The Conservative Party

[bluethrunthru]

None of these people need a winter fuel payment

 

[PPT]

None of these people need a winter fuel payment

But there is millions of pensioners who do.

 

[kaz7]

None of these people need a winter fuel payment

The gift that keeps on giving

 

[west didsblue]

But there is millions of pensioners who do.

are

 

[bluethrunthru]

are

None of whom wear a gold Rolex

 

[bluethrunthru]

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

None of these people need a winter fuel payment

People like that: elderly, cash poor and asset rich should downsize and live off the excess.

Why should the state subsidise their lifestyle choices?

 

[BlueHammer85]

I'm not sure that's true you know. There's some really interesting research where people are asked to place themselves on a left to right spectrum to create a subjective measure of their leanings. They are then asked a series of specific policy/ideological questions to build up a more objective profile of their leanings.

When the subjective and objective measures are compared the vast majority of people are more left leaning objectively than their own subjective assessment. Doesn't matter which party they support, their underlying tendencies are typically to the left of their self perception.

So notwithstanding the success of the different parties at the ballot box, it implies that people's voting behaviour is often out of alignment with their underlying instincts and by implication that there's something quite distorted about our political discourse.

I keep meaning to find out a bit more and whether this is a phenomenon exclusive to us or whether it's a more global behaviour. I wouldn't be that surprised if we exhibit it more than other comparable countries maybe because of things like the piss poor state of our press?

I’d be interested to see more about this and the results/findings.

 

[threespires]

I’d be interested to see more about this and the results/findings.

I'll have a look if it's published free online anywhere, I read about it in a journal I was having to read for a work project (nothing to do with politics, I was supposed to reading up on metacognition in the same publication). There were a couple of universities that had conducted the research definitely Queen Mary was one and I think the other was Sussex, no chance of me remembering the names of the academics ! I will try and see if I can find it because as you say it was really interesting.

As I'm here and it's you... given the album thread this week has touched on some 'politics' here's something that I wanted to share but just thought it would derail the music discussion too much. It's an FT article basically saying that the UK is actually an outlier in terms of quite how much our young people have rejected right wing politics and postulating that it can be directly attributed to a level of collapse in social mobility that has not been the case in other countries. For a while now I've been convinced we are not a 'normal' country politically at all, in fact probably not since Thatchers economic experiments of the 80s.

Why are young people deserting conservatism in Britain but nowhere else?

Shocks thought to be worldwide have hit Britain’s young adults harder than most

www.ft.com

Anyway I will try and find a link to that stuff for you.

 

[Vic]

But there is millions of pensioners who do.

But the Tories don't know any of them!