Ludicrous racism charges

Finegold wasn't offended by being told he was acting in bad faith, though (from an expert in bad faith such as Livingstone, sometime Labour rebel and former Standard writer, this might be ironic). He was offended because someone said that what he was doing (writing for a newspaper) was in any sense 'like' being a concentration camp guard. It's not just that Livingstone refused to 'play the game' of politician and journalist (he has every right to do this), but how he did it.
He isn't defendeing his actions with any reference to bad faith; he is concentrating on the justice of his remarks: to him, Mail journalists are like concentration camp guards not in just terms of bad faith but in terms of their actions: in itself, writing for a right-wing paper makes you a Nazi, is his argument.

k-punk said:

Dave, it's exaggerated, it's not stupid. Let's not forget: that type of journalist IS evil, contributing to cultural stupidity and all manner of reactionary nonsense. It's time people stood up to them and - more importantly - to the idiot PR culture (the big Other in person) that they represent.

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Valid points mark, but i do think that making working for a rightist newspaper analogous to working is a concentration camp, especially when you're a public figure likely to come under this sort of scrutiny, is a bit daft. i mean, we've all said shit like this when we've been faced with jobsworth "i don't make the rules" types or "little hitlers". they're more figures of speech than anti-semitic jibes. not sensible, but not loaded in the way ken's *stupid* (i'm standing by it) statement has been portrayed. sometimes people don't think fully before they open their mouths - doesn't mean they have an underhand agenda of rank bigotry.

stelfox, i agree, i called it stupid a couple of days ago and still stand by it. agree with rest of your post too.

totally fine points mark, but....
i actually said "that's what they said at belsen" to a rail replacement bus driver the other day, who went past my front door and refused to let me out until he'd taken me all the way to liverpool street, saying said "no i can't let you out here. i don't make the rules - i just follow them".
it was a fucking stupid thing for *me* to say and as far as i know he wasn't jewish, linked to a large-circulation newspaper and i don't hold political office, so for ken it's especially daft.

... a specific historical event which had a number of concrete causes, one of which was people's willingness to go along, in bad faith, with what the architects of mass murder required. Surely the most pressing issue is not our attitude to the past per se, but how what we have learned from the past - i.e. that saying 'I was just following orders' is not an acceptable get-out for participating in evil.

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amen to that -- not terribly structuralist/cold-rationalist, but wtf, right?

nor was his refusal to let me off the bus exactly "evil"

stelfox said:

nor was his refusal to let me off the bus exactly "evil"

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No, probably not Those three words - Rail Replacement Service - suck the joy from my life.

I've met people who work for Mail Group and they all say they disagree with the political/social/cultural ethos of the papers but it's a good job for them, good pay, improves prospects, etc. I think this is moral cowardice.

I hope Livingstone does not apologise to appease reactionary criticism from right-wing media who have an alternative agenda. Any PR driven politician would have said "sorry for any offence I caused" and implicitly refused to apologise for what they actually said. Livingstone says you are wrong to take offence because the accusation is one of moral cowardice, it is not related to your religion and if you don't like it then that's your problem.

Of course, reading the transcript it sounds like he was a bit pissed. I bet he's a nightmare down the pub.

ahem... apparently he's much more of a nightmare when he gets home after having been down the pub

Surely the whole point about this is that Livingstone made a bit of a twat of himself and the papers decided to make political capital out of it. End of story. Does anybody really believe that Livingstone was making a deliberate antisemitic attack or that the reporter was really that offended?

Effay is quite right. The weirdest thing about the way this story is being run today is that Livingstone's outburst has somehow jeopardised the Olympic bid! So when we rightly lose it to Paris or whoever, all the press can go 'well, y'know, if Ken hadn't made that twattish comment while drunk about ten months ago, we would have been in with a chance'. Very cheap.

