#COVID19 | Page 716 | Vital Football

#COVID19

Calvin Plummer said:
I think the difference is that poor no longer means working class, it means under class. Poor no longer means a handful of industries dominated by trade unions. Poor no longer means socialist.

It's been a long time since the term working class was anything remotely resembling a homogeneous group.

Your link is telling - Blair enjoyed a far greater support than Corbyn from low income voters, and for that matter Thatcher resonated with them too. So middle of the road and far right politics can work.

The big issue is narrative. Blair had one, Thatcher had one, and for a brief moment it looked like Corbyn did but he threw it away with a muddled campaign, no charisma and like it or not a very middle class Guardianista agenda.

Poor means you can be right, left or central if you're offered hope and a believable path forward. Corbyn didn't have a working class socialist vision, he had a middle class socialist vision.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with any of this tbh.

I think all the labels being used are out of date.
The inference was that poor people can't afford to think like socialists, so none of them do. To me that's just silly.
 
i am a tree said:
I don't disagree with any of this tbh.

I think all the labels being used are out of date.
The inference was that poor people can't afford to think like socialists, so none of them do. To me that's just silly.
Click to expand...
I don't know if they can or not, as I've never been destitute.

I work with a lot of very young people who are, and in some cases I know their parents. Over 15+ years that amounts to quite a lot.

I have known very few "deprived group" teens who were socialists or thought of themselves that way. Very few. And zero amongst the parents.

The few I have known that would describe themselves as something close to socialists were, funnily enough, the very smartest ones; as in, the ones able to apply for Oxbridge.

Amongst the wealthiest children, whether they consider themselves to be left wing or right wing generally depends on their sense of entitlement. Some and this sometimes but not always comes from parents) have been born on third base and thing they have hit a home run. It's curious; they often hate their parents but think they deserve to have what they have becausw their parents have worked really hard and other children's parents haven't.

Others might describe themselves as left wing because they genuinely can't see why everyone can't have the decent standard of living they have.
 
Meanwhile, in the club we have recently left...

"Angela Merkel came under fire on Monday after it emerged she intervened personally to block a bid by European health ministers to secure larger orders of coronavirus vaccine over the summer.

Public anger is growing across the continent at the European Union’s failure to order enough doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine which was developed in Germany and manufactured in Belgium.

But it now appears Mrs Merkel blocked an initiative by the German, French, Italian and Dutch health ministers to order more stocks of vaccine last summer.

Bild newspaper published a leaked letter from the four health ministers to Ursula von der Leyen in which they agreed to drop the initiative and hand over control of vaccine orders to the European Commission.

According to the newspaper, the letter was written under pressure from Mrs Merkel, who wanted to send a signal of solidarity at the start of Germany’s six-month EU presidency.

“We believe that it is of utmost importance to have a common joint and single approach towards the various pharmaceutical companies,” the four ministers wrote.

“We also consider that speed is of the essence in this case. So we deem it very useful if the Commission takes the lead in this process".

In fact, Europe began to fall behind in the race to secure sufficient stocks after the Commission took over.

The four ministers had already negotiated an order for 400m doses of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, but the Commission became locked in protracted negotiations as the UK and US secured large orders.

The row came with the European Medicine Agency (EMA) poised to approve the Moderna vaccine this week. It will become the second vaccine approved for use in the EU, following the Pfzier-BioNTech vaccine.

Jean-Claude Juncker, Mrs von der Leyen’s predecessor as commission president, spoke out against the EU’s response to the virus, telling Luxembourg’s Télécran magazine the bloc had “reacted very weakly”. But he added that the EU was hamstrung by the fact member states retain control of health policy.

Mr Juncker claimed he continues to act as an unofficial advisor to Mrs von der Leyen, and compared himself the former Pope Benedict XVI.

“I always say I am like Ratzinger in the Vatican Gardens: I am their Ratzinger,” Mr Juncker said, using Pope Benedict’s birth name.

“She likes it a lot, and it gives us the opportunity to exchange ideas from time to time, which is very useful for both of us. I'm von der Leyen’s Ratzinger.”



The butchers from Brussels.
 
i am a tree said:
Your opinions are ridiculous.
I'm just about keeping my head above water after being forced into claiming benefits on the sick. I've had to borrow to just pay rent, and use food banks on the regular, despite having worked all my life.
Not all leftists are middle class, in fact most of the lefties i know are poor and struggling.
I guess you only know what you know, ay?
Click to expand...


I guess you do. To say there are no left leaning working class people would be ridiculous. Those pushing that particular envelope though, tend to be middle class.

In the early 90s, just before our Will was born, I was a member of the SWP. I went on the Gulf War and Poll Tax marches in London, and stood in Guildhall Hall with them telling people to tell the judge they were not liable for payment of the Poll Tax.

I attended the weekly meetings above the Irish Centre too. The majority, were middle class.

The people I know, and see spouting Keith vitriol now, such as df, is very middle class.
 
Apollyon said:
I guess you do. To say there are no left leaning working class people would be ridiculous. Those pushing that particular envelope though, tend to be middle class.

In the early 90s, just before our Will was born, I was a member of the SWP. I went on the Gulf War and Poll Tax marches in London, and stood in Guildhall Hall with them telling people to tell the judge they were not liable for payment of the Poll Tax.

I attended the weekly meetings above the Irish Centre too. The majority, were middle class.

The people I know, and see spouting Keith vitriol now, such as df, is very middle class.
Click to expand...


In fact Popey put it much better than me, so just read his.
 
Apollyon said:
I guess you do. To say there are no left leaning working class people would be ridiculous. Those pushing that particular envelope though, tend to be middle class.

In the early 90s, just before our Will was born, I was a member of the SWP. I went on the Gulf War and Poll Tax marches in London, and stood in Guildhall Hall with them telling people to tell the judge they were not liable for payment of the Poll Tax.

I attended the weekly meetings above the Irish Centre too. The majority, were middle class.

The people I know, and see spouting Keith vitriol now, such as df, is very middle class.
Click to expand...

I was a member of Socialist Alliance, got arrested on poll tax march!!

Mainstream Socialism is now a middle class endeavour, as we have seen with all the socialist remainers; many of whom lament the inability to 'live, work' love' [sic] in the EU. This is not in the forefront of working class people's minds!

Centralists is what many people are, who think they are socialists.
 
i am a tree said:
Your opinions are ridiculous.
I'm just about keeping my head above water after being forced into claiming benefits on the sick. I've had to borrow to just pay rent, and use food banks on the regular, despite having worked all my life.
Not all leftists are middle class, in fact most of the lefties i know are poor and struggling.
I guess you only know what you know, ay?
Click to expand...

Keep strong chap. Sorry to hear about this.
 
Apollyon said:
I guess you do. To say there are no left leaning working class people would be ridiculous. Those pushing that particular envelope though, tend to be middle class.

In the early 90s, just before our Will was born, I was a member of the SWP. I went on the Gulf War and Poll Tax marches in London, and stood in Guildhall Hall with them telling people to tell the judge they were not liable for payment of the Poll Tax.

I attended the weekly meetings above the Irish Centre too. The majority, were middle class.

The people I know, and see spouting Keith vitriol now, such as df, is very middle class.
Click to expand...
My experience is that working class people are more likely to 'develop' into left wing types later in life, but also tend to go quite extreme. I knew quite a few communists who were drivers at the last company i worked for.
They also don't tend to shout about it as much as the right wing types (probably worried that they will get their ass kicked for it).

But the statistics tend to say that left wing economic views are rife among the poor.

I think the pro-immigration, 'virtue signalling', expecting people not to be racist, assuming everyone's pro women's rights type leftists are way, way more likely to be middle class.
 
i am a tree said:
My experience is that working class people are more likely to 'develop' into left wing types later in life, but also tend to go quite extreme. I knew quite a few communists who were drivers at the last company i worked for.
They also don't tend to shout about it as much as the right wing types (probably worried that they will get their ass kicked for it).

But the statistics tend to say that left wing economic views are rife among the poor.

I think the pro-immigration, 'virtue signalling', expecting people not to be racist, assuming everyone's pro women's rights type leftists are way, way more likely to be middle class.
Click to expand...

Human behaviourists could write many thesis about this.

My ex parents-in-law always voted Tory; these were council house owning, meagre income folks, salt of the earth, always worked, never claimed, etc.
They voted Tory for two reasons, there may have been more, but these were the only two I knew about: 1) they were given the opportunity to buy their council house by Thatcher and 2) they perceived voting Labour was an "Anti-British" thing to do as they associated Labour with bringing the country down under Callaghan.

I am fully aware that these reasons can be shot to bits using logic, but these reasons were certainly true with that generation (also partly explains why Thatcher kept winning GEs, despite that fact nobody ever admitted to voting for her).

Today I believe the natural distrust the UK has with Socialism was seen in full Technicolour, with the last GE and hopefully that experiment with the electorate in the UK is now over.

Starmer is a much more electable leader, just needs to manage this time very carefully.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.