'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
But does "signifying your class through your belief system" make you an elite? Does having a degree make you an elite?
There's in inherent contradiction in some of what you've linked to and spoken about in that the whole "luxury beliefs" thing seems predicated, in part at least, on affluence, whilst you talk about them no longer competing on income and wealth so having to resort to ideology to elevate themselves.
Lastly, if someone wants to think of themselves as "better" because of their education, so what? That doesn't give them power over you in the same way that political or economic status does. I would strongly challenge the idea of someone with a humanities degree who flips burgers and is a snob being described by the word "elite". "Elite" surely means something different to that.
I'm describing the theory, and how the word "elite" is used in context (which I think is what Goodwin is getting at), rather than endorsing it.
I agree that "elite" can be made to mean top 1% of income, position of power, etc - but that is also interchangeable with "establishment". "Elite" in the above context could also mean the children of affluent parents who (as in the above article) went to top universities, studied humanities and had an expectation of going into jobs in law, publishing, academia, and other jobs that belong to the so called professional-managerial class. The education system overproduced such people in the 90s and 2000s while at the same time demand contracted post 2008.
The net result is a whole class of people who are well educated, had an expectation of a certain standard of living, and yet find themselves worse off than their parents at a similar age. The phenomenon of luxury beliefs is a way of signalling one's status without money. Whether or not such people represent an "elite" class is a matter for debate. An academic with a masters degree from Imperial or a journalist with a degree from St Andrews probably looks like "the elite" to a large proportion of the population, even if their salaries don't reflect this. They are still *quite* affluent compared to the majority of the population, but nowhere near as much as they would have been twenty or thirty years ago.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
If you're actually complaining about achieving same sex marriage, there really is no pleasing you.
If you actually want a radical socialist utopia, from which marriage has disappeared, well, too bad. Most people don't want it.
I'm not complaining about it, I'm just saying it was never the be all and end all, and yet it is treated as such. We still get called groomers if we think it's a good idea for children to learn we exist, let alone could be some of their classmates parents; and that's still just another assimilationist problem. The original criticisms of the nuclear family (a modern invention, not a traditional one at all), the criticisms of comphet, the criticisms of exploitation of women's labour not being valued - all parts of the queer struggle and the original queer rights movement.
Corporations support things like Pride not because they care, but middle class people who are less likely to have children have large disposable incomes - they're chasing the market. We get the occasional side characters in media hinting they have a same sex relationship - but in a way that can be cut out for the Chinese market or Russia and India. Violent crimes against all queer people is skyrocketing, and has been since marriage equality was assured and the people who had us decided the easier wedge issue was trans people.
There is no pleasing me when people I know get called "faggot" for holding hands on the tube or have people following them threatening violence because they're "a bloke in a dress". There is no pleasing me when 1 in 4 of UKs homeless youth are LGBT. There is no pleasing me when we had a PM who referred to us as "bum boys" and have a PM who like to rally the troops by banging on about "women having penises".
What you have to come to terms with is that most gays and lesbians are not radical socialists, who are out to destroy capitalism.
Some of them even .... right wing!
What had 99% of the post to which you replied have to do with either radical socialism or the destruction of capitalism ?
I had taken the references to "Queer Struggle", hostility to the nuclear family, hostility to "heteronormativity" and criticism of corporations to mean that the poster was seeking a radical transformation of society in a very left wing direction.
Perhaps I misunderstood.
I was pointing out that, historically, the Queer Struggle was indeed about those things, and that the very recent settlement of equal marriage was not the be all and end all - and instead was an acceptance of assimilation. And inherently a compromise with conservative social norms.
I then started talking about corporations because HYUFD claimed that pride was some extension of elite beliefs rather than the expansion of capitalism into a new market - again, a very capitalist and conservative win there.
My last paragraph was the direct response to you - what would I be "pleased with" if I am not "pleased with" equal marriage.
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
I assume these historically normal interest rates are going to kill the car lease market too, so every man and his dog isn't going to be driving round in a flash Audi? Or was depreciation 90% of the cost?
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Unfortunately, he's trivially right. Having made his observation (which I agree with, btw), the convo turns to "now what". How did this state of affairs arise (although he has gone into that), and how do we stop it?
The only way we get rid of this new elite is to get rid of the concept of elites, but the country doesn't want to do that. Bear in mind that we have a country that is currently set up to strip-mine everyday people and export the profits to whichever citizen of nowhere party is running the country this week. Stanley Johnson - a wife beater who holidayed abroad during Covid and bought a house in France - was offered a knighthood and nearly got one.
Whatever you or I do, elites will be there for our lifetimes, running the country like a bad "Succession" episode. When you find out how to get rid of them tell me, but until then we are stuck...
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
I would just comment that a similar mortgage crisis happened in the 1990s and many repossession occurred, negative equity was the norm, and house prices took 5 years to recover
It was a bleak time for a lot of home owners and I witnessed it first hand
The government will take the hit but the country has had insanely low interest rates for far too long and that is the responsibility of the independent BOE
Why should homeowners never face a bleak time? In order to keep balance you need a share of summer and winter, you need some bleak times and some positive times.
We've had two decades of overheating property value growth. A bleak time isn't just overdue, its ridiculously long overdue.
And all the overheating that many home owners have loved - and encouraged by NIMBY policies - has led to a very bleak time for those who want to save a deposit to have their own time.
Consider this 'bleak' time some very much needed rainfall after a very long and for many very difficult drought.
Maybe, but there is a human side to this and in the 1990s I witnessed many evictions with the bailiffs and police in attendance and you only need to watch one young family being evicted with the obvious trauma, not to be seriously upset unless you have no heart
It is seriously upsetting yes.
And speak to young families being evicted from a rental property with 2 months notice under a Section 21 order and having no hope of having a home of their own with the obvious trauma and knowledge it will happen again and again if nothing changes - if you're not upset by that then you have no heart either.
There's two sides here. Too much rain causes a flood, insufficient and too much sunshine causes a drought. We need a balanced economic cycle, but we haven't had that.
President Zelenskyy warns that Russia is considering carrying out a terrorist attack at Ukraine's Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant involving a release of radiation.
Let's hear it for Theresa May, who courageously voted in favour of the privileges committee's report. No, wait...remind me which prime minister it was who gave Boris Johnson his first job in central government, as foreign secretary no less, despite his known record of winging it in all the other jobs he'd ever had, and even worse, of repeatedly being sacked for telling lies. But she's critical now, right.
It's at least an admission that she got it wrong. Most of the rest of his enablers didn't show up.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
Wow, you think social liberalism won the culture war?!! It only won a battle, that's all. Pictures of drowning migrants will induce a Windsor Davies response in the population and the focus groups. Wait and see. Yes, even among the same people who wept with genuine humanity when they saw that little Turkish girl saved from the earthquake rubble. Strange thing, crowd psychology. It's not like individual psychology.
Quoting the 65% figure is worse than you say. The problem with it isn't only that the emphasis isn't put on the 35%, and that 35% is about two times the 18% who are privately educated at 16+, whereas 65% seems not much less than the 82% figure for those who aren't. Admittedly that's a classic case of lying with statistics. But the lying doesn't stop there. An even bigger issue is that a substantial part of the bourgeoisie send their offspring to state schools, so the statistic doesn't measure the inheritance of privilege as shown in Oxford admissions very well at all.
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
What a pile of crap. People have had very cheap mortgages for over a decade paid for by millions getting nil returns on their savings. You would have to be seriously dim to expect that to last for ever. Likewise both COVID and Ukraine have given very loud and clear warnings that a big bill was coming down the road. The lack of personal responsibility has reached epidemic proportions. The market always kicks in at some point. Welcome to the real world.
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Agree.
They are all at it though. I had occasion to look at a local news piece featuring IDS where he's campaigning against an incinerator being placed in his constituency. In an energy crisis. Prick.
I assume these historically normal interest rates are going to kill the car lease market too, so every man and his dog isn't going to be driving round in a flash Audi? Or was depreciation 90% of the cost?
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
Just means they won't be able to afford a fancy car.
If we joined the Euro we'd be in the ECB. The addition of Kyiv in a few years will keep it generally poor enough to maintain a generally weaker Euro compared to a western Europe only deal and we'd have lower interest rates courtesy of the ECB.
What's not to like
Interest rates for savers.
They've got all the world's stock markets to invest in.
Pulpy, it's absolutely bog standard advice not to put all your savings in the stock market.
(a) people with not very much anyway - their emergency fund has lost 10%++ of its value, even if they don't draw on it (b) people who don't have the risk appetite and/or knowledge you do (c) people who are coming up to old age and need to move out of equities (old rule of thumb, deduct your age from 100 and don't have more than that percentage in equities)
Got 3.85 already with RCI who actually upped their rates without needing to be asked, too (and might yet again for all I know).
