Marcus Rashford's petition ...
- Thread starter eisenach
- Start date
Christ, the latter is a dead cert. Forget about "even". We haven't had a Huntley or a Sutcliffe for a long time, thank heavens, but if we did the tabloids would be baying for blood. Offer a referendum at that point and it would go through at 65%.Even now, if I did a vox pop in the factory, 55% would be for hanging Huntley. Actually no, they would vote to cut him to pieces with an axe.
I wouldn't want to offer the lovely British people the choice to vote on refugees either. The poor sods would be in tents in Lincolnshire being kept alive with cabbage soup faster than you could say "knife".
There's a South Yorkshire expression still in common use: "He's so tight he'd nip a fart in two."
Seanm
pfm Member
If you define "right wing" in terms of authoritarianism, racism etc. then you're obviously going to find a lot of correlation between those things and being right wing! I can do the same for economics: you know a lot of landlords, hedge fund managers and investors vote Tory, Republican, BJP, PSL etc?
Obviously it's both economics and values and the relative importance of each is an open question: I'm certainly not saying everything comes down to economics. But when there exists a very obvious, pronounced correlation between support for a certain political position and a certain demographic, I think it makes no sense at all to discount it, especially when the alternative explanation for why "working class areas" vote Conservative seems to be "Turkeys voting for Christmas." Drill down and those areas have a higher level of home ownership than those that stuck with Labour, and more older people, and it's these people above all that voted Tory. And in terms of narrow economic self-interest you can't really say, "Well that was stupid", because it isn't unreasonable for them to expect the Tories to look after them, as they have been doing.
I think the question is, "How do values and economics relate to one another here?" And I think one of the reasons that the Murdoch-Powellism of the modern Tories is so successful is that quite a lot of people who are anyway inclined to support horrible, vindictive, racist policies, even when they make little economic sense generally, is that they feel they can afford to. Racism as luxury goods. (Economics also helps explain why racism and cruelty are so appealing to begin with, IMO, but that's a longer story.)
Nagraboy
Ausculta fili
Interesting points Sean, but seems to me that the ultimate example of a racist regime - the Nazis - came to power on the back of the financial hardship of the German people, not as a kind of luxury indulgence that they could afford.
Also, about authoritarianism. Surprisingly, the single biggest factor in whether a country has an authoritarian govt is the prevalence of infectious diseases. Having a xenophobic mindset can work as a kind of ‘psychological immune system’ by keeping pathogens out.
Also, about authoritarianism. Surprisingly, the single biggest factor in whether a country has an authoritarian govt is the prevalence of infectious diseases. Having a xenophobic mindset can work as a kind of ‘psychological immune system’ by keeping pathogens out.
Joe Hutch
Mate of the bloke
The sad, sad truth is that in the 75 years since WW2, the Tories have been in power for 45 of them. This has been through periods of both boom and bust, times when home ownership was relatively high and relatively low, ditto with unemployment. None this can be explained in anything other than a very marginal way by 'older people who are comfortably off and own property'.
Tony L
Administrator
Just watched Tory MP Tim Laughton implode in a sea of seething rage on C4 News whilst trying to blame the avalanche of public fury over vindictive Tory pinchfartery & overwhelming support for Marcus Rashford entirely on Angela Rayner’s use of the word ‘scum’ once in the HoC. Apparently there have been angry emails, death threats, vandalised Tory offices etc as the public rail against Tory policy. I’d be curious to see what he would make of the abuse Dianne Abbott gets on a daily basis from his ‘side’ for the outrageous crime of being a black woman in the public eye. Year after year after year of exactly this sort of behaviour, but without any underlying child-starvation policy.
Seanm
pfm Member
Well, what we're going through now is different from Nazism, but the Nazis had a lot of middle class support, mostly because they were afraid the masses were going to take their stuff. Actually I'm reminded that Adorno and Horkheimer called antisemitism "a luxury for the masses". That's interesting about the disease connection.
Aethelist
pfm Member
I'd have a damn site more respect for the "Marcus Rashford" types in this world if they ponied up and gave just a weeks worth of their exorbitant earnings to the cause they're championing.
But nah. Blame the government. Make the general tax payer pay.
Who wants to fund this sort of society?
Not me. That's for sure.
But nah. Blame the government. Make the general tax payer pay.
Who wants to fund this sort of society?
Not me. That's for sure.
He's helped to raise far far more than he could ever donate personally, so that's a load of crap.
cooky1257
pfm Member
Funny.
Everyone who has donated. He's raised tens of millions, he may be a footballer on good money but he won't be on enough to donate that much by a country mile.
What a load of bollocks.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
I’m not a footie fan, but a big time manager was on Graham Norton the other day and made the point that there are two types of footie player: those who love to win, and those who hate to lose. The former make great forwards, the latter, great defenders. A team requires both.
Seanm
pfm Member
It’s a different question Joe. An explanation - or, really, an explanatory factor - of a particular phenomenon in the present isn’t necessarily going to provide the key to a related but much larger question over a much longer period. Although having said that a history of the Tories’ electoral fortunes that centred on housing might well be quite interesting.