Be Excellent To Each Other

Heh, indeed. Offhand I can't think of anything more utterly stupid than voting Labour; at least the UKIP voter has got the excuse that their Party hasn't utterly fucked up everything it has ever touched, ever, and without even one single exception. Makes turkeys voting for Christmas look like an intellectual tour de force.

I'll concede it's a concern, but there are mitigating factors. For one, opinion polls are already putting the Tories in the lead, even allowing for UKIP, which from my perspective is a double bonus. Obviously it's good that the Tories are leading per se; I can only expect this lead to increase as we head towards GE when the trickle down effects of the now full-blooded, ever strengthening economic recovery make themselves more apparent and pre-GE 'inducements' are no doubt put in place on top.

However, it's also good that the combined right-of-centre and moderate-right vote is so large as well.

Talking to people, my political barometer tells me that some critical mass has been achieved, and the zeitgeist has really moved on, even in 12 months. For me, it's something of a thrill to find myself to the left of that zeitgeist; something that has not happened since the mid to late 1980s! (What it must feel like for you guys must be quite something )

There is no question; benefits culture and the like is coming to an end. That might be ugly, unfortunate, but it's a fact. Too many people I know have simply had enough and they don't want to hear any more excuses from the Political Class telling them that they know better. Those days are waning fast.

If there was a breakthrough new centre-left party that could collapse the Labour vote and steal its throne as the big progressive movement, and make a real opposition to the Tories, I'd vote for it and possibly join it ASAP. Really. Unfortunately there's the matter of FPTP making that impossible. We're never going to get a situation like in Italy last spring when a new opposition party emerged out of nowhere and got a quarter of tjr the vote.

I can see why the SNP gets votes in Scotland - it's a centrist neoliberal party, but at least has some recognisably social-democratic policies amongst that centrism.

One opinion poll has shown them ahead after Cameron announced his tax break and then they immediately fell behind again. Maybe hold off on your Daily Mail wankfest for a bit.

I've had just about enough of your going off on one at me. I've been very polite in our exchanges (despite your ludicrous views), but all I get in return is teenage strops and perpetual failure on your part to even try to engage, or move so much as one millimetre.

Fuck off. Seriously.

You want to listen to yourself sometimes, you massive fucking twat.

Refer to my earlier post; take your abuse and schoolboy politics with you (and please don't derail this thread).
Thanks in advance.

Sorry Cavey but I must say that whilst I do have the utmost respect for you and always have, your recent comments to this thread are absolutely stretching that to breaking point, and I'm finding those comments borderline repugnant, if I'm honest.

I wouldn't agree with the invective used by markg but I can understand and sympathise with his absolute 'what the fuck?' reaction to some of the bile and triumphalist vitriol you're spewing.

To suggest that the Labour party have 'fucked up everything they've ever touched' is to deny both history and human decency.

I know there's no point whatsoever in suggesting you rein it in a bit, but from where I'm standing you're not doing yourself any favours.

Here's a different point of view.



http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/john-wi ... 37980.html

I'm just coming off a train now to Mrs C mate but c'mon you know me. I write in mildly polemic terms; I'm not a UKIP supporter and didn't even vote Tory last time ffs. Look carefully at what I've said; it's far more observation than endorsement. As stated I am to the left of this new zeitgeist position.

Anyway, more tomorrow if you're interested. I'll be hungover though

Cavey

Attempt at a constructive reply:

The Tories are probably quite worried about the Tory/Lab marginals. In previous years, it has been accepted that people will vote UKIP in EU election until the cows come home but they'll always return to the fold come the GE. This is looking less and less likely for next May; while there will be some reversion to the Tories, the danger is that the right vote will be split down the middle. Now, Labour does lose core votes to UKIP too, but in the marginals they have two advantages: firstly, the marginals tend not to be Labour heartlands (duh!), so there's fewer votes to lose, and secondly, the Lib Dem collapse heads their direction (in Lib/Con or Lib/Lab marginals, this is not the case, but the Tories aren't so worried about these). I'd say that this puts Labour in a reasonable position for May 2015. If you look at last night's result, I'd be willing to put money that the majority of the Lib Dem vote went to Labour, which masked the drop in the Labour core vote.

