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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Oct 26, 2010, 09:41
Oct 26, 2010, 09:32
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Thanks for all your replies. I am not ignoring them. Just haven't had the time to write individual responses. My sense is this: This country runs on self interest. Top to bottom. For the UK this is not at heart a problem driven by hard-wired thinking linked to a book of idealogical rules. It may get dressed up as such but the core of this is simply about the distribution of national resources. It is about greed on the one hand and a moral humanist duty to one's fellow citizens on the other. The tug of war between the two has been going on for more than 100 years. Thatcher's regime represented one brutal extreme of self-interest but the idea that she was an ideologue is absurd. Other than her very personal battle with the unions she over-turned very few of the benefits of post war socialist thinking. They were pruned and starved but not broken at the root. Given her power she could have done so much more for the Tory right and yet didn't. Why? Because it was all about the money not the ideology. When she became an ideologue she fell. Half the the wealth of this nation is going absolutely no where regardless of who is in power or what pressure is brought to bear on governments from without. Barring a bloody revolution, a miltary catastrophe or a nationalisation of personal assets that is not changing. Regardless as to how we define the conflict, lets be clear here whatever the regime the rich always stay rich and the impoverished tend to remain essentially impoverished. For the poor to enjoy a slightly better standard of living it is the middle income citizens that will pay for it. Regardless of the government. So we collectively are arguing about the balance, the 40 - 50% of GDP that goes into public spending. In order to maintain the funding of the things that I think we primarily care about - healthcare, education and adequate benefits and protections for those in need - you have to convince middle income tax payers to dig deeper into their pockets and to convince them to pressurise the goverment at the ballot box to allow them in turn enough leaway to be be able to afford the higher taxation that will allow that to happen. The price of power in the UK is cutting the middle classes enough slack that they will vote for you. A right wing Tory government will squeeze the poor to relieve the middle class. An Old Labour government will do the reverse and have the rich pay for some it. The centerists, such as we have had since Major, try and do degrees of both to the chagrin of neither the rich nor the middle income groups. The poor don't vote runs the thinking. Which brings me back to my original point. Historically the street protests of the late 60s and onwards have been of little or no interest to working people except in the case of those directly related to industrial action. People with real jobs have by and large neither the time the money or the energy for much more than keeping their shit together. Street violence might frighten people in power but most of London simply went about their business that day. It was a sideshow. A piece of grotesque theatre with some unexpected consequences. Remember even the far left of the Labour party came out against it. As did the union movement. It was viewed as an anarchistic aberration. The riot helped tip the balance and maybe sped up the process a little but it wasn't decisive. Thatcher was already on her way out. The Tories were already planning for the succession. The Poll Tax was her Custer moment and one she had been preparing for since 74 but what killed her was a decade of zero trickle down and no moral upside. People ultimately voted with their wallets first and conscience a close second. As they always do. Major allowed those that benefited from Thatcher to feel less guilty about it. Blair allowed them to positively celebrate it. Thatcher's error was introducing an ideological element and cutting off her own escape route. Like any ideologue she was not for turning so she got drowned by the tide of opinion as it roared back the other way. So what is required is a grass roots re-education that demands that people register their views at the ballot. Self interest will do the rest. Make it ideological and people will run a mile.
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Oct 26, 2010, 09:57
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Very good points and I agree mainly, but I do think that a deliberate agenda re. the state and social engineering is happening, the scope of which is unprecedented and the effects of which will be catastrophic. I still believe that enough people protesting can/may influence the progress of this deliberate attack on all but the extremely wealthy. Yes, people vote with their wallets, and the same old money/power game is involved, but the sheer scale of what is at stake here is a huge gamble for this Cabal. A vast number of people may very well not accept the destruction of the NHS, the rise in homelessness/crime/social inequalty/economic recession, and, the kick in the bollox wallet that is coming, either.
