Off Topic Politics Thread

No parliamentary rules were broken .

If people aren’t happy , change the rules .

This is all a kick the Labour Up the arse exercise, and one of the many reasons I detest our press ( no matter what party they back )

 

The BBC are very vocal about Kiers and other labour MPs donation's, but very quiet about the Tories, can’t see this one on their front page site.

 

I think that is largely due to labour being the current government. In the same way the press didn’t pick up from my recollection about labour doing this when the tories were in power.

I feel the more pertinent piece here is that donation by and large should be stopped period.

I was hopeful that Labour would be a breath of fresh air to the dirty and corruption of UK politics, and yet it is more of the same.

It disgusts me.

 

The issue nobody is talking about is wealth. Why would Sunak need donations when his own wife is exceptionally rich? Starmer has accepted clothes and accommodation to be able to compete with Tories, most of whom are from privileged backgrounds. If we ban donations, how do the poor compete? How could a working class miner or factory worker ever climb the ranks in politics.

Underneath all this is, yet again, the grubby face of classism. The same journalists who have hacked the phones of dead schoolchildren, who are more likely to come from private school than state education, are rounding on a man for taking money for some fairly basic things. And I have worked box office, all footballing and music events have free tickets for other celebs. They have zero financial value. I even got in for free to the FA Cup Final this way. Man goes to working class activities for free is the story. Would they even care if it was cricket or rugby?

So, yeah, in a perfect world we would get rid of donations, but first you have to get rid of inequality and make campaigning possible for anyone off the street. I don’t like Starmer but the Tories had 15 years to ‘fix’ this and didn’t- so if you ever voted Tory in that time, Pipe Down.

 

Yes, he's got a chip on both shoulders.

 

Just for some perspective, Alli has given £700,000 to Labour altogether. He made his money in television.

Mohammed Mansour, former member of Dictator Hosni Mubarek’s Egyptian government, has given £5m to the Tories this year.

 

Good job I haven’t ever voted for the Tories.

 

Eh?

Starmer isn't exactly poor himself.

Of course footballing, music, rugby, cricket etc have free tickets for celebs (and others, not just celebs). The point is that people in positions of power and influence, be they Starmer, Sunak, Johnson or Corbyn (basically politicians, who have the ability to shift policy to benefit people) shouldn't be in the business of taking freebies that may influence them to do something within their power to benefit a particular individual or corporation. It doesn't matter if it's clothes, football, cricket or rugby. I think you're getting an awful lot of things mixed up in your anger-cauldron here.

 

There’s an odd thing on here where it’s presumed that if someone is privately school educated, that means that they are therefore a - evil, and b - a Tory.

Which is a bit classist, funnily enough.

If you actually met any journalists, you’d probably find that the majority of them (even the evil privately schooled ones) are very liberal and can’t stand the tories.

 

Personally, I think it would be far more effective to get rid of the poor people.

 

The tories did their best to slow and even decrease live expectancy during the years of austerity.
"In February 2020, the University College London Institute of Health Equity published ‘Health equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 years on’. The report stated that, since 2010, the improvement in UK life expectancy for both men and women had slowed dramatically. The report also noted life expectancy had fallen in some of the most deprived areas of the country. In the same year, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that life expectancy at birth in the UK for both men and women had slowed since 2011 when compared with previous decades."
https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/mortality-rates-among-men-and-women-impact-of-austerity/

 

I am not remotely angry, thanks, LTL. My anger cauldron, as you call it, is simmering nicely.

I think you need to have a little read again. Very clearly - very clearly - state that "in a perfect world we would get rid of donations". Just again: in a perfect world we would get rid of donations. Quoting myself there. Just to say I have already said, in multiple posts, I would like it if Starmer were not accepting donations and I do not like Starmer.

In many, many posts. For clarity, as you seem to have missed what I have said over and over again.

My post is about hypocrisy. It doesn't matter if "Starmer isn't poor". He has always taken in a strong wage - but what we are talking about is funding his campaign. Do we need to have £651 million in the bank (Sunak) to be able to self-finance? No, so, unfortunately political donors support parties and individuals to ensure they are electable. Labour only take about 1/4 of the money which the Tory part is able to suck up from some very dodgy people.

Starmer, who I do not like, has been using the exact same system to make him electable as every other party ever. But for some reason now people are noticing it is bad. As I said, it is elitist to criticise a man for taking donations to make himself look electable, when the other guy has over half a billion pounds to sort his wardrobe out with.

I think you only pop in when someone criticises journalists, which is amusing as, despite all these lefty liberal journos, the UK public recognises the vast majority of out press as Right Leaning, no matter which political affiliation they have themselves. How left or right-wing are the UK’s newspapers? | YouGov

It is a funny piece of mental acrobatics to suggest that saying people from public schools are more likely to be supportive of the public school system is a lie. That's like saying people from England are more likely to support England is also a lie.

