So you support them striking but would not vote for someone who does the same?And again, where did I say they shouldn't be allowed to strike? Stop making things up man. I said a prospective prime minister is right not to support a strike, which is not at all the same as making them illegal.
The conversation was about the role of a prime minister, or prospective one in this case, and I contend that they should be looking at the public sector as a whole and not just one group, so no, that wasn't whataboutism, it was a fair question
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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I wasn't talking about perceptions of anti semitism among the public, I was talking about actual anti semitism that the EHCR found Labour was culpable for. I raise this point because we argued about it on this forum incessantly, it was dismissed by a certain part of the left in a way that it wouldn't have been if it'd involved any other ethnic group. It's shameful.
I'm frustrated to see the same old tropes repeated that's all - I'm not trying to be hostile but it's hard to see this all being repeated when many of us at the time, were warning 2019's result was inevitable because of the choice of leader. Labour was crushed in 2019 not just defeated yet the policies, leadership and ideology that got you there, is repeated unchallenged.
If the press was the determining factor as you say, why did Corbyn do OK in 2017, according to your definition, and not so OK in 2019, given the press coverage was uniformly hostile both times? And if the press is so critical in shaping the electorate's vote as you contend, why on earth go into an election with a leader who was known to be such a massive target for the press?
No, I am not a Tory voter. Like many, I am fairly practical when it comes to voting. I have voted Labour many times and I'd like to do so again.
Oh totally, this is the fault of Tory voters. But my goodness, Labour's made it easy for them and it didn't have to be this bad.
And my point is, there aren't enough people who identify with politics in those terms anymore.
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That's now three consecutive posts where you have completely made something up, where did I say that or anything like that? I'll answer you one more time but be aware you are moving close to reporting territory.
I did not say I support NHS workers striking, and I explained in post 5748 (in reply to you!) why I did not. You are correct for once in saying I would not vote for a prospective prime minister that supported NHS workers striking, probably because I said exactly that three posts earlier, post 5745.
Reporting territory... behave yourselfThat's now three consecutive posts where you have completely made something up, where did I say that or anything like that? I'll answer you one more time but be aware you are moving close to reporting territory.
I did not say I support NHS workers striking, and I explained in post 5748 (in reply to you!) why I did not. You are correct for once in saying I would not vote for a prospective prime minister that supported NHS workers striking, probably because I said exactly that three posts earlier, post 5745.
Why is a leader supporting an NHS strike a red line issue for you? If (big if) he gets anywhere near power, he won't need to worry about it because he can just pay them fairly.
Rumours are Ken Loach about to be expelled. So much for a broadchurch. Obviously the friends of Israel are celebrating...
I've already said or hinted at in earlier posts, because an NHS strike would be terrible for those people who are poor, aging or less able to look after themselves and 'fight their corner' as others, for a whole variety of reasons, and because I think a leader needs to balance the needs of all sections of society and not just those with the strongest union and most muscle.Reporting territory... behave yourself
Why is a leader supporting an NHS strike a red line issue for you? If (big if) he gets anywhere near power, he won't need to worry about it because he can just pay them fairly.
I get that's not what you think but I'm actually backing the poorest and those most in need in my belief.
Now to be fair I have answered quite a few questions, any chance of a rest now, or maybe you give an opinion or two of your own?
Of course, they are. They have influence again.
Trevor Phillips IN Ken Loach OUT.
What a croc of shit.
What a croc of shit.
I see this repeated a lot these days but I don't think it's true. People are still either rich or poor or somewhere in the middle. People may have fooled themselves into thinking that class has gone away or isn't important but I'm not sure even that is true. Working class people voting for conservative governments isn't new. If the working class voted for workers' parties, the conservatives wouldn't be an entity.