Still, that's only half inflation. But it's a damn sight better than some of the other banks. And if you are old or not able to use the net and can't get to a branch of a bank which does offer a decent rate, you are even more screwed.
I have savings with Raisin,
They are pretty good and usually have good rates available and, for the muslim community, also offer plenty of sharia compliant savings accounts which offer a really good rate.
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Agree.
They are all at it though. I had occasion to look at a local news piece featuring IDS where he's campaigning against an incinerator being placed in his constituency. In an energy crisis. Prick.
It depends what the incinerator is going to be burning and what anyone downwind is going to get.
Sometimes they are just an excuse not to recycle, although the energy balance for that is complicated.
I don't think it is entirely nimbyism in that there's a legitimate argument not to have any incineration at all, whereas we do actually need housing.
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Trying to out Nimby Starmer is the aim.
Indeed English Tory and LD MPs may form a rare alliance again if Starmer wins the next election to try and block his plans to allow more building on greenbelt land
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
You are countering one spurious definition of an elite with another of your own. I agree that what Goodwin is describing is more of an orthodoxy than an elite, but it takes a huge leap to blame "British conservatism" for the level of transnational interest in the fate of the Titanic submersible or for the EU's border policies.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
A barrier to cycling during a climate crisis, economic crisis, obesity crisis. Smart.
Although liability is a barrier to cycling, just one people don't necessarily realise or think about that can leave horrifically large uninsured bills around people's heads if they're not careful.
If you don't want liability insurance, then abolishing liability and the state being the de facto insurer of last resort taking responsibility for cyclists is an alternative.
But having a system where liability exists, but people don't realise it and don't get insured for it is about the worst of all worlds.
I assume these historically normal interest rates are going to kill the car lease market too, so every man and his dog isn't going to be driving round in a flash Audi? Or was depreciation 90% of the cost?
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
Just means they won't be able to afford a fancy car.
At the moment, an electric car is 'fancy' in terms of the initial costs, which could be a problem if we are mandating their use.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
I still remember on black Wednesday that my mortgage rate went up 3 or 4 times in the course of a day! I left Dundee with it at 12% and by the time I arrived in Wick it was over 15%! It came down 1% the next day after we had given up protecting Sterling but it was still a hell of a jump.
The idea that there is anything unprecedented about this is simply wrong.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
A barrier to cycling during a climate crisis, economic crisis, obesity crisis. Smart.
Although liability is a barrier to cycling, just one people don't necessarily realise or think about that can leave horrifically large uninsured bills around people's heads if they're not careful.
If you don't want liability insurance, then abolishing liability and the state being the de facto insurer of last resort taking responsibility for cyclists is an alternative.
But having a system where liability exists, but people don't realise it and don't get insured for it is about the worst of all worlds.
Fully insured on a Boris bike via the scheme. Bin your high fandangle carbon frames and get on your bike. Plus keeping a bit of Boris in your heart while doing so. Actually not sure how many non-London schemes there are but googling randomly seems quite a few.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
They spend a lot on PR, those two brands do. Much of it goes on pushing the idea that they bend over backwards to help the proles.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
I still remember on black Wednesday that my mortgage rate went up 3 or 4 times in the course of a day! I left Dundee with it at 12% and by the time I arrived in Wick it was over 15%! It came down 1% the next day after we had given up protecting Sterling but it was still a hell of a jump.
The idea that there is anything unprecedented about this is simply wrong.
Did anyone actually pay the implied 0.038% interest that day or was it settled at 1.098% for the month ?
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh but we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
Sorry but both the rhetoric and the outcome and the numbers backs what I said.
The rhetoric was about controlled immigration.
The outcome is that immigration is now controlled, not cut.
And the numbers show most people are happy, not feeling betrayed, about that.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
"Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate..." - views. Opinions. Political positions. Not ability to enact wide or systemic change. Just "people who are in the modern middle class hold different opinions to people in the old middle class and old upper class". That's what this is all about.
Same sex marriage is conservative - yes it was important for same sex couples to have the same rights as any married couples, to visit the ill, to inherit, to live together - but it essentially assimilation into the heteronormative tradition. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" used to be about difference, not assimilation. Abortion is still illegal without 2 doctors signing off on it in this country. And again, dog whistle with "religious teachers" because you don't want a Muslim to teach students fundamental Islamism - you want a specific brand of traditional Christianity imposed on kids.
Starmer is going out with his shadow chancellor on TV every day saying that he won't do anything radical on the economy because of the "economic condition". A majority of TORY voters want public ownership of necessary utilities, and the Labour party is STILL ruling it out.
You call lefties permanent victims, and then complain that the poors are being allowed into the posh people unis, and that new money are lauded like some kind of Victorian Whig. We live in the world created by Thatcherism and Reaganism, by the neoliberal consensus, by capital and capitalism. You won; get over it.
No. Same sex marriage is liberal, hence most Conservative MPs voted against it and most Labour and LD MPs voted for it. Conservative MPs wanted civil unions only at the time.
We have an abortion time limit double that in Roman Catholic nations like Italy. Strict Muslims have more in common with Christian evangelicals on the traditional family, opposition to homosexual marriage and trans than secular liberals in the UK.
Labour will impose a wealth tax, return the top income tax rate to 50% and end private school charitable status and ban new oil and gas exploration.
Thatcher was more of a 19th century liberal than a Tory in some respects and Biden is taxing and spending more than any President since LBJ, the US is not Reaganite now
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
I still remember on black Wednesday that my mortgage rate went up 3 or 4 times in the course of a day! I left Dundee with it at 12% and by the time I arrived in Wick it was over 15%! It came down 1% the next day after we had given up protecting Sterling but it was still a hell of a jump.
The idea that there is anything unprecedented about this is simply wrong.
Did anyone actually pay the implied 0.038% interest that day or was it settled at 1.098% for the month ?
Goodness knows. Building Societies and even banks were just a bit more paternalistic in those days.
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.
I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.
The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).
There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.
Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.
The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.
The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.
This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.
Good.
In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?
Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.
Not this time.
Even if Labour screw it up, which they probably will, the Conservatives deserve evisceration. The continuing criminal investigations and yet further revelations of abject unfitness for office will keep reminding people that the crisis was Torydom´s last act.
Against all expert views, you got your ridiculous Brexit, now I hope its your political epitaph.
Eviscerate the Tories and it will be a Faragite party that replaces them and when the Right get into power it will be a really nasty Nationalist government from your perspective that will make this government look like LDs
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh but we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
Sorry but both the rhetoric and the outcome and the numbers backs what I said.
The rhetoric was about controlled immigration.
The outcome is that immigration is now controlled, not cut.
And the numbers show most people are happy, not feeling betrayed, about that.
It wasn't a majority.
Lord Ashcroft's election day poll of 12,369 voters also discovered that 'One third (33%) [of leave voters] said the main reason was that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders."'.[3]
@gavinesler It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?
Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
Who would he be kidding apart from himself ? The conservatives are failing because they dont have conservative policies and the voters can see that.
What 'are' conservative policies?
The public wants good public services. It wants society to work. It wants housing and jobs. The tories aren't delviering and no on thinks that doing things like cutting tax for the richest is going to deliver those things.
The public wants low taxes and first-class public services. They also think people earning slightly more than themselves should pay more tax.
All of which are actually very realistic expectations.
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.
I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.
The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).
There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.
Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.
The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.
The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.
This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.
Good.
In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?
Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.
Not this time.
Even if Labour screw it up, which they probably will, the Conservatives deserve evisceration. The continuing criminal investigations and yet further revelations of abject unfitness for office will keep reminding people that the crisis was Torydom´s last act.
Against all expert views, you got your ridiculous Brexit, now I hope its your political epitaph.
Eviscerate the Tories and it will be a Faragite party that replaces them and when the Right get into power it will be a really nasty Nationalist government from your perspective that will make this government look like LDs
No doubt, many Conservatives cheered the collapse of the Liberals in the early 20's, only to get something far less agreeable, from their point of view.
On the Continent, when centre right parties decline, it is usually to the benefit of parties that are further to the right.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
A barrier to cycling during a climate crisis, economic crisis, obesity crisis. Smart.
Although liability is a barrier to cycling, just one people don't necessarily realise or think about that can leave horrifically large uninsured bills around people's heads if they're not careful.
If you don't want liability insurance, then abolishing liability and the state being the de facto insurer of last resort taking responsibility for cyclists is an alternative.
But having a system where liability exists, but people don't realise it and don't get insured for it is about the worst of all worlds.
