My Reform voting relatives…..

I mentioned in a thread a while back that my extended family includes a few flag shagging Farage supporting elderly cousins, who at the last get together were boasting how they’d stopped supporting the RNLI as they kept rescuing illegal migrants rather than letting them drown in the Channel….

Just dug out the Christmas cards to get the few written we still post and I’d completely forgotten that MrsMC had stocked up on RNLI cards that were on sale at the Barry Island base back in July. And the greetings inside are in Welsh as well!

I don’t normally send cards to that branch of the family but **** it, when the stars align like that….

I used to work on a private estate which included approx. 60 houses for the over 55’s. A good proportion of them were your typical bigoted DM, DE racist, Brexit voting readers. Over the years I enjoyed sending them Christmas cards supporting the RNLI and immigration charities, also pro EU cards, making sure I highlighted the charity names on the back. Those of whom I received tips from I made sure that tip was given to one of said charities.

Well according to the French politics thread (yes I’m confused as well) its not their fault but I do applaud the use of Welsh RNLI Christmas cards, shame they weren’t Winterval cards or similar, that would have pushed them over the edge.

I used to work on a private estate which included approx. 60 houses for the over 55’s. A good proportion of them were your typical bigoted DM, DE racist, Brexit voting readers.

Nothing like a nice stereotypical character assassination.  Are you sure they arent lefty woke STW readers instead

Just dug out the Christmas cards to get the few written we still post and I’d completely forgotten that MrsMC had stocked up on RNLI cards that were on sale at the Barry Island base back in July. And the greetings inside are in Welsh as well!

Do you want a medal from the leftist on here or something. So some of your family have different view to you. Welcome to the normal world.

Bit too close to home chrismac? You think I never had conversations with them? So yes, I was sure. HTH.

Popped over the water to visit an old mate who I’d not seen or kept in touch for a number of years. Now he’s very pro reform, pro Putin, Farage etc. And he evangelically tries to force these views. He’s also a solicitor
I told him our views are too far apart now so I finished our friendship there and then.

Bit too close to home chrismac?

Not at all.

I told him our views are too far apart now so I finished our friendship there and then.

Really? Wow, just wow.i have friends with a variety of political views, some I agree with, some I don’t. I have others that I have no idea of their political views. I wouldnt dream of ending a friendship over something so irrelevant as politics

Well, this is taking a turn..

*fails to insert popcorn gif*

Do you want a medal from the leftist on here or something.

Well the OP got a like from me, does that count?

Taking a hostile attitude towards the RNLI because they save the lives of foreigners isn’t just a different “political view”, it’s disgusting shite.

Sending RNLI Christmas cards to extraordinarily obnoxious bigots is obviously going to rub their nose in their offensive shit.

What’s not to like?

Oh, I like that. A pseudo passive wind up of the limited thinkers is always a petty but satisfying win.

We had one in the summer. Mrs C shares a love of open water swimming with her father. That’s pretty much the end of the mutual cross over on pretty much every aspect of life. When they last stayed we put on ‘The swimmers’ – Netflix film based on real life of a couple of Syrian refugee sisters who end up swimming a group to safety during a migrant crossing disaster then one of them goes on to represent the refugee team at the Olympics. I’d watched it before and whilst the film is really good I spent the evening watching my ‘confused’ FiL in the throws of conflict instead- the Reform/DM reader in him wanting to have it turned off as an abomination and the father of a swimmer daughter hugely empathising with the story. A true ‘does not compute’ couple of hours that was delicious to watch.

Well the OP got a like from me, does that count?

Taking a hostile attitude towards the RNLI because they save the lives of foreigners isn’t just a different a “political view, it’s disgusting shite.

Sending RNLI Christmas cards to extraordinarily obnoxious bigots is obviously going to rub their nose in their offensive shit.

What’s not to like?

Well put. To dismiss those with humanitarian views as ‘leftist’ says a lot about the author – none of it very pleasant.

I wouldnt dream of ending a friendship over something so irrelevant as politics

I will, and have done…if the political divide is to wide.

I wouldn’t fall out with someone over a difference of opinion, say for example whether the council should priotitise funding for improving the local park vs refurbishing the bus station.

But if I disagree with someone on fundamental level, for example if they voted for Brexit, it’s not really even wanting to end the friendship, it ends itself as I just see them as stupid and/or selfish and I just automaticaly dislike them – I won’t be around people like that.

it ends itself as I just see them as stupid and/or selfish and I just automaticaly dislike them

I still find this incredible. I have friend who voted for and against Brexit. They are still friends as our friendship is based on so much more that political views.

