Tory Party Conference

Detritus · October 2013

Other than the French nothing (my closest friend is French)

ChangN4N6 · October 2013

The French? Remember Cressy. Chang

ChangN4N6 · October 2013

Typical of Kentish types. 'Working? It's a mug's game': Shocking arrogance of jobless mother of six who picks up £27,000 a year in benefits and has just been given a new four-bedroom home Maggie Flisher, 26, who now lives with her family in a £150,000 state-funded four-bedroom house in Tovil, Kent, says critics of her lifestyle are simply envious. Full Story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2441291/Arrogance-jobless-Kent-mother-27k-year-benefits-believes-working-mugs-game.html

miss annie · October 2013

So many French people there! Why don't people call Labour toffs? Most, if not all, of the Labour front bench went to public school then good universities including Milibobs - Oxford, Balls - Oxford & Harvard. Harman went to St Paul's Girls for heaven's sake. is it just the accents that offend people?

Sutent · October 2013

Chang do you really believe that?

Detritus · October 2013

I do, it sounds totally feasible, she looks oh so vulnerable and put upon.

andy · October 2013

This thread is a case study in "whataboutery". http://sluggerotoole.com/2005/02/09/glossary_what_is_whataboutery/ There's not a single good point in this thread, facts are notable by their absence and the tone is notable for its incivility. No-one is being constructive about what to do, just moaning. What are you all trying to achieve here?

miss annie · October 2013

I'm mostly just trying to work out why people only mistrust the Tories, all parties are self serving scoundrels,

NorthNineteen · October 2013

^ agreed. They just use different groups of people to serve their interest, the Torys use land-owners, Labour Trade-unionists and Lib Dems.....i'm not really sure, ultra PC WI members?<br>

conformable_kate · October 2013

I'm with Andy here - it's hard to see how this thread would help to work out anything, or bring any illumination or understanding - a lot of reiteration of entrenched positions with added bad temper, is what it looks like.

Arkady · October 2013

What people tend to forget is that the vast majority of politicians are just people who want their community, or their country, or the world to be a better place. They have ideas about how that might be done. If those ideas broadly match that of a particular political party then they join it and maybe try to get elected in order to be able to have the influence to do what they set out to do. A fraction of those people are scoundrels – probably no higher a percentage and probably rather less than in the population as a whole. Yet all of them become tarred with the same brush.<br><br>I’m someone who is having a stab at this politics business, with no other motive than to improve my community as best I can with my limited abilities. My colleagues also seem to me to be decent folk with the same motive. My opponents also seem to broadly have the same motives, I just more or less disagree with their ideas or methods.<br><br>It’s saddening, then, to be accused of being a scoundrel who’s only in it to be ‘self serving’. Still, I will try to my best for people in my community, no less for those who assume my motives are selfish.

NorthNineteen · October 2013

That's great Arkady, my impression is that the individuals are generally great but it's the wider party structure that can become self-serving (Miss Annie very much referred to the parties being self-serving). Anyway, I realise I'm not adding anything here so I'll stick to talking about trains, buildings and traffic calming with a smattering of food,drink,music and history<br>

nick_m · October 2013

I'm employed and pick up rubbish and dog shit all the time. If everyone who cares about it picked up 1 bit of litter every day and put it in the bin, we'd have a pretty clean city.

Detritus · October 2013

Or if nobody dropped it to start with...

kreuzkav · October 2013

I can see Detritus and Miss Annie's point of view. I'm certainly not a big fan of Labour, though I vote for them as the best of the three. I agree with Andy and others that it's not really a positive discussion, and it's not local.

checkski · October 2013

Just for the record,I am on Sutent's side in this one. I would not address anyone individually, publically, as scum, on this site, but as for the Tory world in general, yes,that's the way many of us feel.No matter how suavely Arkady presents his case,the Tories are, for people like me, selfish capitalism, or to go one step further, evil incarnate.Ad hominem arguments usually end in a punch-up; nothing I write here will persuade anyone, but...<br><br>Basta! (= Italian for enough,not yet more swearing!)<br>

Arkady · October 2013

And just for the record, I'm not a Tory, and gasp at the thought that anyone would think otherwise.<br>

Arkady · October 2013

But I'm flattered by the suave thing.<br>

andy · October 2013

Some context.<div><br></div><div>Recently, I was being told, confidently and at some length, about the problems of the world, the venality of politicians and the simplicity of solving it all if only the worldview of the person talking would be adopted. This was happening in a bar, after midnight. People were just too stupid, or too evil, or wrong-headed to see what was clear to my friend.</div><div><br></div><div>I pointed out that a bar like this was definitely the right place to be settling issues like this. I asked to be passed the vodka.</div><div><br></div><div>But in the spirit of the evening, as a case study, I decided to share a problem I am working on at work. It is small 'p' political. It is international in flavour, and lots of different parties are involved. Given the obviousness with which the world's problems appeared in this bar, I asked what I should do. </div><div><br></div><div>The glib certainty with which the world was put to rights dried up. We quickly got down to don't-knows and how-would-we's and might-that-works. There are no right answers, just least-worst trade-offs. And even if we settled on something that might work, we had no idea if it might have other bad effects.</div><div><br></div><div>The problems of power and politics are simple to diagnose, but hard to prescribe for.<span style="font-size: 10pt;">The problems of the world are hard. </span></div><div><br></div><div>Anger in politics has its place, but howling at each other on the internet doesn't move anyone. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>ps I am great fun in bars.</div>

Arkady · October 2013

Amen.

