Has social media made the UK more right wing?

[Mr Kobayashi]

Who decides centre? I will give you a good example of how this left right and class view in Manchester for example really makes no sense.

A close friend of mine through the pub and work was a stalwart Labour supporter. As a rule I avoid political discussions with mates but the election was coming up and he said he was voting Labour again. This is going back 15 years or so.

I said I was surprised he was a Labour supporter and his answer was well I'm working class.

Okay I said what's your view on people on long term benefits? They should get a bloody job I have to work and I ain't working for them to sit on their arses.

Okay what about immigration? I'm not racist but etc...

You proud of being English? Queen and Country etc...

I said dont your views not align with tories? Well they are posh fuckers.

Even last week I was talking to a girl at work about care workers(my father recently died through cancer mother in care home) which is a gripe of mine. I said they are grossly underpaid and after covid I'm disappointed that people still don't realise how important some roles are. Getting close to minimum wage for what they do. She said don't believe the stories they come over here work for agencies and get good money.

Good money?

Yeah the agency gets 15 quid. Yeah maybe but the the worker doesn't but they wipe arses look after the vulnerable and see people they care for die. Do you think they should earn less than you? You do none of that. Her answer?

Well if we weren't paying for asylum seekers then maybe we could pay more.

Labour voter btw, in her head she's a caring socialist. She will think her views are balanced. She is not even voting for the right fucking party based on her fuckwittery.

This is why left right poor rich upper class working class makes no sense any more.

Doesn't that point just prove there's plenty of morons about? I once worked with an idiot proud Brexit voter who blamed the fact he didn't get a pay rise in the council on "benefit scroungers" it actually transpired in a conversation with someone else that he was getting paid above his grade due to team restructuring and another colleague who had been in a similar position wasn't getting that treatment.

I also lived in a house with a girl in her early 20s who wanted to vote SNP. Fine, fair enough, you might say...

the only problem with that was she lived in Bristol.

(I'm pretty sure she didn't even know what SNP is short for).

For their own class based self-interest those two people you mentioned should be voting labour because there's fuck all the Tories will do for either of them. Or they could waste a lot of energy on UKip/Brexit/reform/current flavour of right wing libertarians cosplaying as fascists.

Just because your views aren't represented doesn't mean you have to shit in your own bed and vote against your own interests.

 

[hilts]

Doesn't that point just prove there's plenty of morons about? I once worked with an idiot proud Brexit voter who blamed the fact he didn't get a pay rise in the council on "benefit scroungers" it actually transpired in a conversation with someone else that he was getting paid above his grade due to team restructuring and another colleague who had been in a similar position wasn't getting that treatment.

I also lived in a house with a girl in her early 20s who wanted to vote SNP. Fine, fair enough, you might say...

the only problem with that was she lived in Bristol.

(I'm pretty sure she didn't even know what SNP is short for).

For their own class based self-interest those two people you mentioned should be voting labour because there's fuck all the Tories will do for either of them. Or they could waste a lot of energy on UKip/Brexit/reform/current flavour of right wing libertarians cosplaying as fascists.

Just because your views aren't represented doesn't mean you have to shit in your own bed and vote against your own interests.

Your first sentence is unfortunately 100% correct. However the class based interest makes no sense whatsoever..

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Your first sentence is unfortunately 100% correct. However the class based interest makes no sense whatsoever..

Why wouldn't it? What have Tories done to improve the living standards of an average worker in the last 14 years?

Where does the "I'm working class so I vote labour" come from? It's not because it's like an inherited allegiance to a football teams, it's because labour generally represent working class people's interests better than Tories. And that's what his father probably told him.

Remember the idiot in Hartlepool who went on BBC and explained why he voted Tory oblivious to this fact.

My politics and worldviews aren't represented completely by a political party but why would I vote for a small party who doesn't have a chance of obtaining power and undermine my own interests?

 

[hilts]

Why wouldn't it? What have Tories done to improve the living standards of an average worker in the last 14 years?

Where does the "I'm working class so I vote labour" come from? It's not because it's like an inherited allegiance to a football teams, it's because labour generally represent working class people's interests better than Tories. And that's what his father probably told him.

Remember the idiot in Hartlepool who went on BBC and explained why he voted Tory oblivious to this fact.

My politics and worldviews aren't represented completely by a political party but why would I vote for a small party who doesn't have a chance of obtaining power and undermine my own interests?

How does Labour represent a plumbers interests? How does a working class bloke who isn't keen on immigration high council tax or raising taxes in general appeal? Those black and white decisions have gone. The Tories will get fucked and the reason isn't ideological its because they have made people worse off.

There is no moral fight here, Don't make people suffer financially they really hate that.

 

[Blue and true]

How does Labour represent a plumbers interests? How does a working class bloke who isn't keen on immigration high council tax or raising taxes in general appeal? Those black and white decisions have gone. The Tories will get fucked and the reason isn't ideological its because they have made people worse off.

There is no moral fight here, Don't make people suffer financially they really hate that.

