David Cameron: It is your fault if you are fat and poor.

[FairyMum]

Has anyone commented on the David Cameron-speech on moral neutrality? He is a price-dick, isn't he?

I bet you have a real understanding of poverty Callisto, there in the slums of the Cotswolds, I bet that's where you learned such empathy and compassion.

"If we can say that all social problems are the individual's fault and nothing to do with the state/culture or society as a whole then what is the point in the welfare system, education system and NHS etc etc?
"

i don't think anyone has tried to say that. even in the article linked DC acknowledges all the factors which can play a role in determining ones destiny,so despite what the thread title might lead you to believe it really has very little to do with the article linked and was deliberately inflammatory IMO.
no where does DC attack those who are in crisis due to circumstances out of their control or say the individual is completely responsible.
what he is attacking is those who are in a position to exert some control over their lives to improve them but don't and then blame everyone else but themselves instead of taking responsibility for the decisions they did make.

Yes, and he is being deliberatly very vague and covering all avenues. We can all pick and choose who in the population we think he is talking about. The trouble with DC is that everyone can agree with him. His speeches are so open to interpretation. Some people will choose to believe that he is talking about really lazy people who just don't want to work, and some people will jump at the chance that he is making it legitimate to "call a spade a space" ie. a poor person a lazy fat person. I predict little speeches like this from DC and the Tory party in the next few months. They are testing the water. The whole marriage thing too. He is sneaking his moral judgements in the back door.

Are poor people really in a position to exert control over their lives HermanMunster? Didn't DC include them in his little speech? Maybe I'm wrong

Well, I've written it once I'll write it again: I don't give a flying fuck what his background is. The man can't help whom he was born to anymore than anyone else. But all that priviledge didn't give him the perspective to at least see what reality is for most pepole now in this country and have the balls to stand up and point that out in plain English then I'm not interested.

And yes, people will say, 'Well, he's trying to win the election.'

Don't you think for just one minute that the hoi polloi are fed up to the back teeth of bullshit and spin?

Don't you or anyone else think the public are a little more deserving than politicians who think they're too damn stupid not to realise the old 'Do as I say and not as I do' song and dance or someone who at least doesn't treat them as if they are sheep who need a dog to herd them and not a fecking leader?

Dp and i had a chat about this at dinner. I hate it because dp is always right about things. He said that DC was right, in most cases it is peoples fault they are poor. The way he puts it across though is better than DC because he demonstrates his comments with facts.

Dp said people don't live up to their full potential which is a better way of putting it than 'it's your fault your poor.' I agree with him about people not trying enough to live to their full potential. There are so many people who could do great things with their lives but don't. I don't mean by going to uni or anything but more using what they have to succeed better.

Dp put more of a positive spin on things rather than just saying people are fat, lazy and poor.

Yeah right, your dp is so very clever. It's their fault they are poor because they are just not trying hard enough... I think you'll find lots of poor people are working very bloody hard to survive and can do without being patronised by people who are better off and assume somehow that makes them superior.

If your dp lost his job tomorrow, say because of the credit crunch, would that make you bad people? Or just unfortunate?

Glad he's said it, as I don't like the way he is creeping up in popularity, perhaps people will think more carefully about his policies now.

After spending years trying to help people improve theur standard of living, there are plenty of people who are self motivated to improve life for themselves and their children. There are also plenty of people who just don;t want ot change and aren't thinking about what will happen to their kids when they are grown and alone in th big wide world. Some people just don't want to change their lifestyle, for those that do, this country does give the chances and opportunites.

"But social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make."

Often is the telling word - he doesn't think he's talking about a minority. He thinks most people don't try hard enough to be like him and his friends.

I don't care what DC's background is. I do care about who his friends are, who he mixes with regularly, who he listens to. I'm afraid I don't see any sign that he has anything but contempt for most people, which he tries to conceal under a superficial charm.

Full speech is here btw. Most of it is carefully written, but they slipped up a bit and let that underlying contempt show throu.

www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=145626&speeches=1

What a clever dp, Nappies! What a virtuoso of logic and reason!

Wow, you know, I hope my children never live up to the potential of ever taking up with such a narrow-minded, simple fool like that!

"Glad he's said it, as I don't like the way he is creeping up in popularity, perhaps people will think more carefully about his policies now."

blackrock, i heard on the radio the other day that if maggie thatcher ran for pm tomorrow she would get more votes than gb, dc and nc put together, maybe he heard that too, hence the speach!

Honestly, NG, you can't possibly think such a simply-constructed attitude as he's got is anything clever.

Seriously?

edam, he didn't say it in a patronising way at all. In my eyes, i kind of admire my dp because everything he has now is because he went the extra mile and tried harder.

