Simon Heffalump in the Torygraph: "I say you fellows, we can't be wasting culture on the oiks "....

[non sociopath skin]

... or at least I take that to be his sub-text.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/02/13/do1301.xml

If bringing culture into schools is "Stalinist," then Florida must be the new Soviet Union.

From what I read in the local papers when I'm over there, the little perishers in the Charter Schools are never bloody away from Theatres and Art Galleries!!!

The Skin

[nxylas]

1. "I'm with Goering on this"

Heffer must be getting more liberal in his old age.

[non sociopath skin]

2. Yeah! I used to be with Himmler but now I'm with the progressive wing of my party ...

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

3. Two of the hoariest British RW prejudices combined...

The common little yobs should not be aping their betters and poking their noses into the arts and such when they should be blessing the Squire and his relations and always knowing their proper stations!

And all artists are a bunch of self-indulgent immoral layabouts who produce a lot of useless junk anyway!

[Anarcho-Socialist]

4. Reading that article (and some of the comments)

was a scary look into the mind of your typical anti-intellectual right-winger. How insane does one have to be to:

* equate Gordon Brown with Josef Stalin
* agree with Goering on matters relating to culture
* suggest that Brown is a "left-winger"
* actually imply that Brown is an outright communist (as some comments did)?

[Morris Onions]

5. well I must be a right nutter 'cos...

I reckon Gordon has some very Stalinist tendencies

[Anarcho-Socialist]

7. explain what sort of Stalinist tendencies

[non sociopath skin]

8. I'd be interested in knowing that, too.

The Skin

[Morris Onions]

10. Well, it was his permanent secretary at the Treasury (Lord Turnball) who...

said he "operates with "Stalinist ruthlessness" and "had a "very cynical view of mankind and his colleagues".

For me though it's the "I know what's best for you" style of his leadership, the top down dictates, the micromanagement.

[non sociopath skin]

11. Helluva lot of Stalinists around, then.

The Skin

[Morris Onions]

12. well they say the fish rots from the head down

[Anarcho-Socialist]

13. isn't that just what politicians do in power

Stalinism in this context is more of a negative spin on what a positive spin would call "strong leader." It just depends on which way you spin it.

Besides it is taking the concept of Stalinism away from its original understood meaning. That of achieving "socialism in one country" through a non-market command economy, overseen by a nepotistic bureaucratic caste within the Communist Party, in which political life is dominated by a cult of personality around the leader.

Ruthlessness and cynicism are common traits in politics. "Stalinist ruthlessness" is hyperbole unless Brown has been secretly knocking off political enemies on a mass scale and operating a slave labour penal system.

[non sociopath skin]

6. Presumably, as insane as yer average Torygraph reader.

The Skin

[T_i_B]

9. I would agree that "culture" lessons are unessessary.....

...seeing as Music and Art are already taught in schools.

The trouble is that it's a Simon Heffer article, and as readers of Heffer's articles will no doubt be aware Heffer's idea of culture is basically just Edward Elgar and nothing else. And Heffers prejudices do manage to cock up what could have been a quite reasonable argument.

And it does annoy me when you get a writer whose prose can make you pretty much automatically disagree with whatever they are arguing in favour of. David Aaronvitch is a prime example.