tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post7329690132242232944..comments2023-11-05T22:35:31.766+00:00Comments on Neil Clark: Bob Wareing: Honourable MemberNeil Clarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-27258133912700906202007-09-05T09:51:00.000+01:002007-09-05T09:51:00.000+01:00Mike, if you have a look at previous posts and art...Mike, if you have a look at previous posts and articles of mine you will see that I did support Britain in the Falkands war. And I strongly defend Britain's role in WW2 too. <BR/>But it's not a question of "my country right or wrong"- in WW2 and the Falkands conflict, Britain was responding to illegal aggression from other countries, in the wars against Yugoslavia and Iraq, Britain itself was the illegal aggressor.Neil Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-59745754219556405312007-09-05T00:33:00.000+01:002007-09-05T00:33:00.000+01:00What I don't understand about Neil Clark is, if yo...What I don't understand about Neil Clark is, if you are a social conservative then surely you would have a little bit of gut patriotism tucked away some where? Surely the idea of always supporting the other side in a war would be a huge turn off for you? I just don't get it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-55750864083007782392007-09-04T17:50:00.000+01:002007-09-04T17:50:00.000+01:00Oh, not that much. These views are shared across a...Oh, not that much. These views are shared across all classes except the one that, most unfortunately, is in charge. Which is not the traditional upper class, or at least not the entirety of it, nor drawn exclusively from it.<BR/><BR/>Michael Ancram, for example, was not especially "Thatcherite" when he was a Minister. In fact, Ancram (long the weak link in The Henry Jackson Society, and good for him) should cast himself, much more accurately, as a voice of the aristocratic social conscience, of its stake in the Keynes-Beveridge-Attlee Settlement through the farm subsidies that pay the rent which sustains it, of Catholic Social Teaching, of the Catholic Unionist traditions in Scotland and Ireland.<BR/><BR/>A voice desperately needing to be heard, in fact. And what he was really trying to say, I suspect.David Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-9065807618387732382007-09-04T10:34:00.000+01:002007-09-04T10:34:00.000+01:00David--I agree completely. I grew up in a steeltow...David--I agree completely. I grew up in a steeltown which was solid Labour when the steeltown shut down. Aspiration in the Labour Party then meant the aspiration not to micro-manage people's health but to provide a first class health service; being free meant that the country governed itself, in theory; leadership meant more than spin and appearance; social welfare also meant social order. I don't care what goes on in bedrooms--more the merrier frankly--I do care what happens on the streets and in the schools. Faux-radicalism, liberal interventionism, and the gods of the city headings seem to be what modern politics is about. Neil's brought that point out here. Class is what really matters, isn't it, worldwide?Martin Meenaghhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06092121503713511010noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-58818575351575123452007-09-03T11:31:00.000+01:002007-09-03T11:31:00.000+01:00Hear, hear!Have the Tories changed? No, not really...Hear, hear!<BR/><BR/>Have the Tories changed? No, not really. Their party used to be a dazzlingly effective means to putting posh boys into positions of power and influence, entirely regardless of their views, if any. It is now a laughably ineffective means to that same end. But that’s all. The real change has been in Labour.<BR/><BR/>Labour used to believe in social democracy. It did so precisely because it had profoundly conservative social and moral values, not least a strong British (and therefore also Commonwealth) patriotism focused on the institution binding together each and both of the Union and the Commonwealth.<BR/><BR/>All of this was, and remains, mainstream opinion in Scotland, Wales, the North, the Midlands, and the decidedly less chi-chi parts of the South. In some such constituencies, turnout last time was as low as one in three.<BR/><BR/>So there is a huge gap to be filled by the restored party of those Labour MPs who defended the grammar schools as the ladder of working-class advancement. By a party tough on crime because most victims are poor.<BR/><BR/>By the party of the Attlee Government, which dismissed the European Coal and Steel Community as "the blueprint for a federal state", which "the Durham miners would never wear". Of Hugh Gaitskell calling the Common Market "the end of a thousand years of history" and a threat to the unity of the Commonwealth.<BR/><BR/>By the party of ardently Unionist Labour MPs from Scotland, Wales, and their adjacent areas. Of Roy Hattersely sending British troops into Northern Ireland in order to defend the grateful Catholics there precisely as British subjects defined by their liberties under the Crown (whereas citizens are defined by their obligations to the State and to the government of the day). Of Roy Mason running Northern Ireland as an integral part of the United Kingdom, with terrorism treated as a plain and simple security problem. Of Harold Wilson guaranteeing the Anguillan people’s right to be British, explicitly outside the American hegemony that had wanted to re-create there the brothels and drug dens of old Havana.<BR/><BR/>By the party of those Labour MPs (mostly Methodists) who resisted relaxation of the laws on drinking and gambling. Of those (mostly Catholics) who fought against abortion and easier divorce. Of those who voted in favour only after warning against exactly what has come to pass: abortion more common than having a tooth pulled, and one in three marriages ending in divorce.<BR/><BR/>That was the party in favour of the Welfare State, workers’ rights, progressive taxation, and full employment. It dissuaded Truman from dropping an atom bomb on Korea, and it refused to send British forces to Vietnam. It opposed the Soviet Union and wider Stalinism on the same grounds, and with the same ferocity, as it opposed Fascism in the Iberian world and elsewhere, as well as apartheid South Africa and its Rhodesian satellite. It won elections on enormous turnouts and in the face of serious opposition.<BR/><BR/>Britain is crying out for just such a party today. So let’s get on and build it.David Lindsayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06839882674758833524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-29517434907901441302007-09-03T11:01:00.000+01:002007-09-03T11:01:00.000+01:00Is that why Bob Wareing is an MP and you "reality ...Is that why Bob Wareing is an MP and you "reality check" are not. Anyone who stoops to personal verbal abuse cannot have much to say on the subject of gun crime which is sweeping through Britain. It is frightening to see how we are following America in everything that is negative.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-3617520969098697482007-09-03T08:51:00.000+01:002007-09-03T08:51:00.000+01:00Really? How come he's been proved right on nearly ...Really? How come he's been proved right on nearly every policy stance he's taken?Neil Clarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10479041156190090119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17766817.post-31327558256522541822007-09-03T03:02:00.000+01:002007-09-03T03:02:00.000+01:00Bob maybe a nice guy, but he's as thick as pig shi...Bob maybe a nice guy, but he's as thick as pig shit.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com