http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2185791,00.html

I've heard BB tell this story Beryl.
I just thought there was more to it.
(He was a wanker on the stage at Hyde Park in 1991 btw)

As Euripides said, "Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."

But jon, what did that bloke (kevin Pearson) say?

as this isn't the thread, I'll reposnd by saying that Mr Pearson is pretty much a knee jerk/PC person who is rumoured to enjoy the Daily Mail and the writings of Boris Johnsons' sister.

And Beryl: I get it.
But he's talking about the 1970's when I was at school - (and me and my classmates were (positively) influenced, by the Rock Against Racism message.)
Today it's much more complex. To try to pretend it's still as simple to be a leftwinger today, seems nostalgic.
I know I'm solipsistic, but I find the filibustering of a few forum members, very frustrating.
(I even said to Zippy yesterday, that I wanted to punch his face in. Which was complete nonsense by me. He'd either kick my arse, (or put a bullet in it) if I tried as much).

Eureka. Look what I found last night for the first time.
This is what I think political debate should be like. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown takes on the editor of Spiked-online in a lively debate on Cross Talk on 18 Doughty St.

Yasmin is a lovely woman, and I'd say her politics and outlook are pretty much in tune with the mainstream of this forum. Something like where pink shay (who says I make her eyes bleed), and Tanya (who says I make her brain hurt) are.

I have said about a dozen times on the forum, that I like Yasmin. I always read her columns in The Independent (and have one of her books). I like her passion for a fairer society, and she argues well.
But I think there is something lacking in her overall view.

Brendan O' Neil of Spiked, is critical of Yasmins kind of leftism, and Yasmin to her credit, was willing to debate against him, and while never agreeing with him fully, admitted that he brought some good points to the discussion.

Far from being the ''bigot'' that I have been called on this forum, my opinions are about half way between Yasmin AB and those of Spiked. I think that makes me open minded, not narrow minded like someone suggested.

Also available on that page I linked to, is Yasmin debating Nick Cohen. That debate got pretty lively.

Damon, it is quite an interesting debate and I think it shows that "Spiked!" is not the product of reactionary racists.
However, it also has to be said that O'Neill doesn't let Y A-B get a word in edgewise for quite a lot of it; that whilst some of the points he makes are good, he's factually wrong about some things (Bosnia, for example); that the questions that he sidesteps are often the real crux of the issues he is debating (actually, the key to the climate change debate is the science, not the ideology); that his own world view is actually a kind of cultural imperialisnm ("Africa needs more of what Europe and America have" - who says?); and that most importantly, for a Marxist, he says almost nothing about class nor does he offer any critique of capitalism.
I think that he comes across as if he's trying a bit too hard to sound like a maverick; but as a catalyst for debate it's good.

Blimey, has someone suggested that they were JB? If they have, they obviously know nothing.

Edited
Edited

Anyway, as I said, politically, I'm half way between Yasmin AB and Spiked myself, as I think (as you say) they do take the maverick thing a bit far.

O'Neil did talk alot. A half an hour was too short a time for three subjects to be discussed by three people.
(But Yasmin's views are widly known anyway).

On Bosnia, Yasmin might be right about the UN doing some good when they actually put troops into the country, and tried to stop the fighting, (although Srebrenica still happened). But the wests role in Yougoslavia was not a helpful one from the begining.

Climate change is too complicated an issue to rush, and I agree with your conclusion in the climate change thread JB. They may be overstating their case there.

I think he's right on ''offical anti-racism.'' (And me trying to raise the idea on here is probably where I've come unstuck).

And saying that Africa needs ''western style development'' I wouldn't call cultural imperialism, but just an opinion. I'm sure that most Africans would welcome state of the art hospitals, and to have roads like in South Africa, and have jobs in factories or IT, or media etc.
Africa has certainly embraced the mobile phone.
Maybe that was the marxist bit - ending want through increasing production .

That was pretty unequivocal. But expected. Instead of bunging up other threads with my bleating I thought I might put a few ideas down here, and will probably add to it by editing a few times.

Firstly can I say that I have very little recolection of barmyrob trying to have much of a conversation with me. There was the advice to stop reading Spiked-online, as they were a bunch of cunts. Not much more really about them. ''Furedi is terrible, Clair Fox can set fire to her farts'' was about it really.
I acknowlege the Ed Vulliamy article about Bosnia, but you have done very little (and why should you) in the past two years, so I found the use of the word conversation somewhat odd.
Eventually after banging on about the ''diversity is divicive'' article by munira Mirza about half a dozen times, you eventuall wrote about one line and asid it's sounds like 'polyculturalism' - which is something you approve of.

I have never said I was a Spiked groupie, (and there is so much crap written about them on the web - ''the Furedi cult etc'') but the articles like ''chaining black youth to the victim culture'' I found to have much merrit, and this subjest is what the sunday night BBC London phone in shows, talking about issues in the black community, were constantly going back to themes raised in the article.
The effect of slavery on black youth today etc.

The reason it drew such a blank (I guessed) was that it went against leftist orthodoxy. I don't think that some parts of the left can take in ideas like that.
For example, from what I have read about The London Feminist Network - there could be no conversation between them and the RCP people. It would end in acrimony. The politics just fundamentally clash. Your suggestion about misogynism was without foundation I thought.
(Unless my dissing the London Feminist Network is more evidence of it).

A quick little story about Bosnia. I went there six years ago.
I went to Osijek and Vukovar in Croatia (on the Serbian border - where the war started). And I saw the blown up and burned buildings, and the block of flats with thousands of bullet marks all over it.
That was Serbian agression no doubt. I went to Tuzla, Sarajevo and Mostar.
In Mostar it was the Muslim side of the river that had been shot to pieces by Croats.

I went to a small town called Trebinje in a Serb controlled area just about 15 miles on the othe side of the mountains from Dubrovnik. I was depressed and scruffy and reminded me of Romania.

A young friendly Serb gave me a lift out of town (to the west), and told me what he had done in the war. He had been in the Bosnian Serb Militia. He pointed out in the valley we were driving through, that this was a three way front line between Serbs Croats and Muslims, and he was defending his village, and ........

To be continued.

I don't think this thread merits being revived. I'm closing it.