On 29 Aug 2015 at 2:40am Jez we can. wrote:
Boris Johnson: says "It would be very complacent and wrong to ignore the truth of some of the observations he is making about ways in which society could be better. We should be humble about that."LOL!
On 29 Aug 2015 at 10:44am Paul Newman wrote:
I saw an interesting analysis by a recovering Cobynite noting that his support was strongly skewed towards high socio economic groups.
One conclusion is that well educated people are Marxists and certainly 'Too clever for the Daily Mail' has always meant “You are a clerk , I have a degree”.
This writer, as a committed socialist himself, felt that Corbyn voters were simply those for whom winning didn`t matter.
The impossibility of a Corbyn Labour Party winning an general election is as close to fact as such an assertion can ever be . Furthermore, as Corbyn voters say they don`t think winning is the main issue, it looks as though the Corbyn vote is a vote for” principled” failure.
Middle class baby boomers enjoying considerable affluence .can afford to vote as a sort of fashion statement without caring about the consequences .Privileged students, yet to experience the grinding maths of a family budget, do the same.
Personally I don`t accept the socialist assumptions but the realisation that Corbyn is a middle –class attack on the poor might, I thought, interest lefties.
On 29 Aug 2015 at 7:04pm Clifford wrote:
How would you define a 'Marxist' Paul? And, of course, I'm not talking about a Marxist-Leninist as even middle class intellectuals will not be stupid enough to be that.
On 29 Aug 2015 at 8:23pm Paul Newman wrote:
Believes in class war, hates private propery, thinks everything can be reduced to economic rivarly and relations ( got a point there ).Hates Nations distrusts families and culture ( modes of oppression / false conciousness. Banks advertising insurance are all waste also hate rent which is exploitation ..that sort of thing also james history into clunky categories ( in fact all narratives ).
Has alot on common with religion , belives in utopia and ....
Mix of astonishing insight and endless cobbblers, like Freud .
Hows that?
On 29 Aug 2015 at 11:31pm Jez we can. wrote:
From The Independent Aug 28th proving yet again what a load of tosh Newman believes.
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Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters tend to be more working class and have lower incomes than the supporters of other candidates for the Labour leadership, according to new research.
Polling conducted by YouGov found that across a series of indicators the frontrunner’s support came from lower income groups, while his opponents and critics tended to be richer and more upper middle class.
Only 26 per cent of Mr Corbyn’s supporters have a household income over £40k a year, compared to 44 per cent for the Blairite candidate Liz Kendall.
The moderate candidates Andy Burnham and Yvette Coopers’ supporters have household incomes over £40k in 29 per cent and 32 per cent of cases respectively, putting them between the two extremes.
On 29 Aug 2015 at 11:58pm Newell Fisher wrote:
@Paul Newman
Could you give the source for this analysis that you saw?
On 30 Aug 2015 at 12:24am M. Sylvain wrote:
I n the interest of candidate-neutral transparency and a spirit of helpfulness, there now follows an (admittedly incomplete) Logical Fallacy Guide to the Labour Leadership Election.
1. Circular argument: a premise that is also acting as its conclusion. See “Only [insert favourite candidate] is electable. So I’m voting for [insert favourite candidate] because only they are electable.”
2. Begging the question: An argument assuming its conclusion is true without providing evidence. See (again): “Only [insert favourite candidate] is electable. We need to win an election. So I’m voting for [insert favourite candidate].”
3. False dichotomy: the false presentation of two apparent opposites as if they covered all the possibilities and no other choices were available. See “it’s a choice between ideological self-comfort and electability.”
4. Appeal to consequence: the use of an assumed and in no way given outcome to argue backwards towards a justification of a preferred action. See “[insert bogeyman du jour] will destroy the Labour party so…” “[insert bogeyman du jour] isn’t electable, so…”
5. Appeal to authority: the attempt to substitute the perceived status of a person for a measure of his truth-value in order to try to win an argument. See “Tony Blair says [insert favourite candidate] can win. He won some elections. Therefore he is right that...” This applies to the oft-quoted opinions-stated-as-fact of several other Big Beasts, too.
6. Straw Man: a form of appearing to refute one argument by answering it with a completely different one. See Yvette Cooper (sorry to be specific here, but it woulnd me up), on being asked if she will stand down: “Some people said I should leave it to the boys, but I don’t agree with that.” (a) no one said that; (b) that’s not the question, is it?
7. Tu Quoque (“and you?”) : an appeal to hypocrisy that substitutes someone else’s apparent inconsistency as an attempt to dodge a discussion of your own. See: “Well, [insert favourite candidate] may have implemented [terrible policy x that they now say they disown] but [least favourite candidate] once said y. So they’re just as bad.” Which brings us to…
8. False equivalence: an attempt to discredit an argument by conflating two different things because they share one or more characteristics. See: “Corbyn is a lefty just like Michael Foot so he will lose just as badly as Foot did.” It also applies to the winning elections and centrism equivalence, which is by no means evidenced by context-free outcomes.
I’ve left out ad hominem (“playing the man not the ball”) because, well, it hardly needs saying BTL, does it?
There are others, of course. And this isn’t to say that any candidate – or especially their supporters – aren’t guilty of one/many/all of these. There’s also the fallacy fallacy, too: the fact that an argument is fallacious doesn’t mean it has no truth value, it simply means the argument fails to articulate it validly. All the same: one of the big losers of this election is the ability for sensible people to make sense.
On 30 Aug 2015 at 2:10am Newell Fisher wrote:
Wonderful 
may i quote that elsewhere?
On 30 Aug 2015 at 10:14am Mark wrote:
Paul Newman take note of the useful guide! If you made use of it you could save yourself from hours of wasted time. You could simply post "2, 4, 7" one morning then "1, 3, 5" during the afternoon.
On 30 Aug 2015 at 2:31pm Paul Newman wrote:
‘Corbyn’s supporters, the cosmopolitan and bohemian left, the middle-class young and so on, can all afford to value principles over power. They can afford to doom Labour to perpetual opposition at little to no personal cost’
I was quoting Evans in the Speccie ( His words above ) I was not cutting a pasting a whole gobbit form Labour UK …..sigh.
Lets steal a zoo monkey shave it, stick a copy of the Guardian up its arse and ascribe genius to its gibbering .
Now there might be some in the Labour Party who would call this an electorally unsound but they may be answered in the cod logic terms the cut and paster has brought to a smaller audience… try it . ( Ok the shaved Monkey might not obviously be like Michael Foot but … apart form that it all works )
On 30 Aug 2015 at 5:41pm Dingo wrote:
Newman is having a breakdown.Incoherent gibberish.
On 30 Aug 2015 at 7:36pm Mark wrote:
Weird. That must be argument Type 15. He's more advanced than we thought.
On 30 Aug 2015 at 8:06pm Newell Fisher wrote:
All Labour needs to do, in our current farcical electoral system, is ensure that Tory, UKIP and DUP MPs are outnumbered by all the other parties.
On 31 Aug 2015 at 8:35am Annette Curtin-Twitcher wrote:
As a Corbyn-supporting working class 60 year old struggling by on less than the average wage, I feel your basic tenet is somewhat flawed, PN.
But then, it usually is.