He bought a house 10 years ago, he litrally scraped everything he had together to raise a deposite and the house he bought was a complete shit hole and i meant a shit hole. The people he bought off had every animal going, the place was covered in fleas and dirt and mould, seriously. The garden was a small jungle. When he moved in he no money what so ever.

He did the house up slowly by saving any money he could and that ment he never went out at night socially, didn't get takeaways, he had 4 channels on his telly to watch, no mobile etc. He basically wanted to do his house up so bad that he lived basic working 12 hours a day. The house today is unreconisable (sp?), he has done himself very proud.

So my dp knows what it's like to be poor and have no money and scrape by. He wasn't born into money, everything he has is down to his own hard work and he still works 12 hours everyday now. So i feel he can say that people don't always go to their full potential because he living proof of someone who has.

I was privately educated, went to Oxford, graduated, married a long term boyfriend who was also privately educated but then dropped out of university and got given a leg up by his brother working for an oil firm into a very nice salary. I started teaching (on a top graduate recruitment scheme) and we bought a 4 bedroom house in Surrey using DH's salary and £10,000 from PILs. Then I got pregnant by mistake and decided to give up work to have the baby.

Around the same time, a 15 year boy in my class who lived in a squat and was the primary carer for his heroin addict mother got his 14 year old girlfriend pregnant with almost exactly the same due date. He really wanted to pass his GCSEs to go to college but ended up missing the exam. He probably wouldn't have passed because he had very low literacy levels owing to a lack of consistent education. He accepted his fatherly responsibilty and was really excited about looking after his girlfriend and child.

Now, can you honestly say that those two Sept 06 babies have anything like the same chances in life? If they came to compete for a job who is probably going to win? What about that student rejected from Imperial?

Society will always be unequal and I don't know what to do about that but I think it's unrealistic to suggest that a better attitude will help in most situations.

FWIW I'm a size 16, clinically obese and pregnant. I had my GTT last week on the NHS.

but Nappy, surely he can see that just because someone isn't what is termed as financially successful it may not be because he/she didn't try hard enough?

I don't know. I mean different people have different ideas about what is/is not classed as financially successful?

Being poor isn't someone who can scrape together the money for a deposit in my opinion. Being poor is barely being able to scrape enough money to buy sanitary towels, or toilet roll or food. Being poor is walking down the street and praying that someone will drop a pound so you can get somehting to eat. Trust me, I have been that poor. I am not that poor now but not because I am trying any harder than anybody else. I see people around me everyday furiously striving to keep their families afloat. I am no better than them.

Trebuchet, you have described my mother 20 years ago.

ng that is so over simplistic!

people don't reach their full potential for so many reasons- here's an example as you seem to like case studies so much (read up on validity of qualitative and quantative studies).

Me: good potential asked to stand as Councillor a year ago, bright enough. Job: none. Why?

registered carer.

Hope to change that in future but just will not be easy.

DH: had his first computer program published at @ 13; straight a's at college- mother woyuldnt help with cash and insisted on extortionate rent so the full time course and full time job she insisted on sent him into a nervous breakdown. Had a relapse ten years laer that lost us our house.

Not that I measure success in terms of cash. I measure success as the fact that every day I get up and thank thew Lord formy boys and my dh, and for the chance of a new day. The rest is just window dressing.

True. I think a lot of poor people work just as hard as a lot of wealthy people with not much to show for it. I know that my cleaning-lady works more hours a day than I do and I have no idea how much less than me she earns. She lives in a bedsit with her DD.

What is classed as 'poor' anyway? It's not a nice term to use.

I think Peachy touches on something important. It has also got to do with confidence and inner resources. You can just look at the depression-threads on MN to see how crippling even a small depression can be to someone's life.

And regarding carers. DC voted against giving carers the right to request flexible working (as well as parents with young children). His track record in helping people to help themselves is not brilliant. I constantly hear let's give him a chance to prove himself and be in charge, but you can already tell what he will be like by looking at how he has voted in parliament. shudder

He's just a bully, bigging himself up to his mates when he knows the weak ones cannot stand up to him and he doesn't care about them anyway, i.e the underclass that don't vote. I'm that anyone fell for it.

FairyMum i totally agree about the depression.

NG, the point is, society as DC wants it NEEDS poor people. It needs them to care for you when you are old and maybe live in a home, it needs them to be TAs for our kids at school, it needs them to clean our hotels for tourists and clean our streets and all the near-invisible, undervalued, underpaid work that makes civilised possible for the likes of Cameron. He sings the praises of the NHS for looking after his son. It is almost certain that the person who cleans under his son's bed is poor. That the person who launders his son's hospital sheets is poor. The idea that simply being poor is a 'fault' a near-crime, permeates this thread.
I'm an atheist, but I think Jesus might have had something interesting to say in this debate.