CarlPierce wrote:They know how the game works - admitting any weakness or fault will be seized upon by the opposition.

The Tory tactics seem to be to keep up the labour 'disaster' mood music every single day aided by their allies in the press. I don't see any counter punching from Labour yet. They need to change the narrative to mark the Tories as uncaring AND incompetent.

mcgruff wrote:

Emmeline wrote:I think there are better ways of performing u-turns

Actually I don't think there are.

There are certainly more dishonest ways to do it. That's what the tories found so hilarious and peculiar: a man attempting to talk honestly to the commons and the electorate. Duly noted.

Sendraks wrote:...
1 - Never admit you're wrong.
2 - Find someone else to blame.
3 - Claim credit for things you never achieved.
4 - As long as you think you're right, it doesn't matter what the evidence says.

And so on and so forth.
...

ED209 wrote:

Sendraks wrote:...
1 - Never admit you're wrong.
2 - Find someone else to blame.
3 - Claim credit for things you never achieved.
4 - As long as you think you're right, it doesn't matter what the evidence says.

And so on and so forth.
...

and we know what stupid fuckery that results in.

I don't believe normal people want any more of it, and the machinery built to spew it out will one day be smashed.

Back in the USSR: Jeremy Corbyn hires Seumas Milne
(...)
At the same time, appointing as your chief spin doctor – your principal conduit to the admirable rotters who constitute the parliamentary lobby – someone whose views are, if anything, even more extreme than your own modestly outlandish prejudices is, well, interesting. Also brave. Undoubtedly bold too.

Ordinarily, a political leader can say that the views held by his own spokesman in a former existence are of no relevance whatsoever. But that will not wash in this instance since the only plausible reason for hiring Milne is that his views are the same as Jeremy Corbyn’s.
(...)
Reviewing Martin Amis’s book Koba the Dread in 2002, Milne wrote:
"It has become almost received wisdom to bracket Stalin and Hitler as twin monsters of the past century – Mao and Pol Pot are sometimes thrown in as an afterthought – and commonplace to equate communism and fascism as the two greatest evils of an unprecedentedly sanguinary era."

Well, yes, I suppose it has. God knows why.

Of course, most people are capable of appreciating that the differences between Hitler and Stalin, while important and vital, do not then require us to absolve or downplay or otherwise diminish the latter’s sins. In like fashion, to put it in a domestic manner, disliking Manchester United confers no requirement to like Liverpool.

Milne’s consistency is complete, however. Thus:
"Whatever people thought about the Soviet Union and its allies and what was going on in those countries, there was a sense throughout the twentieth century that there were alternatives – socialist political alternatives. The Soviet Union and other states of that type would devolve in different directions, but I don’t think most people expected that it would collapse into a form of feral capitalism and social disaster."

Well, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a disaster for some. But it was also – rather importantly – also a liberation for many others. Milne’s concern for those labouring in imperial captivity never extends to those held hostage by the Soviets. Instead his back catalogue is stuffed with articles downplaying the horrors of Sovietism and then, latterly, redefining Russian aggression as defensive manoeuvres designed to combat – of course – western neoliberalism. Which is always the greatest enemy.

Meanwhile, the idea – always pushed by those wishing to rehabilitate the Soviet Union – that say what you will about Lenin and Joe and the other guys in the gang but at least they were building something hopeful is a grotesque piece of history-rewriting. Mistakes were made. There were scenes. All this matters little for a columnist who’s free to indulge himself as he sees fit. But it’s a remarkable worldview to find elevated to the Labour leader’s office. Or at least it would be but for the suspicion all this stuff is exactly the reason why Jeremy Corbyn has called for Seumas.

It tells you something.

ED209 wrote:People who'd like to digest what milne actually wrote - instead of regurgitated pre-chewed smears - might be interested to read his 1990 graun article in full here:

https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2 ... -millions/

...Are the figures credible? In the context of the current political atmosphere in the Soviet Union and the fact that they were in a restricted publication, it seems improbable that they have been tampered with. Of course, they do not cover the famine and other disasters. But they do begin to add credence to the mainstream academic view that the deaths attributable to Stalin’s policies was closer to 3.5 million than 25 million.

Why do numbers matter anyway? After all Robert Conquest may be out by a factor of five or 10, but the repressions were still enormous.

If, however, a figure of 20 million or 25 million becomes current currency, it adds credence to the Stalin-Hitler comparison. Already, anyone who questions these figures — even in the academic debates — is denounced as a “neo-Stalinist.”

As the Irish writer Alexander Cockburn who started what turned into a highly emotional exchange last year in the American journal, the Nation, puts it: “Any computation that does not soar past 10 million is somehow taken as being soft on Stalin.” And by minimising the quantitative gulf between the Hitler and Stalin killings, it becomes easier to skate over the uniqueness of the Nazi genocide and war.

Clearly, with her cynical manufactured outrage allegra stratton is a nazi apologist. See? Easy isn't it.

Scot Dutchy wrote:Here is Milne's latest offerings in the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/seumasmilne

Is the man serious?

ED209 wrote:Are you?

chairman bill wrote:

Scot Dutchy wrote:Here is Milne's latest offerings in the Guardian:

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/seumasmilne

Is the man serious?

You clearly aren't. That's a profile page, not his latest article.

Scot Dutchy wrote:

ED209 wrote:Are you?

Look dont be naive. The man is a menace but of course he is a JC disciple.