(Labour will have to shore up their heartland vote, obviously, but the Tories are in danger as well, as places like Banbury would be somewhat vulnerable to a combined Lib/Lab vote where the Tory vote is depressed by UKIP. Rather unlikely, but they'll still have to play defence just like Labour)

Who the hell do I vote for?

I will never vote for UKIP, Labour or Conservatives. In the past I have voted for Liberal or Green Party. Which I think will be a lost vote down here (it's going to be UKIP or Conservative in May)

Where does the liberal protest vote go?

Malc

If it's a protest vote and you want to vote Liberal, then vote Liberal. Or small L liberal, which can be whoever you feel best represents you. If the vote is between UKIP and Tory, but you're not voting for either, then vote for who you want to win.

I'm in a super safe Labour seat, but I'll still vote for who I want to win, even though they won't.

At the end of the day, it's largely symbolic unless you're out there campaigning or espousing your views to the world.

I've got a horrible feeling that there's no such thing as a safe seat anymore

Half of all welfare state funding in Britain is pensions. Will you be claiming a state pension when you retire, or is that part of "benefits culture" too?

Not to mention the massive amount of benefits that are paid to the working poor because THE MIRACLE OF MODERN CAPITALISM has managed to divine a situation whereby the very few mega-rich at the top make millions/billions whilst the indentured they exploit can scarcely afford to live without government assistance.

Oh yes and don't forget to applaud the Tories for opposing any increase to the already derisory minimum wage, it's anti-business, you see.

Honestly Cavey, you talk about the 'aspirational earners' on £40K or more per year, like all anyone needs to do to earn that sort of wage is to just be an honest and hard worker or something. Do you honestly not understand to how many people that sort of money is utterly and completely beyond their grasp, whatever they do and however they do it, ever?

Yes I earn over that amount, but I wouldn't vote fucking Tory even if it would make me a bit better off, as Curio said here - viewtopic.php?p=837273#p837273

OK, it's Russell Brand, and this isn't an entirely uncritical piece either, but I genuinely believe he believes what he's saying and doing:

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014 ... on-despair



http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/a ... bestseller

This is the horrible lie that America seems to have successfully sold most of it's population and it's fucking heart-breaking to see it accepted. There are levels of inequity baked right into our society that means the vast majority of people who come from poor families will never amount to shit no matter how hard they try (and most of them won't even try that hard because the evidence in front of their eyes teaches them not to bother). But you'll always have people who think they 'dragged themselves up by their bootstraps' and use that lie to convince themselves that anyone who isn't well off is just a lazy cunt who hasn't bothered; while ignoring all the actual privilege that has been instrumental in allowing them to arrive where they are. I'm not a stupid guy, but I am where I am in large part because my family could afford me the upbringing and education to reward my intelligence. If I was born in a sink estate the chance of that same set of events happening is near zero.

Prediction: not that I'll be reading it but Cavey will be right back here with some extended bullshit narrative about how terrible his upbringing was and/or how much he had to struggle to get everything he's ever had without once actually taking on board anything I've said.

However hard the millionaires worked, I bet the guy on the McDonalds counter worked just as hard. You're either born lucky (into wealth and priviledge) or you get lucky (you get random opportunities that pay off well above what you'd expect).

Goodness.

Fuck you, successful people. You don't deserve it.

Successful is the wrong term, because having lots of money is not particularly a reasonable measure of having a successful life. Which is part of the problem, is that too often it is seen as the only measure of someone's success.

Nobody succeeds in vacuum. They are educated in public schools, commute on public roads and train tracks, heat their home with power from the public grid, drink water from the public supply, protect themselves from criminals via police paid from the public purse, eat food that's been safety checked by public authorities, call the fire brigade if they have a house fire or a car wreck, go to a hospital if you get sick -- and if you don't live in America, escape without going bankrupt. They work for employers who succeed because they can sell their goods in a regulated economy, recruit educated staff from a pool of workers, and so on and so on. Pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is a myth propagated by successful egomaniacs too self-unaware to recognise the healthy dose of luck that was required for them to get where they are.

What a pile of shit.

Even disregarding the fact that a whole load of people don't live in countries that give them the things you listed, and the ones that do share those things with millions of others, you're seriously suggesting that working hard has nothing to do with becoming successful?

I fucking love this thread

There's got to be a space-walk joke here somewhere.

