I watched most of the first season. Doesn't make it any less funny to me that Clarkson is suggesting the Conservative Party adopt one of the signature policies of...Mao.
The last thing the NHS needs is forced volunteers. The attitude of nursing students has already become fairly poor imo, rarely passionate about the role and feeling very exploited. As someone's already pointed out re the forces the infrastructure doesn't exist to manage such, issues around confidentiality and privacy could be fun. It's a gimmick.
What a load of bollocks this idea of national service is, and so typical of Tory selfishness Fix the social contract first so that youngsters see that they are getting something back. A free education, the ability to afford housing, a pension at some time in the future. The kids owe this country nothing, because it excludes them from all the things their parents and grandparents took for granted, and the country has no right to expect them to sacrifice for the greater good. Personally, I think this was never intended to be a thing, it's just a distraction policy but the debate will still rumble on.
Carol Vorderman is really going for the Tories and is backing this tactical voting website in an attempt to reduce the Tories to as few seats as possible. https://stopthetories.vote/ In an interview with Politics Joe she has stated that she wants to get them down to as few as 35 seats. A big ask but fingers crossed.
I was trying desperately to explain the broken social contract to my parents this weekend. All they kept trying to say is “we had it hard as well”. And I had to say I wasn’t denying that. And acknowledged I’ve had it easier because they both had it hard and worked hard. But the same is not true for the majority of young people They got something out of working hard. They could afford to buy capital. My dad eventually became successful but initially he was able to buy a house when quite young through working a sole trader electrician. I can’t imagine that is true of many starting up tradesmen now. They’d need years off accounts to qualify for a mortgage. I assume you did back in the day but in that time could probably have also saved a larger percentage of the value to help with that But my mum says things like “We had Maggie. Maggie was good for us”. I had to counter with how she wasn’t good for the country despite being good for some people My dad apparently knows people (older men in their 50s and 60s of course) who work in recruitment who claim that “no one wants to graft anymore”. I didn’t really get to challenge what they mean by that. I’m not sure how you can get that from just being a recruitment agent unless there are people who are just refusing jobs that have crazy hours. I told him that many people clearly think “what is the point? I’ll never be able to afford a house anyway and childcare makes it too expensive to have children without being really hard up”. Explained that most young people are still brought up on the dream of owning and house and having a family and that has been rendered impossible / unaffordable for many. He was struggling to get it and went back to “we had it hard as well” You can’t expect young people to buy into a capitalist system if they can’t accrue capital. And we haven’t even touched on how most shares are now multiple times what they were back in the day so even investing isn’t what it used to be - assuming you have money leftover. I listen to a very right wing English politics channel (the sort that now hate reform because they have removed candidates due to “trial by media” in the form of hope not hate reports) - even they acknowledge this about capitalism and young people There is a lot of stock being placed in young people being “sedated”/distracted by social media, smart phones and entertainment. And it’s working in stopping things getting truly ugly
That would push them into third and not being the official opposition. Might result in people taking the Lib Dem’s more seriously and more of a loss of support for the Tories and they might actually be finished in at least the medium term.
You can't explain this to our boomer parents. It isn't possible. My parents had nothing when I grew up. We lived in social housing and often my dad was on the dole (and working some side hustle most likely). Yet we had a house with a garden on a very, very low rent. There was a fantastic library in town we could rent books from - and also music or even videos. There wasn't the disposable culture we have today. People didn't have vast wardrobes - or at least not the ones I knew. In the 80s it definitely felt like we were satisfied with less "stuff" than today. I didn't know anyone who had a regular holiday. My parents could get lots of presents for me and my brother for Christmas for £50 each. More stuff than either of us ever dreamed of. So, today we do have a lot of stuff. We have so much luxury compared to them. But, like you said, it is social sedative that hides all the stuff our parents' generation has stolen. Landlordism is - as I have said so many times - the most revolting crime against the people of the last 30 years. Thatcher started it. Nobody has done anything to stop it. We don't have to OWN property. That is a big old lie. We just need to protect the rights of ordinary people to affordable housing. Sadly, this Labour party will do nothing to fix it. The version of Labour that cared is long dead. All I hope is that they don't let it get any worse.
The hope is that this version of the Labour Party allows an Overton window shift away from the right. Whether it is too late is another question
Completely agree, it's pure electioneering and pandering to the conservative key demographic. My issue was that most of the focus seemed to be on the armed forces and ignored the community work aspect. Whilst this might have been a throwaway campaign pledge as a form of distraction, I do think there is merit in having some form of compulsory community work for teenagers to help imbed them in the fabric of society. I just don't trust the Tories to deliver it. As you mentioned the issues around privacy would be my main concern as this type of policy would seem like an ideal way to get masses amount of personal information.
Yeah, agreed. Everyone: "let's be more like Sweden and Denmark" Suggest something Sweden and Denmark do. Everyone: "no, not that"
All those people who want to be like Sweden and Denmark are deluded. Neither has a population larger than London. Lots of things work with small, wealthy populations that would never work with vast, diverse, economically varied populations.
So Beckham is now a `global ambassador` for some Chinese tech organisation. I don`t suppose he cares that China are backing Russia in their war with Ukraine. Still, his gravy train with those awfully nice Qatari folk has dried up now, so he needs a few bob from somewhere. Shameless arsehole.
Yeah agree with the above. It’s nonsense. Societies work best when the older (supposedly wiser) generations plant trees for the young folks to enjoy. Instead these old corrupt bastards have already stolen all the wealth via inflation, locked youngsters down for 3 years, destroyed the health and education system (which the youth will have to pay for.) Now they want to force them to work in jobs which they don’t want to do / send them to war, despite never having contributed themselves. Insanity. Young people are treated unbelievably badly. It’s time for the boomers to contribute instead of breaking & hoarding things imo.
With Labour saying that they want 16/17 year olds to vote I think there has never been a more important time to introduce politics into the school curriculum. The teachings would need to be agreed by independent bodies and delivered in an agreed manner, to try and prevent bias, but the children (because that is what they are) really need to understand what each individual political party stands for and the benefits or negatives that each party might bring to the country and to the individual, to help them make an informed choice. TBH, there are millions of people of all ages who still don’t understand what they are voting for because they don’t have the basic understanding of the political principles (or lack of) of each party, but like a specific policy on the manifesto. The education could include guiding the children towards looking at the bigger picture rather than get swept away by one or two snappy catchphrases that promise much but deliver little.
Yeah, because those beardy, sandal wearing, Guardian readers are going to stick to the script and give young impressionable minds an unbiased lesson in politics aren't they? Actually, I don't think it's a bad idea although I'm not sure how many youngsters would be interested at that age. But they might learn that our politicians are mostly unqualified grifters at an earlier age, become disillusioned quicker and not bother to vote sooner than the rest of us.
I see Jezzer is going to stand in the GE against the Labour candidate. I was wondering if you now think he was a terrorist sympathiser after all. You know, like he would have been all along if he had been a Conservative. More importantly, a man who was not just a Labour MP but the party leader and loved from Islington to Glastonbury is standing against Labour. It must be putting the "Oh Jeremy Corbyn " brigade into a right old tail spin. Very strange but I'm sure someone will invent a very believable excuse, probably Jabbo. UTS.
You have worked really hard not to read the various comments on this over the last few years. There are Labour supporters who hate Corbyn and there are those who love him. He has been ousted for political reasons. He is clearly a pacifist and I am sorry you are so fixated on hating him.
Same applied during the pandemic, small aware populations with a sense of community regarding collective responsibility.
