Labour Party Verdict on Cllr Sheila Peacock?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on Sunday

Forgive me, I don't know. Partly this is because the single book you ask for covers an enormous area. Also because I am out of date and am bound to have missed something good and recently published. I don't recommend books unless I've read them 
Also because I don't know you. Once long ago,  I had a temporary job on a social work course. My advice  to students who asked me was to borrow several books from the University Library - which was nearby and not a bad range. Then to try a few and stick with those which were well written, lively, and generally with a style and depth, and maybe even a sense of drama a and sense of  humour; which appealed to the student reading them.

A final thought. Books of words are losing their primacy. Socialism without song, poetry, music, plays, films, jokes, cartoons, and live people face to face, is like a lion with no roar & no rumbling...

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on Sunday

Neil how about we ask the moderators, Hugh Flouch and Liz Ixer to move your book request to a new topic page??

Permalink Reply by Brian Mahoney on Sunday

Animal Farm.

Permalink Reply by Mark Michaels yesterday

Come intellectual fraudster 

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin'
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'

____

["T]his Party selects candidates largely on their ability to attract groups of voters identified by race or religion, rather than a general appeal that transcends ethnicity, nationality etc."

And that tribalism is thanks to people like you and your voting practices. Although to be fair, in instances when you don't ramble off on a tangent and write coherently, it's more "global warming, global warming, the sky is falling" than "white, white, white", "islamophobia" and on and on. But it's all cut from the same Marxist-Islamist cloth as far as the party's selection of candidate's goes.

__

"Independent Socialist".  

Ha ha ha ha. Maybe the greatest oxymoron I've ever read.

__

"I don't care that much for peoples' affiliations so long as they do a decent job taking up local issues and defending their wards."

You see Neil, running for office on one's record and actual qualifications is vastly more difficult than running for office against straw men like Donald Trump/Nigel Farage and exploiting the emotions of the irrational electorate by stirring up racial and ethnic hatred with sexuality thrown in. That sort of rhetoric works well.

Just look at how in politics the most incompetent people soar to great heights of power merely by stirring up race and class hatred, e.g, David Lammy, Sadiq Khan-man; and the latest entry to the list Zohran Mamdami. Anyone can tell you what Lammy thinks of Trump and Farage, but they couldn't tell you what he has actually done while in office for decades besides enrich himself. 

___

"[C]ould you please take a little time and be specific on  your remark against councillors spending 'time protesting about Palestine" [rather] "than traffic in the borough',  Do you think its not possible to do both?"

I am happy to pull out the bouncy ball that moves on top of the words for you:

-The councillors are elected to represent constituents.

-Those constituents live in various neighbourhoods in a given area. In this instance, the given area is situated in a city named London, which is geographically located in England. 

-Those neighbourhoods, therefore, are not located in Gaza or Judea and Samaria and the councillors are not elected to represent those places.

Is that exercise in the axiomatic specific enough for you? Probably not, because you weren't really looking to have something clarified to you; you were just looking for a springboard to make yet another proclamation of "genocide, genocide, genocide".

But I responded anyway because I don't make my rare appearances here for you; I make them for third parties to help ensure they are not seduced into believing that your ability to post anyone you might disagree with into oblivion in no case means you have something reasoned and empirical to say. 

 ___

"Can you recommend a decent history of left-wing political thought?"

I prefer the actual sources. Plato (in an archaic way), Rousseau, Hegel and Marx & Engels will give you the foundational understanding of the madness. Then a little Trotsky is worthwhile. (Heck, maybe he is an "independent socialist" because he showed what happens to party apostates.)   

Then come the ones I think are the most diabolical to the modern world-because what they advocated has come to pass: Gramsci and Woodrow Wilson. Gramsci wrote about revolution not with guns but by taking over the institutions methodically--today a mission fully accomplished.  Wilson's focus was on using the judicial system to "legislate from the bench". 100 years on you can see his writings in practice every day when one of these District Court judges block the president's orders on wildly unconstitutional grounds (which is why invariably they have all been overruled on appeal). 

