Hold me back from Anthony Steen: glad to see the Tories are scraping the barrel too

[LupusinaLlamasuit]

for fuck's sake

"What right do the public have to interfere in my private life...? It is just jealousy"

Wormy fucking slimeball. I do hope some local farmers find a new home for their spare sileage.

You are misrepresenting my argument, SWC.

And, what's more, you know you are.

No I didn't!

I said his mother wasn't "plugged into the community" because she sent her child to Eton.

I also said it is perfectly possible to feel compassion without experience of hardship.

I just don't think Cameron does because of his "society is not the same thing as the state" arguments.

Why do you "fulminate" against lefties from privileged backgrounds??

I also think that some members of the Labour party are pretty dreadful - that woman married to a millionaire with a main home in Hertfordshire (from where most mere mortals would commute to London), claiming for her chimneys in Chelsea springs to mind.

My point is that it is innate in Labour to strive to improve the welfare of the weakest and I don't think the Tories have really made this leap, despite Cameron's desire to make us think they have.

Dont generalise at all there will you

smallwhitecat - know what you mean. There were a lot of 'champagne scialists' at University with me and DW. All from London who thougt it was really 'cool' to be a socialist. They all came from nice London schools in nice areas though and some from private schools. Made me and DW sick at their hypocracy. During the miners strike we used to have long debates about the hated Thatcher and how she had done down the working man.

My DW was there at one and stuck up her hand and asked the panel if any of them actually knew any miners. None had. She shocked them all when she told them she did and he lived next door to her in her Mum & Dad's their two-up-two-down terrace in Newcastle but she would vote for Thatcher as would her miner next door neighbour as he was setting up his own business as a plaster/painter/decorator because he hated going down the pit.

That shut them up.

Funny how so many of the champagne socialists left University and went to work in the City or the privelleged life of career politician afterwards.

In all cases since the WWII all Labour Govts have left office with the country near bankrupt. They just do not understand how wealth is created or how to spend it wisely.

Oh what tosh. This Labour govt presided over one of the biggest increases in wealth this country has ever seen, and the current crisis is global sparked by a number of things outside the govt's control. Moreover, this increase in wealth funded enormous improvements in public spending over the last 10 years, and material improvements in services as a consequence.

As well the Tories know, except of course it suits the political agenda to try and argue otherwise.

So it's not possible for someone from a privileged background to feel grateful and want to give something back to society that doesn't just consist of lording it over the serfs as a magistrate or similar??

Right.

Of course it would be ideal for people to take responsibility for themselves and their families, but they are not always able to - for a huge variety of reasons that most of us will thankfully never experience or even fully get to grips with.

I would rather have a welfare system which some people took advantage of than no welfare system at all. And frankly, all my experiences of the state education system and the NHS have been really good. The only time I was treated very badly in a hospital was when I was being treated privately.

You just can't generalise about it. There has to be support in place for people who can't cope for themselves and who really need it.

I agree that this Government has not managed the welfare state perfectly (tax credits are a disaster), but that is not a reason to scrap welfare altogether. It just means we have to try harder to get it right.

I just don't believe the Tories really care about that.

I know an old Etonian who does contribute to society, and does everything he can, professionally and personally, to help vulnerable people.

But he comes out in hives at the mention of Cameron and his ilk. Is inclined to assume OEs in positions of power are toffs who grind the faces of the poor until proved otherwise.

And he knows them better than me. (Although the handful of OEs I have bumped into into have all had lovely manners.)

Absolutely agree with dollius. Well said.

Dollius: My point is that it is innate in Labour to strive to improve the welfare of the weakest

Yes, old labour agreed, bring on the Barbara Castles. new labour? Blair, Brown, Blears, Purnell et all. Really? Do you really think that?

I think Blair only cared about himself and his own ambitions. Have never understood why he joined Labour (except I am told he wanted to get to know Cherie).

Brown should have the right impulse. But has been too in thrall to the City to be honest about it. Hence all that bureaucracy around tax credits, buggering everything up by giving the Revenue the job of actually paying money out. Madness.

(And turns out it was a bit of a waste of time cosying up to the City anway, in the long run. A little more scepticism and a little less admiration would have done us all a favour.)