To think middle-class Guardian reading lefties, really are morally superior to their rabid Daily Mail/Telegraph reading counterparts?

[ComposHat]

Posh lefty handwringers/Champagne Socialists/The Islington mafia call them what you like, but I think they are unfairly maligned.

Because in purely self economic terms it would be more beneficial to adopt a right wing stance and advocate less taxation, cuts in stamp duty and inheritance tax, yet they take an opposing view in the interests of fairness and justice.

By contrast, Middle/upper class Tories act largely in their own interest.

[Francagoestohollywood]

Oh, Goooooooooooooood.

[EmmyFlavs]

Is what what what? Oh never mind!!! Whoever suggested that a few thousand hormonal women all thrown together in a Forum would be ''Madness'' was clearly wrong!!!!!!!! We can do this!!!!

[EmmyFlavs]

Ohhh, you are so terribly welcome, I would be interested to know which part you disagreed with? Stalin being a nasty man? Ummm, Fidel Castros Cuba? people killing themselves trying to escape the regime? Socialists Manifesto where it is stated ' The Bourgeois should re distribute their wealth to the Proletarians '' or maybe that my Husband doesnt work 13 hours a day!! I'm confused with your post!!! But again, yw

[Hullygully]

Haven't rtft

wholeheartedly agree

[TheOriginalSteamingNit]

YANBU.

We're just nicer

[bobbywash]

to the OP if you're a guardian reading etc then you do feel morally superior with no justification whatsoever, however if you're a DM/Torygraph reader then you also feel morally superior with no justification whatsoever.

Moral superiority comes from within, whether it has any merits or not is irrelevant to those who profess to have it. TBH I think the true meaning of it (moral superiority) has been lost, and replaced with smugness.

[Binkybix]

I don't think people are implying that all those who are left wing are wealthy are they? They are addressing the thread which specifically talks about 'champagne socialist, Islington' mafia' that is certainly the 'group' that I've posted about, not everyone who is left wing.

[EmmyFlavs]

Has the OP actually responded?

[ComposHat]

I have a few pages ago. Realised I'd started a bun fight and hoped it would fizzle out.

[motherinferior]

The thread is about 'Guardian reading middle-class lefties' according to its title. Of which I am one.

[Hullygully]

I can feel a thread coming on...

[Moknicker]

OP, I read the Guardian, Telegraph and the Daily Mail - i guess that makes me a morally superior, rabid, self interested ... and any other adjective you want to throw in.

:)

[Chandon]

The only problem with guardian reading middle class lefties is tat hey can be a bit smug, on the whole they are largely inoffensive, IMO!

As to the self seeking Tory voters, most tory voters I know ( almost all the Ils) actually have very strong ideological ideas about a " small state" and "personal liberty" and personal responsibility.

SIL for example has never claimed child benefit, as she does not want to use up "benegits" she does not need, so there is more for those who do.

To say all Tpries are heartless and selfish is a bit silly IMO, and it stops you from understanding how people think.

Saying that, I am not too keen on the Tories, or the Telegraph etc. myself!!

[Chandon]

Benegits, now there is a Freudian slip....must have been reading the Mail again

[Dededum]

Newspaper reading is on the decline, the circulation of the Guardian is under 200,000, whilst the Daily Mail is still over 2 million. Whether or not one reads the Guardian or not, the alternatives are dire. The Guardian provides left wing comment as part of its fare, but the actual news sections of the paper are not imbibed with ideological claptrap. As someone interested in facts and opinions I find any reading of the DM deeply depressing and the Torygraph and Times editorially skewed.

There aren't many of us Guardian readers left, so why do the right and a the stupid (not necessary the same) get their knickers in twist. Life is complicated, confusing and impossible predict. I find the Guardian a more accurate portrayal.

[Dededum]

Figures slightly wrong - guardian 204,000 daily mail 1.8 million.

[PosyNarker]

YWNBU if those who might be considered 'champagne socialists' put their money where their mouth is. I am sure some do, but I've encountered many that don't.

