Westministenders: Theresa's Common People

[RedToothBrush]

She came from Oxfordshire she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied geography at Saint Hugh's College
That's where politics
Caught her eye

She told them that her husband was loaded
The press barons said "In that case have a rum and coca-cola"
She said "Fine"
And in thirty seconds time she said

I want to look like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to eat like common people
I want to sleep like common people
Like you

Well what else could Fiona and Nick do
They said "We'll see what we can do"

They took her to a supermarket
I don't know why
But they had to start it somewhere
So it started there
They said pretend you've got no money
She just laughed and said
"Oh you're so funny"
They smiled "Yeah”
Well we can't see anyone else smiling in here

Are you sure you want to live like common people
You want to see whatever common people see
You want to eat like common people
You want to sleep like common people
Like me

But she didn't understand
She just smiled and held Trump’s hand

Order that benefits get the chop
Tell them all to get a job
Promise to bring back the grammar school
Pretend you don’t think them a fool
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching the news talking about building the wall
All have to do is call your mates to fake it all

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
Whilst you blame it all on the EU
Because that’s all you can do

Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get Brexit through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh about leaving the EU

It’s the most stupid thing that you will do
Because you think that it is cool
You’ll call them a ‘lying foreigner’
But don’t say we didn’t warn you
You’ll regret saying we are better off out
'Cause everybody hates a benefits tourist

It doesn’t matter if you can’t do the math
With all those pockets that you grease
You’ll win the vote in Bath

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And wish they were all white
So you tell ‘The Big Lie’

Get THE flat above THE shop
Cut your hair and get THE job
Trick some mugs and hire some fool
Pretend you are not really cruel
But still you'll never get it right
Instead you're plotting late at night
About which ‘cockroach’ will take the fall
All have to do is call your mates to fake it all
Yeah

You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
As we plan to leave the EU
Because there's nothing else left to do

But ‘moan’ about how we don’t want to leave the EU.

Ds keeps asking why the at least 68 children killed last month in a bus by a suicide bomber near Aleppo were not remembered with a minute's silence. Or why all the civilians that have been killed in the Syrian conflict as "collateral damage" www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-40037169 don't get the same respect. Why isn't there the same outrage at that? Apart from saying to him that two wrongs don't make it right and they weren't deliberately targetted (but is "collateral damage" any better ?), I'm really not sure what to say to him.

I know it's closer to home when it is somewhere that we can all identify that "there but for the grace of go we", which is why we are moved by it, but it does come perilously close to "we care more about Western children" - or, perhaps more fairly, "those events are so far away from our own lives, we can't imagine how dreadful it must be for those people so it is easier not to"

I know that there are lots of people that do care, but there is not the same media frenzy. Sometimes I think that our media are like piranhas, who go into a frenzy when there is bad news that they can get their teeth into pun intended

Red linked to a twitter thread by @DrEm_65 yesterday, who talked about how the media made her involvement in a terrorist incident much more harrowing and actually cut her off from being able to access support at a time when she needed her friends and family. SImilar incidents are already occurring with survivors and relatives of the Manchester bombing. There is a degree of voyeurism in our ongoing interest in the names of the victims and the details of their lives (and I'm guilty of it too )

If our country was in the grip of a civil war, or any sort of active conflict, then I would expect there to be minimal reaction to deaths tbh.

Britain is not in any way comparable to the current situation in Syria; death, destruction & terrorism is extremely rare here.
That's why it is more widely reported and discussed.

And it is one of the reasons why we are seen as targets by fundamentalists.

"One of the reasons" is a pretty crucial caveat, isn't it? Is there any reason to think we would be safe if we withdrew from all military involvement outside our borders? France publicly refused to participate in the Iraq War - is it safe? Sweden had nothing to do with Iraq and Syria, preferring to become a "humanitarian superpower" - is it safe?

It's not just the right that has a simplistic view of the world.

It's not being discussed in the same way because the press don't want us to feel that we have any responsibility

I appreciate Sting is a divisive figure, but ..

...
It's a subject we rarely mention,
but when we do we have a little convention,
that by pretending they're a different world from me
I shelve my responsibility
...

("One World", Synchronicity by The Police - 1983)

And Belgium, which you just mentioned - what exactly has their foreign policy done wrong?

Back to Brexit for a moment. An article on Kent the Giant Lorry Park
www.kentnews.co.uk/news/brexit-uncertainty-means-plans-for-operation-stack-lorry-park-should-push-on-at-pace-warns-kcc-transport-chief-1-5034727

"Plans for a lorry park to ease the problems caused by Operation Stack should “push on at pace” due to uncertainty over Brexit, according to Kent County Council’s transport chief.

The government first announced in 2015 it was to pledge £250m to build a holding area “the size of Disneyland” for lorries after the county was blighted by gridlock two years ago.

It earmarked the village of Stanford, near Folkestone, just off the M20 as the ideal location for the park, but campaigners have vehemently opposed the move and launched a judicial review against the decision.

However, that hearing has now been pushed back until later this year following Theresa May’s announcement of a snap general election on June 8, meaning progress on the project has stalled in recent months.

While Stack hasn’t been in operation since the lorry park was first proposed, the prospect of a changing relationship with France under newly-elected president Emmanuel Macron, as well as the need for Britain to negotiate free trade agreements with the European Union after Brexit, has sparked concern among many that there could be delays on a regular basis at Kent’s ports.

Addressing colleagues at the first full council meeting since the local elections on May 4, cabinet member for transport, Matthew Balfour, said: “KCC working with Shepway District Council continues to urge the Department for Transport and Highways England to work at pace to deliver a solution to Operation Stack.

