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Post by mercian on Jan 10, 2024 3:35:14 GMT
You'd have to ask how come she got these other jobs, when she had already been forced to resign from the PO because of what had been happening. It almost looks as if someone decided she needed to be looked after for her sterling work on behalf of the government. It seems to be standard practice for people in senior government or quasi-government jobs. They just get moved sideways or upwards after major cock-ups. Whoever is in power at the time.
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Post by mercian on Jan 10, 2024 3:36:41 GMT
"Paula Vennells: Ex-Post Office boss was shortlisted to be Bishop of London" ......"The Archbishop of Canterbury pushed her application and was seen as a supporter of her, two of the sources added." www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67923190It's surprising how far the tentacled arms of the establishment reach. The Lib Dems were part of that once, before they abandoned their congregation in 2010.Not 1910? EDIT: Apologies again for multiple late-night posts. I seem to keep different hours to you 'normos'.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 10, 2024 6:00:44 GMT
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 6:13:18 GMT
R4 made an interesting comment, that 70% of the contracts awarded to Fujitsu since horizon had been authorised by Sunak.
Dont know if they meant since way back or since this officially became a scandal.
Seems one fujitsu employee has spoken out about its failings and another is refusing to do so unless promised immunity from prosecution.
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 6:19:03 GMT
Another story that half of child sex abuse crimes are committed by children. Well gee, no surprise whatsoever. Theres an obvious problem here that what the law defines as abuse has nothing much to do with what the people concerned define as abuse, because most of this behaviour is likely to be consensual. Most will also never come to the attention of authorities, so the true rate of children swapping nude pictures and having sex with each other will be way higher. Its obvious to anyone working in a school that this is rife.
The real question is why mutually consensual sex should be regarded as a crime?
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neilj
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Post by neilj on Jan 10, 2024 6:46:46 GMT
I just love this, Conservative Post complaining about community notes are community noted, brilliant 😀
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 10, 2024 7:13:05 GMT
Danny That's a complete misrepresentation of the serious problem of sexual assaults.
"In 2022 a total of 107,000 reports were made to police in England and Wales alleging sexual offences against children, ranging from rapes and, in a quarter of cases, to the making and sharing of indecent images.
The NPCC said 52% of alleged offenders were children, compared with around one third a decade ago.
Police received reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children aged 10 to 17 where the suspect was classed as a child, the overwhelming majority being boys.
Ian Critchley, the NPCC lead for child protection, said: “This is predominantly a gender-based crime of boys committing offences against girls.
“I think that is being exacerbated by the accessibility of violent pornography and the ease with which violent pornography is accessible to boys and, therefore, a perception that is [normal] behaviour, and that person can carry out that behaviour that they are seeing online in the most violent way against other peers as well.
“Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed, not just in relation to 11- to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well. That accessibility has really exacerbated that and I think this is a debate that does need to be had in our society.”
A third of attacks take place within the family, the most common setting for abuse, and eight out of 10 victims knew their attacker.
Police said it is estimated as few as one in six offences are reported to them which goes a long way to address the issue of low prosecution rates.
While sexual assaults on children by adults tend to be more severe thousands of assaults overwhelmingly by boys under 17 are committed against girls.
