Monday 12 May 2014

Labour: Freedom Fighters?

It's interesting how two sides can view the same material emanating from Labour, isn't it?

Last week, Brendan O'Neill commented thus on their new manifesto packed with ways of dictating what working people freely choose to consume.
These proposals tell you pretty much everything you need to know about modern Labour. They reveal in Technicolor glory the party's killjoyism and its contempt for the public. They expose a party machine so cut off from everyday people, so very aloof from the man in the street, that it has come to view us as effectively overgrown children who must have chocolates and booze hidden from our view lest feel be tempted to gorge on them and become fat and tipsy in the process (heaven forfend). They show a party so utterly bereft of big ideas for how to kickstart the economy or reinvigorate industry that it now concerns itself with – drum roll – the fact that there are Mars bars next to the tills at Morrison's. I mean, really. Who has ever spied a Twix while waiting to pay for his groceries and thought to himself, "I wish the political parties would do something about this chocolately assault on my senses"? Answer: no one, ever.
Meanwhile in the Guardian, Owen Jones tells us that Labour are the party of freedom and light; the party of less government intrusion into our lives. No, really.
The authoritarian statists in No 10 have got away with dressing themselves up as freedom-loving champions of the individual for too long. The fight for personal freedom and liberty is a great historic cause, but it now falls to the left to take it up.
Well, it would be nice if Labour were ever to take up Owen's challenge by actually reading letters from vapers about e-cigs instead of their enforcer ramming unwarranted regulations through Brussels; by obeying the concerned public about plain packaging; by not "empowering people" by taking away choices and punishing the poor with minimum alcohol pricing. In short, by not being such aloof, deaf, snobby, authoritarian, disconnected toffs.

I'm still waiting for someone in politics - anyone in politics - to actually talk about freedom properly instead of arguing about which party is the best at stopping us eating chocolate.

So all this left/right guff is pretty irrelevant.

I'd say, though, that Jones is wildly deluded if he really thinks that his lot are the freedom fighters in the 21st century. I'm old enough to remember Harold Wilson talking about such things, but even he - the disgusting pipe smoker, he - would now be a legitimate target for 'denormalisation' by Jones's bunch of screaming prohibitionists.

He does have one tiny point, though. That being that the incumbents are not distinguishably any better, otherwise his article would be so laughable that Harry Hill would be making a show out of it.

Three parties; one goal. To screw the public as much as possible. Bet you simply can't wait till that glittering choice on May 22nd, eh?

H/T Mudgie


9 comments:

Michael J. McFadden said...

"I'm still waiting for someone in politics - anyone in politics - to actually talk about freedom properly instead of arguing about which party is the best at stopping us eating chocolate."

Dick, you clearly don't understand the importance of chocolate in the universal scheme of things.

You've heard, I'm sure, that it is thought that the bulk of matter in the universe is what they call "dark matter." What is not so well known however is that scientists have determined that this dark matter is actually chocolate! Giant Alien Bugs have strewn microdroplets of chocolate throughout our earthly environs, wrapped in bright packaging that they know we shall be helpless to resist. They are having a cosmic laugh at the news pages lately as we debate eating insects, when, in reality, they are just fattening us up until we fill one of their ten-billion buckets -- at which point they'll dump us in the soup and have a nice luncheon stew of us!

Our only possible salvation as a species is to fight their fifth-columnists, the Antismokers, because in truth...


http://www.sott.net/signs/anti-anti-smoking.htm

:)

MJM

P.S. What's the trick for simply typing a phrase up there where I put the hotlink and have the phrase BE the hotlink? Putting the hotlink in after the phrase or somesuch?

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Here you go, MJM.


http://www.echoecho.com/htmllinks01.htm

Michael J. McFadden said...

Hey! Thank you Mr. Puddle Cote !


:>
MJM

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Ha! Would have worked better as a jpeg for Cote ;)

Michael J. McFadden said...

As you can see, GMTA, eh? :> I was just in "editing" mode trying to get the two pics to show in the one post. LOL!

Silver Lining said...

Labour has become the cover for a cowardly ensemble of failed Marxists,Leninists,Trots and Fabian dropouts. These former banner waving maggots realised the failure of their causes and slithered up the bowels of the
blinkered OLD LABOUR,where now their cancer can spread unopposed by
the sleeping carpetbaggers pretentious in their desires for the underclasses.
The working classes are to dim to see through their chrome plated disguise,to
pathetic to question their motives,to bone idle to ask for the truth.
Worse still,the Conservatives and Liberals hardly differ in objectves.

nisakiman said...

