UK Politics VII - Going down on Downing Street

[VarysTheSpider]

You talk about the narrative as if it was a conservative propoganda letter. I always considered the Times fairly neutral?

I don't think lobby hacks copying and pasting press releases makes them not-neutral. Lazy and sloppy, sure, but maybe not biased when they're running to a deadline and are just reporting what was said - they did the same for Labour, after all. And of course it's really not just the Times, they all do it, including the BBC. A lot of the actual investigative/analytical side of things seems to be left to columnists and bloggers, who, of course, deliberately aren't neutral.

Seems Cameron has adopted a "hit em hard, hit em fast" attitude to his unruly backbenchers (the ones that he didn't manage to get rid of last year, anyway). I am inclined to agree with Norman Tebbit:

For Mr Cameron to bounce the Parliamentary Party into a vote to change the rules to allow Minister and Whips (the payroll vote) to become voting members of the 1922 Committee is one thing. But to announce that he has unilaterally changed the rules to give them votes in an ballot to decide if they should have membership and votes in the 1922 is another.

...

Mr Cameron's proposal was declared carried by 168 votes to 118, making it obvious that the members of the backbench 1922 Committee must have been strongly opposed, but were outvoted because of the payroll vote. One has to expect a little discord now and again among Ministers in a coalition, but the contrast between Deputy Prime Minister Clegg's breathless calls for political reform to give power to the people and the Prime Minister's putsch against his own backbenchers is really going too far.

Hurrah for making the executive stronger!

[HT Reddy]

I know a lot of people with PhDs but I don't generally refer to them as Doctor.

Kind of reduces the appeal of getting one really. :)

[slim da reaper]

Kind of reduces the appeal of getting one really. :)

For personal satisfaction hey why not, nice to be recognised, as a means of automatically being the authority on a subject? no, it's why we are in the state we are in.

A huge amount of our best most original thinkers and innovators walk away from education, seeing it as authoritarian and it is, if authoritarianism is the way of the world then some people will adopt that and excel at it in arenas other than academia, because the material reward is much higher.

Why the need for an authority? Makes life simple, but you're only making problems, take this board it has arbitary moderators, Ran is an enlightened intelligent person, who if I met him would almost certainly like, but I would have moderators as being voted such by boarders who have been around for a couple of years and with substantional post counts.

[Doran Doran]

Oxford is aristocratic upper class, and Tory (Tory -> Conservative)

Cambridge is intellectual upper middle class, and Whig (Whig -> Liberal -> LibDem).

Interesting. So trust funds are indicative of the (upper) middle class, whereas they're considered too gauche for the true, and presumably landed, aristocracy?

[A wilding]

But obviously it's the Cambridge types that are actually superior :)

Of course. ;)

I know a lot of people with PhDs but I don't generally refer to them as Doctor.

You are missing out on some fun there. Bonus marks if you can get someone to ask them to help out with some medical problem.

A huge amount of our best most original thinkers and innovators walk away from education, seeing it as authoritarian and it is

I am struggling to see UK academia here. A good many academics want to concentrate on their research and have to be bullied into taking a turn at the management/teaching/administrative tasks. Correspondingly Ran and the mods get a great deal of thankless drudgery that I doubt I would have time or patience for. (And voting on scientific theories is unlikely to be a very productive approach.)

Interesting. So trust funds are indicative of the (upper) middle class, whereas they're considered too gauche for the true, and presumably landed, aristocracy?

"Whigs" are smart enough to make what money they need. "Tories" rely on the old boy network and are often relatively cash poor.

[slim da reaper]

I am struggling to see UK academia here. A good many academics want to concentrate on their research and have to be bullied into taking a turn at the management/teaching/administrative tasks. Correspondingly Ran and the mods get a great deal of thankless drudgery that I doubt I would have time or patience for. (And voting on scientific theories is unlikely to be a very productive approach.)

Have you seen a discussion between academics with opposing views? Hardly non-authoritarian, quite rabid. Also at departmental meetings you get the people who must dominate the floor. And what has voting on scientific theories got to do with anything? We do not choose what we wish to believe is true, your argument is trotted out to reinforce authoritarianism nothing else. There's a narrowing simply for power and money, it's called corruption. Complete relatavistic arguments about knowledge are a straw man, respect for error and the limits of any particular theory vastly increases certainty.

As to the moderators firstly, what has the thankless drudgery actually got to do with the notion of having a democratically elected moderatoring team? secondly there are a majority of moderators who are doing a good job, I assume so but that still has nothing to do with having them democratically elected.

[Maltaran]

Brown is part of a notable club: he's one of only four post-war British Prime Ministers (the others being Churchill, Callaghan, and Major) not to be a product of Oxford University.

And of those four, he's the only one who actually went to university.

[Jon AS]

You are missing out on some fun there. Bonus marks if you can get someone to ask them to help out with some medical problem.

Plus in this case he'd be Dr. Brown. I'm sure you could make quite a few mildly amusing jokes out of that.

[A wilding]

Have you seen a discussion between academics with opposing views? Hardly non-authoritarian, quite rabid. Also at departmental meetings you get the people who must dominate the floor. And what has voting on scientific theories got to do with anything? We do not choose what we wish to believe is true, your argument is trotted out to reinforce authoritarianism nothing else. There's a narrowing simply for power and money, it's called corruption. Complete relatavistic arguments about knowledge are a straw man, respect for error and the limits of any particular theory vastly increases certainty.

