To think this young man represents so much of what is wrong with champagne socialism?

[Pissfarterleech]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2042623/Rory-Weal-Child-star-Labour-conference-truth-life-poverty.html

Who doesn't want to contribute to it?

Pissfarterleech, my response was to your first 10 posts about the kid which I read clearly.

As regards your latter posts re what's wrong with Labour, I totally agree with you that Labour totally lost their way. However, I decided that having benefited from the welfare system that they were still the best guardians of it and that it would be disingenuous of me to not vote Labour to give others a helping hand.

His family were rich. Then they were poor. The benefits system helped them. He attends a State school.

So why the vitriol?

I think whereyouleftit is right re where they probably intended to position it. If they had filled in the blanks and said it all turned out fine then poor boy wouldn't now be subjected to national ridicule in the Daily Fail.

wordfactory, ooooh I would love to be a fly on the wall of the inner circle right now! Not surprised Ed is livid.

Me too .

The whole thing is going to derail conference.

Perhaps you're right and that was how the boy's speech was meant to be positioned...but even that is bloody awful no?

Oi rich people, be glad to pay your taxes, cos you might be next on the scrap heap. It's not a winning idea is it?

Labour need to get out there and start asking the poeple what they're looking for. Not telling. Soem of it they're going to find unplatable I'm afraid. It won't chie with their Primrose Hill sensibilities.

They need to get out there and ask ordinary young people what they hope for. It aint high taxes and the promise of benefits if they need em.

The tories are all over the place, the lib dems are on the verge of implosion, now should be Labour's time to regroup, not grandstanding.

The practice of sending your own offspring to private schools whilst officially condemning private education is a hypocrisy prominent labour politicians and party supporters (that'll be you, Diane Abbott and Polly Toynbee) feel they can get away with. Don't they realise how galling so many of their voters find this?

Same with private medicine. I remember Dennis Healey savaging Anne Diamond for daring to ask how he squared his wife's private treatment with his principles. But then, it's the common people who have to live by politicians' principles - they themselves seem to feel they don't have to. Not all of them, of course (I recently met Chris Mullin - what a star!).

Yes, well, Chris Mullin has told the truth about the Labour Party in his diaries, hasn't he?

And that's it, in a nutshell, Roxyrobin

I don't think I will ever, to my dying day, forget Diane Abbott's Black Mothers speech.

PMSL at "Oi rich people, be glad to pay your taxes, cos you might be next on the scrap heap." Agree with everything you say wordfactory. I wonder whether they should have had a conference before the completion of their policy review? They can't say anything new as they haven't decided on policies so it is just a giant wasted opportunity. I also do think that in the same way that the Tories were "unelectable" for a long period of time, the same fate as about to fall on Labour (again). I suspect that the (wrong) perception that the caused the recession will be so ingrained in voters minds, I suspect it will be 2020 before they're back in power, and even then depending on the economic cycle, 2025 is more likely.

I agree novice and I find that quite depressing.
They have a real opportunity now to listen, really listen to the electorate and then do something wonderful about it.

I really hope they do.

Hhhmm, I am not convinced they will get it right. I also don't think Ed is currently electable (and apparently neither do most voters according to last nights News at Ten poll) so I think there is probably some implosion, back stabbing and emergence of new new Labour to come over the next 10-12 years.

shame on the Labor party for using a child. Shame on people on this thread being critical of a child

I think it would be totally moronic for the country to forget the damage the Labour Party wrought on us while the people who were supposed to be governing were actually preoccupied with thrusting themselves up the greasy pole while kicking in the heads of any rivals.

I think I heard him on R5 last night saying that his family had their house repossessed. Is that not the case?

I don't think people should be too hard on him, he's only 16.
If people are to be critical of anything it should be the Labour party for allowing him to be used this way.

I rather like this comment under the DM article:

"He's bound to go far in the Labour Party - they all have degrees in hypocrisy."

Wordfactory is spot on.

Seems like there are 5 concatenated themes:

• Welfare state helping anyone, regardless of previous wealth, who falls on hard times

• kids going to grammar schools via extra training advantages (in this case public school)

• the existence of grammar schools

• the existence of Kent

• 16 years olds at party conferences.

Apart from the last one, IMO YABU OP

Actually, maybe the comment should be: "They all have degrees from Oxbridge in hypocrisy."

Agree with RoxyRobin totally...its when the Socialist play Animal Farm piggies that you lose all respect for them.

How did the welfare state help him. His parents sold their properties for nearly a millon in total, surely that would mean they did not qualify for state handouts. It is only two years sinc ehis fmaily lost everything by having to sell their homes for less moeny, yet they do nto live in social housing, so obviously not reliant on benefits. And he says he disagrees with private and selective schooling, yet he went to a private school when his family could afford it, then as soon as they could not, he went to a selective grammar. He now claims he disagrees with this, but that is the system he lives under and his mother wnate dhim to go there. There are actually far more non-selective schools than selective (labour where in power since he was two years old, and only left power last year after he went to a selective school, so how can he blame the tories for his educational choices) and at 16 he is old enough to make his own choices (he is legally old enough to be a parent for goodness sake) if it is something he believes in.
I am sure single parents getting into debt each week to pay their council housing, and feed their children have such a lot of sympathy for him. It just shows how out of touch labour are getting, when he is held up to be a poverty striken person saved by the welfare state. I did not realise selective grammers were considered to be the welfare state.

They should at least have taken him to Asda to get a suit that fitted.

The labour party has got form on using youngsters for propaganda purposes. Remember the Laura Spence affair? That young woman was shamefully exploited by Gordon Brown, and her headmaster, who also seemed to have an axe to grind. Pawn in the game, indeed.

Can I just say I am fed up with all three of the main parties, they all seem to have been chosen to be mps since childhood (Milliband's father was a leading marxist, Cameron's godfather called the tory party tellling them that they had to employ him after he went to interview and did not hear back straight away). We really need a freshen up in politics. Lets start a mumsnet party.

Yes, but please don't just vote in a woman just because she is a woman. Any woman.

wordfactory/kelly2000 - agree with your feelings.

"The tories are all over the place, the lib dems are on the verge of implosion, now should be Labour's time to regroup, not grandstanding."

To be honest, I'm voting UKIP next time.