What a week Churchill mark two snuffs it then Foot pops his clogs strange a right whinger and a left whinger going at the same time could be a death from a broken heart? I no who ill miss more and thats Churchill mark two a donkey jacket at the cenotaph ffs.

Originally Posted by Charm_City

the English would have you believe that tolerance is a particularly English virtue, indeed that tolerance is one of the defining characteristics of the Englishman. But for the bile spewing 'tards who use this site as a playpen, and wrap themselves in a cloak of Englishness, it is obvious that tolerance only extends as far as those who subscribe to their world view.

C_C

Are we having a Scottish moment?

Enlightenment, thank you for that. Do you happen to have a link for any of his speeches and/or quotes? Can't say that I agree with much of his politics, but do admire his genuine concern for human suffering and besides I'm a sucker for political prose from all quarters.

Originally Posted by WhiteRabbit

Originally Posted by Charm_City

the English would have you believe that tolerance is a particularly English virtue, indeed that tolerance is one of the defining characteristics of the Englishman. But for the bile spewing 'tards who use this site as a playpen, and wrap themselves in a cloak of Englishness, it is obvious that tolerance only extends as far as those who subscribe to their world view.

C_C

Are we having a Scottish moment?

Enlightenment, thank you for that. Do you happen to have a link for any of his speeches and/or quotes? Can't say that I agree with much of his politics, but do admire his genuine concern for human suffering and besides I'm a sucker for political prose from all quarters.

No - we're having a cheap and nasty bottle of Malbec moment. The 'Scottish moment' is when I pass out in a pool of my own effluvia while singing 'Kishmul's Galley' off key - that comes after the second bottle. Not long now.

C_C

Decent man of principle: a convinced Socialist (and Puritan Liberal throwback!) who, like Ernie Bevin, had no time for Communist tyranny. To his great credit, unlike many during the 1930s, he perceived the dangers from authoritarian regimes of the Right and the Left, and did not shy in the face of the great personal calumny directed at him for speaking against appeasement & warning about Stalin.

Michael Foot was a great speaker, a real champion of the House of Commons/ Parliamentary Sovereignty, and a political writer of real substance - rather like William Hague, in fact!

He was, however, probably a poor practical politician - and a Foot premiership (never, in truth, a remote possibility; probably much to his relief!) would have had unfortunate consequences for Britain.

Had he got a First he'd probably have remained at Oxford, become a "Don", and eventually a Professor, and he'd have been a great one! Can imagine generations of undergrads cutting their teeth in tutorial debates; having their assumptions/ prejudices tested to the extreme, and then emerging into the world to do great deeds all the better for the experience.

Sad that he's died, but he had a good innings: IMO, we always benefit from thinkers/ speakers of his ilk, whatever their political convictions, and in the Great ledger of Life Michael Foot was a man "who done good".

R.I.P.

I think the bloke was excellent, and thank him for his service to the Conservative party. He did such a fantastic job of making Labour unelectable, he absolutely must have been a Tory plant. What a winner.

In the same vein though, it kind of looks like that with Gordon today. Oh the irony (assuming he isn't a genuine plant), that his lasting legacy to the nation and his party will be fiscal holocaust and punting the Conservatives back into power.

This is a recurring theme with Labour politicians. I suppose there's the occasional bad apple, like Bliar, but on the whole they're not so bad when looked at as vote-winners for Conservatives.

Originally Posted by CAARPS

Originally Posted by rickshaw-major

Originally Posted by CAARPS

Originally Posted by rickshaw-major

Originally Posted by CAARPS

Sorry Parapauk, you was right, he’s just a thick tw*t :D

I see you are doing the intelligent bit. I suggest you leave parapauk out of the equation - he can think.

You are just a lefty dumbfcuk!

Why thank you, some people say the nicest things

At least my Geography and grasp of cold war demographics would appear to be a bit better than someone’s though

But not mine. I served in West Germany for 12 years and am well aware of cold war demographics - which is why I am virulently anti-socialist. Oh that and the fact that the current lot have fcuked our country over - again.