I don't see why the fact that scientific disputes can get rabid makes science authoritarian.

I am afraid that I really don't follow the rest of your argument. But if you are saying that the scientific community has become an authoritarian one in which theories are treated as dogma and may not be questioned, then we shall have to agree to disagree (at least where the hard sciences are concerned - I am relatively ignorant when it comes to the softer ones). But perhaps you are talking only about academic politics?

And apologies for the threadjack.

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

I don't know about Oxford candidates being old tory types. My Dad went there, and is a labour voter. So's my Grandad (well, he was a strong labour voter before Thatcher, then switched sides).

[A wilding]

Obviously your Dad and Grandad were repelled enough by what they saw at Oxford to be turned completely against it - not uncommon I understand. ;)

Maggie Thatcher changing his mind is interesting. One narrative is that she changed the Conservatives from an old fashioned upper class paternalistic party (i.e. true Tories), into the "nasty" party, only interested in money.

[HT Reddy]

For personal satisfaction hey why not, nice to be recognised, as a means of automatically being the authority on a subject? no, it's why we are in the state we are in.

A huge amount of our best most original thinkers and innovators walk away from education, seeing it as authoritarian and it is, if authoritarianism is the way of the world then some people will adopt that and excel at it in arenas other than academia, because the material reward is much higher.

Why the need for an authority? Makes life simple, but you're only making problems, take this board it has arbitary moderators, Ran is an enlightened intelligent person, who if I met him would almost certainly like, but I would have moderators as being voted such by boarders who have been around for a couple of years and with substantional post counts.

Eh?

[Werthead]

Interesting. Question Time has Alastair Campbell on tonight, and because of his presence the government refused to send a front-bencher on unless he was removed. Dimbleby told them to get stuffed. Campbell is now being faced down by the disturbingly vacant stare of John Redwood (representing the Tory Party rather than the government) instead.

A somewhat bizarre situation. Do the government really fear that none of their front-benchers are capable of taking on Campbell on a TV show?

[Ratty]

I think the issue was more to do with no proper member of the Labour party being sent so they wouldn;t send someone as it legitimises him, at least thats what a lot of websites are saying. Either way it does make the tories and libs look a little silly and petty.

I had a horrible surprise on This week afterwards, Hazel Blears ack! David Davies was ok, but not as good as Portillo, Galloway whom I normally loathe was actually pretty decent as well.

[mormont]

I think the issue was more to do with no proper member of the Labour party being sent

Campbell's a proper member of the Labour party in good standing so far as I know. ;) But I get what you mean: he's not an MP or a Lord.

However, the Tory/Lib Dem objection was (or at least they claimed it was) that they wanted a member of the Shadow Cabinet, or else they wouldn't send a Cabinet minister. Now that is certainly petty: as the BBC pointed out, the Labour goverment sent a Cabinet minister when asked regardless of who the Tory guest was.

[Ratty]

Just to confirm I agree it was petty and has backfired somewhat on the Whig/Tory pact.

Can anything be read out of last nights election? I suspect not. There was no crushing of the lib dem vote which indeed increased its share from labour and the tory vote held firm. The result matches the surrounding constituencies which implies nothing has changed so far in the publics eye since the general election. Unless anyone thinks different?

[mormont]

An interesting twist?

Chief Treasury Secretary David Laws has apologised after it emerged he had been claiming MPs' expenses to rent rooms in homes owned by his partner.

Mr Laws said he would immediately pay back the money which the Daily Telegraph said totalled £40,000.

He said his motivation was to keep the relationship with the man private and not to reveal his own sexuality.

David Cameron said he agreed with Mr Laws' decision to refer himself to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner.

Since 2006 parliamentary rules have banned MPs from "leasing accommodation from a partner".

The Daily Telegraph said the Liberal Democrat cabinet minister claimed up to £950 a month for eight years to rent a room in two properties owned by his partner, James Lundie.

I'm not sure I'm buying the bit about 'keeping the relationship private' - there are surely ways to do that which don't involve claiming nearly a grand of public money every month. But the political consequences of sacking a senior Lib Dem only weeks into the coalition should be interesting: particularly as it was a Tory paper that broke the story.

[Maltaran]

I'm honestly surprised that a Lib Dem still feels the need to stay in the closet.

[mormont]

I'm honestly surprised that a Lib Dem still feels the need to stay in the closet.

Most, though by no means all, Lib Dem members are open-minded enough not to give a shit. But MPs have constituents as well as parties, and Yeovil - despite being Paddy Ashdown's old seat - is a fairly conservative place. It was a safe Tory seat for decades until 1983, and even at the last election the Tories got 33% of the vote.

[Lummel]

Wow so they have started on the sex scandels already. At least this time there wasn't an attempted murder, so that's progress I suppose.

Is this a conspiracy or a cock up? Is is someone spilling the beans to the Telegraph because they a Conservative opposed to Cameron, a Lib-Dem opposed to Clegg, a jealous rival, sniping from within the coalition or even pure investigative journalism?

A great start for the new politics anyhow.