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Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

PERHAPS the most lasting image and memory of last night's Rochester & Strood By-election, will be the effect of a Parliamentary Opposition front-bencher's use of that most risky of political tools, the "tweet" ...

Was image from #Rochester, snobbery?

Here's the image. Unlike the original tweeted image, I've obscured the resident's vehicle registration number. The issue of privacy was later cited by Mr Ware.

Tags for Forum Posts: image from Rochester, snobbery?

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So, Dermot, the sub-text is a matter of interpretation...

what was your interpretation?

Where I am from the English flag is plastered over your house to display that you are a nationalist, it is a way of marking territory of saying 'this is our area' and not your area, and is a way of making people from outside feel unwelcome; it is these notions that underpin UKIP.

ONE can understand the desire to portray the tweet as a pure blow against fascism.

There are difficulties with this noble and charitable interpretation:

  • Mr Ware said his flags were related to football
  • His flags are the flag of England, rather than swastikas or similar
  • The Islington MP said that the reason she tweeted "image from Rochester" was because she'd never seen so many flags on a house (one wonders whether she ought to get out more)
  • Within hours of the tweet, the MP was gone as an Oppo front-bencher. Ed Milliband has confessed to anger about it. If he invited his front-bencher to resign, then it's doubtful that the reason was that it was an anti-Nazi gesture. It could be that the unguarded tweet said more about New-Labour's champagne-socialism than was intended

the idea that she had never seen houses with flags on before isn't credible. She has obviously not travelled around her own constituency. There is more to south Islington that the brasseries of Upper Street.

Id have expected a stronger defence from a barrister

Clive,  You and Liz are correct, it is snobbery. But I also believe Thornberry read the situation correctly. She just should have turned twitter off.

But  Clive, I think in this case, however understandable from LD point of view, instead of continually trying to undermine Labour, you should start firing at UKIP.

Think of it as similar to Churchill getting into bed with Stalin in WW2 - Doing what's best for the country.

Not a new critique in any respect but Owen Jones hit the nail squarely on the head, describing what lies behind the kind of disdain exhibited by Thornberry and her ilk, in his book Chavs:

Because ‘class’ had for so long been a forbidden word within the political establishment, the only inequalities discussed by politicians and the media were racial ones. The white working class became another marginalised ethnic minority, and this meant that all their concerns were understood solely through the prism of race. They became presented as a lost tribe on the wrong side of history, disorientated by multiculturalism and obsessed with defending their identity from the cultural ravages of mass immigration. The rise of the idea of a ’white working class’ fuelled a new liberal bigotry. It was OK to hate the white working class, because they were themselves a bunch of racist bigots

It's so pleasant to feel so comfortably detached from all this crap.

As a Northern Irish blow-in, I have no idea why you English get so worked up over mere flegs.

Eddie, I think there're lessons to be learned here. About the quick (sometimes, mindless) use of Twitter and as an insight into the attitudes of some in New Labour.

I reckon before the next General Election, we'll see more in trouble over Twitter. I also reckon that Ed Milliband's immediate instinct was dead right: it could damage his party, comparable with Gordon Brown's Bigoted Woman remark in the 2010 election

Here's the Beeb's round-up of reaction to Image from #Rochester.

There's a lesson to be learned here, Clive.  About the over-rapid use of HoL to respond to a posting by OAE before checking his English usage with the Urban Dictionary.

Thanks Alan - you're on the ball as usual. The fleg contributor to the Urban Dictionary is so accurately comprehensive that I'm green with envy that I didn't write the fuckin thing meself, so I am. But al use it agane, so I wull. If Emily Thornberry had just tweeted 'flegs!', she'd have said everything she wanted to say, issued firm warning to her compatriots on the slippery semiotic slope of flegs, pulled the wool over Ed M's eyes, and kept her shadow job.

Don't know if you saw this OAE - well worth a watch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fy5CVALJuw

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