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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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03 October 2007 |
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High noon at the last chance saloon. Make or break time is Tuesday. Announce a 1 November election then, Gordon, or forever hold your peace. Don`t go early and there`s little point in going next May or October. Might as well sit on into 2009. If things don`t look good then May 2010 for the bitter end. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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03 October 2007 |
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French intellectuals agonise about national identity. Mundane British counterparts preferred to worry about our ailing economy, a pessimism more debilitating than the French because it’s a phallic failure not an anxiety: the once workshop of the world can`t make it. Yet today while French anxieties remain obsessive ours are gone. Prophets of economic doom are silent just as Britain is embarked on a series of economic gambles instead of attempting to build long-term economic strength as doomsters urged. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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27 September 2007 |
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Bad Conference is degenerating into a trade fair. The unions supinely gave up their power. They didn’t trouble the leader with votes. Conference was castrated. No bookshop. No ideas. Everything passed to the Policy Forum. Which is useless. Ruthless management of the old Stalinist style without the Blair charm. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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24 September 2007 |
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Off to Bournemouth for what’s more likely to be a coronation than a conference. Indeed, under the guise of providing that conference resolutions will be dealt with more quickly by the Policy Forum and the department concerned, they’re proposing new constitutional rules which will emancipate conference by reducing the role of the unions and excluding contemporary resolutions which usually provide the only red meat we get to chew on. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 September 2007 |
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The Bank`s buggered it. King Merv is obsessed with retribution and high interest rates. Punish the overlenders. Punish the overspenders. Moralism as a system of economics. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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05 September 2007 |
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Citizens` Juries. Bring `em on. Gordon is quite right to go for this idea. Let’s have the first on the EU`s “Reform Constitution”. Do we want it or not? The next on interest rates. Up or down. The third on Proportional Representation.
Ontario had a jury of 100 on electoral reform. After six months of discussions and presentations they came out in favour of AMS, like Germany and New Zealand. That’s now going to a referendum in October.
Juries are easier to persuade to sense than MPs. Provided they’re properly educated i.e. by me and Gordon. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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03 September 2007 |
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When is a Constitution not a constitution? When it`s a European Constitution. Then it`s Speak no Constitution. See no Constitution. Hear no Constitution. Even though it`s more like a Constitution than, say, elephant droppings.
David Millipede says it`s elephant droppings. No need to vote on them. Just sniff.
Balls. Elephant Balls. Other governments are saying this is the essence of the Giscard Constitution. The Commission has got all it wanted. Read the proposals and see that the “Reform Treaty” is 90% of the Monster Treaty. They`re trying to fool us. Again. We promised a referendum. Let`s have it. Otherwise we`re locked in the Euro-Jail. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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29 August 2007 |
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Blog.
Bush hanging tough (and will surely hang anyway) on Iraq. Back Malaki even though he’s a broken reed. No pull out. Vice Pres. Cheney is the eil genius here, a man so determined to use America’s military might (as cheaply as possible) that when Bird Flu threatened he proposed to bomb the Canary Isles.
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The price of fame. People used to come up to me and impart useful bits of information like “You’re on television” or “Don’t tell me - you’re - you’re….” Here nothing like that. Last night a gorgeous blonde came up and said “I know you. You’re Archie’s grandfather”. His efforts at lifeguard training have made him a legend in my lifetime. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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21 August 2007 |
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TUESDAY. Today’s the funeral of my friend, Keith Jackson, who went out to New Zealand in 1956 to the University of Otago, for those were the days when NZ Universities recruited young Poms which made for a stodgy university system but was pretty good for us.
In 1960 he and I collaborated with Bob Chapman to write the first NZ election book, appropriately called New Zealand Politics In Action (N.B.two separate words). Now I’m the only one of the three pioneers left. Ave atque Vale Keith. A sad going for one of the nicest men I know. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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14 August 2007 |
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A new Italian book, La Casta, (the caste) by two journalists, Sergio Rizzo and Jian Antonio Stella, has sold over a million in a few months and caused shock horror in Italy. It reveals that the Italian political class has given itself a well heeled political niche.
Italian MPs are paid three times as much as the French. Their perks include chauffer driven, bullet proof, cars, body guards, discounted air travel, tennis coaching, comfortable pensions after only 30 months service. Between 600,000 and 700,000 Italians live off the political machine most of them well. The Italian Parliament is the costliest in Europe and a deputy`s basic salary before tax is Eu 11,703 per month compared to British Eu 7,459. They also have Eu 10,000 a month in hypothetical unchecked expenses. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 August 2007 |
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Like the IRA decommissioning their weapons, New Labour has spent ten years dismantling Labour’s Big Bertha Gun, the state, more properly called the community acting for collective purposes. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 August 2007 |
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News from Cayucos, Ca Pop 3320. BEACH TOWN SAVED BY BRITS. Triumph for Mitchells.
