Harry's Place

Revolting, and not in a good way.

Explains a lot, I’d say.

Almost enough to make me want to vote Tory… they do realise don’t they that one of the key reasons they are despised is due to this kind of thing…? They DO don’t they…?

More disturbing reporting and another reason Harry’s Place is what it is – a way of approaching Islamists extremists without falling into the ‘they are all the same’ trap.

These matters simply relate to bad faith. They reward the undeserving and unreconstructed. Bad faith and moreover worse politics. This must end. Write to the Labour Party.

Since this is a post about British politics I’ve been meaning to ask: In the last elections to the EU parliament there were about 30+% turnout (can’t remember the exact number but I do remember it was around 30% and definitely lower than 50%). While legally that still counts as valid elections, in essence, doesn’t that mean that the parties elected are in fact illegitimate and that the amount of people voting for them says nothing about their support? In essence, wouldn’t that make the elections a joke?

And they are going to listen, Larkers?
Maybe they’ll listen you you. Unlike you, however, I am not a billionaire.

Isy, much about the EU is illegitimate. You only have to look at the repeated instances of re-voting, forcing a country to keep voting UNTIL the desired result is achieved. At that point, the situation is frozen in stone.

Desperate for the Muslim vote – it’s the only card they’ve got left.

By the way, when did principled politics begin?

I wan’t talking specifically about the EU (although I am quite confused about how much authority and influence it has and how can it implement it’s authority when each country has different needs). I was referring to British politics since I assumed the low turnout is normal in Britain and not just a matter of EU elections (I remember hearing of similar turnouts in regional/constituasies elections)

Old Peculier says they’re angling for the Muslim vote. But surely 99% of ordinary Muslims are opposed to theses Islamists. Aren’t they?

The Labour party can’t but know what it is doing, so writing letters to them will not serve much purpose. The letters should be written any way. Even as someone who would vote Labour (having been disappointed by the Greens) I think a resounding Labour defeat at the next elections would do them good. Except that I don’t know that the others would be better.

What utter madness: I keep remembering Bush and Blair saying they would hunt down extremists to the last corners of the earth.

Last Sunday, John Denham, the communities secretary, announced: “Anyone wanting to build a more progressive society would ignore the powerful role of faith at their peril. We should continually seek ways of encouraging and enhancing the contribution faith communities make on the central issues of our time.”

Personally as a rather ‘militant atheist’ I must confess I do rather find the religiously inspired chopping heads off on the internet, suicide-murder bombing, ‘honour’ killings or even the systemic tacitly endorsed buggering of little boys and the contributions to scientific progress ‘contribution’ that I am rather less than enamored with.

I suppose if you don’t realy believe in anything then you can accept anything and anyone. What can we do about it?

So we now know what Gordon’s moral compass looks like. The sheer chutzpah of the man is breathtaking, he has no shame, no vision, no decency, and the most scary thought of all is that he actually may believe he is moral. The only credible theory as to what drives this insanity is plain blind hatred of Tories. T’was ever so.

Maybe after the Election we shall see a meltdown like that of the French Left after Sarko was elected.

Just as I was beginning to waver and thinking of voting Labour next June, along comes HP to remind me what a foolish course of action that would be.

“By the way, when did principled politics begin?”

OP does have a point….

I guess Nick will be writing lots of strongly worded letters

Disgusted of harrys place, that should do it.

Can’t see Nick Cohen voting Labour next year, hopefully he’s not alone and the Labour party will suffer the fate they so richly deserve.

Hopefully alsom the Tories won’t suck up to the Islamofascists quite so much, but I’m rather less than convinced that their position on sectarian education is any better than Labour’s.

Rather than write to Labour it may be a better use of time to expend one’s effort in prevailing upon the Tories over sectarian education.

If we want to reduce the divisiveness that comes as night follows day with sectarianism is to ban all schools from conducting any religious test or applying any religious selection criteria for any pupils or any staff.