I am also very wary of those who speak of higher earners paying yet more when they are so far into the upper earnings eschelons as to be completely removed from the lower end of that spectrum. (Yes, left wing popstars, actors etc. I'm looking at you.)

I'm fairly centrist, slightly left of social issues, slightly to the right on economic. I've actually ditched many of my grauniad reading 'old friends' because we can no-longer engage in civilised debate, by which I mean ad hominem, patronising guilt trips and attacks have become their go to tools for political discourse.

Of course the plural of anecdote is not data, but that's my experience.

[Francagoestohollywood]

Great post Dededum.
I've been missing the Guardian a lot, since we've moved back to Italy. We haven't got anything like the DM here, but even La Repubblica is not as authoritative or interesting as the Guardian.

And I am a bit fed up of this general portrayal of left wing people, either drinking champagne or not contributing to the wealth of a nation. Yawn.

[Dededum]

Ah yes and if we send our kids to private school (I don't but am thinking about it) earn lots of money, don't give it away, or live in a 'posh area' with good state schools we are called hypocrites who would be money grabbing, dislike immigration, begrudge receipents of welfare etc...if we didn't earn much money, lived in a poorer area and our kids had to go to sink schools.

Maybe.... But then my education has enabled me to question the stereotypes and misinformation peddled by the mainstream media. I read the guardian because I want to think.... Though I really don't like the family section it really gets my heckles up.

[Toadinthehole]

I am a Guardian reader, and was brought up soft-left liberal, and probably still am on the whole.

The Guardian's - and for that matter the BBC's - mistake is to assume that everyone is inherently reasonable, and if you seek to engage any person in respectful dialogue, everything will come right. That is not a parody. It is the very essence of liberalism as a philosophy.

Those of us who (like me) have lived next door to neighbours who abuse animals, get drunk and fight, get drunk and piss in the front garden, abuse their position as council tenants by wrecking the house, dealing drugs from it and taking in sub-tenants, who listen to loud music both day and night, burgle the neighbours, and leer through the window at DW when she breastfed know perfectly well that such people are generally too wrecked or hungover and probably ill-brought up to be reasonable. We know that a respectful approach for grown-up dialogue with such people will be met at best with a sneer, and perhaps a fist. We do not wish to be told that these people need help and understanding and that we ourselves deserve none. Nor do we wish to be told they have rights when ours, ie, to live in peace and quiet aren't enforced by the authorities. We know that such people need a kick up the backside or perhaps a spell in prison or, at very least, removal to a street full of people just like them, because that sort of treatment is the only thing they respond to. Unlike the Guardian, papers like the Daily Mail at least pretend to know this perfectly well.

So while I have no love for the Mail, I do get enraged by the formulaic approach to social matters one finds in the Guardian, informed as it is purely by theory and absolutely no experience except perhaps second or third hand through treatises written by second-rate academics from lesser-known universities.

[Binkybix]

To be fair dedendum, the example I used was someone who actively tries to avoid his taxes whilst thinking he is morally superior, that's why I called him a hypocrite. I don't think they would be right wing if they had not grown up in a leafy north London suburb and had different parents, but I think it's hard to argue that how he acts vs how he talks is not hypocritical.

Likewise, I think he uses the Guardian to supply all his beliefs and opinions unquestioningly because they confirm what he already thinks - I don't think that's thinking, any more than someone who does the same with a different paper.

Obvs I don't think this applies to all left wing people, but just shared my first hand experience - I may have vented a little because I was on the receiving end of a lot of his lectures a week or so ago! I am prob centre left btw so not rabid right wing!

[FasterStronger]

to look at someone's politics and choice of newspaper is a way too simplistic way to look at who is morally superior.

I think you need to make a large personal sacrifice with life long effects for people outside your family to be morally superior - and voting and buying a paper comes nowhere near to doing that. and TBH if you make that sort of sacrifice you are probably more interested in helping others than deciding who is more morally superior.

[EmmyFlavs]

The Guardian is a leftist Newspaper, end of!!!

[thebody]

I am just so amazed that people still waste money on newspapers so they can obviously read ones own political views and agree.

What the fuck is the point of that?

What a waste of time.

[EmmyFlavs]

The Body!!! LOL