Ironically the term metropolitan elite is pretty stupid, seemingly implying that anyone in a metropolis is privileged and those in the countryside are poor put upon unfortunates. All of these types of generalisation are unhelpful and contribute to dumbing down of political and social discussion.
Westminster Politics
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Ironically the term metropolitan elite is pretty stupid, seemingly implying that anyone in a metropolis is privileged and those in the countryside are poor put upon unfortunates. All of these types of generalisation are unhelpful and contribute to dumbing down of political and social discussion.
Metropolitan elite, as far as I understand it, is a proxy for highly educated professionals, good income, probably well off. Most of them are concentrated in cities, so there are not equivalent concentrations in the rural areas or small towns. It is a stereotype but one I certainly see many examples of. So I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss it.
What's highly educated? Cause if it's a degree then like half of all adults under forty qualify. If it's a masters, something like 1 percent of the UK population does.
Yeah I'm not sure it's harder right than previously either, though it might look it with it's constant ranting about lockdowns etc...
I find it decent for news too and business, sport and money. I also just avoid reading its UK politics stuff or editorials, which can actually be worse than the DM's at times.
Fair point about the website having bafflingly immense reach. Do young people really read its sidebar of shame for gossip? Surely they'd get it from social media.
I guess I (naively maybe) assume that most DM readers are either right wing anyway or just people there to sneer at its comments etc...
I suppose the DM's constant drip drip of bile must have some effect, even if people only see the headlines, and if you add in the more insidious stuff on Facebook you get Brexit etc....
But as @DOTA said, the culture wars thankfully don't seem to be taking hold in the UK like in the US. British battles seem lower level, like around the name of the dog in Dambusters or whether the National Trust flag a building as funded by slavery or whatever.
I play football with a guy who's in the local Labour party in London and is a lecturer at a university. He's an ex drug dealer who grew up on an estate in South London and at one point had to leave for a year because someone put a hit out on him. He joined the Army and then only after that did he get his degree. Is he part of the metropolitan elite? There are lots of people in cities who vote as if they're part of the "metropolitan elite" and yet, shockingly enough, they're from massively underprivileged backgrounds. There are also a feckton of educated, privileged people in places like Sussex or Cambridgeshire who are racist Tory voters that are apparently "salt of the earth".
I think the main thing being in a metropolis gives you is an understanding of how immigration benefits the country, and also how you've got to get along with your neighbours. That's it really, don't get me wrong I understand why people in this country have been frustrated and upset for a long time but it's nothing to do with woke accountants in Leeds, much more to do with the bizarre bubble our politicians and media inhabit in Westminster.
I used to read it now and then before the brexit debate began but that made it all but unbearable to me.
https://news.sky.com/story/michael-...conservative-peers-driveway-potholes-12505847
And so it goes on, and on and on.
If this doesn't make you feel furious, nothing will.
And so it goes on, and on and on.
If this doesn't make you feel furious, nothing will.
No, not everyone who lives in a city is part of a metropolitan elite: they can't be if it fits my definition of it (see my post you are replying to).
You are also going off a tangent from the original point, which is that progressives on the left do tend to call others stupid for, for example, rejecting left-wing policies that might benefit them. This is a fact: I see such posts here on the caf often. I don't think it helps bring about any kind of understanding of diverse views or interests, common cause, or indeed win elections.
I'm surprised they let people in the 'red wall' vote at all when could never understand the realities of life. Maybe it would be best if we just let whoever wins Islington run the country?
And if there's one thing I hate, whether it comes from the right or the left, it is categorising people in the red fecking wall.
I don't take the throw around of the use of the phrase "metropolitan elite" seriously. It's been hijacked as a catch-for-all term to apply to anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with cultural right wing politics. And it is based on a laughable premise that guys like Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg are fighting the 'metropolitan elite' when they were born with a silver spoon in their mouth and trust funds in their name. Whereas someone who is from a working class background becoming the first in their family to go to university, pays their way through the course, graduates and spends time abroad for a couple of years before returning to work for an NGO based in London is now an elite. There's a contradiction that should be glaringly obvious. But it's because it's a substantial cultural difference in worldviews than economic difference.
