Off Topic Politics Thread

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I really don't give a **** about Farage, the man is a hate breeding merchant and isn't an MP. So why do the BBC waste so much time interviewing and giving the guy column inches on his website. **** off Nigel Farage. Please!

Because they got in before ITV, CH4 and Sky for a change. He's been taking turns on each this week. News is news whether you like the news or not. Makes a change from "the world according to Laura Kuennsberg." All the channels prefer to tell us what the news means these days than just report what is happening and all the news channels are bothered about are business, politics, business, politics, sport, politics, weather. repeat.
 
No and that is my point. I have said it for a long time. Labour have a massive problem on their hands just as the Democrats do.

They have for a long time lurched into the liberal ground in their words yet are seen to look after profits and support them and that has alienated their largest voterbase who are now very suspicious of any talk of representing them. On the other side no-one in that voterbase is crazy enough to fall for Corbyn's slant on things. Yes there is some appeal there but Corbyn is backed by rich people and groups like Momentum are full of middle classes that don't really understand the poor or "non educated."

Labour does not have the middle ground in their party anymore and even if they did their largest voterbase is so wary of them that they have jumped to UKIP and Tory and will see even more of that in 2020.

The Democrats from what I can see at the moment echo exactly where Labour were in 2010 and 2015. They have a big problem with being seen to be doing lots of talk without action and being part of the rich system. The talk I have seen on a couple of websites (washington post, new york times etc) is of moving away from wealthy donor support and to a grassroots effort. This has echoes of Corbyn's rise all over it with a severe over correction that actually makes things worse for the party at least in the short term.

It is necessary in a way because if your problem is the perception of being at the mercy of special interests then you have to move a long way from that perception before that perception is broken at which point you can move back towards something sensible.

The problem isn't so much Hillary herself, it is what she represents. The political elite backed by the uber rich (Soros, Buffet) and the suspicion (especially now with the DC Leaks, Wikileaks) that they are bought.

If you ignore Iraq Blair and the Blairite/Moderates are seen in the same way. Talk of looking after the poor while they see big business importing cheaper labour, moving away to cheaper labour, the rich getting richer and all the time the talk from the political machine was of tackling it without ever doing any tackling.

Its a "They said they would do something about this but didn't." From a normal person's view of it they said to us they understood our concern and would do something about it but then turned their back, winked at their mates in a "they bought it" and then went and reassured their cartel at the top that their profits were safe and continue. Business as usual.

Are the Tory party any different? You can answer that. They love that Blair's Labour introduced all this stuff, pushed zero hours, pushed freedom of movement, pushed the whole profits at the expense of people. They love it because Labour can't accuse the Tories of changing the previous government's stance because they didn't. They just continued with it. As to why the Tories were gaining under Cameron. Why vote for Tories (Blairite Labour) that pretend they aren;t Tories when you may as well just vote for the actual Tories and then you know where you are.

May might be different. She is sounding different but as above.......words does not mean action. All our parties should wake up and see what happened at Brexit and in the US. People are not buying the slick, professional sales pitch anymore. They don't believe it. It isn't authentic. A bit different to the old way we used to say politicians just lie and never answer questions.

Corbyn will struggle to hit 150 seats at the next election. Where that vote goes between the Tories and UKIP will be decided on whether Brexit is seen as a fudge. I suspect that it would be better in terms of seats for the Tories to have a GE now because I suspect that Brexit might end up being watered down not from pressure from the opposition but from pressure from within. The Tories are bankrolled by the same people that loved Blair. They were still donating to Tories while Blair was in but Blair gave them exactly what they wanted. Access to cheap labour and support whenever they needed it to move out of the country or make money in property or banking etc.

Labour's real problem is the Blair era where they played the Tory game without the Tory backing and by doing so lost their voterbase. There aren't enough metros, liberals, neo-liberals and luvvies with a vote to get a Blairite Labour in and there certainly aren't enough SWP, UAF, Momementum types to get Corbyn in. All of Labour's votes on both sides are not at lower class level. Corbyn's support is mainly middle class.

You are looking at a period of 8-12 years in the wilderness trying to wipe away the smell of Blairism before a realistic fightback can come. Corbyn will be gone in 2020 and I suspect there will be all out war between the far left and the moderates for a long time meaning it will take 2 or 3 leadership changes before someone between the 2 camps can get the top job.

Will relatively affluent voters in the shires vote for him? Why would they? Relevantly affluent voters in the shires are closer to Tory than you would imagine. They would probably be Ed's voters and closer to Blairism. They most definitely aren't going to vote for Corbyn's style of communism socialism.

They will do in University cities and large metro bases. Will be an echo of the Brexit success for Corbyn Labour. They seem to buy that kind of thing.
Both my daughters are going to vote for Corbyn - they actually agree with what he says - they have no knowledge of Blair but they know Cameron / Johnson / Farage / May!
 
Trump picks Reince Preibus as Chief of Staff, Steve Bannon as senior advisor


US now has a racist anti-semite in a seat of considerable power.
 
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Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment under consideration to serve as Commerce Secretary.

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/l...401008686.html

Well she did donate $6m for Trump's campaign and is also a awful person.

