Her statement is fascinating. Completely at odds with her statement before the trans row and financial impropriety rumbles that she still had plenty in the tank. It's also very 'despite being fantastic at everything I do....' There's a rabbit away here. Jumping before she's pushed.
I don't like the woman at all but she is absolutely bang on about the current state of political discourse in this country and how polarised it is. You only have to look at this thread to see it.
My wife is a teacher in a primary school too. What you have described above is almost exactly as she describes. She works in an extremely tough area and one of the things that she spends a lot of her time doing is working on making sure that the 'pupil premium' kids get extra support. This is a form of 'levelling up' but, if you believe some, this doesn't exist. Teachers are now expected to be social workers, during the pandemic they were on the front line facing the public without PPE, they continued working while many people were furloughed or WFH effectively facilitating other key workers who needed somewhere for their kids to go during the day, some were even delivering the free school meals to the homes of their pupils. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how poorly teachers are treated. Yet teachers, and other people in similarly important roles, are shown little to no respect. It seems fashionable to be anti-authority or anti-establishment (a completely self-defeating attitude in my opinion) to the extent that it is getting harder and harder to recruit people to these vital roles. BUT, this is a societal problem- it won't be resolved by changing the government. It will only be changed by a significant shift in public attitudes. While the Conservatives have done nothing to solve such problems there is clearly no will or appetite in any of the other parties to tackle these attitudes (in fact, I feel that most will just exacerbate them) as, in their own ways, they are just as populist as Johnson's Conservatives.
Spot on. The way the term 'far right' is bandied about these days is one element of the polarised and deeply divisive political discourse we now have.
I'm not sure the country is generally polarised, they just want the best government possible providing it favours their own hopes and aspirations. Swathes of 'Labour areas' switched last time as did many 'Tory areas' when Blair came in ... ... I expect there'll be another big swing this time so I don't believe everyone is dyed in the wool. I have a policy of criticising whoever's in power and making mistakes, far too many this time imo.
She knows all about it because she helped create it. There was a period where the SNP found it impossible to utter a sentence that didn't have the word 'tory' in it. Making the other side out to be the Boogeyman and evil has a strong effect on those who don't have time to delve too deeply into politics. And the hard of thinking.... I don't want politicians to tell me what their opposition wants to do - tell me what you're going to do.
Sturgeon when she was at University was nicknamed Seaweed... cos even the tide wouldn't take her out.
Dunno mate, you can have a good nosh on seaweed ... ... tastes a bit fishy but at least you know it gets a wash at least once a day
This is why it's such an important issue. Political polarisation is a well-observed phenomenon in this country- Sturgeon mentioned it today, Rory Stewart has talked quite extensively about it, the Forde Report into bullying and other problems in the Labour Party alludes to it, and this article describes how it has been at its worst point since the turn of the century in the last couple of years https://www.bi.team/blogs/britain-c...-fostering-dialogue-during-national-lockdown/. It only takes 5 minutes on Twitter to find how divided debate is. It's being driven by those that shout loudest, of course. For most people, as you say, their political viewpoint is more nuanced (e.g. a traditional Labour voter who voted for Brexit) so you'd think this would be something that we'd all be more concerned about. The danger of it is that, in many settings, people are becoming wary of speaking about politics for fear of the zealots. Proper debate is therefore stifled with only the sniping across the ever-widening divide left, while everyone in the middle just tries to keep their heads down. As a result, we have the worst cohort of politicians that I can remember and will continue to have increasingly poor politicians as its very easy to criticise or to take the diametrically opposed position to the other party. Anyone can do that- it's much harder to listen, analyse, debate, and reach consensus.
Corbyn was toxic. A point I make is that at the golf club's Christmas Dinner 40 odd blokes 90% usually Labour voters. Outside of the window is a small garden dedicated to Richard Annan VC, biggest funeral in Cathedral for years. Corbyn was seen as unpatriotic. If Farage's mob hadn't stood in Sunderland and split the Brexit vote, Labour probably would not have held the seat. So unsurprisingly , Starmer is trying to banish Corbyn to the twilight zone. He is also not touching Brexit with a ten foot pole. Meanwhile the tories have turned cannibal on each other. Starmer will not rock the boat atm Politics is a funny old business Now Mrs Crankie has self-immolated on the the burning topic of 'Trans' . Strikes continue What will next i wonder?
Good post, the Brexit vote did throw up some ironic outcomes, the one that stood out for me was Yvette Cooper. This was the woman who tried everything she could to stop the Country’s vote from happening, which enraged the local mainly Labour voters, who vowed to get rid of her,but luckily for her Farage never did a deal with the Tories in her constituency, and she scraped home with the Brexit vote split, so ironically she was helped by the voters she was abandoning
There was a time when I thoughg she would emerge as a fantastic Labour politician. I still like much of what she says but she is falling into the trap now of not really sayinh enough. I think there is a very fine politician in there, whether she will ever be allowed to show that in our current political landscape I am not so sure.
All you have to look at is the response to anyone who doesn't automatically say 'tories evil' here. It's going to take the middle ground to resolve this by telling both fringes where they can go, and it's getting closer every day as the fringes continue try to force politics into every area of life.