You just mentioned the red wall. A made up figment of the press and Labour party elite's imagination in many ways. But yes, as someone who's lived in various places around the country I can tell you that in my experience the most xenophobic bits are either the ones with the fewest (non-white) immigrants or the ones where they're least integrated (e.g. Burnley and surrounding areas). It's quite an intuitive outcome of that as well in fairness, as fear begets hatred or whatever Yoda says.
I can agree with that sentiment but an obvious counter is that it takes two to reach out. It's not as if people on the right are more considerate and thoughtful of what the other side thinks and why they do and whether perhaps they have a point. "Snowflakes" "remoaners" "metropolitan elite" "social justice warriors" etc. They love to throw labels around and monopolize patriotism as if it is a right wing virtue. I believe Corbyn's policies would have done a lot more to improve substantially the material conditions of the public and communities around the UK in the same way Clement Attlee did. That's why I voted for Labour. I don't want a politician to drape themselves in the union jack and shout jingoistic slogans as a sign they care about the state of the country.
At the same time I also think one of Corbyn's problems and still a Labour problem now is that too many overinflated media representatives of the left (I'm thinking of some Guardian columnists, big social media accounts, independent media like Novara) come across very smug and woefully out of touch that can turn people off. You can't simultaneously make everything out to be a massive crisis while stating that the solutions are really easy. That's no different from the sloganeering of Boris Johnson. Corbyn I thought was a very good explainer of underlying causes of issues - his loudest supporters were terrible.
What was it that interview with Matthew Goodwin said, “economically on the left, culturally on the right, but cultures in the driving seat”
Yeah, red wall was a little tangential sorry, I just detest the concept so much it crept in
Who were the Corbyn supporters in the media with loud voices? Certainly not the Guardian, save the odd Jones column for a while.
The Remain position on Brexit may very well be vulnerable to claims of smugness (a not inherently Left position as an aside) but, unless you mean the relative minority of fellow Labour MPs, I can't recall loud voiced Corbyn supporters that anymore than a tiny fraction of the country were aware of.
The right are clearly not more conciliatory, I agree, nor, I would argue, less smug. They do, however, have loud voices and virtually a monopoly on the means to project them.
But I think much of that is the right wing media opinionists and other loudmouth commentators, not ordinary folks that have for example voted for the Tories for the first time in 2019. By most accounts, many ordinary people do not even know what those terms you mentioned even mean. It is them we should try and reach out to; the former will never accept progressive policies.
People love an excuse not to vote for the left. They're all smelly hippies. They're wrong about climate change. They would wreck the economy. They're all wasters who don't want to work/they're all elitest snobs who look down on the poor. Some of them are a bit rude towards the xenophobic, homophobic, sleaze-ridden party of the mega rich and corporations.
I would agree that if you named them the average person probably doesn't know them. But the online sphere of hyper-active political obsessives know them. More importantly the media profession of journalists know them because journalists get their cues these days off the back of a vocal minority.
As someone who voted for Corbyn's Labour twice I don't have a problem saying the likes of Aaron Bastani, Novara Media, representatives of Momentum, and those Labour MPs were insufferable because their lack of persuasion skills were so glaring. The Guardian also came across like a bunch of middle class people pretending to be working class by talking about niche topics. To me I already held similar views so didn't need it. But lots of people are there to be convinced and they do a lousy job. The pro-Corbyn media personalities came across terribly smug and like an in-group where only the cool kids sit. Jones's books are quite good but he did get invited a lot to go on TV and he comes across a child at times almost as if he wants a viral moment.
Now that's not to say I'm suggesting that Labour lost in 2019 because of twitter. But I do think the party got sucked in too much of an echo chamber.
And, of course, the money came out of her own pocket and not from the taxpayer's?
And to think some folk here keep saying that MPs get a meagre wage.
The party of fiscal responsibility
Yeah the usual bootlickers.