Fully insured on a Boris bike via the scheme. Bin your high fandangle carbon frames and get on your bike. Plus keeping a bit of Boris in your heart while doing so. Actually not sure how many non-London schemes there are but googling randomly seems quite a few.
Boris bikes? Sadiq cycles, shirley?
(on-topic: I do have public liability insurance for my bike, but this is the first bike I've had it on - came with the theft insurance; this is the first bike I've had a bike-specific policy for, rather than just home insurance add-on)
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
But the whole point of reforming mortgage approvals was that even if people "could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year" the approval process is meant to protect them from getting into such a mess. It's blindingly obvious now that far too many people have got mortgages that they could only service providing rates stayed close to the all-time low, literally the lowest for 300 odd years.
It's like nobody has learnt a bloody thing from previous busts. It was all too predictable that if rates returned to something like the norm, which frankly should have been pencilled in for years ago, a lot of people were going to end up in trouble again.
I'll say it again, some days I wonder how civilization manages to continue, nobody seems to have a clue what they are doing but we keep on ticking.
When reading Vanished Kingdoms, and particularly the history of nation/kingdom development I was left confused how any modern state which wasn't invented in the 20th century by dudes scribbling on maps ever came into being, as its so complicated and haphazard it's amazing we ever coalesced beyond hunter gatherer tribes.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh but we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
Sorry but both the rhetoric and the outcome and the numbers backs what I said.
The rhetoric was about controlled immigration.
The outcome is that immigration is now controlled, not cut.
And the numbers show most people are happy, not feeling betrayed, about that.
It wasn't a majority.
Lord Ashcroft's election day poll of 12,369 voters also discovered that 'One third (33%) [of leave voters] said the main reason was that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders."'.[3]
Sorry, who said anything about a majority?
Either way your quote proves my point. "Control" was the rhetoric and what people voted for.
What is a majority is that a majority now that its controlled are happy with migration either as it is or higher than it is.
Since taking back control of immigration more people now want migration to stay the same or increase than to see it reduced. The polar opposite was the case pre-control. Voting for control has worked, people are happy with controlled migration, even if its at high levels, so win/win.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
It's a ludicrous idea.
We all do things that could in theory expose us to liability to a third party. Your dog might bite someone. Your lawnmower might damage a neighbour's gnome. You might knock over a shelf of pottery in a shop. You might injure someone with an ill-timed challenge in an informal game of park football.
We don't insist on people getting liability insurance for these activities because the risk of a claim arising is low, and the likelihood of it being a high value claim even if it does is low (i.e. if there is a legal claim against you, there's a good chance you'd be able to pay without claiming on insurance). We make an exception for motor insurance as the inherent risk from driving around several tonnes of metal at potentially some speed is pretty high - we don't have a high accident rate in the UK, but where they do happen the damage to property and people can be pretty catastrophic and beyond the means of the person claimed against.
That is not to diminish the fact that on very rare occasions, an irresponsible person on a bike can cause significant damage. But compared with motor vehicles it is simply incredibly unusual to have situations where lack of third party insurance is an issue for the injured party.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
It's the 'in favour of housing but not here' type of policy?
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Trying to out Nimby Starmer is the aim.
Indeed English Tory and LD MPs may form a rare alliance again if Starmer wins the next election to try and block his plans to allow more building on greenbelt land
I'm not sure about that - though no doubt there will be local exceptions for LibDem MPs.
FWIW, while I'm more likely to vote LibDem than Labour, I strongly support the Labour proposal for strong planning and acquisition powers for local authorities in principle. The devil will be, as always, in the detail.
I personally am glad that the MPC didn’t bottle it and have gone for the full 0.5%. They must be under some political pressure given the consequences for mortgage rates and growth but this is what an independent Bank should do. It improves the prospects for gilts in the medium term as it shows the system working as it should.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.
I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.
The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).
There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.
Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.
The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.
The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.
This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.
Good.
In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?
Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.
Not this time.
Even if Labour screw it up, which they probably will, the Conservatives deserve evisceration. The continuing criminal investigations and yet further revelations of abject unfitness for office will keep reminding people that the crisis was Torydom´s last act.
Against all expert views, you got your ridiculous Brexit, now I hope its your political epitaph.
Eviscerate the Tories and it will be a Faragite party that replaces them and when the Right get into power it will be a really nasty Nationalist government from your perspective that will make this government look like LDs
Re-elect us, or we will become more unelectable isn't perhaps the threat you appear to believe.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Problem is, the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer. I think it peaked sometimes in the past 20 years and the not-rich are still heading downhill. We can pick our poison: GFC, Brexit, the break-up of the White Stripes, whatever, but we aren't thriving to say the least.
Interest rates went up to 5% today. How big is your mortgage? Feeling poor, or feeling rich?
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott...
James Marriott seems to have built up an impressive set of articles (so how the Times got him is beyond me). He's already read and reviewed Peter Turchin's "End Times" - I've been looking thru his lectures on YouTube and trying to make sense (Turchin has bad delivery and a pronounced Italian accent, which doesn't help).
I've had a look at some of Marriott's articles: here is a tasting
So the Tories still lead Labour by 2% in rural areas with Yougov then even despite trailing Labour by 16% overall in the latest Yougov UK wide poll.
Labour may be closer there but they won't win rural areas just as they failed to in 1997 and 2001 despite big wins nationally and just as the Conservatives failed to win inner city areas overall even in 1983, 1987 or 2019, their biggest wins in the last 50 years. The chart showing the Tories winning urban areas in 2019 I suspect includes the suburbs not just inner cities
If Labour win Rural seats the Tory party will be below 100 seats at the next election.
Hear there were some serious truth bombs at the 1922 Committee in address by @FrankLuntz to Tory MPs.
Said anyone with a 15k or less majority is "at this moment in time" under threat of losing their seat - added: "this is what CCHQ are not telling you."
Not sure why CCHQ need to tell them - they must know from their constituents
It is very easy to miss what you do not want to hear.
Ideally for the party CCHQ would drop truth bombs, but also have a plan to inspire recovery.
So far the only plan appears to be 'out Nimby the LDs'.
Trying to “Out-NIMBY the LDs” is like the proverbial wrestling with a pig. You both get covered in mud, but the pig is going to enjoy the experience.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Trying to out Nimby Starmer is the aim.
Indeed English Tory and LD MPs may form a rare alliance again if Starmer wins the next election to try and block his plans to allow more building on greenbelt land
I'm not sure about that - though no doubt there will be local exceptions for LibDem MPs.
FWIW, while I'm more likely to vote LibDem than Labour, I strongly support the Labour proposal for strong planning and acquisition powers for local authorities in principle. The devil will be, as always, in the detail.
I'm sceptical of it. But it would be amusing if the Tories turbo charged their nimbyness at the very moment the public underwent a shift and actually backed more development.
Then again they probably already do in an abstract idea at the GE kind of way, it's specifics they don't like.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
I think the main difference between the old and the new elite is that the old elite was mostly honest, whereas the new elite is often dishonest. The old elite never pretended to be anything other than what it was. The new elite is often pretending to be other than what it actually is.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
The Brexit vote was to leave the EU; that's it. Anything beyond that is just someone's spin.
I assume these historically normal interest rates are going to kill the car lease market too, so every man and his dog isn't going to be driving round in a flash Audi? Or was depreciation 90% of the cost?
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
I'd expect the current situation to really hurt the car industry - PCP deals are going to get more expensive at the same time as there is a massive squeeze on household incomes. I'm supprised the wheels haven't fallen off the PCP market sooner - given how leveraged the lease system is, I thought that it was quite likely to be the cause of the next crisis, rather than merely a unwilling participant. The only thing saving their bacon a bit is that used cars are amongst the things with the highest levels of inflation - I.e. the stuff coming back off lease will be worth more expected.
I'd expect sales of new cars (on finance or otherwise) to fall of a cliff, which the motor industry won't enjoy very much.
(I remain quite happy with my £500 2008 diesel VW Passat Estate - 72 mpg on a run last week, 63mpg over the last tank (~900 miles). About 10.5p/mile with no depreciation cost - that's a similar cost to an electric car charged at home, despite the huge tax arbitrarage in favour of the electric car).
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.
I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.
The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).
There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.
Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.
The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.
The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.
This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.
Good.
In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?
Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.
Not this time.
Even if Labour screw it up, which they probably will, the Conservatives deserve evisceration. The continuing criminal investigations and yet further revelations of abject unfitness for office will keep reminding people that the crisis was Torydom´s last act.
Against all expert views, you got your ridiculous Brexit, now I hope its your political epitaph.
