I’ve finally registered what really annoys me about many of the Self-Proclaimed Decent Left: they don’t appear to have any sense of fun.
Dressing as a clown and claiming that capitalism is boring is a harmless and fun thing to do. Slating people for doing the former ("oooh, it’s so bourgeois and decadent") is, well, just fucking lame.
General rule of thumb: if you find yourself empathising with the cops at a demo more than the protesters, that’s a reasonable sign that you’re descending into blimpish senility – as well as infallible, certain proof that you’re not leftwing.
(I’ve some sympathy for Lenin’s take: "We pay the police’s wages – it’s us who should be entitled to knock them about a bit". It’s interesting the way that people’s attitudes to the police are often diametrically opposed to their attitudes towards other public servants: right-wingers tend to think that public sector workers are idle spongers but that the coppers are great, whereas lefties’ views tend to go the other way…)
As the Holy Roman Empire was proverbially neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire, so the "Decent Left", who seem to think it’s more culpable to give your mates olive paste on toast when they come for tea than to hand them zillion dollar reconstruction contracts in another country without even the pretence of a tendering process, are neither decent nor left.
"[R]ight-wingers tend to think that public sector workers are idle spongers but that the coppers are great.."
I don’t!
Just thought you’d like to know.
For the record.
There’s another wonderful line down in the comments from Gene:
You know, there is something to be said for (if I may use such an old-fashioned word) dignified protest, like that of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.
I have forwarded his words to Coretta Scott King; I’m sure she will be glad to know that the Decent Left still believe there was "something to be said" for the late Reverend, even though he did appeal solidly to the politics of communalism and was opposed to the USA’s humanitarian intervention in Vietnam.
DD – really? I assume this reflects a dislike of bullying bootboys, rather than a newfound love for civil service penpushers…?
As a rabid right whinger I’d just like to point out that I do not think coppers are just great. Idle spongers the lot of them.
But then I do think my views might be slightly coloured by the Detective Sergeant who nicked my girlfriend while investigating me.
Surely the police are just the armed wing of the civil service. I’m not fond of them myself.
John,
Are your employers entitled to knock you about a bit?
Coem to think of it, we pay the firefighters’ wages. It’s we who whould be entitled to set fire to buildings with people trapped inside. Obviously.
"Some sympathy" coming from the whole "we pay their wages so they bloody well ought to act like our servants not our masters" thing, rather than a literal endorsement of violence.
John, you’re too soft. Smack em up, I say! It’s the only language they understand. God knows I’ve tried to speak to them in a sufficiently mono-syllabic fashion, but they just grunt and repeat the phrase "If you don’t get off my foot, sir, you’ll be arrested. And then I’ll bugger you with this truncheon".
Tim, there’s a book in that story.
Or an ITV 1 Drama Premiere.
Len, is there a convention in the SWP that party members are allowed (or even obliged I suppose) to nick each other’s jokes and pass them off as their own? Because the one that John links to above comes from Mark Thomas’ stand-up act in the 1980s, quoted in the book "Reasons To Be Cheerful" by Mark Steel.
Mark Thomas isn’t an SWP member, but I suppose the convention would be that we don’t believe in property. As my mother-in-law used to say to me, "you are awful, but I like you".
Dick Emery was Lenin’s mother-in-law? The history books will have to be re-written after this one
Lenin is married? And his mother-in-law *used* to say …? what happened to her? And was she fat?