Furthet to my post a couple of days ago on the emergent blogosphere debate about what should be Labour’s brave new economic policy, there’s good news.
A semi-troll, who usually inhabits Hopi’s site but occasionally forays over the Duncan’s in search of the blood of lefties, has done what semi-trolls do not usually do in the face of coherent argument – he has admitted he’s wrong and that the lefties are right.
Fair play to the semi-troll. Such commendable behaviour is what makes a semi-troll a semi-troll, and not a troll, of course, but it still reinforces my faith in the basic goodness of human nature.
That’s one semi-troll down, quite a few to go.
The salient bits of the to and fro between semi-troll and Bickerstaffe Record representative are reproduced below (I’ve left the semi-troll’s idiosynratic grammar in place):
Right wing commentator
Why should Public Sector Pay not be cut , Private Sector pay has been and Public Sector rewards have increased at double their equivalents in the real world ?
This sums up the attitude of the parasites and their media friends
Surveys were showing a general distaste for the continued expansion of the state and its sinecure holders prior to the crunch and the reaction to IHT showed that the old trust for big government had been abused and destroyed by New Labour. These are to sort of attitudes that have created that new settlement, a contempt for the tax payer and the ordinary family’s efforts to improve their lives…………………
…………..I don`t you and your lefty friends have yet understood how much of the big state model is under threat I am far from convinced David Cameron has . Yet.
Bickerstaffe Record
1) ‘I don`t you and your lefty friends have yet understood how much of the big state model is under threat I am far from convinced David Cameron has . Yet.’
Some of Duncan’s ‘lefty friends’ are at least prepared to contest the right’s loaded use of the word state (not that the left don’t also load their use). See here and Chris Dillow’s linked post on how the left needs to argue for a smaller state. I wouldn’t know about David Cameron.
2) ‘Why should Public Sector Pay not be cut , Private Sector pay has been and Public Sector rewards have increased at double their equivalents in the real world ?’
Try turning the question round to: Why shouldn’t private sector employees be encouraged to unionise in order to start to reverse the decade long decline in average earnings brought, so that earnings are enough in the long term to ensure consumer demand can be increased sustainably without resource to the imbalance of credit growth in budget deficit countries/depressed consumer demand in high-export countries?
Right wing commentator
Sweet
I am, I acknowledge, assuming that the word ’sweet’ in semi-troll dialect means that the semi-troll accepts the argument put to him, and concedes defeat, albeit not entirely graciously. Anyone else speak semi-troll who can confirm?
Amusing that one of the words the semi-troll left out in his eagerness to make his point was “think”…
Well done indeed.
He’s my favourite semi-Troll, he at least usually argues in a semi-rational manner.
Although he did, a few weeks ago, accuse me of ‘having a blow up Tony Blair with whom I hold hands and kiss’.
Yes, Brian, though my proof-reading is hardly exemplary.
Duncan, agreed about NM the S-T. He’s a fascinating mix of incisive detail and utter blathering gibberish. At least I’ve always assumed he’s a ‘he’.
Give my regards to Blow Up Tone – we should get together sometime as a foursome with my rubber Gordon.