Be Excellent To Each Other

Yeah there are food banks here mate, theres a lot of hardship in Winsford for example (within a mile of here), and also rurally as well.

In terms of Thatcher, yes of course, agreed, but my point is that Blair is hated in all those places too - and everywhere else besides.

As for your final point, I love you and all of you here too, you know I do. To you I am blinkered; I honestly don't think so but maybe I am for all I know; I'm just trying to get you to see where people like me are coming from, because you're miles off beam at present, honestly.

I know where people like you are coming from. My wife's family is from a few miles from where you live, remember. These are people who are terrified of immigrants despite never meeting a non-white person. Not bad people, but isolated. Living in their own little Bubbles with little idea of how the country at large live.

I get it. It doesn't make it right.

Sorry for the horrific generalisation, BTW. Your milage of course, may vary

So how did they just get more votes in the council elections? The Tories lost more seats than Labour did!

If Labour are a joke, the Tories must be a group of clowns!

(NB. I didn't vote for Labour, BTW)

Neither did I

You seriously don't get it; you accuse me of living in a bubble but you don't know me, less still that I myself am first gen immigrant (refugee) stock. "Terrified of immigrants".... Lol. Who the hell brought up immigrants anyway?

It's always the same; it just doesn't compute, no matter how I try to explain. Just as political facts are waved aside (if acknowledged at all, usually not), it's just so much easier to put me in some absurd middle class little englander box, despite that a fair few have even met me in person. Well I'm sorry to spoil the party but I'm just not; like millions of others. I'm a working class Tory and am so because having reviewed tge facts before me, rightly or wrongly, I think that is right for the highest number of people. Not because of where I'm from (a council estate in Essex btw), where I live now, and least of all because I'm "evil".

If this sounds intemperate, I don't mean it to be. I'm just genuinely sad, is all.

Gng.

No one. Is. Calling. You. Evil.

FFS

I'm done mate there's nothing else I can add.
Besides, I have a motorbike to collect. Woo.

My Dad voted Tory all through the 80s, despite being a labourer at the Redcar British Steel blast furnace. I reckon he still voted Tory even after his job disappeared and he had to stack shelves in asda in his 60s. I guess I'll never understand why the working class vote Tory. Some sort of cap-doffing, "those guys must know what they're doing" effect maybe.

I dunno. I'm not a debater and can't communicate well enough in this medium to have a satisfactory chat. I'd really like to meet you Cavey. Are you going to the cottage?

Mate, I ain't exactly the Stephen Fry of debating societies either lol.
Yes I am, and it would be great mate. Look forward to it.

I hope I can get down there this year. Even if just for the afternoon

David Cameron, repeatedly.

Cavey, I honestly think you believe some of us here are as politically tribalistic as you are. Every time I criticise the Conservatives you take it personally, and say Labour aren't any better, but get this: in the last ten years I've been a member of the Lib Dems, the Greens and now Labour. I don't give a shit whether it's the blue pricks or the red pricks or the yellow pricks or the green pricks who win elections and I'm not particularly interested in arguing Tory v Labour all the time. I only care about who is in the best position to effect change for the better in our society, and for all their problems currently that is Labour. They have someone in charge who is deeply passionate about those who are most unfortunate society, and as the second biggest party in the country they are in the best position to hold the government to account when they announce these terrible policies like cutting tax credits and turning all schools into academies.

I really don't know how you can vote Tory and also volunteer at a food bank, unless it's to assuage your own guilt. Their policies have directly increased the need for food banks. In fact, they now see it as a viable option for the poor instead of welfare. I guess that's Dave's Big Society come to fruition then.

'xactly. (I found it particularly disgusting how Cameron and Goldsmith attempted to smear the S. Khan because of his ethnic background, FWIW.)

Labour won all four mayoral contests, it turns out.

Bunch of clowns

I have to wonder if the overtly racist campaign the tories ran is what turned the tide in Khan's favour.

I can see how they thought appealing to fear and hatred might have worked, but I am very glad that it did not.

I think I have some idea where you're coming from Cavey - for me, it's genuinely heartening to find people of my acquaintance *aren't* tories, so prevalent was it in my youth and is it now, so it doesn't feel like I'm joining a majority in coming in from the left. I grew up in Hertfordshire, safe Tory seat where I was (tilting further right wing as you head down to Broxbourne, where they elected some BNP councillors not so long ago, think they had the honour of being the first to do that). I went to a public (quick edit to put an 'l' in that) school so was surrounded by Tory thinking (though my economics teacher had a lot of subversive fun with the Thatcher government and their 'money supply is crucial, here's our target; oh we've missed it, here's the new target: repeat to fade'). I live in Kent now, in the blue bit (Canterbury and surrounds - been Tory longer than anywhere else, apparently). And my dad is essentially a genius, and has always voted Tory. So I have some fun with it - there's a reason why universities are left wing, that's where all the educated people are and where the innovation in human knowledge (not in 'getting things done', I'll accept) comes from, so all Tories must just be under-educated. I know that's not really the story.

But just as you can't see Labour without seeing (fill in your own list here, I don't want to get it wrong, but 'financial muppets, idealogues and people busy fighting the idealogical battles of the 50s'), I can't see the Tory party without seeing the homophobic, little-England racist 'bah, this country!' exhorting idiots. They may genuinely be a small group at the margins, but it doesn't feel like it, and they make for poor bed-fellows. More than that, I don't think you can have the compassionate 'come on, this is necessary, real world stuff, chaps' Tories without the swivel-eyed loons - they make the party.

Having joined the Labour party here, I'd happily reassure you that community action of the people-helping kind, just as you are doing, is totally ingrained into the actions of most members.

10 Tory MPs being investigated for election expenses with regard to last year's general election.

Funny how that's news after this week's elections, isn't it?

