BS: Milliband should change his name

Subject: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 06:23 AM

Sounds like a cross between an insect and a wave band on a transistor radio.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 06:50 AM

No,
Sounds more like the modern day counterpart of the Glenn Milliband:
"String of Pearls", "Pennsylvannia 6,5,thousand", etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 06:52 AM

Wasn't that a Hillbillyband?

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 07:18 AM

one of those old radio with a little glass window and places like Hiversum on the front......ah yes, you can get the broadcast from Vienna on 178 millibands

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 07:50 AM

A length of smouldering milliband is what we lit the blue touchpaper with when I was a lad.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Musket
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 07:56 AM

When I joined a band, we were going to be millionaires, so our vehicle to success was a milliband?

We were noisy for a while, a few people got to know our name and some told us we were important and they listened to us.

We didn't get a recording contract and he won't get the keys to No.10. Possibly for the same reasons.....

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 11:05 AM

Perhaps he should change his name to Ed Hypocriticallabourwanker or Ed Cryptotorywe'reallthesamereally - or how about Ed Neoliberalfreemarketsupporter or Ed Growthgrowthgrowthevenifitcoststheearth? They just trip off the tongue, don't they?

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 11:16 AM

Another suitable name might be: Ed Imaytalktoughbutgreedybankershavenothingtofearfromme.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 11:55 AM

Now don't be unkind to Mr Millipede.

It's virtually impossible to avoid putting your foot in it when you have about a hundred of 'em.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: MikeL2
Date: 18 Jun 12 - 02:16 PM

hi

David Milliband sounds a much better name???

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 06:31 AM

If Ed and his brother David could find 998 relatives, they would have a whole band.


DC

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 06:57 AM

t's Miliband, not Milliband, but with only two members of the family engaged in frontline politics at the highest levels, Big Al might not have noticed.

I don't get a lot of fun out of people's names (for those who do, Ed Balls must be a tempting target) but I would support a name change in this case to prevent this ernest pair further devaluing the name of their dad, the distinguished Marxist academic Ralph Miliband.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: MikeL2
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 11:53 AM

hi

<" I don't get a lot of fun out of people's names (for those who do, Ed Balls must be a tempting target">

His middle name could be Ivanhoe...!!

Cheers

MikeL2

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Doc John
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 05:30 PM

In Private Eye he's Mr Milibean; in another satire (can recall) the brothers are Milidum and Milidee

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Jun 12 - 05:38 PM

You keep thinking if theres an Ed Balls, there should be a 2nd in command Balls.

Can you imagine if Newt Gingrich had been English - he'd surely have to change his name. Still pissed....Newt?

Americans don't believe this.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 05:04 AM

Face it, Al, Miliband doesn't need to change his name but his party - to something less sly, hypocritical and sanctimonius. Labour whinge on about the wicked Tory government (no argument there) but we all know that if they were in power they would be making exactly the same cuts (as a commentator in the 'Independent' put it, a couple of months ago - perhaps a little slower).

Remember that when your darling Labour Party was in power they: carried on with Thatcherite policies, were slavishly pro-big business and anti-trade unions, failed disastrously to regulate the banks, venerated the 'super-rich', allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen, were obsessed with privatisation in education and the health service, perpetuated the 'cult' of managerialism so that public sector staff were buried in pointless paper-work - and then accused them of being inefficient, and pandered shamelessly to the Tory tabloids.

And still mindless, spineless (these days mainly middle-class) Labour Party supporters have the nerve to lecture me on Socialism and social justice!! F..k the Labour Party - may it be consigned to electoral oblivion - it's just another form of Toryism.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 05:15 AM

Isn't he the guy who sold his birthright for a pot of message?

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 06:15 AM

you think so....Shim?

I more than half agree. I felt let down by Blair. On too many issues to go into here.

However stuff gets done under Labour that would never occur to a tory administration. As Polly Toynbee pointed out - Labour was actually on target to eliminate child poverty in this country. That's a target that went into the dutbin to give more money to the rich, as soon as the Bullingdon gang moved in.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 06:50 AM

Miliband's - The Revolution at the End of the Universe!

(with apologies to Douglas Adams i.a.)

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 08:04 AM

dunno about his name...

but his face & hair definitely needs a serious cosmetic make over
to present him as more substantial & appealing to fluffy headed floating voters....

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 08:30 AM

His face does wear the expression of someone, who has just had an Orange Mivvi, stuck up his arse.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 02:29 PM

Yes, I do think so, Al.

Oh, and I forgot to mention a certain illegal war over oil (they lied to us about the cause)in which countless Iraqi children were "taken out of poverty" by means of bombs and bullets!

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Jun 12 - 03:20 PM

Shimrod, I've been a carer since autumn 1976, when rheumatoid arthritis hit my wife like an express train. left her totally disabled and in pretty much constant pain.

if you'd been sneered at, marginalised, impoverished, stolen from, had facilities reduced - by successive tory governments. All the time watching the dumbing down and screwing up of society, and the elevation of moneyed crooks, and the privatising and pillaging of the infrastructure of the country......

You would understand why I vote Labour. I used to hear trots trotting out all this same bollocks about - theres no difference between the two parties, before they stopped Callaghan from delivering a single election speech in 1979.