Eviscerate the Tories and it will be a Faragite party that replaces them and when the Right get into power it will be a really nasty Nationalist government from your perspective that will make this government look like LDs
Re-elect us, or we will become more unelectable isn't perhaps the threat you appear to believe.
Also, threatening it could be worse 10 years down the line or whatever when they do get back in is just not going to stir people up.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Problem is, the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer. I think it peaked sometimes in the past 20 years and the not-rich are still heading downhill. We can pick our poison: GFC, Brexit, the break-up of the White Stripes, whatever, but we aren't thriving to say the least.
Interest rates went up to 5% today. How big is your mortgage? Feeling poor, or feeling rich?
Yes if the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer then that is a problem, but that's a totally different problem to the rich getting richer while the poor are also getting richer. And Brexit is likely reversing that, Brexit aids the not-rich more than the rich, in seeing wages going up potentially.
As for me I don't like going into personal details but I'm happy to say I'm paying less for my mortgage today than I was paying for my landlord's mortgage this time last year, when rates were lower. So things have in the past year improved for me, personally.
But I'm not primarily concerned about myself. If I go into negative equity, as I hope, I will still have my own home. I will still have a roof over my head and no landlord.
Millions of others of my generation and younger aren't so fortunate. I'm more concerned with them, than I am myself.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
This ruling elite who haven’t fully implemented the Brexit vote… you mean Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman?
The public at large are diverse — different people believe different things — but the majority reject your socially conservative views.
If you go to a good private school, then your A’level grades flatter your ability, so it makes sense for universities to take that into account when they wish to select on ability. Going to private school remains a massive advantage for getting into Oxford or Cambridge.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Well the original point was "most rich world economies" and now people are specifying the UK.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
Guidance from the Police Chief's Association accepts that adults cycling on pavements is OK, when the road is too dangerous, and it is done considerately - as in the vast majority of cases. Guidance was issued in 1999 by the Home Secretary when it became an "offence", and reaffirmed in 2014. The recent case of the manslaughter of the elderly cyclist demonstrates the need, until such time as we have safe facilities everywhere:
The "cyclists need insurance" brigade have no point whatsoever, except in their own sawdust-filled heads.
Lability insurance for people riding bikes usually comes for free with a home contents policy. Some of us have extra insurance via memberships or specialist policies. I have that because I know many motorist vehicle drivers will lie to the police and then lie to the court, and I will need ferocious lawyers should the worst happen, potentially for a civil claim.
These insurance companies include liability insurance in their Home Contents policies:
I personally am glad that the MPC didn’t bottle it and have gone for the full 0.5%. They must be under some political pressure given the consequences for mortgage rates and growth but this is what an independent Bank should do. It improves the prospects for gilts in the medium term as it shows the system working as it should.
They are now (and know they are) playing catch up.
The interesting question is will the August decision be another 0.5% or just 0.25% I suspect it will be the former as needs will require it,
And the irony is that it won't make much difference because the people who are impacted by the change aren't the people spending money in the first place.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
If that's what helps you sleep at night but the reality is that for many people, perhaps a majority of your fellow Brexit voters, Brexit was about reducing immigration.
"Oh but we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
Sorry but both the rhetoric and the outcome and the numbers backs what I said.
The rhetoric was about controlled immigration.
The outcome is that immigration is now controlled, not cut.
And the numbers show most people are happy, not feeling betrayed, about that.
It wasn't a majority.
Lord Ashcroft's election day poll of 12,369 voters also discovered that 'One third (33%) [of leave voters] said the main reason was that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders."'.[3]
Sorry, who said anything about a majority?
Either way your quote proves my point. "Control" was the rhetoric and what people voted for.
What is a majority is that a majority now that its controlled are happy with migration either as it is or higher than it is.
Since taking back control of immigration more people now want migration to stay the same or increase than to see it reduced. The polar opposite was the case pre-control. Voting for control has worked, people are happy with controlled migration, even if its at high levels, so win/win.
As I said, you can keep telling yourself that Brexit voters adore immigration and just want to be able to swap out a Polish for a Somalian plumber but in those quiet moments, you know you sided with Nigel Farage and millions of people who wanted and still want fewer foreigners over here.
But yes your stated reason (control only) is noble. But it is also bullshit.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Problem is, the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer. I think it peaked sometimes in the past 20 years and the not-rich are still heading downhill. We can pick our poison: GFC, Brexit, the break-up of the White Stripes, whatever, but we aren't thriving to say the least.
Interest rates went up to 5% today. How big is your mortgage? Feeling poor, or feeling rich?
Yes if the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer then that is a problem, but that's a totally different problem to the rich getting richer while the poor are also getting richer. And Brexit is likely reversing that, Brexit aids the not-rich more than the rich, in seeing wages going up potentially.
As for me I don't like going into personal details but I'm happy to say I'm paying less for my mortgage today than I was paying for my landlord's mortgage this time last year, when rates were lower. So things have in the past year improved for me, personally.
But I'm not primarily concerned about myself. If I go into negative equity, as I hope, I will still have my own home. I will still have a roof over my head and no landlord.
Millions of others of my generation and younger aren't so fortunate. I'm more concerned with them, than I am myself.
And negative equity is a solved problem - it hit Northern Ireland between 2009 to 2015 and the banks just allowed people to continue their loans - it's less risky than the other options...
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Well the original point was "most rich world economies" and now people are specifying the UK.
Yes and your original point was wrong then as it is now.
Most rich world economies were spending much, much more on the military during the Cold War than they are today.
The military is an irrelevance in public spending compared to pensions, healthcare and debt in any country in the rich world let alone most of them.
@gavinesler It appears the Sunak government is unwilling to defend the indefensible. If they cannot even defend their acceptance of Brexit, is there any point to the Sunak government? Thoughts?
Rishi needs to start piling the failures of Brexit firmly at Boris's door. Emphasize that it was nice idea comprehensively cocked up by Boris, his incompetence and his egotism. The Boris myth must be destroyed for all the Tories' sake, and Brexit is the perfect place to start.
Who would he be kidding apart from himself ? The conservatives are failing because they dont have conservative policies and the voters can see that.
Lol, the old "the Tories would be doing better if only they were more rightwing" line.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
There are occasions where it makes sense to ride on pavements, for instance if there are no pedestrians around, and you have lorries coming up behind you. There shouldn't be an inflexible law relating to it in my opinion. Use commons sense.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
I think the main difference between the old and the new elite is that the old elite was mostly honest, whereas the new elite is often dishonest. The old elite never pretended to be anything other than what it was. The new elite is often pretending to be other than what it actually is.
Citation and explanation needed? The "old elite" where honest how? The "new elite" is dishonest how?
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
The Brexit vote was to control immigration, not to cut it. You may not have realised that, not having voted for Brexit.
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
The Brexit vote was to leave the EU; that's it. Anything beyond that is just someone's spin.
Beyond facile.
It was about a host of things but for millions upon millions of Brits it was about getting rid of foreigners.
I assume these historically normal interest rates are going to kill the car lease market too, so every man and his dog isn't going to be driving round in a flash Audi? Or was depreciation 90% of the cost?
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
I'd expect the current situation to really hurt the car industry - PCP deals are going to get more expensive at the same time as there is a massive squeeze on household incomes. I'm supprised the wheels haven't fallen off the PCP market sooner - given how leveraged the lease system is, I thought that it was quite likely to be the cause of the next crisis, rather than merely a unwilling participant. The only thing saving their bacon a bit is that used cars are amongst the things with the highest levels of inflation - I.e. the stuff coming back off lease will be worth more expected.
I'd expect sales of new cars (on finance or otherwise) to fall of a cliff, which the motor industry won't enjoy very much.
(I remain quite happy with my £500 2008 diesel VW Passat Estate - 72 mpg on a run last week, 63mpg over the last tank (~900 miles). About 10.5p/mile with no depreciation cost - that's a similar cost to an electric car charged at home, despite the huge tax arbitrarage in favour of the electric car).
There must be something wrong with our Volvo D4 engine - can’t seem to get more than 52mpg out of it, even though it mostly drives long distance runs. Trouble is, we drive so little it’s not worth the effort to get a problem like that diagnosed & fixed. Presumably a sensor has died somewhere, but which one?
(It is ULEZ compliant IIRC, did they sacrifice efficiency to meet emissions limits?)
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
How do you square the belief that an increasing number of people are too poor to eat with the growing levels of obesity?
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
Guidance from the Police Chief's Association accepts that adults cycling on pavements is OK, when the road is too dangerous, and it is done considerately - as in the vast majority of cases. Guidance was issued in 1999 by the Home Secretary when it became an "offence", and reaffirmed in 2014. The recent case of the manslaughter of the elderly cyclist demonstrates the need, until such time as we have safe facilities everywhere:
The "cyclists need insurance" brigade have no point whatsoever, except in their own sawdust-filled heads.
