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SB
miss_s_b
[theyorkshergob]
04 May 2008 @ 02:28 pm
I'd like to thank the academy, my mum and dad, my fiance, my daughter, my dogs...  
Featured on Liberal Democrat Voice

I guess this makes me a Proper Lib Dem Blogger now. My début in the Golden Dozen features me not once, but twice. Horatio will be breaking his chains again...

* blush *

I suppose this means I ought to tone down the invective, right? Become more acceptable and measured, and less angry and sweary?

...

Nah. Not going to happen.


In other news of Lib Demmery, our very own Martha Kearney, [info]alixmortimer, makes an interesting point about the current fortunes of the party:
It strikes me that we’re in a sort of puberty stage of political parties (no, really, stay with me). We’re too big and successful now to be regarded as the plucky little underdog, and attract the grumpy protest vote. That role now belongs to the Greens. People don’t see us as anti-establishment any more, purely by dint of our size and vote share, and the fact that they’ve decided to see our leader as an establishment leader who doesn’t “live up” to establishment standards, rather than the oddball anti-establishment leader he actually is, good teeth and an enthusiasm for hiking and tennis notwithstanding. Our size and popularity attracts the other parties’ fear, hence all the ludicrous unfairness and name-calling on the Beeb and throughout the media.

But, while we’re now definitely in the secondary school playground, we’re not strong enough to challenge the big boys, who bully us in the apparent hope that we’ll dwindle and lose heart. We’re in a peculiarly hellish sort of limbo, neither one thing or the other. Presumably the only thing to do when confronted with a set of results like this is to stick with it, not let the bastards grind us down and keep applying the clearasil. No, I have no idea how that translates into an actual strategy, wot am I, Lawd Rennard?
I can't speak for anyone else, but Clearasil always made my spots worse...


In other other news: is it that all people who voted for Boris are stupid, or that all people who are complaining about people who voted for Boris are stupid? I don't know, but I think that shouting you're stupid at each other is a pretty stupid thing to do. All it does is make everybody dig their heels in for being attacked, and further entrench division. Obviously I lean towards Mitch's position rather than Doctor Vee's, but perhaps both of them are not as constructive as they might be: this I have discovered by the fact that [info]matgb and I have had our first proper argument over this, because he most definitely sides with Doctor Vee, and I think Doctor Vee is being a patronising, overbearing twat. YAY for domestic harmony!

Anyway, Boris is mayor. It's a fact. And, you know, bumblebees DO stay up in the air, so maybe he'll pull something amazing out of his arse and it won't be all that bad. He's only the glorified head of London transport, after all. But anyway, going over the whys and wherefores won't change it, nor will it make it more acceptable to people who don't like it. Lets' think about what we need to do now, eh? Like maybe learning from the mistakes we made in the campaigning arena...
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17 rants | rant
 
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StaceyUK[info]staceyuk on May 4th, 2008 02:11 pm (UTC)
I can't speak for anyone else, but Clearasil always made my spots worse...

Not just me them. I find sudacreme works much better. Seriously.
SB[info]miss_s_b on May 4th, 2008 02:27 pm (UTC)
* nodnod *

That stuff was brilliant on [info]shrublette's nappy rash.
StaceyUK[info]staceyuk on May 4th, 2008 02:31 pm (UTC)
It's definitely better than over the counter remedies for other stuff too. *cough*piles*cough*

Edited at 2008-05-04 02:33 pm (UTC)
SB: Innocent[info]miss_s_b on May 4th, 2008 02:35 pm (UTC)
That's worth knowing, thanks.
StaceyUK[info]staceyuk on May 4th, 2008 02:48 pm (UTC)
You're welcome.
Miss Freddie: oots - vengeance[info]freddiefraggles on May 4th, 2008 03:15 pm (UTC)
I can't speak for anyone else, but Clearasil always made my spots worse...

Actually, I've been trying it on my back (get nasty spots tharr), and it works quite well. I was about to say it must be a Northener thing, but since Stacey's in Wisbech, I'm more North than she is. I think.

Anyway, yes. Hi.
[info]jw_77 on May 4th, 2008 08:18 pm (UTC)
Congratulations on being featured on Liberal Democrat Voice.
doctorvee[info]doctorvee on May 4th, 2008 10:04 pm (UTC)
I should probably apologise for causing your first domestic! But I do think you have got the wrong end of the stick. I didn't call anyone who complained about people who voted for Boris Johnson stupid. I was simply pointing out that many of the arguments put forward by these people were either invalid or could as easily be levelled at voters of Ken Livingstone. And certainly all of this "he's a toff, boo!" and "he's a Tory, boo!" surely must make one despair that this is what counts for supposedly intelligent political discourse.

