Harry’s Place

Holy shit! I’m embarrassed it took me seven years to get a B.A.! (Granted, I wasn’t a professional revoltionary, just a very heavy drinker.)

“But just think, if I’d been black [the policeman who saved my life] might have hauled my arse to the station and kicked my head in.”

Thataboy, Seymour! Revolutionary credentials intact.

“And yes, before any smartarse points this out, I am fully cognisant of the fact that I owe my life to a policeman. But just think, if I’d been black he might have hauled my arse to the station and kicked my head in. Ungracious, I know - but since when have you come to expect grace and good manners at the Tomb?”

He really is a prize twat. Is that an attempt at self-parody?

Where’s his degree from by the way? I’m very snobby about this sort of thing. Clearly not Oxbridge - can’t do Politics, Philosophy and History at Oxford or the other place. *sneer sneer*

You can think what you like about Seymour’s politics - and God knows I hate his stuff - but there’s no doubt he’s a seriously smart guy; and I’d be very surprised if he wasn’t well worth a First (at any university).

Bugger, I’m in a dire enough situation, but I thought he was a PhD.

“but there’s no doubt he’s a seriously smart guy”

He was certainly a much higher class of troll than Flanker is.

he also had a run in with the police a couple of months ago. he was photographing something he wasn’t supposed to, the police told him to stop, he pissed his pants again and went home.

you know, i wouldn’t have imagined that a leader of the revolutionary vanguard (i’m kidding, he’s a wanker with a blog who _thinks_ he’s a leader of the revolutionary vanguard, but never mind) would actually eat at burger king, helping the multinational capitalists, or well funded bankers, or whatever idiotic terms these people are using today, make money from a working class (read: tries to make money by promoting his book on his blog) stiff such as seymour.
this reminds me of the time he was helping hollywood by sending his minions to see v for vendetta.

Oh well, at least we can finally say to him,

“You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could say something so stupid”.

Hrrrumph.

OK, I only got a 2nd class honours degree fromthe LSE ( but it WAS 1973, and I WAS on drinking terms with Tariq Ali.

Harrrumph again :)

And I was arrested by the SPG

Many times.

(Many, many times. Many, many, many times etc)

seymour doesn’t come over as ’smart’, wordy certainly, able to digest chunks of post-modernist guff and repeat it, but not really smart

after all would a ’smart’ person rely on Rees/German and the other SWP leaders for political direction? remember that in the past 3+ years the SWP have made political mistake after mistake (Galloway, Respect, London election, StWC, etc)

or wouldn’t someone truly ’smart’ be able to decide upon political issues without reference to the Muppets that run the SWP?

if seymour was smart then surely he’d able to argue his points in non-SWP forums where there is a conflicts of views?

but instead seymour sticks solidly to SWP type forums, where the level of debate is barely above articulate runts of approval whenever a Central Committee member farts

nah, seymour is smart in the same way Bobby Fischer, he has some mechanical ability but deranged in every other way, and presumably has that rather typical SWPer’s limited understanding of personal hygiene issues?

“first class with honours”??
No such thing.
He’s either lying or too stupid to understand the British degree classification system.
Possibly both.
DougR BA (First class honours), MSc.

So fucking what? It wasn’t in science or engineering or anything useful now was it? It was in felching Trots. Typical commie scumbag.

I had always assumed Seymour was above undergraduate graduation (as it were).

I’ve been chatting away over there on the “Islamophobia in the US” thread. Go and back me up against the muppets, please. (Oh gosh, I know that rude is not dude.)

I assumed he was going for some kind of graduate degree?

Did he not even have any sort of degree in the first place?!

What a loser. I got a degree from Orxfaard. How much better does that make me than him? Many multiples, I cannot help but think.

He did get a 1st, apparently. I want to know where it was from, though. I bet it wasn’t from one of the universities (either of them).

Ben,

are you drunk?

Congratulations to Richard.

“Politics, Philosophy and History” is an unusual triple combination, that I’ve not heard of. Given that Richard must have been a part-time mature student, I’d guess that he may have studied at Brikbeck, probably this course:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/ug/politics/UBAPOPHI.html

Kinda. Ish. Tipsy. Not especially. It is a shameful admission that I have been drinking alcohol this evening, nonetheless.

Am I not being as melliflous as I usually am?

I must say that I’d rather be a drunk me than a sober Richard Seymour.

Are you implying that my visceral disgust for trot-boy might have gone a bit too far? My apologies if so.

To be fair, my previous comment is no more tipsy than some of the comments I write on here, which is not to imply that the majority are, because that would be quite untrue.

