Dave chases the pink vote

[non sociopath skin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/02/david-cameron-gay-pride-apology

Shrewd career move, Dave!

Of course,any gays with stomachs strong enough to read some of our favourite "grass roots conservative" sites will take this with a VERY hefty pinch of Saxa ... :evilgrin:

The Skin

[T_i_B]

1. Grass roots conservative sites?

Oh I'm sure that Tories won't have too much bother pointing people towards openly gay tory blogger Ian Dale, who gets far more traffic then the likes of Free Britannia or Sterling Times.

Doesn't mean that people voting their sexuality are suddenly going to turn Tory though.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. bearing in mind the age of the average Tory party member

I would think they're more likely reading the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the SExpress than Iain Dale's blog or any Anglo-Freeper forum. The former are more reflective of the Tory grassroots.

I think the politically-active quarters of British GLBT know the sensibilities of the Tory grassroots.

[Nihil]

3. Wots that then?

> the politically-active quarters of British GLBT ...

The Greater London Bisexual Tories group?
Nah ... you'll never get them to break cover ...!

:evilgrin:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

4. there's probably some UK log-cabin equivalent

although I think most GLBT activists know what the Tory grassroots feel about them from reading the homophobic narratives from the Daily Hate.

[TheBigotBasher]

5. The Daily Hate,

which Zanu Labour have used through the last 8 years (after the collapse of the Daily Mirror) to sell policies and drive the Country in a historically unprecedented authoritarian direction.

The Zanu Labour Party, which claims so much for gay rights but EVERY single piece of that legislation was forced on it through the ECHR.

I would suggest avoiding old Labour working class grass roots if you want opinions in favour of social democracy. It is there you will find far more homophobia and racism than anywhere else. Of course, that is excused by poverty not downright ignorance exacerbated by fear sold to them by this Labour Government.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. Zanu Labour? Please

What have New Labour got to do with Mugabe's blend of black nationalism and economic Maoism?

I agree that Labour has its own homophobic tendencies, but I don't see any evidence that pro-Labour media is anywhere near as homophobic as the Tory tabloids.

[non sociopath skin]

14. Perhaps we should ask Peter Tatchell. He's been there.

The Skin

[Dutch]

8. I wish someone would "bash" your disgusting bigotry - and ignorance - towards working people.

Unfortunately, that's one prejudice that seems to be pretty much allowed these days.

[T_i_B]

12. Our trolling friend's anti-working class bigotry is also totally wrong

Not for the first time either.

I have to say that in my experience the worst bigotry occurs when people are not exposed to people of a different race or sexuality. Growing up in working class Sheffield racism was certainly less prevalent then it is in the more affluent and lillywhite parts of Essex for instance.

A prime example of this is an old friend of mine from Uni. When I first met him he admitted that he wasn't used to being in the company of non-white people having grown up in Frinton-on-Sea. As this was in Chelmsford, which is quite a lot more white then where I grew up I thought he was being daft. However, I'm glad to say that things change and as he's been exposed to more different cultures he's become a lot more tolerant.

[TheBigotBasher]

18. I guess I am completely wrong about white working class racism in the North

or the fact that Labour recently used bigotry to win an election in Leyton. Defeating a gay Lib Dem candidate by spreading smears that he was a paedophile.

British jobs for British workers was not a wolf whistle call at all.

Demonising Muslims has not been used by Labour spin doctors, after all, it is co-incidence that they turn up to the now obviously fake raids on their homes.

I have to say that in my experience the worst bigotry occurs when people are not exposed to people of a different race or sexuality.

I fully agree with you there.

[non sociopath skin]

20. And which of your examples proves "White Working Class Racism in the North"?

I see you've made it regionally specific, now. Thanks.

Bit of a bigot, aren't you?