My most profuse apologies, it must just be a problem with geography then

When I served in West Germany it was to the left of the East (the clue being in the word West I suppose) :D

Read my earlier posts. I was in sweaty sock land when I initially replied and facing South so the fomer IGB was to my LEFT. Now I am back in Bosnia it is to my NORTH. :D

Originally Posted by Bugsy

Originally Posted by rickshaw-major

But not mine. I served in West Germany for 12 years and am well aware of cold war demographics - which is why I am virulently anti-socialist. Oh that and the fact that the current lot have fcuked our country over - again.

They really seem to have done a thorough number on you. First they appear to have convinced you that Capitalism is without doubt the very best system for you, personally, and in addition, that what went on in East Germany and other COMECON countries had anything at all to do with Socialism.

I'd always pegged you as a fairly intelligent and sensible geezer, so I'm a bit surprised that you fell for such bullshit.

MsG

Thank you. The COMECON and the argument that the Commies were not really socialists as such does not hold much water MsG. They tried to be and the experiment failed - just like ours!

Originally Posted by Charm_City

I had no time for the political party he led. However, Foot was a representative of particular strand of upper-middle class socialism and, more importantly, possessed of a particular type of decency that is seldom evident these days.

The reaction to his death evidenced here is 'interesting' - the English would have you believe that tolerance is a particularly English virtue, indeed that tolerance is one of the defining characteristics of the Englishman. But for the bile spewing 'tards who use this site as a playpen, and wrap themselves in a cloak of Englishness, it is obvious that tolerance only extends as far as those who subscribe to their world view.

C_C

Somebody disagree with your world view did they? Oh and I am a Sweaty through and through. And I am not a fcuk tard but well done as it must have taken you ages to think of that one.

Good assement of the Commie…


Good Old Footy? No, a dangerous, deluded hypocrite
By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN
Last updated at 9:05 AM on 05th March 2010
Comments (99)
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It wasn't so much the olive-green donkey jacket which men of my father's generation objected to. It was the fact that the Labour leader laying the wreath at the Cenotaph sat out the Second World War and let others do his fighting for him.
We still don't know the real reason Michael Foot managed to avoid military service. Some put it down to his pious Quaker pacifism qualifying him for a free pass. Others say it was ill-health, a combination of asthma and a skin complaint - though plenty of asthmatic boys with acne were at the front of the queue to sign up for the fight against the Nazis.
Foot preferred to sneer from the safety of the sidelines, even publishing a book attacking far better men than he for indulging Hitler throughout the 1930s, ignoring the indisputable reality that this 'appeasement' bought Britain time to re-arm, which ultimately equipped us to stand alone and ensured our survival as a free nation.

Michael Foot never fought in the Second World War
While his Left-wing contemporaries, including Tony Benn, were enlisting in the RAF, the Army and the Royal Navy, Foot was keeping the home fires burning at his luxury apartment in Mayfair, curled up on the sofa in a brocade smoking jacket, reading George Bernard Shaw.
Even if he was physically unsuited for the front line, there were plenty of other ways in which he could have done his bit for the war effort.
Foot could have joined the Home Guard and patrolled the White Cliffs of Dover with a breadknife strapped to a walking stick.
He could have found useful work in the munitions factories, or got himself a reserved occupation in the coalmines alongside those working-class heroes he lionised throughout his life.
When the British Expeditionary Force was being evacuated from Dunkirk, Foot could have joined the flotilla of small ships as a medical orderly, administering First Aid to the fallen as they retreated from the beaches. I'm sure Lord Beaverbrook would have loaned him his yacht.

