Most Tory freshers pretend they’re Labour

[claig]

I knew things were bad, but I never realised just how bad.
I knew we had sunk, but didn't realise to what depths.

Why has no one called for a public inquiry - judicial or otherwise?

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/9714190/Petronella-Wyatt-I-was-bullied-out-of-Oxford-for-being-a-Tory.html

[BoulevardOfBrokenSleep]

"What is the alternative?"

Crazy plans like getting companies who make profits in this country, to pay taxes in this country? That sort of thing maybe...?

[LittleTyga]

Re housing benefit - my friend lives in a cold damp one bed flat with no outside space and her LL charges her local council £500 pw for her to live there with her son.
All other flats in the area are about £200 pw but for that they are top notch luxury ones - perhaps if they looked in to LL ripping off tax payers instead of blaming HB claimants that might help reduce the HB bill?

[Autumnalis]

Claig - mischievous or mad?

[ravenAK]

I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive, but I do enjoy her posts, especially the Weeble-like adulation of the Idiot Gove.

[claig]

mischievous - yes, slightly
mad - absolutely.
Mad at injustice and lies and spin, mad at taxpayer subsidies to rich landowners for inefficient windfarms while people are having their benefits cut, mad at green subsidies that are pushing up energy prices for struggling people in a time of austerity.

[claig]

ravenAK, did you not see how Gove dealt with the Labour benches at Education Questions. It was akin to a cat toying with mice, it was like Jerry outwitting Tom, it was like a colossus compared to an ant - the calm, assured way that Gove swatted off the nuisance of the Labour rants.

[ttosca]

Cozy9

Lowering housing benefit will hit thousands of people, but it has to be done. What is the alternative?

Build more houses and put in rent controls, so that there isn't a chronic shortage of houses, and landlords aren't allowed to get away with extortionate rents?

Thousands of disabled people died every year before ATOS even existed.

This is disingenuous. More disabled people are dying after being told they were 'fit for work' than those who were not or those expected to die generally. That is to say, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people dying prematurely as a result of Atos assessments.

You can read some Atos victims stories here:

atosvictimsgroup.co.uk/category/personal-stories/

Or just Google Atos stories.

Not giving people money isn't "stealing" from them!

When disabled and vulnerable people rely on state support to survive and are denied this support, you should probably call it murder.

The level of entitlement we have in this country is ridiculous, and is not what the welfare state was intended to do.

Put down the copy of the Daily Mail and investigate the facts for yourselves. Welfare provision in the UK is not especially generous. It is in the mid range of the EU. The largest cost of welfare spending in the UK is not DLA or JSA, but pensions.

The level of fraud, according to the DWPs own figures, for benefits claims is consistently below 5%. The highest level is Jobseekers Allowance, which is just below 5%. For Disability Living Allowance this figure is less than 1%.

What's happening is that the Tory scum are making the poorest and most vulnerable pay for the financial crisis - in some cases, they are paying for it with their lives.

If we had kept going the way we were under Labour, eventually we'd have disaster and a bankrupt state.

Well, we wouldn't because the deficit and debt prior to the financial crisis were not especially high.

Here is a chart of the UK national debt as measure by percentage of GDP (i.e. ability to pay back) from 1900 to 2008:

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/spending_chart_1900_2008UKp_12c1li011mcn_G0t

I purposely stopped the chart at 2008, when the financial crisis hit. Examine the figures for debt and deficit yourself.

[FellatioBellsOn]

LittleTyga 500 per week? When all the other, much nice flats are 200 per week? Are you sure? Where is this?

[ChristmasFayrePhyllis]

"In 2011 the Oxford Student newspaper was leaked video footage of an OCA member singing the first line of a song glorifying the Nazi Party in the Corpus Christi JCR following an OCA meeting at The Oxford Union.

The alleged incidents occurred in 2010. Current and former members of the association have strongly criticised all racism, with some members resigning, and the university launched an investigation into the society as a result of the reports.

The Dean of Corpus Christi has subsequently banned all OCA events at the college, indefinitely. "

Source = Wikipedia, so you know it's gold wink

So that's why the Corpus Conservatives feel their rights are being imposed upon.

Corpus is also my college - all the alumni got an email from the college the day or the day after this was in the news. I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was clear college were pretty disgusted and I think it is true that OUCA were banned from holding events in college. Not that it will make any difference to most people, but I think it was an MCR member who held the party, so not a regular undergrad (unless a 4th year).

Corpus was pretty politically apathetic when I was there - there were certainly people who voted Tory, but I don't think anyone was active in OUCA. Part of the problem for Tories in Oxford is that OUCA (or OCA, as it now is because the University won't let it use its name) is basically a drinking society for people who want to pretend they are living in some sort of Edwardian fantasy land. It's not like it used to be back when it was a training ground for future Conservative leaders in the 50s and 60s. I was actually very relieved during the last leadership contest to see that Cameron hadn't actually been a member when he was at Oxford.

So unless you are prepared to take on the loons in OUCA, there's actually no place in Oxford to be involved with Tory activism, unlike OULC or OULD. So Tories just aren't very visible unless they are OUCA loons, in which case they deserve everything they get.

But it's not clear what actually happened: to be honest the proposal of a Tory equal ops post just sounds like a joke JCR motion to me.

