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A people’s history to replace Old Toryism – the Danny Boyle legacy

July 28, 2012 4:02 pm

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Danny Boyle claimed not to be pursuing a theory in the Olympics opening ceremony. He wasn’t making a point. And yet old Tory critics are fuming. Most of them behaved themselves but some such as Aidan Burley MP couldn’t help ejaculating their displeasure at the orthodox view of Britishness being completely displaced. This was our national story but not as you’ve heard it before.

The unfamiliar narrative that we saw represented in East London’s Olympic Park on Friday is a view of Britain – or was it England? – that has been quietly buried in our national consciousness by TV history and Establishment Toryism. There were no executions last night. That stands in contrast to the David Starkey view of history. The orthodox view of the people as merely extras in a story of regal supremacy and a march to global domination now seems as peculiar as a gurn on the face of Mr Bean.

It was this island’s people throughout the ages who took centre stage. Somewhere in a beyond the grave humanist socialist nirvana, E.P. Thompson would have been looking on and smiling. Boyle’s history was revolutionary. The innocence of the Shire was replaced with the energetic brutality of Satanic Mills. Tolkien was implicitly referenced and so were William Morris and William Cobbett. Yet, the revolution represented by a Dickensian Willy Wonka-ish Isambard Kingdom Brunel was simply part of our story – not a nostalgic refrain. We weren’t being ushered back to an age of innocence.

As a people’s history, our new national story is respectful of popular institutions. Our monarchy is not there to reign over us. It is there to express us – we have come from somewhere but our institutions are very much about today. In this sense the NHS and the monarchy are similar – they are about who we are and what we value. This modern monarch joins in with the joke. God bless you ma’am. And this is precisely what anti-royal republicanism misses – this is an institution embraced by the people. In Haggerston Park, Hackney (a Borough not noted for its conservatism), the cheers went up for the Queen, James Bond and then the NHS in the order. But it is conversely what the neo-liberal right miss about the NHS – it is ours, we built it and we are not letting it go.

This fanfare for the common man and woman – America’s revolution was ours too as Jonathan Freedland has argued – presents an existential challenge to old Tory politicians, journalists, historians and writers. If we are capable of looking after ourselves then they are rather surplus to requirements. This is no longer about Thomas Carlyle’s great men of history. It’s about millions of great men and women in history and in the present and future. The athletes are some of the most inspiring but the real inspiration comes from we, the people – all of us.

That path of a people striving for justice through time is certainly flavoured with Thomas Paine. It’s a story though that has a past, a remarkable present and unbounded future. The golden thread runs through. There is considerable room in this for the subtle conservatism of Edmund Burke – who, remember, was in favour of the American but not French revolution.

Somewhere along the way Empire was quietly locked away. The slave trade was avoided. World War II was glossed over. This is quite incredible in many ways. Empire and World War II glory are usually front and centre of our national story.

My hunch is while there is still visceral conflict on all these issues to be diplomatically avoided, Boyle was doing something else also. He was refusing to allow us to slump back in the comfy yet frayed armchair of how our national story is normally told. He was challenging us. The Churchill speeches are magnificent but have become too easy a historical crutch. They will keep for another day. The EU was also missing – reflecting our national ambivalence about that relationship.

Of course, there is ambiguity in all of this. What is this nation? Who are ‘the people’? We are English and we are British and we don’t necessarily know the difference between the two for they are marginal. Yet there is a sense of difference. Perhaps we have to accept we are both and hold the dissonance in suspension. We are Londoners and we are East Londoners. We take ourselves too seriously and not very seriously at all. We are engineers and scientists. And yet we are the most creative nation/s on the planet.

Politicians have clumsily tried to describe our national character for years. Suddenly, we have three hours to tell that story of character and achievement. Culture can do what politics seldom can. Last night was an excavation and a reclamation. Old Toryism is left looking small-minded: whining about ‘lefties’ and multiculturalism. They got a shock last night – the country moved on long ago. Danny Boyle got this. He understood who we are and where we can head next.

