Dec 2019
8:57am, 20 Dec 2019
9,830 posts
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larkim
(Aargh, hideous use of apostrophe, sorry!!)
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Dec 2019
9:34am, 20 Dec 2019
142 posts
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Stander Claus
Great post JRitchie. I too believe in a smaller state and more personal responsibility. Yes, we help those that need it, but why should we help those that can't be arsed to help themselves? The entitlement beliefs of (mostly, the younger generation) need to be challenged. Work hard and you reap the rewards. Dick about, and why should you benefit? And I also agree with your comments about how just insulting anyone that doesn't agree with your views doesn't work. It just entrenches them further. Unfortunately, much of this thread deals in insults and sees nothing but doom, gloom and the end of the world as we know it. |
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Dec 2019
9:39am, 20 Dec 2019
143 posts
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Stander Claus
On Diane Abbott, there is no doubt she has achieved much from her humble beginnings. But she is in a public arena and has said some really stupid things. But then so has Boris. But in this thread, if you take the piss out of Diane, you are called racist, whilst Boris is regularly called a c**t without any issue. |
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Dec 2019
10:07am, 20 Dec 2019
9,832 posts
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larkim
I agree with that perspective on Abbot / Johnson. Though I must admit I would still see one as a fundamentally "good" person who puts her foot in her mouth sometimes, and the other as being an entitled toff who puts his foot in his mouth sometimes. It is difficult to see the social "good" in perspectives based on the right wing though Stander - or perhaps I should say, that those on the left really struggle to see social "good" in right of centre policy thinking. And that's a genuinely held perspective, it's not from any intellectual deficit on the left being unable to critique without insult - mnay (myself included) simply cannot see how right of centre philisophies can be correlated with compassion for disadvantaged individuals in society that we have with us today. I can see a stretch of the argument which says "prosperity for all" in the long term, but for me at least the right is dominated by broadly Thatcherite approaches which say that competition between individuals to achieve best rewards for themselves is the way forward - and to me that brings the logical outcome that if there are big winners, there are big losers. So the right wing philisophies fundamentally entrench inequality throughout society, and that is plain and simply wrong morally. And if those on the right believe being told they are thought of as being morally wrong is insulting, then so be it. |
Dec 2019
10:15am, 20 Dec 2019
2,482 posts
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J2R
Stander: "Work hard and you reap the rewards. Dick about, and why should you benefit?" My views on this are not as far away from yours as you might imagine. One of the tendencies of the Left has always been to blame criminality, for example, on failings of society, absolving the individual of any responsibility, just as the Right has always blamed the individual, or some underclass as a whole, not allowing that society has its part to play. But it needs to be both. Blair's slogan from before he was PM hits the spot here: "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime". I think the reality, though, is that in any social democracy, you will always have some people who are free riders, who are taking the piss. That's kind of factored in in mature social democracies, as an undesirable but unfortunately necessary side-effect of a system which is massively beneficial to the country as a whole. You can minimise it but you can't wholly get rid of it. But this philosophy is anathema in the States, where it seems people would rather everyone should do without rather than a single undeserving person should get something they haven't earned. |
Dec 2019
10:29am, 20 Dec 2019
1,966 posts
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Canute
JRitchie, yes conservatives want a smaller state - more individual control and responsibility. But many fail to recognise just how much they owe their current circumstances and capabilities to society and to luck. I have had a lucky life, so far. My parents experienced the soul-destroying trauma of the great Depression. When I was young their mantra was ‘get an education and you will not be out of work when the next depression comes’ I got an education and have worked hard ever since. However there are so many points in life when luck opened the right door for me. I surfed through the education system on the leading edge of the baby boom. I got into Oxford. I could claim that I earned my place but I must also acknowledge that I was incredibly lucky. That piece of luck almost certainly played an important part in opening subsequent doors to a rewarding career, far beyond what my parents might have imagined when they encourage me to get an education. I was unbelievably lucky to meet and marry my wife. The circumstances of our meeting were the stuff of a fairy-tale. Family and society (I might even say the welfare state) provided me with the spring board and good luck opened the doors at the right time. But our luck springs not only from our family and our local society. We can no longer passively accept the good luck of living in a privileged country that created its wealth by ingenuity; hard work; exploitation of less developed countries; and polluting the atmosphere with green-house gases. Earth can reasonably be described as a goldilocks planet. But if we do not work together internationally to deal with the consequences of the ingenuity and hard work of our parents we will leave a blighted bowl of poisonous porridge for our children. |
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Dec 2019
10:30am, 20 Dec 2019
7,019 posts
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Too Much Water
Labours issue is perhaps that they are perceived as having a base vote which partly consists of the “free riders”.
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Dec 2019
10:40am, 20 Dec 2019
9,833 posts
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larkim
On the "Work hard, don't dick about" theme, do we really think that those who do not do that, and yet are (and will remain) very wealthy, privileged and sometimes powerful should be entitled to remain in that position? Because broadly the right tolerates the locking away of that accumulated and often unearned wealth to the detriment of supporting those who would be capable of working hard etc, but are held back by the constraints of inherited poverty and structural inability make the best of education and opportunities that those with even moderate wealth find easy to access. I like this cartoon - overly simplisitic of course, but gets across the point better than I can. rnz.co.nz |
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Dec 2019
10:57am, 20 Dec 2019
145 posts
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Stander Claus
Therein lies the conundrum. How much of your rewards for working hard are you allowed to keep and pass on to your offspring? We all want our kids to have a better life than us. |
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Dec 2019
10:58am, 20 Dec 2019
2,483 posts
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J2R
You may be right, TMW. On the other hand, I could argue that the free riders are the most likely people to blame immigrants for things and would thus be more likely to be Conservatives. Probably neither of us can actually know. My biggest problem with the Right is not in fact this preference for personal responsibility and small state, but the fact that when countries like Britain and America move to the Right, we don't get a society of everyone putting in hard work and getting their just rewards, we instead get one with the advantages grossly distorted in favour of those with pre-existing wealth and power. People who are earning low wages get wage cuts because otherwise they are 'pricing themselves out of a job', whereas those earning lots get huge bonuses, huge salary increases. It ends up not as meritocracy but kleptocracy, plutocracy, snouts in the trough. |
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