But, yes, I think what needs to be understood is that I’m an alcoholic loser in every comment I make here. Hic.

Does that make you happy?

(I’m really restraining myself here, Darren, by the way. I hope you appreciate it.)

Ben, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t spoil it. ;-)

But you weren’t giving me the “benefit of the doubt”, were you, Darren? You were being quite vicious.

I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never, ever, cast aspersions on the lifestyle of or psychological state of constructive HP commenters. And I never would.

It’s only the fact that I’m not embarassed about being up late and having had a drink tonight that means that I don’t shrink before your suggestive comments. “Drunk”? I don’t care if others think I am or not.

So what’s your big deal, Darren?

Why are you up so late/early? I have a job to go to at the end of August. I intend to contribute to society. What the fuck are you doing having a go at me at such an early hour yadda yadda. Do you have a job? Is it a good one?

(I don’t want you to answer either of the two previous questions. But you’ll see the point.)

I’ll answer one of your questions anyway.

“Why are you up so late/early?”

I live in the States.

Vicious? Not really. Just hoping that pompous arsery of your original comment was alcohol induced . . .

“What a loser. I got a degree from Orxfaard. How much better does that make me than him? Many multiples, I cannot help but think.
He did get a 1st, apparently. I want to know where it was from, though. I bet it wasn’t from one of the universities (either of them).”

pissing yourself 3 times isn’t a good look for a revolutionary tho is it

Uh huh.

Had you ever considered that pride and self-mockery could exist along side each other? I’ve wondered what the word for this is. There must be one.

And also along side my pride and self-mockery, is the effort to make Richard Seymour seem rather small. I admit this. I am oh so terrible a creature.

But I find it amusing.

And, in any case, you are still a fool. I think I might just have to give up here. (And I will necessarily look like a knob to some - sadly)

(Oh lord, please not let the commentariat be too harsh upon me.)

“And yes, before any smartarse points this out, I am fully cognisant of the fact that I owe my life to a policeman. But just think, if I’d been black he might have hauled my arse to the station and kicked my head in.”

It’s a cosy place, the far left. Make a set of assumptions about say, widespread state brutality against minorities. Have them confirmed by talking with your comrades. Don’t bother to challenge said assumptions by doing old-fashioned, empirical stuff, like say, actually talking with and listening to members of said minorities.

Still, I don’t wish to belittle his achievement in graduating with a first. Now’s he a first class honours graduate who writes a worthless blog. I’m happy for him.

Well done Richard.
See what you can do now Galloway and McKay don’t do your writing for you.

“And yes, before any smartarse points this out, I am fully cognisant of the fact that I owe my life to a policeman. But just think, if I’d been black he might have hauled my arse to the station and kicked my head in.”

This is below the level of anything I have ever heard of the less intelligent trots in my Faculty in Argentina. You deserve to have your head kicked in for being a white middle class shmock with delirious of being a vanguard.

I don’t think it’s nice to be too snobby about the fact that Richard Seymour has waited until middle age to do a degree, we don’t know his circumstances. I’ve got a feeling that he was at SOAS, part of London University, but I could be confusing him with Johng. Personally I roared with laughter at reading that post. sometimes the guy is genuinely funny. Never mind writing political polemics about international politics, I think he could write a humorous diary.

Did it take him a long time to complete, or did he return to Uni as a mature student? [I’ll be 47 by the time I fully graduate, largely because I was 39 when I started] He’s an ignorant baw bag anyway, degree or not.

Never mind writing political polemics about international politics, I think he could write a humorous diary.

“The secret diary of Lenny Lenin, aged 37 3/4″? Now in all good bookshops, priced 4.99; soon to be serialised on ITV. Starring Chanie Rosenberg as Queenie, John Rees as Bert, Lindsey German as Pandora. Ugh!

I’m glad Lenin got a good degree. That career in banking now opens up. The blog has been a good laugh, but people are beginning to catch on.

the ‘resentiment’ here is really something to see. just because he’s funnier then you. he can’t help it you know.

You’ve all got it wrong.

Seymour was at Spunkbridge University (formely Robert Mugabe Junior School), where he was best mates with Militant Millie.

As Sue C says there isn’t anything wrong with being a mature student but to suggest Dickie is “smart” is hilarious; he may be able to discuss a few Marxist theories and suchlike but he proved at the last election that he didn’t even know what a council house was. Without knowledge of both academia and ordinary people’s lives (and an understanding of the dialogue between the two) “Lenin” will end up as “smart” as someone like Dsquared.

He is funnier John, unintentionally. And I know he can’t help it.

How long before he refers to Obama as a “house nigger” do you think?

