Quote...Unquote

I'm still holding  off on commenting on the US election.  Trust me, I've got plenty to say - four years of pent up frustration with Trump - but I want to be absolutely sure that Biden has got those last electoral college votes in the bag before I let rip.  So, back to moaning about stuff that niggles me.  I'm seriously thinking of blocking anybody I currently follow on Twitter who tweets or retweets another supposedly 'inspirational' quote from someone.  For fuck's sake, not only are such things invariably utterly trite, but they are also meaningless generalisations completely inapplicable to any set of circumstances other than those they were originally made under.  Believe me, coming out with some fucking aphorism concocted by some dead dude has never resolved any real world problem.  I mean, do you honestly think that we'd have climate change, Boris Johnson or international terrorism if they could be cured by the deployment of an appropriate quote? But then that's social media for you, isn't it?  People seem to feel the obligation to keep posting stuff, so when they run out of anything of their own to say, they just start quoting somebody else - probably in the hope that if they tweet a quote from somebody famous, it will make them look more intelligent.

Changing tack, I've been struck by the way the media have chosen to characterise recent events in the Labour Party, specifically the suspension of former leader Jeremy Corbyn for his continued attempts to play down the anti-Semitism allegations which plagued the party under his leadership.  The media seem to be relishing the poosibility that this could herald another bout of internal strife for the party, just as it seemed to be regaining public trust after its change of leadership.  What they don't seem to grasp is that, in reality, the average rank-and-file Labour member and, more importantly, the average potential Labour voter, welcome this development which, hopefully, will finally see us draw a line under the Corbyn era.  The fact is that he was a poor leaser who surrounded himself with a coterie of insular apparatchiks who were too wrapped up in their quest for 'ideological purity' that they couldn't grasp the need to appeal to a wider electorate.  Indeed, despite the dire predictions of the  press, Labour now seems to be opening up a clear poll lead over the Tories.  Sure, there are still rumbles of discontent from the Corbyn loyalists, but all they do is spend their time getting hashtags like #starmermustgo to trend, thinking that this somehow achieves something.  It is typical of the student-level of politics they operate in - anybody can get anything to trend on Twitter, but it achieves nothing in the real world.  (See, we're back to Twitter).  Winning elections isn't achieved by connecting with the like minded on social media and assuming that this is somehow a microcosm of reality.  Instead, it involves going out on the streets and trying to connect with real voters, real working class people and convincing them that Labour can address their real world problems.  So, the sooner they fuck off out of Labour and get back to playing their games in the SWP, the better.  Maybe then we can focus on winning elections and helping people.