stoush.net

My short answer is no, no, factions aren’t killing the Labor Party, it’s the stupidity and the shallow gene pool that are doing in the cause of organised labour in Parliament.

… or a bit of both, perhaps? It’s a bit of a “chicken or the egg” scenario.

Australians, tell me the truth.

You love your country and take gigantic pride in her and her democracy. We Americans do to. And while we Americans reveal in our flag waving you guys are a bit more restrained and see us as pretentious with our jingoism. I know you do. It’s the Brit in ya (wink).

I like the egalitarian, beer-drinking bloke that tells it like it is. I like that you are not prissy. When MP Julia Gillard told your minister of health “I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard.” I died laughing. Not at Australia but with her. You see I look at that as a sign of a healthy people who value free speech and hate pretension. And later on

read the reat at [link deleted]

Well, you’re not a spambot as far as I can see, massachusettsrepublican, so I won’t delete your spam.
I’m nice like that.
You’re just posting the same comment everywhere, entirely out of context and unsolicited, to promote your shitty blogspot collection of other people’s sectarian links. It’s people like you who make it so easy for Americans to be stereotyped as arrogant, ignorant chauvinists.
Don’t come back.

My short answer is no, no, factions aren’t killing the Labor Party, it’s the stupidity and the shallow gene pool that are doing in the cause of organised labour in Parliament.

Ah, but to reverse-engineer your comment, couldn’t it also be said that the stupidity and shallow gene pool are the factors that have turned factions from ideologically united intra-party lobby groups to little more than rival footy teams?

Guess we’ll have to work it out at Fabians …

Well that was certainly Mark Latham’s estimation.

Labor being killed by factions.

For a socialist party to maintain its sense of purpose, it has to be for the most part community based.

Labor has become little more than a cut-rate Democrats party, same with the English party too. In fact throughout the western world, socialism is entirely alienated from the people and is only an institution of for spin doctoring. Good luck to them on “securing water” but it is fast becoming the case that the Liberals are far more the community based political party.

That has been the effect of factional politics within the Labor party.

Too little emphasis on community involvement and far too much emphasis and controlling the institutions of power.

You’ve obviously not read John Hyde-Page’s book on the Liberals, Patrick, and the burnt-earth destruction of their fairly minimal branch structure during the most recent factional wars. I’ll review it sooner or later when I’ve time.
Needless to say the existence of the idea of the Liberals as a ‘community’ Party represents simply successful marketing, not the actual Party.

Factions in themselves don’t kill the party, only when the ideological purpose of factions/groupings no longer exist.
Sadly, stupidity and a shallow gene pool aren’t barriers to an ability to doing numbers.

It is sort of on topic. Its about factions just not in the ALP. For those of you who followed the race, Ned Lamont has won the Democratic primary over Joe Liebermann. The Blue State has a good run down of it all http://thebluestate.typepad.com/

The power of blogging? It was a bit over-stated in the race as was referred to at dailykos but nonetheless played a part.

Overstated indeed, double-L. Personally I think in these kinds of situations the candidates’ weblogs don’t compete with the established press and electronic media, rather, they compete with the direct mail and phone networks on which the campaign(s) would otherwise spend money.
What can you say about the result, though, and Lieberman going indie? Send the rat some cheese.

The annoying thing about Labor’s factions is the lack of variety. Politics now aren’t a simple left to right line on which you can stick a pin and say ‘I sit here’. Labor’s right, presumably aimed at being somewhere near the political centre, is in fact (mostly) strongly left wing on IR issues and well right of centre of social liberalism.

That’s fine, but where do you go for the opposite (without crossing to the dark side and sitting with Petro and the two other libs born with both a conscience and a brain).

It will never change until the control of conference votes is shifted to allow for decent representation without the endorsement of a union. No ifs, no buts.

Unions don’t need to lose their central place in the party, just ease up a bit and share the power.