The General Politics Thread v2.0 (AKA the "Labour are Cunts" thread)

[BomberPat]

4 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

It's a lot easier for some people to be friends with those of differering political beliefs depending on their upbringing, background and current financial, social and societal position. 

Exactly, a lot of it comes down to how much skin you have in the game.

It can also come down to questions of whether loyalty to your friends is more important to you than loyalty to your beliefs, which is never an easy question. But surely everyone has their red lines, and surely everyone accepts that on some level you become friends in the first place through some shared set of views or other? Like, I don't expect everyone I have a drink with to agree that "Rain Dogs" by Tom Waits is the best album ever recorded, but I'm not getting a second round in if they disagree on who deserves basic human rights. 

[Keith Houchen]

2 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Forgot to mention this too. There's a lot of lambasting of identity politics like it's a bad thing, and it's usually from people historically not affected by them.

Identity politics arose in response to a problem. There seem to be a lot of people more bothered about the response than the problem itself.

It’s the classic of people being more outraged at accusations of racism than the actual racism. 

[Carbomb]

1 minute ago, Keith Houchen said:

It’s the classic of people being more outraged at accusations of racism than the actual racism. 

Or calling Antifa "worse than the fascists". (Not saying anyone here does that, BTW, just that that does pop up a lot on the Intarwebs.)

Edited December 4, 2023 by Carbomb

[Keith Houchen]

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Or calling Antifa "worse than the fascists". (Not saying anyone here does that, BTW, just that that does pop up a lot on the Intarwebs.)

“I’m anti antifa”. So that makes you “Fa” then. 

[BomberPat]

21 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

It’s the classic of people being more outraged at accusations of racism than the actual racism. 

I honestly think that comes down to certain people seeing the extent of the impact of racism as, "you called me a bad word", so that they draw no distinction between somebody being called a racial slur, and somebody being called a racist, no matter how much it's warranted. They just see both as name-calling.

It's something I only really realised around the US election in 2016 - there are two groups of people not even having the same conversation, so that when what side uses the word "racism", they're talking about institutional and systemic issues, where when the other side hears the word "racism", they define it as "actually calling a minority a slur to their face". 

[Loki]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

It can also come down to questions of whether loyalty to your friends is more important to you than loyalty to your beliefs, which is never an easy question. But surely everyone has their red lines, and surely everyone accepts that on some level you become friends in the first place through some shared set of views or other? Like, I don't expect everyone I have a drink with to agree that "Rain Dogs" by Tom Waits is the best album ever recorded, but I'm not getting a second round in if they disagree on who deserves basic human rights. 

I wonder how many of us have genuinely dropped a real-life friend over a political disagreement?  Is that a common thing that people are doing?  

I don't think there's ACTUALLY that many people that don't believe in basic human rights, but there are many who have differing opinions on how rights are manifested, how competing rights intersect, and how a balance is struck between rights and security.  Unless you're in the pub with Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen, you probably share about 90% of your moral philosophy with the person you're talking to, but the 10% you differ on seems huge because, well, politics has become something that people calibrate their personalities to and so small differences are accentuated.

The political "debates" we see on tv are always ridiculously simplified and amplified. As @Keith Houchen said earlier there's a whole class of commentators who are there to shout at each other and call each other idiots etc, so that we can tut at them, or agree with them.  Actual real-world conversations can be much more nuanced if you take the time to ask people WHY they feel or think a certain way.  Someone who might agree with 30p Lee Anderson about immigration, at heart may just be really worried about the impact of wages on the business they are trying to run, and the impact of high immigration on his local public services.   You may both have almost identical core concerns but radically different solutions to the problem.  

 

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

I honestly think that comes down to certain people seeing the extent of the impact of racism as, "you called me a bad word", so that they draw no distinction between somebody being called a racial slur, and somebody being called a racist, no matter how much it's warranted. They just see both as name-calling.

It's something I only really realised around the US election in 2016 - there are two groups of people not even having the same conversation, so that when what side uses the word "racism", they're talking about institutional and systemic issues, where when the other side hears the word "racism", they define it as "actually calling a minority a slur to their face". 

 

People get angry about being accused of racism because a lot of the time the racism is a result of the system they are also trying to navigate, that is producing outcomes that affect them personally.   They want things to improve for themselves, and that's not a ridiculous notion, right, but there just isn't the flexibility in our discourse most of the time to separate that from wanting things to be worse for others.   