He eats (sic) at Burger King?

Pretty sure Seymour was at Birkbeck - which explains why it’s taken him so long to graduate as it will have been part time in the evenings.

The man’s politics are junk but good on him for sticking out a tough course - having been fortunate enough to study full-time at Birkbeck I’ve no idea how part-timers can juggle their lives to work and study at the same time.

only someone like johng would think seymour is funny.

Ben

….’Had you ever considered that pride and self-mockery could exist along side each other? I’ve wondered what the word for this is. There must be one’….

there is ….’irony’

metta,

Ben’s sleeping it off.

Daft how this post was originally supposed to be about taking the piss out of Lenny graduating - congrats Lenny, btw - and, for me, it ends up being about that other SWPer, Ben.

BTW I have no idea how old Seymour is. He may be 25 for all I know. I was, as you say, taking the piss out of someone who seems to be an eternal student.

He’s 30.

And reportedly his book is being held up due to problems with the Iraq chapters.
It was doomladen with billions dead when he handed in the transcript.

Yikes. Poetic justice that he should have been saved by a police officer. It always surprises me when socialists from developed countries eat animal - particularly intensively-farmed dead animal. Kind of invalidating.

Wikipedia says he’s the same age as Johann Hari - born in 1977. Also if he wants to pursue postgrad studies he’d need his BA so go easy on him on that count (only).

the ‘resentiment’ here is really something to see. just because he’s funnier then you. he can’t help it you know.

Really does have you on salary, doesn’t he Johnners?

Grahan: How long have I been posting here? You could at least have the good manners to separate me in your mind from Sue C, who is a a completely distinct individual and not myself at all.

My apologies (and apologies from Graham with an M too).

“Politics, Philosophy and History”

You can actually get a degree in talking bollocks about stuff you know nothing about? No wonder science and engineering subjects are under-studied.

Ah, there Seymour was rushing off to Sidney Street when he chokes on one of Mrs Miggin’s pies.

Sue R - Lenin is 30 and so probably started his degree around 27. Does that count as ‘middle age’ these days?! Blimey.

Probably is Birkbeck. I did PPH by evening study at Birkbeck years ago. Oh my, you don’t think…

To show how long ago it was: Roger Scruton was still teaching some of the philosophy courses.

I started the course thinking that fuzzy subjects were an easy dodge for wasters, having previously been a science student.
I liked to think that I would emerge unscathed from beneath the weight of other people’s opinions, and I was later much emboldened by the Sokal hoax.

I did change my mind though. Getting a first in a BA course remains difficult, even if no one else is failed. Also, I came to believe that the question of how to live is too important to be left to priests and politicians - alternative and competing claims to legitimacy help keep us all free.

Regardless of what you may think of his politics, Seymour is bright - although he would be a lot more interesting if he wasn’t so “party line” on everything. I have actually enjoyed his blog posts on Haiti, since it’s not the usual boring diatribes about Israel. Testament to his intellectual ability is how seriously HP writers take his provocative articles. If he was simply a brainless left-wing lunatic, no-one would pay attention.

Good luck to you and well done on you first class, if you’re reading this, Rich. But I wonder whether you’ll go for a career as an advertising executive or a call centre manager. One cannot earn a living from blogging and writing lengthy “discourse” in SWP publications.

He has a book out soon Dan - somehow I have a feeling he’ll be just fine without having to lower himself to the world of advertising.

Pre-order your copy here:

http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/seymour_r_the_liberal_defense_of_murder.shtml

“He has a book out soon Dan - somehow I have a feeling he’ll be just fine without having to lower himself to the world of advertising.”

I doubt he’ll earn much out of it. But good for him. I am older than him and I haven’t written a book. I admire him for it, even though I’d probably vehemently disagree with most of what he has written. I won’t be buying it though because his arguments are far too familiar and I don’t think he’ll be saying anything new. It’s a polemic and few polemics are worth reading.

He has a book out soon Dan - somehow I have a feeling he’ll be just fine without having to lower himself to the world of advertising.

Well, we’ve given it plenty of free publicity.

I’ve often wondered what meeting Dick Seymour is like. He seems a little too cocky and probably considers himself to be above the paper-selling minions of the SWP. Does he have any friends outside the SWP? Does he drink alcohol? Does he have a girl/boyfriend? Is there anything in his life that is not devoted to overthrowing the ruling classes/Zionism/imperialism? I am genuinely curious about the lives of Trotskyists like our friend Dick and whether there is a human-being lurking there. I’d love to have a drink with John Rees and talk about mundane things like the weather, gardening, playing guitar, etc, without class struggle being the focal point. I don’t think these people are mad, bad or stupid, just that they may be too much like evangelical Christians.