Old Tory orthodoxy can’t cope with Boyle’s vision – its very foundations are disrupted by it. Modern British Englishness definitely has a place for Conservatives, Liberal, Social Democrats and humanist Socialists where these political perspectives are able to trust the people. Statist paternalism – left or right – has no place in this vibrant civic culture. Boyle cried for freedom and equality in his notes that accompanied the ceremony. It is an equality of dignity and status not one of uniformity that his creativity suggests. Then there are those who seek certainty in ethnic exclusivity will find things tough going – their country no longer exists and their reaction could create terrifying challenges for us all.

Danny Boyle was saying to us: “This is who you are, this is what you have done, this is what you can do.” This fuzzy and snappy nation is an expression of that and also a tool to pursue a common purpose: come together but as ourselves. The hive is dead, long live the hive. Welcome to London, England, Britain 2012.         

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  • http://twitter.com/shibleylondon Shibs

    wonderful article anthony!

  • NiceRhetoric

    ”
    Statist paternalism – left or right – has no place in this vibrant civic culture”

    Agreed. But isn’t forcing people to fund a Stae healthcare system just that? The State daddy telling the people what is best for them.

    It is possible to give the poor access to healthcare without the State actually supplying said service. We don’t have a “National Food Service” for example.

    • Redshift

      To a point but think about the blood service – runs on donations and in that sense is highly participative. The NHS isn’t some sort of government handout. It is a British institution built by our people. 

      Of course, the Tories want to privatise it – it involves people donating altruistically. 

      • NiceRhetoric

        Sure, the key is choice. Statism removes choice.

        Nothing wrong in people supporting a State-run service, so long as they don’t force others who do not share their view, or want to use their service, to pay for it.

        • http://twitter.com/Chas_Boz David Arrowsmith

           Is my choice to be mentally unwell and unemployed? The problem with people like yourself who wish destroy the welfare state is that you always assume you will be a winner. Not one of the sub-humans on shrinking benefits.

          • NiceRhetoric

            #facepalm Um, I guess the “nothing wrong in people supporting State-run services” entered your head as “destroy”? 

            Ideologues pick state or private over the other. Realists just want to let people choose.

          • ClearBell

             Realist??? Sorry, the “realism” of pre-NHS healthcare in the UK was absolutely dire for most ill people. Don’t kid yourself that this isn’t the case for many countries where there is no “statist” provision. Look at America…”choice”??? And an incredibly high amount of money spent on healthcare insurance – rather than health for all.

            Is this preferable to us all helping us all out through taxation? What on earth are you afraid of from having state-run services such as health?

        • Brumanuensis

          It has been well-established that ‘choice’ is meaningless in the healthcare debate. ‘Choice’ only assists ‘consumers’ in a functioning market, and healthcare is not a naturally efficient market, something demonstrated by Kenneth Arrow as far back as 1963. Thus, publically-run services are capable of being more efficient that privately-run ones.

          In the absence of mandatory contributions, any insurance system that aspires to universal coverage will fall apart, because the pool of insurees will become too narrow. In a private healthcare market, this problem is dealt with by simply under-insuring or not insuring the poor and chronically-ill. In a public healthcare system, universal contributions have to be imposed in order to avoid ‘free-rider’ issues. So if the NHS is to work, everyone must contribute. Sucks for you if you don’t like it. Your ‘freedom to choose’ does not come before the freedom of others not to suffer from sickness due to lack of means.

          • Graham Duke

             So – this is summed up as ‘we know best – we’ll allow you to choose things we want you to’

            This is Murphy rhetoric, which ultimately ends up with – all money belongs to the state, give yours to me & I will redistribute it as I see fit and give you some pocket money.

            Why not be honest & put this in a manifesto?

          • Brumanuensis

            No-one ‘chooses’ to ‘buy’ healthcare. It’s not a normal (in the informal sense) good and it doesn’t follow the usual dynamics of goods. Everyone participates in the healthcare market at some stage in their lives. It’s not like buying a bicycle or a new book. You’ll have to, at some stage, deal with ill health.

