<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>The Charlotte Gore Blog &#187; hashtag</title>
	<atom:link href="http://charlottegore.com/tag/hashtag/feed" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://charlottegore.com</link>
	<description>Free Trade and Free Minds. Politics for Reasonable People. Independent Political Blogging. Top 20 Blog. Libertarianism. Laser Kitties.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 06 May 2011 16:38:10 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2</generator>
		<item>
		<title>Against All Odds, A Minor Triumph</title>
		<link>http://charlottegore.com/2009/11/17/against-all-odds-a-minor-triumph.html</link>
		<comments>http://charlottegore.com/2009/11/17/against-all-odds-a-minor-triumph.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:55:11 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Charlotte Gore</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Communications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[against all odds]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hashtag]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KerryMP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Labour]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://charlottegore.com/?p=1960</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s hard to measure how elated I feel. A rabble rousing propaganda piece &#8211; deployed to great effect in mentally numbing the drones at the Labour Conference &#8211; has been chosen as Labour&#8217;s new Party Political Broadcast. This news has been met with cheers of delight by all sections of the political bubblesphere. The video is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It&#8217;s hard to measure how elated I feel.</p>
<p>A rabble rousing propaganda piece &#8211; deployed to great effect in mentally numbing the drones at the Labour Conference &#8211; has been chosen as Labour&#8217;s new Party Political Broadcast. This news has been met with cheers of delight by <em>all </em>sections of the political bubblesphere.</p>
<p>The video is called, &#8220;Against the Odds&#8221; and recounts the heroic struggle against reality by Labour over the last 100 years &#8211; a battle, it seems, they&#8217;ve won. Epic won.</p>
<p>See, Labour&#8217;s spent the first ten years of their current period in office waiting for Gordon Brown to take over so they could do some &#8216;real&#8217; Labour stuff. They knew, or at least believed, that by keeping to the moderate, centre ground (or, &#8220;keeping the fucking beardy weirdies off the telly&#8221;) they could stay in power. While they weren&#8217;t getting everything they wanted it was still <em>better than the Tories</em>.</p>
<p>Now, with their doom inevitable, Labour are now beginning to reflect on their time in office with a sort of dewy eyed nostalgia. It&#8217;s been a triumph, a golden era &#8211; we are, it seems, extremely lucky to have had them.</p>
<p>Do you see the problem, though? During Blair they bemoaned the lack of progress. Now, with Brown, they&#8217;re celebrating all the progress they made.</p>
<p>So the decision to use this video is a significant one. It&#8217;s not aimed at Liberal Democrat voters, or Conservative voters, or SNP voters, or Plaid voters, or swing voters or undecided voters. They&#8217;re trying to prevent Labour voters dragging the Government down in their suicidal malaise. They&#8217;re trying to motivate the core, the True Believers.</p>
<p>The language is that of war &#8211; the constant repetition of the word, &#8220;fight&#8221; and &#8220;fighters&#8221;. They&#8217;re fighting <em>us. </em>They&#8217;re fighting <em>you</em>. They&#8217;re fighting <em>me</em>. This is a <em>war </em>and they&#8217;re motivating their troops to do battle against Labour&#8217;s enemies. This sort of rhetoric does for Labour what Sarah Palin did for the Republicans -sending <em>everyone else </em>screaming and running in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s nauseating, profoundly partisan stuff. There&#8217;s a schmaltzy Sean Bean-a-like narration invoking the old Hovis advert vision of a simple and pleasantly prolitarian Britain filled with ordinary, common working folk that need to&#8230; er&#8230; <em> </em><em>fight against our enemies and the system that denies us what we deserve, Comrades! </em> Swing voters, beware.</p>
<p>What effect will this Party Political Broadcast have? Absolutely none, obviously &#8211; no-one watches the bloody things anyway. It apparently reduces certain Labour activists to tears. For hardened, embittered cynics like me, Against All Odds reduces me to tears of laughter &#8211; it begs &#8211; no, it <em>demands </em>mockery, it<em> demands </em>parody.</p>
<p>What else could I do? Cue several hours of relentless mockery in one of Labour&#8217;s little corners of Twitter. Their celebration of Labour&#8217;s triumphs became a hotbed of ego deflating irony and sarcasm:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Labour Party also abolished slavery, put a man on the moon, started the Enlightenment and &#8211; AND &#8211; killed Hitler.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Mr Kipling&#8217;s exceedingly good cake recipes were stolen from Ramsey MacDonald.</p>
<p>Gordon Brown was immaculately concieved by himself. He *is* the Manse!</p></blockquote>
<p>We had fun with this one. It went on and on, lots of people got involved and came up with their own brilliant little gems.</p>
<p>As long as Labour&#8217;s only strategy for winning back the hearts and minds of the British people is boasting and bragging about their achievements, I think it&#8217;s safe to say that this sort of irreverent mockery is how the rest of us can stay sane.</p>
<p>UPDATE: <a href="http://sarabedford.com/blog/2009/11/a-fisking-of-labour-schmaltz/">Sara Bedford has done a wonderful fisk of this video here</a>. Highly recommended.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://charlottegore.com/2009/11/17/against-all-odds-a-minor-triumph.html/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>5</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

