[Watchman]

Yeahbut, Tom Watson

One in 10 Tory peers have given more than £100,000 to party
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... 0-to-party?

[Crabcakes]

I recently had to bite my lip while sat between two more ‘traditional’ members of my running group at our Xmas dinner when one started on how he couldn’t go and see Roy “Chubby, and also a cunt” Brown on tour because he’d been “cancelled”.

No, actually *he’d* cancelled dates because he’s not filled venues due to being shit and experiencing diminishing appeal, in no small part due to having the exact same act as he’s had for the last 30-odd years, and claimed to have *been* cancelled so riled-up twats who otherwise wouldn’t have gone to a gig would snap up tickets.

100% played, but wouldn’t accept it in a million years.

[Bones McCoy]

Anti-vax is to our right-wing nutters what the second amendment is to the American version.

There’s a large contingent of bobble hatted Lib Dems and lefties sticking it to big pharma.

This is true.
They tend to be annoyed at pharmacy companies abusing artificial monopoly positions.
A hot example in the USA was price gouging on insulin products.

I've never seen the leftists or centrists indulge is mass coordinated medical misinformation as a campaign technique.
None, at least, outside a tiny minority of moontouched holy book thumpers.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Tories are piling up a nice demographic problem for themselves. This could be (a very long) payback for chasing Brexit pensioners after 2010. Still, I'm sure Lynton Crosby and Dom Cummings will give the Tories a refund for the short-termist bollocks they sold them.

Interestingly, he adjusts for home ownership BTL. Millennial home owners are more conservative than renters, but nonetheless still bad for the Tories.

Looking at that graph, I'm not sure the "Jez inspired the young" explanation cuts it.

[Bones McCoy]

Chickens flying home to roost do so rather slowly.

Since Thatcher the tories have built their "affluent society" myth on two pillars.
* Selling off the "family silver" of nationalised industries - you can only take your bucket to that well so many times.
* Looting the prospects of the young to bung a bit to the older demographics. (Example: Tuition fees Vs Triple lock pensions).

The former has shifted the "crossover age" at which a citizen joins the worthy oldies.
All manner of metrics including age of home purchase, and retirement age testify to this.

If you believe that people become conservative as they age, as an immutable law of nature, you can ignore all this.
If you believe becoming more conservative is a reflection of self-interest, then the delay of those metrics reflects a dwindling natural constituency for the tories.


This isn't an exclusively UK issue either.
Many nations are facing the reality of fortysomething "dispossessed youths" looking for a beter way.

[Andy McDandy]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/bbc-dramas-wa ... 00798.html

Want to read some absolute paranoid crap? The "Campaign for Common Sense" has written some reports saying that BBC documentaries and drama are all horribly lefty. Really desperate stuff, but good as it is for a laugh, it's worrying that it can be taken seriously.

[kreuzberger]

Nutters have been taking Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John seriously since god was a boy, quite literally.

They are probably the easily-baffled from Frome or Stoke or summat. Some things never change.

[satnav]

It looks like the campaign for common sense is led by a guy called Mark Lehain who used to be the Director of the News Schools Network which was closely linked with Toby Young and Katharine Birbalsingh. Mark Lehain was also an adviser at the DFE when Zahawi was briefly Education Secretary.

When the Tories talk about 'common sense.' It usually means taking things in a more right wing direction.

[Andy McDandy]

It means no lah di dah mucking around, and no pooftahs.

[Youngian]

One person’s common sense is another person’s ideology. They should consider offering philosophy on the national curriculum.

[Bones McCoy]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/bbc-dramas-wa ... 00798.html

Want to read some absolute paranoid crap? The "Campaign for Common Sense" has written some reports saying that BBC documentaries and drama are all horribly lefty. Really desperate stuff, but good as it is for a laugh, it's worrying that it can be taken seriously.

I had the misfortune to have some campaign for common sense stuff appear on my facebook timeline.

Let's just say their followers idea of common sense sits somewhere between Alf Garnett and Pol Pot.

[davidjay]

That's the thing with 'common sense'. First, it isn't. Second, it's usually one man's (and it's invariably a man) idea that hasn't been thought through.

[Crabcakes]

Anyone who uses the term “it’s just common sense” to describe an action they want to see or think people should do is probably not talking about actual common sense, because it’s so obvious it doesn’t need explanation. What they actually mean is “I just want something done my way”, which at best is lazy and at worst is bigotry.

[Youngian]

Everyone appropriated common sense in the 80s. The two Davids would use it for split the difference social democracy and Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone were big on “just common sense policies” (I’m not a nutter, honest). Benn would also point out that Tom Paine started all this.

[davidjay]

As ever, it shows that it's easier to argue from an extremist point of view than a realistic one.

[satnav]

I saw a Tweet earlier from rent a quote Tory Brendan Clarke-Smith who was pouring scorn on the suggestion that some teachers were now so poor that they were having use foodbanks. He reckoned that during his time as a teacher he was never in a position where he couldn't afford food. I was interested to see what schools he has taught in because his constituency is only about 10 miles from where I live. But when I did a bit of digging I soon realised that nearly all his experience has been in International schools in Norway, Sweden and Romania so he really isn't in much of a position to comment on what it is like working as a teacher in schools over here and surviving on a teachers wage. He is also married to a doctor so he has never been the sole breadwinner in the family.

[Bones McCoy]

A thought for 2023:

Take a look back through recorded history.
You'll find hundreds of examples of nations collapsing due to the greed and folly of their rulers.
I challenge anybody to name a nation that collapsed through over-paying its medical professionals.

[Yug]

Tory voters slowly starting to wake up

Tory voters believe Government has failed on NHS, education and austerity, poll suggests

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/tory- ... ts-2058898

Some of us, the non Tory-voting ones, have known this for years.

[Abernathy]

failed on NHS, education and austerity

. . . and everything else. This is no exaggeration.

[Crabcakes]

Even this:

However, bucking the trend, more Tory voters (43 per cent) believe Brexit has been a success than a failure (33 per cent. Among all respondents, the outcome was the opposite: more viewed quitting the EU as a failure (57 per cent) than as a success (24 per cent).

Is not good for them, because this deluded 43% are clearly still expecting their fucking unicorns. Unicorns no Tory will ever be able to deliver.