            I’ll just write this down again. If you want an effective public health care system, you have to require contributions from as many people as possible, or the system will collapse. ALL health-care insurance systems – public or private – work this way, by having their participants in good health cross-subsidise those in poor health. All the NHS does is enact this on a larger scale. The Obama Administration included an insurance ‘mandate’ in their health-care proposals, because they recognised that requiring insurers not to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions, would create adverse selection, unless people were under an obligation to purchase insurance and widen the insurance pool. Paying a tax is another way of doing this.

            All healthcare systems ration too. Private systems do so on cost. The NHS uses NICE to determine the QUALY count of treatments.

            Choice, outside of a clinical setting, doesn’t come into healthcare. People do not plan good or bad health and only ocasionally can we accurately predict our future health status. This uncertainty is why we insure ourselves through NICs and general taxes, and are ‘repaid’ these contributions when we require healthcare on the NHS.

    • Brumanuensis

      You are comparing two different kinds of market, shades of Scalia’s broccoli fallacy in the recent Supreme Court judgement on the ACA.

    • http://www.facebook.com/MichaelBater74 Michael Bater

      So do you want a private system that costs more money & results are worse? 

  • Peter Pan

     ”Then there are those who seek certainty in ethnic exclusivity will find
    things tough going – their country no longer exists and their reaction
    could create terrifying challenges for us all.”

    But this multiculturalism is largely only in cities, and where it exists it is normally ghettoised, with most trouble not between natives and immigrants, but mainly between different immigrant communites themselves. i.e Bristol, Birmingham etc.

    The happy-clappy one-world Britain you guys think exists is a fantasy, to many people nothing much has changed accept an immigrant village replacing village next door after the former resisdents are driven out by crime and drugs. They don’t socialise between groups, because they have nothing in common – i.e. too culturally different.

    People don’t really like all this multi-culturalism thing, especially this peculiar form of urban Britain, with its bigging up of guns, drugs, money and gang culture. Why should I celebrate that culture, it is not mine, it is nothing to do with me.

    But you are right, it is likely to create terrifying challenges for all of us, but then maybe Labour should have thought about that before it opened up the borderes to mass immigration. India should provide us a good example for what awaits us from its experience in 1947.

    • Brumanuensis

      As a resident of Birmingham, I don’t recognise that portrait of it at all. Yes there are problems common to inner-city areas, but if there’s one thing you notice about Birmingham,it’s how relatively amicable race relations are. I’m not naive, I know there are problem areas, but living in an area where St Pauls Church and a Sikh Gudwara are within 5 minutes walk from each other - and highly ecunemical in nature too – I see people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds working and co-existing happily everyday. From the nice Jamaican lady who runs the barbers down the road, to the jewellers near Chamberlain Clock Tower – largely Asian – the amiable west African security guard at the local Tesco metro and his colleagues, among them a young third-generation Asian girl. The Carribean cafe across the road and up the street, the old-fashioned and charming ‘Lord Clifden’ pub, as quintessentially English as if plucked from a sleepy Warwickshire town and set down in central Birmingham. The biggest problem here is high unemployment and a high vacancy rate, not bad race relations.

      People like you have made apocalyptic predictions before and Britain has not only survived, but thrived. Comparisons to the Indian Partition are a stupid as they are ahistorical as are your racially-crass remarks about ‘urban Britain’ and what it allegedly is.

      • Peter Pan

        ‘Raically-crass’ thats a new one, is ‘urban’ that going to be put on the banned-list to? Maybe you should have a word with these guys then, for making ‘racially-crass’ films? http://www.britishurbanfilmfestival.co.uk/

        Truth is buddy, I don’t care about race, my best buddy in the world is a 1st generation Malaysian – but he shares my culture. Not this gangsta, guns, drugs culture that Dizzee Rascal and his Grime lords promote. Unless of course you want to promote and celebrate the Kray Twins, at least then you would be consistent.

