General election time

[Section_31]

He's about as inspirational as Gary Glitter being appointed ambassador For Save The Children.

 

He's as inspirational as a big issue seller whose father and older brothers are also big issue sellers.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Who is inspiration in the Labour party? I can't see anybody there who actually inspires me. I like some of Miliband's ideas, but I'm not inspired to go canvassing or anything. There's no political party that makes me feel like that.

[VladimirIlyich]

Who is inspiration in the Labour party? I can't see anybody there who actually inspires me. I like some of Miliband's ideas, but I'm not inspired to go canvassing or anything. There's no political party that makes me feel like that.

 

Dennis Skinner and Tony Benn but unfortunately they are far too old.

Where are their proteges though?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

I grew up liking Tony Benn, but his ideas are for yesterday. Well, his ideas for social justice are as relevant as they've always been, but he's what we should build from, not look to his ideas for the way future.

[Strontium]

There's too much focus today on leaders of parties. How they look and how they sound seems to be as important to some as what they say. I don't think Ed M is particularly inspiring, but who cares? He's a politician, he's not leading troops into battle at Agincourt ffs. I'm more interested in his ideas than his delivery.

[Lee909]

While I agree with you on that,a hell of alot of the masses seem to think its a popularity contest.Its another crap American thing.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

There's too much focus today on leaders of parties. How they look and how they sound seems to be as important to some as what they say. I don't think Ed M is particularly inspiring, but who cares? He's a politician, he's not leading troops into battle at Agincourt ffs. I'm more interested in his ideas than his delivery.

 

Whilst I agree, it's clearly very important that party leaders able to get votes for the party come election time. No matter how good your ideas, if you're not voted into power... well, you're a Lib Dem, you know better than most about good ideas and not being able to implement them.

 

I like some of his early ideas about reforming Capitalism. It's something he clearly needs to expand on, because it's entirely possible for Capitalist companies to act in a more responsible way. I like what he says about short-termism in business/finance sectors needing to be discouraged.

 

However, most people haven't heard him talk about that. Most people have seen him acting like a fucking robot on youtube.

[Thomo123]

There's too much focus today on leaders of parties. How they look and how they sound seems to be as important to some as what they say. I don't think Ed M is particularly inspiring, but who cares? He's a politician, he's not leading troops into battle at Agincourt ffs. I'm more interested in his ideas than his delivery.

 

Whilst i agree in principle we still need someone with enough charisma to engage the masses and the media.

[stringvest]

Whilst i agree in principle we still need someone with enough charisma to engage the masses and the media.

 

Exactly. Paddy Ashdown's put in a transfer request. Let's wait for that.

[Paul]

I don't think the underclass are the ignorant ones in this equation, they don't - or didn't - vote Labour because they believed, quite rightly, that Labour didn't give a shit about them.

 

The villains of the piece to my mind are the new middle class, the lower middle class, or upper working class, whatever you want to call them. The local lads/girls done good, people whose parents probably worked in a factory or a shop, but who through Labour's expansion of further education have managed to make themselves teachers etc. These are very often the voters who think 'me me me', while also being too dense to look beyond the ITN footage of Gordon Brown picking his nose. They're also the most likely to repeat the phrase 'scroungers' and 'Labour maxed out the credit card'.

 

They're also most likely to be scab cunts who let others fight their battles for them while crowing about how ace it is to "get paid to be in work while doing fuck all"...

 

(That's not at all a loaded post based on recent personal experience).

[Strontium]

No matter how much I ever get irritated by people who break a strike, I don't think I'll ever use a disgusting dehumanising term like "scab". Truly the language of hate.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

No matter how much I ever get irritated by people who break a strike, I don't think I'll ever use a disgusting dehumanising term like "scab". Truly the language of hate.

 

I kind of agree on this one. Along with the right to strike must come the right not to. I don't think people should break strikes, and I very much don't like it, but it's their right.

[razor]

They're also most likely to be scab cunts who let others fight their battles for them while crowing about how ace it is to "get paid to be in work while doing fuck all"...

 

(That's not at all a loaded post based on recent personal experience).

 

Heaven help us all. I take it that's true, Paul. I don't know how you keep your hands off their throats.

 

'Arrogance' falls well short as a description.

 

I take it this person's not in a union?

 

You could always get one of the kids to cry wolf...

[VladimirIlyich]

I kind of agree on this one. Along with the right to strike must come the right not to. I don't think people should break strikes, and I very much don't like it, but it's their right.

 

I suppose it depends on whats at stake I suppose.

 

The 80s miners dispute still bears the scars of hate even now and scab is used very frequently and probably rightly so.

[Section_31]

I know a couple of teachers who are pretty shameless about the fact they chose to join the least militant union because 'when the others strike we get a paid day off'.

 

I've said on other threads that one of the problems I see with this country, and it spans the last 10-15 years, is that when the Tories destroyed vast tracts of the economic landscape, Labour attempted to offset some of the damage by sending everyone's kids to college.

 

What this created was an absolute mass of people with degrees who left uni and were still none the wiser about their direction in life because of the lack of obvious choices on offer. Many of them bummed around in various jobs, many of them probably public sector roles, until one day a lightbulb came on and they decided to pursue things like teaching or the police because each was a 'career', offered a pension and decent wages, and at least they could say they'd done something with the degree they'd paid so much for (I include myself in this).

 

What this did though was tug at the tapestry of society's roles and skewer it, giving us a hell of a lot of teachers and coppers, PCSOs etc IMO who don't particularly want to do that role but just want the cash and the kudos.

 

This no doubt applies to a lot of other roles, local Government jobs etc I imagine, and combined it's created this large mass of neither-here-nor-there people, most of them higher paid than their parents who were probably consigned to blue collar roles and who have fallen into the Thatcherite dream of coveting home ownership and the usual shite, but because of their background many of them probably lacking an awareness of the world in general, politics, and basically what is the world outside their generic one bedroomed 'executive' apartment complete with sky television and matching set of three NEXT flower prints on the wall.

 

This certainly applies to 90-95% of the new middle class I know and came up with anyway. All of them wealthier than their parents, all of them graduates, few with any real 'wealth' beyond their personal debts, most spend their disposable income on drinking, gigs etc and all - absolutely all - don't know, or care, anything about politics, although all tend to lean toward the right if they do - with 'scruffs' and 'scroungers' reserving much of their half-hearted ire.

[dennis tooth]

The Daily Mash - Clegg's mum writes angry letter to Cameron's mum