The liberals have made it quite clear that earning money is evil, and that you should be ashamed that you went to school, learned diligently, and then applied that knowledge in the advancement of a career. Such capitalist thinking must be stopped - everyone should get a fair share of everything regardless of how hard they work because to imply that low-income earners are anything other than a hapless victims of society's inequality makes you patronisingly classist and out-of-touch with reality.

People therefore must dedicate their lives to working hard and running successful businesses, but at no point should they expect to reap the rewards of their endeavour. They need to be taxed out of proportion to those that don't earn as much and forever be made to feel like they're parasites of human dignity. People are desperate to appear humble, because to evince any pride in your success just makes you a boastful, undeserving cunt.

Or, y'know, we could stop trying to make out it's one extreme or the other and that it's actually a combination of factors. Some silver spooned people do badly and fail at life because they never tried hard. Some people were born without a spoon in the house and get to a very sustainable, decent standard of living purely from their own graft.

The guy behind the counter at McDonalds does work hard. If they're not simply content to take orders and shell out fries all day, they can engage in career progression opportunities and either use that to advance internally or leverage a better position elsewhere, or do something else that's entirely unrelated to customer services.

I respect anyone who has a job, regardless of the job, and I have no respect for anyone that does nothing but fucking whine about how it's society's/the government's/capitalism's fault that they don't own a massive house and drive a fancy car.

Me and my brother had the same opportunities. I worked hard in school, he didn't so much. I went to Uni, he didn't. He worked a series of fairly low-paid jobs in IT and has slowed advanced up over the years, but still earns less than me. He doesn't own a house and struggles to keep on top of his credit cards, but he's doing OK.

My parents 'owned' their own house but always had an overdraft to keep things ticking over. My dad can't afford to retire and is currently working beyond 65. I went to whatever the local school was with no effort to ensure it was either good or bad. On the whole it was entirely average. They didn't help me with my homework, or give me special attention. I went to Uni with almost no money and took the maximum loans and worked up to 3 jobs simultaneously to support myself. I wouldn't cast myself as a rags-to-riches success story by any stretch but I worked hard and have always earned a decent wage. There's a whole other level of people above me who work harder still, with more initiative, and do a whole lot better than me. It would be nice if I earned more, but acknowledge that that's on me and not anyone else's fault.

Yes, it's a huge advantage to be born in the UK, to parents that didn't abuse, starve, or otherwise beat the shit out of me. I've seldom experienced any kind of racial abuse or discrimination, and no single experience of my life has been so traumatic that I've been unable to function. Lucky indeed.

But those huge examples of disadvantage do not provide the excuses for everyone that fails to get ahead. Some people are just fucking lazy, or would rather steal than learn and apply knowledge, or never have enough initiative to do anything other than make do with whatever they're presented with. We're all part-circumstances and part self-application.

I otherwise broadly agree with Cavey. Rewarding hard work and aspiration sound good to me. I don't care if you're an immigrant from abroad either, for the record - if you're here to work hard in an honest job then you're welcome as far as I'm concerned.

There are single parents out there, working two minimum-wage jobs for 12+ hours a day to barely make ends meet, making a fraction of the money I do. Yet I've never worked that hard at anything in my life. So why aren't they more successful than me? Why do I get to live in a nice flat in Putney, while the barista who makes my coffee has to endure an hour long bus journey from a crummy flat in Staines?

Or how about a different approach. Most CEOs are white men. I assume a CEO of a thriving business is probably meeting your definition of success. So why are they mostly white men? Do you think white men are intrinsically better at working hard than women or men of other ethnicities?

Because they're unlucky*. I'm fully aware you need to be lucky to get anywhere.

However, you're (and others are) saying it's got nothing to do with working hard and, indeed, it makes no difference if you do, which is clearly rubbish.

*or stupid enough to have a kid, you decide!

Whoops, this is a reply to the single parent post, obv.

If you're going on correlations for something as simplistic as mere ethnicity, I would point out that the countries with the highest proportion of black people are also often the countries with the lowest GDP. So local economic circumstances have a direct congruence with a western-definition of wealth. If we switched around the population and the western world was suddenly full of black people with a minority of white people, I would expect the numbers to change. Nobody is actually arguing that circumstances aren't a factor. But also just one factor - not a win-all get out clause.

Hello. You appear to be confused as to what has been said.