The former Labour leader, pictured with his faithful dog, campaigned for unilateral disarmament

Instead, Foot opted to talk a good fight in the fashionable, self-indulgent socialist salons of the spoilt upper-middle classes and the leader columns of the Evening Standard.
Plenty of other Standard staffers fought and died in World War II. When I joined the paper in the late Seventies, there was a memorial to them in the foyer.
Foot was a standing affront to their sacrifice. But then he had previous. While one of his heroes, the trades union leader Jack Jones, and hundreds of other idealistic young British Leftists raced to fight the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, Foot stayed home.
There's always been a fine line between conscientious objection and cowardice. That's why so many of the tributes to Good Old Footy's 'bravery' this week had such a hollow ring.
Obituaries have pointed up Foot's friendship with Enoch Powell, who certainly wasn't afforded such glowing accolades on his death.
Yet Powell once said his greatest regret was not laying down his life for his country. No danger of Footy ever dying in the last ditch, unless it was on Hampstead Heath while out walking the dog.
His alleged asthma never prevented him delivering lungbursting speeches to CND rallies.
While campaigning for a nuclear-free world is a noble, if deluded, aim, Foot took it one step beyond.
He wanted unilateral disarmament - demanding Britain and the West give up our nukes while thousands of Russian warheads were pointed in our direction. You have to be a real 'intellectual' to come up with something so stupid and suicidal.
What were his motives? You might have thought that having survived the threat of Nazi totalitarianism, thanks to the sacrifices of others, Foot would have been alert to the equal dangers of communism. Stalin and Hitler were two sides of the same coin.
Far from it. Like so many other misguided men and women of his generation, Foot was a Soviet stooge.


Although not a paid-up agent of Moscow, he was certainly one of the most prominent of Lenin's 'useful idiots'. The Labour Party was crawling with them in the Sixties, Seventies and early Eighties.
This may be all very well in an impressionable young student in a Doctor Who scarf and a Che Guevara T-shirt, but in a man who aspired to be Prime Minister it is nothing short of calamitous. Foot never grew up.
Yet still his apologists cite this as evidence of a humanitarian, romantic bent - as if a love of Hazlitt is enough to mitigate a willingness to surrender one's country to a hostile foreign nuclear power.
The revisionists have been out in force this week, their most ludicrous claim being that Good Old Footy was the man who saved the Labour Party for civilisation and democracy.


While we expect no better from Kinnochio, who can be relied upon to unpeel the onion at the drop of a Red Flag, from New Labourites a more hard-headed assessment might have been in order.
The truth is that Foot's leadership brought Labour to the brink of extinction. He gave free rein to the assorted Trots and spacemen infiltrating the party in the early Eighties. The 'longest suicide note in history' would have turned into a death sentence for Labour if a few more leading figures such as Roy Hattersley had walked out with the Gang of Four and joined the SDP.
It was Right-wing trades unionists such as the engineers' Terry Duffy and the electricians' Eric Hammond, who kept the Labour flame burning, not the Hampstead dinner-party set.
God help us if Footy had ever become Prime Minister.
His obituaries only go to prove once again that being of the Left means never having to say you're sorry. They'll even forgive him freeloading off the hated Tory newspaper baron Beaverbrook, who lavished upon Foot a country house and fabulous holidays in the South of France.

This titan of the Left enjoyed rich men's hospitality every bit as much as Peter Mandelson does today.
Foot's ocean-going hypocrisy is matched only by that of those New Labourites singing his praises this week. He stood up for what he believed in, they say. He was the true voice of dissent, unafraid to express his pacifist, socialist opinions.
Yet when Walter Wolfgang, a near contemporary of Foot, had the audacity to heckle Jack Straw over Iraq at a Labour conference, these same people had him thrown out by the police.
And when a poet started reading out the names of Iraq and Afghanistan war dead at the Cenotaph, they had her arrested under an act introduced deliberately to crush dissent.
If Good Old Footy turned up at the Cenotaph these days and started spouting his pacifist protest slogans, he'd get the collar of his donkey jacket felt before his wreath had touched the ground.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...#ixzz0hIQoirTb

A unbiased opinion from the Daily Mail?