what really is the difference between “Growth” and “Levelling up” at the end of the day?
I think there's a big difference and it's key to Tory thinking.
Levelling up has proved incompatible with their ideology as it works on the redistribution of wealth from top to bottom. They've been a great pains to point out that there has been too much focus on 'distribution of the pie' as they call it. Rather, they want to assuage the anguish of the 'left behind' only if it means that the rich can get richer while the lives of the less well off are improved -'growing a bigger pie'.
We know of course that this is nonsense and unless there is real redistribution of wealth, the left behind will fall even further.
Without going through to some dodgy think tank websites, is there an actual list of what things they want to get rid of, not STW nightmares, but what the guardian is basing its article on?
After the conference, I doubt Liz Truss can actually get anything radical through parliament now. They can only trash stuff that a minister can sign off.
Sorry, the link didn't work.
I'm referring to the guardian article about lash and burn ideas that the IEA and tax payers alliance want.
I’m referring to the guardian article about lash and burn ideas that the IEA and tax payers alliance want.
This?
'Lash and burn'....Cynthia Payne?
ernielynch
So who inhabits these “Red Wall” seats which you appear to attach a great deal of importance to and see as some sort of typical Tory voter?
Affluent middle-class professionals?
That really depends how each and every one of those words is defined... especially in this context for the dilemma Labour face in being relevant to their traditional voters.
At a very simple level, you can see this linguistically by comparing Mick Lynch with Keir Starmer the former using "working class" and the latter "the workers" and "working people".
Fundamentally, the post WWII red wall working class I was born and brought up into doesn't really exist because low paid workers have abandoned their self reliance and pride in their self reliance opting for aspirational middle-class lifestyles (that they quite probably can't afford in full due if done en-masse and as a lifestyle).
Partly the world has changed but only in part and these have worked together destroying the working class identity.
Many things that were shameful to a working class family in my youth are everyday things for people today claiming to be working class.
A quick example ... and since I mentioned Mick Lynch I'll use transport for that example and how it's impacted what was the working class.
Postwar working class had a philosophy of equality of the working class that has vanished.... your time and comfort was the same as everyone else's time and comfort but this has been eroded by working class people using middle-upper class services.
Take taxi's... anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver's... the taxi driver pays for fuel, wear and tear tax and NI and pays a cut to some controller etc. who also pay tax and NI and costs. On a simple level if you can afford a taxi on a regular basis then the taxi driver must be paid a LOT less than you value your time/comfort. So if you are "working class" what does that make a taxi driver?
Because of this shift public transport services have been cut and to all intents and purposes wrecked so whether the "working class" can afford it or not they don't have a choice.
A recent example was I went to the walk in centre... who due to potential seriousness of my injuries said I had to go to A&E. The nurse (working class?) said she'd call me a taxi... I refused and she had to go get another nurse to witness my refusal. I asked about a bus .. she just looked at me.
It's 5 1/2 miles so perfectly walkable although there is one bus service from the town centre that goes hourly so it's as quick to walk.
So last week I was at the fracture clinic at the hospital (having walked as nowhere safe to lock a bike)
They want me to go to the other hospital to see a physio... NO CONNECTING BUS SERVICE at all and another (further) 7.5 miles between hospitals.
In what world does it make sense to have 2 sister NHS hospitals not connected via public transport?
How are working class patients even expected to get between them?
This came my way via Facebook
Thoughts?
In taxis?
A significant number of working class people use taxis as a) it eliminates the fixed costs of owning a car and b) busses are shite
In what world does it make sense to have 2 sister NHS hospitals not connected via public transport?
How are working class patients even expected to get between them?
I have no idea but I reckon that you need to move to London - I have never known public transport to be better in London than it currently is.
Which is why I am assuming that you don't live in London.
Thoughts?
George is more attractive.
Take taxi’s…
Taxi's are public transport.
Take taxi’s… anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver’s… the taxi driver pays for fuel, wear and tear tax and NI and pays a cut to some controller etc. who also pay tax and NI and costs. On a simple level if you can afford a taxi on a regular basis then the taxi driver must be paid a LOT less than you value your time/comfort. So if you are “working class” what does that make a taxi driver?
