To think that being Tory doesn't make you thick?

[RainbowSheep]

Ok, my family are all very liberal (I mean my parents, aunts & uncles, who incidently have all had lots of money & opportunities throughout their lives). Their parents (who were poor working class) were more conservative as are me and my brother, who are both pretty poor. We recently had a family get together where I was told by my uncle (university lecturer) that Tories were unitelligent and I was beginning to sound like an idiot for having conservative views... I don't think I am particularly right wing.

YANBU, OP - I hate it when people use as 'argument' against someone's politics the fact that 'you must be stupid to be right wing / left wing'. I've seen both said on MN, frankly each as much as the other.

MoreBeta, you may be a rabid Tory, but I'm a rabid lefty anarchist, and I agree with you half the time if not more!

OP just going back to an earlier point about your DH's lecturers' comments and salaries, am curious to know why you think they make a lot of money?

I started as a lecturer 5 years ago on £28.5k. Given that I had been at university training for 8 years to do a highly skilled job, I don't think that is a massive salary at all. That doesn't bother me at all, btw, because I'm not in it for the money - and I don't think I'm entitled to a massive salary because of my degrees - but I do think people who train to do a highly specialist job can expect professional salaries.

I went on strike and talked to my students about the strike too because I think the pension cuts will affect my generation (early 30s) badly and their generation (mostly 18-22yos) even worse and that it is no bad thing if they stand up and register that. That's all.

Incidentally, I don't know if this is true or not, but an older colleague once told me that when he began lecturing in the 70s, the jobs of uni lecturers and doctors were on the same public sector pay spine, but then they became 'de-coupled' so that whereas in the 70s a lecturer and doctor would've earnt the same, these days we earn something like 50-60% of what a doctor would. That doesn't actually bother me, but if true, it is interesting.

I also don't get why you seem to dislike your DH's lecturers so much: do you have any idea at all how hard it is to become one these days? I put myself through my PhD working 70+ hour weeks and supported myself by working in bars, restaurants and a really god-awful depressing bakery on early morning shift, all the time trying to get myself published and the like. Most young lecturers I know have similar backgrounds. We are the people who tried to better ourselves through education and get good professional jobs - you'd like someone who admired self-made success would get that.

I get that public sector cuts are disproportionately hurting the less well-off. I really do. But I honestly don't understand what people think the alternative is. Where do people think the money is going to come from?

Um, from all the billions and billions sitting in the bank accounts of the top 1%.........?

Going back to an earlier post, I also really hate that old chestnut about having no heart if you're right wing when younger, and no head if you're left wing when older.

Erm, no - there are plenty of considered, thoughtful young Tories (plus the yah-boo-rich kids of course) and plenty of intelligent older Lefties (as well as knee-jerk socialists who've never thought it through).

Well, there are a huge amount of small and medium sized enterprises in the UK, and I think that the Tories have perhaps done a better job in recent years of presenting themselves as the people who can (slightly better...) support SMEs in keeping going in troubled times. So that would be a lot of owners and employees of SMEs worried about their jobs, and voting for the Tories.

God that was an essay

All the Tories have done for me, as someone struggling to set up a small business, is to cut my childcare tax credits.

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative." - John Stuart Mill.

I'm a liberal but it sounds like your uncle was being slightly knobbish, to be honest. If he's so sure that you're wrong, he should argue on the facts of whatever it was you were discussing. "All Tories are stupid" is such a lazy get-out.

Takver - I agree with you an awful lot too!

Worrying isn't it?

YonderRevoltingPeasantWhoIsHe - his lecturers are all a lot older and on good salatries by all accounts. The reason it bothers me is because we are getting into debt paying their wages and almost every lesson he is send home 2/3 of the way through. I am sure there rae plenty of great lecturers by the way, thsi si just my limited personal experience!

Peasant - very, very, very well put.

MoreBeta I came out near Ghandi too, I think it was down to the gay marriage and sex questions, I'm pro gay marriage and think what people get up to in their bedrooms is their own business, I didn't realise it was anti tory to thin kthis!

Actually RainbowSheep, although I don't agree with you politically (my answer to your question would be "No, not automatically thick, just selfish"), I would agree that it is shocking what some lecturers in some universities do get away with. I wonder if your DH's uni has a formal complaints procedure for students? Because mine sure as hell didn't.

I can't believe you didn't think it was anti Tory to be in favour of gay marriage. Have you never heard of section 28? You do seem ill informed.

Rainbow well that is bad - I routinely extend my MA seminars by about 40 minutes because they are at the end of the day and we just stay chatting! I am also answering students' emails right now in intervals of MN-ing.

Well then what your DH needs to do is complain via his student reps or to the head of dept. Believe me, if the university is worth anything, they will respond. These days we are all hyper aware of annoyed students because we're more dependent on income from fees so I'd be surprised if they didn't take it seriously.

