The General Election Thread

[DaveBrigg]

Cameron has himself hunted foxes, and promised a vote on repealing the ban if elected. Despite this, there is a Conservatives Against Foxhunting group which claims 11 million supporters. Presumably somewhere there is also a conservative group against privatisation, another which wants shorter sentences for muggers and one that supports the Tories but would like less of a gap between rich and poor.
Our local MP supports fox hunting, opposes contraception and has children with a distant claim to the throne. He opposes wind power, but told me in a letter that if there must be wind turbines, they should not be very tall.

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I assume that if there have to be coal fired power stations, or nuclear waste dumps, he'd be happy to have one in his constituency?

 

[biffvernon]

Who would William Morris have voted for?

 

[Pford75]

I do think that organisations like the RSPB need to decide if they are a charity or a political lobby. I'm fine with either, but would like them to be more honest with the public.

Schoomarm - I share your view. I would like a Conservative Govt but have no interest in repealing the hunting ban (and find it incredible that some people mock Labour for finding the parliamentary time and yet propose to find the time to revote). However, on balance, I am more swayed by the other core beliefs than this issue alone (difficult I know and each person will decide for themselves...but as FW says, the 'ideal' party probably doesn't exist).

Gervase - Criticising the Conservatives for having a lot of public school educated 'toffs' is funny considering this Labour Gov't has populated the front benches and quangos with Blair's housemates and school chums for 13 years. It's hardly the case that the Labour party are 'salt of the earth' working class grafters is it? Besides, I couldn't care less what school someone went to...the same as I couldn't care what colour/religion/gender they are. Trying to characterise them as 'Toffs' only serves to drive a wedge between people - it seems some people wish to perpetuate a 'class war' when it serves their purposes. Considering the disdain left-wingers claim for private schooling, they do send a rather large number of their own children to them (Diane Abbott anyone?)

I'm not privately educated, my father left school with no qualifications and my mother looked after us as children. I've got no bloodline to royalty or 'influential' relatives. Yet, I believe I have made a good fist of the little I was given and through hard work have managed to succeed in my career. This in turn has enabled me to spend money conserving and maintaining several period properties which might otherwise have crumbled or been subject to 'development makeovers'. Yet, I find myself now in the position where my grandfather waited 14 months for a hip replacement at the age of 90 (dying on the waiting list), where my grandmother is forced to sell the home she lived in all her life to fund her care, where my childrens school (comprehensive) is so bad it is placed on 'special measures' and where the policies of this government have fomented a dangerous disenfranchisement amongst local workers in East Anglia. Our gardener works at a local poultry farm, where new jobs were advertised with the requirement that 'applicants must speak Polish' and where he no longer gets any overtime (this all goes to casual workers excluded from minimum wage legislation).

You might like to think that anyone who votes Conservative is an 'upper class toff'...but the reality is that many of us are just sick of working 60 hour weeks to fund poor public services and a culture of welfare dependance

 

[Moo]

I want to know how we can provide welfare for the needy without bankrupting either the State or the basic-rate taxpayer... I want children to be decently educated... I want the superb care my husband has received in our local NHS hospital to be available everywhere... I'm worried about the whole long-term environmental situation... I want to know how we can balance individual freedoms with defence against terrorism...
Somehow I just can't find room in my (admittedly, little) mind to worry about foxes as well.

 

[Schoolmarm]

..but the reality is that many of us are just sick of working 60 hour weeks to fund poor public services and a culture of welfare dependance

Oh yes.And how.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Great Prime Ministers who went to posh schools:

Churchill (Harrow) CON
Atlee (Haileybury) LAB

Great Prime Ministers who didnt go to posh schools:

Thatcher CON
Lloyd George LIB

Middling Prime Ministers who went to posh schools:

Macmillan (Eton) CON
Blair (Fettes) LAB

Middling Prime Ministers who didnt go to posh schools:

Major CON
Wilson LAB

Disasterous Prime Ministers who went to posh schools:

Eden (Eton) CON
Chamberlain (Rugby) CON

Disasterous Prime Ministers who didnt go to posh schools:

Heath CON
Callaghan LAB
Brown LAB


Dont detect much of a correlation here between posh schools and bad prime ministers, or even between posh schools and prime ministers of particular parties, whether good or bad.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Pford - a very eloquent example of the deep seated anger across much of the country and why this election is going to sweep away NuLabour and keep them away from the reins of power for a generation. Whether a Cameron government is going to be better is a matter for debate (I happen to think so) - but it certainly couldn't be worse than this overbearing, lying, wasteful and incompetent tenure about to come to an end.