        But don’t take my word for it, David Blunkett agrees:
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2632343.stm
        as does Cameron:
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5055724.stm

        You gloss over Birmingham like it is some modern Nirvana, but this is not the real picture and you know it. Living in a bubble is easy, the problems come when the bubble bursts. If we have a severe economic shock (Eurozone, Our borrowing costs rise etc), the London riots will look like a z-movie warmup. You’ll be alright though obviously, screw everyone else eh.

        The fact that urban Britons are disproportionately affected by this gun and drug culture doesn’t seem to worry you? Don’t you care about black kids being killed, or do you only care when its a white/asian person who pulls the trigger?

        Bigotry is blinding you, not I.

        • Brumanuensis

          I’m sorry, where did I describe Birmingham as a ‘modern Nirvana’? I explicitly acknowledged that it suffered from numerous problems and that racism was not a completely absent phenomenon.

          My remark about ‘racially-crass’ was to with your sloppy conflation of ‘urban Britain’ with the ‘gangs and guns culture’, as if this was some sort of natural offshoot of multiculturalism. Not to mention your ‘natives and immigrants’ language.  I’m concerned about gun and knife crime too. I just don’t use it as an excuse to bash multiculturalism.

          As for this race war you seem to see coming, the strange thing about the Birmingham riots last year was how un-racialised they were. White, Asian and black people all took part in the looting and one of the strongest responses from residents came from the local Muslim community. I’m sure there’s a risk of crime rising in response to further economic downturn, but it won’t be mainly along racial lines, at least not in Brum. I don’t see the area I live in as about to explode into racial violence. I see a place that, imperfectly, but generally capably, is getting on with itself.

          • Peter Pan

            I’m not conflating anything, you clearly have no idea what urban music is or what it is about, so it’s not even worth discussing with you.

            And frankly, I don’t care if you are offended by the language I use, the problem is often not the colour of the skin, but the thickness of (or lack of) it.

            I use their own cultural terms to describe them, urban is a badge of honor, unless you hate the music and culture, then of course, being described as urban could be insulting.

            So what would you call indiginous Brits then? Native Americans don’t seem to mind the name, why should I? As for immigrants, what do want me to do, consult a thesaurus and find an ‘approved’ name for people who come to live here that were not born here or have dual passports? New Brits? How about modern Brits, is that retro enough for you? Brit 2.0, Is that approved?

            But you sir are the real bigot, the silent bigot who assumes the worst motivations in people who offer criticism of this harmful culture and its glorification of drugs, violence, and gangs because you see any criticism of this as racist. This is your own prejudice, but I wouldn’t expect you to see it.

            Things might be alright for you, but not for the kids that get caught up in this stuff. Not that you care, playing the ostrich with his own backside… or is that racist too?

          • Brumanuensis

            Who the hell is a ‘native Briton’? I have ancestors from Italy and, probably, France. Presumably I’m not fully native, but I’d regard myself as British.

            I’m pretty sure Urban music is a very diverse category. So Solid Crew were a less pleasant manifestation, Dizzee Rascal on the other hand is a rather more media-friendly version. And so forth. Operas regularly include rape, murder, infidelity, crass materialism and other moral lapses. The music itself is only part of the problem; I don’t think young people involved in drug trafficking or knife crime got there because they heard a grime single glorifying this. This is a much more complex phenomenon than you are claiming.

            The rest of your reply is projection.

          • Peter Pan

            Native Brit is a white western European, look up the r1b haplogroup. As the Japansese would say “White people all look the same”, if you would allow me to invert an unfamiliar observation.

            But its not the DNA that matters, its the culture… you really can’t get you brain round that can you. Hmm, thats a shame.

            To be honest, we are on different planets here, I don’t know anyone who goes to see opera, only people who can afford it, especially ‘regularly’, tend to go. Well, at least you recognise that it really is part of the problem, thats a start.

            Projection, indeed, you have been happy to project that I am ‘racially-crass’ to which I will gladly parry, yet offer no defence of your own snobbish bigotry. Sad really.

          • TomFairfax

            Let’s get this right, you’re describing the French as ”native Britons’.

            Try going in your local and see how many free born Englishmen agree. I imagine their might be a few dissenters in the other countries of these isles.