It's in the memory of most of us that you would routinely come across racism of the second type you mention - whether its schoolyard jokes or Bernard Manning, I'm sure we can all remember when casual racism was acceptable in the UK.  I don't think it's mere lip-service that this is no longer true - I think as a country (and we're very different from the US here) we are genuinely a less racist society of individuals.

Systemic racism is going to take a lot longer to root out because it's often unconscious, and very much tied up with the class system that still exists here.  In all honesty it will probably improve with the passing of the older generation as much as any political efforts.

I'm rambling now.

 

[Keith Houchen]

15 minutes ago, Loki said:

I wonder how many of us have genuinely dropped a real-life friend over a political disagreement?

Unsurprisingly I have, and a few have dropped me (not that I blame them). And yes, we all got damaged. 
 

As I’ve said before, I think there is a distinction between someone who voted conservative and someone who is a Tory. We know how the last election was primarily a one issue election, but one thing that routinely gets overlooked is how good your constituency MP is. If they’re out there fighting local causes and raising issues that are important to the community in the commons, that goes a long way. People will vote for that person as opposed for whichever party they represent. 

[BomberPat]

5 minutes ago, Loki said:

People get angry about being accused of racism because a lot of the time the racism is a result of the system they are also trying to navigate, that is producing outcomes that affect them personally.   They want things to improve for themselves, and that's not a ridiculous notion, right, but there just isn't the flexibility in our discourse most of the time to separate that from wanting things to be worse for others.   

It's in the memory of most of us that you would routinely come across racism of the second type you mention - whether its schoolyard jokes or Bernard Manning, I'm sure we can all remember when casual racism was acceptable in the UK.  I don't think it's mere lip-service that this is no longer true - I think as a country (and we're very different from the US here) we are genuinely a less racist society of individuals.

Systemic racism is going to take a lot longer to root out because it's often unconscious, and very much tied up with the class system that still exists here.  In all honesty it will probably improve with the passing of the older generation as much as any political efforts.

 

I'm not sure I agree with the first paragraph, though you do see a lot of that assumption - often baked into the discourse, as you say - that to make life better for one group necessarily means making it worse for another, and I think the fear of being considered racist or some other kind of unacceptable label is actively exploited by the bad actors in our politics and media, who want already disadvantaged people to feel like they can't speak out or express their concerns for fear of being called racist.

It's like part of the Stewart Lee routine on his gran confusing political correctness with basic health and safety legislation, into this confused mess of "you're not allowed to say/do X any more" - our discourse is of a really appalling quality, and that means quite often we see the outcome of conversations with very little background, and that leads some people to feel that certain words or concepts are just being "banned" or deemed offensive completely arbitrarily, because they've missed the entire debate around why they should or shouldn't be acceptable and suddenly they find that words they've been using for years without incident, they're being told are no longer "allowed". 
I'm sure there are better examples, but one that comes to mind for me is the toppling of the statue of Colston in Bristol. People acted as if it was an out of nowhere, impulsive act, because they weren't aware of the background. But I have a mixed race cousin who went to university in Bristol, and they were well aware of the backstory to that action, and to the divisiveness of Edward Colston's name, going back decades.

 

I do think that casual day-to-day racism has definitely lessened in this country, at least from what I see from my perspective as a white bloke. A lot of that comes from exposure - the truism that being around more people from diverse backgrounds means you're less likely to be racist, because you start seeing other races as individuals and not a homogenous bloc. I don't tend to go in for broad stereotypes about "national character", but I do think there's something in the British tendency towards being polite and reserved that means we're by and large less likely to go in for the loud, shouting and flag-waving racism of the American right, as much as the flag-shagging right-wing protestors here might try and bang that drum.

I don't like to think that things will just get better as the old racists die off, because it needs to be a constant active struggle, and it's too reductive to push everything back on older generations' shoulders, but generally there is a liberalising trend to subsequent generations' social attitudes, and long may it continue.

 

As for ending friendships based on political opinions, it does depend on what you consider "political". I think if you frame it as "moral differences", you're more likely to find people who would say they have done that. There are definitely people I know who I have made no effort to reconnect with after the pandemic, because of how much they either became or outed themselves as anti-vaxxers and conspiracy nutters during lockdown. There are people who I used to happily drink with, but started noticing more and more dodgy sentiments coming from that maybe early on I'd have made excuses for because they were a bit of a laugh or whatever, but over time I realised I actually don't want to keep listening to this shit. None of these people have been close friends, but I think if a close friend outed themselves as a racist, I'd stop being friends with them - though I like to think I'd have had better judgement in the first place, and that I wouldn't be friends with a racist. But you get my point.