Have some fun with a conspiracy theory …I’ve done my own research.

There is a man out there who hates white christans so much that he wants them ethnically cleansed from this green and pleasant land by BANNING any moving here.

He is a muslamic fifth columnist and goes by the name of Nij-Al Farage.

I’m 100% with Caher and mattyfez here

Life’s too short to be surrounding yourself with horrible idiots. Sack em off

I wouldnt dream of ending a friendship over something so irrelevant as politics

Supporting Putin is hardly “irrelevant politics.” Being against the RNLI because they aren’t murdering brown people is hardly “irrelevant politics.”

A lesson I learned far too late in life is that life is too short to spend it in the company of ****.

I should probably qualify my above post by saying I wouldn’t be friends with someone like that in the first place, as to move from ‘aquaintence’ to ‘friend’ I’ll know enough about them to know I don’t really like them anyway, so they wouldn’t get that far!

Life’s too short to be surrounding yourself with horrible idiots

So everyone who has a different opinion to yours is an idiot by that logic. How tolerant of you.

So everyone who has a different opinion to yours is an idiot by that logic. How tolerant of you.

Now you’re just inventing things I didn’t say.

[Slow hand clap emoji]

Life’s too short to be surrounding yourself with horrible idiots. Sack em off

This. If you meet someone and they sprout views forcibly that err on overt racism and you spend a whole night arguing with them it’s not a friendship. I have plenty of builder mates who voted Brexit but don’t hold the full range of views that are unpalatable to me.

I’m having a bit of a conflict on this. My best friend voted Leave several years ago, she also now thinks Farridge & Reform ‘has quite a few good points’ (although she went LibDem at the election earlier this year)

If I want to end the friendship, it would require divorce.

Suffice to say politics in our house is an area we mostly avoid.

So everyone who has a different opinion to yours is an idiot by that logic. How tolerant of you.

Re-read what I wrote, lol! A different opinion can be whether you prefer Fords to Vauxhalls, or it can be thinking the RNLI should let people drown in the sea, V’s trying to save them – the whole purpose of the RNLI is to rescue people. Any people.

And why should, or indeed would, I be tollerant of bigotry, let alone be friends with them?

Do you want a medal from the leftist on here

That was the whole point of the post at a guess

I still find this incredible. I have friend who voted for and against Brexit. They are still friends as our friendship is based on so much more that political views.

I seem to remember reading on here that someone forceably removed a guest from a house party because they found out they voted Tory.

The peaceful, all inclusive and caring left…..

I dare to imagine that the swathes of illegals entering our borders have wildly different political views to most on here. But that’s ok, bless them.

Biscuits anyone?

Great plan OP.

Do you want a medal from the leftist on here

Can you show us on the doll where the leftist hurt you?

Now you’re just inventing things I didn’t say.

How was your comment supposed to be interpreted

Life’s too short to be surrounding yourself with horrible idiots

im struggling to see how else to interpret the above

I’ll break it down for you chris:

A Horrible idiot

Is not necessarily equal to

Someone with a different opinion

I said the former. You (for some reason beknown only to yourself) inferred the latter

Is this going to be one of those pigeon playing chess scenarios?

Wait until some of these people hear that the RNLI rescued German sailors and airmen during the 2nd World War.

im struggling to see how else to interpret the above

I’m struggling with how you got to your interpretation tbh. It read clearly to me it’s only when genuinely extreme differences exist. It feels like you’ve extrapolated way beyond what I think was meant.

So everyone who has a different opinion to yours is an idiot by that logic. How tolerant of you.

Add me to your list: I’m intolerant of those who would prefer that the RNLI let brown people drown.

Wait until some of these people hear that the RNLI rescued German sailors and airmen during the 2nd World War.

To be honest I very much doubt that anyone who is happy to see brown people drown would have a problem with that.

Even Farage managed to bring himself to marry a German woman.

Reform voters are going to have to learn to love Welsh because soon they’re be running Wales now they’ve worked so hard to convince the low information voters of the Valleys to believe their lives will be better under the populists than Labour.

To be fair to Chris, there’s a certain level of understable about his position.