There is John Dewey who recognised the value of Leftist indoctrination via the educational system - very successfully so.  Then Cloward & Piven who advocated overwhelming the welfare benefits system. Look what that has become - a couple of weeks ago the Chancellor destroyed an entire industry to finance the further extension of benefits to her base. I have mentioned previously that in this country 2/3rds take out more in benefits than they pay in. Permanent underclass = permanent political power.

Finally, if you want just one single not so long book that is the tactical playbook for the posters here, I highly recommend Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. Or just read the Wikipedia summary of it. That book will help you really see the strings behind the most incessant posters here.

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton 22 hours ago

Neil, a good friend of mine saw your request and emailed me this list.
George Orwell- Road to Wigan Pier
Michael Foot – Biography of Aneurin Bevan
E P Thompson – The Making of the English Working Class
G D H Cole – A history of British Socialist Thought
Raymond Williams - Culture and Society
Jon Cruddas – A Century of Labour
David Torrance - the Wild Men – a history of the first Labour Government

Film – Ken Loach – Spirit of '45

Having a rethink I came up with a different suggestion. This is for you to look at the lists of two left wing publishers: Verso and Pluto. They have a wide variety of books and most available as ebooks. Their lists have descriptions. You are perhaps more likely to come across stuff you might read for pleasure. Most books in their catalogues are not authored only by white males.

Permalink Reply by neil 11 hours ago

Thanks for taking the time to post this.

I will check out some of these. EP Thompson is a famous work. Amd Orwell of course.

I've got a huge backlog of reading to get through and i just can't pass by a charity bookshop without purchasing more! Biography of Rostropovich was in yesterday's haul. If you see Galina's memoirs please let me know. 

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton 9 hours ago

Yeah second hand bookshops, lucky  us. Once I filled my shelves from the Oxfam bookshop in Crouch End! But my eyesight got worse and it was ebooks and a Kindle. Then the KIndle stopped working, so now I read on the screen.

Thanks for the link to the Empire videos.

Initially I had to smile when I saw what it served up as similar videos. But of course that was simply algorithms - stuff linked to Gaza which might interest me: Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Sara Roy, Chris Hedges, Amira Hass, Gideon Levy.  Luckily, it won't serve up Mark Michaels with these video options. I don't wish anyone Christmas tidings of discomfort.

I think I've given away both of my Saul Alinsky books. But I've still got an e-copy of articles he wrote for Playboy. It covers some of the same stuff when  he claimed to be researching Al Capone. A lot of it is sexist too. 

Permalink Reply by Gordon T 9 hours ago

Neil, Galina Vishnevskaya's memoir? Oxfam Online Bookshop has it: : https://onlineshop.oxfam.org.uk/galina/product/HD_302701006?sku=HD_...

Yours for a tenner plus postage. You're welcome.

Permalink Reply by neil 11 hours ago

Thanks. Indeed, Haringey is not located in or near "in Gaza or Judea and Samaria". 

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. I'll check this out. 

Podcast recommendation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgcAQFS4xjY  (Empire Podcast miniseries)

Their guest expert on Gaza and the ancient world is Josephine Quinn.  I am reading her history of the ancient world "How the World Made the West". 

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton 8 hours ago

I would suggest there that there are some things closer  to Haringey and Enfield than are dreamt of in our philosophy. Closer too I learned on BBC radio 4 today, to mothers and babies in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza still under fire. As indeed are Palestinian farmers in Judea and Samaria. Our Haringey elected councillors aren't banned from shedding human tears and feeling human empathy and human rage.

A former Israeli, Haim Bresheet, lived in Muswell Hill. As a small boy he lived with his parents in a house close to the Gaza Strip. They were allocated the house as Jewish refugees. One day two women came walking over the fields to the house. It had been their home; they were refugees in Gaza. Then administered by Eqypt. Haim's mother welcomed them in and told them they should get their home back.

Haim was recently arrested with others demonstrating near the home of the Israeli ambassador. Anyone who thinks that time and place are nothing to do with London and the UK is badly informed.

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