In "working class" areas, it is very common to have a free telephone to ring the local taxi company to pick you up, as it's not possible to get home with your weekly shop without a car.
I saw this in the NE and up around Glasgow. This wasn't a thing at the supermarkets near Tunbridge Wells.
Thoughts?
Good luck getting that through to @sendembackdave1959
Take taxi’s… anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver’s
No they are demonstrating they need to hire a service, skill, equipment they do not have access to.
People regularly have to pay for someone who earns more then them or the same. This someone may have expertise, experience and or equipment that they don't. People don't just buy things of people who are poorer than themselves. It may be how your world works but not for most.
I see 'working class*' people take taxis all the time, usually at Asda. If you can't afford a car but still need a weekly shop, and you're not right on the bus route then it makes sense. Big shop once a week that you can't carry, £10 for a taxi is a lot cheaper than your own car. And it's also comparable to all the bus fares you'd need to go several times a week if you were only getting one bag's worth at a time cos it's all you can carry the 3/4 mile to the bus stop.
Don't judge until you know - it's what Tories do.
* obviously you can't tell by looking at people if they are working class or not. I really mean people who don't appear well off.
Some good stuff in this one 🙂
https://twitter.com/RussInCheshire/status/1577992292102819841?s=20&t=Pn7Cr0acRZsWLrjQRnr5Yw
Thoughts?
Whilst I wouldn't underestimate the seriousness of the situation I reckon Monbiot ignores a couple of important points in his attempt to paint a dark picture.
Firstly he claims that the postwar consensus was driven by a fear of a return to fascism which is why there was a recognition of the importance of "people's needs".
I strongly disagree with that for too many reasons to mention. But among the reasons relevent to the debate is that universal suffrage required capitalism to make huge compromises, especially if it was to stem the tide of socialism, in the form of mixed economies and universal welfare states.
Secondly whilst he focuses on Truss and what it means for the advance of neo-liberalism Monbiot ignores two important facts. Firstly he ignores the fact that the two previous Tory prime ministers, especially the last one, had moved the Tory party away from extreme neo-liberalism. And the reason they did so is very important - it wasn't working. Not if the aim was to hang onto power.
Secondly Monbiot ignores the fact that within a month of Truss's premiership and her laying out her extreme neo-liberal plan it caused hugely negative reactions from both the markets, ironically, and from it would appear the electorate - all recent opinion polls put Labour on around a staggering fifty percent of the vote, which I can assure you has nothing to do with the charisma of its leader.
Neo-liberalism has hit a brick wall.
I wouldn't want to underestimate the seriousness of the situation though, so if you are feeling that you might be happier than you deserve to be Monbiot makes some interesting and very valid points which deserve attention imo
Some good stuff in this one 🙂
quote of the thread...
Truss's brain is like a dazzlingly high-tech stealth weapon: impossible to detect, but still capable of inflicting enormous damage
anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver’s
Are they? is it? Do they?
My MIL regularly takes Taxis mainly because of having a long term respiratory condition that means marching to the local Bus stop isn't really an option, she's a pensioner and never learnt to drive, very much working a class person with a mobility need...
TBH it's a big part of her maintaining her independence, she spends a proportion of her Pension income on Taxis so she can get herself to the shops, appointments or to see her friends and not feel like she has to rely on lifts or stagger to the nearest bus stop to take 3 busses to travel a couple of miles...
She certainly doesn't have some sort of hierarchical idea about the value of her time Vs a Taxi drivers. If she has to spend an hour+ pissing about on busses it has a very real impact on her health...
anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver’s
it is a strange take. having a cleaner? a gardener? I could see the logic but a taxi doesn't really fall into that camp.