I've noticed that some sites using Disqus either fully or partially disable html, and others, if you include any html (italics, bold, hotlinks etc) your comment is immediately consigned to moderation, from whence it rarely emerges. And then to further confuse the situation, a lot of forums use BB code for inserting hotlinks. Not being particularly au fait with the world of computers, I find it all very tiresome. You'd think that by now there would be some sort of standard...

And as for chocolate, do you realise how many chemicals there are in it? There are some deadly toxic substances in it that are used for all sorts of nasty stuff! Whatever you do, make sure you protect the cheeldren from it. It can obviously kill at a hundred paces.

H/T Rose for this little gem:

Acetic-acid, aesculetin,
alanine, alkaloids, alpha-sitosterol, alpha-theosterol,
amyl-acetate, amyl-alcohol, amyl-butyrate, amylase,
apigenin-7-o-glucoside, arabinose, arachidic-acid, arginine,
ascorbic-acid, ascorbic-acid-oxidase, aspariginase, beta-carotene,
beta-sitosterol, beta-theosterol, biotin, caffeic-acid, caffeine,
calcium, campesterol, catalase, catechins, catechol, cellulase,
cellulose, chlorogenic-acid, chrysoeriol-7-o-glucoside, citric-acid,
coumarin, cyanidin, cyanidin-3-beta-l-arabinoside,
cyanidin-3-galactoside, cyanidin-glycoside, cycloartanol, d-galactose,
decarboxylase, dextrinase, diacetyl, dopamine, epigallocatechin,
ergosterol, ferulic-acid, formic-acid, fructose, furfurol,
galacturonic-acid, gallocatechin, gentisic-acid, glucose,
glutamic-acid, glycerin, glycerophosphatase, glycine, glycolic-acid,
glycosidase, haematin, histidine, i-butyric-acid, idaein,
invertase, isobutylacetate, isoleucine, isopropyl-acetate,
isovitexin, kaempferol, l-epicatechin, leucine, leucocyanidins,
linalool, linoleic-acid, lipase, luteolin, luteolin-7-o-glucoside,
lysine, lysophosphatidyl-choline, maleic-acid, mannan,
manninotriose, mannose, melibiose, mesoinositol, methylheptenone,
n-butylacetate, n-nonacosane, niacin, nicotinamide, nicotinic- acid,
nitrogen, nonanoic-acid, o-hydroxyphenylacetic-acid, octoic-acid,
oleic- acid, oleo-dipalmatin, oleopalmitostearin, oxalic-acid,
p-anisic-acid, p-coumaric-acid, p-coumarylquinic-acid,
p-hydroxybenzoic-acid, p-hydroxyphenylacetic-acid, palmitic-acid,
palmitodiolen, pantothenic-acid, pectin, pentose, peroxidase,
phenylacetic-acid, phenylalanine, phlobaphene, phosphatidyl-choline,
phosphatidyl- ethanolamine, phosphatidyl-inositol, phospholipids,
phosphorus, phytase, planteose, polygalacturonate,
polyphenol-oxidase, polyphenols, proline, propionic-acid,
propyl-acetate, protocatechuic-acid, purine, pyridoxine, quercetin,
quercetin-3-o-galactoside, quercetin-3-o-glucoside, quercitrin,
raffinase, raffinose, reductase, rhamnose, riboflavin, rutin,
rutoside, saccharose, salsolinol, serine, sinapic-acid, stachyose,
stearic-acid, stearodiolein, stigmasterol, sucrose, syringic-acid,
tannins, tartaric-acid, theobromine, theophylline, thiamin,
threonine, trigonelline, tyramine, tyrosine, valerianic-acid,
valine, vanillic-acid, verbascose, verbascotetrose, vitexin



http://www.rain-tree.com/chocolate.htm#.U1WSm6Lx0dU

That's a great link to have when one encounters the "4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke" chestnut.

truckerlyn said...

So that's why chocolate is said to lift ones mood!!!

truckerlyn said...

And the politicians and their cronies continue to get richer and richer, whilst the rest of us just get poorer by the day.