Mumsnet: An echo chamber for the leftist chatterati?

[Cam2020]

Just that really-what do people think?

@RufustheLanglovingreindeer Really? Try reading any of the covid threads and see how many silly "I don't think anyone who voted Tory should be allowed to use the NHS comments" you can find and how quickly they are backed up.

Less than 50% of NHS employees vote Labour and therefore would not be able to use the service they work at. The NHS is funded by income tax and the top 5% of earners are expected to contribute 50% of income tax receipts this year, most of those will vote conservative. If they aren't allowed to use the services they pay for then they cannot be expected to be charged the tax. Try funding the NHS with only half the tax receipts and see how that goes.

I think it’s quite mixed - I’m quite left-leaning and sometimes come on MN to get a feel for the more general picture. I’m not sure it is that left leaning. Parts of MN are quite well educated, and plenty of posters work in higher education, which tends to be quite lefty, but still I think I’d class it more as being woman-and-family centric than left. I think it’s just that most of the policy that makes life better for women tends to be left, or tends to be EU-driven. I appreciate that this is a huge generalisation though

Where does that statistic on voting amongst NHS staff come from? I haven’t seen any suggestion anywhere that Tory voters shouldn’t use the NHS.

I think MN is pretty centrist overall. You know who’s consistently on the left and most of us can name the most vocal right wingers. There are some posters who never have a good word to say about the NHS too, I could also name those and roll my eyes when I see they’ve posted.

@MadameMarie

I don't think the forum is representative. Country overwhelmingly voted Conservative but far from the case on here.

No it didn't. Nowhere close.

The Conservatives got 43.6% of votes cast at the last GE. Left of centre parties got over 50% of the vote. Thus, a board that was demographically representative of the UK electorate who voted, which MN isn't bearing in mind it's mainly female and there aren't that many pensioners here, would be left leaning.

@BlackberryCane

But even then a low percentage of posters here vote Conservative compared to the nearly 44% of the UK (higher in England). Look at a political map of England, it's mostly a sea of blue. Most MN users will presumably reside in a Conservative constituency.

The site has been out of touch with public opinion. Brexit is another example. Did 52% of MN users vote for Brexit?

I say this as someone who didn't vote for Brexit or Boris.

The political map of England is a sea of blue because of the first past the post system. My vote is completely wasted in a general election because this is a very safe Tory seat. The local MP got less than half the vote because the rest was split.

Mumsnet is now the UK's biggest network for parents, with around 10 million unique visitors per month clocking up around 100 million page views - a mumsnet page from google

I would guess that we have many posters who aren't mums, aren't female and aren't in the UK.
Sadly due to the numbers many threads imv get taken over very quickly by the angry brigade who could be anyone from anywhere.
There are fewer interesting debates as a result. But it is a victim of its own success.

@Alsohuman

I agree with that but when there was a referendum on voting reform 'No' was the biggest landslide you'll ever get in a vote.

You get younger and older people on MN, the average is probably somewhere in the 40s which in an election is a more 50/50 Labour/Tory split. So there is still a huge split from the wider public on this forum.

[quote MadameMarie]@BlackberryCane

But even then a low percentage of posters here vote Conservative compared to the nearly 44% of the UK (higher in England). Look at a political map of England, it's mostly a sea of blue. Most MN users will presumably reside in a Conservative constituency.

The site has been out of touch with public opinion. Brexit is another example. Did 52% of MN users vote for Brexit?

I say this as someone who didn't vote for Brexit or Boris.[/quote]
Well for a start, you're using the wrong figures here because you're leaving out non-voters. Who are also on MN. In the 2019 GE, the Tories got 43.4% of a two thirds turnout, so the percentage of adults in the UK who had a vote and cast it for them is about 30%. The turnout for the Brexit referendum was 72%, and 52% of that is about 36%.

So if 43.6% of MNers had voted Tory in 2019 and 52% had voted Brexit in 2016, actually that would be very unrepresentative in itself. This also excludes adults living in the UK who don't have a vote, and they too post on MN.

There's also the fact that age is one of the major cleavages in British politics now, and has been for the last few years. The older you are, the more likely you are to be a Conservative and Brexit voter (and to vote at all). MN is primarily populated by women of childbearing age and thus of course isn't representative of a population that gets more right leaning as it gets older. It's bemusing that anyone might think it would be. That would be like going onto a pensioner site the day after the 2017 GE and commenting that they didn't go a very good job representing the Labour surge. It would be like, no kidding, for your next insight will you point out that readers of Vice place a lower priority on pensions than do British voters as a whole?

@BlackberryCane

It'd depend on the average (mean) age of posters here. If it was 20 or 30 something then yeah to be fair you're not going to get many Tories because as you say politics is quite noticeably split by age now. Even in the 80s Thatcher won a majority of young voters and in the 90s I think Blair even won a majority of older voters.

