How Much is a Corbyn?

cepheus

chewmylegoff wrote: »

Presumably not even you can possibly believe that people who voted Tory would vote labour if only labour shifted radically to the left.

Why should they need the 22% of Tory voters (theoretically 24% if you include those who did bother to register) How about the third who didn't bother to vote because there was no-one worth voting for?

Well now there is. Essential reading material for you and Hamish.

Where is Labour's 'Jeremy Corbyn mania' coming from?

...There is evidence to suggest the political landscape in Britain is shifting and Corbyn's recent success could be accredited to his core message connecting with an electorate to whom the "centre ground" no longer appeals.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33881104 …

PS I recall that Survation poll suggested even some Tory voters would go for Corbyn in addition to many UKIP, although I have to admit it surprises me as well. Perhaps they have got tired of all the stage managed political propaganda and they prefer straight talking. That's what made Farage so popular even though he's almost the polar opposite in every other way.

Thrugelmir

Generali wrote: »

Especially given that the whole point of the Government buying RBS was to overpay for shares that the market wouldn't buy.

Given the amount "invested" of £42 billion. It kept the Company solvent. Little more as history has shown. Ulster Bank alone has lost around £15 billion as a result of the Irish housing market collapse. So the money is irretrievable.

One of the elephants in the room is the shareholder action in relation to the rights issue of £12 billion in April 2008. Court hearing is set for December 2016, this could be a costly exercise for the bank.

Generali

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Given the amount "invested" of £42 billion. It kept the Company solvent. Little more as history has shown. Ulster Bank alone has lost around £15 billion as a result of the Irish housing market collapse. So the money is irretrievable.

One of the elephants in the room is the shareholder action in relation to the rights issue of £12 billion in April 2008. Court hearing is set for December 2016, this could be a costly exercise for the bank.

And all because Gordon Brown wouldn't give equity holders what their equity was worth: £0.00. He had to structure a silly way of doing things and so has left the way open for this.

If he had simply announced that any bank that was insolvent would be taken on as an ongoing business by the BoE and kept running then shareholders wouldn't have had any recourse to the Government, only to the board.

ruggedtoast

martinsurrey wrote: »

lets not forget some of Corbyn's friends.

it was an "honour and pleasure" to host - Hamas and Hezbollah

Hamas Charter - “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.”

Hezbollah's charter - “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’”

Seem like a nice bunch...

Stop the war coalition (He is the chair) - “reaffirms its call for an end to the occupation, the return of all British troops in Iraq to this country and recognises once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends”.

which was seized by al-Qaida as propaganda legitimizing suicide attacks on British troops

the lists go on and on, the man rubs shoulders with some real slim...

He states that there will only be peace in the Middle East if all the stakeholders other than just Israel are engaged in broad consensus.

So febrile and frankly silly is 'The West's' attitude to the ME this opinion alone is enough to label him as a raging anti Semite.

There is a reasonable precedent for talking to militant groups because that is exactly what worked with the IRA.

martinsurrey

MS1950 wrote: »

So you've abandoned your previous 'guilt by association' quotes from the Hamas and Hezbollah Charters and are now concentrating on what you call Corbyn's encouragement of "what ever means necessary" to end the allied occupation of Iraq?

I'm not a member or in any way associated with the Stop the War Coalition so I've had to do some digging to try and answer your question. A search of the Stop the War Coalition website revealed no such statement so I'm guessing that your source for the phrase comes from a 'Comment' piece by one James Bloodworth in the Guardian on August 13th?:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/13/jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-foreign-policy-antisemitism

I'm pleased to say that I'm also not privy to the arcane policy making process that may have gone on the early days of the Stop the War Coalition. However, the following left wing source, that claims to know, says that the phrase you quote was from an “an early draft” of a 2004 STWC statement that it seems was quickly abandoned in favour of “Our position, which is the same as that adopted at the TUC conference, is that an early date be set for the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq”.

http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/550/crisis-demands-end-to-fudge/

Now I don't know, and neither do you, whether Jeremy Corbyn as Chair of the Stop the War Coalition had a hand in this rapid change of policy. Personally, I doubt he had any hand in producing the original objectionable draft.

So for James Bloodworth and now you to continue asserting 11 years later on the basis of what seems to have been a short lived draft that Corbyn 'gave encouragement' of "what ever means necessary" to end the allied occupation of Iraq, is pretty shabby and insubstantial to the extent that it raises questions about your motives.

not guilt by association, guilt by appreciation, nothing wrong with sitting down with terrorists if you need to for the greater good, everything wrong with calling it an honour (which is what I quoted).

Corbyn has been chair of the Stop the War Coalition since 2001, the man who made the comment was Andrew Murray, he was also made a chair of the coalition in 2001, a post he held until 2011.

here is a good run down (from 2004)
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000147.html

this source has been used for years without been disputed
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-war-in-iraq-was-wrong-but-the-antiwar-movement-has-very-little-to-be-smug-about-8546226.html

and another article from 2005
http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2005/03/on_the_justific.html

So what happened was they sent out the statement I quoted by email, which then blew up in their face (pun intended), resulting in an early day motion in the house of commons on the 14th of October 2004

http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2003-04/1744

the revised position you quoted was from 24th October 2004, which was put out to try and calm the situation down.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/oct/25/iraq.iraq

so I think we can agree that it happened, and that the man responsible was at the heart of the STWC for a further 6 years, alongside Corbyn, now if what he said was so wrong, and the STWC disagreed with it so much, why did he hold his post for a further 6 years.