Electric taxis are going to be an essential part of our public transport soon. And probably used more by those on lower incomes than high incomes, in areas away from London and other major conurbations anyway. We've spent a century building with car use in mind. Pair that with the deregulation and defunding of integrated public transport, and it's obvious that distributed vehicle sharing, rather than owning an expensive electric vehicle that needs somewhere to charge, will fill a gap for many without any significant means. Using, hiring, booking... not owning. People often get excited about driverless vehicles when talking about this, but the more prosaic answer is the tech we already have, used on roads we already have, driven by humans.
anyone taking a taxi on a regular basis (e.g. more than a couple of times a year) is demonstrating their time is worth more than the taxi driver’s
I used to get a cab everyday to work as a baker in Birmingham as there simply wasn't a Bearwood to Kings Heath bus at 3:30AM
I'm pretty confident, by the fact that the driver owned a car and I could barely afford driving lessons, that he was demonstrating that his time was worth more than mine.
If anyone needs more evidence that taxis are an important means of working class transport just look at Liz Truss's determination to get hid of them:
https://newsthump.com/2022/07/12/liz-truss-launches-tory-leadership-bid-by-promising-to-cut-taxis/
If you can't afford a chauffeur driven car then walk.
The taxi driver thing is a very strange take, the taxi driver probably uses his Visa card several times a week to pay for fuel.
Does he view petrol stations as being sub-sub-working class?
Does he view the bankers running the Visa network as sub-sub-sub-working class?
Rig workers on a north sea platform getting the oil out the ground?
It's daft to ascribe that paying for someone else time/skill/equipment is only done if you value it as being less than your own. It's just far more productive to have a division of labour. The taxi driver(s) can far more efficiently get me (and anyone else) from the railway station to the hotel anywhere in the country I happen to be working than I can keep a car in every town/city. Just as if he had to make his own TV shows it'd take aboutyears worth of manhours to make an evening's middling-quality TV (maybe an episode of pointless, but no GoT).
It’s daft to ascribe that paying for someone else time/skill/equipment is only done if you value it as being less than your own.
Ridiculous idea. What about lawyers or tax reduction advisers......
thestabiliser
In taxis?
A significant number of working class people use taxis as a) it eliminates the fixed costs of owning a car and b) busses are shite
This is 1/2 the point I'm making.
It's chicken and egg.
No they are demonstrating they need to hire a service, skill, equipment they do not have access to.
People regularly have to pay for someone who earns more then them or the same. This someone may have expertise, experience and or equipment that they don’t. People don’t just buy things of people who are poorer than themselves. It may be how your world works but not for most.
That's a completely different thing or at least it used to be when we had a traditional red wall labour voting working class. (The context)
To keep on the "taxi" though .. working class people were born with feet and where distances we longer or we had loads of shopping the were buses and trains.
This someone may have expertise, experience and or equipment that they don’t.
This is the point of Mass transit systems.... except our mass transit systems have now been broken to the point of not working. (Possibly as Ernie Lynch says with exceptions like London)
I'm not saying as northern traditional working class I'd not hire a 20 tonne crane and driver ... (which is expertise, experience and or equipment I don't have) I'm saying I wouldn't pay someone to drive me (outside of a dire emergency) or make me coffee/sandwiches (outside of a treat) both of which I have expertise, experience and equipment for.
As I say things moved on ... I can't even do half the things to my 2015 van I could with my old Escort Mk2... I can't buy the parts for the fridge/washing machine/oven if it breaks etc etc.
It may be how your world works but not for most.
This is my point, that is how my world used to work but if I can't get public transport between 2 sister hospitals 7.5 miles apart then that world no longer exists.
gobuchul
In “working class” areas, it is very common to have a free telephone to ring the local taxi company to pick you up, as it’s not possible to get home with your weekly shop without a car.
Again, I'm talking of TRADITIONAL (post war) labour voting working class... not to make too much of a joke out of this but Billy Connelly and cantaloupe melons and left over venison where Glaswegians bought veg from the van on the estate, we had local shops and pre-out of town hypermarkets.
I’m not saying as northern traditional working class I’d not hire a 20 tonne crane and driver … (which is expertise, experience and or equipment I don’t have) I’m saying I wouldn’t pay someone to drive me
If this is some sort of Monty Python Yorkshire Men vision of a historical working class, then you really wouldn't be driving anywhere surely.
I take taxis for example because for the short term at least I've decided not to spend several thousand pounds on buying, taxing, insuring, fueling and maintaining a car.