On my side of the barricade, theres a difference.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 04:33 AM

" ... if you'd been sneered at, marginalised, impoverished, stolen from, had facilities reduced - by successive tory governments. All the time watching the dumbing down and screwing up of society, and the elevation of moneyed crooks, and the privatising and pillaging of the infrastructure of the country."

I'm sorry to hear about your wife's illness, Al. And you both have my sincere sympathy. But I'd still like to know why you, and other Labour Party supporters, went all quiet when Blair and his cronies blythly carried on with Thatcherite policies ... why weren't you all manning the barricades? Then, when Labour lost the last election, you all suddenly found a voice and started berating evil Tory policies again (they were just as evil under Blair and Brown you know!).

And I'm not a "Trot" by the way - but I have a lot of sympathy with their view that all of parties are the same (pass that cigarette paper - let me see if I can slip it between them ...).

If you must know I'm a Green (although not a member of the Green Party) and I watch in horror as conventional political parties mindlessly support policies which are rapidly degrading the planet's ability to support life - including human life.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 05:58 AM

Some of us didn't go all quiet - being kicked in the bollocks hurts just as much no matter who's doing it.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 06:23 AM

I think as a long term Labour supporter. You learn not expect miracles. Harold Wilson refused to support America in Vietnam, and America exacted a terrible revenge - cosying up to the IRA, cancelling defence contracts, generally wiping their arse on the special relationship...

Blair was running scared of that happening again. harold Wilson's galloping pragmatism mark II.

In the other hand, many good things got done. Things that wouldn't occur to a Tory admin. Just today, they want to make the O level exams something that won't lie within the hope of ordinary kids. It will be something once again - just saying - working class, no rich parents - you ain't good enough. The idea of having an education system that is 'comprehensive' - holding something achievable for the whole population is anathema to the tories. Same as their view of the tax system. the health service and everything else.

If you'd lived at the bottom of society - you would understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 08:10 AM

Al, why do you assume that I haven't "lived at the bottom of society"?

My Dad was a sheet-metal worker, in a town where social divisions were very clearly marked. I went to a secondary modern school with no hope of going to university. But, with the support of my parents, I went to the local technical college and got 'O' levels, 'A' levels, a job in a lab - and a Higher National Certificate in Chemistry (which my employer paid for). Eventually I moved to a northern city - where I've had two jobs and been made redundant twice (the last time I realised that I was secure enough to retire). In other words I started from one of the lower levels of society (although certainly not the bottom) and just took advantage of the opportunities that were available to me at the time (whilst working, I also studied for an Open University degree). Some other people, who started from where I started, may not have taken advantage of such opportunities and ended even further down the social scale - and others may have done better that I did.

The opportunities that I took advantage of may not be available now - but remember that social divisions actually got wider under the last two Labour administrations.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 11:56 AM

we're pretty similar background wise. working class parents. In my case - school, tech, teacher training college, open university.

Its when you take you lose your earning potential that the earth opens up, life closes down, and the great chasms open up into which you can fall.

I was lucky, I became some sort of musician, had enough sense to open up lines of credit before I lost my last proper job, moved to an area of the country where property was really cheap, generally bobbed and weaved - but it could have gone much worse - and throughout the tory years you could feel the bastards trying to erode and destroy what vestiges of dignity were there.

You could see the fissures open up - people less fortunate who had calculated wrong becoming falling into in organised crime, or starving in the gutter - people who would have doing jobs servicing a properous working class community only a generation before. Families breaking up - cracking up under the pressure. And getting sneered at relentlessly for being poor, having the bad taste to be poor, having the bad luck to be dependent.

I perceive a difference in the agenda of the two parties.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 12:03 PM

It seems there was this plane crash on a farm in the North of England, and when the rescue services got there they found a burned out plane, but no bodies,......Not One!

A team from Special Branch appeared and started looking around, and they realised that there was a farmer ploughing in the next field, apparently oblivious to what was going on.

They walked over to him and shouted at him to cut the tractor engine, then asked if he had seen the crash. Yep,...he saw it!

What happened to the people? "I buried 'em!"

One of the team said "Tony Blair was on that plane, are you sure he was dead?"

Said the farmer "Weeell! He kept telling me he wasn't, but you know what a lying bastard he was."

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 01:02 PM

Well, Al, I think we're going to have to agree to differ. Labour has much to answer for and they're going to have to work a lot, lot harder before I'll even consider voting for them again.

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 21 Jun 12 - 01:08 PM

It's always preferable, to be shafted by your own side ;)

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 Jun 12 - 03:43 AM

Brown was caught on a microphone dismissing a voter who had raised the issue (immigration)as "bigoted", Mr Miliband will say voters have legitimate fears.

"Worrying about immigration, talking about immigration, thinking about immigration, does not make them bigots. Not in any way. They are anxious about the future," he will argue.

we lost sight of who was benefiting from that growth - and the people being squeezed in the middle who were losing out. We became disconnected from the concerns of working people."

Subject: RE: BS: Milliband should change his name
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 22 Jun 12 - 04:22 AM

"We became disconnected from the concerns of working people."

You certainly did, Ed - you certainly did!