Let's face it the wage is incidental to all the blagging and side hustle that comes with it not to mention the hefty pay days in the private sector on retiring as quid pro quo for bending policy to suit the rich.
The DM version slagging off civil servants for 'trying to save just £400' and has this as fifth paragraph:
...and this down to tenth paragraph.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...d-Tory-donors-Mayfair-club-meet-diplomat.html
Can't wait for Truss to sort out Brexit in Northern Ireland.
I agree that the Guardian were definitely not on Corbyn's side. I remember they actually deliberately misrepresented what he said on a few occasions, especially when they were furious at him for not becoming a full on remain / 2nd referendum supporter in late 2018 - early 2019 when the Brexit deadlock intensified and became more toxic. For all the talk of Novara Media or Owen Jones, a large number of right wing YouTube channels have significantly more subscribers and clout than them. When it comes to British politics, YouTube is overwhelmingly right wing, just like the print media. There are both significantly more right wing / right of centre channels than left wing / left of centre ones, and they have typically have more subscribers.
Also after the 2019 election result, I remember the internet was full of gloating right-wingers, Brexit supporters for quite a while etc. For a period, any criticism of Johnson's record in office was somehow deemed to be bitterness from 'remoaners', before those Brexiteers eventually turned on Johnson themselves.
The fact that so many right wingers still complain about how they are sidelined and ignored by the media, when they are in fact incredibly well served by it including by traditionally the two largest circulating and sadly most influential newspapers, never fails to amaze me. Then again Republicans in the US constantly moan about how they are hard done by, when the electoral college and set-up of the senate / senate faces both clearly favour them. The BBC is deemed to be a lefty organisation, when far more staff members have moved between it and the Tory party than between it and the Labour party over the years, Farage appeared more times on QuestionTime than any other guest in the 21st century, they have regularly rolled out the red carpet for right wing think tanks that don't disclose the sources of their funding etc.
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Sorry if it's been posted before; embeded tweets currently don't work for me.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...oca-cola-over-role-in-beijing-winter-olympics
The irony. A tory fecking boycotting Coca Cola for moral reasons
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2...oca-cola-over-role-in-beijing-winter-olympics
The irony. A tory fecking boycotting Coca Cola for moral reasons
Nothing to see here, just a Member of Parliament.
Tbf we should probably stop people from doing that to kids. It's a bit mean to be shoving a dirty cloth in their faces.
Does that imply that the masks work?
Also, what grubby bastards aren't replacing their disposal masks after one day or washing their longer use ones?
Explanation for Liz Truss’s £3,000 lunch in doubt, says Labour
Government says Mayfair venue was chosen for short notice availability but report suggests foreign secretary insisted on it
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...anation-for-liz-trusss-3000-lunch-says-labour
Government says Mayfair venue was chosen for short notice availability but report suggests foreign secretary insisted on it
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...anation-for-liz-trusss-3000-lunch-says-labour
From the article
So not exactly a 3k lunch?
Also wouldn't it just have been a lit easier to put it on a company credit card... can't imagine the trade secretary wouldn't have access to one with a limit well over £1400
Tbf if truss negotiated that price its the best deal she's got since moving to trade
So just the discounted grand and a half meal then?
Wouldn't the company concerned be the UK government? I should imagine even if it was on a credit card that blowing a grand and a half on a lunch would require clearance.
How do you manage to find the least relevant points in a story to highlight for inane tattle? I'm sorry, but once again it feels like a Guido take.
Also from the same article...
the trade secretary, “explicitly asked that we book 5 Hertford Street”, which is owned by Robin Birley, a £20,000 donor to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign and the half-brother of Zac Goldsmith, the environment minister.
the foreign secretary “refused to consider anywhere else”
Also it seems she (and her party) have previous. It is a pattern of overspending public money rather than an exception.
Truss was forced to correct a parliamentary question about the south-east Asia trip and disclose that the cost to the taxpayer included £20,296 on flights, £3,980 on accommodation and £4,034 – or £250 a day for each person – on expenses
Oh just feck off.