BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[First Aspect]

I suspect that a majority of CS had voted Tory at some point (much to the disgust of @orraloon), but that doesn't fit the narrative that we were a bunch of lefties, unless voting for Thatcher/Major qualified one as a leftie.

I've never voted Tory. It's a moral thing after they seem to repeatedly go after disabled people, thinly disguised as people "pretending" to be disabled. Of course, stopping all these scammers means disabled people lose out. By being able to walk 20 paces, that sort of thing.

 

[First Aspect]

You are also a senior member Brian. Putting your dob in the profile wasn't mandatory you know.

 

[briantrumpet]

I've never voted Tory. It's a moral thing after they seem to repeatedly go after disabled people, thinly disguised as people "pretending" to be disabled. Of course, stopping all these scammers means disabled people lose out. By being able to walk 20 paces, that sort of thing.

I thought I remembered that you were one of the never-Tory residents. Proper leftie then.

 

[First Aspect]

I thought I remembered that you were one of the never-Tory residents. Proper leftie then.

I tend to centre left probably, but it's not even that with the Tories. You don't have to have someone voiceless to persecute in order to have effective conservative policy, but the Tories have played to the audience on this for generations.

I also believe that having an effective and compassionate centre right in the UK would be helpful. The Tories are letting us all down on this at the moment.

 

[icowden]

I've never voted Tory. It's a moral thing after they seem to repeatedly go after disabled people, thinly disguised as people "pretending" to be disabled. Of course, stopping all these scammers means disabled people lose out. By being able to walk 20 paces, that sort of thing.

The first election I could vote in was 1997 Blair vs Major. I lived in Wandsworth at the time and voted Tory. I come from a Conservative voting family, went to public school, so had naturally conservative views, although these had already moderated a lot thanks to University and meeting other people.

The one thing I have always disliked about Labour, and which was ingrained in to me, is that they wanted to prevent people like me having the chance to go to a good school. They hated the idea that if you were clever you could go to a good school with small classes and would have to go to a comprehensive with thousands of other kids. This is a view that hasn't changed as I have got older. I still despise the Labour mentality about schools. If they truly wanted better schools they would look at places like Finland and invest hugely in education rather than depriving children of the education they need.

I continued to vote Tory (Looking back I voted for Michael Howard which seems very strange!) until Cameron shafted us with Brexit. That said, since I could vote, I have always lived in Boroughs where voting anything other than Conservative would be pointless. However by 2015, Raab was showing his true colours as a useless sack of brown stuff and losing his huge majority. My borough became a borough where there was a choice at last. A choice between Lib Dem and Conservative. So since 2015 I have always voted Lib Dem.

I get your moral thing about disability, but I had always felt that the Tories knew how to look after the economy, create jobs etc whereas Labour were bloody useless. That was the convention since the 1970s. But reading Private Eye and getting older what I saw was a party becoming ever more venal and self-serving. A party disinterested in the country, and focused on profiteering. A party facilitating the extraction of value from public services and failing to get to grips with anything.

I can't see the Conservative party recovering at all at the moment. They would need to completely clean the stables and dump Jenrick, Badenoch and all of their ilk. It would need a complete change of management and policy, and they don't have it in them. Farage is dumping all over them from a great height and Reform will probably become the replacement Conservative party but far more right wing. Whether Ed Davey can capitalise on this remains to be seen.

The best bet for the future would be Starmer introducing a form of PR so that people are represented by people based on voting percentages. I'd quite like to adopt the Australian model of compulsory voting as well.

 

[midlandsgrimpeur]

A party facilitating the extraction of value from public services and failing to get to grips with anything.