          • http://twitter.com/mistyblulabour dave stone

            “I’m pretty sure Urban music is a very diverse category.”

            Spot on.

            I’m a big fan of Beyonce, she’s usually categorised as ‘urban’. Can’t see anything wrong with the values she expresses:

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBCMJjKi-uw

        • Cari_esky5

          If you know your history, there has always been tensions within the Urban area.  I dare say that the Urban area today is a far lot better than the Urban area that existed in Victorian and Edwardian times.  
          As for drug culture, come to the countryside.  it’s here too.  Grime, huh youngsters round here love it.

    • TomFairfax

       I think you’ve spent too much time in Never Never Land. Try the southern shires for a change, you will clearly be surprised.

      Just this road of ten houses has a South African, Australian and an Irish flag flying this week for the Olympics.

      Our Iranian born neighbour moved to another road in the village last year.

      The village school has a head mistress of Caribean descent, who is frankly a fantastic role model regardless of the creed or race of the pupils.

      Frankly it’s a different world from the one I was born in, but the only drug dealer around here was a white Anglo-Saxon. And a load of people have guns, for sport or pest control.

      I rather wish people who go on about the English countryside weren’t continually advocating policies designed to kill off the jobs and turn it into a sanatised theme park.

      Anyway, what are the English if not a bunch of German immigrants with a liking for Welsh agricultural land?

  • http://twitter.com/Chas_Boz David Arrowsmith

    A London Blairite reflection of New  Toryism that is; cobbled together from re-cycled Americanisms and Ad-speak.

  • Amber Star

    Statism removes an excess of choice from the privileged & gives more choice to the rest of us. Choice is for everybody. New Labour did give more choice to the rest of us but it was afraid to reduce the excess of choice available to the privileged & therefore it restricted the amount of choice which it could make open to all citizens.

    If there’s to be any difference between an Ed M Labour Party & New Labour, I think a refusal to protect privilege could be at the heart of it. To actively attack it would likely be a bridge too far for the Labour Party but we can live in hope… but back to the topic of the article:

    The opening monlogue in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting places considerable emphasis on the idea of choice. It is quite simply a brilliant piece of poetry, brilliantly used by Danny Boyle to make a huge political statement. And the Olympic ceremony shows Danny Boyle has not lost (his) touch with the biggest political questions of our age. Perhaps, last night, he even tried to answer a few of them!

    • NiceRhetoric

      ”
      Statism removes an excess of choice from the privileged & gives more choice to the rest of us. Choice is for everybody. ”

      With respect, that it total bollocks.

      Choice is simply the right to say no. Statism removes that from everyone not just the poor. The “excess of choice” is what gives people competitive insurance etc. 

      At the moment, there is also an “excess of choice” of where to buy food. Clearly you would support a single, State-owned, free-at-the-point of use supermarket so everyone  can take what they want.

      • Brumanuensis

        As so often happens in these sorts of discussions, a line from Anatole France enters my head:

        “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread”.

        • NiceRhetoric

          Well it is a shame that nothing practical enters your head. But as long as you are happy ;-)

          • Brumanuensis

            The practical point is that competition works well for some things, less well for others. You also have know what kind of competition you are establishing: is it competition on quality – which tends to drive up costs – or on cost – which tends to drive down quality. Even Zack Cooper, of the LSE, an advocate of competition in the NHS, acknowleged in a recent report that the outcomes were mixed and indeed competition between private providers and the NHS, worsened NHS outcomes ( http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1125.pdf ). NB, some of Cooper’s findings have been criticised too ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/15/bad-science-competition-healthcare?INTCMP=SRCH ). And of course, this sort of competition is within the NHS and on a quality, not cost basis, meaning that it’s not precisely analogous to market competition.

            If you want equity, you have to sacrifice choice. But choice on a patient level is rarely helpful to the patient, in making decisions over healthcare.

          • NiceRhetoric

            You didn’t quite finish your sentence. You meant to say “.. you have to sacrifice choice [for others]“.

            It is not competition if people make a choice based on an ideological decision, ie some will always choose the State, others will never choose the State.

