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Post by Adam in Stroud on Dec 2, 2017 21:31:50 GMT
The working class is meaningless? Who delivers your post, serves you in shops, drives the buses or trains you use, cuts your hair or brings you your coffee in the coffee shop? This is an excellent illustration of why I utterly reject the Liberal Democrats and refuse to "lend them my vote". Experience tells me that if you do that they will count it as a whole-hearted endorsement of what, for want of a better word, we shall call their policies. Nevertheless, congratulations to them. Unusually I am in agreement with carlton43 whose analysis of the results is actually very good here. It's noteworthy that all 4 of the constituencies where the by-elections took place are safe Conservative seats, and only one has been anywhere remotely near electing a Labour MP in most people's living memory (Gosport, in 2001). Who spends all day shovelling manure into a trailer, moving it by tractor and then digging it by hand into solid Severn valley clay in the pissing rain for £12.50 an hour? Who has to soak in the bath to get the mud off and stop his back aching at the end of the working day? Oh hang on, that'd be me. And no, it doesn't make me working class. Nor does the fact that I'm a single parent who gets Tax Credits either. Nor does the fact that I call no-one boss and fill in a tax return make me a little capitalist. Sorry @barnabymarder, you're clearly a decent bloke but I won't take a lecture on working class life from any of the Labour members on here until just one of them is delivering the post, working in a shop, driving a bus or train or working in a coffee shop. As far as I can tell about the only regular on here who could make the claim would be @boogieeck. I believe ArmchairCritic could have said so in the past and I believe cogload has been known to see the inside of a signal box; gwynthegriff seems to have been at the sharp end a bit. Spot the link - none of us are in the bloody Labour Party (and I bet one of us would say we're working class.) |
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Post by andrew111 on Dec 2, 2017 21:56:43 GMT
Don't think Andrew111 had you in particular in mind when he referred to Barnaby, as I don't think its part of your remit to keep Lib Dems on the straight and narrow, and given that Andrew's status is non-aligned it can't be part if his either.  Must be a reference to Midsomer Murders. He's mentioned he's been canvassing for the Lib Dems etc but for whatever reason prefers to keep himself non-aligned. Oh, yes I don't mind admitting i am a Lib Dem member these days (having not been one while Clegg was Deputy Prime Minister after a few exchanges of opinion with Simon Hughes over tuition fees...). I just have a reluctance to joining an online tribe you know... But of course if it is compulsory for membership of this discussion board then so be it! Probably it was MerseyMike I should have been warning YP about, so apologies to you Barnaby |
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Post by andrew111 on Dec 2, 2017 21:57:42 GMT
The working class is meaningless? Who delivers your post, serves you in shops, drives the buses or trains you use, cuts your hair or brings you your coffee in the coffee shop? This is an excellent illustration of why I utterly reject the Liberal Democrats and refuse to "lend them my vote". Experience tells me that if you do that they will count it as a whole-hearted endorsement of what, for want of a better word, we shall call their policies. Nevertheless, congratulations to them. Unusually I am in agreement with carlton43 whose analysis of the results is actually very good here. It's noteworthy that all 4 of the constituencies where the by-elections took place are safe Conservative seats, and only one has been anywhere remotely near electing a Labour MP in most people's living memory (Gosport, in 2001). Who spends all day shovelling manure into a trailer, moving it by tractor and then digging it by hand into solid Severn valley clay in the pissing rain for £12.50 an hour? Who has to soak in the bath to get the mud off and stop his back aching at the end of the working day? Oh hang on, that'd be me. And no, it doesn't make me working class. Nor does the fact that I'm a single parent who gets Tax Credits either. Nor does the fact that I call no-one boss and fill in a tax return make me a little capitalist. Sorry @barnabymarder , you're clearly a decent bloke but I won't take a lecture on working class life from any of the Labour members on here until just one of them is delivering the post, working in a shop, driving a bus or train or working in a coffee shop. As far as I can tell about the only regular on here who could make the claim would be @boogieeck . I believe ArmchairCritic could have said so in the past and I believe cogload has been known to see the inside of a signal box; gwynthegriff seems to have been at the sharp end a bit. Spot the link - none of us are in the bloody Labour Party (and I bet one of us would say we're working class.) BTW I am not working class - does that mean I have to join the Labour party now?? |
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Post by yellowperil on Dec 2, 2017 22:16:11 GMT
Yes I has thought much of this policy excellent but I hadn't quoted it myself because there are 3 little words I personally think are wrong -"at least ten" new garden cities, which seems to me to be spreading too widely - my own preference would be, as I said elsewhere, probably 3 or 4 big ones, with anything else being quite small scale. 2016-17 new build completions were just over 180,000. If you're going to build 300,000 per year, over a ten year period you'd need 12 Milton Keynes to make up the shortfall. The scale of the problem is enormous. But not all new builds should be into garden cities -it should only be one part of the solution, and not the major part. |