[nameuschangeus]

It's not only the posh universities where this is true. The labour club where I work (untrendy northern uni) are quite spiteful and vociferous. I can't think of any students who admit to voting Tory outwardly to other students but in conversation it's clear many of them do but are too frightened of, at best, people taking the piss out if them.

And for all you people saying 'its their own fault' or similar try replacing the word Tory with black or female or gay and see how your argument comes across then.

[StNickHasHisXmasTeakozyOn]

:o:o:o You can't choose to be gay, female or black; you can choose to be a Tory. Which means the poor, disabled and the women you clearly despise are right to rip the piss out of you.

[nameuschangeus]

You miss my point. It's not about how you are referring to, it's about the way YOU are talking about another group of people, and it's horrible. No wonder freshers feel bullied.

[StNickHasHisXmasTeakozyOn]

So by your analogy it's not ok for Iain & Duncan Smith to refer to disabled and other benefit claimants as scroungers. 'Cos they and the rest of their nasty bunch of cunts do that on a daily basis. Cuts to the welfare and housing benefits are going to cost more in the long run.

[nameuschangeus]

I don't think I did say it was ok. My point is that ime students do lie as the labour group are very vociferous. I think you've proved me right.

[claig]

Very good, balanced, reasoned posts nameuschangeus

'the labour group are very vociferous'

Remember that wise Tory saying: 'it is an empty vessel that makes most noise'

Bear that in mind when you listen to the Labour benches replying to Osborne's Autumn Statement later today!

[BoulevardOfBrokenSleep]

Phyllis - I'd suggest that the Oxford Union is the natural home of Tories maybe? Not exactly political, but similar...style.

[ChristmasFayrePhyllis]

What do you mean by 'similar ... style'?

All my experiences of the Union suggested to me that it was a nasty pit of vipers: people stabbing each other in the back, clawing their way to the top. Most normal students despised the 'hacks' there. I wouldn't vote for anyone who'd come up through that system.

I stand by my point that there is nowhere in Oxford for ordinary Conservatives to talk sensibly about Tory policy. This means that normal students who vote Tory but don't want to get mixed up in OUCA lunacy don't have an outlet for activism in the way that OULC etc do. So that means that the only Tories who are really visible at Oxford are OUCA types, who are an embarrassment to the national party and don't represent most Tory voters.

People then assume that all Tories are like OUCA and attack anyone who votes Conservative without bothering to find out what they actually think on any given issue.

[GrrrArghZzzzYaayforall8nights]

MoreBeta - Romney's quote had nothing to do with government welfare/getting money from the government.

The 47% are the number of people whose incomes are so low that they have no federal income tax obligation as they are under the personal allowance given by federal tax laws. They all still pay local tax, state tax, petrol tax, vice taxes if applicable, sales tax, and so on.

Not all of these will be getting social security benefits (though a good number of those are pensioners), most get no government aid and for those that do the numbers are ridiculous (welfare in some areas is as little as $3 per person per day).

The fact that 47% of Americans aren't earning a living wage to the point the IRS thinks it's not proper to take their money shows a lot about the problems with the people running the businesses in America not with those on low wages.

[ttosca]

You miss my point. It's not about how you are referring to, it's about the way YOU are talking about another group of people, and it's horrible. No wonder freshers feel bullied.

As already pointed out, you choose to be a Tory, you don't choose to be female or black.

Secondly, being female or black doesn't imply you're a sociopath. Being a Tory does.

If we can't criticise people based on their behaviour, then on what basis can we criticise them?

[Cozy9]

All Tories are sociopaths? Please. Most of us are kind, hard-working people.

[ttosca]

You're not kind if you support economic policies which kill disabled people, increase child poverty, increase homelessness, and (according to 'HM' Treasury statistics www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/as2012_distributional_analysis_impact_on_households%281%29.pdf) enact regressive budgets which take even more money from the lowest 50% of households to pay off for the financial crisis caused by the richest.

[Cozy9]

There's nothing "kind" about making people reliant on benefits. Eventually they won't be there anymore and people won't know how to support themselves.

[ttosca]

There's nothing "kind" about making people reliant on benefits. Eventually they won't be there anymore and people won't know how to support themselves.

Oh right. More Tory bullshit about 'being kind' by removing benefits from people and making them destitute or killing them. Right.

In actual fact, there are more unemployed than their are jobs. Removing welfare in the midst of a recession as an attempt to 'motivate' people to work is like kicking someone out of a hospital in order to 'motivate' them to cure themselves of a disease.

Stop trying to dress up nastiness as 'kindness'. Nobody believes it. The majority of people receiving welfare are either honestly looking for work when there is none, or are disabled/ill and cannot work.

Furthermore, a large part of the welfare bill goes to subsidising companies which are too greedy to even pay their employees a proper wage, so that families require state subsidies to survive.

This is just more of the same from the Tory party: nastiness, hatred, and contempt for the poor.

[Cozy9]

Neither of us are going to change each other's mind, are we?

[ChristmasFayrePhyllis]

All Tories are sociopaths? You seriously think over a third of the population are sociopaths?

I'm afraid that is the point at which it becomes impossible to have a reasonable conversation.