This is the difference between being friends with Murdoch and not being friends with Murdoch.

Cherry picking makes me nervous; here's those numbers in context. 2016 doesn't look bad for Labour to me. 1291 seats won, out of 2581 contested. I look forward to Cavey explaining why that's actually terrible.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

On the other hand, 2006 is actually worse than 2005; far from the "best Tory result for years" as your image suggests. And 1995 is worse than 1994 for Labour. So I also think the image is nonsense.

I think you've somewhat missed the point, Doc. That image is showing us what Murdoch's newspaper's said about the election results.

I heard rumblings of it a couple of months ago on news night or something similar (perhaps the politics show?)

What the BBC pundits were saying (as were the Tory MPs and some anti Corbyn Labour MPs too) was that given that Cameron has been PM for 6 years, Labour should be doing much better than they are, as every other opposition party had done since the 80s, and given that they hadn't, meant that Labour had no chance in 4 years time.

I have no idea (and no time to try and work it out at the moment) that if you indeed factor who was in power it affects the result.

Well, maybe. But as it has no sources cited it's hard to tell.

Actually I think it's misleading, having looked a little closer.

My bad.

OK then just a brief update from me because, hey, I'm losing the will to live here.

Labour's vote utterly crashed in Scotland; not only did the SNP utterly annihilate them, even the hated Tories cruised past them to become, by some margin, to become the official Opposition. Who would've put money on that happening even a year or two back?

It's similar story in the Welsh parliament, where they've lost seats and their overall majority.

Even in terms of Councillors, Labour have lost seats, though not quite as many as the Tories (wow, quelle surprise eh, sitting governments do so well in their first year after being elected).

Still, we have a Labour Mayor of London, and it's all going swimmingly and an amazing vindication of Corbyn's swivel-eyed tenure as leader so far.

Long may "successes" like this continue, I say.

As a complete aside, if you want a lift to the Cottage let me know DavPaz mate.

You do realise when using "swivel-eyed" you're co-opting a phrase used by liberals about conservatives, yes? A typical reactionary trick.

You know instead of saying "swivel-eyed" in every single post, you could probably just assume that when you are referring to anyone connected to labour, everyone will remember that you think they are "swivel eyed".

Having done a bit more reading up, I do think that it probably was overall a bad result for Labour.

They just need to stick with my plan:

Corbyn solidifies the base for a couple of years, then hands over the reins to a more dynamic character who can retain the base while reaching out to more centrist types.

I'd also say that I think both main parties are at their most vulnerable in years.

Diddums.

To be fair, that's entirely right IMO.
Labour need to regain their political soul, post-Blair. As swivel-eyed crazy as I think Corbyn's policies and appointments are - all IMO of course - at least they're unmistakably Socialist in origin, colours nailed firmly to the mast.

They need to go down before they can come back up; as a Tory I'm bound to say the world has moved on politically, but who knows? They may yet resonate with the wider electorate, especially if there's another crash.

I'm not upset, it just make it harder to take you seriously.

W-what? You don't take me seriously, Lewie...?
Shit, that's my week ruined.

I think these are both very reasonable posts

I don't think anyone is saying everything is going swimmingly in the Labour camp, Cavey. I don't think things are going very well for any of the major national political parties. Labour seem to be all over the place with in-fighting, snarking and problems with a big rift between those who see Corbyn as a moral and upstanding visionary of what SHOULD be, and those who see him as s radical idealist with a loose grip on reality, meanwhile in the Conservative camp they are looking increasingly like a little England protecting the need and wants only of the elite lucky enough to be doing well for themselves, with a fringe of xenophobes and borderline (and occasionally quite overt) racists bobbing around. You may see Corbyn as a joke, in the same way many others see people like Johnsson and Goldsmith as not only clowns, but contemptuous ones at that. But things bob about until it comes time to cast votes... Where I think you end up embroiled in discussions here is because you seem to look for the merest point of news on Labour to rush to this thread (though you're always really busy and in a rush, so must post and then forget about this whole silly thing) to say how you don't like schaudenfreud, REALLY, but couldn't help but laugh at this one thing, call everyone mate, and then go back to being really busy and not able to spend all day posting really long diatribes.

You're definitely not the only person here that does it, but perhaps(?) the most frequent. I don't think you're the most politically annoying person, but you stick in people's minds and have a lot of rebuff because you make a point of everything, despite how little time you have to waste on this and the fact that you really, really don't like to gloat.

Also, I don't care that you use terms like 'swivel eyed', but goodness me it can get a bit repetitive. At least mix it up a bit with the name-calling so it's not like reading the same post 200 times, please!

This will never do. I clearly need to be more reactionary

*waves*

VERY harsh.

I think you should switch in a few 'bandy-kneed miscreants'

"Frothing-mouthed reactionaries"

Man up, take it on the chin old boy etc etc

Or maybe realise we're not all dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporters but just detest the actual harm this government is purporting on its citizens and want things to be better. If the Tories turned around and said they were going to support the NHS and BBC, roll back their plans to dismantle welfare, implement fair tax changes and crack down on tax evasion by large corporations, I'd start voting for them. Like I said I don't give a shit who's in charge, I am not partisan.

But they won't, will they?

He can't use the term reactionaries - it literally means conservative!

I believe this is what they call an iron fist in a velvet glove.

Yeah, glad you liked it Hearthly.

He only says swivel-eyed all the time to wind me up, anyway.

The scamp.

Are those eyes rolling or swivelling?

I'm seriously not laughing, in fact I'm pretty pissed off about this TBH. Totally uncalled for IMO.
But hey, I'm big enough and ugly enough etc.

Consider this my last political post however. Just not worth the fucking hassle.