Once into the 40s though that's where it evens up, I think it's more 50/50 around 40 and then nearer 50 upwards becomes a lot more majority Tory (Brexit/Remain worked along the same age lines in terms of majority). I'd have thought the average age here would be somewhere around 40 but could be wrong.

This has a really interesting breakdown of demographic factors for voters in the 2019 GE if anyone's interested.

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

Not non-voters though unfortunately. And there were more of them than there were voters for any one political party!

[quote MadameMarie]@BlackberryCane

It'd depend on the average (mean) age of posters here. If it was 20 or 30 something then yeah to be fair you're not going to get many Tories because as you say politics is quite noticeably split by age now. Even in the 80s Thatcher won a majority of young voters and in the 90s I think Blair even won a majority of older voters.

Once into the 40s though that's where it evens up, I think it's more 50/50 around 40 and then nearer 50 upwards becomes a lot more majority Tory (Brexit/Remain worked along the same age lines in terms of majority). I'd have thought the average age here would be somewhere around 40 but could be wrong.[/quote]
I think the spread here is about late 20s to early 40s primarily isn't it? There was something about this the other week in one of the discussions about advertisers but I can't seem to find it. I've never seen anything breaking it down any further than that. Anecdotally we don't seem to see that many in their early 20s. It's also obviously mostly women here, and women being less Tory than men is more pronounced in younger groups.

But again, it's not 50/50 of those in their early 40s, it's 50/50 of those who have the right to vote and chose to exercise it. There were millions of EU nationals in the UK who mostly didn't have the right to vote in the referendum, for example, and some of them certainly had a great deal to say about that on here. But we wouldn't see that looking at turnout figures.

Look at a political map of England, it's mostly a sea of blue

That's because of the larger rural counties are Conservative - so it creates a false impression

You need a hexagonal map.

@RufustheLanglovingreindeer

And I do find many AIBU posters are very left leaning and will pile in to applaud "kill the pig/Tory" type comments Lreally?

I honestly dont think ive seen this...at all

Have you never been on Brexit threads? Remainers certainly pile in on anyone who supports leave, secure in the knowledge that they’ll have the support of all the other regular posters.

Sorry I can't work out on my phone how to start new thread but I want to know why HSBC don't have branches open at weekend, like Barclays. I have an old phone and can't use the 'scan your cheque from home' facility/it won't work with my phone. I'm saving money/spending less because I'm out of work and not on benefits (husband earns too much). Anyway, I would move money/accounts to Barclays but HSBC have proved to be better/more reliable at dealing with fraud scams....

Remainers certainly pile in on anyone who supports leave, secure in the knowledge that they’ll have the support of all the other regular posters

Including those posters who support Leave - because there are Leavers on here as well. I know because I've seen them on threads.

When does a debate become a pile on? Is there a certain number of posters for it to become a pile on?

I did enjoy OP's comment about the gender pay gap.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3922505-Pay-gap-AIBU-to-have-hope?msgid=96964624

Have you never been on Brexit threads?

I have

Ive seen people who say they voted leave/remain give their opinions and sometimes they can be very mean...wouldn’t argue with that at all

But never have i seen ‘kill the pig/tory’ comments

When does a debate become a pile on? Is there a certain number of posters for it to become a pile on?

I’ve often wondered about this

I’ve often wondered about this

There's got to be a ratio.

1:5?
2:9?

chom

Its only ever a pile on Because people who agree with the pilee (is that right) arent posting to say that they agree

So it looks one sided

When does a debate become a pile on? Is there a certain number of posters for it to become a pile on?

I’ve often wondered about this

Surely it's when hundreds of posters post who are saying much the same thing - I presume to prove how RIGHT their views are in contrast to the original. It is a shame as it stops debate. You can't debate something if for every one view, there are two pages of replies saying the opposite over and over and over, all of whom have only read the first couple of posts on the thread.

A ''pile on'' is unfair criticism made by a lot of people. Lots of people posting nasty comments in response to an actual attempt at debate is a pile on.
Lots of people disagreeing is not a pile on.
Making faux naif comments to be goady is not a debate.

Yep, but it’s quite hilarious at times watching them fall over themselves attempting to be so woke and embrace diversity they circle like a pack of bullying hyenas shouting down anyone’s different opinions, usually calling them bigots with absolutely no sense of irony at all. They are easy to spot by their repeated bleating of cliched sound bites, trying to pass them off as original, educated thought.

It almost seems the default position of those devoid of critical thinking abilities to have this MO.

Happily awaiting the predictable, of slightly disappointing responses.

Which they are you referring to there @Lifeisgenerallyfun?