Mirandola · October 2013

Arkady's right. The habit of despising politicians is lazy because if you bother to look most are decent well-intentioned people and dangerous because if you believe councillors, mps and pms are all self-serving you might as well give up on democracy.

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Brodiej · October 2013

@Mirandola. <div><br></div><div>1. Expenses issues</div><div>2. Cash for questions</div><div>3. General filth in private life calling into question their integrity</div><div>4. Tactical voting </div><div>5. Never saying sorry for mistakes</div><div>6. Never answering questions properly</div><div>7. Telling us they're doing a great job when they know inside they haven't</div><div>8. Not making decisions around doing the right thing</div><div><br></div><div>.....guess that makes me lazy. Perhaps if they remembered who they worked for and who gave them the opportunity, they'd behave a bit better. On the whole, i believe they forget very quickly why they wanted to get into politics one they're there.</div><div><br></div><div>On a local scale, the recent thorpedale/corbyn road issues that were raised with the council by Papa L gave everyone a good insight into the low regard we are held in.</div>

Mirandola · October 2013

Expenses was bad, but what never gets said is that MPs salaries were kept down and they were encouraged to use expenses to compensate. Some did so dishonestly, most didn't. What is quite funny is that the new tougher expenses regime costs way more (admin) than the old one. Cash for questions - one MP quite a while ago. Neil Hamilton isn't representative. It's true that e.g. Jeremy Corbyn will generally speak up for trade unions and John Redwood will back corporations. Some people have started calling this 'cash for questions'. Call me naive, but I reckon both of them genuinely believe in what they're saying. Any evidence that politicians' private life is worse than the general population's? Alistair Darling, for example, is by all accounts an excellent person to work for/with as well as a good friend, father and husband. What do you mean by 'tactical voting'? I'm with you on saying sorry, but if you admit you're wrong or could have done better you get pilloried for 'making a U turn'. I also have some sympathy for the view that consultations can be written in an overly bullish style, but politicians aren't the worst offenders here - take a look at the Free School condoc I posted below. I'm just back from Italy and much as I love my country there's nothing like watching Berlusconi to reconcile me to UK politics. What does worry me is that the general anger against politicians might drive good people like Richard Watts or Arkady out.

Arkady · October 2013

*swoon*

andy · October 2013

There's an interesting feature of democratic politics that it requires an opposition for scrutiny. This isn't a feature of everyday life, but it's a feature that leads to poor perceptions of politicians.<div><br></div><div>Imagine if when you went to work, there was someone there who wanted your job, and told you (and everyone else) that what you'd just done was rubbish and stupid and possibly motivated by the fact that you are evil. And they did it every day, and it was their job to do it. In response, you might argue that in fact you were working jolly hard, and the other person is stupid and evil, and possibly their dad was evil, too. A lot of people might conclude that you were evil, or stupid, or not trying, or just wrong for the job. Others might conclude that the pair of you were no better than each other.</div><div><br></div><div>This happens on the fringes of public and private life, but not much approaches the intensity and consistency of national politics. </div>

Ali · October 2013

<P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 18pt"><SPAN style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><FONT size=3>Detritus </FONT></SPAN></P> <P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 18pt"><FONT size=3><SPAN style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'">How about this lot </SPAN><SPAN style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"></SPAN></FONT></P> <P style="MARGIN-LEFT: 18pt"><SPAN style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: 'Arial','sans-serif'"><FONT size=3>"The double dip recession was, of course, purely the fault of 1) the Labour party 2) Gordon Brown in particular 3) rich people paying too much tax 4) the Eurozone crisis 5) the Global economy 6) too many employment rights for workers 7) not enough de-regulation 8) the broken society 9) feral youth 10) teenage pregnancies 11) the welfare dependency culture 12) the bloated NHS 13) health tourists 14) unseasonably hot weather 15) unseasonably cold weather 16) unseasonably wet weather 17) public sector workers 18) public sector shirkers 19) public sector strikers 20) public sector pensions 21) interfering European bureaucrats 22) legal immigrants 23) illegal immigrants 24) disabled and sick people for drawing too much in benefits 25) elderly and retired people for not dying quickly enough, so costing a fortune in pension payouts 26) ordinary people for borrowing too much money to buy over-priced houses 27) the Queen's anniversary celebrations meaning too many Bank Holidays 28) the Olympics 29) the lack of a 3rd runway at Heathrow."</FONT></SPAN></P>

Detritus · October 2013

Truthfully I don't really care, just get sick of people constantly blaming the tory party for things that happened when they were not in office. People moan and bitch about them but enough people out there voted for them to end up with the most seats in the house. Something had to be done about the national debt and the recession, and things look like it might just be turning the corner, but would the labour party have done any better? I should be a dye in the wool labour voter, everyone I grew up with either votes labour or BNP they folow what mummy and daddy did to the letter. I didn't I looked around and found what political party is closest to my way of thinking and regardless of what others think thats the torys and I am not alone in that train of thought.

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