Your Happening World (20)

The perfect Daily Express cover.

“Labour is facing a deep crisis that threatens its survival as a party of power, Ed Milibandwill be warned, on Wednesday as he is told to avoid the “politics of protest” and to focus on establishing political credibility.” Better not rock the boat Ed, or your masters might get upset. Play the game using the proper rules and don’t get so uncouth as to actually take it seriously.

The humilation of the Yes campaign: an analysis of why the AV Yes campaign failed, from a supporter: “From the outset, the YES campaign was all about the tiny coterie of people who feel strongly about electoral reform. The emphasis was on these people “having fun” and being invited to comedy evenings. In email after email from the YES campaign, the quirky behaviour of this “producer set” was celebrated and the “consumer set” ignored. So, some bunch of local activists who had written the letters Y, E and S in big letters on a beach were hailed as creative geniuses. Others were highlighted for running a particularly successful street stall. From the point of view of any observer, it was all about “them”(the micro-percentage of constitutional reform obsessives) never about “us” (the people). None of this self-indulgent madness won a single vote for the YES side, but it probably lost thousands.” OUCH!

One example of why any political activist should stay away from Facebook. It has been very good at conning people into thinking Facebook is just like the Internet, but you’re at the mercy of an unsympathetic commercial entity that’d rather you’d Farmvilled. Real activists get their own servers.

Clearing out the weeks old tabs on my browser, here are two articles on the Bristol Stoke Croft riots from OpenDemocracy: an eyewitness account and an analysis of how the police and media spun it.

Read all your links? Then have a kitten as a treat: