I blame Stroppybird, but she’s blaming me. We’ve both come down with colds, and, I have to say, it’s not just man flu, but I’m hacking up strange stuff from my lungs (some might say it’s come uppance for all those fags and booze) and, as is traditional whenever I have a cold, my ears are producing some rather strange stuff, which gives me tremendous ear ache. So today has been a silent day by nessicesity - no bassy music (which has been hard because most of the music I listen to is built around low frequency sounds), no phone calls, and even the washing machine is making my ears explode. They’re so hot right now you could boil water with them. Provided you cover them with cling film first.
I’ve been using the time laying waste in bed to do some moving-in house tidying on the new blog, which I’ve imaginatively called KitNotes 3.0. There are more links than before (whatever made me think that linking to Paul Anderson was a good idea, I’ll never know) and two widgets promoting the John 4 Leader campaign here in Britain and the Presidential campaign of the LCR’s Olivier Besancenot in France. Nothing like internationalism, is there?
Some people might ask “OMG KIT WHY U NOT BACKIN SEGO IN FRANCE????!!!!!oneoneoneeleven LOL”. Fair point. But if you want to have an idea as to what life under Ségolène Royal’s France would be like, then you just have to look at Blair’s Britain. Slashed public services, increased job insecurity, cuts in corporate taxes, hikes in income taxes for the poor (Gordo just abolished the basic rate of income tax - 10p in the pound), dragged into American imperial misadventures… the list goes on. And Royal has openly made clear that she admires Blair and wishes to emulate him and the “third way”.
In England, there is nowhere else to go. Respect is an unprincipled rotten bloc between a faction of unprincipled ’socialists’ willing to sacrifice any principle to get into bed with dodgy Islamist types… and George Galloway. The Socialist Party’s Campaign for a New Workers’ Party has no life beyond the SP’s printing press.
John McDonnell’s campaign, on the other hand, is offering a real alternative, inside the Labour Party.
In France, they have the luxury of the LCR, and Besancenot’s candidacy. He scored 5% of the vote in the 2002 Presidential elections, which equates to well over one million votes, on an openly revolutionary socialist platform. It is a viable, going concern - and socialists should support it.
What do you think? Should I be backing Arlette Laguiller, candidate of Lutte Ouvrier? Or maybe Royal’s just admitted to being a third camp Trotskyist and I didn’t notice. The comment box, as ever, is always open…
I always had a soft spot for Arlette, though getting to know actual LO members or even trying to do politics with them knocked that one out of me pretty sharpish. But this is the internet age, and both LO and LCR have campaign websites for their respective candidates. And now I really understand why Arlette is referred to as “the parrot”. I did 4 years of French at school, resulting, it is true, in an A at GCSE (my oral exam wasn’t the best one recorded on tape, I seem to remember going on about Arthur Scargill and the mineworkers and the SLP, the launch meeting having occured a few days beforehand), but this is 12 years ago. And when I watch the videos of Oliver Bescancenot on French télé (uploaded onto his website), to be honest I don’t understand much. A word, a phrase now and again, but in any case he seems to be able to answer the questions he’s asked, not just by journalists, but also by anyone else. Arlette Laguiller is another matter. I understand most of it - and it’s always the bloody same. She was interviewed, live, after being shown going to a strike rally (and travelling first class by train, so she could write her speech in peace, but she was still congratulated and being told ‘you’re my girl in the first round, love’ by various old men, on their way to the TGV buffet). And then a film was shown about ‘flexibility’ in the workplace, the example being a company making something that looked a bit like caravans, but for the fire brigade (like I said, French is something I did until 1995), interviews with the workers and that. Back to the studio. Arlette was asked, ‘you think flexibilisation is crap. But these workers appear to like it as their company only gets orders now and again, so sometimes there’s nothing much to do, and sometimes they have to do overtime, but they accept it”. Arlette stumbles. She gives a few (probably correct) slogans. And ‘ums’ a bit. Mentions workers’ control, but that was it. Not the finest hour of a revolutionary socialist on national (ok, it was a local optout of France 3) television. Thankfully the interviewer changes the subject to the old chestnut of ‘why so many left candidates’. She’s done better in the past - the French national archives (online) have a lot of old LO stuff and interviews with Arlette (including the classic “Why aren’t you married, why don’t you have any kids?” (translation: “Trotskyist *and* lesbian or what?) . Perhaps she’s just doing one candidature too many? And will LO find anyone for next time round?
So my answer is: Bescancenot. Not that he’s “100%” the man to back, mind you.
France. Choice of three Trot candidates for president. 300 cheeses. A country where women don’t buy their underwear at Asda. What’s not to like?
“A country where women don’t buy their underwear at Asda”
Well I certainly don’t buy my underwear at Asda’s !!
The Third Trot candidate (Workers Party) is interesting - I was looking why he wasn’t on any of the lists of candidates, not realising that he is put forward as the ‘Mayors candidate’ and is standing on a very non Trot platform of - e.g. don’t merge municipalities, more powers for Mayors, etc’ - although all this is according to WSWS.
WSWS also claim Besancenot says he has more time for Castro rather than Trotsky and the general greenish, backsliding, building alliances to the right of themselve sof the LCR is a concern.
But so is the method of LO. They remind me a lot of Militant - workerist disdain for any other lefts and parotting out formulas (but without the reformist stuff).
LO seem better politically but worse method- wise - I don’t know which of them I’d vote for.
& harrumph - ‘A country where women don’t buy their underwear at Asda’ - I recall that phrase as originally being posted by me in Dave’s comment box.
I could have assimilated it in turn from somewhere else but was based on experience. But then maybe he blazed the trail and I have just being following in Dave’s footsteps - 10% of voters on my site do think I’m him. So Stroppy - what are we doing at the weekend?
So Stroppy - what are we doing at the weekend?
If it’s up to you, going to Housman’s, or Centerprise, and if Freedom Press hasn’t got it either, then Borders on Oxford Street, to buy a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook.
Oi, what’s with the imposters?
Come on Punchie, let’s get dressed up in fishnets and drink JD and coke.
There is only one Stroppy, and its not the two copy cats above !!
Still imitation is meant to be a form of flattery .
Next weekend I will be at the bloggers piss up. I will be drinking JD and may or not be wearing fishnets
Look, I’m not the imposter, you are!
I think Kit should delete your comments. Please Kit. Delete them or I’ll strop
saddoe
strop strop strop
Oh shut up. I’m just going to mark any more imposters as Spam, OK?