Of course, it is perfectly legitimate for somebody to complain about Boris Johnson or indeed his voters. But the point is that you should debate politicians on their merits and, if they are the incumbent, their record -- not their background, the colour of their rosette, their hairstyle or their appearances on HIGNFY. But looking at the many character assassinations of Boris Johnson that have been written over the past couple of weeks, this is all that the anti-Boris argument appears to amount to.
SB[info]miss_s_b on May 4th, 2008 11:12 pm (UTC)
[info]tyrell made the best anti-Boris argument. No character assassination involved.
doctorvee[info]doctorvee on May 5th, 2008 12:31 am (UTC)
Well, that makes some good points but it seems to centre on the same old.

...while Boris might be the comedy rich-boy bumble-twat, his masters can be as far to the Tory Right as your horrified 80's memories can dredge up...


I should say also that I was not making a comment about all of the anti-Boris commentary, but the majority of it.

I've written a second post that hopefully clarifies my original.
SB: Moods - Brain Hurts[info]miss_s_b on May 5th, 2008 12:41 am (UTC)
Hmm. I'd still say that your post lacks balance although you make some good points. Everything you are complaining about the left doing to Boris is exactly what the right have been doing to Ken, and that's maybe why it bothers me: it now (despite the disclaimer at the end) reads like: my candidate won, so his smear campaign of irrelevancies was better, so you can stop yours now

I dunno. Maybe I'm overanalysing.

* shrug *

I am also tired and might not be putting my finger with accuracy. But there's still something bothering me about the way you're wording it. Maybe finger will land in the morning.
doctorvee[info]doctorvee on May 5th, 2008 12:33 pm (UTC)
This is another of the points that I made delved somewhere or another in one of my posts. To say "oh, well the right do the same" doesn't really do you any good. For one thing, tribal voters on the left cannot do anything about what tribal voters on the right do. The point is to persuade those voters who always make the difference -- the floating voters. And if the sum total of the argument against Boris Johnson is that he is a toff, then of course you will never convince floating voters not to vote for him. There were a host of genuine reasons why people would not vote for Ken Livingstone, as outlined here.

The other point, as I also made, is that, no, the right is not as bad at this as the left is. How many instances will you be able to find of someone on the right saying that you shouldn't vote for [generic Labour politician] because he is too working class? I am certain that they will easily be outnumbered by "ooh Boris is a Tory toff" several times over.

Even so, to say that the right is just as bad is just passing the buck. Would it not be better to, regardless of what the right does, do the right thing and take the moral high ground?
SB[info]miss_s_b on May 5th, 2008 12:50 pm (UTC)
People on the right don't make the same smear reversed, but they /do/ make ad hominem smears, and it's ridiculous to pretend that they don't.

I'm not passing any bucks. I agree with the points you make about tribal lefties. I'm just saying that they apply equally to tribal righties. I stand with neither.
doctorvee[info]doctorvee on May 5th, 2008 02:36 pm (UTC)
You are quite correct that the right are just as bad. I suppose I am just concentrating on the left for the moment because for one they were certainly the serial offenders in the London Mayor campaign as far as I could see. And for another thing, I consider myself to be politically closer to the left and certainly the liberal rather than the right. And I see the approach adopted by many during their anti-Boris campaigns as totally counter productive and playing into the hands of the authoritarians currently ruling us for reasons I lined out in the first post.
SB: Moods - Oh dear[info]miss_s_b on May 5th, 2008 02:39 pm (UTC)
You are quite correct that the right are just as bad.

Then why did you spend your previous post here arguing that they aren't? If you hadn't have done that, Mat wouldn't have been able to agree with you (again) and we wouldn't have had another argument!

:P

Bloody men. You're so frustrating!
doctorvee[info]doctorvee on May 5th, 2008 03:19 pm (UTC)
Heh. Sorry. I probably worded it wrongly. When I said the right are just as bad, I meant that they are not totally immune to this kind of behaviour. It is easy to see, for instance, that many a year ago it was common for some on the right to say "Gordon Brown is too Scottish". But now that they can say "Gordon Brown is too incompetent" and no-one will challenge them, they use that instead.

But I do think the volume of this sort of thing is worse among the left. I suspect this is perhaps because the Conservatives have been lame ducks for too long, so it was really easy to just dismiss someone on the basis of being a Tory. But when they are on the resurgence, that trick doesn't work.

If this behaviour wasn't worse among the left, it would be bad enough if it was equal anyway. From my understanding of left and liberal ideologies it is not supposed to be fair to attack someone on the basis of their background.
Mat Bowles: Better Politics[info]matgb on May 4th, 2008 11:17 pm (UTC)
this is all that the anti-Boris argument appears to amount to.

There has been a lot more legitimate criticism of him—not least because his policies seem to be uncosted and badly thought through, the new routemaster thing was a publicity gimmick from what we can tell.

But a lot of the legit criticism did get lost amongst the "bbbbbut it's Boris" crap, much of it was unjustified, or at least over the top hyperbole.

I'm utterly convinced he wasn't expected or intented to win. If I can summon the inclination, I might post about it tomorrow. Then, I might post about many things, never do.

Oh, this is our first domestic since I formally move in, the previous one was more amusing:
http://matgb.livejournal.com/tag/cup+cakes