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Dec 2019
12:33pm, 20 Dec 2019
774 posts
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Ally-C
Good on you Fellrunning.
I’ve worked with the homeless & young offenders in the past. Was brought up in a single parent family by a mother with mental health problems in a council house. But the things I witnessed at work were truly eye opening.
Most folk just don’t have a clue how some folk live.
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Dec 2019
12:38pm, 20 Dec 2019
147 posts
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Stander Claus
DeeGee - obviously, where you start from varies for everyone.
Some people will have less choices available to them because of random factors such as birthplace and circumstances, but the overriding principle remains - work hard to improve whatever you start with or were born into and try to make it a little bit easier for yourself and/or your kids.
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Dec 2019
12:39pm, 20 Dec 2019
148 posts
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Stander Claus
It's how we help people achieve that which many of us in here disagree on.
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Dec 2019
12:45pm, 20 Dec 2019
23,007 posts
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Johnny Blaze
I think one of the things that boils my piss about the "I worked hard all my life, and nobody gave me a handout" crew is that they rarely, if ever, consider that one of the reasons they may have "got a little something for themselves" is that they have been lucky not to have had any of the extreme life events that afflict many other people. All of us are only one or two life events away from penury and despair: mental illness, divorce, redundancy, physical illness all the kinds of things that can lay anybody low at any time.
But they are still happy to vote for a party that they KNOW will pull the ladder up from people who have been less fortunate than they. Vote for Raab and Leadsom and Duncan-Shitbag and you KNOW what they are going to do. They will strip away your rights, freeze or cut your benefits, and reduce public spending, whilst leaving their rich mates largely untouched.
As a parent I think you have to bring your kids up with some sense of social responsibility and compassion, rather than a "win at all costs" ethic as embodied by the likes of Johnson and Trump. I'd rather have kids that were kind and compassionate than grasping little douchebags who treat life as a game where the winner takes all and the losers get what they're given - which usually isn't much. One of the sad things about the election is that the game has been comprehensively won by people with genuinely malign intent and there are large parts of the electorate who can expect no mercy from these tools.
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Dec 2019
12:51pm, 20 Dec 2019
19,030 posts
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DeeGee
"work hard to improve whatever you start with or were born into and try to make it a little bit easier for yourself and/or your kids."
And if that required me to relocate to Exeter, that's a reasonable thing to expect, and fully aligned with the sort of thing that Tebbit's dad would do. I absolutely agree!
I just don't understand why 360km south west is fine, but 360km east is totally unacceptable.
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Dec 2019
12:52pm, 20 Dec 2019
29,813 posts
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SPR
J2R - "If the Labour manifesto had consisted of the single line "We're going to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and replace him with Keir Starmer" they would have won a comfortable majority."
Really?! So all those voters that wanted Brexit done would suddenly decide they want to remain?
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Dec 2019
12:57pm, 20 Dec 2019
2,485 posts
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J2R
SPR, polling done after the election showed that the leaders of the parties were far more of an issue for voters than Brexit. Corbyn had the worst ever rating of an opposition leader, by quite some margin, so the Conservatives did well to focus on him. Keir Starmer would have been seen by voters as a safe pair of hands and probably a much better bet than the risky-but-fun Johnson. I reckon it would have been worth 10% better polling for Labour.
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Dec 2019
1:13pm, 20 Dec 2019
1,967 posts
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Canute
A minority of the electorate are both ill-informed and silly, but as far as I can see, the majority are not. Many might nonetheless be poorly-informed, but in a democracy it is the task of politicians to counter that. If a labour leader had articulated the Brexit issues clearly and demonstrated the fatuousness of the slogan ‘get Brexit done’, while also presenting moderate socialism coherently, it is quite possible the result of the election would have been different. As for which potential leader might have achieved that during the past parliament, Keir Starmer was undoubtedly one of the best informed about the issues involved in Brexit and also has the capacity to articulate issues clearly.
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Dec 2019
1:15pm, 20 Dec 2019
775 posts
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Ally-C
Good post JB.
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Dec 2019
1:31pm, 20 Dec 2019
9,330 posts
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rf_fozzy
The problem with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" philosophy is that not everyone can.
Particularly when, in the current configuration of our society in this country, it often means trampling on others to pull yourself up.
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Fantasy General Election
Jul 2024