Molgrips
I see ‘working class*’ people take taxis all the time, usually at Asda. If you can’t afford a car but still need a weekly shop, and you’re not right on the bus route then it makes sense. Big shop once a week that you can’t carry, £10 for a taxi is a lot cheaper than your own car. And it’s also comparable to all the bus fares you’d need to go several times a week if you were only getting one bag’s worth at a time cos it’s all you can carry the 3/4 mile to the bus stop.
Don’t judge until you know – it’s what Tories do.
* obviously you can’t tell by looking at people if they are working class or not. I really mean people who don’t appear well off.
Do these people vote labour and did they traditionally vote labour?
(i.e. that's the point I'm making that the traditional labour voter has largely disappeared)
It's chicken and egg... the bus routes have disappeared and the local shops and markets been decimated by the growth of out of town supermarkets.
I'm not judging them, they are responding to the fact Adsa is miles off a bus route (that has been privatised and no longer runs as a public service) whilst their local shopping has been replaced by "free enterprise capitalism".
trailmonkey
I used to get a cab everyday to work as a baker in Birmingham as there simply wasn’t a Bearwood to Kings Heath bus at 3:30AM
cookeaa
My MIL
I'm talking in general here... i.e. "The electorate" or more specifically the TRADITIONAL labour voting electorate.
Jam-bo
it is a strange take. having a cleaner? a gardener? I could see the logic but a taxi doesn’t really fall into that camp.
It's semi random .. could be having your coffee/sandwiches made... but it does link in between the difference between Mick Lynch (and working class) and Keir Starmer (and "working people)
The same generalities apply.. it's not about cookeaa's MIL or trailmoney working in the bakery... or for that matter the train/bus/tube drivers it's about the change in "working class" to "working people" and why despite as Ernie Lynch points out 98% of the population being financially better off under a labour government (which I agree with) a huge percentage of that 98% voting Tory.
98% of the population being financially better off under a labour government (which I agree with) a huge percentage of that 98% voting Tory.
This is the key thing (not whether someone gets a taxi or not). Why does that huge percentage of the 98% continue to vote tory, election after election. Loads of reasons but the Tory party will just keep going until more of that 98% somehow wake up. They woke up to what Blair was offering and almost woke up at Corbyns approach until he blew it so it is possible and with Truss being so far unappealing (in strategy and just being her) it could be that time again.
🤞🏻
kerley
This is the key thing (not whether someone gets a taxi or not). Why does that huge percentage of the 98% continue to vote tory, election after election.
That was how we got into "working class" vs "working people" of Lynch vs Starmer
Fundamentally the ex-working class don't feel Labour represents their values outside of financial interests and they are willing to take the financial penalty for the non financial values. (and to some extent con themselves on the extent of the financial penalty)
GROSS OVER GENERALISATION (but that's how elections work).... it's the traditional Tory's who are obsessed with financial values not traditional Labour.
Why does that huge percentage of the 98% continue to vote tory, election after election.
it's the punching down mentality that the tories so successfully harness.
my BiL is a case in point, would benefit massively from labour policies, but rages about immigrants and benefit cheats, wouldn't vote labour in a 1000 years.
the place I used to work was the same. Maybe the latest round of tory incompetence has soured it a bit but I doubt it.
She’s been avoiding consulting with her own cabinet, so it seems unlikely she’ll talk with the leaders of the Scottish and Welsh Governments about what she’s thinking of doing (today).
Fundamentally the ex-working class don’t feel Labour represents their values
Who are these "ex-working class"?
Apart from the posh gits that travel around in taxis.
@stevextc I'm curious as to how you'd propose that my mum gets her weekly shop?
I don't think Steve is proposing that your mother shouldn't use taxis Cougar, as I understand it using a taxi now defines which social class someone represents.
Luckily I never use taxis so I can still proudly declare myself to be a member of the proletariat. I think.
The refusal to promote energy saving seems to be against their own stated aim of reducing government spending, as with the price cap every unit used will cost the government (and in the longer term all of us) the difference between the true cost and the cap price. I can’t see why she is said to be ‘ideologically opposed’, unless….
reducing government spending
Depends who's receiving that spending... and getting to keep it... (don't mention windfall taxes).
