Wassup with John Reid?

[ViolentPanda]

Im sure I recently watched an episode of the new Dr Who that had a similar theme to this ?

John Reid as a Slytheen?

Now there's a thought!

 

[nino_savatte]

VP please dont contradict me...It only leads to arguements.

There is only one "e" in arguments, clever dick.

 

[ska invita]

bullseye

 

[ZAMB]

That picture flatters him, don't you think? He's even less sexy IRL.

 

[tangentlama]

Personally I wouldn't piss on Reid. Having met him a few times "back in the day" I can't say I was impressed by his lack of self-control or his inability (like most of his ilk) to take constructive criticism. I can't see that his giving up the sauce will have changed that.

I'm told by older people that Reid was not above beating up other students whose political views differed from his own and used intimidating tactics on his political opposition when he was at University. I did some research and found he was involved in the Communist Party at the time.

Even if Reid does stand, he probably still has too many enemies in the parliamentary Labour party to get many votes from them, and the unions aren't too fond of him either, which means he'd need to rely mostly on constituency party votes in a leadership contest.

John Reid is still using bully tactics and intimidation, and hasn't got a leg to stand on with his comments on 'violence' with a history like his own. I wonder who he beat up at University (it was Edinburgh, wasn't it?). I hope they come forward with their stories. He's not leadership material.

Mark Seddon wrote an very interesting piece on ex-Communists and 'ex'-Trots and their Manichean worldview, recently:

most of the ex-Trostskyites and ex-communists I have come across, invariably still see the world in black and white. The imminent collapse of capitalism for them has been replaced by new certainties against which to rail.

In Alan's case it is a "pathological mass movement", a "death cult" courtesy of "totalitarian militant Islam". Hear this from the clearly excitable academic: "The Islamist threat is not that some hundreds of people will be killed, or even once every so often that they will get 'lucky' and kill thousands. In the Muslim world, the victims of totalitarian movements have been in their millions". By extension, the ever pessimistic Alan, believes that there could be "millions of victims" from Islamist terror in Europe. Give me an Avian flu pandemic any day!

But here's the thing, as Americans are wont to say; what evidence does our academic friend have that "millions" have been victims of totalitarian movements in the Islamic world? Over what period of time? From which "movements"? Does he include secular Baathists in his monstrous equation? Are we really to believe such nonsense, because if we do, this collective crime against humanity could mirror the millions slaughtered by the Nazis in Europe and the Khmer Rouge in Indo China.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mark_seddon/2006/10/filling_the_swamp.html

Reid is guilty of playing the 'terror-suspect' card to draw away attention from the fact that there are 600 violent criminals on the loose in the UK.

 

[ska invita]

as an aside, my tip for the top job in the not so distant future is Hazel Blears!
-Very loyal Blairite I would guess from her voting record.

not sure what her score at a focus group would be. People often get intimidated by confident and articulate women.

A little while back I thought (kind of 'optimisticaly'*) Hazel Blears might just be leader of the Labour party - looks like she's quite likely going to be deputy leader instead
http://www.newstatesman.com/200703120012

She seems unshakable - I have to admit being a little fascinated by her! I bet she's got a mean headbutt.

*not that I want her to get the job you understand

Ladbrooks has got her as least favourite at 10/1 but I reckon thats a good bet at good odds:
http://www.oddschecker.com/specials/politics-and-election/next-deputy-labour-leader/win-market

 

[Azrael]

What's up with John Reid?

Well, aside from the fact that he's a right-wing arsehole with a bullying style, a total lack of personal charm; that he's a sycophant with a well-deserved reputation as one of Blair's arch-toadies; that he was as involved as any in some of the shittiest things this government has done; that he's managed the remarkable feat of being even more illiberal and authoritarian than his predecessors; that he looks like a bouncer in some vaguely upmarket but terminally rough nightclub and that he's got all the charisma of a halibut then he's fine IMO.

(But also of course.)

From the Guardian speech: "And let's be clear. It cannot be right that the rights of individual suspected terrorist be placed above the rights, life and limb of the British people. It's wrong. Full stop. No ifs, no buts. It's just plain wrong."

That is the rationale of a banana dictator and, quite simply, describes the end of civil liberties as we know them. Procedural safeguards are now a sin. This man is an unreformed commissar and a national menace. As some wag so wisely said, "If there's something of the night about Michael Howard, then there's something of the dawn raid about John Reid."