            That is not competition but choice. Not the same thing.

            You simply want to deny people the choice.  Let’s not try and dress it up as anything other than what it is, you believing you know best, and seeking to impose that view on everyone else.

          • Brumanuensis

            I’ll quote what I posted further down the thread:

            “It has been well-established that ‘choice’ is meaningless in the healthcare debate. ‘Choice’ only assists ‘consumers’ in a functioning market, and healthcare is not a naturally efficient market, something demonstrated by Kenneth Arrow as far back as 1963. Thus, publically-run services are capable of being more efficient that privately-run ones.

            In the absence of mandatory contributions, any insurance system that aspires to universal coverage will fall apart, because the pool of insurees will become too narrow. In a private healthcare market, this problem is dealt with by simply under-insuring or not insuring the poor and chronically-ill. In a public healthcare system, universal contributions have to be imposed in order to avoid ‘free-rider’ issues. So if the NHS is to work, everyone must contribute. Sucks for you if you don’t like it. Your ‘freedom to choose’ does not come before the freedom of others not to suffer from sickness due to lack of means.”

            Cooper’s paper points out exactly the danger of following your ‘choice’ fetish. Competition with private providers undermined the quality of NHS treatment, because the private hospitals creamed off richer patients, leaving the NHS with poor patients with disproportionately greater health problems. Thus demonstrating the validity of Richard Titmuss’ observation ‘services for the poor will always be poor services’. The insurance pool becomes too narrow and overall service deteriorates. If you want a functioning public health-care system – and that extends to non-NHS models too – you have to require the purchasing of insurance. National Insurance is the form in this country, by which people pay a contribution in return for health-care free at the point of use. If we followed your approach, the result would be a system whereby the rich would enjoy excellent healthcare, and the less fortunate some knock-down, under-funded poor house.

            You can either have equity or choice. Given that ‘choice’ is a meaningless term in healthcare discussions, I prefer equity.

          • NiceRhetoric

            lol.  Authoritarians presenting nasty, dirty choice as a “fetish”.

            Funnily enough, having used health systems across Europe, the UK has by far the worst, most inefficient system with the dirtiest hospitals and the longest delays. 

            WHO ranked the French insurance-based service as the #1 in the world. I agree. It is great. In fact I have yet to use a health care system in Europe that isn’t far better than the UK.

            So the outdated, broken, statist NHS model for healthcare you love so much, is really just killing people, which is why more people die per year through NHS blunders than are killed by guns in the USA.

            Europe knows how to care for its citizens. Britain is just killing its own by following your entrenched dogma.

            Good luck with that!
            However, despite it being more of a killing machine than caring system, I am not trying to deny you the choice to keep trying to maintain the pulse of a 20th century healthcare system.

            That’s the difference. I think you are wrong, but wouldn’t for a moment try to impose another way on you.

            Freedom to choose. It makes your skin crawl, doesn’t it? ;-)

          • Brumanuensis

            Hey, I’m just making basic points from health economics here. You’re the one who doesn’t seem to be capable of understanding that ‘choice’ doesn’t mean much if it means others get worse quality healthcare.

            The NHS actually fares quite well in international comparisons, including actually having a better record than the vaunted French system in reducing heart attack deaths, part of an excellent record on cardiac illnesses ( http://www.inthenews.co.uk/news/uk/nhs-heart-surgery-survival-among-best-in-europe–$21384542.htm ). It has received praise from, among others, the Commonwealth Fund (http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Fund%20Report/2010/Jun/Davismirrormirror2010exhibitsFINAL%202%20pdf.pdf ) for its access to healthcare for poorer individuals. WHO data actually bolsters the NHS’ claim to international quality ( http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2011/08/07/JRSMpaperPritWall.pdf ).

            Your glib and repetitive whinging about ‘freedom to choose’ belies your complete egotism and belief that your own wishes and desires are far superior to all other persons. Just remember: ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one’.

          • NiceRhetoric

            lol. Sure, of course I am not capable, I like everyone else, need you to impose your view on me.