Lability insurance for people riding bikes usually comes for free with a home contents policy. Some of us have extra insurance via memberships or specialist policies. I have that because I know many motorist vehicle drivers will lie to the police and then lie to the court, and I will need ferocious lawyers should the worst happen, potentially for a civil claim.
These insurance companies include liability insurance in their Home Contents policies:
Apologies for introducing evidence to the debate.
Normally placid people go absolutely bonkers when it comes to cyclists. It's utterly barmy and baffling.
Even if inflation falls Sunak can hardly bring out the bunting given to get there it would have driven many people to lose their homes .
On another note am I the only one fed up of the moralizing crap from people who seek to judge those who just wanted to own their own home . The situation was vastly different 20 years ago .
People took out mortgages and could never have envisaged the rapid change in interest rates over the space of just over a year.
There seems to be a lot of mean spiritedness about which I find appalling when some people are going to be sick with worry over what will happen to their mortgages .
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
It's a ludicrous idea.
We all do things that could in theory expose us to liability to a third party. Your dog might bite someone. Your lawnmower might damage a neighbour's gnome. You might knock over a shelf of pottery in a shop. You might injure someone with an ill-timed challenge in an informal game of park football.
We don't insist on people getting liability insurance for these activities because the risk of a claim arising is low, and the likelihood of it being a high value claim even if it does is low (i.e. if there is a legal claim against you, there's a good chance you'd be able to pay without claiming on insurance). We make an exception for motor insurance as the inherent risk from driving around several tonnes of metal at potentially some speed is pretty high - we don't have a high accident rate in the UK, but where they do happen the damage to property and people can be pretty catastrophic and beyond the means of the person claimed against.
That is not to diminish the fact that on very rare occasions, an irresponsible person on a bike can cause significant damage. But compared with motor vehicles it is simply incredibly unusual to have situations where lack of third party insurance is an issue for the injured party.
That sounds very complacent to me. Some of those liabilities are probably covered by your household policy, but for those that aren't it is a very sound idea to look in to joining the park footballers/dog owners/ whatever society, who often throw in a few m liability cover in exchange for an annual membership sub.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Problem is, the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer. I think it peaked sometimes in the past 20 years and the not-rich are still heading downhill. We can pick our poison: GFC, Brexit, the break-up of the White Stripes, whatever, but we aren't thriving to say the least.
Interest rates went up to 5% today. How big is your mortgage? Feeling poor, or feeling rich?
Yes if the rich are getting richer and the not-rich are getting poorer then that is a problem, but that's a totally different problem to the rich getting richer while the poor are also getting richer. And Brexit is likely reversing that, Brexit aids the not-rich more than the rich, in seeing wages going up potentially.
As for me I don't like going into personal details but I'm happy to say I'm paying less for my mortgage today than I was paying for my landlord's mortgage this time last year, when rates were lower. So things have in the past year improved for me, personally.
But I'm not primarily concerned about myself. If I go into negative equity, as I hope, I will still have my own home. I will still have a roof over my head and no landlord.
Millions of others of my generation and younger aren't so fortunate. I'm more concerned with them, than I am myself.
And negative equity is a solved problem - it hit Northern Ireland between 2009 to 2015 and the banks just allowed people to continue their loans - it's less risky than the other options...
Absolutely! Indeed its happened throughout history and throughout the world.
Last thing the Banks want is to foreclose on a loan that's bigger than what they'll get from the asset. They're losing money if they do that. Ride it out to the other side as best as can be done is better and leaves the economy in a much healthier place.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
How do you square the belief that an increasing number of people are too poor to eat with the growing levels of obesity?
Because some of the cheapest food is some of the most unhealthy.
Not to say I don't like this new to-the-right-of-Mark Francois @williamglenn but sometimes the auto-responses are a bit too lazy.
I still think you are doing this because it is an amusing role to play (cf your pre-2016 vote persona).
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
How do you square the belief that an increasing number of people are too poor to eat with the growing levels of obesity?
Dirt cheap price of carbs relative to other forms of nutrition.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
You're assuming we could make that 0% but never assume it makes an ass out of u and me.
Countries that have attempted to abolish rather than reduce or ameliorate inequality have invariably and inevitably always ended up with more people skipping meals, not fewer.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
"Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate..." - views. Opinions. Political positions. Not ability to enact wide or systemic change. Just "people who are in the modern middle class hold different opinions to people in the old middle class and old upper class". That's what this is all about.
Same sex marriage is conservative - yes it was important for same sex couples to have the same rights as any married couples, to visit the ill, to inherit, to live together - but it essentially assimilation into the heteronormative tradition. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" used to be about difference, not assimilation. Abortion is still illegal without 2 doctors signing off on it in this country. And again, dog whistle with "religious teachers" because you don't want a Muslim to teach students fundamental Islamism - you want a specific brand of traditional Christianity imposed on kids.
Starmer is going out with his shadow chancellor on TV every day saying that he won't do anything radical on the economy because of the "economic condition". A majority of TORY voters want public ownership of necessary utilities, and the Labour party is STILL ruling it out.
You call lefties permanent victims, and then complain that the poors are being allowed into the posh people unis, and that new money are lauded like some kind of Victorian Whig. We live in the world created by Thatcherism and Reaganism, by the neoliberal consensus, by capital and capitalism. You won; get over it.
No. Same sex marriage is liberal, hence most Conservative MPs voted against it and most Labour and LD MPs voted for it. Conservative MPs wanted civil unions only at the time.
I see David Cameron has joined HYFUD’s ranks of “not a true Conservative”
So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.
Does anyone believe the Tories can pull it back to a Hung Parliament and still remain in Government? I would like to hear your hypothesis for my betting
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
Guidance from the Police Chief's Association accepts that adults cycling on pavements is OK, when the road is too dangerous, and it is done considerately - as in the vast majority of cases. Guidance was issued in 1999 by the Home Secretary when it became an "offence", and reaffirmed in 2014. The recent case of the manslaughter of the elderly cyclist demonstrates the need, until such time as we have safe facilities everywhere:
The "cyclists need insurance" brigade have no point whatsoever, except in their own sawdust-filled heads.
Lability insurance for people riding bikes usually comes for free with a home contents policy. Some of us have extra insurance via memberships or specialist policies. I have that because I know many motorist vehicle drivers will lie to the police and then lie to the court, and I will need ferocious lawyers should the worst happen, potentially for a civil claim.
These insurance companies include liability insurance in their Home Contents policies:
Apologies for introducing evidence to the debate.
Normally placid people go absolutely bonkers when it comes to cyclists. It's utterly barmy and baffling.
The worst cyclists on the streets of London are without doubt the Just Eat/Deliveroo ones. Most cyclists at least look left then right before going through red lights - the food delivery ones don't even do this.
And I'm the idiot who stops at all the red lights as I see 83% of other cyclists race through them past me.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
Social liberalism won the culture war. That doesn’t mean the “liberal elite” won it. Rather, the public at large threw off the social conservatism of the then elite.
High migration isn’t proof of a ruling liberal elite: high migration is the result of Conservative Party policies.
And saying 65% of Oxford’s intake is from state schools is an odd way of saying the privately educated are still massively over-represented at Oxford.
High migration is a result of the ruling elite not fulling implementing the Brexit vote to cut immigration.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
High migration is a desire by capitalists to have cheap labour and discipline labour at home - the reasons liberals don't mind migration is because they want to treat people humanely, and the reason leftists don't mind migration is because they're internationalists who view borders as fake. The only people who don't like high migration are those who are convinced by capitalists that migrants are taking their jobs and destroying their culture so that the blame of migration and labour discipline falls on the relatively powerless migrant and not the exceptionally powerful capitalist.
That's why you see in the US, for example, lots of anti immigrant rhetoric from the right, but when someone like De Santis implements a policy of fining companies $10000 for each illegal immigrant they are found to be using as labour you a) have food shortages in Florida and b) lots of companies (who spend lots of money in GOP primaries) crying that their profits are going down.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Why do you think populist parties are in government in Sweden, Finland, Italy, and will likely be in Spain very soon?
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
How do you square the belief that an increasing number of people are too poor to eat with the growing levels of obesity?
Because the food they eat is ultra processed shit. Trouble is, it's the only food they can afford.
Although the "cyclists need insurance" brigade do have a point. Liability insurance for cyclists is quite sensible.
Adult cyclists who cycle on pavements, which is unlawful, with a "get out of my way, pedestrian scum" attitude, being too wimpy and scared to ride on the roads, need bans slapped on them by magistrates. (It would only take a few Cambridge fellows to feel the long arm of the law for the others to feel "encouraged".)
