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Winter is coming on here and it being the near tropics the rats are heading indoors. I let one of the dogs stay in last nite to catch one of the bastards that has been nibbling on the apples out on the table. The dog is after all a terrier and ratting is supposed to be their thing. But no she simply flipped the cushion of my favourite chair and settled down for a good nite's sleep. Was it a case of "Catch your own rat?" Waking up to the news that the Tories are BAACK, made me think that too many of the working class in the UK are a bit like my dog. They are largely sitting this one out. I have a lot of sympathy for that attitude. Life is after all short and getting shorter. Sorry to say though, the hear no evil, see no evil strategy isn't going to work in this conjuncture. But the working class are far from being the villains in this drama. My nomination for that role is the educated middle class. Frankly I have a strong dislike for the role that the liberal middle class are drawn to play. A paradigmatic case is that of Polly Toynbee. I have been reading her column in the Guardian regularly throughout all this. She was once part of the right wing split from Labour led by Rodgers, Williams, Owens and Jenkins that kept Thatcher in power throughout the 80s. Seemingly she returned to the Labour Party though and she has consistently campaigned for Brown to be dumped and for a Lib-Lab alliance. Well she has not got her wish and the hopes of a "progressive" alliance against the Tories has come to nought. Such an alliance was her equivalent of a wish to hear no evil etc during what is about to happen. The fantasy that somehow there was the possibility of a progressive aspect to a Lib-Lab coalition was her moment of bad faith, when she could fool herself that after all the Capitalist system was really not a system and that anyway things would not be too bad. Well they are about to get bad, very bad. And all the working class are going to have to wake up and to some serious rat catching. regards Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