“Without knowledge of both academia and ordinary people’s lives (and an understanding of the dialogue between the two)”

Graham,
Who can claim this? You? I won’t bother with trivia about what is meant by “academia” and “ordinary” because I start with the principle of charity when thinking about what someone is saying.
In my experience there are few who are willing to embrace both popular culture and high culture. Some people affect it, but their affectations don’t bear close examination.
Generally I find that members of the educated working classes are alienated by the fact of feeling at home in places they can no longer have a conversation in, and being an outsider in places that they can.
The middle class types affecting proletarian sympathies are easier to spot - displays of inverted snobbery and expressions of sympathy combined with a ruthless demand for perfect service.

I stopped being a socialist when I realised that I really don’t like working-class people, with their fish ‘n’ chips (as if that ‘n’ makes them more tasty), their lager drink, hoody-wearing and knife-carrying abilities, their atrocious accents (the worst being Liverpudlian), their loud exhausts and car-based sound systems, their sexual misdemeanors (resulting in paternity tests courtesy of Jeremy Kyle) and their racism (the BNP is the only working-class party in the UK). I hope the working-class rot in the excrement of their popular culture.

In my experience there are few who are willing to embrace both popular culture and high culture. Some people affect it, but their affectations don’t bear close examination.

I find a few (enough to keep me going anyway) but there are plenty of people who started off with privelige or who worked their way into academia from nothing who can recognise how useless academic knowledge is alone.

I stopped being a socialist when I realised that I really don’t like working-class people, with their fish ‘n’ chips (as if that ‘n’ makes them more tasty), their lager drink, hoody-wearing and knife-carrying abilities, their atrocious accents (the worst being Liverpudlian), their loud exhausts and car-based sound systems, their sexual misdemeanors (resulting in paternity tests courtesy of Jeremy Kyle) and their racism (the BNP is the only working-class party in the UK). I hope the working-class rot in the excrement of their popular culture.

Well I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to stop being a socialist. What’s more disturbing are people who believe essentially the same as you and continue to be socialists.

Although I think what you’ve provided is not an accurate description of “the working class” but rather a compendium of the worst stereotypes about them and flat-out snobbery.

Don’t forget about our filthy habit of filling our jacuzzis with coal.

And voting for the Peronist party.

The working class are too stupid to realise their revolutionary potential, so they need a middle-class vanguard to do it for them. Recruit, recruit, recruit!

I have always thought that the concept of a middle-class vanguard was an oxymoron as the middle never leads anything - it just follows in either direction.

their sexual misdemeanors; like this chav?

Both before and after his marriage, Kent had a long string of affairs with both men and women, from socialites to Hollywood celebrities. The better known of his partners included the African-American cabaret singer Florence Mills, banking heiress Poppy Baring, socialite Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll), musical star Jessie Matthews and actor Noel Coward, with whom he carried on a 19-year affair.[4] Intimate letters from the Duke to Coward are believed to have been stolen from Coward’s house in 1942.[5] There is some suggestion that the duke had an affair with Indira Raje, the Maharani of Cooch Behar (1892–1968), in the late 1920s, according to British historian Lucy Moore. [6]

The Duke of Kent is also said to have been addicted to drugs (notably morphine and cocaine) — a weakness which his brother the Prince of Wales was deputed to cure him of during the latter part of the 1920s — and reportedly was blackmailed by a male prostitute to whom he wrote intimate letters. Another of his reported bisexual liaisons was with his distant cousin Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia; homosexual spy and art historian Anthony Blunt was reputedly another intimate.[7] The Duke was known to have attempted to court Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. She spurned the overture and married Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Bisterfeld instead.

In addition to his legitimate children, the Duke is said to have had a son by Kiki Preston (née Alice Gwynne) (1898–1946), an American socialite whom he reportedly shared in a ménage à trois with Jorge Ferrara, the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Known as “the girl with the silver syringe”, drug addict Preston, a cousin of railroad heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, was married first to Horace R.B. Allen and then, in 1925, to banker Jerome Preston.[8] She died after jumping out of a window of the Stanhope Hotel in New York City. According to the memoirs of a friend, Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Prince George’s brother (the Duke of Windsor) believed that the son was Michael Canfield (1926–1969), the adopted son of American publisher Cass Canfield and the first husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_kent

>>“first class with honours,” he proudly notes. (How old is he now? 35? 40?)>>

I graduated from Birkbeck with a first class honours degree at the age of 42. Do you people have a problem with that? I worked a lot harder and gained a lot more from bringing real life experiences to study and combining it with full-time employment and trade union activism than most of you did sitting in the SU bar all day listening to the Smiths and going to SWSS meetings.

