[quote]Cockney Blue wrote:
Sifu, to come out and call the labour front bench communist is just plain ignorant, many of the barbs that have been thrown at them are based on them being too centerist. [/quote]
Obviously you don’t read the British newspapers on a daily basis like I do. In November the Telegraph ran a list of the 100 top left wingers in Britain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/2988767/Top-100-left-wingers.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/labour/3052281/Top-100-left-wingers-25-1.html
1.(-) GORDON BROWN
Prime Minister
Despite his ongoing travails, there is no doubt that Gordon Brown?s grip on the Labour Party machine and the levers of power is still strong, albeit diminishing. His ability to wreak revenge on those who gainsay him is still legendary. His ability to remain in pole position in twelve months time is far less certain.
- (+2) DAVID MILIBAND
Foreign Secretary
There?s little doubt that David Miliband?s reputation and influence have been enhanced over the previous twelve months. The very fact that he has made clear he won?t be reshuffled to the Treasury demonstrates his power. One of the few Labour intellectuals who is able to articulate a vision, the next twelve months may well tell if he has the courage needed to go all the way in politics.
- (+13) ED MILIBAND
Minister for the Cabinet Office and Manifesto Co-ordinator
Ed Miliband threatens to eclipse his older brother. In his role as manifesto coordinator he has impressed party activists and unions alike and he is one of the few senior Labour figures who is able to give an inspirational speech without notes. He remains close to Gordon Brown and was horrified by the aftermath of his brother?s Guardian article.
- (+3) HARRIET HARMAN
Chair of Labour Party and Leader of House of Commons
Last year, we asked if Harriet Harman?s reinvention could last. It has, and the some. One of the few to have the courage to tell Brown when he?s wrong, though she is frequently overruled, she has cemented her position as the party?s conscience. Nevertheless, while Brown hears what she says, he rarely listens. There is little doubt that Harman would be a candidate in the Brown succession, and after her surprise win in the deputy leadership election last year, few now underestimate her.
- (+1) DEREK SIMPSON
Joint General Secretary, Unite
The former leader of Amicus is no less influential in his new joint-leader position within the massive new Unite trade union. An archetypal devil-may-care old style union leader, Simpson has it within his power to create real industrial problems for Gordon Brown. His public dismissal of David Miliband just before the TUC Conference was a deliberate attempt to show his union?s political muscle.
- (NEW) CHARLIE WHELAN
Director of Communications, UNITE
The reemergence of Charlie Whelan as a major political player has caused much heartache among Blairites. But he has been deployed by Gordon Brown behind the scenes to cobble together deals, and he was behind his boss Derek Simpson?s destruction of David Miliband a fortnight ago. He has also persuaded his own union ? and others ? to keep the Labour Party afloat financially.
- (-7) JACK STRAW
Secretary of State for Justice
Having run Gordon Brown?s leadership campaign, Jack Straw has proved he?s the great New Labour survivor. However, in recent months the Prime Minister has become wary of his motives. His gradual distancing of himself from Brown has not gone unnoticed either by the PM or political journalists.
- (-1) ALAN JOHNSON
Secretary of State for Health
Johnson emerged from the Deputy Leadership campaign slightly damaged by not winning, but his cheeky chappy appeal across the Labour Party ensures continuing inference. The only leading Labour Minister Conservatives genuinely fear, he may have been rather too early in ruling himself out of any future leadership contest.
Then there was this version of the list that was produced where the communist backgrounds of several of the most prominent officials in the Labour government were detailed.
http://bnp.org.uk/tag/derek-simpson/
The Daily Telegraph has recently printed their list of the top 100 British Left-wingers. A closer look at the upper echelons of the list reveals some interesting facts about our lords and masters and their true ideological leanings.
- Gordon Brown
At No.1 in the traitorous hit parade is the man himself, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It is often said of Brown that he wasn?t an avowed Communist in his youth, unlike many of his New Labour colleagues.
While not a card-carrying member, Brown?s choice of subject for his PhD at Glasgow University gives some clues as to his true political leanings. Brown wrote his thesis, and later a biography of James Maxton, an Independent Labour Party MP, a man Brown has admitted to being ?fascinated? by. As well as being a conscientious objector who was sent to prison during WWI, Maxton was an extreme-left winger who even went as far as to pen a glowing biography of the man who had provided the inspiration and influence for Maxton?s own political viewpoints; Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Better known to posterity as Lenin.