According to the latest standard headline Blair has asked ken to apologise, i can't see how that will help things at all, it'll just lead to accusations of hypocracy and conspiracy, especially in the light of the pig and fagin images. Ken has explained himself on the telly etc but a swathe of strong headlines are more powerful than explantions and considered argument from the guy who is actually being accused in the first place.
the only good thing about this is that it's so woeful that just maybe it will put people off the daily mail, evening standard, labour, conservatives and ken livingstone. but most of all hopefully michael howard cos he is mr downer 2005, an utter nasty cynic, not a bit of good about him.

infinite thought said:

So when we rightly lose it to Paris or whoever, all the press can go 'well, y'know, if Ken hadn't made that twattish comment while drunk about ten months ago, we would have been in with a chance'. Very cheap.

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Which is secretly what I reckon the Standard want anyway - they love being down on the city they're supposed to represent. Nothing would make them happier than a 40-page supplement on 'Why we lost the Olympic bid'.

Rambler said:

Which is secretly what I reckon the Standard want anyway - they love being down on the city they're supposed to represent. Nothing would make them happier than a 40-page supplement on 'Why we lost the Olympic bid'.

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totally agree

There's a pretty good leader in the New Statesman at the moment that covers a lot of what's been mentioned on this thread:

http://www.newstatesman.com/nsleader.htm

I particularly like these paragraphs:

Freedom includes the freedom to speak offensive rubbish; indeed, that is the most important freedom of all, and it should not be qualified by demands to apologise for exercising it. Why should Mr Livingstone feign a contrition that he does not feel? Sincerity is what we supposedly want in our politicians. The Prime Minister, who seems to wish to turn apologising into a cottage industry, predictably supports those who want the mayor to retract. Yet he will not apologise for misleading the country over the threat from Saddam Hussein; on the contrary, he promoted the intelligence chief apparently responsible for the flawed information.

It is because our rulers have become so difficult to hold to account on the larger issues - ruinous wars, disastrous public-private partnerships, gridlocked transport - that the media try to nail them on what seem smaller, simpler questions. There is no easy way of putting Iraq right; but Mr Livingstone can be fixed if he will utter a few, well-chosen words, preferably on prime-time television. Again, it is because the political parties lack firm boundaries of principle that so much attention focuses on how politicians express themselves. Just as they are required to tidy their hair and clothes before they go out, so politicians have to tidy their language. The slick surface is all: the substance beneath is nothing.

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stelfox said:

nor was his refusal to let me off the bus exactly "evil"

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Unless you were the only person on the bus, I would even call it "right."

Watching BBC's evening news a couple of days ago, the Livingstone and immigration affairs were covered in parallel, and I could only think of how correct K-Punk's points early in this thread were.

I think it was Michael Howard who stated "We have a National Health Service, not a Global Health Service." This reminded me of comments heard in France 10 or more years ago: "France cannot host all the misery of the world." I thought we'd gotten past that, apparently not.

We also apparently have not gotten past using shoddy science as a flimsy cloak for racism: my soon-to-be-doctor girlfriend debunked the utility of TB tests in protecting the general population in about 10 seconds.

Again, we are also not past failing to see immigration as a *positive* employment factor (cf. Labour's "we'll only let in useful, qualified immigrants."). I find it hard to believe that no studies have been carried out on the economic roles filled by immigrants (e.g. Italian miners in Belgium in the 60s, North Africans in France for a whole variety of things, and so on), so I must believe that these kinds of pronouncements are as shoddy as the TB one. Further, UN reports have recommended major increases in immigration quotas as a means to combat the problems looming due to ageing populations. I don't remember the exact figures, but for France, the recommendation was about 10 times the current quota.

And yet, we are "flooded" with immigrants and their misery and their NHS-sucking deviousness. Seems to me the best gig is to become Finance minister and get the people to pay your 14,000 euro/month rent (a scandal that has just forced the French minister to give up his appartment and the Prime Minister to change the legislation on official residences).

You'd have to be naive, or even stupid, to think that to highlight the jewish background of key tory cabinet members wasn't significant. Campbell knew exactly what he was doing. Come on, Howard as Shylock! As far as Ken is concerned, all power to him. He's the main reason London works at all.