And... "can't tell people what to do..." really means... "won't offer good advice to help people reduce energy use, and spread the load away from peak times to avoid using gas and coal... that's what those greeno pinkos would do".
it is a strange take. having a cleaner? a gardener? I could see the logic but a taxi doesn’t really fall into that camp.
So Cleaners and Gardeners can only be 'employed' by rich folk then?
I've had a Cleaner pretty much all my working life - and I was 100% a Labour voter before coming to Scotland (SNP now), my folks too also had Cleaners. Voted Labour and my Dad was even a Labour Mayor.
In fact, I'm just watching two blokes chop the tops off our fruit trees in the garden - does this mean that I really should vote Tory?
Whilst I wouldn’t underestimate the seriousness of the situation I reckon Monbiot ignores a couple of important points in his attempt to paint a dark picture.
Something put me off him because he did this before in an article of his I read. I wish I could remember the exact details now, but I knew a point he had made was not correct.
I have to admit I'm not fully aware of the backgrounds of the political movements and groups he mentions in the video, but how he describes the current situation seems to fit with some level of plausibility. E.g. today's pulling of a Government backed energy saving campaign. It really makes no sense. People who don't want to be lectured to will ignore it, but it might just save people and the Government some money. Unless someone wants more money to go to energy companies and reduce the public pot?
Connor Burns
The Rohipnol MP we can't mention
Coke n Putin cash David Warburton
Chris Pincher
Definitely a last days of Rome vibe about the Tories
Oh and Braverman losing official secrets
https://twitter.com/mc_c55890972/status/1578419546838294529?t=CGE1dQE88g_uSGkV2bPNzg&s=19
Cougar
@stevextc I’m curious as to how you’d propose that my mum gets her weekly shop?
Whatever works ... I don't know where she lives but I'll assume close to where you were brought up and I'll assume further the local shops and bus routes you used as a kid no longer exist.
I care far more she (or her mates and my Mum etc.) vote "not Tory" than whether she uses a taxi...
The point here is the "working class" of your Mum's generation and her Mum's generation (post WWII/Bevan) don't exist anymore because they are through a mixture of choice and being forced living a "middle class" life by post WWII/Bevan standards. As I keep pointing out (or trying) being "working class" in those times was not based on income.
As an example: If you pop into Burnley next to the Town Hall is the mechanics institute, back in its day the mill mechanics were some of Burnley's best paid people (well men) BUT they were considered and considered themselves working class.
The whole point of this discussion that uses taxi's as a metaphor is the working class (as referred to by Mick Lynch) don't really exist in the same way.. hence I take it why Keir Starmer doesn't say "working class" but "working people".
Equally it's why train drivers on £40k are working class in Mick Lynch's world...??
Back when I was my kids age we had markets (Burnley, Accy, Nelson) and we could get a bus direct and it would stop within 200' of our house. We shopped more regularly and there were no supermarkets (the closest thing was Taskers in Burnley where we'd go 3 maybe 4 times a year)
Obviously non of that infrastructure exists anymore... so people have to spend money on taxi's etc.
We also had communities that seem to no longer exist.. I remember one occasion (must have been school hols) coming back from Accy market with my gran and having more shopping than usual... the bus stopped by the local pub so my gran just went in and found some friend of my grandad or my uncle and got them to carry the shopping .. I assume my grandad would have bought the bloke a pint at some point or done the same for his wife?
In the same way we didn't have a phone for ages... but our neighbours did. Not like we abused it but in an emergency etc. family would ring next door and leave a message... or we could use the phone and give them 10p
ErnieLynch
I don’t think Steve is proposing that your mother shouldn’t use taxis Cougar, as I understand it using a taxi now defines which social class someone represents.
I'm not proposing anyone shouldn't use taxi's or Costa or whatever... I'm pointing out the "working class" of traditional Labour red wall voters doesn't exist anymore.
The traditional red wall labour voting working class was an identity but that identity doesn't exist anymore as such.
There was a simple symbiotic relationship that Labour could rely upon in one direction and the "working class" could rely upon in the other direction based on that joint identity.