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Post by AdminSTB on Dec 2, 2017 22:18:01 GMT
He's mentioned he's been canvassing for the Lib Dems etc but for whatever reason prefers to keep himself non-aligned. Oh, yes I don't mind admitting i am a Lib Dem member these days (having not been one while Clegg was Deputy Prime Minister after a few exchanges of opinion with Simon Hughes over tuition fees...). I just have a reluctance to joining an online tribe you know... But of course if it is compulsory for membership of this discussion board then so be it! Probably it was MerseyMike I should have been warning YP about, so apologies to you Barnaby No, it is not compulsory to join a political group on here if you don't want to. I have taken note of the two usual posters are who seem to try and "enforce" this. |
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thetop
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Post by thetop on Dec 2, 2017 22:22:04 GMT
I have taken note of the two usual posters are who seem to try and "enforce" this. If you're including me in this, I'd have to ask where I've seeked to enforce it (if not, ignore). |
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Dec 2, 2017 22:54:57 GMT
He's mentioned he's been canvassing for the Lib Dems etc but for whatever reason prefers to keep himself non-aligned. Oh, yes I don't mind admitting i am a Lib Dem member these days (having not been one while Clegg was Deputy Prime Minister after a few exchanges of opinion with Simon Hughes over tuition fees...). I just have a reluctance to joining an online tribe you know... But of course if it is compulsory for membership of this discussion board then so be it! Probably it was MerseyMike I should have been warning YP about, so apologies to you Barnaby You can't get more Liberal Democrat than refusing to be in the LibDem group even thought you're a member. It's the rest of us who are letting the side down. |
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Dec 2, 2017 23:05:40 GMT
Thats easy. Democratic socialism. And while there are differences of emphasis it's certainly less vague a concept than liberalism.... Fair enough, Mike, you and I aren't going to agree on this. But to me Democratic Socialism has been claimed by people whose polices in practice are indistinguishable from Social Democrats (including the SDP tradition of the LibDems.) The big difference is the aim of creating a socialist paradise eventually. The fact that no-one has ever achieved it anywhere in the world is what makes it to me a sight vaguer than liberalism, which gave us e.g. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - which is concrete enough that it can be incorporated into law and you can sue for specific breaches of it. And on the principles point, I'll accept that Democratic Socialists are more principled when Labour clearly and explicitly tell the electorate that overthrowing current society and replacing it with a socialist society is their purpose, and define the latter. I don't see you getting that past the party strategists anytime soon. But mainly I wish you'd just accept that other people see things differently instead of insisting that anyone who does is unprincipled. |
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Post by Merseymike on Dec 2, 2017 23:19:05 GMT
Only that's not what I said.
You can't explain why you happily face almost diametrically opposed directions from one place to another and then expect to be able to suggest an ideologically coherent outlook.
I think what holds your party together is localist populism and a particular style of doing politics. In my experience it doesn't encourage a consistent or particularly principled approach
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Dec 2, 2017 23:35:38 GMT
I have taken note of the two usual posters are who seem to try and "enforce" this. If you're including me in this, I'd have to ask where I've seeked to enforce it (if not, ignore). Oh my, not you as well!  |
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Dec 2, 2017 23:36:42 GMT
Only that's not what I said. You can't explain why you happily face almost diametrically opposed directions from one place to another and then expect to be able to suggest an ideologically coherent outlook. I think what holds your party together is localist populism and a particular style of doing politics. In my experience it doesn't encourage a consistent or particularly principled approach Well I apologise if its not what you meant, but it seemed to me to be a hell of a lot like what you actually said. The thing about being in the middle is that necessarily you oppose two extremes simultaneously - e.g. I'm against Conservative free market dogma and against socialist state ownership dogma simultaneously - I want a moderate case-by-case pragmatic approach with the impact on the individual always kept in mind. If I'm in Merseyside with a Labour majority at local and parliamentary level there's not a lot of point in going out to slag off the Tories - they're still as wrong in Merseyside as they are in Dorset, but they just aren't there. And vice versa in Dorset. It's not inherently hypocritical, its about fighting the battle in front of you, not the battle that's in front of your colleague 200 miles away. You're quite right to say this can lead us into difficulties and sometimes we screw up. And you're also right to say that as a 3rd (or 4th) party we have more temptations to fudge it than a party that can say "sod it, let this constituency go, we'll win elsewhere." But you get the same fudging by other parties including yours e.g this from @davidr in Dundee, which is nothing like what Labour were saying in Stroud (or, I bet, in London): |
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Post by Merseymike on Dec 2, 2017 23:57:28 GMT
I trust that's what Richard Leonard needs to sort out!