As for fox-hunting, the current legislation patently doesn't work (for either side of the debate) and a free vote in the next parliament seems a good way of improving matters without making it party political.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Forgot to mention the forgettable Prime Ministers: Baldwin (Harrow) CON, Douglas-Hume (Eton) CON, MacDonald (nowhere posh) LAB, who perhaps should be added to the middling category. Their addition doesnt change my conclusion.

 

[Moo]

Oh, I do hate this class war thing.
Our children were on the receiving end of it at school : they were criticised because "your mum 'n dad talk posh", because "you live in a big house", and mocked because "you haven't got the latest toy", because "your dad's car's rusty", and so on and so on.
They were sitting targets, and none of us were allowed to fight back.
Plus ca change.....

 

[Nigel Watts]

Until he moved house last year I was a near neighbour of Boris Johnson. The house between mine and his was occupied by a senior labour-supporting Guardian journalist. The remarkable thing about these two neighbours of mine was how similar their lifestyles were: both were highly intelligent journalists by profession, both had four children at private schools (although Boris had sent his kids first to the local state primary, unlike my Guardian neighbour), both had professional working wives, both went off to their country houses most weekends and both had fairly Bohemian lifestyles. The irony is that it is just this kind of Guardian journalist who seeks to portray Boris as so alien; in fact they are birds of a feather.

 

[Gervase]

On the one hand we have people decrying public spending and welfare dependence, and yet we have the same people complaining that there are waiting lists for NHS treatment and that schools are under-resourced.
Say what you like about the current government, but it has lavished unprecedented amounts of money on health and education. And say what you like about any would-be government, some of that money is going to have to be cut in the coming years. For any party to talk about tax cuts at such a time is irresponsible (even if the proposed inheritance tax cut would only affect a couple of thousand people).
For me the election isn't about class, it's about honesty and candour. As an example, I find the notion that Annunziata Rees-Mogg has been told to change her name to 'Nancy Mogg' to appeal to a wider demotic to be patronising at best and insulting at worst. And having had many dealings with 'Dave' when he was in the PR department at Carlton Television - where he was a model of duplicity, deviousness and downright dishonesty, and was renowned as one of the most unreliable PRs in the whole media industry - I'm doubtful that that particular leopard is capable of changing its spots. If he can't even come clean about his occasional (and well-known) use of a few recreational pharmaceuticals back in the nineties, what hope is there for candour on anything else?

 

[Nigel Watts]

The Right Honourable Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, second Viscount Stansgate, renounced his title and changed his name to sound more common. He likes to be known now as plain old Tony Benn, Darling of the Left. Having attended Westminster School (alma mater of Ruth Kelly and Nick Clegg) he is in the posh school category of politicians. If la Rees-Mogg is a hypocryte, so is Wedgewood-Benn.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Moo - there is only one party fighting this election as a negative class war. It tends to happen when you have nothing else to offer... I think Nigel's list is quite interesting - it hsows not much link between background and ability as PM.

I think the "toff" thing is basically trying to say - he's not like us/you therefore how could he possibly understand what your problems are and sort them out as PM? The irony is that it is clear which of the two PM choices has better people skills, empathy and is more in touch with "ordinary" folk - and it isn't the chap who had stage-managed visits to vetted crowds in supermarket canteens yesterday...

The toff thing is a desperate and cynical act doomed to fail. Look how it bombed in the Crewe & Nantwich byelection...

Anyway, to bring the thread back to it's topic (novel I know) I have now scoured the two main party websites and not found anything sunstantial relating to our built heritage... at this rate I''ll be forced to scour t'internet for 1979 pictures of Biff in his Ecology Party campaign!

 

[FamilyWiggs]

The Right Honourable Anthony Wedgewood-Benn, second Viscount Stansgate, renounced his title and changed his name to sound more common. He likes to be known now as plain old Tony Benn, Darling of the Left. Having attended Westminster School (alma mater of Ruth Kelly and Nick Clegg) he is in the posh school category of politicians. If la Rees-Mogg is a hypocryte, so is Wedgewood-Benn.