It should be no more acceptable for any school to positively select for Anglicans, Catholics, Jews or Muslims and discriminate against others than it should be for any Tescos to have a whites only recruitment policy.

MCB represents nearly 500 groups.

When it started, the Sufi Muslim Council
http://www.sufimuslimcouncil.org/

led by Haris Rafiq, had 350 groups. But Inayat Bunglawala was totally dismissive.

Why didn’t the government deal with the Sufis?

What we need is some useful idiot with access to a political party to make a lot of noise about this.

Leee! Leee–eeee! Wherefore art thou when thou name is callest?

Yet everyone of you HP posters are still planning to vote for that shower of unprincipled cunts, aren’t you?

Not me, I won’t be voting Labour again for a long time, if ever.

“they do realise don’t they that one of the key reasons they are despised is due to this kind of thing…? They DO don’t they…?”

I don’t think they do, though you are of course correct that it has had a very adverse effect and they are now absolutely hated by a large amount of people in this country, including many of their former supporters. In any case, let the MB and scumbag apologists like John Denham enjoy their last few months in the limelight. The party is almost over.

I’m probably going to not vote.

Unless Brown resigns.

Not me, I won’t be voting Labour again for a long time, if ever.

Me neither.

Not me, I won’t be voting Labour again for a long time, if ever.

Me neither.

Yet everyone of you HP posters are still planning to vote for that shower of unprincipled cunts, aren’t you?

No, not this time.

Is it true that the Sufi Council is loosing funding.

I never thought I’d say this but, OP, there was a brief crazed period earlier this year.

And, I’m glad that Labour has no chance in my constituency and, even though the incumbent is a LibDem, I – and many others like him personally. He’s more a classical Liberal.

Moggie would like him.

If the Labour Party were prepared afew years ago to engineer mass immigration in order to boost their vote I don’t see why they wouldn’t cozy up to the MBC to boost it that little more. The question is, will the flip from old to new voting support work for them? Not in my case, it won’t.

Ali’s crime was that he opposed Islamism while advising Tony Blair, Ruth Kelly and Hazel Blears.

Presumably Cohen has evidence for this?

Hate to say it but I told you so.

In fact in one fell swoop New Labour has turned into Respect.

All the grooming and engagement and preventing extremism has merely resulted in the unleashing of an islamist political tendency in British politics.

These nasty Islamists will commandeer and manipulate and eventually Islamise the Muslim ‘bloc vote’ now also set free as a sectarian force in British politics.

That this ‘bloc’ or constituency will have no natural home in the left should be evident to anybody.

If there is any doubt on this then Ossama Saeed’s SNP Islamism should dispel it.

The Tories may not be set up to court this communal bloc this time around, indeed they even may voice a rhetorical opposition to it, but it will not prevent them in the future, indeed they will have no choice.

Welcome to the new communalised sectarian British polity a greater advance for regressive sectarianism in one administrations lifetime than has occurred in decades of post Independence India and South East Asia.

Well done New Labour it may be your only truly lasting legacy.

I don’t believe that I will vote again in a communalised election.

I do not recognise communal sectarian politically gerrymandered elections sufficiently democratic to want to vote in them.

Nor me Morgoth – no chance.
(and not just because they’re asking me to vote for Lauren Booth/Cherie Blair’s stepmother.)

Shame about thea rticle as a whole. What a curate’s egg is Nick Cohen. He certainly has his moments. But this is not one of them.

He lazily accuses “the white working class” of providing the electoral support for the BNP, which in fact comes entirely from white people who, while they may in some cases be objectively classifiable as working-class, very consciously do not define themselves as such, and therefore self-consciously always voted Tory in the past, at least in the absence of an extremely rare National Front candidate. And he seems never to have heard of Naxalism, or Irgun, or Lehi, or the Italian Red Brigades, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang. Nor even of the IRA and the INLA, Leninist organisations persistently described as “Catholic” by the Leninist-infested BBC.

