A scintilla of hope for a renaissance of Britain's Labour Party from NZ.

[Joe Chi Minh]

Gould resigned from the Labout Party and returned to NZ, when Bliar became PM.

Unfortunately, the prospect of even a brief spell with the Tories in power would be unthinkable - even granted the deeply corrupt rogues and vagabonds of NuLab(c). The conventional wisdom is that the Tories will walk the next election, but ah hae ma doots. In the end, we're still not quite a nation of turkeys prepared to vote for Christmas to be kept on the calendar, I think, but the more pressure put on NuLab(c), the better.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/03/new-labour-new-zealand

[Ghost Dog]

1. Proportional representation

might provide some hope. But not for the likes of NuLab nor NuCon, much.

Under PR parties tend to campaign somewhat more on the basis of what they stand for, somewhat less on some calculus of "how to get elected".

Then, real horse-traing may take place in a much livelier cabinet and above all parliamentary environment.

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. Absolutely. Spot on.

[Ghost Dog]

3. So tell me, Joe Chi,

Do you also make the effort to observe and, er, "make friends and influence people" in some Scottish or British or European or International forum or fora beyond here?

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. I wouldn't say I tried to make friends, exactly, Ghost Dog. No more than

enemies, for the most part. I just feel I have to say certain things, and let the chips fall where they may. It's why I don't go to chat rooms. There's no substitute for expressing your thoughts on a subject, or for chit-chatting to other people face to face.

Yes, I occasionally post to Common Dreams, and the boards of one or two of our more anarchic commentators, such as James Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov, but my main soap-box apart from DU is Guardian Comment. Before I knew about Comment I used to post a lot to Guardian Talk, but although Americans seem to have quite low self-esteem in some ways, DU generally seems to have far more mature posts, and of course, there are a lot by real mavens in politics, finance, etc. I find a lot of Guardian Talk posts very juvenile(probably literally), more like chit-chat, too, a lot of the time.

But the fact that the Guardian sites get so many American neo-liberal trolls putting in their two-penn'orth must be a tribute to the paper's world-wide cachet. Same with DU, though obviously its dedicated to discussions, rather than a long-established, uniquely liberal organ of the media. I would think it unique in that regard. I write to the Guardian as "paulbecke".

How about you? Do you post to other fora? I see you a lot on the stock-market threads, here.

[Ghost Dog]

5. No, only here, and on a rebel Spanish Indymedia site

I helped start up but have been dropping out of for some time now.

Although I'm a fairly assiduous Guardian International reader I've never offered myself there for the reasons, perhaps, you mention.

There is no substitute for getting really hands-on, is there? I've been feeling increasingly isolated, self-exiled and just observing from down here these last twenty years, although life has been very fine.

Can't stand the thought of spending much time in most parts of England, though. Scotland, however, from where a healthy branch of my family, and friends, did spring, may be stirring deep in the hearth.

I'll be sleeping on it, to reflect.

Did you hear this music (once posted in the Stock Market Watch)? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBmhvpiTSAU

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. No, I hadn't heard that, but I could have told you you had Scottish connections,

because it sounds very like a kind of keening, wailing song I heard snatches of in a TV ad here. Having grown up in England I chuckled a bit at the wailing, but the fact is, I lapped it up. It struck a deep chord.

I think I have an English outlook, but deep inside I feel very Scots, though I'm only a quarter Scots, half Welsh, part French, part Portuguese and part Indian, plus going further back any number of others, including Irish. Very strange really.

I read that a Pakistani supermarket owner once said, that England belongs to the English and Wales to the Welsh, but Scotland belongs to God. And I fear there may be some truth in that. I say that because, as the Scots well know, themselves, they're not lacking in self-regard. They do have a sardonic, pretty self-mocking sense of humour, though, as is reflected in their saying, "Wha's like us?"

I think the Scots are pretty like the latins actually, as I am, too, and if I had my time again, I'd probably settle in France. Even the Scottish right-wingers are "red in tooth and claw" like the latin fascists of yore, I think. Even after taking over the Labour Party!

Read a great Indymedia article on False Flag ops. Can't think of the author's name, but very well-know, and evidently pretty fearless.

Must go, as it's late.

Hasta luego, compadre.

[T_i_B]

7. "Under PR parties tend to campaign somewhat more on the basis of what they stand for"

Now I hate to tell you this, but we have PR for European parliamwnt elections and did it pan out like that with those elections this year? Did it heck!

Basically you had a number of parties all claiming that only by voting tactically for them could you keep the BNP out. And all too often you got more of that then what the parties wanted to do in the European Parliament.

So no, politicians will always try and scare people into voting tactically, even if we do get PR.