Beautiful sunny day, and with all that is happening, thank heavens I’m off to France later to have a little peek at the elections there. Perfect time of year for France, the government there is not causing through its sheer ineptitude a petrol shortage, the election is finely poised, and there is no chance of George Galloway winning anything.
Au revoir, a bientot et vive la cornemuse (sorry, but you’ll have to look it up … clue, George and Alex Salmond ought to know)
by
"Your country needs you. Your world needs you. Your time is now."
Our politics is a mess. We have leaders who can't or shouldn't be allowed to lead. We endure governments that lie, and seek to undermine our democratic values. And we are confronted with policies that serve the interests of the privileged few. It's no surprise that so many of us feel frustrated, let down and drawn to ask, 'But what can I do?' That question is the inspiration behind this book. It's a question regularly posed to Alastair Campbell, not least in reaction to The Rest is Politics, the chart-topping podcast he presents with former Tory Cabinet minister Rory Stewart. His answer, typically, is forthright and impassioned. We cannot afford to stand on the sidelines. If we think things need to change, then we need to change them, and that means getting involved. But What Can I Do? provides each of us with the motivation and the tools to make a difference. Opening with an acute analysis of our polarised world and the populists and extremists who have shaped it, it goes on to show how we help transform it. It explains how we can develop our skills of advocacy and persuasion. It draws on Alastair’s long experience, as well as on role models and lessons from history, to offer practical tips on starting and leading a campaign. It offers advice on developing confidence and coping with criticism and setbacks. And it sets out the practical steps by which we can become political players ourselves. Part call to arms, part practical handbook, But What Can I Do? will prove required reading for anyone who wants to help change things for the better.
Indeed, a perfect time of the year for France – off to Nice next week for our annual and by now traditional Easter holiday. (Not many bagpipes there…)
The public have spoken, but, the political chatterati (?) neither want, or refuse, to accept this criticism of the political stalemate that plays out before us. Watching Douglas’s total waffle on QT last night, looking, desperately, for political points you realise how distant you are getting from reality. The public momentum against political ineptitude and denial is leaving you all behind. Can we start again?
Bon voyage, restez la.
So, Alistair. Miliband the Unelectable, otherwise known as Kinnock Mark II. Has the penny dropped yet?
Anyway, been asked several times in last few days to down to Brive to see Scarlets play, a week or two after next, how far will you be from there, when you get there, cut off from life? I’ll call by, if I get around there, if you speak to me special, I will introduce George to wotshername, yourdaughter, that is it, Grace. George North, meet Grace Campell – got a good ring to it? We are only dreaming and should stop it. But Grace can meet George whenever she wants, no buts or wotsits. say no more.
Right I’ve had 3 attempts on free translation sites and the closest I’ve got to an english sounding result is:
“Goodbye, soon and have a deep the bagpipes” – the same to you Alastair.
And yeah you’ll have no worries in France, whoever heard of strikes in France from lorrydrivers, farmers, etc lol
I’ll try to get a link but just wanted to mention I read an excellent short comment by a doctor yesterday, explaining from a free market perspective how the NHS reforms will not work. We all know the arguments from the other perspective but this was a very strong attack from the other perspective.
I think this government should carry on Tony Blair’s good work on this, but also listen to he himself talk about the challenges they faced, and how they got some things wrong and needed to reverse them.
In France earlier this week and very nice it was to get away from here.
I have never been to Bradford, so can only guess at what played out there. Galloway is something of a pied piper in certain communities – though I’m interested in the idea that Labour didn’t see this coming. Makes it sound like quite a strange phenomenon. Which GG is, of course.
Bugger it, George North 90, Grace, he was the wotsits of whatevers that can make whatever each and other kind to happen in present human race, by just running down a rugger wing and smashing anything that is in front of him, Grace,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW5Ig49sVa4
George,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAR8v33JGzE
needs a wife…..
Monsiour Hurot, en la France, pish,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaF-4EHPy4w
I agree George won’t win an election but serious questions have to be asked when the party can’t win a by election in a safe Labour seat in the middle of a crises created by an incompetent Govt. I was a member of Bradford West CLP in the 80s. I know the constituency well. I have to say hard question have to be asked because it really is a safe seat.
I suspect we selected the wrong candidate. I suspect we went for a PC approach rather than a pragmatic approach. Wards like Manningham and University have a high Muslim population. Wards like Wibsey and Heaton are predominantly white squeezed middle. So getting the candidate right here was crucial. So why wasn’t Terry Rooney former MP for the neighbouring Bradford North selected? He had a good base in West as he was former chair of University ward?
And where was the national presence? How many shadow cabinet members visited, or did we just assume this was a stroll in the park? If we still had a Malcolm Tucker figure at the centre of our organisation there is no way we would’ve lost.
What pains me even more is we have made the same mistake in London with the mayoralty. We have the wrong candidate who will get my vote on a tribal basis but who is in no way the right candidate.
