= new reply since forum marked as read
I caught the headlines on BBC Radio 4's evening news programme just now. Apparently there's a scandal because somebody had filmed Corbyn walking past empty seats on that train on the way to the leadership hustings where he ended up sitting on the floor.
So I headed online, where even Twitter apparently has more investigative capacity and sense of news values than the BBC does.
Richard Branson, who obviously has no vested interest in reports of chronic train overcrowding, released some CCTV footage from the train supposedly proving there were empty seats that Corbyn walked past.
Here's Corbyn walking past "empty seats"
Note the red cards, which indicate they're reserved.
And in the end, here's the damning shot of Corbyn sitting - in a seat, shockhorrorhowdarehe!!1! - in Coach H,
where, as may happen when the rest of a train's dangerously overcrowded, a ticket inspector had shuffled people around so that groups could sit together, and directed those without First Class tickets to find more comfortable accommodation, freeing up a seat for Corbyn in Coach H.
And here's an eyewitness report - it seems the media has the resources to hunt out intemperate tweets from people, but not to find anything that blows their latest silly season story out of the water.
Now, it took up five minutes of my life to figure all that out. And the BBC just ran another two-minute report on it. Is it any wonder people are tuning out?
And to cap it all, gratifyingly, Branson appears to have fallen foul of the Streisand Effect:
The row over whether Jeremy Corbyn had to sit on the floor of a Virgin train has taken a new twist after passengers on the service disputed the company’s version of events.
Earlier this month Mr Corbyn released a video of himself sitting on the floor of a Virgin East Coast train arguing that “this is a problem that many passengers face every day”.
The train company, however, has released CCTV stills showing Mr Corbyn finding a seat on the train, saying that it “clearly wasn’t the case” he could not find somewhere to sit. Though Mr Corbyn did not claim that there were no seats on the train, he said it was “ram-packed”.
Other people on the train have however come forward to say it was in fact very busy, at least at the start of the journey.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/passengers-dispute-virgin-trains-version-of-jeremy-corbyn-sitting-on-floor-video-a7205631.html
He'll just win a majority of Labour MP's, and Corbyn fanboys will just end up looking even sillier than they did before! 
No wonder all the trainspotters gave up and turned to beer ticking!
.....well, until it gets cancelled due to engineering works!
Quite a few people will remember it for a long time.
(Last one: different date, same priorities.)
Sounds like Corbyn's in danger of succeeding in pulling at least some in the PLP and the wider party to the left (leaving aside the question of how "left" Smith's claim to multilateralism, support for Trident and declaration that he's willing to press the button is, and the vagueness of some of his top 20, such as "focus on equality of outcome, not equality of opportunity"
.
So if, once re-elected leader, Corbyn pursues at least some of these policies in parliament, he can expect the vocal support of Smith and others in the PLP, rather than catcalls and sniping? Right?
(Baker is General Secretary of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union.)
* Corbyn supporter Catherine Starr, 33, denied a vote in leadership election
* Labour refused her full membership for 'sharing inappropriate content'
* Refers to post in March when she shared clip of Dave Grohl's band and wrote: 'I f****** love the Foo Fighters'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3759906/Labour-suspends-member-party-posted-love-FOO-FIGHTERS-Facebook.html
Among those not singled out for purging:
* Braces self to hit alert button toot sweet in anticipation of next intemperate "gobshite" jibe *
his victory would be tainted and illegitimate.
The sad thing is, Mr. Smith may be a perfectly decent man, but he is not running as himself. He is running to put
BTW, there's no reason to put "Momentum" in scare qutes That's the organization's name, and it has just as much right to be in the Labour Party as Progress does. Momentum is simply a group of radical democratic socialists seeking social and economic change by peaceful and honorable means. It is not a sect and it is not a cult. Nor is it run by "Trots"
btw, if calling someone a "Blairite" in sociali media is enough to get you barred from voting in the Labour leadership contest, would you agree that it should also get you banned if you call someone a "Trot" in the same social media? It's not as though the former is slanderous but the second isn't, and it's absurd to act as if the only reason Corbyn won was a Trotskyist-Tory plot.
As for mass deselections...that most likely isn't going to happen. But are you really prepared to argue that it is diabolical to deny a sitting Labour MP reselection(something most of the PLP seem to think they are entitled to by divine right) if it is shown that that MP has been part of a sabotage campaign against her or his party's own leader? Even if it is clear that said campaign did irreparable damage to Labour's chances of winning the next election?
Should a sitting MP really be able to do that and face no consequences from his constituency party at all? It's not as though the MP is above the CLP, that the MP matters and the CLP don't.
