UK Politics: Striking at the heart of the nation

[Which Tyler]

44 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

And if Corbyn had been given a fair shake of things in the media, he would have won a fucking landslide.

Unfortunately, we have to deal with the world we actually live in, rather than the one we'd like to.

[BigFatCoward]

58 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Depends on who you ask.

Britain's predominately right wing media?

Or the people, many of whom can barely afford to live these days?

Did you see the crowds turning out for Jeremy Corbyn at the peak of his popularity? 

Let's ask the electorate. Who havent voted for a socialist government actually ever.

Because of the media Starmer has to walk a very fine line, Blair was a master at it and it got us 3 election cycles to do some good (shame about the war etc).  

Big crowds of inspired voters don't win elections unfortunately. 

Edited July 18 by BigFatCoward

[mormont]

52 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Starmer ran for election on a decidedly socialist ticket. That is an undeniable fact. And that's why he won.

That seems odd, since both the other candidates ran as further to the left than Starmer.

Quote

Did you see the crowds turning out for Jeremy Corbyn at the peak of his popularity? I have never seen anything like it. So I'd say there is a very large appetite for a government with socialist values. A government that puts the interests and the safety of its people over that of its donors. And if Corbyn had been given a fair shake of things in the media, he would have won a fucking landslide.

It's the job of a party leader to deal with the media. Corbyn was terrible at it, and surrounded himself with people who were equally bad at it (McDonnell, Milne). Their media strategy was to whine about the media. It was embarrassing, and it rapidly destroyed that initial wave of popularity.

I agree with you about there being an appetite in the country for a more radical agenda. But it's not a shock that the Labour party are targeting Tory voters at this stage in the electoral cycle, and at least part of the blame for that can be put on Corbyn's disastrous failure to sell the more radical agenda he believed in.

[Spockydog]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

That seems odd, since both the other candidates ran as further to the left than Starmer.

They all ran on tentpole socialist policies, because they knew there was a massive appetite for change. And that included Starmer.

 

[Spockydog]

14 minutes ago, mormont said:

I agree with you about there being an appetite in the country for a more radical agenda. But it's not a shock that the Labour party are targeting Tory voters at this stage in the electoral cycle, and at least part of the blame for that can be put on Corbyn's disastrous failure to sell the more radical agenda he believed in.

Pretty hard to sell your ideas effectively when the BBC's political editor is doctoring videos to misrepresent your views, while the Newsnight editor is photoshopping Russian hats onto your head. 

He never had a chance. 

 

Edited July 18 by Spockydog

[mormont]

17 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Pretty hard to sell your ideas effectively when the BBC's political editor is doctoring videos to misrepresent your views, while the Newsnight editor is photoshopping Russian hats onto your head. 

He never had a chance.

Yes, he did.

Being elected leader of a political party and complaining about how the media won't give you a chance is a bit like being a film producer and blaming the reviewers for why your films don't make money. Selling your ideas to a hostile press, as I said, is literally one of the two main components of the job - the other being managing the people in the party who disagree with you, which Corbyn also sucked at.

The complaints above are absolutely standard stuff  for the UK media. Corbyn had no plan to deal with it and just sulked when it happened. That's on him.

[Heartofice]

41 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Pretty hard to sell your ideas effectively when the BBC's political editor is doctoring videos to misrepresent your views, while the Newsnight editor is photoshopping Russian hats onto your head. 

He never had a chance. 

 

Wow you actually believe this baloney. 

[Spockydog]

25 minutes ago, mormont said:

Selling your ideas to a hostile press, as I said, is literally one of the two main components of the job - the other being managing the people in the party who disagree with you, which Corbyn also sucked at.

You say that, but Corbyn to successfully sell his ideas to the British right wing press would have required complete abandonment of every single principle the man ever held. 

What he offered challenged so many vested interests he could never have been allowed to succeed.

Edited July 18 by Spockydog

[Heartofice]

4 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

You say that, but Corbyn to successfully sell his ideas to the British right wing press would have required complete abandonment of every single principle the man ever held. 

What he offered challenged so many vested interests he could never have been allowed to succeed.

Or he was completely unable to sell his policies to the public because he was so bad at speaking, unable to answer even basic questions when challenged, often taking positions unpopular with most voters and seeming to take the side of almost everyone but the British.. plus his nonsense Brexit positions . Maybe that’s why he didn’t succeed.

[mormont]

I really don't get the complaint here. Successfully selling his ideas to the British press was the job Corbyn knowingly took on. The job he paid Seumas Milne handsomely to direct and appointed John McDonnell to assist him with.

They failed.

They didn't even seem to try very hard, to be blunt.

If you can tell me anything at all about what strategy any one of those three had to sell their ideas, I'll eat my hat. It's a nice black one with two pewter badges, so it'll be crunchy. But I feel pretty safe on this one.

[kiko]

26 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

You say that, but Corbyn to successfully sell his ideas to the British right wing press would have required complete abandonment of every single principle the man ever held. 

What he offered challenged so many vested interests he could never have been allowed to succeed.

But isn't that the failure of the left? Staying ideological pure is more important than beating the enemy. Let's rather concentrate our ire on the people's liberation front of Starrmistan.

[Raja]

Shameful

From the article linked below the tweet

Quote

So the two-child limit appears to be failing on its own terms: it isn’t really reducing fertility. In many ways that’s a good thing: attempting to curtail people’s fertility by punishing them for having more children is problematic for all sorts of ethical and economic reasons, particularly given the fact that fertility rates are already well below the level needed to sustain the population.

