To wonder why there’s so much talk on politics on mumsnet?

[Chloefairydust]

Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s important to know what’s going on in the world and I’m as angry at the government as the next woman…

But sometimes it’s nice to come on mumsnet for a bit of escapism, and the lighter hearted topics…

Am I alone here?

I think its a bit tedious when its orchestrated.

I remember a weekend at my mums (100 miles away). There was an identical conversation started on her local Facebook page, my local Next Door page and on Mumsnet. It was pretty obvious that it was today's topic issued to Labour activists and those 3 people had cut and paste the suggested text.

On Mumsnet we often have the same topic raised several times in a short space of time but Mumsnetters are generally better at re-wording today's suggested text.

That said, I think the everyday is political and we should engage. Political decisions affect us all.

Want escapism, go to amazon and download a nice romance novel.

Mumsnet is people talking about life, there’s nothing less escapist than that.

I'm surprised there is not more.

I like to talk about politics because it's hugely important and I find it interesting. I learn from reading posts by people who are better informed on certain issues than I am, and I also get insights into why some people think very differently from how I do.

If you're not interested, then there are plenty of other threads to choose from.

Its one of the things I enjoy about the site. Discussing issues anonymously with strangers from a wide variety of backgrounds is preferable to me to discussing them with friends and family, which is either just an echo chamber, or fraught with the risk of causing offence. The political discussion on here offers me different perspectives and I learn a lot.
There's plenty of lighter threads if you want them.

YANBU. I hate it

The politics threads on here have one subject. I hate the Tories. Then Clavinova appears!

But why would you hate other people talking about the things that they consider to be interesting and important? Why wouldn't you just scroll past and look at the other threads instead?

There are lots of threads on MN that I don't find at all interesting, but I don't hate the fact that other people want to talk about this stuff...I just ignore the ones that don't interest me and focus on the ones that do.

Bizarre.

I have zero interest in or knowledge about celebrity chat or style and beauty. Should I hate that other women do?

Actually I find that politics is not very represented on mn "active" topics, which seems surprising considering how in real life it feels like everyone around me is talking about this stuff recently - and how Truss has managed to piss off just about everyone, from mortgage holders, to the normally apolitical National Trust, to people who live in North London... etc. However, I've discovered that I have to use the search function on mn to find new threads, as they do seem to exist, but as they appear to get buried despite having lots of responses.

Ha then posters pile on and tell them to stop posting

Not sure it’s that a wide variety after all ;

There are loads of "But Labour" posts.🙄 However the Tory hating posts as well because they're in power, have been in power for 12 years and have destroyed the UK.

YABU @Chloefairydust. The country is a basket case and no one trusts the government, of course people are going to discuss it.

Exactly this. In my experience they are the ones who tend to not bother voting for the same reasons then have the temerity to complain about lack of public services without seeming to understand the link between government and said services. Ffs.

And it's posts like this that show a total lack of ignorance in how the NHS works.
I'm a senior manager in a regional team. Because of me, and my team, the people in this part of the world have new services to help patients to recover from a very serious illness. Those services are located close to where the patients live rather than concentrated in a major hospital.
Because of my team and our work, people in the most deprived parts of this region have improved access to these services because we went out and sought their views, engaged with the communities and introduced things to make it easier for them to get the help they needed.
Because of my team, over 2000 people are now back at work quicker than they would have been normally, over 1000 people have received the benefits that they need because they can't work anymore and 10,000 people are managing their condition better.
Because of my team 250 nurses been employed along with 400 OTs and physios, 50 operations managers and 30 administrators. They have been attracted into returning to the NHS mostly from the private sector or fixed term contracts because the jobs are good, we are offering flexible working and decent pay. That also means nearly 1000 people are contributing to our local economy.
We have also saved our local NHS trusts a significant amount of money and prevented a high number of 30d readmissions.

Try doing that without a team of managers?

I've started ignoring them. They more often than not descend into tories are evil, Tory voters are thick, leave voters were stupid etc. it's just monotonous.

A forum for mainly women.

How very dare they like to talk about politics.

They should stick to light hearted stuff they can understand.

Politics should only be discussed in the presence of men because obviously they understand things in a better way than women.

Women getting together and talking about politics where men are a minority. God know. Thats DANGEROUS. IT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.

For the hard of thinking, this is 2022. Woman wanting to talk about issues that affect them and the world is not exactly an out there concept.

If you want a light fluffy light hearted forum go make one about kittens on reddit. See how long it last before some dick comes along. And i dont necessarily mean metaphorically.

Otherwise suck it up, pick the threads you want to join in and ignore the others

HTH.

@thesurrealist Exactly my point. 1 Operations managers to every 8 staff - that is a high ratio that simply wouldn’t be the case in Social Care which has a much flatter leaner structure.

One other major point.

MN's format. It means it's anonymous, allows for in depth discussion and reduces harassment (especially against women) in a way that other social media does not accommodate. Its also less of an echo chamber because it has a broader and bigger user base.

Thats why I use it.

I don't want to use Facebook as its very closed and I've had targeted abuse and known others to have real life harassment. Twitter is restrictive in terms of debate. Reddit is too niche and full of misogyny.

Turn it on its head.

Where is better for women to talk about politics?

Why wouldnt they want to do it on MN?

@Ritasueandbobtoo9 it not social care. This is a rehab service that delivers services to an entire region. Each ops manager is responsible for populations of over half a million and have to work across primary, secondary and tertiary care as well as social care. If you think you can do better, then I'll quit and you take on my job.
My point is that people take the bollocksy headlines in the daily mail and the even bigger bollocks from politicians who have never worked in this service and comes up with crap like the post I quoted.

Really odd thread 😂

’Why do people have approaches to life which differ from mine? Why doesn’t everyone want Mumsnet to be totally light hearted, like I do?’

There’s such a broad range of topics from the intensely heavy to the delightfully light. Focus on the stuff you like OP!

This is exactly what I mean…

Some days on mumsnet chat and Aibu there are so many posts about the same things. The posts are not always as such a discussion but read more like someone trying to push their political opinions in a sort of aggressive way. Some posts are just ordinary people having a discussion but there’s definitely a clear agenda to a lot of posts to try to sway opinion. And a lot of it is very biased and I think you hit the nail on the head here with it likely being political activists using mumsnet as a place for free publicity to really push political agendas…

@thesurrealist I am a HCP manager currently working across health and social care. I notice that you didn’t pick on my point that 1:8 operational managers to operational staff is quite a high ratio by any standard.

You don't like the fact that people have string opinions on political matters, and that they voice those opinions strongly?

If people feel strongly about certain issues, then of course they will try to sway opinion. Whether they will succeed or not is an entirely different matter - I suspect very few people's minds are actually changed - but I see no harm in people trying. If you believe passionately that something needs to happen, or conversely, that something should absolutely not be happening, why wouldn't you try to bring others around to your way of thinking.

There is nothing actually wrong with having an agenda and trying to promote that agenda. It's how our democracy works.

And it isn't necessarily political activists looking for a platform either. Just ordinary MN users who happen to have strong opinions about political matters.