I've said that working hard can make you successful. You have denied this, and said it has no factor - a "myth", if we're being accurate.

I've not said anything about it being the only factor, so why are you acting like I have?

Of course hard work makes a difference. I'd be head of the department instead of just a senior technical person if I gave a shit.

I'm also well aware that I'm undoubtedly less hard working than the vast majority of people in the country. I've been extremely lucky.

For a lot of people it doesn't matter if they worked 24 hours a day; they're not going to get to some promised land where they're a CEO of a big company, or even any kind of seniority.

My opinion is that the people in the middle, like me, (okay, upper Middle) really don't need any help in terms of tax breaks. Our household earns enough that if we can't keep ourselves afloat and have spare money for nice things then that's just because we're fuck ups.

The people who are working their asses off, or who are working single parents, or who don't have the spare money despite doing their best; they're the ones who need help.

Yet the government actively penalises them, and then helps people like me a bit, then giving massive help to those who are already millionaires. Is it because those people need or deserve help? Obviously not. Is it because those people are the peers of those in power, and paid a lot of money to get those people into power? Obviously yes.

Noooooooo - you need to wait until you're lucky again.

I got where I am through a combination of luck and lying

To be fair, the Doc never said that hard work was not helpful. He just said that people being able to elevate themselves to a high position as purely a function of hard work, with no luck or support, is a myth. Much like how when I win at roulette it's down to my genius systems, and when I lose it's down to terribly bad luck

He rather pointedly left it off his list of roads and policemen and whatnot.

The environment I work in (large corporates) hard work doesn't matter that much.

Arse kissing, playing the business bullshit game, your face fitting and an element of luck get your forward.

I had some luck in getting to my current role and will play the business bullshit a little bit, but that's it.

Further climbing would mean longer hours and almost certainly relocation, I know one guy at work my age who has climbed very high in another dept, he seldom sees his kids before Saturday most weeks, what with travel and working late.

Fuck that life is too short. I can say with all honesty that I would turn down double my salary if it meant a family life like that.

I'm not sure if you're including me in your comments here or not but I never said anything like that and it would seem to take a near willlful misreading to get to that conclusion. Aside from your luckiest of liars of course people will need to work hard to succeed. The 'myth' I'm addressing is that which says hard work is the only thing required to succeed. If you're a successful person then well done, it's 99.9% sure you do deserve it. However it's not true that everyone else who hasn't reached your level is a lazy feckless twat who simply hasn't put in the same level of effort you have.

Pundy basically said that it's only luck that makes people successful.

Pundy is of course correct in my case. All of my success can be traced back to three incorrect and terribly bad decisions made at points in my life over a two year period. None of those decisions were taken with an eye to the future.

The entire ten years before that, I'd done everything sensible and by the book and got nowhere.

Luck and right place at the right time do play a part, my old boss was "let go" and that enabled me to get into my position, although I'm 2 or 3 grades lower than he was and as such he would have been paid a lot more than me. Him going was about the fact he was too senior to just run the UK so they let him go and had me do it.

He told me that 15 years before, his boss pissed off the directors so they fired her and he filled her boots, he always said it was right place\right time for him.

Of course if I had been lazy or crap at my job then I would have gone as well, so working well\hard plays a part, unless you are one of those people that all big companies have who have the knack of doing very little but never get noticed and get away with it. Always thought that was a skill in itself!

That's easy. Doing it in a small company, that's the real skill...

Especially if you're self employed.

In other news.... fuck me. Where to start with this, eh readers? Amazing scenes.
In between variously being told that I'm a rabid Daily Mail reader and/or general purpose "massive bellend twat", one of the more common (baseless) charges that I tend to endure around here is that I apparently cling to some political ideology or other, as a matter of pseudo-faith and that this informs a "narrative", where of course there's precisely none. The supreme irony is that someone like me, an out and out empiricist, cares not so much as a single quark for ideology, whereas as has been so ably demonstrated here, my detractors absolutely DO do this. It's almost cult-like.

Hard work is nothing to be ashamed of; the very opposite is true. There are too many intelligent, perfectly able-bodied but ultimately lazy, embittered people out there who envy those who have grafted their way to a nice house, a nice car, a fab job and a great life, but were not and are still not willing to make the effort themselves.