“I understand that Highways England have suspended all work until the outcome of the judicial review - into the lawfulness of the decision of the secretary of state for the new lorry area to be created near Stanford to ease issues caused by Operation Stack - is resolved.

“The hearing was scheduled for June 27 this year however the DfT has advised that the judicial review has been adjourned at the request of the department and the claimant.

“The department’s reasoning for the adjournment request is to allow the new administration following the general election to have time to take a view and the June 27 hearing date left very little practical time for the government to do this.

“I am not aware that a revised hearing date has been set yet, but the department has advised that it will not be before October.”

Elham Valley councillor Susan Carey suggested that the newly-elected Kent County Council should “also be given the time to consider the need for this scheme, because it has been nearly two years without Operation Stack”.

In response, Cllr Balfour said: “It’s fair to say there were a number of years previously when there were similar calm times.

“We’re going into a period of some doubt as to our relationship with the continent and I have no guarantees that we’re not going to have problems with HGVs backing up across our roads again, so I think we should push on at pace – if such a thing exists in Highways England - and that we should continue with this proposal.”"

Agree with LH and pretty

The reality is that Syria etc.. is far away, they are seen as 'not as important'.
Yes there is a war there but does it mean it's ok to see children as 'collateral damage'??? Does it mean that suicide bombers are dog less damage, thatbtendeath of those people are not as important or that the effect on their families will be less??
There is something to say about the fact we should be respecting all lives the same way. And to consider the loss of a life from a terrorist just as harrowing in Syria or Irak as over here.

There is a section of our community who do relate to those children killed in Syria. Even moderate Muslims who are liberal and thoughtful and a million miles from being radicalised extremists find what is happening to innocent civilians in Syria and the wider Middle East horrifying. I have had many conversations with moderate liberal Muslims who present a convincing argument that both in the Middle East and the UK, especially since Brexit, the Muslim world is on the receiving end of a bad deal from the west in general and the UK and their wider local communities in particular. A situation that has deteriorated steadily since the Iraq war. However it is hard to raise those arguments outside academic circles because people simply do not want to understand that perspective, or willfully misrepresent it.

Well, if we have to talk Brexit ..

Interesting story about the EU going all French market intervention, requiring streaming companies to carry (presumably a minimum) 30% EU content.

I have to admit (and I hope no one would question my pro-EU credentials) it's nonsense like this which does give some support to some of the leave arguments.

Something a non-EU UK can happily ignore (looks forwards to S5 of House of Cards ...)

Motheroffourdragons

From your own link:

Belgium is to extend airstrikes against the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) from Iraq into Syria, the government said Friday.

“In accordance with UN Resolution 2249, the engagement will be limited to those areas of Syria under the control of IS and other terrorist groups,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Charles Michel said after a cabinet meeting, AFP reported.

The decision comes in the wake of twin attacks in Brussels , claimed by ISIS, on March 22 that killed 32 people and injured more than 300.

I can't see a damned thing wrong with Belgium's actions.

It would be ironic if Kent, having voted "overwhelmingly" for Leave at least, more overwhelmingly than the UK as a whole, at 59:41, then has to bear the brunt of the consequences of a hard Brexit with no single market.

I wonder what Stanford voted?

We have all contributed to wars in that region

Do you really believe that? Because I haven't contributed a single thing to it. Unless of course you mean that simply being citizens of the West automatically makes us "contributors".

It would be ironic if Kent, having voted "overwhelmingly" for Leave

It would be even more ironic if all the Remainers went out of their way to thank the residents of Kent for putting the needs of the country as a whole ahead of their own selfish interests in a fantastic example of the wartime spirit Leavers often suggest they are channeling

What about Germany then? They have opened their doors to hundreds of thousands Muslim refugees, but that didn't stop the Berlin attack.

I am very much against military intervention in the middle East, but I don't think that we can link it directly to home-grown terrorism.

The reasons for radicalisation are probably more complex and have a lot to do, like others have said, to alienation and the eternal allure of life as a rebel.

Do you really believe that? Because I haven't contributed a single thing to it. Unless of course you mean that simply being citizens of the West automatically makes us "contributors"

WTF do you think your taxes go ? It's not all on benefit scroungers and cheats you know.

I think the "we" that Motheroffourdragons is referring to is "we in the West" as in the countries of the West (as opposed to the Middle East) - but I do to want to put words into her mouth.

The many millions who marched against the war in Iraq feared exactly this as a consequence. I was one of them - as was dh, as were my parents.

I was discussing this with dh last night and blaming it on Bush (senior) for not "finishing" the first Iraq War. He said no, it goes back further than that - beyond (but including) the time when the West was supporting and arming Hussein, when the US was supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan to the post WW2 period when the Middle East was carved up with artificial borders. Look at the straight lines on a map. They are not the contours of countries that have evolved.

I am not a student of the history of Middle East so can't comment much beyond that. But I do remember my Economics professor (who was also a highly respected negotiator) at Uni saying that the next wars would be in the Middle East over oil. This was in 1983 - so long before the first Iraq War. **

WTF do you think your taxes go ? It's not all on benefit scroungers and cheats you know.

Aah, I see what you did there...
Because someone doesn't buy in to the prescribed thought on some issues, they must be the sort who make shitty comments about people on benefits.

Well played, LH, well played.

WTF do you think your taxes go?

So paying my taxes - which are taken from me under penalty of law, remember - has made me a "contributor" to violence in the Middle East? That's some pretty attenuated moral causality there, almost homeopathic in its diluteness.