Can’t speak for Seymour, though; he comes across like a superannuated 21 year old. I strongly suspect he has a traffic cone in his bedroom.

‘I’m in a dire enough situation, but I thought he was a PhD’.

So did I. Or maybe I confused him with another swuppie pissing around on the fringes of academia:

‘the ‘resentiment’ here is really something to see. just because he’s funnier then (sic) you. he can’t help it you know’.

Haven’t you got a thesis to submit, John Game?

I graduated from Birkbeck with a first class honours degree at the age of 42. Do you people have a problem with that?

I can’t speak for anyone else here but I certainly don’t as I now teach people as old as 70 who happily go off to uni having myself graduated from london University at the age of 36 (alas with only a higher second but I did have to work three days a week to manage it.)

Well I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to stop being a socialist. What’s more disturbing are people who believe essentially the same as you and continue to be socialists.

In fact that’s the very definition of a Leninist (like Seymour), isn’t it? Someone who believes the working class is incapable of figuring things out and acting for themselves.

yeah, it’s a pretty good definition of social democracy/labourism as well, Gene.

Is he immensely fat?

Dan -

That was a FUNNY post.

No doubt it will cause a lot of the bien pensants some pain as they go into mental contortions having realised that they ALSO hate all the things you listed but still want to love the working class!

Perhaps we should help them with things that it is possible to love the working class for:

1. Good pop music (middle classes not v. good at that really).

2. Tomato ketchup.

3. Football.

4. Democracy.

Er - that’s it I think!

Personally I’m with Robert Robinson - lower middle classes are the salt of the earth. They produce the really rich crop of artists, scientists, writers, inventors, and so on that define the best of our culture. The upper and lower classes can’t be a*sed one way or another…

Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes! Bow, bow, ye tradesmen, bow, ye masses!

The BNP of course are quite obviously a lower middle-class vanguard party .

Can I just say here that Seymour, Game and all the other swuppies have about as much to do with socialism as Brian Blessed has to do with mime?

“The BNP of course are quite obviously a lower middle-class vanguard party.”

No, they are the fake middle-class - the working class who pretend to be middle-class. It’s the mirror oppose of the SWP, which are the middle-class trying to be working-class. It’s funny how both believe in global Jewish conspiracies.

I don’t begrudge Seymour for passing his degree thing - there’s no doubt he is very efficient at completing academic tasks and has a competitive streak. It’s just a shame that someone with a BA in Politics, Philosophy and History could think that being in the SWP, supporting George Galloway until he dumps you, siding with fascists and racists against Muslims abroad, whilst at home pretending we live in apartheid south Africa because Muslim parents don’t want their children wearing fundamentalist garments in school, and so on, is politically, historically or philosophically intelligent.

It’s like his former pal, James Meaders, who is a Marxist with a degree in economics - the definition of a contradiction in terms. You get the feeling that it’s all a bit of an academic game at the moment with these guys. They have an eye, quite naturally and sensibly - on their future career interests. That’s why they’re quite happy to invest lots of time gaining acceptance from state institutions and officialdom in system they supposedly despise. I just find the whole business rather distasteful and self indulgent - why wait until you’re middle aged before taking life seriously?

I strongly suspect he has a traffic cone in his bedroom.

It can get so lonely up there in the vanguard.

The word to describe Richard Seymour is Pooteresque, or in plain english Pooterish.

Again with this ‘middle-aged’ thing. Is 30 middle-aged Mike? How old are you, 12? Strange bunch of age obsessed (and ageist) types here.

No, they are the fake middle-class - the working class who pretend to be middle-class.

Well if you think the BNP are a fascist party then it is worth pointing out that their “Fuhrer” Nick Griffin attended two private schools and Cambridge so he is hardly fake middle-class!

Fascism is weak generally in working-class areas in which the supposedly indigenous population are often themselves the descendents of immigrants two or three generations back and the whole areas are creations of the industrial revolution. It is only generally when fascism meets lower middle-class home-owning areas in the suburbs that the curtains start twitching and the swastikas start being waved.

Again with this ‘middle-aged’ thing. Is 30 middle-aged Mike? How old are you, 12? Strange bunch of age obsessed (and ageist) types here.

My point is that he is not serious now, idiot. He won’t get serious until he is middle aged. Read the fucking post.

“Is he immensely fat?”

LOL, no he is incredibly yummy actually. A very eligible young man in fact, but sadly very taken…