Not forgetting deputy NuLab Leader, Harriet Harperson - harbinger of doom on all things un-equal. I seem to recall (but may be wrong) that she has aristo connections in her lineage too. Shock-horror!

[Edit - Wikipedia says her aunt is Lady Longford, married to 7th Earl Longford, and she has a host of other "Lady wotsits" in her family as well as a variety of other establishment figures]

 

[Nigel Watts]

Not forgetting deputy NuLab Leader, Harriet Harperson - harbinger of doom on all things un-equal. I seem to recall (but may be wrong) that she has aristo connections in her lineage too. Shock-horror!

[Edit - Wikipedia says her aunt is Lady Longford, married to 7th Earl Longford, and she has a host of other "Lady wotsits" in her family as well as a variety of other establishment figures]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246827/Harriet-Harman-admits-changed-accent-make-sound-posh.html

 

[Gervase]

Tony Benn actually fought a legal battle to overturn his peerage when there were quite a few in his party who would have preferred him not to have been a commoner. Rees-Mogg, on the other hand, was told to do 'de-posh' by the party machine to make herself more electable after being parachuted in to fight the seat. However I'm sure that the Daily Mail would fail to see an difference between the two.
I suppose 'Harperson' is the 21st century equivalent of the 'Wedgie-Benn' that reactionaries used to trot out in the Sixties. NuLab is an interesting on, though. One often sees 'ZaNuLab', particularly on far-right blogs, but it seems to be creeping into the mainstream curtailed as NuLab. With Cameron modelling himself so much on Blair, I suppose NuCon can't be far off.
As for stage-management, control-freakery and vetting, we're going to see that from all parties. Cameron's speech yesterday (convened before Brown had even left Buckingham Palace) showed him surrounded by adoring members of the public, all of whom happened to be either Conservative candidates or party workers.

 

[Pford75]

On the one hand we have people decrying public spending and welfare dependence, and yet we have the same people complaining that there are waiting lists for NHS treatment and that schools are under-resourced

The frustration comes from the fact that our tax burden has increased dramatically, yet many of us see no noticeable improvement in the public services. I guess I just don't believe that the state is an efficient way of spending our cash (most of the recent increases in funding went on wage rises, with no noticeable impact on service quality)

My view on inheritance tax is simple....people have already paid tax on these things. That they chose to save/invest their earnings instead of spending wildly and then relying on the state is penalised. Inheritance tax is a tax on saving and frugality. It is particularly pertinent to Period Properties, since many of our larger period properties have fallen into disrepair or the hands of developers when they have been sold to pay death duties. If i've already paid 50% + NI on my earnings, and then I purchase something (with 17.5% VAT added) the Govt then feels that I don't 'own' this and should be taxed again if I wish to pass this to my children....an absolute disgrace.

And perhaps the reason people feel the need to change their names is because the socialist left lampoon them for having names which don't fit with their view of the world. How very modern....mocking someone for having an unusual name.

 

[Merlin]

I don't really get all this "toff" and "ordinary" people. I am more bothered about the debt the country is in and having a Government that can control its spending. I can only spend what I earn and borrow within certain limits. No Government should be able to mortgage the Country to the hilt and then walk away.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Tony Benn actually fought a legal battle to overturn his peerage

Not quite true. He automatically lost his seat on succeeding to the Viscouncy but stood again in the ensuing by-election, only to be disqualified by the Courts. The runner-up, a Conservative, was confirmed as the MP. There would have been no further legal recourse in those days - Human Rights Act and European Court routes not then being available - so a legal battle would have been futile. However the then Conservative government passed a law a couple of years later which allowed hereditary peerages to be disclaimed in certain circumstances and the Conservative who came second did the decent thing and resigned in favour of the victor. This incident explains how Anthony Wedgwood-Benn shed his title but not why he later abbreviated and shortened his name.

In the end it was the Tories who made the most of this legislation. Alec Douglas-Hume renounced his earldom to become Prime Minister and Quentin Hogg gave up his title of Viscount Hailsham. Recent legislation allows hereditary Peers to sit in the commons without having to renouce their titles: Tory grandee Michael Ancram is a Marquis and Douglas Hogg of moat-cleaning fame inherited the title of Viscount Hailsham renounced by his father. I believe however that only hereditary peerages can be renounced. Lord Mandelson does not have the option to come back to the commons - a situation which Mr Brown and many others in his party are doubtless very content not to change.