            #rollseyes

            You only have to live in  Europe for a short while to see how crap the NHS is for your own eyes.

            I made my choice and don’t use or fund the NHS. So really, I am only here to draw out the swivel-eyed authoritarians like yourself.

            It was fun. Thanks.

          • Brumanuensis

            Mate, I spent the first 18 years of my life in Belgium. I know about continental healthcare systems. They are better than the NHS in some ways and worse in others. Have you ever been to a Belgian GP? It’ll cost you an arm and a leg.

            Your smug indifference to the welfare of your fellow citizens is as obnoxious as ever.

          • NiceRhetoric

            ”
            Your smug indifference to the welfare of your fellow citizens is as obnoxious as eve”

            Ah, you mean indifference to the people *you* want me to fund, rather than the ones I choose to, don’t you?

            Yes, it’s obnoxious to help people that you personally haven’t deemed as worthy.

            Nice man. 
            #rollseyes

            #again

          • Brumanuensis

            So glad that you regard the welfare of your fellow citizens as a sort of nice little plaything to be dispensed for your own amusement and gratification. Here’s an idea: You have obligations to society and a duty to meet those obligations. Completely alien to your selfish mentality, but there you go.

            Nice man yourself.

          • Brumanuensis

            Oh and the French system you love so much follows the same principles on ‘choice’ as the NHS. It just does so in a different manner.

          • NiceRhetoric

            For example, if you close the Daily Mail down, that doesn’t mean more people will read the Guardian.

            They are not in direct competition for the same people, but providing a similar service for people who would never choose the other.

            I can see why you want to dress up the denial of choice in another way, as it is clearly extremely authoritarian, and you are desperate not to appear that way.

          • Brumanuensis

            Your analogy is pointless. You are comparing two completely different kinds of good, with healthcare being a ‘necessity good’ and newspapers are closer to a ‘superior good’. The former has very low elasticity and the latter much higher elasticity.

  • Johndclare

    Please can someone tell Mr Gove?

  • vespacat

    “But it is conversely what the neo-liberal right miss about the NHS – it is ours, we built it and we are not letting it go.”

    Alas, the reality is that we have let it go. And unless whoever forms the next government passes legislation to take it all back, then we have lost it forever. RIP NHS

  • C Remoney

    So basically this article is confirming the Tory suspicion that there was a left-wing agenda to the opening ceremony.

    • Brumanuensis

      What, so Anthony Painter is now Danny Boyle’s official artistic spokesman?

  • Guest Sonny

    A People’s History written by the liberal Elite..the people don’t write this thing so it’s not a people’s history

  • Timsharp1

    I liked your article – but I think you need to talk to a few republicans – we genuinely don’t think that the royals are as popular as the DM would have you believe and to be honest apart from assenting to the parachuting which I found pretty funny the queen looked tired and miserable to me.

  • Bill Lockhart

     For heaven’s sake, it was TV entertainment, not the start of some crusade.
    Contemporary urban Britons got off pretty lightly: no teenage skunk dealers, no weapon dogs, no White Lightning. No EDL, no Islamists, no organised Romanian child-begging. No postcode gangs, no stabbings.

    It was make-believe.

  • James Flower

    Yes, how dare we not want our country changing beyond all recognition, its native population made a minority, and its history completely re-written and glossed over because it isnt ‘multicultural’ enough for the left.

    Yes damm us, damm us all to hell. How DARE we have any complaints about all of these things happening, how DARE we ask what those brave English men and women fought and died for in two world wars only for their nation to be completely given away and their history re-hashed.

    How DARE we. We must just allow the deaths of those brave people in WWII to be in vain, obviously a multicultural and multiracial britain with the white british a minority in the coming decades is CLEARLY what they fought for.

    Silly me. 

    • Brumanuensis

      Don’t you dare smear the war dead with your vile racist tripe. People like you would have been good little Nazis in the ’40s. You just would have directed your bile at Jews instead of black Britons or Asian-origin Britons.

      Not to mention the tens-of-thousands of Indian, African and Carribean soldiers who fought and in many cases died, in the war effort, in both World Wars. You’re insulting their memory too.

