Mental arithmetic
Let’s take it back to the fundamentals. The Conservative Party is not an opposition. If it were they’d do some proper opposing. We’ve seen precious little heavy-lifting from them in the last 11 years. They have one and only one proper strategy for achieving victory at the next general election: getting the perception that Gordon Brown is mentally defective to stick in the public’s imagination.
They’re less a political party and more a school yard mob. Worse even than sniggering Tory bloggers who merely parrot the party line and use it on their online opponents. I imagine Cameron thinks he’s being subtle but he might as well stand at the dispatch box during Prime Minister’s Questions and declare, ‘Mr Speaker, I put it to the Prime Minister that I saw him in the park feeding the pigeons in his dressing gown’.
And then the Tories come over all compassionate for the mentally ill. All the while twirling their fingers at their temples and going cross-eyed whenever the Prime Minister walks in the room. Joined up thinking? They’re working hard to paint the most powerful man in the country as having a mental illness and that being A Bad Thing. Yet they give no thought to the message that sends to the millions of people out there who struggle everyday with some form of mental illness and keep quiet for fear of the stigma.
It’s the work of children and scum.
(This was going to be a post on the Tories’ new advertising campaign but Cameron’s declaration that ‘we’re all in this together’ made me want to kick something. Plus the campaign website’s broken - I’m not going to say where - and 39% of the country don’t have Internet access. Get stuffed, Grandma and Grandpa.
I hope Jimmy Cliff donates the money he’s earning from the Tories pissing on his song to the Labour Party. ‘Persecution you must bear,’ goes one of the lines. Cameron should know - it’s his election strategy. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?)
Posted on February 28th, 2008 at 9:26 am
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Cameron’s declaration that ‘we’re all in the together’ made me want to kick something
More like “we’re in the all together”. That Conservative broadcast in brief; “change, change, change, change, change.”
And why does Cameron apparently have a “law” lying around on his desk for him to pick up and drop dramatically?
Plums, that should be ‘we’re all in this together’.
Cameron should have done his research. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill is 500 pages in two volumes. That would have given him a much more satisfying thump on the desk.
Sorry to be pedantic Justin (and I know you are aware of the difference) but this is a hobby-horse of mine - Autism, Like Asperger Syndrome and many other conditions is not a ‘mental illness’.
I accept that it doesn’t invalidate your point and most people do not distinguish between mental ‘illness’ and ‘disability’ (which is one of the reasons I bang on about it when I get a chance!)
It’s a fair point, Mike. I did debate with myself how to put it.
Semantics though - Asperger Syndrome is an illness, and it does make you act in such a way that some people would describe as pretty mental. And yes, I do suffer from it myself, and it’s not great, and George Osbourne is, not to put too fine a point on it, a total prick.
I just wish that more had been made of it, as unfathomably the cocaine-snorting restaurant-trashing tosspot is still shadow chancellor.
At least they’ve got a better taste in music these days - I’ll take Jimmy Cliff over D:Ream any day…
Still, in the tip top Jimmy Cliff movie classic The Harder They Come, I could have sworn he ends up getting mowed down in a hail of bullets*. Which could well happen as soon as everyone twigs that this is a subtle return to Tebbit’s “on your bike” attitudes of the 80s. Not likely to go down too well if/when recession kicks in in a few months…
* Note: there are two versions, I’ve only seen one, and it was a few years ago now. Top film, though…
Asperger Syndrome is an illness
Well - there’s a view, that I hold, that’s it’s not. It’s a description of symptoms. It’s a useful description, it identifies things that need to be identified, but that’s what it is, not an illness itself. Although people do say “I have Asperger’s Syndrome” I don’t think that’s an accurate thing to say.
I also think that at leasta few years ago, it had become essentially a diagnosis du jour - almost inevitably if you spoke to somebody who had seen a psyciatrist it transpired that the diagnosis was Asperger’s. At which point it was in danger of ceasing to be a useful description.
This is worth a look-see. The madness of politics
Allan Beveridge, MPhil FRCPsych:
“Because mental illness is perceived so negatively, psychiatric terms are powerful weapons against opponents. It is not just lay people who have used them in this way; doctors and psychologists have also drawn on clinical concepts to criticize the Prime Minister; and by doing so they give tacit support to the pejorative use of psychiatric terminology in the wider community. They help to maintain and reinforce the stigma of mental illness.”
Which completey supports what Justin said
This was quoted by Simon Hoggart in yesterday’s Guardian:-
Earlier Gerald Kaufman had risen to talk about schoolchildren being taught about the Holocaust.
“The suit!” cried someone in anguish, and indeed this garment was of a lustrous, silver-grey fabric covered in a chicken-wire design.
“Since my grandmother and other members of my family were slaughtered …” he began, and two Tories went “Ahhh,” in mock groans.
Yes, I heard that - if you listen to the ‘listen again’ on Five Live you can hear it at the 13.30 minute mark along with somebody shushing them.