You might be correct but in a world where inequalities are growing rather than shrinking I do not see this lasting. And if there distinction between Labour and Tory is not public versus private, or social democracy versus outright neoliberalist tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, and privitization, then what is it that divides the two parties? It might be that Labour as the party of the working class is dead, or very rapidly dying, but there is still space for a working class party. The only reason Johnson and Farage did well with that group was because Brexit was tied up with ideas about nationalism and the working class in England have always been deeply nationalist as opposed to the internationalist working class in most other countries.
As for 2017/19. The answer is Brexit. Corbyn has been anti-EU for half a century but his party and its London base is/was in favour of remain by about 2:1. As a result, he tried to find a middle way and ended up pleasing no one. His policy on Brexit in 2019 was utterly shit. In a campaign run entirely on nationalist credentials, it's hardly surprising that a genuine internationalist was by far the least popular of the two primary candidates. If Corbyn were more reactionary he might have done better but he isn't/wasn't and he lost overwhelmingly.
But Labour won't get into power under Starmer. They need someone who can make the argument for public spending and income inequality without being as damaged as Corbyn or as incredulous and weak as Starmer.
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This is naive. The press want to influence and shape opinion whilst turning a profit. They can have more than one objective. And those objectives can vary from publication to publication.
Not so.
First and foremost the press need to sell their papers in order to make a profit.
And like everything when you are selling, you have to know what your target audience want to buy.
Once you are reaching your readership targets, that is the time you can start to influence.
But very few papers are selling well. Particularly when younger people are not interested in buying and reading them. Hardly surprising for the rubbish they are stupid enough to print.
Press power has changed since the days of independent newspapers, where most of the circulation is now goes through News Corp, the Daily Mail Group, Barclays Bros, etc.
There has been an element of chicken and egg over the years, eg The Sun's switch to Labour under Blair. Even the Telegraph and the DM have struggled to cheer lead Johnson at times through the pandemic, but yeah, these tend to be aberrations before the return to the customary jingoistic tubthumping.
If those terms have disappeared, they've certainly been eroded as the middle class has grown. I'd be interested to know how many people actively identify as 'working class' - the only surveys I can find are a few years old. Obviously class barriers remain, but there is much more social mobility these days and I'd be surprised if young people in particular viewed themselves through the traditional class lens.
We've also been indoctrinated to believe that unions and the like are anachronisms no longer needed in the age of overarching employment protections, despite the proliferation of zero hours contracts etc...
The term middle class is being used differently as well, to the generation above me it would have meant bank manager (ie the one in charge of the town bank) or grammar school headmaster, now the finance industry alone has hundreds of thousands that would consider themselves middle class, and half a million teachers the same.
In any event the American use is taking over, meaning just the bulk of people in the middle, not unduly wealthy, and not poor.
Politicians would be better dropping the term and choosing alternatives I think, those that use it now just come across as being old-fashioned and out of touch.
In any event the American use is taking over, meaning just the bulk of people in the middle, not unduly wealthy, and not poor.
Politicians would be better dropping the term and choosing alternatives I think, those that use it now just come across as being old-fashioned and out of touch.
Billionaires own the press. Making a profit is a nice to have not a need to have. Especially in these times.
The owners already have money. Now they want influence... How do you think they go about that?
When faced against a Labour party under Corbyn who would've taxed the billionaire owners correctly and also implanted Leveson 2. I think it is obvious why the press were almost unified against Corbyn's Labour.
Well, no, he certainly wasn't going to lure them from the Tories for any number of reasons. I doubt for a minute that they thought him getting in was a realistic outcome though, so it's not like they were panicking over tax or Leveson2. Whatever tax reforms Corbyn had enacted, it's highly unlikely he'd have been able to snare offshore billionaires like Lord Rothermere or Murdoch.
I'm not sure they will either, but even if they had the greatest argument in the world the hole would still be too deep to dig out of in a single parliament (who knows though, politics is volatile at the moment). Maybe there's a coalition to be had, I could settle for that. Re: the leadership, I'd settle for a Kinnock or John Smith type - a person who lays foundations/paves the way.