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

21. OK - Just going from The British Nazi Party Membership List

Stupid Nazis by Region

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJaEOkd_7K3ACcUn8fj4sLQ&oid=4&output=image

[LeftishBrit]

24. Whereas the White Upper and Middle Class Racists in the South..

are more likely to work from within the Tory Party?

[TheBigotBasher]

25. Probably UKIP

British jobs for British people was a wolf whistle call to a Labour base that Brown failed to deliver on.

Brown is now trying "local homes for local people", another BNP wolf whistle and yet again will fail to deliver. Not least because such a policy is illegal. It is desperation, it probably will not be long before he comes out with hard working, white Britons.

They have already been running homophobic campaigns at local level and in one case spread rumours about a Lib Dem candidate that he was a paedophile. Rather than apologise the National Labour Party fought it all the way to Court and only dropped it when the Independent picked it up as a story.

[non sociopath skin]

9. I think that you are wrong. Period.

I live in such an area and see no more - and probably less - racism and homophobia here than I did in the upmarket, white-collar solidly-Tory area in which I lived previously. And a helluva lot more empathy and compassion.

And BTW, much as I dislike New Labour, to try to liken it to ZANU is, IMHO, a travesty which belittles the miseries inflicted upon the Zimbabwean people.

As they say in Old Labour Land, "Keep the ball on the bottom, marra".

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

11. Zanu Labour - A very easy comparison

According to The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Poverty levels, at the time the recession started, amongst those without dependent children is higher now than at any point since 1961.

Wages have stagnated with median wages having risen by only £1 per week since 2006. In the mean time the pay of a Member of Parliament is now higher than 95% of the population they serve.

Housing was at crisis point before the depression started, it is now a disaster. According to the Lib Dem Leader, there are 70% more people on the Housing Waiting List than in 1997. The budget for house building is slashed again in the Labour “no cuts” budget (it was already below 1997 levels in cash terms), and the cross Party supported Local Housing Allowance will be effectively scrapped next year in the “no cuts” Labour budget. Despite increasing case numbers, the overall HB budget will be cut by £125 million.

The Prime Minister lies about public expenditure cuts that appear in his own budget.

We were lied to about a War.

We were told that Britain does not torture and now we have this.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6466430.ece

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt.

The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers…

..The waterboarding claims will fuel the debate about police conduct that has raged in the wake of hundreds of public complaints of brutality at the anti-G20 protests in April.

The part of the inquiry focusing on alleged police brutality has been taken over by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. It is examining the conduct of six officers connected to drug raids in November in which four men and a woman were arrested at addresses in Enfield and Tottenham. Police said they found a large amount of cannabis and the suspects were charged with importation of a Class C drug. The case was abandoned four months later when the Crown Prosecution Service said it would not have been in the public interest to proceed. It is understood that the trial, by revealing the torture claims, would have compromised the criminal investigation into the six officers.

For cannabis?

Children are still being added to the DNA database daily. An illegal database anyway.

We are now one of the most spied upon Nations on earth. The Government no longer knows how many databases it has or how many are cross referenced for illegal data mining.

The House of Lords managed to stop Parliament being abolished through what was essentially a Nu Labour Enabling Act, with the innocuous name The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. A bill that would have given Ministers power to abolish ANY legislation without recourse to Parliament.

An opposition MP was arrested for doing his job. Nine Anti Terror Police went to his house.

Labour have consistently used Islamaphobia to drive through an agenda of fear. Of all the terror raids conducted in such a high profile manner, almost all have led to no charge or if they have got to caught a not guilty finding.

(added) As for Nationalism, playing right in to the hands of the BNP, in fact giving them their Euro campaign slogan, British Jobs for British Workers". Of course, there is also the fact the Gordon Brown blames all of the problems facing Britain on Foreigners. In particular the US, except of course when he was in the US. The London capital boom and City had nothing to do with it of course.

I do not remember those being traditional Labour values, they are indeed a lot closer to Zanu PF than Labour values.