If you hold a view (brown people should be left to drown for daring to attempt to cross the channel and a national institution who at their very core is all about saving lives should be vilified for stepping in and stopping them drowning), and especially if you have the odd friend or family member who thinks the same, your view is ‘normal’ to you. Others might find your views abhorrent, but they are your views – you wake up every day thinking them. You think you are ‘normal'(very very few of us are self aware enough to think otherwise), so your views must be normal too and on the range of acceptable even if you appreciate others don’t hold them. So from your perspective someone finding you irretrievably dislikeable for have your ‘normal’ views means it’s obviously their problem not yours. Put a nice ‘out of touch leftist’ wrapper around the accusers and hey presto they are the unreasonable intolerant ones and you are the wronged party.

Meanwhile, you are totally oblivious to the fact that holding such a view puts you way, way beyond tolerable personality variance in a reasonable, modern society.

A Horrible idiot

Is not necessarily equal to

Someone with a different opinion

Was the point I was trying to get across. Distance and their increasingly poor health means that we only see each other once or twice a year. Other than politics, they are sweet and loving people, albeit of their generation.

I’ll happy put up with their ill thought out political views. We all occupy our bubbles of “normal”. I won’t tolerate supporting a view that goes against basic humanitarian principles.

At the time me, the younger cousins and one of the older ones who identified as a “leftie liberal” went and got started on the washing up after a dinner for 12 of us.

Actually,  maybe we got played?

You can put up with disagreements over economic policy, but if someone thinks that brown people should drown, that trans people should be persecuted, that misogyny is normal, that queer people have no rights, it’s not a disagreement over opinions or politics, it’s a profound difference in morality and values.

@onewheelgood

absolutely bang on

The bit I really struggle with is ‘otherwise sweet’ relatives or acquaintances supporting parties that are enablers to all those abhorrent things.

They might not realise/think about what they’re doing, but I’m afraid that makes them idiots.

I don’t dislike them on a personal level but I do deeply dislike their lack of thought.

You can put up with disagreements over economic policy, but if someone thinks that brown people should drown, that trans people should be persecuted, that misogyny is normal, that queer people have no rights, it’s not a disagreement over opinions or politics, it’s a profound difference in morality and values.

Nobody (apart from a tiny minority) want brown people drowning, but some don’t want them ushered into the country at the expense of EVERYONE

Nobody (apart from a tiny minority) want trans people persecuted, but some don’t want it made the new normal, paraded on all media platforms and taught that this is the way to be in schools

Nobody (apart from a tiny minority) supports misogyny, but some people are capable of having a bit of fun without every bit of innuendo being labelled as misogyny

Unfortunately the amount of flannels we seem to have amongst us lately want to label the ‘some’ as far right, racist misogynistic bastards

God it’d be dull if we just knocked around with people who agreed with us on stuff like politics. I’ve got a good mate (since school) who’s quite racist, specifically against muslims, who he refers to as ‘ragheads’. I just let that ride as he’s ex-army and has pretty bad PTSD from tours of Iraq and Afghan, where I suppose having ISIS, the Taliban and Al Quida trying to kill you and actually succeeding in killing quite a few of your mates must colour your judgement quite a bit.

I suppose I could get into a debate about what he was doing there in the first place, but instead we just avoid subjects like that and talk about music and football and stuff while having a beer.

The bit I really struggle with is ‘otherwise sweet’

Yeah it’s weird one. How can anyone who feels so strongly that the RNLI shouldn’t help desperate asylum seekers, including children, from drowning be in anyway “otherwise sweet”?

Perhaps they just don’t see them as human beings?

The thing is I have personal experience of this myself. I know this guy, he’s actually a friend of a friend, who some time ago was moaning to me about the abuse he had received online when he announced that he would no longer be donating to the RNLI.

I told him that I totally agreed with the abuse he had received and that he totally deserved it. His reaction was to instantly shut up and look very downcast.

The thing is my mate, who happens to be Asian Guyanese and a far more hardline and intolerant left-winger than me, keeps telling me that despite his views on people drowning in the Channel he is apparently a really sweet and kind man. Wtf?

I do actually in every other respect see him as a kind man, and with his best friend being Asian (they are neighbours btw) it is a tad difficult to denounce him as racist.

He is actually a real engineering expert and loves repairing all manner of hopelessly fecked up things. I have had an old bike with a stuck seat post for years which I have tried everything to release, he keeps telling me to take it round to him as he wants to challenge. I keep saying that I will but I am never sure whether I want him to do me any favours, so I never do.

Yup, it’s definitely a weird one.