Screw that. I will take Linda McMahon. Is she qualified? No. Is she a nice person? No. But when they are feeding you ****, you take the smallest turd.
 
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This is a good read:


What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class

https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class


Yeah, it is interesting. And what it's basically saying is that there has always existed a rump of working class people who are irredeemable idiots, with no idea of what or who is most likely to serve their interests. What Marx called the lumpen proletariat, doomed to wilful ignorance, venerating the very people who continually rip them off.
 
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Yeah, it is interesting. And what it's basically saying is that there has always existed a rump of working class people who are irredeemable idiots, with no idea of what or who is most likely to serve their interests. What Marx called the lumpen proletariat, doomed to wilful ignorance, venerating the very people who continually rip them off.

A mother needs to look after all of her children, not just the sickly one.
 
Yeah, it is interesting. And what it's basically saying is that there has always existed a rump of working class people who are irredeemable idiots, with no idea of what or who is most likely to serve their interests. What Marx called the lumpen proletariat, doomed to wilful ignorance, venerating the very people who continually rip them off.

There are quite a few of them in this country too, unfortunately.
 
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A mother needs to look after all of her children, not just the sickly one.

Maybe. But you can't help people who won't help themselves.

In my opinion, any ordinary working people struggling to get by, who voted for Trump in America or Brexit over here are turkeys voting for Christmas. Time will tell whether or not that is the case. And I won't be saying "told you so", because that's not nice.

Still, voting for a man who lives in a gold tower because you wanted to shove it to the establishment - well that is just plain stupid.
 
Yeah, it is interesting. And what it's basically saying is that there has always existed a rump of working class people who are irredeemable idiots, with no idea of what or who is most likely to serve their interests. What Marx called the lumpen proletariat, doomed to wilful ignorance, venerating the very people who continually rip them off.


My Low paid Uncle Bought his council house for very little , always Voted Tory & Never understood why his own children have never owned their own home .......
 
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Maybe. But you can't help people who won't help themselves.

In my opinion, any ordinary working people struggling to get by, who voted for Trump in America or Brexit over here are turkeys voting for Christmas. Time will tell whether or not that is the case. And I won't be saying "told you so", because that's not nice.

Still, voting for a man who lives in a gold tower because you wanted to shove it to the establishment - well that is just plain stupid.

You seem to have taken a different understanding from the article than I have then. Strikes me that it is saying that it isn't people that are "struggling to get by" more that they are being held back because all the help has been diverted to those at the bottom (including those who won't help themselves) and are resentful that they are being ignored.

The whole aspiration being stifled argument.

After all ISIRTP did say that the poor bottom of the rung still voted Democrat. The poor bottom of the rung in this country never vote Tory. It is the just above the poor that will often vote Tory.

This is the whole crux of the article. The assumption that when we are talking about the working class it means the poor when the reality is working class includes people up to and above the median.
 
You seem to have taken a different understanding from the article than I have then. Strikes me that it is saying that it isn't people that are "struggling to get by" more that they are being held back because all the help has been diverted to those at the bottom (including those who won't help themselves) and are resentful that they are being ignored.

The whole aspiration being stifled argument.

After all ISIRTP did say that the poor bottom of the rung still voted Democrat. The poor bottom of the rung in this country never vote Tory. It is the just above the poor that will often vote Tory.

This is the whole crux of the article. The assumption that when we are talking about the working class it means the poor when the reality is working class includes people up to and above the median.

Wrong . My Uncle was on the poorest level that had a home . He voted Tory . The POOREST probably cannot even vote , so that comment goes right of the window .
 
Wrong . My Uncle was on the poorest level that had a home . He voted Tory . The POOREST probably cannot even vote , so that comment goes right of the window .

If I said that many would say "anecdotal." In general the poorest level vote(d) Labour. That is just fact. There will be many that do vote Tory (me) but in general that is not the trend.

The irony is that they still won't vote Tory and are contemplating voting for "uber Tory" UKIP
 
If I said that many would say "anecdotal." In general the poorest level vote(d) Labour. That is just fact. There will be many that do vote Tory (me) but in general that is not the trend.

The irony is that they still won't vote Tory and are contemplating voting for "uber Tory" UKIP


I can only comment on the example I have . He will never vote for Labour because he feels he is " Better that that " , a direct quote .
 
I can only comment on the example I have . He will never vote for Labour because he feels he is " Better that that " , a direct quote .

I remember Frank Skinner saying something similar about his father once on the new Room 101. He said something like "You want clever people doing the clever jobs." Can't remember the exact phrasing he used so I have just put "clever."
 
This is the whole crux of the article. The assumption that when we are talking about the working class it means the poor when the reality is working class includes people up to and above the median.

And that is why I don't care about them or their message.

The REAL poor often have a hard time voting, made harder by voter suppression laws passed by the jackholes they just elected. If we were really mollycoddling some other group at the expense of the white working class, well then those people wouldn't be so poor.

Essentially their beef is that the government needs to do more to help them even if it means stomping on the poor to help them keep their middle class status.

Nope, sorry. I will always help the very poor before I help the less poor and middle class. I will always help those who I think can actually be helped over those who refuse real help in favor of empty promises.

Why is it everyone's responsibility to understand what makes the working middle class tick? Where is the responsibility of the working class to understand others?
 
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