[non sociopath skin]

13. IMHO they are neither.

But if it makes you happy to pretend we're like Zimbabwe, who am I to stop your fun?

The Skin

[T_i_B]

15. It's a popular term on RW blogs

Especially with swear bloggers such as Devil's Kitchen and Mr Eugenides who prefer to simply hurl as much abuse as possible rather then make rational arguments.

The other one you see from RW blogs is "NuLab". Why I don't know. It's not much of an insult to be compared to Nu-metal or Nu-rave if you as me.

[TheBigotBasher]

16. Is this the origin?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article5254217.ece

I remember Nu-Lab from before then. Which I had though was always a play on Zanu PF anyway; or another way of saying New New Labour in response to the appointment of Brown as PM.

(Zanu Labour and NuLab are both in common use on Lib Dem blogs as well - in fact any blog that is not LabourList).

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. No, I can find a casual use of it from April 2005 in a RW expat Brit blog

http://www.di2.nu/200504/27.htm

No explanation of how brilliantly witty the term they've coined there is, so it seems to have been in use before then.

[non sociopath skin]

19. Seen NuLab used on many left -leaning sites including this one.

Indeed, I've used it meself.

A bit different from the ZANU tag, I'd have thought ...

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

23. I've seen NuLab used for several years and not just on the right - but not Zanu Labour

The latter is much worse. Indeed not very much better than 'Godwinizing' by calling everyone whom you don't like a Nazi.

[TheBigotBasher]

22. It hardly makes me happy that we have a crypto fasicist Government

and that the only Party that is likely to take any real action to reverse much of the measures that have put Britain into this state has no real chance of doing anything about it.

Cameron is unlikely to do very much to role back the database state, except in areas where it will reduce expenditure (ID cards will not save much nor will it provide the money to stave off giant tax increases or cuts elsewhere).


Getting back on topic, you may wave a stick at Cameron and the Tories, and shout homophobes but Labour and their record on gays is not one to be proud of. As I refer to earlier.

[non sociopath skin]

26. Interesting, isn't it, that the Freepers think that Obama is crypto-fascist ...

... and you think that Brown is.

Yes, Labour's record on gays is not brilliant but you might be interested to reflect upon whose initiative led to the decriminalizing of homosexuality and on whose watch Clause 28 was introduced.

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

27. The Freepers

also think that Obama is a communist so I am not going to give them much regard.

you might be interested to reflect upon whose initiative led to the decriminalizing of homosexuality

Both the 1967 legalistion of homosexuality and clause 28 were both master-strokes of backbench Parliamentary democracy.

The legalisation of homosexuality was first proposed in the House by Humprhrey Berkely, the then pretty much openly gay Conservative MP for Lancaster. His bill got a second reading and it passed 164 to 107. Then Parliament dissolved so the bill fell.

Leo Abse, the then Labour MP for Pontypool who became the main sponsor of the bill because Berkely lost his seat. His argument to encourage his collegaues to vote for it suggested that homosexuality was a mental illness, but rather than punish the illness, he illness should be treated before boys become men.

Not really the most Liberal of arguments, but it did allow some of the more macho MPs to support the bill. There was no Government support for the bill. So Abse used the power of backbenchers to get it through. He persuaded the Government to do two things firstly to grant it some time, to stop it being being "spoken out" and then if they were not going to support it on whip, to allow a free vote so that the Government was not seen as opposing it on whip.

So it became law. Very bad law, in that as with most backbench legislation many factors are not taken into consideration. Gay sex was illegal (and to some extent may still be) if there is a couple in one room and someone else in the house (they do not have to be in the same room). Threesomes were illegal and even gay nightclubs were effectively illegal.

Clause 28 was equally a back bench measure which was effectively a sledge hammer to crack a nut.

Lord Halsbury (an independent Peer), proposed a Bill in response to books available in ILEA libraries and some other (largely London) local Authorities, entitled “An Act to refrain local authorities from promoting homosexuality”.

