JeremyStangroom.Com

No doubt I need a pedant bypass operation, but am I wrong in thinking the first of the posters produced by the Socialist Workers Party, featured here, is a mess? Surely it only makes sense if the thing which Blears is claiming doesn’t make her a corrupt politician does make her a corrupt politician. But in this case, it doesn’t. There’s nothing corrupt about saying that avoiding tax on a second home is within the rules, it’s the non-payment of the tax that constitutes the corruption (if it is indeed corruption, which I make no judgement about).

I know I shouldn’t laugh at socialists, but… this post contains what I think must be the most absurd example of Marxist ‘economic determinism’ I’ve ever read: “the police officer who comes to your home in response to a burglary or an incident of vandalism with a sympathetic ear and a commitment to your needs at that particular moment, is the same police officer who when deployed at a demonstration against the very institutions responsible for people losing their homes is ready, able, and willing to put a baton over your head…Social being determines consciousness, and the primary role of the police in any capitalist society is that of a weapon in the hands of a state controlled by the few at the expense of the many.” This is then followed by a commentator earnestly commanding that nobody forget “the guy whose name I’ve sadly forgotten” (I kid you not)!