To think Toby Young deserves scorn for this article?

[BowieFan]

Apologies for linking to the Daily Mail, but I've used a service that denies them advertising revenue: <a class="break-all" href="https://anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">anonym.to/?www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3869182/Why-Lefties-misty-eyed-movie-romanticises-Benefits-Britain-says-TOBY-YOUNG.html

Aside from the basic errors (it's 100minutes long, not nearly 3 hours), it's just an awful article. The fact that Toby Young thinks everyone claiming benefits is a smoking/gambling/drinking loudmouth is just offensive. I'm shocked - not that it was published - but that he thinks his opinion is the opinion of everyone.

I'd love to see him survive on benefits. I wonder if he'd be saying the same things then?

bowie - I wasn't referring to you when I made the comment about 'tory cunts'

smallfox - you said

'Governments can be good at spending money, the NHS is highly.efficient for example'

The NHS may be highly efficient but IMO it doesn't provide a very good service because it is asked to do far too much.

Well maybe that is because we spend less as a % of GDP on our healthcare system than almost any other developed nation.

Oh and the fact that we've had 6 years of ideology based austerity inflicted upon it, by the fans of small government.

smallfox - it's had problems IME over the last 20 years. Don't disagree that we should spend more on the NHS

Well its gone from having a surplus to a deficit under the rule of the conservatives.

I agree tories need to know this is what they voted in

I am beyond sick of hearing 'I don't want the lazy scroungers taking money that should go to those who have a genuine reason to need it' without realising that the government they voted in are directly screwing over the most vunerable, systematicly targeting those who can't fight back. Tory voters need to be responsible for this.

PermenantLurker - most people vote on a best fit basis rather than blindly agreeing with every policy of the party they vote for. That applies across the political spectrum. Saying that "tory voters need to be responsible for this' is like saying labour voters are all responsible for the Iraq war i.e a ludicrous leap.

But that can't be only because of Labour voters, the Tories backed it too.

;)

Labour were in power ergo they were the ones responsible! It's a ludicrous point anyway, which is the point I was making!

sorry didn't see your wink

Well I don't vote labour for that exact reason, although corbyn was all for making the blairites pay so maybe I would these days.

However, the coalition brought many of these changes in with dc, so the electorate should know more from the same was to come, so yes bare responsibility.

If people dismiss the tories disablism as not that important in light of another issue then the phrase morally bankrupt comes to mind. How we treat the most vulnerable should come first. If it doesn't then pp's use of sub human comes to mind.

user1471446905

Yes but the opinion of the population is massively shaped by the media - the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Star and Express are the most read newspapers in the country, they all push the lie about benefits claimants being scroungers.

I think I, Daniel Blake is an excellent film and I think it will actually make some people wake up and see what the cuts they voted for have actually done to some people.

It's the same reason Corbyn is unpopular in the polls. Murdoch and his cronies don't like him because he isn't in bed with them, his support is grassroots. So they've decided to make their readership believe he's the antichrist because he thinks austerity is stupid and we should renationalise railways. This despite the fact that for 20 years, privatised rail travel has only got worse and polls have consistently shown the public support renationalisation.

I wish people could see that the recession was not caused by spending money on benefits or spending money at all, but by banks. Banks and bankers alone. We do not need austerity - we can spend whatever the fuck we want. We are a very rich country.

Oh what I meant was that labour voters couldn't know what would happen, where as based on how dc attacked the disabled leading the coalition voters should have known.

Bowie don't forget the channel 4 & 5 programs that add to the demonisation of anyone on benefits. To the extent that people on benefits often hate each other. Those on in work benefits hate those 'below' them & vilify 'wellfare'

bowie - i agree with a lot of your post but the idea that corbyn is unpopular because of the press is ridiculous. He is unpopular because many people don't like his ideas.

permenant - the idea that you think people who don't have the same priorities as you come election time are 'morally bankrupt' and 'subhuman' is quite alarming.

bowie - the idea that 'we can spend what the fuck we want' is rightly not that popular IME.

I think the reporting in the press goes a long way User, for example if you take the way the Mail and Sun have reported some of Corbyn's stuff then you would think he was some lefty loon.

He's popular enough to have had lots more people join the party, although I don't agree with a lot of his policies myself.

I think anyone who puts issues above their responsibility to society's most vulnerable are yes absolutely. I don't care what views anyone holds, but being ok with others human rights being eroded is vile. And as bowie points out it doesn't need to be that way as our country has more than enough for everyone

500000 people out of an electorate of approx 40million is not a lot of people. Corbyn's ideas are easy enough to access, why can't people who support him realise that his ideas are not popular on a wider basis and he is a terrible party leader. And compared with the fairly centre based politics that have dominated this country for the last 20 years odd he is a 'lefty loon', though the current tories are moving to the right in several ways it is a recent development, the last few goats have all been pretty central.

govts not goats! Though maybe goats would do a better job

User, its more than any other political party in Western Europe!

Yes - and 4 times that number of people visit the dailymail website each day! Big picture it's not membership numbers that win elections it's the electorate!

I conversely would say that if you don't like the way things are being done then leaving the country is the best thing you can do, better than staying and complaining IMO!

Erm, might I point out that this is the rhetoric of totalitarian regimes, not democratic societies.

The very best thing that those of us who diagree with the government policy of inhumanity towards the vulnerable is stay right here in the UK and work for change.

It is only in totalitarian societies where self-criticism is suppressed. The society that we should be most critical of is our own.

If we are not critical of our own society the there will be no progress!

Bowie , Donna et al. giving a hard time to Hiros: the age of feudalism has passed, everyone is free to live where they wish, and she and her DH are right to have left. Moving to another country shows initiative, a spirit of enterprise (and, often, knowledge of foreign language(s)), all of which are praiseworthy imo.

Also Bowie and Donna, I don't know where you live but it can't be the North if you think that false benefit claims and multigenerational benefit claiming drinking-smoking-drug using families are "anecdotal" and "tiny minority".

Bowie, re the obligation of having to look for work 35 hrs a week: about a year and a half ago I was on (contribution based) JSA for about 6-8 weeks (which is how long it took me to find a job after being made redundant from a public sector job). The JC advisor gave me a list of things to do, and I had to show proof that I did them on every sign-on: this was how I proved I spent 35 hours a week "looking for a job". The list had things like "look at 5 job ads every day"; "reply to messages promptly"; and the like. I did the whole list in about 2 hours a week - that is, when I did not yet have internet in my then new flat, because after that it was about one hour. So please forgive if I am not impressed by how all my time would be taken up by the obligatory JC 35-hour-looking-for-work thing, because I happen to know that it wouldn't.

Btw: my friendly JC advisor at the initial interview asked what my last job had been. I said I had been a data analyst. He asked me to spell it. He was English, I am a non-native speaker of English. Then I waited while he pecked the letters with his two forefingers. I can touch-type, taught myself using a free online course, in my free time - but my friendly JC advisor obviously did not believe in self-improvement to this extent.