      • http://www.facebook.com/matthew.blott Matthew Blott

        I echo these thoughts. My grandad suffered terribly in  POW camp defending this country and certainly wouldn’t share the views of James Flower. If he thinks the men who fought so bravely in WWII would share his BNP mindset why did they vote in a socialist government upon their return?

      • PeterJukes

        Word

        Of course the real origins of anti racism in the last century were in defence of the racist ideology of the brown shirts, whose main target was the large Jewish population of the East End.

        Indeed, didn’t we fight the last war – as Churchill said – to defeat the noxious ideology of racial superiority promulgated by the Nazis?

      • James Flower

        Yes, keep kidding yourself that those English men and women who died in two world wars would be happy with what governments since have done to their nation and its demographics, keep telling yourself they would be fine with it.

        The only memories being insulted are those of the English soldiers who died to protect their nation against invasion only for it to be done anyway without a single shot being fired.

        What Labour have deliberately done to this country is a disgrace, to purposelessly attempt and succeed in changing the culture and demographics of a nation for your own political agenda is the height of treachery, and deep down you surely must know that.

        You have obviously never heard Churchills thoughts of immigration and race, I assure you he is rolling in his grave seeing what Labour have deliberately done to this country and its native population.

        When will you brainwashed individuals be happy? Will it actually take the white British to become the minority? Is that what you actually desire? A non-white majority who will vote Labour into power over and over again?

        I can only assume that those who continue to vote Labour are mentally ill. There is simply no other reason to vote for a party who have caused such immense damage to the very fabric of a nation.

        • TomFairfax

           I think you need to read Winston’s works.

          Starting with the one about the Sudan campaign. He was appalled at the treatment of the enemy wounded and prisoners apparently for no better reason than they were black.

    • Cari_esky5

      If anything thousands of people died during the Industrial Revolution.  People were shoved of the land they had looked after for generations and moved into cramped, disease ridden towns and cities.  Generations before us built this country up, they built the roads, the water network, the factories, the houses and democracy that we have today and the ceremony was thanking the millions of people who before us built up this country and the millions who suffered in doing so.
      Now we are helping to build upon that in the present time for the generations that are to follow us which includes multiculturalism.  It exists and it’s here.
      The power of paranoia really does inflict yourself and is clearly misting your judgement.  The country is a better place than you would think and appreciates it’s history and the sacrifices more than you think.

    • Conrad

      Alot of non-British Empire people died in those wars too you know, and no-one is saying Churchill is bad just that its always the go too and nothing much else gets a lot of attention. But please don’t talk about the ‘native’ population like you speak for us all, i don’t feel like a minority, and there is nothing wrong with being inclusive, immigrants have never shown any anger at the way i have gone about my life, in fact the only people ever to do so are other white people, which isn’t to say that its bad, merely that i feel more oppressed by overwhelming numbers of white police officers, white politicians and angry types like yourself than i do to the supposed wave of bomber migrants that are supposedly going to blow up my wheelie bin or something.

  • Daniel Speight

    Lefty? Not really. Rather balanced if anything.

    Now if they had had Wat Tyler and John Ball carving through the shires, that would be lefty.

    Or the Chartists being transported to Australia, or the 1926 General Strike, then you would be really getting there.

  • Caroline

    Speaking as a Tory I have to say that I enjoyed the opening ceremony and speaking as a Tory I have to say that I couldn’t care less what anybody else thinks about this entertainment.  

  • treborc

    It’s funny really empty seats, and the games are such an importance to the country all three main leaders disappear  off on holidays for two weeks.

    You cannot make it up.

  • ovaljason

    If this opening ceremony was supposed to be sympathetic to the Left, where were the bodies of the 100,000 Iraqis that New Labour slaughtered?

  • Martin Yuille

    Danny Boyle has broadly defined the centre ground of British politics today. 

    Labour can scale back its efforts in searching  for a definition. 

    All three parties are obliged to contest that ground. The contest can be positive and/or negative.

    The next general election campaign has started. 

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