The only "problem" that existed in the last leadership campaign was that the non-status quo candidate won. If the PLP had accepted the will of the vast majority of the party and rallied 'round that leader, worked with him and bolstered him rather than constantly briefed against him in the Tory press, and hadn't blamed him for a referendum result he was clearly blameless for(Remain would still have lost even if Corbyn had done what the Labour right really wanted and shared a podium with Cameron, and Corbyn made MORE speeches on behalf of Remain than any OTHER Labour figure-nothing was stopping Alan Johnson, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall, Andy Burnham, Hilary Benn, Angela Eagle OR Owen Smith from hitting the hustings across the UK-yet almost none of them did a damn thing to work for a Remain victory(and Alan Johnson's constituency voted Leave while Corbyn's voted overwhelmingly Remain). There was simply nothing more at all that Corbyn could have done, and no other Labour figure made any effective arguments for the Remain case.
It's time to stop acting as if it's silly to question the idea that Corbyn MUST step down and that Corbyn's supporters must be driven out of the party. At this point, it is clear that neither of those occurrences(NOR a repudiation of Corbyn's ideas)is going to bring Labour huge numbers of additional voters, OR persuade a single person who voted Tory in 2015 to vote Labour next time.
If the PLP wanted Corbyn to step down, they should have made it clear, from the beginning, that a left candidate WOULD be allowed in the subsequent leadership vote, that Corbyn's supporters wouldn't be expelled, and that internal party democracy would be restored. From all that I've heard, they refused to commit to ANY of those things. Instead, all they offered was to give Corbyn a newly-created job as "party president"-a job we all know would have been powerless and irrelevant. It was absurd for the PLP or anyone else ever to have expected Corbyn to agree to that. They all knew that he wouldn't, and that he couldn't. Therefore, the PLP were never "negotiating" with Corbyn in good faith. They treated him as if he had no right ever to have been leader at all and they acted as if it were THEIR party and no one else's. That attitude made Corbyn's decision to stand and fight, and massive support that decision has received among the Labour rank and file, inevitable and predictable.
The MPs have got to accept the fact that the party members and workers and the LABOUR MOVEMENT ITSELF(the unions)must have just as much say in what the party stands for, who leads it, and who is nominated as prospective parliamentary candidates by it as THEY do. Otherwise, they need to do the honourable thing, rename themselves the "Professional Politician Party", and stand down and fight for their seats in byelections under that banner. They have no right at all to treat Labour as their private property and their exclusive club.
‘Get the fuck out of Brighton, right now’ activists warned
TWO left-Labour activists were told to “get the fuck out of Brighton now, scum,” by members of their own party, according to reports this weekend.
The London-based activists, who were on the south coast for a rally in support of Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday night, said they had faced “physical threats,” swearing and aggression from people purporting to be Labour members in a Brighton pub.
The verbal dust-up followed an extraordinary letter from the Labour leader of Brighton and Hove Council warning of a “takeover” of the local Labour Party by left activists.
Tottenham Constituency Labour Party secretary Seema Chandwani said two men had approached her and Michael Calderbank, who works as a trade union researcher in Parliament, at a pub where they were eating dinner after the packed rally.
https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-d9b4-Labour-right-thugs-threaten-own-side
Tut. Those Corbynite thugs.
John McTernan, a commentator and previous strategist for the Labour Party, has threatened an SNP MP with violence on Twitter. In one fell swoop, McTernan (who strongly backs Owen Smith in the Labour leadership contest) proved himself to be the very type of abusive person that officials claim they want ejected from the party.
The threat transpired during an exchange between McTernan and SNP MP Pete Wishart over recently released figures on the state of Scotland’s finances.
http://www.thecanary.co/2016/08/24/owen-smiths-biggest-backer-just-lost-social-media-threatening-violence-mp-tweets/
Twitter exchange in question here: https://twitter.com/johnmcternan/status/768421586701545472
Just a one-off transgression by McTernan? Well ...
Quote from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10276410/David-Camerons-No-10-isnt-a-patch-on-Tony-Blairs.html
Tut, tut. Those Corbynite thugs.
"In the end, in politics you need to be feared or respected."
Now you know how I feel every time I read yet another of your hyperbolic dead-ender diatribes about "Corbynite cultists" and their many, many terrible transgressions against humanity, which inexplicably give a pass to the spineless cod-Machiavellian centralizing triangulating unelectable austerity fetishists who got the party and country in this mess in the first place. 
Last edited Thu Sep 1, 2016, 02:56 AM - Edit history (1)
It's my rants about the "Northern Powerhouse", especially with regard to Sheffield City Region that are especially boring.
And even there, we really need the leader of the Labour party to intervene to resolve the significant dispute between Chesterfield Labour and the county wide party.
Politics. It isn't always about the interesting stuff.
P.S. Your posts also prove my point that the Labour leadership contest is all about personal vendetta's, not about making this country a better place to live. And you wouldn't want the SNP to head down this sort of direction would you?