Guidance from the Police Chief's Association accepts that adults cycling on pavements is OK, when the road is too dangerous, and it is done considerately - as in the vast majority of cases. Guidance was issued in 1999 by the Home Secretary when it became an "offence", and reaffirmed in 2014. The recent case of the manslaughter of the elderly cyclist demonstrates the need, until such time as we have safe facilities everywhere:
The "cyclists need insurance" brigade have no point whatsoever, except in their own sawdust-filled heads.
Lability insurance for people riding bikes usually comes for free with a home contents policy. Some of us have extra insurance via memberships or specialist policies. I have that because I know many motorist vehicle drivers will lie to the police and then lie to the court, and I will need ferocious lawyers should the worst happen, potentially for a civil claim.
These insurance companies include liability insurance in their Home Contents policies:
Apologies for introducing evidence to the debate.
Normally placid people go absolutely bonkers when it comes to cyclists. It's utterly barmy and baffling.
It's jealously. Motorists see my calf muscles go momentarily insane.
I had a shout-off with some driver in a huge fuck off (but white) Jeep Cherokee this morning. I just think many drivers resent the freedom of movement of cyclists. They don't like cyclists filtering either which I think is part of this.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
The above concept of the "elite" is cribbed from Rob Henderson's theory of "luxury beliefs".
Paraphrasing, we have an overproduction of "elites" i.e. university educated people who in previous times would have demanded high salaries for jobs such as journalism or academia, but due to the change in the job market and the increasing precariousness of the middle class, we have produced too many humanities graduates who are educated but no longer command large salaries. This overly large class of people can no longer compete on traditional wealth based status symbols, so they use their belief system as a signifier of their class.
What is a luxury belief? I've heard people call "gender ideology" a "luxury belief" - despite the fact the vast majority of trans people are working class and poor, disproportionately homeless and suffer from mental health issues related to being ostracised by society; doesn't sound very "luxury" to me. Whereas I would say "trickle down economics" is a pretty "luxury belief" - only the rich can believe it, it justifies their existence and their hoarding of wealth, and it patently doesn't work. Is "equal rights" a luxury belief? "Human rights"? "Society"?
The issue is that on economics, there is no other game in town. History did end, capitalism won. Corbyn and Bernie get called bloody Marxists for wanting to do low level social democratic reforms which are all in aid of keeping capitalism from falling apart under it's own contradictions. So when capitalism is clearly failing but it's easier to imagine the end of the world then it is the end of capitalism, what do you have left?
Social democracy won (even if social democratic parties are vanishing). Most rich world economies have public spending at 40-50% of GDP and extensive welfare states.
Thatcher called Blair her heir. The welfare state has been cut year on year since 2008. Public spending is high due to bungs to private corporations and military spending - and public coffers are empty because of tax cuts after tax cuts. If social democracy is an incrementalistic approach to socialist equality via the ballot box, why is wealth inequality higher now than 50 years ago? You're looking at technological gains and saying that the quality of life is better for most people, therefore society must have improved, but the gap between the richest and poorest is astronomically greater than previously.
I am not sure what planet you are living on but it isn't this one.
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
Yes but @148grss's basic observation is right: the gap between rich and poor has ballooned, under both Labour and Tory administrations.
So what?
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Inequality is an issue when ~20% of the population skip meals because they can't afford to eat all the time, and have to choose between eating and paying the bills, when other people have the resources to buy luxury yachts and private jets.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
No. 20% of the population skipping meals is a problem in its own right, not because of inequality.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
The wealth exists. That some people have astronomically more, and others have so little that they are skipping meals, is a problem. The wealth that the rich have could go to those who do not have it and are therefore having a worse standard of living. There is no conceivable way that wealth redistribution from the richest people who have ridiculous amounts of money, inconceivable amounts of money, money that when put into context is absolutely absurd, would lead to 60% of the population of the population skipping meals - but it could easily make that 0%.
You're assuming we could make that 0% but never assume it makes an ass out of u and me.
Countries that have attempted to abolish rather than reduce or ameliorate inequality have invariably and inevitably always ended up with more people skipping meals, not fewer.
So your position is that wealth redistribution from rich to poor just doesn't work, despite the fact that the most prosperous economic period of Western history was the period with the most wealth redistribution?
The current teenage scribbler for the Times, James Marriott is a little perturbed by what he calls "Centrist Populism"- i.e. the gathering wrath of moderates towards Brexit and all other works of Torydom.
I think I can explain the gathering disaster for the Conservatives in very simple terms.
The educated middle class have had more than a decade of being told that experts don´t matter (they are trying to do it again today, seeking to transfer the blame for the UK´s economic woes towards the Bank of England, rather than their own policy incompetence).
There has been decades of utter bullshit, absurd power stance policies which do not even begin to scratch the surface of under investment and misallocation of capital across the whole economy for decades.
Then there is the more than 40 years of the playground shit show of internal Tory party politics, which culminated in the travesty of "Prime Minister" Boris Johnson, but covered so much else in childish personality clashes The mass expulsion of adults, from the Conservatives by Johnson was the last chance for the Tories.
The patient people of Britain are waiting for the fat lady to sing, and she is clearing her throat.
The Tories are going to face a whole new world of pain at the next election, but more to the point I think we are going to see a long overdue period of radical change. The country in 10 years will have changed in ways- economic, political, social and constitutional- that I do not see the Tories being able to survive.
This is not just about the 2024/5 election, it will be epochal.
Good.
In 5 years we could have a high tax, even higher inflation and higher interest rates deeply unpopular Labour government plagued with even more frequent strikes and with a big deficit and rising unemployment. The idea Labour will win the next general election and be in power for all time is complacency of the first degree from you and other left liberals
I believe that Cicero is a former Tory voter ?
Complacency is the belief that the Tory party is now anything more than a parody of what once could claim to be the natural party of government.
It is complacency for any party to say they are 'the natural party of government' in a democracy, the Tories have suffered heavy defeats before in 1997, 2001. 1966, 1945, 1906, 1880 and against Palmerston on many occasions and always come back.
Not this time.
Even if Labour screw it up, which they probably will, the Conservatives deserve evisceration. The continuing criminal investigations and yet further revelations of abject unfitness for office will keep reminding people that the crisis was Torydom´s last act.
Against all expert views, you got your ridiculous Brexit, now I hope its your political epitaph.
Eviscerate the Tories and it will be a Faragite party that replaces them and when the Right get into power it will be a really nasty Nationalist government from your perspective that will make this government look like LDs
Sunak is like Louis XVI or Nicholas II, a relatively inoffensive, rather weak, leader taking the consequences of the collapse of the entire ancien regime... So Sunak will pay the price for Truss, Johnson and, yes, May.
It would be quite hard to find worse leaders, and the idea that these far-right gargoyles were anything except incompetent, irresponsible and occasionally pretty sleazy is for the birds. Farage is sharing the blame for the disaster, so despite you echoing Rees Mogg´s witterings, I see no come back for the irresponsible right under whichever brand.
Indeed I see a complete redrawing of the political map.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
Goodwin is really disappearing ever deeper up his own backside.
Yes. It is quite evident that the new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by uttering mantras which *appear* to be progressive.
The reality is nothing changes, but they all give each other awards for being on message - see the revelation about how much money the Met Police spends on awarding itself awards.
Goodwin just isn't thinking structurally about who the 'elite' are. Being an academic, he probably thinks that leftie academics with pride flags in their twitter profile are a part of the elite - ie it's pure narcissism. The elite are people who control the levers of political and economic power, ie people in business and finance and the Tory party. These are not people you will bump into at a BLM protest, believe me.
The whole misuse of the concept of "elites" by people like HYUFD strikes me as so much playing with fire. To hear populist narratives coming out of the mouths of "conservatives" is disturbing.
The danger is that normalising such language opens the door of the town hall to far worse people than either the stupid conservatives speaking like this or the stupid people they are trying to attack.
Populism isn't a plaything. It's a vicious weapon that should only be unleashed when it's really, really needed. If your target is tweedy academics and pride flags, you can be damn sure it's not needed.
Yes, reading the Spectator these days is like reading a student Trotskyist pamphlet: full of talk of 'our rulers', 'the ruling class', 'the ruling elite' etc. My theory is that a certain type of middle-class conservative bitterly regrets letting the 1970s and punk rock pass them by and is desperate for another go.
Goodwin just dislikes the evolution of societal norms. Most of Goodwin's recent book (which has very few actual citations for an academic) claims that the new "elite" are essentially just all university graduates, women, and ethnic or sexual minorities, and the old elite are white working class people and the elderly. Which is clearly not the case, that's just generational divide.