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ratcni01 916 posts |
Oct 26, 2010, 11:24
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Nah, can't be arsed init ;-)
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Oct 26, 2010, 12:08
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Ha! :-)
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Oct 27, 2010, 14:29
Oct 27, 2010, 10:21
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The Sea Cat wrote: Very good points and I agree mainly, but I do think that a deliberate agenda re. the state and social engineering is happening, the scope of which is unprecedented and the effects of which will be catastrophic. I still believe that enough people protesting can/may influence the progress of this deliberate attack on all but the extremely wealthy. Yes, people vote with their wallets, and the same old money/power game is involved, but the sheer scale of what is at stake here is a huge gamble for this Cabal. A vast number of people may very well not accept the destruction of the NHS, the rise in homelessness/crime/social inequalty/economic recession, and, the kick in the bollox wallet that is coming, either. I hear you. I think the saving grace of England if not the rest of the UK (I don't know so can't say) is that your common or garden greedhead doesn't do well with a guilty conscience. They are happy to get the best of what's out there but there is an underlying nagging sense of fairness that, in the end, pulls society back the other way. In the end the effectivenss of these cuts and this government in political terms boils down to one issue - how much suffering among the poor will the middle classes tolerate in order to hold what they have? Thatcher was helped by the fact that she oversaw the creation of a new class of property-owmning lower middle class and working class Tories. What turned them against the Tories ultimately was the fact they were still using government schools and health care. These new Tories were smart enough to know that their taxes should be providing better services rather than worse. It took eight to ten years for that process to play itself out. This time there will be no new cadre of future blue rinsers to hold the fort come the elections. Also there are a lot more people from lower down the economic pyramid signed up to (largely pointless) private health plans and who are breaking the bank to send their kids to one of the 2400 private schools. This shift in education is partly down to post 9/11 NIMBY bigotry and partly down to the fact that there are low-mid income families who have some disposable income but are unable to move up the property ladder or see the risks there as being too great. So it goes on schooling and health instead. Out of London you are talking about two working parents scrapping maybe as much as £700 a month together between them and probably digging into savings to make it happen. If tax squeezes see these families starting to have to pull little Janet and John out of their private schools and send them to the local comp there will be hell to pay for Tories at the ballot box. Other than a guilty conscience the other thing the class-bound English hate most is loss of perceived status.
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Oct 28, 2010, 08:01
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IanB wrote: The Sea Cat wrote: Very good points and I agree mainly, but I do think that a deliberate agenda re. the state and social engineering is happening, the scope of which is unprecedented and the effects of which will be catastrophic. I still believe that enough people protesting can/may influence the progress of this deliberate attack on all but the extremely wealthy. Yes, people vote with their wallets, and the same old money/power game is involved, but the sheer scale of what is at stake here is a huge gamble for this Cabal. A vast number of people may very well not accept the destruction of the NHS, the rise in homelessness/crime/social inequalty/economic recession, and, the kick in the bollox wallet that is coming, either. I hear you. I think the saving grace of England if not the rest of the UK (I don't know so can't say) is that your common or garden greedhead doesn't do well with a guilty conscience. They are happy to get the best of what's out there but there is an underlying nagging sense of fairness that, in the end, pulls society back the other way. In the end the effectivenss of these cuts and this government in political terms boils down to one issue - how much suffering among the poor will the middle classes tolerate in order to hold what they have? Thatcher was helped by the fact that she oversaw the creation of a new class of property-owmning lower middle class and working class Tories. What turned them against the Tories ultimately was the fact they were still using government schools and health care. These new Tories were smart enough to know that their taxes should be providing better services rather than worse. It took eight to ten years for that process to play itself out. This time there will be no new cadre of future blue rinsers to hold the fort come the elections. Also there are a lot more people from lower down the economic pyramid signed up to (largely pointless) private health plans and who are breaking the bank to send their kids to one of the 2400 private schools. This shift in education is partly down to post 9/11 NIMBY bigotry and partly down to the fact that there are low-mid income families who have some disposable income but are unable to move up the property ladder or see the risks there as being too great. So it goes on schooling and health instead. Out of London you are talking about two working parents scrapping maybe as much as £700 a month together between them and probably digging into savings to make it happen. If tax squeezes see these families starting to have to pull little Janet and John out of their private schools and send them to the local comp there will be hell to pay for Tories at the ballot box. Other than a guilty conscience the other thing the class-bound English hate most is loss of perceived status. I wholeheartedly agree with everything you have said there Ian. Excellent points very well made.
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jshell 333 posts |
Oct 28, 2010, 10:25
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Popel Vooje wrote: Yes, and the fact that many people are too worried about their own individual problems to see the bigger picture of how the cuts will affect society as a whole. Right on the nail. The population are too worried about terrorists around every corner, the loss of their income/finances or the faux-threat of global wombling/sea levels/biodiversity etc, etc. Keep the population scared and they are utterly controllable. cnuts.
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grufty jim 1978 posts |
Edited Oct 28, 2010, 10:39
Oct 28, 2010, 10:36
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jshell wrote: Right on the nail. The population are too worried about terrorists around every corner, the loss of their income/finances or the faux-threat of global wombling/sea levels/biodiversity etc, etc. Dead right. That's why the population have stopped using their cars in their millions, significantly cut consumption of products imported from areas where biodiversity is under threat and started to demand massive investment in sea-defences and the relocation of vital infrastructure away from low-lying coastal areas. Oh wait, no they haven't. So how exactly is this "worry" manifesting itself, jshell? EDIT: One more question, jshell... whatever about global warming; are you honestly suggesting that (a) biodiversity is unimportant to the health of humanity, and (b) industrial civilisation is not having a hugely negative effect on it?
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Squid Tempest 8769 posts |
Oct 28, 2010, 10:38
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jshell wrote: ... or the faux-threat of global wombling/sea levels/biodiversity etc, etc. Keep the population scared and they are utterly controllable. Can I just say "bollocks"? or is that too aggresive?
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The Sea Cat 3608 posts |
Oct 28, 2010, 15:19
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The Agenda: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/28/tory-cuts-are-not-ideological
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