Overwhelmingly we aren't talking about consensual acts here amongst teenagers While consensual sex under the age of consent is a crime it's long been held that it's not normally in the public interest to prosecute incidents that are reported.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 10, 2024 7:17:23 GMT
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 10, 2024 7:38:29 GMT
Why would those who voted for Foot and Kinnock in preference to Thatcher now prefer Sunak to Starmer? Because he's a slightly less cardboard cut-out? Wow. If you can discern any personality or character in Sunak then you've got quite a talent.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 10, 2024 7:43:25 GMT
This has got bugger all to do with lib dems. The one thing very clear about the lib coalition with con was that con steamrollered them on every single decision. Well they should have seen that coming before becoming tory enablers and jumping in bed with them. As much as it upsets some, there will be a lot of voters who won't forget. But they'll be tiny in number compared to the far greater amount who don't live over a decade in the past and very much do want to give the tories a kicking any which way
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 10, 2024 8:09:05 GMT
I'm partial to a bit of Rafael Behr in the morning, so have to declare my hand in that respect, but I think he makes a rather good case for the defence here in terms of Starmer's political strategy as we head into election year. It's based on something that has always struck me about the strange nature of British politics; the enduring tolerance of inept Tory governance and the electorate's stubborn forgiveness of it. The affording of licence that leads to default acceptance of an assumed natural order and therefore continuation of Tory rule. We've talked before on this forum about deference to the establishment order, and how this favours Toryism, and why this may be slowly fading, but I think it still lingers amongst the demographic that are now almost habitually supporting the Tories. I'm haunted by a conversation I had with a former work colleague around the time of the 2015 election. He conceded that his social and economic background should really have made him a natural Labour voter but his instinct drew him to vote Tory because they looked more fit to rule. He cited education, class, accent, bearing, appearance, dress and manner. He seemed to despise Labour politicians because of their apparent lack of these qualities. He felt far more comfortable with the world with Tory politicians in charge. He sort of tolerated Blair for a bit because he was a "toff". It is within this political culture, lingering on and perpetuated for all it's worth by a Tory-centric mainstream media, that Labour leaders have to live and battle in order to try and get elected. Starmer is trying to win with an electorate he wouldn't necessarily choose if he had the option to do so, but it's the only one he's got for now. Behr makes other interesting points too, I think. Worth a read, anyway, as he always is. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/10/keir-starmer-tory-traps-labour-conservative
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 8:10:16 GMT
But that's not to say he doesn't have some awkward questions to answer, and more so than his predecessors. As you should be aware if now watching the drama/documentary, it was roughly around the time he took over that (thanks to Alan Bates) the sub-postmasters were forming together and the scale of what was happening was becoming obvious. He also took over soon after the first report was published in "Computer Weekly". His predecessors may have some justification for claiming "we just weren't aware" - he can't use that excuse. Computer weekly have a page about this here: www.computerweekly.com/feature/Post-Office-Horizon-scandal-explained-everything-you-need-to-know They state problems with the system began immediately it was introduced in 1999, way, way before Davey had anything to do with this. They say that whereas previously postmasters kept their own accounts, which they could check to find where discrepancies arose (if any), they now did not have access to a record of transactions. Presumably there must have been one (or do I assume too much, and this is a massive flaw?), but it sounds as though only fujitsu and the PO had access. Or maybe even only fujitsu had this access, given how adamant PO seems to have been that no one else could have accessed postmasters terminals. Was the central system simply incapable of storing a full transaction record for all post offices? PO for now has the benefit of the doubt, whether they even understood how the system worked and that Fujitsu needed to have access to change local accounts to make it work at all. Althought its hard to see how they could have not understood something so fundamental about how it works, especially since even the union rep was permitted a tour of fujitsu and saw this happening live. However that doesn't account at all for the fact PO had to know how many postmasters were being accused of fraud. A massive rise like that could lead to only two conclusions. Either they believed there was something wrong with the system. Or they believed their postmasters had always been massively ripping off the PO, but they had never detected this in the past. I don't really see how that would be possible though, any significant losses would be detectable because of actual missing money. Most of the PO business is about selling goods for known amounts and being funded by commission for handling transactions. PO never was able to find any of the tens of thousands they claimed had been stolen from them, but surely someone would have been screaming about tens of thousands of real money missing prior to Horizon, if it had really been happening. Though nor does it seem anyone identified actual missing money using horizon, a paper deficit yes but no one claiming they had lost money. So, its impossible to believe Royal mail did not know the system was faulty. The dramatisation shows PO officers deliberately imposing gagging orders on people affected and denying any widespread problem, which they would only have done if they believed true knowledge of what was happening would have broken their cases against the postmasters. In general, bringing people to justice is surely seen as a deterrant to future criminal behaviour, you want all the publicity you can get! They KNEW it was faulty way before Davey. For example, computer weekly say, " In 2003, when the Post Office was suing a subpostmaster who was blaming Horizon for shortfalls at her branch in Lancashire, a judge ordered it to appoint an expert IT witness. When the expert revealed problems with Horizon, the Post Office paid off the subpostmaster and forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement." In other words, Royal Mail absolutely knew they had no legal basis for their actions, if the full facts were known, very early on.
Fujitsu's defence in this is going to be that they had informed PO of the problems. Its been stated that they failed to inform PO of known faults with the system at the time it was first rolled out, which were so serious it should not have been implemented. But that was back in 1999. All the problems must have become clear internally to the PO within a couple of years. Fujitsu people are saying they were aware of problems, but not aware people were being prosecuted on the back of false claims about the system.
