The 'currency"£ of victimhood.

[Imnobody4]

This isn't strictly feminist but I like James Marriot - he's always thought provoking.
I'm reminded of a Bertrand Russell quote;
"The fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed"

‘Nan gave birth in handcuffs” ran the arresting headline on an
extract from Wes Streeting’s memoir in The Sunday Times. Streeting’s hardscrabble early life — criminal grandad, teenage mum, a dresser drawer for a cot — might have appealed to Charles Dickens. But is it enough, Labour members might wonder as they mull their next leader. Is Streeting not rather outclassed in the adversity stakes by Angela Rayner, who was the carer for her bipolar mother at the age of ten and who left school pregnant at sixteen?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/6d9f54f1-9bcd-4c61-a91b-ee0f0cf31dbc?shareToken=9d2b2e907a4934239f25a0660d244241

The Four Yorkshiremen sketch is pretty perennial, isn’t it?

It's like the Sob Stories Olympics, I don't personally care about what they over came to get there, only what they going to do now they're there.

Thank you so much for sharing this, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Although if he thinks Labour are bad for 'the moral authority of the victim', he should meet the Greens!

‘The fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed’ seems to be the MO of TRAs. They believe that as ‘the most oppressed group in society’ everyone should listen to them and consider their wants and preferences to take precedence over others’.

Excellent read. Thank you.

A lot of modern society have their own spin on the Beatitudes: instead of blessed are the meek and the righteous et al. for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, it's become a version of, 'Blessed are those who can claim to have experienced the most trauma, for they shall have the most social kudos and be given many opportunities'.

Hardship/trauma does have a currency. When I was part of the IICSA research project I felt that the stories being gathered were somehow someone else’s trauma voyeurism. I was cynical on how gathering all these appalling stories were really going to change anything, and 10 years on, not one of the recommendations from this report has happened.

But did you know Kier Starmer's dad was a toolmaker? Surely that trumps the hardships of either Rayner or Streeting!

Theres something more genuine about Streeting though (maybe I'm going soft). I thought what he said in his recent speech was quite thought provoking along the lines of the sink council estate he was brought up in and worked hard to escape is now a place many kids today can only dream of ever living in. For them a childhood in temporary accomodation with no security, having to move schools, is the best they can hope for. All the building round here is multi story shoe boxes that cost a fortune. Three bedroom family semis are turned into HMOs. We need millions of family homes to be built.

And new hospitals, gp surgeries, schools.