I think this is an important part of it, and arguably equal to, or even more influential than Brexit. Osborne and his policy of austerity started the real damage to the UK. The whole exercise was a complete fallacy and a blatant lie. It was a clear effort to sell off public service contracts to corporations for profit, and has played a huge part in leaving us with a whole raft of public services that are unfit for purpose and Local Authorities going bankrupt. I worked in the youth sector at the time and you literally had LA's tendering out their entire youth services and large public contracts for youth unemployment programmes going to companies like G4S and Serco who are basically just massive profit making supply chains. You would be working on payment by results with a set per head cost paid per person. You would often end up with £2500 PP, with the youth organisation that did all the work getting around 10-15%, and the rest mysteriously disappearing into the contract lead's coffers for doing absolutely nothing.

There is still complete lack of public knowledge around this and the extent to which the Tory's decimated public services from 2010 onwards.

 

[briantrumpet]

As I know I mentioned back on CS, I remember once seeing an interview with Denis Healey in the 1980s in which he opined that the unions in the 1970s had had a stranglehold on the Labour Party and country, that Labour couldn't deal with them, and 'someone like Thatcher' had been 'necessary'. I suspect that that sentiment was quite widely shared. I also remember Arthur Scargill stating that he'd happily use strike action to bring down an elected government.
FWIW

 

[First Aspect]

The first election I could vote in was 1997 Blair vs Major. I lived in Wandsworth at the time and voted Tory. I come from a Conservative voting family, went to public school, so had naturally conservative views, although these had already moderated a lot thanks to University and meeting other people.

The one thing I have always disliked about Labour, and which was ingrained in to me, is that they wanted to prevent people like me having the chance to go to a good school. They hated the idea that if you were clever you could go to a good school with small classes and would have to go to a comprehensive with thousands of other kids. This is a view that hasn't changed as I have got older. I still despise the Labour mentality about schools. If they truly wanted better schools they would look at places like Finland and invest hugely in education rather than depriving children of the education they need.

I continued to vote Tory (Looking back I voted for Michael Howard which seems very strange!) until Cameron shafted us with Brexit. That said, since I could vote, I have always lived in Boroughs where voting anything other than Conservative would be pointless. However by 2015, Raab was showing his true colours as a useless sack of brown stuff and losing his huge majority. My borough became a borough where there was a choice at last. A choice between Lib Dem and Conservative. So since 2015 I have always voted Lib Dem.

I get your moral thing about disability, but I had always felt that the Tories knew how to look after the economy, create jobs etc whereas Labour were bloody useless. That was the convention since the 1970s. But reading Private Eye and getting older what I saw was a party becoming ever more venal and self-serving. A party disinterested in the country, and focused on profiteering. A party facilitating the extraction of value from public services and failing to get to grips with anything.

I can't see the Conservative party recovering at all at the moment. They would need to completely clean the stables and dump Jenrick, Badenoch and all of their ilk. It would need a complete change of management and policy, and they don't have it in them. Farage is dumping all over them from a great height and Reform will probably become the replacement Conservative party but far more right wing. Whether Ed Davey can capitalise on this remains to be seen.

The best bet for the future would be Starmer introducing a form of PR so that people are represented by people based on voting percentages. I'd quite like to adopt the Australian model of compulsory voting as well.

I believe that you have completely misunderstood the left wing attitude towards private schools. It is rooted in the belief that everyone should start off equal and progress on merit rather than get a head start in life based on where they went to school and who they met.

An alternative to your narrative might be mine for example. I went to a state school and got into Oxford where I did well. When I went to Oxford I had about 1/10 the likelihood of getting in as compared to somebody who went to private school. This is because some colleges would top slice their intake based on schools rather than candidates, leading to about 50/50 intake between state and private education across the university as a whole. In turn some employers would have a strong preference for candidates coming from certain colleges.

It is as though one were shopping for a car and preferentially choosing Mercedes, regardless of whether they were going through a period of low build quality or not.

In my own profession there are still companies who have a first filter on CVs based on Oxbridge.

This bakes in social immobility across generations.