Now the question becomes whether Royal Mail reported these problems to its bosses the crown ministers. Vennells was caught in an email asking assistants to assure her there was no truth in various claims about shortcomings of the system, such as that no one apart from postmasters had access to their accounts, before appearing before a parliamentary committee to answer questions about this. She was first hired in 2007 as 'group network director'. Yet there is clear evidence Royal mail knew the system was faulty before she ever began working for them. Computer weekly first got the story from a postmaster 2004, but didnt publish until May 2009 after they had seven postmasters in this situation. This was with still nearly a year of the labour government to run. That minister would be Lord Young, anthony Young, who was never an MP but a trades unionist appointed to the house of lords.
Ministers should have been aware of problems with Horizon going back to say 2003, or earlier. The department should have had a huge file by that time, and an agreed policy what to do. I dont know how many labour ministers came and went in that time, but either they all knew about this or none knew. If they didnt know, I dont understand why Davey would be expected to know. There was scope for Davey to find out because of additional publicity (also of course available to Young before him), but Davey claims he did the obvious thing and asked Royal Mail, which would not have been Vennells but maybe Adam crozier (departed as CEO May 2010, hired 2003) or next Moya Green? Then there is the problem that the post offices branch network became an independant company split from Royal Mail 1 april 2012 after davey ceased to be minsiter, but presumably this process must have been happening in his time. Top of the list for Davey as minister were presumably the corporate reorganisations following the postal serices act in 2011, the continuing big subsidies to Royal mail and post office, privatisation of Royal Mail and the opening up of postal services to new competitors. I totally agree that this matter of frankly criminal behaviour by Royal Mail and potential maybe billion pounds compensation case would be a huge problem for the privatisation, and this was contained to the new Post Office company.
If vennels is being attacked for this, then its pretty obvious Adam Crozier also should be explaining why he didnt take action to prevent this scandal.
Its absolutely correct this is an excellent bat with which to hit the lib dems in an election year. Its very hard to know whether Davey really knew anything about this affair, or whether he could have known. If Royal Mail had a fixed policy of lying to ministers about it dating all the way back to the start of horizon, or whether government was always aware of these problems reaching back to the last labour government. Parliamentary unanimity to blame Royal mail is un surprising since it seems all three main parties had ministers involved in this. R4 has been covering this for years in an intermittent documentary series as events unfolded. Not sure for how long, but maybe 5 years? I remember years ago hearing updates which began something like 'back in (whenever) I reported on the post office prosecutions scandal. Now we just had another legal case where the victims comprehensively won..'
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Post by pete on Jan 10, 2024 8:10:18 GMT
Fascinating how the post office scandal has caused such a furore. What a TV drama can do for a cause and open up politician's eyes to actually do their jobs, pity they're late onto the bandwagon (bar the odd exception). I hope the post-thousand+ sub-postmasters get their justice. Pity there wasn't the same furore over Hillsborough, Grenfell, austerity and Covid deaths...perhaps they needed better writers?
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 8:22:54 GMT
Well they should have seen that coming before becoming tory enablers and jumping in bed with them. As much as it upsets some, there will be a lot of voters who won't forget. The great thing about this for con is it is something they can try to blame Davey for personally. Whereas it seems likely libs acting as enablers for a conservative government might this time act in their favour in the eyes of tribal tories who are however disillusioned with the current lot of conservatives. Ex conservative voters could see the libs as the kinder tory party, but perhaps not if they think Davey screwed over postmasters. Its blindingly obvious though in the round, that whatever part davey may have played, all his successors would have had access to all the facts he did plus a lot more. Nothing whatsoever was done until this became a TV series seen by milions. Indeed Vennells was rewarded for her work in hiding this by a big payoff, an honor and additional government jobs. That was sanctioned by the conservative government. If they acted innocently in rewarding her, so too did Davey. But you must be truly upset with daveys conservative successors?
(incidentally, when it came to allocating ministerial posts to libs, it would seem likely con deliberately shafted libs yet again by handing them the job of privatising the post office, not something very popular)
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 8:32:50 GMT
It seems from the news government intends to pass emergency legislation to cancel the convictions of the postmasters. hesitancy in doing this is being dressed up as a desire to maintain separation between the justice system and the legislature. However, that misses the point of the high court of parliament and the historical evolution where responsability for administering justice has devolved over the years from direct action by the monarch personally. In this sort of situation a pardon simply will not do, as this is seen as setting aside a punishment despite a crime whereas no crime was committed.
And yet it it is obviously unjust if the formal process to exhonerate people takes decades. The real solution would seem to be massively speed up the legal system and expand the ability of the existing process for reviewing cases and reversing decisions. But of course, that would be the exact opposite of government policy for the last 14 years, which has been to deny justice by refusing to provide funding, lawyers, judges or courts to hear cases. A wider question the government desperately does not want to discuss in this election year.
Its also true of course, that using a legal shortcut to pardon people raises wider questions about past injustices. Which could similarly be retrospectively expunged once the principle is accepted. Whether people transported to Australia should now be entitled to compensation, or their descendants should.
How much longer is the guy cleared of rape from 20 years ago going to wait for his compensation?
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 8:35:01 GMT
I hope the post-thousand+ sub-postmasters get their justice. Some more have now made themselves known to the legal parties. Another question is how many thousands of postmasters quietly made up smaller losses showing on their systems from their own money, which essentially was stolen from them by the post office? This must amount to millions of pounds, it has to statistically if there were these big cases which got prosecuted. Could it be as big as a billion, just how much would you be willing to pay to make this go away if you were a postmaster and didnt know it was a system failure but thought it was somehow your fault? There must have been discrepancies appearing in crown post offices too, what happened about them where there was no one franchisee to blame?
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 10, 2024 8:39:46 GMT
"Paula Vennells: Ex-Post Office boss was shortlisted to be Bishop of London" ......"The Archbishop of Canterbury pushed her application and was seen as a supporter of her, two of the sources added." www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67923190It's surprising how far the tentacled arms of the establishment reach. The Lib Dems were part of that once, before they abandoned their congregation in 2010.Not 1910? EDIT: Apologies again for multiple late-night posts. I seem to keep different hours to you 'normos'. If you'd have just said "apologies again for the posts" and not qualified it with "multiple late-night", I might well have liked your post! 😉🤔😅
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Danny
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Post by Danny on Jan 10, 2024 8:50:29 GMT
Danny That's a complete misrepresentation of the serious problem of sexual assaults. "In 2022 a total of 107,000 reports were made to police in England and Wales alleging sexual offences against children, ranging from rapes and, in a quarter of cases, to the making and sharing of indecent images. The NPCC said 52% of alleged offenders were children, compared with around one third a decade ago. Police received reports of 14,800 rapes and sexual assaults against children aged 10 to 17 where the suspect was classed as a child, the overwhelming majority being boys. Ian Critchley, the NPCC lead for child protection, said: “This is predominantly a gender-based crime of boys committing offences against girls. “I think that is being exacerbated by the accessibility of violent pornography and the ease with which violent pornography is accessible to boys and, therefore, a perception that is [normal] behaviour, and that person can carry out that behaviour that they are seeing online in the most violent way against other peers as well. “Clearly the accessibility to smartphones has just rocketed, not just in relation to 11- to 16-year-olds, but in relation to under-10s as well. That accessibility has really exacerbated that and I think this is a debate that does need to be had in our society.” A third of attacks take place within the family, the most common setting for abuse, and eight out of 10 victims knew their attacker. Police said it is estimated as few as one in six offences are reported to them which goes a long way to address the issue of low prosecution rates. While sexual assaults on children by adults tend to be more severe thousands of assaults overwhelmingly by boys under 17 are committed against girls. Overwhelmingly we aren't talking about consensual acts here amongst teenagers While consensual sex under the age of consent is a crime it's long been held that it's not normally in the public interest to prosecute incidents that are reported. So what did i misrepresent? The news report made no attempt to distinguish between statutory rapes, defined to be rape regardless of circumstances because the people were under the age of consent, and actual assaults including rape. If you do not make this distinction, then it is meaningless re how many real rapes took place. Nor are there any credible estimates how many cases of sending nude pictures of having sex go completely unreported, which has to be the great majority, maybe the vast majority. The most likely people to find out about this are parents or teachers, who will not report it to police because it would be harmful to the parties concerned, it would be absurd for them to do so. It happens I know about a case between an under age boy and girl. The boy was reported to police for rape, wheras in fact he had agreed to an offer of sex for money from an under age girl known to police for selling herself to men, usually rather older ones. The police said they had been trying to catch her with an adult for ages. It only got found out because someone bragged about having had sex and took pictures.
So thats one of the 15,000 so called rapes, a case of an under age girl selling sex to others of similar age. Some would have said it was very enterprising of her, exploiting men. Police took no action, but presumably recorded it. I wonder how many rape reports that one girl was responsible for? in fact, would that one incident count as one rape, or two, because they would be deemed to have raped each other?
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Post by hireton on Jan 10, 2024 8:56:13 GMT
@robbialive
"(1) I thought we had agreed to drop the term British Nationalist. Esp as you lot disdain the idea you are nationalists. It appears from previous posting that you regard virtually everyone in Britain as a nathionalist apart from yourselves. There is not a single poster on here who opposes Scottish independence."
No, I'm very happy to be called a "Scottish Nationalist" if that is shorthand for a supporter of Scottish self-determination and independence.
I deliberately used "British nationalist and unionist" to soothe the feelings of those who support the continued existence of the current UK state but possibly don't support the continuation of absolute Westminster sovereignty (although the ending of that sovereignty is not a major issue for them as long as their team wins the UK General Elections). The future of Northern Ireland is generally an unstated exception to that point of view because few on here think about Northern Ireland at all.
It is clearly not true that nobody on here opposes Scottish independence. Most but not all seem to think that Scottish voters should at some unspecified point and subject to some unspecified conditions be allowed to vote on the question but not yet and not when the Scottish electorate has returned a pro-independence referendum majority to the Scottish Parliament. Few actually support Scottish independence and there is at least one who laments that devolution occurred.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 10, 2024 8:56:18 GMT
crossbat11We now have the situation where both the largest opposition parties have leaders who have achieved from modest backgrounds , while both the Tories and their far right refuky comrades are all led by public school educated multimillionaires.
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domjg
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Post by domjg on Jan 10, 2024 8:59:02 GMT
I'm partial to a bit of Rafael Behr in the morning, so have to declare my hand in that respect, but I think he makes a rather good case for the defence here in terms of Starmer's political strategy as we head into election year. It's based on something that has always struck me about the strange nature of British politics; the enduring tolerance of inept Tory governance and the electorate's stubborn forgiveness of it. The affording of licence that leads to default acceptance of an assumed natural order and therefore continuation of Tory rule. We've talked before on this forum about deference to the establishment order, and how this favours Toryism, and why this may be slowly fading, but I think it still lingers amongst the demographic that are now almost habitually supporting the Tories. I'm haunted by a conversation I had with a former work colleague around the time of the 2015 election. He conceded that his social and economic background should really have made him a natural Labour voter but his instinct drew him to vote Tory because they looked more fit to rule. He cited education, class, accent, bearing, appearance, dress and manner. He seemed to despise Labour politicians because of their apparent lack of these qualities. He felt far more comfortable with the world with Tory politicians in charge. He sort of tolerated Blair for a bit because he was a "toff". It is within this political culture, lingering on and perpetuated for all it's worth by a Tory-centric mainstream media, that Labour leaders have to live and battle in order to try and get elected. Starmer is trying to win with an electorate he wouldn't necessarily choose if he had the option to do so, but it's the only one he's got for now. Behr makes other interesting points too, I think. Worth a read, anyway, as he always is. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/10/keir-starmer-tory-traps-labour-conservative"He cited education, class, accent, bearing, appearance, dress and manner. He seemed to despise Labour politicians because of their apparent lack of these qualities. He felt far more comfortable with the world with Tory politicians in charge. He sort of tolerated Blair for a bit because he was a "toff"." - God, the English class system, one of things I really can't stand about this country and that doesn't exist on anywhere near the same level in other European countries or even other English speaking countries. It really is an English disease that should long since have died out. When I was a kid and young person at university looking or sounding 'posh' was definitely not something to aspire to and when an undergrad in the nineties the 'ra-ra's' or 'hoorays' as we sometimes referred to them often did their best to hide their accents and origins. It was the age of 'Mockney' Damon Albarn etc. What the hell happened? Hopefully your work colleague has now been thoroughly cured of the idea of tory competence, in anything at all. Weirdly the attitude you describe seems to be more prevalent outside of the South East and I had noticed it previously when visiting the northern family of an ex partner some years ago. I don't really know why that might be. When growing up I can't remember anyone I knew child or adult having the slightest bit of deference towards those with a posh accent, quite the opposite in fact.
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Post by shevii on Jan 10, 2024 9:33:47 GMT
(3) What remainers have said is that in general leavers are less well-educated than remainers & are more concerned with immigration. Both things are true. UKIP went nowhere as long as it merely argued for leaving the EU on constitutional, abstract nationalistic grounds. The EU was invisible as a concern. As we all know: the polling trackers show that: it was not until Farage linked the EU to increaing migration from eastern Europe that its polling/electoral success vaulted. I did once look at the kind of people UKIP put up as candidates when they stood everywhere. It made gruesome reading: many of them were out-and-out racists. (BTW I have removed my curse from yr house & progeny & removed the pins from the doll that resembles you.) What would be the point of flagging up "less well educated" other than to suggest that "less well educated" make bad voting decisions? Indeed "more concerned about immigration" is flagging up potential racism as we've seen in the debate on here.
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steve
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Post by steve on Jan 10, 2024 9:49:19 GMT
Indicators are that well over a thousand post masters were impacted by the horizon fiasco.
It's highly likely that there were cases in all constituencies.
Needless to say Nick Ferrari in a not remotely partisan report decided to focus on just one case in Ed Davey's constituency in 2003.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 10, 2024 9:52:07 GMT
crossbat11 We now have the situation where both the largest opposition parties have leaders who have achieved from modest backgrounds , while both the Tories and their far right refuky comrades are all led by public school educated multimillionaires. Indeed. The true tribunes of "the people" do seem to come from unlikely backgrounds in our country. Going back to my old work colleague that I cited in a previous post, I was always struck by how he reserved his real venom for what he called, or was led to believe were, hypocritical Labour or left wing figures rather than the Tory Toffs he seemed to think were born to rule. For example, he despised "Two Jags" John Prescott particularly, mainly because he felt he advocated equality but didn't practice it.. To him, if you weren't impoverished and destitute you had no right be a socialist. He came up with all the usual stuff about Tony Benn living in mansions (God knows what he'd have made of Corbyn) and seized upon every Daily Mail article there was that "exposed" the alleged double standards of Labour politicians. The Mail was his Bible in many ways. I can't be sure of this, but I expect he would have been fixated on Keir Starmer's role as DPP now and his lefty lawyer background. He'd probably be like the Tory voter I met on the doorstep in Tamworth during the by election who said to me when I compared and contrasted Starmer's background to Sunak's, "you're only jealous of Rishi's money." Prior to that he'd given me a rant about Starmer's lawyerly background. It ain't fair but it is what it is. Starmer just has to plough his way through this sort of stuff and the right wing press will be on it all the time. They probably scent blood with Davey already. Boris, Rishi, Suella, Penny? Carry on regardless. Take Davey down, then Starmer.
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Post by crossbat11 on Jan 10, 2024 10:07:02 GMT
(3) What remainers have said is that in general leavers are less well-educated than remainers & are more concerned with immigration. Both things are true. UKIP went nowhere as long as it merely argued for leaving the EU on constitutional, abstract nationalistic grounds. The EU was invisible as a concern. As we all know: the polling trackers show that: it was not until Farage linked the EU to increaing migration from eastern Europe that its polling/electoral success vaulted. I did once look at the kind of people UKIP put up as candidates when they stood everywhere. It made gruesome reading: many of them were out-and-out racists. (BTW I have removed my curse from yr house & progeny & removed the pins from the doll that resembles you.) What would be the point of flagging up "less well educated" other than to suggest that "less well educated" make bad voting decisions? Indeed "more concerned about immigration" is flagging up potential racism as we've seen in the debate on here. I take your point, and these terms can be used as euphemisms for less generous descriptors, but the flip side is the debate about demographics and voting determinants becomes a ludicrously self conscious tip-toeing on eggshells. Neither sort of language nor debate is very illuminating.
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Post by graham on Jan 10, 2024 10:22:25 GMT
crossbat11 We now have the situation where both the largest opposition parties have leaders who have achieved from modest backgrounds , while both the Tories and their far right refuky comrades are all led by public school educated multimillionaires. Indeed. The true tribunes of "the people" do seem to come from unlikely backgrounds in our country. Going back to my old work colleague that I cited in a previous post, I was always struck by how he reserved his real venom for what he called, or was led to believe were, hypocritical Labour or left wing figures rather than the Tory Toffs he seemed to think were born to rule. For example, he despised "Two Jags" John Prescott particularly, mainly because he felt he advocated equality but didn't practice it.. To him, if you weren't impoverished and destitute you had no right be a socialist. He came up with all the usual stuff about Tony Benn living in mansions (God knows what he'd have made of Corbyn) and seized upon every Daily Mail article there was that "exposed" the alleged double standards of Labour politicians. The Mail was his Bible in many ways. I can't be sure of this, but I expect he would have been fixated on Keir Starmer's role as DPP now and his lefty lawyer background. He'd probably be like the Tory voter I met on the doorstep in Tamworth during the by election who said to me when I compared and contrasted Starmer's background to Sunak's, "you're only jealous of Rishi's money." Prior to that he'd given me a rant about Starmer's lawyerly background. It ain't fair but it is what it is. Starmer just has to plough his way through this sort of stuff and the right wing press will be on it all the time. They probably scent blood with Davey already. Boris, Rishi, Suella, Penny? Carry on regardless. Take Davey down, then Starmer. I very much agree with your analysis of social deference as reflected in the attitudes of some voters, though I have little doubt that 'doffing the cap to our social betters' is much less common today than was the case pre- World War 2 or even in the 1950s. Education has had some positive influence on the ability of most people to see though such inherent snobbery and nonsense - indeed there are some voters who would be deterred by the prospect of supporting 'a toff'. As for the gentleman who relied on the Daily Mail, you can imagine what I would have said to him! Beyond labelling it an organ of political pornography, I would have invited him to consider why he felt so happy accepting the contents of Adolf Hitler's favourite British newspaper which had very strongly supported Mosley's British Union of Fascists in the 1930s.
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Post by jimjam on Jan 10, 2024 11:08:50 GMT
Savanta a couple of hours ago:
''🚨FIRST Westminster Voting Intention of 2024
📈19pt Labour lead - largest since Oct '23.
🌹Lab 45 (+2) 🌳Con 26 (-1) 🔶LD 10 (=) ➡️Reform 8 (-1) 🌍Green 5 (+2) 🎗️SNP 3 (=) ⬜️Other 4 (-1)
2,268 UK adults, 5-7 January
(chg 15-17 December)''
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domjg
Member
Posts: 5,106
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Post by domjg on Jan 10, 2024 11:28:29 GMT
crossbat11 We now have the situation where both the largest opposition parties have leaders who have achieved from modest backgrounds , while both the Tories and their far right refuky comrades are all led by public school educated multimillionaires. Indeed. The true tribunes of "the people" do seem to come from unlikely backgrounds in our country. Going back to my old work colleague that I cited in a previous post, I was always struck by how he reserved his real venom for what he called, or was led to believe were, hypocritical Labour or left wing figures rather than the Tory Toffs he seemed to think were born to rule. For example, he despised "Two Jags" John Prescott particularly, mainly because he felt he advocated equality but didn't practice it.. To him, if you weren't impoverished and destitute you had no right be a socialist. He came up with all the usual stuff about Tony Benn living in mansions (God knows what he'd have made of Corbyn) and seized upon every Daily Mail article there was that "exposed" the alleged double standards of Labour politicians. The Mail was his Bible in many ways. I can't be sure of this, but I expect he would have been fixated on Keir Starmer's role as DPP now and his lefty lawyer background. He'd probably be like the Tory voter I met on the doorstep in Tamworth during the by election who said to me when I compared and contrasted Starmer's background to Sunak's, "you're only jealous of Rishi's money." Prior to that he'd given me a rant about Starmer's lawyerly background. It ain't fair but it is what it is. Starmer just has to plough his way through this sort of stuff and the right wing press will be on it all the time. They probably scent blood with Davey already. Boris, Rishi, Suella, Penny? Carry on regardless. Take Davey down, then Starmer. I suspect what your colleague's attitude reveals is a fundamental innate and unreflective selfishness on his part. Possibly as far as he's concerned you vote solely for your own interests and nothing else so if you are or have become well to do you don't vote for a party that wants to help those less fortunate or even the wider community as you're only interested in protecting what you've got. He sees 'champagne socialists' as hypocrites because he perhaps personally doesn't understand or have any wider community based principles other than 'I'm alright Jack'. We see this in the labelling of people as 'do-gooder's' or 'virtue signallers'. It's an assumption by the selfish that everyone must surely be like them really and those who appear to care for a wider purpose are just pretending. Obviously impoverished people are unlikely to have the time and wherewithall to become national politicians so your colleague's logic would lead to permanent tory government something he'd no doubt be very happy with.
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Post by robbiealive on Jan 10, 2024 11:34:07 GMT
(3) What remainers have said is that in general leavers are less well-educated than remainers & are more concerned with immigration. Both things are true. UKIP went nowhere as long as it merely argued for leaving the EU on constitutional, abstract nationalistic grounds. The EU was invisible as a concern. As we all know: the polling trackers show that: it was not until Farage linked the EU to increaing migration from eastern Europe that its polling/electoral success vaulted. I did once look at the kind of people UKIP put up as candidates when they stood everywhere. It made gruesome reading: many of them were out-and-out racists. (BTW I have removed my curse from yr house & progeny & removed the pins from the doll that resembles you.) What would be the point of flagging up "less well educated" other than to suggest that "less well educated" make bad voting decisions? Indeed "more concerned about immigration" is flagging up potential racism as we've seen in the debate on here. I was commenting on what remainers on here said or did not say about Brexit voters. There is no proof they saisd they were racist/dim, but they did comment on education/concern with immigration. It was after all Farage/Johnson who exploited immigration. One big problem was that UKIP/Johnson had a free ride. They promised the moon but they had never held power & hence the quality of their promises could not be gauged by induction from their record. (Johnson had been Mayor of London & it did eventually emerge that he was crap) When he was put in charge of the government he was shown to be useless. Maybe if UKIP had run a few councils & made a mess of it, people might then have judged them by normal rather than fanciful criteria. In The US it seems different. Trump is not just a neo-Fascist thug, he also failed to achieve what he said he would on Obamacare, immigration, etc. On Covid he was useless. His supporters don't seem bothered. Biden on the other hand has proved effective but has v low approval ratings. Perhaps right-wing US voters don't care what the President actually does. It's all rhethoric & performance
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 11:38:21 GMT
(3) What remainers have said is that in general leavers are less well-educated than remainers & are more concerned with immigration. Both things are true. UKIP went nowhere as long as it merely argued for leaving the EU on constitutional, abstract nationalistic grounds. The EU was invisible as a concern. As we all know: the polling trackers show that: it was not until Farage linked the EU to increaing migration from eastern Europe that its polling/electoral success vaulted. I did once look at the kind of people UKIP put up as candidates when they stood everywhere. It made gruesome reading: many of them were out-and-out racists. (BTW I have removed my curse from yr house & progeny & removed the pins from the doll that resembles you.) What would be the point of flagging up "less well educated" other than to suggest that "less well educated" make bad voting decisions? Indeed "more concerned about immigration" is flagging up potential racism as we've seen in the debate on here. Exactly. The point is to denigrate and portray as intellectually incapable of understanding the virtues of the EU , and resistant to its Freedom of Movement because of innate xenophobia . The purpose is to thus portray eu scepticism as of no credible worth or validity. What amuses me about this is these are the self same people who would sneer at an "Oxbridge" education as "elite" , and who turn a blind eye ( or are ignorant of ?) to the " concern about immigration" in their precious EU * I really do think that it is this dismissive, high handed , patronising attitude which is pushing voters to more populist political offerings across europe. Actually I was thinking about this when listening to Nicky Campbell's radio phone in prog this morning. Horizon was the topic. One young person-the child of a victim of the PO prosecutions asked the assembled political representatives why their expressions of sympathy and concern for early action had waited so many years , until the nation's outrage had been galvanised by a tv play. Hard to argue that this isn't populism in action.Or that it isn't a good thing. Coming to KS -who will be governing this country through the turbulent years ahead. I kind of feel that he understands the need to keep a finger on the pulse and concerns of ALL parts of our society regardless of background or circumstance. But its a tough thing to pull off.And the voters' verdict is swift when exasperation really sets in. * home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/schengen-borders-and-visa/schengen-area/temporary-reintroduction-border-control_enwww.politico.eu/article/eu-judges-slam-france-migrant-pushback/scroll.in/article/1061574/new-curbs-closed-borders-detention-centres-eu-to-see-effects-of-tightened-immigration-lawsapnews.com/article/eu-italy-albania-migration-asylum-rescue-court-91a92ebe5a0ea0e4273609a7ad0eed47www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/12/eu-migration-pact-agreement-will-lead-to-a-surge-in-suffering/
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