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Post by lancastrian on Dec 3, 2017 1:03:35 GMT
2016-17 new build completions were just over 180,000. If you're going to build 300,000 per year, over a ten year period you'd need 12 Milton Keynes to make up the shortfall. The scale of the problem is enormous. But not all new builds should be into garden cities -it should only be one part of the solution, and not the major part. But what is the major part if not garden cities or more edge of town estates (in addition to those thousands needed to be built just to maintain the current building rate)? |
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thetop
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Post by thetop on Dec 3, 2017 1:10:28 GMT
If you're including me in this, I'd have to ask where I've seeked to enforce it (if not, ignore). Oh my, not you as well! I noticed but thought I'd leave it in to give you something to do. |
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Foggy
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Post by Foggy on Dec 3, 2017 1:15:48 GMT
Oh my, not you as well! I noticed but thought I'd leave it in to give you something to do. |
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J.G.Harston
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Post by J.G.Harston on Dec 3, 2017 4:33:24 GMT
Who spends all day shovelling manure into a trailer, moving it by tractor and then digging it by hand into solid Severn valley clay in the pissing rain for £12.50 an hour? Who has to soak in the bath to get the mud off and stop his back aching at the end of the working day? Oh hang on, that'd be me. And no, it doesn't make me working class. Nor does the fact that I'm a single parent who gets Tax Credits either. Nor does the fact that I call no-one boss and fill in a tax return make me a little capitalist. I have to admit that my little guilty bit of virtue signalling is that I insist on keeping three months of washing dishes on my CV.  |
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sirbenjamin
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Post by sirbenjamin on Dec 3, 2017 19:20:58 GMT
Good luck trying to explain that concept to anyone on the hard left... Or, it must be said, to many on the right who openly ignore 'working class' areas/voters because they 'don't vote for us'. It's one of the deep connections between Liberalism and localism. If you inherently approach and deal with people as individuals rather than whatever label they're given or even give themselves then localism comes naturally as the way you operate politically mirrors that. People make up communities, not the other way round, they shape what it looks like and should have the say over what happens to it. It's a concept difficult to grasp if you adhere to economic based political ideologies but no less valid. But, crucially, I think, we don't ignore areas because they are working class/poor. As a party we have a good record of standing full slates of candidates even in the most unpromising areas, and in every working class community there are - sometimes unbelievably - people who doggedly turn out to vote for us, despite not having a cats chance in hell of their vote making a difference. We may sometimes choose not to focus too much attention on certain areas due to unrepentant, incessant Labour voting, but this is just as likely to happen in uber-wealthy bits of Islington as in Middlesbrough slums. I was surprised just how well we did locally in some very poor areas even with Cameron as leader. Bits of Great Yarmouth, Tendring etc. were far grimmer than I expected. And yet there were folks on the doorstep without an awful lot to show for their toiling who nonetheless expressed sympathy towards the Tory cause, even with a leader painted as a 'Toff' by the media at every conceivable opportunity. Strangely, though I've met a lot of self-identified working class Tory voters, I don't remember ever encountering a working class Lib Dem... |
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Post by andrew111 on Dec 3, 2017 20:24:53 GMT
Oh, yes I don't mind admitting i am a Lib Dem member these days (having not been one while Clegg was Deputy Prime Minister after a few exchanges of opinion with Simon Hughes over tuition fees...). I just have a reluctance to joining an online tribe you know... But of course if it is compulsory for membership of this discussion board then so be it! Probably it was MerseyMike I should have been warning YP about, so apologies to you Barnaby No, it is not compulsory to join a political group on here if you don't want to. I have taken note of the two usual posters are who seem to try and "enforce" this. Heh! I am not trying to get anyone in trouble here! |
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Post by andrew111 on Dec 3, 2017 20:26:15 GMT
Who spends all day shovelling manure into a trailer, moving it by tractor and then digging it by hand into solid Severn valley clay in the pissing rain for £12.50 an hour? Who has to soak in the bath to get the mud off and stop his back aching at the end of the working day? Oh hang on, that'd be me. And no, it doesn't make me working class. Nor does the fact that I'm a single parent who gets Tax Credits either. Nor does the fact that I call no-one boss and fill in a tax return make me a little capitalist. I have to admit that my little guilty bit of virtue signalling is that I insist on keeping three months of washing dishes on my CV. It must be hard to find your C.V. under all those dirty plates! |
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Post by finsobruce on Dec 3, 2017 21:06:02 GMT
I have to admit that my little guilty bit of virtue signalling is that I insist on keeping three months of washing dishes on my CV. Is that wise? I nearly put 6 months pot-washing on recently but thought it made me sound a bit common so took it of. Add it back in pronto. Proves your not proud enough to mind getting your hands dirty (and the plates clean hopefully). If it's good enough for Orwell, it's good enough for you young @benjl |
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