The main books at the time that caused the controversy were, "The Playbook for Kids about Sex", "Jenny lives with Eric and Martin" and "The Milkman's on his Way". The appropriateness of these books and the age group to which they they were targeted even today I would question.

Despite the publicity surrounding the bill and of course the Daily Mail headlines, the bill was opposed by the Government as unnecessary, unworkable and open to misrepresentation.

Nonetheless, it passed through the House of Lords. They had a habit of giving the Governement a bloody nose then. The bill was adopted in the Commons by Jill Knight (MP for Birmingham Edgbaston) in response to similar books being prroduced by Birmingham and Liverpool LEAs.

The Government made clear it would not support the bill and it failed.

The campaign for a law to control these publications did not end with the defeat of the bill. Members used another bill, a Government bill to introduce it. At Committee Stage of the Local Government Bill, David Wilshire introduced an amendment for a similar law. This became Clause 28. It was again championed by Jill Knight and with the bill having gone through Parliament, the then Minister for Local Government, was essentially forced to accept it in to the bill.

Despite its passage, the Government made clear through the then Department of Education and Science, "Section 28 does not affect the activities of school governors, nor of teachers,..", "...It will not prevent the objective discussion of homosexuality in the classroom, nor the counselling of pupils concerned about their sexuality."

For better or worse, these moves to force an unwilling Government to take action are unlikely to ever happen again. That is bad for Parliament and the Country as the Executive is not properly or effectively tackled.

[non sociopath skin]

28. Excellent rewrite, there, Comrade.

Er ... who exactly are you, Masked Man? ... :evilgrin:

The Skin

[TheBigotBasher]

29. LOL

Not exactly a re-write. Tell me what part was incorrect?

[LeftishBrit]

31. Interesting and important part of history...

Just noting that Berkeley, though he was indeed a Tory at the time, was one of the most unlikely Tories ever (centre-left, not to mention gay) and soon afterwards switched to the Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War. He later switched to the SDP, and then back to Labour again.

I must be one of the few people to have actually read 'Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin'. It was available in some public libraries, but so far as I know it was never used in schools, or read widely, and the Daily Hate-Mail were just using it as an excuse for attacking gays, liberal teachers, 'loony-left' councils, etc. and demanding censorship. As I remember, it was a dull-but-worthy book, similar in style to the dreadful didactic fiction we had in our school library, with titles like 'Jane and Jeremy Have a Guided Tour in Iceland'. The whole episode would have been a laughably ridiculous piece of hype, except for the way it was used to damage our educational system through Clause 28.

[TheBigotBasher]

32. I actually agree with you there

I pointed out that behind the campaign to introduce clause 28 was a high profile Daily Mail campaign. Jenny lives with Eric and Martin was one example used at the time. In Parliament, the Mail had been circulating a number of others to members of the Lords and the Commons.

It is not unusual for MPs, looking to their seats, to respond to newspaper hype. Especially when a key group of lobbyists was at the time the church.

Certainly this Government has not been immune from playing to and reacting to newspaper hype campaigns. In fact, under Blair it was very successful at doing so.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

30. fascism?

No I don't think so. Neoliberalism is an ugly system in its own right without conflating it with the extremities of fascism.

The UK has little resemblance to a fascist state formation and New Labour isn't organised among fascist ideological lines, but among social populist and Market Liberal lines.

[TheBigotBasher]

33. Have a read of the Rowntree report on the Database Society

It represents only a small part of Government monitoring. We no longer need jackbooted enforcers.

[TheBigotBasher]

6. Peter Tatchell has some interesting views about Labour and Gay rights,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/02/gay-same-sex-marriage-gordon-brown

[non sociopath skin]

10. I like Tatchell very much and admire his courage ...

... but he isn't always right and he certainly isn't always in agreement with the policies and strategies of other LGBT activists.

Bet you wouldn't catch him to referring to NuLab as ZANU Labour BTW ....

The Skin