So the labour attitude towards schools is not so much that private schools are bad, but that state schools should be good. It is though in my opinion naive and simplistic to morph this idea into making it more difficult to go to private school and being against private school, whicj the more tub thumping lefties tend to do.

But it would be nonetheless helpful I think for more people who have had the privilege of private school, for whatever reason, to better understand the perspective of people who haven't.

I should also emphasize that I'm not some champion of the working classes. I lived in a detached house in Surrey growing up, and my dad just happened to be a lefty who didn't believe in private schooling or even grammar schools. He was an idiot.

I am also well aware that an Oxford degree makes some doors easier to push open for me than my talents alone would.

 

[Ian H]

As I know I mentioned back on CS, I remember once seeing an interview with Denis Healey in the 1980s in which he opined that the unions in the 1970s had had a stranglehold on the Labour Party and country, that Labour couldn't deal with them, and 'someone like Thatcher' had been 'necessary'. I suspect that that sentiment was quite widely shared. I also remember Arthur Scargill stating that he'd happily use strike action to bring down an elected government.
FWIW

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The main problem was that unions didn't have enough legal powers so resorted to strikes as the only weapon. Mandatory arbitration and perhaps representation on company boards would have been the better way to go. Instead we're down to exploitation via zero hours contracts, temporary contracts, fire and rehire, etc.

 

[briantrumpet]

The main problem was that unions didn't have enough legal powers so resorted to strikes as the only weapon. Mandatory arbitration and perhaps representation on company boards would have been the better way to go. Instead we're down to exploitation via zero hours contracts, temporary contracts, fire and rehire, etc.

Indeed. I seem to remember that at the time Germany had union representation on management boards, so both had a bigger influence but equally weren't viewed as wanting to bring down businesses. The polarisation in the UK of unions v. business was not healthy for either - it was very much a time in the UK of conflict rather than trying to find solutions that were mutually beneficial. It was, after all, a Labour Government that was brought down by the unions (Winter of Discontent, and all that.)

 

[midlandsgrimpeur]

In turn some employers would have a strong preference for candidates coming from certain colleges.

I remember a Giles Coren interview and he mentioned when he first worked at The Times, that if you went to work anywhere on Fleet Street you were looked down upon if you hadn't been to Magdalen (Tongue in cheek perhaps, but with a large grain of truth I am sure).

 

[Ian H]

Indeed. I seem to remember that at the time Germany had union representation on management boards, so both had a bigger influence but equally weren't viewed as wanting to bring down businesses. The polarisation in the UK of unions v. business was not healthy for either - it was very much a time in the UK of conflict rather than trying to find solutions that were mutually beneficial. It was, after all, a Labour Government that was brought down by the unions (Winter of Discontent, and all that.)

Labour in power always morphed into timid Tory. Even Attlee was criticised for not being bold enough - allowing GPs to continue as private practitioners and failing to properly reform the education system, for example.

 

[First Aspect]

I remember a Giles Coren interview and he mentioned when he first worked at The Times, that if you went to work anywhere on Fleet Street you were looked down upon if you hadn't been to Magdalen (Tongue in cheek perhaps, but with a large grain of truth I am sure).

More than a grain.

Christchurch was considered the worst offender for taking most of its intake for a small.number of private schools (incl Eton) in my time. Setting foot in there was quite an experience for a quiet bloke from a pikey college.

Apart from anything else, everyone seemed to have attended voice projection lessons at Eton.

 

[briantrumpet]

Labour in power always morphed into timid Tory. Even Attlee was criticised for not being bold enough - allowing GPs to continue as private practitioners and failing to properly reform the education system, for example.

Probably 'The Blob' in action.

 

[Ian H]

I remember a Giles Coren interview and he mentioned when he first worked at The Times, that if you went to work anywhere on Fleet Street you were looked down upon if you hadn't been to Magdalen (Tongue in cheek perhaps, but with a large grain of truth I am sure).

Giles Coren is Alan's final, posthumous joke.