This week has seen Cameron compared to Cororpal Jones. Well, if we can’t we this seat in these circumstances, in the words of Private Frazer ‘we’re doomed’. Or as Tony Blair said in his parting comments as leader ‘ if we can’t take this lot apart we don’t deserve to be in politics’
I think Ed M could do with a bit of advice – I don’t recall you ever suggesting sausage rolls vs pasties as a vote-winner
Alastair
I am hoping you read these comments because I really want to get a message through re Galloway and I haven’t seen it addressed anywhere.
Galloway has done in Bradford what he did in Tower Hamlets. He dropped in, stirred up a lot of religious hatred and garnered votes on the back of it. He was never interested in Tower Hamlets and its people. It was always about a platform for him.
If he cared, he would have stayed and represented the people of Tower Hamlets. But. of course he didn’t care. He moved on, because his empty rhetoric was found out. The Muslim population in Tower Hamlets thought that GG was going to represent them. But they were wrong. He had no interest in his constituency, once the media frenzy was over. So like, any seller of snake-oil or rain he moved on to somewhere similarly gullible.
During the Tower Hamlets election, GG knocked on my mother’s door on Cable Street. He was surprised to find a tiny Jewish woman, full of fire, who told him, in no uncertain terms, that she had seem his like before and he should pack his smarmy bags and go (I paraphrase).
For avoidance of her doubt, her issue was not her Muslim neighbours, with whom she had a good neighbourly relationship. Her issue was with a style of populism that was familiar to the older residents of Cable Street.
Btw: on a style note, on this particular date, GG, was wearing a fashionable black shirt.
Gary
Mais c’est un petit monde, Chrees, un petit monde!
I like France, always have done, ever since my ancestrial ahem! some say inncestual relationship with them from past celtic times, free love we both share, and things, unlike the english shrouded Lutherian minded. Song from me welsh and our true cousins, on free love,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haWVIaslEOs
More francais, vous et grande tres biens, 1984,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atfdOY5T3Po
Duh! So what if Kinnock went to that Lewis Jones school in Pengam, next to the Rhymney river, ey?
TOOOL!
Posted this on the Guardian George Galloway yesterday, but forgot, when I called him an arab, and posted a song for him in appreciation for being such, quite catchy, us welsh know how to pronounce the “ch” as in chwaer as in sister,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIu5saOfryE
Creepy man!
Alastair, you might want to post this, Dave Grohl of lead singer Foo Fighters/Nirvanah appearing with Josh and QOSA banging the skins totally possessed, a classic, if you are that way inclined,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW2AKkwJb_c
No Glastonbury this year 2012, fallow field time says farmer, but others going on, get your VW camper out time, it’s summer.
matchmakers don’t have to always be old wimmin….
: )
A vid for Josh of QOSA, a nip nipping up Colorado’s Pikes Peak in quick time last year. Looking forward online to seeing it this year, lighning striking aside, Monster, go-pro cameras and all that, adventure sports, undersea or above ground, up in the hills, held at a weekend as close to fourth of July each year, baseball sucks,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBaIlQOGgwc
Excellent post Gary. Thanks.
Gwyn Thomas welsh raconteur and wind bag also, etc. etc., some close by would say, here he is talking about politics, the politics of the chip, on the potato crisis of the early 1960’s, after that hard deadly winter, for potato seeds in the ground, especially in Pembokeshire. Here he is with that other mouthy racontuer, english, Alan Whicker, with his interesting large microphone, lead dragged behind. Gwyn,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QX48fx8g9M
For those interested, more Gwyn Thomas, marvellously windbagging, on welsh life, which we still are, my favorite of a series of vids available he made for tell, roundabouts 1960,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvG3HWvYASo
Pontneddfechan, Neath/Nedd river/afon, and down, to the welcoming sea.
Hurts, and spanish/moorish backing dancers,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R45BsR7yQiQ
Islam was part of Europe, officially, once.
GOOD GRIEF! Cable Street? GG does come across as a celebrity political fly by night. But Cable Street Gary John Lloyd! Deep history there, but it was bombed out how it looks now from then in the riots against 1930’s facism,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzKv5gjOzTA
Think the nazzies c***s aimed it, like it did other civilian targets.
Might as well post this, more adventure, gliding from Argentina. Went solo gliding, might have a go at it again one day. Nice ladies from the argies in this vid, very nice, classy vid,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD-ZIILtI2I
Tip, if you grow spuds in your garden, but cabbages especially, on keeping them caterpillar and other insecta free, keep chickens in your garden, they will munch them, prowling round your lettuceheads. Tip of the day that Percy Thrower nor Alan Titchmarsh never ever gave you on the telly. And eggs for your fry-ups and custards is the nice bonus, out of this arrangement with our fowl friends.