- David Miliband
Just behind Comrade Brown is Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Milband?s father Ralph was a leading Marxist theoretician who had entered Britain illegally with his father Samuel Miliband, a former Red Army soldier, in 1940. A leading figure of the Communist left in Britain, Ralph Miliband is buried in Highgate Cemetery close to his idol, Karl Marx.
Ralph also spawned the entry at No.4 in the Top Left-Winger list, David?s brother and Minister for the Cabinet Office, Ed Miliband.
- Harriet Harman
Often referred to as ?Harriet Harperson? due to her extreme politically correct views, Harman often takes her far-left views to absurd, and sinister, lengths. She is virulently anti-family and has questioned whether ?the presence of fathers in families is necessarily a means to social harmony and cohesion.? Her advocacy of the racist practice of ?Positive Discrimination? is well documented and Harman has sought to extend this biased employment strategy even further.
- Derek Simpson
Lumbering Union dinosaur Derek Simpson comes in at No. 9. Simpson is joint General Secretary of the enormous new trade union, ?Unite.? A card carrying member of the Communist Party of Britain, Simpson has also used his members? money to conduct an obsessive campaign against the BNP, and Unite was one of the chief organisations behind this year?s violent left-wing protests against the BNP?s Red White and Blue festival.
- Charlie Whelan
Gordon Brown?s spin doctor cum political enforcer of choice and Director of Communications for Simpson?s Unite union, Whelan just fails to make the top 10 of shame but his credentials as a loony lefty are impeccable. A Champagne Socialist who went to a public school in Surrey, Whelan was a long serving member of the Communist Party, only leaving it in 1990 as he tried to establish a career within the Labour Party.
- Jack Straw
Former Foreign Secretary and current Secretary of State for Justice, Jack Straw?s career has been on the wane of late, but he still manages to make the top 20 list of the bad, the very bad and the downright ugly.
A proud and vocal communist during his formative years, Straw once went to Cuba as leader of the National Union of Students to meet his hero, future Chilean communist dictator, General Allende. British diplomats in Chile cabled the Foreign Office in London concerning Straw?s presence, calling him a ?troublemaker?acting with malice aforethought? and branded Straw?s juvenile far-left politics as ?depressingly immature.?
- Alan Johnson
The Secretary of State for Health is considered by many to be a future leader of the Labour Party. A closer look at Johnson?s dodgy background reveals why. A former militant leader of the postal workers? union, Johnson joined the Labour Party. But he made no secret of his true political affiliations: ?I was more CPGB [Communist Party of Great Britain]. I did consider myself to be a Marxist ? I read more chapters of Das Kapital than Harold Wilson.?
- Baroness Shriti Vadera
Readers may have noticed the ?hideously white? nature of the list so far. But fear not, Britain?s non-indigenous loony lefties are first represented at a rather lowly 28 by Shriti Vadera, Gordon Brown?s somewhat ironically titled ?economics guru.? But we?re sure that with a good dose of ?positive discrimination,? Mrs. Vadera will be in the Top Ten in next year?s list.
Congratulations to all the former communists, crypto-communists, quasi-communists and current communists that have made the list. We can all look forward to a year ahead where they will further pursue their internationalist, anti-British agenda in the hope of moving up a few spaces in next year?s list.
[quote]
I doubt that without checking wikipedia you coul name more than 2-3 Labour front benchers let alone give a breakdown of their political ideology. [/quote]
I read a lot of different news sources. I don’t have the time or motivation to sit around anally memorizing everything I read.
[quote]
China and India (along with a number of developing nations) represent a fantastic opportunity for Europe, the USA and Japan in terms of new markets that are opening up. The problem is scare mongering not competition or lack of opportunity. The problem is short sited people who struggle to accept that they are part of an interconnected global economy. People who still want to focus on their own back yard. [/quote]
You need to lay off of the Koolaid.
China has not been an opportunity at all. They had over a billion people living in grinding poverty who couldn’t afford to buy anything that we made. The only market they had to offer was a massive job market that would work for next to nothing. The only thing they are consuming is our manufacturing jobs.
India is a much better case than China in regards to dealing with us fairly, but they can out compete Europeans and Americans in the labor market. In short they are educated, they are smart, they are hungry and they will work for a lot less.
A European who only works 36 hours a week and who takes a months vacation in the summer cannot compete. Especially when a sizable chunk of his salary is confiscated to pay for ridiculously lavish social programs. And all the governments in Europe can think to do is bring in new work rules that make them even less competitive than they already are.