I would say it's a bit of both, they've made people worse off, with zero trade of improved public services I might add, but they've slowly metamorphosed into a nationalist hate group. So, there is also an idealogical cause to their inevitable downfall. And any rabid nationalists they were hoping to convince will now suck on the teets of Reform. They are cast adrift and rudderless.

It's also important to remember many in this country are politically disengaged, especially after the shitshow of the last decade. And the many that are disengaged and working class will vote Labour because that's the done thing; it's axiomatic. Come GE, the nitty gritty won't matter because their minds are already made up.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

Social media (pretty much Twitter) seemed to back Remain, Corbyn, Clinton etc. All lost. Musk was determined to rid them.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

How does Labour represent a plumbers interests? How does a working class bloke who isn't keen on immigration high council tax or raising taxes in general appeal? Those black and white decisions have gone. The Tories will get fucked and the reason isn't ideological its because they have made people worse off.

Council tax (in areas starved of central government cash and mismanaged and taken over by commissioners) and net immigration have increased under the Tories.

I wasn't talking about local government elections anyway.

If you don't want higher council tax you either have to get on board with less entitlement for elderly people in need of residential care or home care or a new funding model, along with children's social care that's where the spending increases are going. You can see where running down other public services increases the demand for more costly interventions.

There is no moral fight here, Don't make people suffer financially they really hate that.

You seem to have missed the point of the post, the Tories have made people worse because of their ideology. They have run down almost everything without making anything noticeably better.

 

[hilts]

Council tax (in areas starved of central government cash and mismanaged and taken over by commissioners) and net immigration have increased under the Tories.

I wasn't talking about local government elections anyway.

If you don't want higher council tax you either have to get on board with less entitlement for elderly people in need of residential care or home care or a new funding model, along with children's social care that's where the spending increases are going. You can see where running down other public services increases the demand for more costly interventions.



You seem to have missed the point of the post, the Tories have made people worse because of their ideology. They have run down almost everything without making anything noticeably better.

I haven't I'm saying people mainly, when it comes down to it, care about what's left in their pocket. This is understandable if your pockets are usually empty however those that have full ones still vote on that basis.
It's not on any political ideology it's based on greed.

 

[Rascal]

I don't use Facebook or Twitter at all. The only forums I use are bluemoon, the Telegraph and the Guardian. All are biased and full of people who 'know' what is right. So if Facebook and Twitter are even worse count me out! Maybe the question 'Is being right wing, centre or left wing best?' would be interesting. It seems that many people just assume that because they are right wing, centre or left wing that, of course it's best.

I saw a rather chilling interview with a Russian official last week. The gist of it is that the the western interviewer asked the official something like 'Is it right that Putin had virtually no opposition in the election?' The Russian official answered 'Why do you want to tell everyone else what to do and think? We do not think like you".

Here's a list of the politicians that have killed the most people,
Top Ten Most Evil Dictators of All Time (in order of kill count)

• Kim Il Sung (1.6M deaths) ...
• Pol Pot (1.7M deaths) ...
• Ismail Enver Pasha (2.5M deaths) ...
• Hideki Tojo (5M deaths) ...
• Leopold II of Belgium (2-15M deaths) ...
• Adolf Hitler (17M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Jozef Stalin (23M deaths) BREAKDOWN. ...
• Mao Zedong (49-78M deaths) BREAKDOWN.

It might be fun to put political affiliation of right, centre, left next to the names.

The simple answer is none of them were democracies, they were authoritarian states run by Dictators.

 

[Rascal]

Come on mate, we've had some exchanges on here before and the most memorable thing I can recall is you believe in an authoritarian left wing government which stinks of far-left ideologue to me.

I am a Democratic Socialist, i am also an authoritarian in some areas such as believing in a strong police force, armed forces, rule of law. I am not a liberal and i am to be fair quite socially conservative. I strongly believe family is important and that local community ties are an integral part of a functioning society.

Most people would take the nationalisation of the trains and you'd struggle to find anyone who disagrees. However honestly I doubt that any majority also wants their entire life to be nationalised and rubber stamped by the state which is what proper socialism demands. This is the kind of stuff that scares people to vote for the status quo.

Lenin did not want the whole of society state run, he was an advocate of community based enterprises.

Aside from this the past is the past and we're not all down the pits anymore. Life today is infinitely better than it was 100 years ago.

Of course, but it could be better. inequality is now the highest it has been since Victorian times.

Regardless of the shite that has happened over the last few years the Tories just do not have any answers to the problems facing the country and that's assuming they're even bothered at this stage.

The Tories have ruined the post WW2 social consensus through their adoption of neo liberalist idelogy. The rich are richer than ever and those with least have to think about can they put their heating on. That appals me mate.

To me the next election won't be about left or right, it'll be about removing a dead government and replacing it with one that actually does something. I don't want the economy blowing apart and replacing, I just want somebody to make things work again.

Me too, my worry is the prevailing economic theory will still have a hold over them and they will be scared to death to be radical enough to make real change. Starmer does not offer it, the Tories are fucked,the Liberals are untrustworthy. That scares me as people may look to idiots like Reform, god fucking help us.