. If they started calling for violence then that’s when the government should intervene, but not until then.

 

[The Future’s Blue!]

The guy was already incapacitated. I don't agree with kicking mentally ill people in the head.

The fact that he called it an antisemitic attack as well is doing my head in. Three people were attacked, which is being conveniently glossed over by our fearless media. Still, it gives the Government an excuse to crack down even more on the protests.

Very strange take, unless you are using it for a different agenda.

The police didn’t know he was mentally ill, what they seen was a man trying to to kill two people. In fact, that excuse is the most preposterous take on the situation that you can get.

As for your ‘anti-Semitic’ nonsense, this was 2 British people and should have absolutely nothing to do with any response to the actions that took place at the time, or after.

Please don’t respond, I’m now fully conversant with your agenda.