(I remember Stu telling me it was "all luck" about 10 years ago at the last place too. At the time I was most put out and reacted angrily, but these days...? Well, sometimes smilies say it better: )

True, Cavey, but there are MORE people who work very hard and don't ever get to that economic level. These people should be supported, not demonised (not saying you demonise them, but the government does).

Mate, do you not think I want to support, reward and encourage those who would only make the effort to help themselves, to get off their butts, basically? Shit, there's nothing I would rather do; that is the very essence of being a Conservative, most especially a working class one.

I seem to recall the reason for my banning from there was because I argued with him about how difficult it was to buy a house. He insisted the system was stacked against people like him (workshy layabouts subsisting on a mere £1/month donation) and I said it was actually pretty easy with an average paying job and a decent credit rating. That was 2006 when the housing market had never been more generous (or foolhardy) about who it lent to, but he was still convinced it wasn't.

He's a true socialist now, of course. He was poor and the slightly less poor have all thrown their money at him.

That's emphatically not the problem. The problem is that there are genuinely millions of people who are getting off their butts and working, but who will not be able to get above, say, the 40k barrier at which Conservative policies start to benefit them.

The aim of the government should surely be to prioritise getting the hard working lower paid people to have a better deal, as opposed to those already over that threshold who are more comfortable. I get paid absurdly well compared to, say, nurses or firefighters. Yet those people are struggling to survive on their pay because they're not valued in a system that puts money above all other consideration.

I knew a single mother whose partner had left them. She had a kid in pre-school, but was still working full time and studying accountancy to try to improve her life. She practically had no time ever for recreation, and working was almost of no value in terms of paying for childcare etc. That's going to be even harder to do now, due to giving the rich large tax cuts at the expense of the poor, and freezing benefits for working people.

Curio, sadly I don't have the time right now to devote to this as I'd like, but very briefly, it is absolutely NOT the case that there's some '£40k threshold', below which one does not benefit from a Tory government. That is to catastrophically misunderstand; do you seriously believe if that were the case, I'd be in favour of it?

EVERYONE benefits from a healthy, stable, sustainably-growing and low tax economy. There are more jobs; there is more opportunity to make good; more opportunity to be the next success story of the enterprise economy. The Labourites here will bleat on about how their party "lifted millions out of poverty", right up to the bit where the economy fucking nose-dived c.10%, an unprecedented Depression which we, our kids and our grand kids will be paying for, and those millions - and many more besides - were instantly and cruelly dumped into worst shit than ever they were before.

I've spoken at length why this is Labour's fault; it is inarguably the case that the job of government is to regulate the financial sector, which they manifestly failed to do (and in fact, didn't even understand it, let alone regulate it). Tax Credits, the minimum wage, creation of endless 'unjobs' in the public sector (as paid for by ever increasing debt) - all USELESS against a backdrop of a catastrophically failed, broken, mismanaged economy.

You need to look at the bigger picture mate. If you don't get the economy right, you get NOTHING right. This is the fundamental lesson that Labour fails to learn, time and again, each time one of their administrations ends in bankrupcy and disaster, as indeed they always have. Hence my 'turkeys voting for Christmas' comment.

I'm only interested in stuff that WORKS, nothing else. It could be THE most left-leaning policy ever for all I care; I'm just not interested. The empirical truth, however, is usually close to the inverse.

In terms of lower earners I thought Cameron said he planned to make the minimum wage tax free via cuts?

Not saying that's going to make a huge difference but better than nothing?

Just caught the headline so no doubt it will in 3 years time and linked to him getting a 2nd term

There are tax cuts for lower earners. They are dwarfed by the amount cut for higher earners.

Cavey, I too don't have enough time at the mo, but will comment more later. Suffice to say I don't believe that you want to trash the working poor, nor that it is necessarily a product of Conservatism, but I really believe that is what the current government is trying to achieve, and there is tons of very empirical evidence to back this up.

I'll try to post some of it tonight.

Or - Cavey should come to the fucking cottage and there would be all the time in the world for chat!

I'd be tarred and feathered!

Seriously, I'd love to come (assuming that would be ok with everyone as, all joking aside, I would not want to piss any of the 'regulars' off ), but things are a tad sticky work-wise and I need to be around here. Assuming it goes ahead, I'd love to make a comedy appearance at the next BeexBBQ - I'll bring my own village stocks so people can chuck rotten fruit at me.