However to be fair to your DH lecturers they probably are talking about the strike to the students with a view of empowering the younger ones.

I am old enough to remember that it was the Tories who abolished the National Minimum Wage and the Tories who screamed blue murder when Labour brought it back.

I don't trust this lot not to try that one again, and I include the power hungry traitors Lib Dems in that.

'not all conservatives are stupid people, but most stupid people are conservative' - JS Mill.

I'm like the character in How To Be Good who tries to convey to her kids that 'no-one who votes Conservative will ever really be welcome in our house, but we make an exception for Granny and Grandad'.

I think there are Tories who genuinely and optimistically believe that anyone can do anything and you mustn't stifle that etc etc - but there's always an obvious logical problem with any of it.

I do think that anyone who is a) nice and b) clever would have to left wing.

have to be left wing. That's why you don't get a lot of Tories in universities.

Elaine - something that has genuinely interested me - in universities you get a lot of people very actively promoting diversity in terms of hiring people from different minorities etc - but it has always struck me you'd find it hard to land an academic job if you expressed socially conservative views at an interview.

Should we have affirmative action for Tories, do you think?

Ah, but both my DH and my ex-DH are both nice, clever and voted Conservative at the last election, and one is a University lecturer. I suppose you might argue that the definitions of the words 'nice' and 'clever' are inseparable from having voted Labour at the last election, but it might be counted as special pleading .

Anyone else remembering that excellent bit in Bridget Jones' Diary where she talks about how voting is not about who you think will do a better job in Government, but about representing yourself to those around you in a particular way? "Labour stands for the principle of sharing, kindness, gays, single mothers and Nelson Mandela"

YonderPeasant - very amused by the idea of affirmative action in University for Tories, but I think the ideas would be so novel to the rest of the interview committee that the academics would be seen as radical visionaries with some exciting new theories, and so hired straight away.

RainbowSheep - A most emphatic NO to your question asking if all dc at state school get the same level of education. Look at a Secondary school on a 'sink estate', and a Secondary school in a 'posh', leafy suburb. The quality of the teachers is better at the latter school, as they can pay better wages.

If a child is in FC due to abuse - that dc does NOT have the same 'life chances' as a child from a stable, 2-parent family. A dc in FC often moves every 3-6 months, moving school too. A dc that has spent the early part of their life being beaten or raped is NOT going to have had the same life chances as one from a stable, loving family.

If a dc has a parent that is illiterate - they are going to have much less help at home than a dc whose parents were university educated.

If someone has a chronic health condition - they do NOT have the same life chances as someone able bodied, with no illnesses.

There are soooooo many variables, and this Government is managing the defecit by cutting support for those who HAVEN'T got the same life-chances as them.

Too Many Cuts Blog

HuntyCat, #frothers.

But voting is done in private! I haven't read Bridget Jones, but to be honest the side of sharing, kindness and single mothers is alright with me!

Anyway, in answer to Yonder - I can't speak for all universities, but yes I think in a lot if you said 'well, I don't like the lowering of standards and the idea of letting just anyone through the door', then it probably wouldn't go well for you, because it would flag an issue for the way in which you'd deal with students who weren't from academic backgrounds. Basically if you make yourself sound like a bit of a bigot, it's not going to go well.

However I don't suppose you'd do yourself any favours either if you said 'I believe all property is theft' or something!

Anyone who started being overly politicised in that situation in any direction would, I suppose, raise a few eyebrows.

FairPhyllis - The poor who are being hardest hit by the cuts expect the RICHER to take a bigger hit of 'pain', as they won't be left scrabbling for money to heat or eat. The poor (especially the working poor) want to see the country become more equal, that there isn't such a HUGE divide between the Have's and the Have-not's. Tax richer people more. There, I said it. If you have the money to pay for private education for your dc - your biggest worry ISN'T about if it is OK financially to put the heating on for 1 hr in 24 when it's December. It is for those who are poor.

So you want the country to become MORE segregated, and only people who are directly affected by an issue can talk about it? Why should people ONLY be worried about issues that affect them personally? What is wrong with having EMPATHY and UNDERSTANDING that not everybody's life is the same as yours?

THAT is why I think Tories are unintelligent. Emotionally unintelligent.

The bit in Bridget Jones is a very funny moment, but I think it makes a very valid point. What Bridget is distinguishing between is support for a party's policies, and the way in which party supporters are viewed specifically by your own cultural group - so in her cultural group, it would be social death to admit to being other than a Labour voter, although she doesn't know what the party policies are, because among her group of friends, if you want to be seen as kind and socially aware, you have to say you're voting Labour. So for voters of all political hues, voting becomes a form of self-fashioning and presentation, rather than a careful consideration of politices.