And on the tickets thing, I basically agree with you, but posting the individual price of each ticket is a nonsense. They did not cost the football clubs that. They did not cost Starmer that. Nobody has gained tens of thousands of pounds out of it. Just say he got X tickets.

 

Thanks for unblocking me, Billy. You obviously need to hear someone from the bad side of the tracks now and then.

 

Aw bless, it’s cute when you lot think that.

I just dropped in the image as LTL was talking about being angry, and those pesky Mr Men came to my mind.

That said, I thought it only fair to read through your post as you replied to me.

You are clearly a smart, intelligent guy, I’ve said that before. Very articulate and broad in intellect.

However, to me you are like kids when they go to Uni, and want to be all grown up and fight against the cause, to make a stand. To belong to something grown up.

Most people grow out of it, and get on with their lives in the real world. But going by what you say in this thread, I can only surmise that you seem to have doubled down on this, and are back to the uni fighting the cause.


Anyhow, I’m not arsed about a reply as I wont read it (yep, still on ignore), but being serious, best of luck, hope this approach works out for you

 

But you’re talking about two different things and conflating them. Political donations for campaigning (as a party) are not the same as taking freebies for wardrobes/tickets etc (as an individual). That’s why your post is confusing. Now, should they be considered the same? Maybe, but your point isn’t clear on that.

It’s irrelevant whether you like Starmer or not. Not sure why you’re pushing that point.

Where have I said that people from public schools will or won’t support people from public schools? Nowhere.

The reason I pop in when people make ludicrous statements about journalists, is because it’s something I actually know about, rather than guessing or projecting my obsessions on. I spend my life with and around journalists through my job, and through the fact my wife is one. She’s privately educated and went to Oxford. She’s also the hardest working person I know, and has never voted Tory in her life. She’s also very disappointed so far in Starmer, and hates the whole freeloading bit.

The issue seems to be, and sorry if I’m wrong in this, but you seem to be perpetuating something in your head that sees all private school educated people as like the Bullingdon Club, where they get to positions of power by having long, liquid lunches at clubs somewhere, and don’t do any work whilst lazing around a bottle of port counting their cash. And that as a result nobody from the (currently fetishised) working class can possibly get a look in.

That may have been true in the 70s, but it just isn’t now, and particularly within journalism. As I say, I spend my life around journalists, and I don’t know a single Tory voter amongst them, regardless of whether privately educated or otherwise (quite fervently the opposite actually). They also all work incredibly hard, are hugely passionate about their jobs, and some of them take incalculable risks for their (not always great) salaries.

The only two died in the wool tories in my friendship group are an ex army guy, who was raised by a single mother in a caravan at the side of a road in Wales, and a builder.

 

I don’t believe in social inequality being exacerbated. I have made that point fairly clearly on repeat ad nauseum. Nothing should exist to streamline those who have into more positions of power and control. That is my issue with private schools and so much of the bric-a-brac of modern life. And it doesn’t matter what the political leanings of journalists are when the vast majority of them work for newspapers which demand right leaning news.

Some of my own best friends are journalists. I also have friends who went to private school. I am not trying to cast anyone as anything. That doesn’t mean that your chances of rising to the top in journalism aren’t profoundly impacted by who you know and it also doesn’t mean that people who went to private school are not inordinately powerful.

And it does matter what the money was used for. If Starmer had bought a yacht, or a fancy car, or wallpaper, I get it. But he spent it on campaigning and published every penny. That makes it campaign money. And it matters that I don’t like him because I am more than happy to crucify the guy - if it reflects the same treatment the last lot got.

I don’t think it does.

 

Your chances of becoming a journalist are more to do with how well you can write and comprehend and communicate (not to do with who you know these days). Now, if those skills in the individual are better because they were educated more proficiently because they went to a private school, therein lies the *actual* reason they have those jobs, rather than some nefarious old boys club that doesn’t really exist any more. Therein, as you rightly say, is the inequality and unfairness (and in that I agree with you). But that’s not the fault of either the news outlet bosses, or the individual, and it does come across that you project part of that blame on to them, which is what I take issue with.

The comment “it doesn’t matter what the political leanings of journalists are when the vast majority of them work for newspapers which demand right leaning news” is just largely incorrect, unless you’re talking about the extremes of media too.

 

https://ygo-assets-websites-editori...papers20left20right20wing-01.format-webp.webp


https://amp.theguardian.com/media/2008/apr/07/pressandpublishing4

 

Didn’t Starmer actually spend £32k on clothes. And changed how this was categories, as in he only admitted £16k on them to start with.

He is no different to the slimy tories, and is just a sneaky.

£32k on clothes! Think of how many clothes from Berluti I could purchase with that