Get Well Soon, Tony Benn
Thursday, February 13, 2014
BBC News - Tony Benn seriously ill in hospital.
I rather like Tony Benn. He's a glorious English eccentric. He's an aristocrat whose attempts at working class affectation are so weak as to be hilarious. His patrician affection for the working class is, however, never in doubt. Say what you like about him, he did not use working people as fuel for his own career, unlike so many in his party (including some who were working men once). He is sincere in his stupidity. He believed he was doing good.
His instinctive emotional reaction is that of the better sort of country squire. Like many of his generation (including many far cleverer than him) he was drawn by the easy, wrong answers of Marxism. Still I have no doubt that - unlike many of his political successors - he has his heart in the right place.
He has been the political weathervane of many. My father told me years ago "I am not much interested in politics, but if Tony Benn's against it, I'm for it". That has guided many better than more studious approaches, except perhaps on the subject of the European Community. Benn was against continued membership at the time of the only referendum we were ever allowed, which convinced many Common Market-sceptics to vote the wrong way. Including me, a naif exercising my ballot for the first time.
I find it hard to believe any current socialist is a good person, given the 20th Century's unequivocal demonstration of the consequences of that vicious doctrine. Either they will its vile ends, are too stupid to understand them or are hucksters playing on its appeal to the weak and envious.
I make an exception for Benn. He's not very bright. He could talk for England in the Talking Olympics but he doesn't listen very well. His thoughts are in ruts so deep he can no longer see over the sides. But despite his continued willing of ends that would kill, impoverish and oppress, I am still fond of the guy.
I wish you a speedy recovery, poor misguided Tony. You have had a good run, but still I hope you live to see what a fool you have been. For someone with such a muscular conscience that will be, even if it's only in your final moments, all the hell you deserve.
here
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qMAwnA5WvLc
Posted by: Mark | Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 12:37 PM
No, I really mean it - there is good reason to believe that a lot of the damage associated with aging will be reparable within the next few decades - check out stem cells, UK government pledge to cure dementia, anti-alzheimers "vaccine" in late stage clinical trials, removal of aged cells...
Also work on medication which slows metabolic aging continues (check David Sinclair)... not to mention that google recently launched an "anti- aging" division.
Who knows when the final breakthrough will occur - largely depends on the funding, I guess - but it seems certain that it *will* occur at some stage in the future.
The sooner the better.
Posted by: Mark | Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 12:32 PM
Kind of agree with Tom.
A man you love to hate, but never can really get around to the hate bit.
Posted by: Furor Teutonicus | Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 07:35 AM
Exactly. I hope we all wish our enemies well at this personal level. May their ideas die in ignominy, but they die painlessly and in peace.
It takes socialism (national or international) to reduce humans to so many eggs in the social omelette. It takes socialism to make state violence the sole implement of government. I hate it in all its variants and oppose socialists in their political actions with tooth, nail and whatever else I can sink into the bastards.
When they are not busy attacking the decent and productive to bribe their thugs and hangers on, however, I am happy to have a pint with them.
Posted by: Tom | Saturday, February 15, 2014 at 12:02 AM
I am puzzled by this. It's clearly sarcastic, but I don't get your point. Care to expand in the hope I might be able to agree?
Posted by: Tom | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 11:54 PM
I subscribe to your last two paragraphs, which say more graciously what I attempted. Thank you.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 11:53 PM
He was an hereditary peer. Noblesse de robe, not noblesse d'epee certainly. Was the first Earl of Chester not an aristocrat in 1068? How well-aged do they have to be in your book? And please don't use that dishonest word "progressive" here. Taking liberties and property away piece by piece is not "progress" to any civilised mind.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 11:50 PM
Can't stand the bloke, but of course wish him well.
Posted by: Single Acts of Tyranny | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 11:05 PM
Looking it up on wikipedia - might be a bit inaccurate to describe him as an "aristocrat" - his familly's titles were awarded for (progressive/labour) politics to his father and grandfather.
Is the son of John Prescot an aristocrat now?
Posted by: Mark | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 10:34 PM
Have to agree, cannot feel charitable to him.
May the NHS apply a socialist solution to his ills. Of course as a politician and a lord he would NEVER receive better treatment than the plebs, would he? Of course he would, the nomenklatur look after their own.
My mother, who worked for the then Eastern Electricity accounts department, once threatened to cutoff his electricity for non-payment. He with mighty dudgeon could not understand why he would be treated similar to the plebs for such a minor offence.
His type just do not have a grip on reality.
Posted by: Cascadian | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 08:26 PM
Hopefully scientists will cure aging soon enough and these troubles will be a thing of the past.
Posted by: Mark | Friday, February 14, 2014 at 12:02 AM
He fought for and won the right of hereditary peers to renounce their titles and sit in the House of Commons.
That was worth doing.
He came up with his 5 Democratic Questions:
What power have you got?
Where did you get it from?
In whose interests do you use it?
To whom are you accountable?
How do we get rid of you?
No matter that they might be a paraphrase or distillation of others' thoughts, they are worth articulating in the way Benn did.
He was right about the EEC/EU.
He was spectaluarly wrong about nationalised industries, and much else besides but it never seemed to me that he was self-serving in the way of Blair.
And he is a man of significant personal charm.
I wish him as much peace, as little discomfort as possible in this illness.
Posted by: James Strong | Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 09:56 PM
Wedgie Benn, a thorn in the side of reason probably done as much harm as global warming, an idiot who had more influence than his self serving affected advocacy should have been given. But that is always the way of the left more shout than substance, the idiot Owen Jones being the latest village idiot of the left rest in peace sooner than later.
Posted by: Peter Whale | Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 07:36 PM
Ah yes. Mr Anthony Wedgewood-Ben. Get well soon.
Posted by: Mark in Mayenne | Thursday, February 13, 2014 at 03:32 PM