By way of comparison, someone I knew back in Jersey was accused pretty credibly of sexual assault. A mutual friend was adamant that they were still their mate and they stood by them, because they thought that loyalty to your friends was the most important thing in life. Whereas I would argue that loyalty to your morals is more important, and that if somebody proves themselves capable of something like that, then they shouldn't be your friend, and arguably never were, if they were able to hide that capability from you. There are opinions and viewpoints that I think would merit the same response, but different people will have different cut-off points as to what they are.

[organizedkaos]

Quote

don't think there's ACTUALLY that many people that don't believe in basic human rights, but there are many who have differing opinions on how rights are manifested, how competing rights intersect, and how a balance is struck between rights and security.

 

Yep, there's certainly a fair amount of varying political view points within my friendship group. There are times it can be disheartening but often the varying view points are coming from friends I know very well, well enough to understand the person behind the views. That doesn't mean excusing them, simply understanding.

For example, I've a close friend who thinks Brexit is a great idea.  He's certainly not saying that because of any stance on immigration, it's mostly that Tony Benn anti Europe thing.. There are a million different reasons I think he's wrong but they come from differing ideas about how to make things better. Ideologically we both want our country to do better, we just see different paths to getting there. I do feel that he downplays the suffering Brexit has brought to people's lives and I'm pretty sure that comes from his background/economic status but at the same time it's not like he wants to starve all the poors. I  think he's being overly optimistic about the potential negative effects of leaving the EU (and I get to remind him of this, repeatedly)

I believe he can change his mind for the better, he believes he can change mine. In reality we mostly just develop a more nuanced understanding of both our views.

There's certainly some terrible people out there but suggesting that people who vote against you are basically scum who have no moral compass about human rights is a great way of narrowing your world view as much as possible.

Fair play if you think you have to cut these sort of people out of your life. But that's kinda my point. You've a bunch of people who feel there are views that cannot go unchallenged. You might think you can challenge those views within a social relationship or you may think the existence of the relationship tacitly endorses those views. Either way, you're all people trying to improve things.

Edited December 4, 2023 by organizedkaos
making it clear what i was responding to

[SuperBacon]

Some great discussion over the last two days and I'd love to contribute but I've had a fucking shit day and will instead just post this.

I know its low hanging fruit and I sort of get the point he's making but he's a millionaire. Buy your sister a Fisherman's Pie you cheap cunt.

[Devon Malcolm]

Just Keir Starmer getting embarrassed.... by MICHAEL FABRICANT.

 

[Keith Houchen]

45 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Just Keir Starmer getting embarrassed.... by MICHAEL FABRICANT.

 

Stephen Flynn of the SNP also asked Sunak how he felt about potentially being the first conservative PM to lose an election to a Thatcherite. Yeeouch!

[Loki]

Starmer put Sunak's Rwanda contract to the sword during PMQs, it was obvious Sunak hadn't even read it.  Most shocking was the under the new deal, the UK is obliged to take refugees from Rwanda!

Also, presented without comment, but fucking hell 

"My parents pay £90k a year for my kids’ school fees – now they’re out of money. A mother of three tells how her parents have got cold feet about funding their grandchildren's education - and she now feels stupid, resentful and heartbroken

Edited December 6, 2023 by Loki

[Keith Houchen]

16 minutes ago, Loki said:

 

Starmer put Sunak's Rwanda contract to the sword during PMQs, it was obvious Sunak hadn't even read it.  Most shocking was the under the new deal, the UK is obliged to take refugees from Rwanda!

 

This was always the case. I’m just glad it got mentioned because thus far it’s always been ignored. It was part of the previous deal too. 

[westlondonmist]

2 hours ago, Loki said:

Starmer put Sunak's Rwanda contract to the sword during PMQs, it was obvious Sunak hadn't even read it.  Most shocking was the under the new deal, the UK is obliged to take refugees from Rwanda!

Also, presented without comment, but fucking hell 

"My parents pay £90k a year for my kids’ school fees – now they’re out of money. A mother of three tells how her parents have got cold feet about funding their grandchildren's education - and she now feels stupid, resentful and heartbroken

I live near a few private schools, I always look at their prices and the best one costs about 21k a year. 30k is really fucking top end. I went to a private school (full scholarship for council kids) and the most intelligent ones didn't do private primary, it's a waste. Some privately educated primary kids were thick as mince. I feel bad for the 3 kids, they are getting shafted but she just comes across as ponce.

If my parents said they'd pay for my son to go to private school id tell them I'd rather they paid a mortgage for me until they leave school.