This will stick in your throats, but Corbyn really could have done more to prevent the Press taking chunks out of him. He could have done a deal over Levenson 2 for starters, or tax, or similar - the Tories would have. But Corbyn really wasn't a very good at that kind of pragmatic, making-enemies-friends dealmaking sort of politics - which I think a successful PM has to be - and here we are with 5 years of Tories running the place.
I agree with much of this. Only you don't have to be a coal miner to be working class. The distinction is if you have to sell your labour in order to live, or belong to a class where that distinction holds (family, peers, and so on), then you are working class, a member of the proletariat. Doctors, bank managers, and other members of the bourgeous, typically had either an income which meant they could retain capital or owned land. They didn't strictly need to work. Though there have always been other distinctions in play, like the aristocratic family which is asset rich but cash poor, or asset poor, cash poor, but class rich (the upper class distinction is institutionalised and carries over even if they cease owning land and having capital).
Is social mobility really better now than it was fifty years ago? The housing ladder is the best index of social mobility and the Western world is facing a generational housing crisis.
You could run a working class, democratic socialist, platform without mentioning class at all. You would just have to focus on education, healthcare, housing, and tax reform. It might be better to drop the class terms but only if you still focus on the underlying issues which class politics is about.
Nahh, an awful lot of papers run at a loss. This is because their function is not to turn a profit but to engineer society.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...mid-falling-print-sales-phone-hacking-damages
Newspapers serve many functions. They would like to turn a profit if they could but very few can and this isn't new. The prestige newspapers are all either located behind a paywall or owned by a trust. The papers that do run at a loss are usually those which only represent tiny parts of much broader media conglomerates. The value for the owners of newspapers is that papers still set the editorial agenda. The newspapers publish, the television and radio broadcast news regurgitates, and the online news (twitter and the like) tend to act as a running commentary. Newspapers are also valuable here because they allow state and non-state broadcasters to set biased editorial agendas with get out of jail free cards (they can support their editorial bias simply by saying "we must report the news" or "In the Times today...").
I'm not sure they engineer society, though not for lack of trying. It's more that they set the terms for the "legitimate" spectrum of what can be read and debated as "important"/"newsworthy" by the rest of the media (television, radio, internet, blogs, and so on, but mostly the first two). This is why moguls and certain corporations are quick to buy up newspapers even though they never expect to turn a profit from the newspaper alone. The profit comes in the form of influencing the wider discourse in their favour and to their interests.
What you've described is social engineering.
A very good friend of mine who is an editor of a daily newspaper would very much beg to differ.
Is his paper raking in the cash is it?
Your friend would not have been given that job role if he had "begged to differ".
What a pack of utter cretins the current iteration of Labour is.
You know him do you?
The media owners will employ someone who, in general, agrees with, or will promote key parts of their agenda. Why would they hire someone who doesn't?
If banning them caused unemployment to rise, as some people think, why not reform them instead, see if they can be made to work better?
Because 0 hour contracts guarantee you nothing. Hence the term 0 hour. How would you suggest we reform them so that they're fit for purpose?
Maybe he will go full Tory and suggest 1 hour minimum contracts.
There’s definitely a use for zero hours contracts. When I was at uni I was on one when I was working in hospitality. Was ideal to be able to work as and when I needed to. there is a small number of people whom they are useful for. No doubt they are abused by many businesses, however.
0 hour contracts mean you work when they like, not when you like
Good... you can't repeat that often enough, becsuse people seem to think it gives the employee some sort of say.
I'm not sure what type of contract @esmufc07 was on but I don't think it was a 0 hour. Anyone arguing in favour of 0 hour contracts is an enemy of the working person.
It was a 0 hours contract - I picked up work as and when I needed it whilst studying. It worked for me as opposed to being on a 4/6/8/16 hour contract where I had to work every week. It was flexible.
As I say they are useful for a small amount of people - but far too many companies take advantage and the rules around them need change.
I've literally never heard of a job like that where you pick your own hours. You must have had the kindest employers in the UK.