Ah, there’s the rub. With his Communist background, Cohen is blind to many things. But not to the hatefulness, as such people see it, of those who created the Labour Movement, the reason why Britain never had a Marxist revolution, a success avenged by the Stalinists (as Cohen used to be), fellow-travellers and Trotskyists in the form of their total destruction of Labour, namely New Labour.

Some of us would vote for candidates in the tradition of the Labour MPs who defended Catholic schools, and thus all church-based state schools, over several successive decades. Of the support by national leaders of the Social Democrats for Christian religious instruction in the schools of Berlin. Of the early Labour activists who resisted schemes to abort, contracept and sterilise the working class out of existence.

Of the Catholic and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, who fought tooth and nail against abortion and easier divorce, not least including both Thatcher’s introduction of abortion up to birth and Major’s introduction of divorce legally easier than release from a car hire contract. Of the Methodist and other Labour MPs, including John Smith, who fought tooth and nail against deregulated drinking and gambling. Of those, including John Smith, who successfully organised (especially through USDAW) against Thatcher’s and Major’s attempts to destroy the special character of Sunday and of Christmas Day, delivering the only Commons defeat of Thatcher’s Premiership.

Of the trade unions’ numerous battles to secure paternal authority in families and communities by securing its economic base in high-waged, high-skilled, high-status male employment. And of the trade union banners depicting Biblical scenes and characters.

But we can’t.

So we are going to have to be those candidates ourselves.

Metta

In fact in one fell swoop New Labour has turned into Respect.

This should be batshit crazy hyperbole…alas it’s not…really not.

“When it started, the Sufi Muslim Council led by Haris Rafiq, had 350 groups.”

What helped to sink the SMC was this very clever blog entry that linked them with American Neocons which was spread all over the Internet:

“The ‘Neoconservative’ Sufi Muslim Council”

http://sufimuslimcouncil.blogspot.com/2006/08/neoconservative-sufi-muslim-council.html

Good points Mettaculture – maybe this is why the London bombings took place after the 2005 general election and not before.

It is possible that it was a “forcing” event to bring the new government into line with Islamist thinking and practice – a “forcing” event with the added piquancy that the government was already hamstrung by its own guilt over the Iraq war, and was therefore unable to counter the Islamist onslaught on any level.

In other words, it rolled over. Threw in the towel. And strengthened the Islamist position immeasurably.

Tant pis.

In fact in one fell swoop New Labour has turned into Respect.

How true.

I see that Lindsay is off on another one (another one of his Lehi-fixated rants, that is).

“Of the trade unions’ numerous battles to secure paternal authority in families and communities by securing its economic base in high-waged, high-skilled, high-status male employment. And of the trade union banners depicting Biblical scenes and characters.”

A very odd description (the motivation that is) that would not be recognosed by most trade unionists – not least in the light of the trades unions’ extensive campaigning for equal pay.

Has Lindsay never heard of the Match Girls strike – surely a defining moment in British TU history?

No, Bloo, they do not realise that sucking up to vile fanatics is one reason that they are despised if only for the simple reason that is is not true.

It is not true because 98+% of the people neither know no care about such things, sad to say.

To all the chaps and chapesses who are no longer voting labour – well done. You have my respect (no pun intended).

This is very disturbing information, but also, of course, very important to know… Makes me think twice…
Thank you for bringing it about.

Metaculture makes some good, if dispiriting, points. Labour’s cynical tactics have blown up in their faces on this matter, but unfortunately they have done real and possibly permanent damage to to the concept of voting being matter for individuals rather than bloc ‘communities’.

The Tories would be doing themselves and democracy as whole a favour if at least they dump the ridiculous postal vote vote ploy except for valid cases like the disabled, citizens aborad, etcetera. able-bodied residents here should turn out and vote – there’s been plentiful evidence of how the laxer system of recent times has been abused.