The "elite" are the same people who have owned and controlled land since their ancestors landed on these shores in 1066. The "elite" are the same narrow group of people who go to one of two or three public schools and one of two universities. The "elite" are the people who have the opportunity to leverage their preexisting wealth and networks into cushy jobs where they can publish in national newspapers on a regular basis or get a peerage before the age of 30.
What the new generation have is the ability for the old elites to hear them, because social media allows the plebs to shout at anyone. They also have more willingness to "talk back" to their "betters". Graduates may have more pluralistic attitudes because they interact with a different set of people whilst at university - people from across the country and across the world.
I want to know what significant impact the "new elite" have had. If we're talking about the press - that's overwhelming right wing in this country. The government has been right wing / centrist since Thatcher. Yes, we have progressed on open racism, sexism and homophobia - but barely and only if it is really obvious (in his book Goodwin complains that the "new elite" think doing accents and complaining that people don't speak English in the UK are racist is bad, actually, and thinks that we should define the number of people who hold racially prejudicial views on the basis of a poll that asked people if they self defined as racist).
The problem with Goodwin, HYUFD, and a lot of British conservatism is they're complaining about winning too much. They won the economic argument - everyone's a Thatcherite now. They won on the EU - we're leaving. They won most of the culture war - gay rights begins and ends with the right to act like straight people with same sex marriage, and it's more important that 5 rich people are likely dead out of their own hubris than it is 500 migrants were killed when their boat was sank. But winning doesn't make your enemies shut up and respect you, and that's what they want - for the goddamn poors and women and gays and ethnics to just accept their place in the world and stop asking for a better world. They believe it was shit for them (despite most of them living through the golden age of the welfare state and investment into their progress) and therefore demand that it must be shit for the rest of us. "Didn't do me any harm..." etc etc, bullcrap bullcrap
The liberal elite won the culture war, we have homosexual marriage, abortion near on demand up to 24 weeks, Pride days even in corporations, religious teachers sacked for teaching traditional views of gender and sexuality, migration to the UK higher than ever before even despite Brexit, statues being pulled down in big cities and museums. Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate the ranks of academia, the civil service, lawyers, big corporations and TV news from the BBC to Channel 4.
Even the economic argument the right was alleged to have won is looking shaky with the tax burden high and likely to get even higher under a Starmer government, increasing public spending and things which were privatised like railways now being drawn up by stealth under public ownership. While the Unions are shaking their fists again and striking for huge wage rises.
The elite is also different, the rich list in the Sunday Times is now mainly self made entrepreneurs, whereas in the early 1980s it was mainly landowners and inherited wealth. Public schools are now seeing pupils being rejected from Oxbridge more than ever, with 65% of Oxford and 70% of Cambridge students from state schools and even most Tory MPs now state educated.
"Social liberalism and anti Brexit views dominate..." - views. Opinions. Political positions. Not ability to enact wide or systemic change. Just "people who are in the modern middle class hold different opinions to people in the old middle class and old upper class". That's what this is all about.
Same sex marriage is conservative - yes it was important for same sex couples to have the same rights as any married couples, to visit the ill, to inherit, to live together - but it essentially assimilation into the heteronormative tradition. "We're here, we're queer, get used to it" used to be about difference, not assimilation. Abortion is still illegal without 2 doctors signing off on it in this country. And again, dog whistle with "religious teachers" because you don't want a Muslim to teach students fundamental Islamism - you want a specific brand of traditional Christianity imposed on kids.
Starmer is going out with his shadow chancellor on TV every day saying that he won't do anything radical on the economy because of the "economic condition". A majority of TORY voters want public ownership of necessary utilities, and the Labour party is STILL ruling it out.
You call lefties permanent victims, and then complain that the poors are being allowed into the posh people unis, and that new money are lauded like some kind of Victorian Whig. We live in the world created by Thatcherism and Reaganism, by the neoliberal consensus, by capital and capitalism. You won; get over it.
No. Same sex marriage is liberal, hence most Conservative MPs voted against it and most Labour and LD MPs voted for it. Conservative MPs wanted civil unions only at the time.
I see David Cameron has joined HYFUD’s ranks of “not a true Conservative”
So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.
'@GoodwinMJ · 17h The old elite projected their social status through their wealth, estates & titles. The new elite project their status & distinguish themselves from the masses by preaching radical woke progressivism'
I think the main difference between the old and the new elite is that the old elite was mostly honest, whereas the new elite is often dishonest. The old elite never pretended to be anything other than what it was. The new elite is often pretending to be other than what it actually is.
I'm not sure that's true, at least since the invention of newspapers. Who was the American billionaire at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries who had very good media management and cultivated an image of benefitor of the poor? I think it was Carnegie, but happy to be corrected.
Comments
I agree that "elite" can be made to mean top 1% of income, position of power, etc - but that is also interchangeable with "establishment". "Elite" in the above context could also mean the children of affluent parents who (as in the above article) went to top universities, studied humanities and had an expectation of going into jobs in law, publishing, academia, and other jobs that belong to the so called professional-managerial class. The education system overproduced such people in the 90s and 2000s while at the same time demand contracted post 2008.
The net result is a whole class of people who are well educated, had an expectation of a certain standard of living, and yet find themselves worse off than their parents at a similar age. The phenomenon of luxury beliefs is a way of signalling one's status without money. Whether or not such people represent an "elite" class is a matter for debate. An academic with a masters degree from Imperial or a journalist with a degree from St Andrews probably looks like "the elite" to a large proportion of the population, even if their salaries don't reflect this. They are still *quite* affluent compared to the majority of the population, but nowhere near as much as they would have been twenty or thirty years ago.
I then started talking about corporations because HYUFD claimed that pride was some extension of elite beliefs rather than the expansion of capitalism into a new market - again, a very capitalist and conservative win there.
My last paragraph was the direct response to you - what would I be "pleased with" if I am not "pleased with" equal marriage.
If the Tories want to accept that they have one year left in government, they should use their remaining time and clear majority to have a bloody good go at the “too-difficult pile”, the problems that need fixing but are politically difficult. It’s not 1996, where the majority had evaporated.
Might cause difficulty for the ULEZ plans if most people can't afford to replace their car.
The only way we get rid of this new elite is to get rid of the concept of elites, but the country doesn't want to do that. Bear in mind that we have a country that is currently set up to strip-mine everyday people and export the profits to whichever citizen of nowhere party is running the country this week. Stanley Johnson - a wife beater who holidayed abroad during Covid and bought a house in France - was offered a knighthood and nearly got one.
Whatever you or I do, elites will be there for our lifetimes, running the country like a bad "Succession" episode. When you find out how to get rid of them tell me, but until then we are stuck...
And speak to young families being evicted from a rental property with 2 months notice under a Section 21 order and having no hope of having a home of their own with the obvious trauma and knowledge it will happen again and again if nothing changes - if you're not upset by that then you have no heart either.
There's two sides here. Too much rain causes a flood, insufficient and too much sunshine causes a drought. We need a balanced economic cycle, but we haven't had that.
Most of the rest of his enablers didn't show up.
Quoting the 65% figure is worse than you say. The problem with it isn't only that the emphasis isn't put on the 35%, and that 35% is about two times the 18% who are privately educated at 16+, whereas 65% seems not much less than the 82% figure for those who aren't. Admittedly that's a classic case of lying with statistics. But the lying doesn't stop there. An even bigger issue is that a substantial part of the bourgeoisie send their offspring to state schools, so the statistic doesn't measure the inheritance of privilege as shown in Oxford admissions very well at all.
down the road. The lack of personal responsibility has reached epidemic proportions. The market always kicks in at some point. Welcome to the real world.
They are all at it though. I had occasion to look at a local news piece featuring IDS where he's campaigning against an incinerator being placed in his constituency. In an energy crisis. Prick.
They are pretty good and usually have good rates available and, for the muslim community, also offer plenty of sharia compliant savings accounts which offer a really good rate.
Sometimes they are just an excuse not to recycle, although the energy balance for that is complicated.
I don't think it is entirely nimbyism in that there's a legitimate argument not to have any incineration at all, whereas we do actually need housing.
Indeed English Tory and LD MPs may form a rare alliance again if Starmer wins the next election to try and block his plans to allow more building on greenbelt land
If you don't want liability insurance, then abolishing liability and the state being the de facto insurer of last resort taking responsibility for cyclists is an alternative.
But having a system where liability exists, but people don't realise it and don't get insured for it is about the worst of all worlds.
It came down 1% the next day after we had given up protecting Sterling but it was still a hell of a jump.