Beth Ditto of the Gossip going completerly nuts and bonkers at Glastie the other year, stunning perfect brilliant performance, an hell of a girl,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTtvrl8SFOM
Hanna Reitsch, one of the most incredible glider pilots in the twentieth century, also part-time the top test pilot of the nazzies. But all said, an incredible aviatorex (however you spell it), when all is said and done, pity about things then,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Y-uSR1krk
Good pic of the planting of Pembrokeshire spuds here, and, funny has it, in actual Pembrokeshire too, oil plants in the Haven in the distance, cracking their hydrocarbons,
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1812951
Anyway, bugger it, if anyone wants to know more of Gwyn Thomas the brilliant, get your hand on a copy his semi-autobiography of his “A Few Selected Exits”, semi as in you can’t rely on what us welsh always spout, some might be made up, chapels aside. Amazon, books,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Few-Selected-Exits-Gwyn-Thomas/dp/0907476570/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333455605&sr=1-1
Why is it whenever we get a tory government in, they need the feel to shit stir? Things were alright between the argies and us before these tools appeared. I like argies, always have done, but getting a tory government to look after us is a diplomatic can of petrol on fire always, a repeating story that strains the patience. Could go on, but I might bore people, like tory nazzie sympathisers in the 1930’s, buried facts.
Hope the Guardian do an article on the Pikes Peak Hillclimb 2012, and headline it as “A different Event”, Alastair. Just tell them to give me a shout how to advise them to report it, with the opening paragraph as tarting with something like this “A bananas event capturing those hardcore petrol heads that are peculiar to themselves, all over the World, a fight and climb to the clouds”, or something like that.
Again, could be stopped halfway, due to Mother Nature and her lightning strikes, but that’s life at times.
More Hanna here, and yes, she could speak englander, marvellous woman, pity about times,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPOV9lfdS8
Bollocks to this, got to post a bit of Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl singing, with another one of their mates going bananas in the background, drumming,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhzmNRtIp8k
Hang on, there s a better one than that, must search… not the right one I was thinking of…
Dave, and Josh and QOTSA, skins being banged,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s88r_q7oufE
Brilliant french film is “Le renard et l’enfant”,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6RU8GLMz8Y
Like foxes, have a friend that brought up an abandoned vixen cub, he was in pieces when she died at about six years old. But they do pong a bit, worse than labradors.
Always like the way La France allow full movies posted on you tube, Jacques Tati and his “Trafic”, and another French film “La Rayon Vert” – a sweet film of twenty-something love dicovery from the 1980’s, are example.
Tati http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPv_M7uAOmk
La Rayon Vert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncddwdzsbPo
Youtube secrets….
OK, last one, I promise, clip of Gwyn on Parky, humour overflowing, getting that yorkshire cricket botherer in stitches,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQdIuuX18O8
Parts two and three are available to be clicked when asked, if you are still awake. Dicky Burton had a habit of sending people to sleep, without sheep, with his sonorous voice.
sorry, but, in part three “sirloin wife” split my sides, with Sarah Miles there, baffled, politely. Anyone remember her in “Ryan’s Daughter”, based in Ireland Catholic country with Robert Mitchum the yank, John Mills, and Christopher Jones as the army hottie for her, clip here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMQR-welqoM
Full version of the chanson, in la francias,”Le Renard et l’Enfant”, sweet, tear dripping, call voici a softie if vous want,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B12iBMeme1U
Mo, which I bump into now and again, showed things are not as bad as we make out, though his family’s homeland REALLY needs sorting, Palestine, they have been stuffed by twentieth century history, and with no fault by themselves, it was due to us european buggers. And it bothers me too, as well as Mo, a great bloke, hell of a sense of humour. Song Palastinia,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqywdMZa2DM
Do I care that I am not following crap, Israel does test the patience, and I am not going to say certain people had a point at all, but it makes you think, atom bombs and all….. Mossad? get lost, you don’t scare me, I am well old european, as old as your “things”.
Rant over, I feel better for that.
A film and song that reminds me of my daughter. “Hey Blondie!” – two fingers from her!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLHx6D3NNuI
..but managed to get her over her thirteen year old Avril Lavigne saddo girl life pit she got into, over the phone, spooking her with simple common man trick-cyclist speak long lost. But made sure she kept that edge, for her future man/men….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTRmOphK1so
Victoria Hesketh from Blackpool, aka Little Boots, in her days with Dead Disco, my daughter, and surprisingly myself, was really into, and it spooked her. Still like Little Boots, five foot of dynamite,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8jx99asRtI
Super sweet welsh song here, and brilliant visuals, enjoy,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3m9bbU2J0w
One of my favorite Little Boots track, remixed, as you do. It’s summer,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLJ2g2mRYhE
More Boots, in her armchair,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHSMSS7F-KI
More Boots here, BBC 6, live, classy, high heeled and shoed,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCXA7nwc4uE
More beeb six radio Boots here, on about Mathematics,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnyhx1zvKtU
superbe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z0TmH478nA
haunting Iberia