But it is concerning from another crucial angle: child poverty. If you introduce a policy that cuts the benefits of low-income families with children – but doesn’t make them less likely to have kids – then, as a simple matter of arithmetic and logic, the result will be an increase in child poverty

And that’s precisely what is happening: child poverty among larger families (those with three or more children) has been rising sharply since 2013 and 2014

 

[Spockydog]

Children raised under UK austerity shorter than European peers, study finds

Quote

 

British children who grew up during the years of austerity are falling behind many of their European peers in terms of height, a study has found.

In 1985, British boys and girls ranked 69 out of 200 countries for average height aged five. At the time they were on average 111.4cm and 111cm tall respectively.

But by 2019, British boys were 102nd and girls 96th, with the average five-year-old boy measuring 112.5cm and the average girl, 111.7cm. In Bulgaria, the average height for a five-year-old boy in 2019 was 121cm and a girl, 118cm.

Experts have said a poor national diet and cuts to the NHS are to blame. But they have also pointed out that height is a strong indicator of general living conditions, including illness and infection, stress, poverty and sleep quality.

“They have fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling,” said Prof Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London. “The question is, why?”

 

Hmmm, I wonder.

[Gorn]

Any article that takes Bulgaria of all places as a shiny example of childhood prosperity is suspect, to put it mildly. To use some examples that I have personal familiarity with, people from Montenegro are tall not because Montenegro is an amazing example of proper child raising, but because they are born with the "tall" gene.

The explanation is as simple as more short people immigrating to UK, having short children, and bringing the national average down.

[Heartofice]

36 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Any article that takes Bulgaria of all places as a shiny example of childhood prosperity is suspect, to put it mildly. To use some examples that I have personal familiarity with, people from Montenegro are tall not because Montenegro is an amazing example of proper child raising, but because they are born with the "tall" gene.

The explanation is as simple as more short people immigrating to UK, having short children, and bringing the national average down.

I think there is probably some truth in that, but the bigger point is that the UK national diet is just shit. Only one paragraph after talking about children with rickets it talks about problems of obesity and type 2 diabetes. This isn’t because of austerity, it’s because Brits eat badly and wouldn’t know a nutrient if it hit them in the face.

Its like we’ve all forgotten the reaction to Jamie Oliver trying to put healthy food into school meals… parents throwing chips over the walls! 
 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

2 hours ago, Spockydog said:

Children raised under UK austerity shorter than European peers, study finds

Hmmm, I wonder.

I was almost 6 by the time I reached 1 meter.  I want it on record my childhood diet was good, got plenty of sleep and parents did not smoke.  Was also lucky enough to grow up in a finacally secure household despite growning up under Thatcher.   I do have a lot of short ancestors. 

 

But my hobbitness has always been unique when grouped with others of a simialr age and now anyoneover 12 years.   Most people my age are taller than paernt of same birth gender.  Im shorter.  It is concerning when on average people are shorter than their parent.

Edited July 18 by Pebble thats Stubby

[A wilding]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

I think there is probably some truth in that, but the bigger point is that the UK national diet is just shit. Only one paragraph after talking about children with rickets it talks about problems of obesity and type 2 diabetes. This isn’t because of austerity, it’s because Brits eat badly and wouldn’t know a nutrient if it hit them in the face.

It is mostly poor Brits that eat badly, and they have some excuse. Unhealthy food is marked heavily, relentlessly and sometimes deceptively. Healthy food is generally more expensive. The knowledge, time and effort required to prepare and cook healthy food can all also be an issue.

[Heartofice]

Just now, A wilding said:

It is mostly poor Brits that eat badly, and they have some excuse. Unhealthy food is marked heavily, relentlessly and sometimes deceptively. Healthy food is generally more expensive. The knowledge, time and effort required to prepare and cook healthy food can all also be an issue.

It’s pretty easy to eat healthy on a budget actually, you’d be amazed. 

 

One of the main reasons unhealthy food is so popular is because it tastes nice, and it’s easier to over eat. So where I would agree with you is that making healthy food taste nicer can take a bit more effort, but at the same time lots of kids get trained to like vegetables whereas some grow up eating chicken nuggets.

I remember when I was 20 going to the house of this girl and met her family and was just amazed they were eating vegetables for fun, just snacking on them. I had literally never seen anyone I knew do that.

The difference between her and me was that she was pretty well off, from a middle class family who made sure she grew up enjoying healthy foods

I grew up eating chips.

I think we can blame the government all we like but at some point people have to take responsibility for their own habits and behaviour. 

[karaddin]

If Corbyn was as terrible at selling his ideas as you all (spooky excluded) say, and I can only take your word for it that he was, then surely a large part of his electoral failures are due to his failings as a leader rather than a rejection of the left wing policies? Yeah he failed to sell them to the electorate, but Starmer advocating for right wing policies sure as shit isn't going to do a better job of selling people on left wing ones.

The UK is really suffering under austerity, and between Brexit, COVID, and the parade of PMs the Tories should be vulnerable at the moment. If Starmer can't sell easing off austerity at the moment what the fuck is the point of labour? He's either as bad at it as Corbyn or he doesn't want to do any of that in the first place and he's in the wrong party.

It's hard to see anything changing as long as first past the post voting remains though, the polarized society with culture war shit has a floor for Tory support that seems sufficient to make it very hard to lose government.

[The Anti-Targ]

13 hours ago, Spockydog said:

And that, Mr Tyler, is precisely why I am in a state of despair.

 

Starmer can kind of say what he likes at this point, but the [predicted] incoming Labout govt will need to set a programme of work based on the party election manifesto. So really the key thing for party members to do is make sure the election manifesto is as progressive as possible. Now is the best time in the last 50 years to get a truly progressive manifesto approved by the voters because just about the only thing that would see Labour lose the next election would be if Labour decided to put the communist manifesto up as it's party manifesto.