Its not just political parties who spin.

martinsurrey

ruggedtoast wrote: »

He states that there will only be peace in the Middle East if all the stakeholders other than just Israel are engaged in broad consensus.

So febrile and frankly silly is 'The West's' attitude to the ME this opinion alone is enough to label him as a raging anti Semite.

There is a reasonable precedent for talking to militant groups because that is exactly what worked with the IRA.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-contest-7-questions-jeremy-corbyns-critics-say-he-needs-to-answer-10459775.html

while Corbyn may not be anti Semite (as in shouting from the roof tops), a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view.

Generali

martinsurrey wrote: »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-contest-7-questions-jeremy-corbyns-critics-say-he-needs-to-answer-10459775.html

while Corbyn may not be anti Semite (as in shouting from the roof tops), a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view.

TBH I think that the whole reporting of the Corbyn campaign along with obfuscation from Mr Corbyn himself that it's not really possible to state clearly what his position is on a lot of quite important things about, for example, foreign policy.

For example, if he is making common cause with Hamas and Hezbollah, what is his position on Israel?

He wants to nationalise railways and a couple of utilities but what about beyond that, perhaps if he were to get a second term? BT and the mobile phone companies perhaps? ISPs? Heavy industry? Mining and other extractive industries like gas and oil? Other transport firms such as buses or logistics? All have been owned by the state in one way or another in my lifetime and I'm only in my 40s.

He talks about peoples' QE which I get and I think might actually have been a better way of QEing at least some of the money into the economy. For example, QE could have been used to buy bank shares to give them capital to lend and then those shares gifted to the public to hold or sell as they saw fit.

ruggedtoast

martinsurrey wrote: »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-contest-7-questions-jeremy-corbyns-critics-say-he-needs-to-answer-10459775.html

while Corbyn may not be anti Semite (as in shouting from the roof tops), a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view.

I am no Corbyn expert. Like lots of people I hadn't even heard of him a few weeks ago.

From what I can see, his views on the Middle East have been consistent for as long as he has had them. They seem to be predicated on the view that denouncing 90% of the stakeholders in what would be any potential peace process as murderers and refusing to talk to them, is a dead end.

The mainstream's criticism of this stinks of hypocrisy, in my opinion. If any denouncing should be going on then Israel should be receiving a large share. Regardless of what the cause of the conflict was I can't see any way that the Israelis and their American backers, aren't now responsible for the problems in the region, and a lot of Islamic terrorism to boot.

Regardless of Corbyn the man,Corbyn the phenomenon is very interesting. There are a good many people who are genuinely inspired and excited by his politics who are utterly turned off by the mainstream cardboard cut outs.

Could England be having its SNP moment? Seems to have scared the life out of "Westminster".

MS1950

martinsurrey wrote: »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-contest-7-questions-jeremy-corbyns-critics-say-he-needs-to-answer-10459775.html

while Corbyn may not be anti Semite (as in shouting from the roof tops), a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view.

Again this is pretty poor stuff from you.

“Corbyn may not be anti Semite - as in shouting from the roof tops” implies, as I'm sure you intended, that he is some of 'closet' anti semite i.e. really one but just won't say so openly.

And while your second claim may not be as unsavoury it is still pretty unpleasant - “a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view”.

You seem determined to continue to insinuate this sort of stuff despite his clear denials - repeated again in his Channel 4 interview yesterday evening (reported in the Guardian below) - and his explanation (that I've previously posted) of why he has met with and talked to groups and individual you continue to describe as his 'friends' but who he referred to as people who “held personal views which are anathema to me, abhorrent to me”.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/18/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-claims-ludicrous-and-wrong?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

If you really want something to get your teeth into, the real 'scandal' about western politicians and the middle east (that Corbyn has consistently highlighted) is their silence about supposed western allies that have funded and armed ISIS and/or have been complicit in permitting the flow of jihadists into Syria and facilitating the sale of ISIS controlled oil onto world markets; examined, for example, in the following articles:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/uk-us-turn-blind-eye-islamic-state-oil-sales-553879014

CLAPTON

MS1950 wrote: »

Again this is pretty poor stuff from you.

“Corbyn may not be anti Semite - as in shouting from the roof tops” implies, as I'm sure you intended, that he is some of 'closet' anti semite i.e. really one but just won't say so openly.

And while your second claim may not be as unsavoury it is still pretty unpleasant - “a lot of his friends seem to be, and he refuses to condemn that view”.

You seem determined to continue to insinuate this sort of stuff despite his clear denials - repeated again in his Channel 4 interview yesterday evening (reported in the Guardian below) - and his explanation (that I've previously posted) of why he has met with and talked to groups and individual you continue to describe as his 'friends' but who he referred to as people who “held personal views which are anathema to me, abhorrent to me”.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/18/jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-claims-ludicrous-and-wrong?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

If you really want something to get your teeth into, the real 'scandal' about western politicians and the middle east (that Corbyn has consistently highlighted) is their silence about supposed western allies that have funded and armed ISIS and/or have been complicit in permitting the flow of jihadists into Syria and facilitating the sale of ISIS controlled oil onto world markets; examined, for example, in the following articles:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/16/terrifying-rise-of-isis-iraq-executions

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/14/america-s-allies-are-funding-isis.html

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/uk-us-turn-blind-eye-islamic-state-oil-sales-553879014

presumably you are calling for british boots on the ground there to stop the flow of oil?