The idea that there is anything unprecedented about this is simply wrong.
The public at large was always more socially conservative than the elite, check polls on homosexuality in the 1980s or the death penalty now.
About 40% of top A grades and A* grades at A level go to private school pupils yet now over 70% of Cambridge students went to state schools. Indeed access schemes give places at some Oxbridge pupils to state school pupils with only 3 Bs
Opinion polls suggest that post-Brexit most people are happy with immigration now levels now that it is controlled. The number of people concerned about immigration levels has collapsed post-Brexit referendum.
It's official! The current Conservative Government hate cuddly, fluffy puppies.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/21/mps-vote-down-labour-attempt-to-revive-animal-welfare-bill
Military spending is now less as a % of GDP than it has been in decades. It was 7% in the 1960s and is now 2%. And taxes are higher as a % of GDP than they have been at any time in the last 50 years.
"Oh we love immigrants but just want a say in which ones we accept" is comforting for you to parrot but conflicts with the reality.
The rhetoric was about controlled immigration.
The outcome is that immigration is now controlled, not cut.
And the numbers show most people are happy, not feeling betrayed, about that.
We have an abortion time limit double that in Roman Catholic nations like Italy. Strict Muslims have more in common with Christian evangelicals on the traditional family, opposition to homosexual marriage and trans than secular liberals in the UK.
Labour will impose a wealth tax, return the top income tax rate to 50% and end private school charitable status and ban new oil and gas exploration.
Thatcher was more of a 19th century liberal than a Tory in some respects and Biden is taxing and spending more than any President since LBJ, the US is not Reaganite now
Its a shame Tories of your style have come to dominate the party instead.
It makes no difference to my life whether Elon Musk or Richard Branson can afford one flight into space or 1000.
It does make a difference to my life whether my own life is getting better or worse.
Closing the gap by making us all poorer is not progress.
Making us all richer, even if some get much richer than others, is progress.
Lord Ashcroft's election day poll of 12,369 voters also discovered that 'One third (33%) [of leave voters] said the main reason was that leaving "offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders."'.[3]
On the Continent, when centre right parties decline, it is usually to the benefit of parties that are further to the right.
(on-topic: I do have public liability insurance for my bike, but this is the first bike I've had it on - came with the theft insurance; this is the first bike I've had a bike-specific policy for, rather than just home insurance add-on)
Either way your quote proves my point. "Control" was the rhetoric and what people voted for.
What is a majority is that a majority now that its controlled are happy with migration either as it is or higher than it is.
Since taking back control of immigration more people now want migration to stay the same or increase than to see it reduced. The polar opposite was the case pre-control. Voting for control has worked, people are happy with controlled migration, even if its at high levels, so win/win.
We all do things that could in theory expose us to liability to a third party. Your dog might bite someone. Your lawnmower might damage a neighbour's gnome. You might knock over a shelf of pottery in a shop. You might injure someone with an ill-timed challenge in an informal game of park football.
We don't insist on people getting liability insurance for these activities because the risk of a claim arising is low, and the likelihood of it being a high value claim even if it does is low (i.e. if there is a legal claim against you, there's a good chance you'd be able to pay without claiming on insurance). We make an exception for motor insurance as the inherent risk from driving around several tonnes of metal at potentially some speed is pretty high - we don't have a high accident rate in the UK, but where they do happen the damage to property and people can be pretty catastrophic and beyond the means of the person claimed against.
That is not to diminish the fact that on very rare occasions, an irresponsible person on a bike can cause significant damage. But compared with motor vehicles it is simply incredibly unusual to have situations where lack of third party insurance is an issue for the injured party.
FWIW, while I'm more likely to vote LibDem than Labour, I strongly support the Labour proposal for strong planning and acquisition powers for local authorities in principle.
The devil will be, as always, in the detail.
It improves the prospects for gilts in the medium term as it shows the system working as it should.
It's almost as though ideological labels for political tribes doesn't really work.
Interest rates went up to 5% today. How big is your mortgage? Feeling poor, or feeling rich?
Why is the elite always someone else?
Then again they probably already do in an abstract idea at the GE kind of way, it's specifics they don't like.
The wealth is being created - but it is being redistributed up to the owning class, not to those who actually do the labour. Elon Musk or Richard Branson don't do anything - they buy the means of production and the workers do the work. Relative poverty, affording the basics to engage in society, has increased in the last 40 years, not decreased.
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/improving-our-understanding-of-uk-poverty-will-require-better-data/
Anything beyond that is just someone's spin.
The only thing saving their bacon a bit is that used cars are amongst the things with the highest levels of inflation - I.e. the stuff coming back off lease will be worth more expected.
I'd expect sales of new cars (on finance or otherwise) to fall of a cliff, which the motor industry won't enjoy very much.
(I remain quite happy with my £500 2008 diesel VW Passat Estate - 72 mpg on a run last week, 63mpg over the last tank (~900 miles). About 10.5p/mile with no depreciation cost - that's a similar cost to an electric car charged at home, despite the huge tax arbitrarage in favour of the electric car).
As for me I don't like going into personal details but I'm happy to say I'm paying less for my mortgage today than I was paying for my landlord's mortgage this time last year, when rates were lower. So things have in the past year improved for me, personally.
But I'm not primarily concerned about myself. If I go into negative equity, as I hope, I will still have my own home. I will still have a roof over my head and no landlord.
Millions of others of my generation and younger aren't so fortunate. I'm more concerned with them, than I am myself.
The public at large are diverse — different people believe different things — but the majority reject your socially conservative views.
If you go to a good private school, then your A’level grades flatter your ability, so it makes sense for universities to take that into account when they wish to select on ability. Going to private school remains a massive advantage for getting into Oxford or Cambridge.
If we were more equal and 60% of the population were skipping meals instead would that be better or worse?
https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/support-for-police-discretion-when-responding-to-people-cycling-on-the-pavement
The "cyclists need insurance" brigade have no point whatsoever, except in their own sawdust-filled heads.
Lability insurance for people riding bikes usually comes for free with a home contents policy. Some of us have extra insurance via memberships or specialist policies. I have that because I know many motorist vehicle drivers will lie to the police and then lie to the court, and I will need ferocious lawyers should the worst happen, potentially for a civil claim.
These insurance companies include liability insurance in their Home Contents policies:
Apologies for introducing evidence to the debate.
The interesting question is will the August decision be another 0.5% or just 0.25% I suspect it will be the former as needs will require it,
And the irony is that it won't make much difference because the people who are impacted by the change aren't the people spending money in the first place.
But yes your stated reason (control only) is noble. But it is also bullshit.
Most rich world economies were spending much, much more on the military during the Cold War than they are today.
The military is an irrelevance in public spending compared to pensions, healthcare and debt in any country in the rich world let alone most of them.
LOL.
https://twitter.com/ProudDoggieMom/status/1671655188346597377
It was about a host of things but for millions upon millions of Brits it was about getting rid of foreigners.
(It is ULEZ compliant IIRC, did they sacrifice efficiency to meet emissions limits?)
Yuk.
Last thing the Banks want is to foreclose on a loan that's bigger than what they'll get from the asset. They're losing money if they do that. Ride it out to the other side as best as can be done is better and leaves the economy in a much healthier place.
Not to say I don't like this new to-the-right-of-Mark Francois @williamglenn but sometimes the auto-responses are a bit too lazy.
I still think you are doing this because it is an amusing role to play (cf your pre-2016 vote persona).
Countries that have attempted to abolish rather than reduce or ameliorate inequality have invariably and inevitably always ended up with more people skipping meals, not fewer.
So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2011/oct/05/david-cameron-conservative-party-speech
Likely: 52% (+7)
Unlikely: 29% (-5)
via @YouGov, 17-19 Jun
(Changes with 24 Apr)
https://twitter.com/OprosUK/status/1671863328413564928
And I'm the idiot who stops at all the red lights as I see 83% of other cyclists race through them past me.
That's why you see in the US, for example, lots of anti immigrant rhetoric from the right, but when someone like De Santis implements a policy of fining companies $10000 for each illegal immigrant they are found to be using as labour you a) have food shortages in Florida and b) lots of companies (who spend lots of money in GOP primaries) crying that their profits are going down.
It would be quite hard to find worse leaders, and the idea that these far-right gargoyles were anything except incompetent, irresponsible and occasionally pretty sleazy is for the birds. Farage is sharing the blame for the disaster, so despite you echoing Rees Mogg´s witterings, I see no come back for the irresponsible right under whichever brand.
Indeed I see a complete redrawing of the political map.
"Pint of hot whisky and lemon, landlord," says the pony.
"That's an unusual order," says the barman.
"I am a little hoarse."