Proud to be Mike?

Neil Clark (god this blog is getting stuck) is at it again with a piece of biting satire in the Morning Star (that is 'biting', as in toothless budgie, and 'satire' as in "a feeling that is oriented toward some real or supposed grievance" (ire) produced from the fundament. And, of course, Morning Star as in daft old gits who haven't realised that Communism only lives on in the great democratic and egalitarian success that is North Korea (and only ever worked in Israel).

Now, I am clearly not "Mike Blogger". I am not left wing, I didn't support the Iraq war (at the time, IIRC, I my under-informed opinion was that it was an odd piece of Shrub's semi-Oedipal "Daddy didn't comprehensively kick Baathist butt in 1991" Republican posturing. I am not sure I was wrong), I have served in the Armed Forces (Neil not only gets his thinking wrong, he cannot do grammar either) and I think that the Saudi government and the whole Wahhabi idea should be comprehensively put down (or, slightly more humanitarian, made to work for a living).

I do, however, think that the Euston Manifesto is an important step for young lefties on their journey to the moderate libertarian right and was a quite explicit and understandable reaction by the concerned to the mendacious and quixotic antics of the Bliar administration(s).

Of course, by this point, Neil is getting remarkably inconsistent (the Euston Manifesto and most leftist bloggers loath Bliar):

Mike shows no enthusiasm for public ownership or introducing higher taxes on the wealthy. A member of the Labour Party since 1994, he regards Tony Blair as the greatest Prime Minister Britain has ever had.

Well, public ownership just doesn't work - so maybe they are just a little more economically literate than Neil?

He also puts 'barbarians' in double quotes, implying that it is a direct quote, without any link. I have heard and read the Iraqi insurgents called all sorts of things - I believe I recently called them "jihadi scumbag terrorists" - but "barbarians"? As for the rest of it - I have work to do and he has already wasted far too much of my time.

Maybe, regardless of our political outlook, we should all be proud to be, in some way, Mike because, at the very least, it doesn't make us Neil.