By A. Mitchell (proud Grandfather)
Deadline: Wed 1 August. Three Mitchell Grandchildren -really grand kids - are on a junior lifeguard course ($l50 for three weeks). Today was the great face-off. Kids on three courses, Cayucos, Morro Bay and Pismo Beach to compete to be heroes of the San Luis Obispo (Slo) County beach. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 August 2007 |
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Washington has a rule for senators and Congressmen. They’re not allowed to employ wives and members of their family on congressional pay roles. Quite right too. I never have and won`t. Instead of concentrating on such petty issues as how much money MPs spend on travel when those who live furthest away inevitably spend most, we should concentrate on such examples of corruption as keeping the secretarial allowances in the family by employing wives, mistresses, kids or relatives. Some MPs pay all their allowances to their wives because there’s no limit on how much wives are paid. That’s a cheat on the taxpayer. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 August 2007 |
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Now a bit more blog.
Watching the committees of the American Senate and the House of Representatives I`m filled with envy. Our select committees are tame by comparison, attract far less public interest (which hurts our egos) and are far less well covered by television.
It’s not that they’re less dominated by the parties. The Republicans protected Bush from all enquiry while they had a majority. When the Democrats took over it was clear we were going to get accountability by the tonne. And we have. I`ve been watching fascinating committee hearings on Iraq, on the military prospects and on the Senate Judiciary Committee into the political role of the Attorney General which has now led to four members demanding that he be investigated, accusations of lying to the committee and subpoenas for Rove and others.
It’s a powerful weapon and covered by television in a way appropriate to its importance. Several cameras, reaction shots and good lighting to build up the tension where we have to make do with two cameras on perpetual and boring wideshot. Plus the fact that American legislators have big staffs whose research ensures that they`re better prepared and informed whereas we always have to vamp it. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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07 August 2007 |
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Tony and his supporters , particularly Mandy, have tried to create the myth that he won the centre ground of Labour, built a middle-class Labour coalition to broaden our appeal and turned us into a party of government.
Balls. Tony Blair`s achievement has been to wreck an emerging liberal majority. We were gaining ground among the liberal middle-class, appalled by Thatcherism, the women who’d traditionally voted Tory, the manual workers suffering from the destruction of the unions, and the manufacturing economy and the public sector workers repelled by meanness and cuts. Here were the makings of a new Labour majority to replace the mass manual worker vote of the forties and fifties. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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17 July 2007 |
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Campbell Diary A satisfied customer writes: “Great stuff. Honest. Interesting. Tells it like it was in a government where PR has replaced principles. Written by the man who made the mould for the jelly.
Cert F.U, (journalists only under parentel supervision – if the bastards have one). |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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05 July 2007 |
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Today’s daft decision of the inflation crazed Bank of England to raise interest rates yet again shows that our inflation hawk of a Governor, who’s been constantly warning about inflation and bullying the reluctant doubters on the Monetary Policy Committee into voting for yet another rate increase, has finally flipped. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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29 June 2007 |
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Whither Blair? The whithering has begun. Tony takes the Chiltern Millions. It might upset his constituents who’ve been grievously used. That’s up to them but it casts doubt on all our professions of loyalty and commitment to our constituencies. It’s like a marriage. Tony’s quickie divorce makes him a user, not a lover, and upsets the majority just as dumping a frumpy middle aged wife upsets the married. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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29 June 2007 |
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The Dawn of Socialism: Wed 24 June Cromwell takes over from Charles I
All’s for the best with the best of possible, Gordon. Bliss is it in this dawn to be middle aged. But not old. Excellent speeches from Gordon and Harriet, both well judged for the occasion and all crammed with attractive policies. No indication of how we can achieve them. Indeed, why haven’t we already?
Exactly what we wanted to hear. Yet how representative are we? People of principle, conscience, indeed, soul, even a touch of socialism, but also older, more serious and living in a different (and more comfortable) world. |
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General Ramblings
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Written by Austin Mitchell
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04 June 2007 |
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Dear Party Member
As I was unable to get to the last General Management Committee because of a Public Accounts Committee visit, I`m sending this note on the Leadership Election out by post.
On the leadership I nominated Gordon. There wasn`t, in fact, much else to do. I would have preferred an election, and so would the Party, but none of the big Blairites would stand and I didn`t think the left should stand alone because it would just be humiliated. |
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