I am not rich, I am not a businessman, I am not a Lord, but I agree: I am tired of hearing the whining of people who have a house and a car and a pension. This is a welfare state, and nobody ever had to starve or die out of need.

I have travelled many places, and one thing I have learned is that we Europeans moan and whine at a very high level. While others, who are truly in need, are forgotten by us.

A civil servant who loses his job and has to look for one on the free market with his experience, connections and references is not in a terrible situation. A farmer in Bangladesh is after a flood. Or a refugee in Kigali who doesn’t know where his family is.
Think about this, next time you warm up with a coffee at Pret-a-Manger after a protest in London.

What is the elusive “it” to which he refers? If its the opportunity to eat garbage, watch garbage and buy high tec crap that’s obsolete before you pay for it, then he’s right. If its a satisfying life in a more equiatble, caring society then opinion seems to be that its been downhill since the Seventies. There are many who already have no house, pension or car in this country and many more will join them as the last drops of wealth are squeezed from it into the pockets of the rich and the middle class are left to pick up the bill for everything else as has happened in America where middle class living standards took till the early 2000′s to match those of the 1970′s and that was only achieved at the cost of increasing personal debt.

1

Nice line in false dichotomy you have there; even if we’ve never had it so good, at least we’re not drowning in a Pakistani ditch, or being hacked to death in Kigali.

Now that we’ve been told in no uncertain terms how unfeeling we all are, and how it’s quite right that we’ve never had so good, we’ll all just shut up and let the Tories do anything they like; after all since there is apparently no such thing as society, it’s not as if we’ll mind having our living standards and liberties rolled back.

It’s not a sin to be a dupe Andreas, it is a sin to be holier than thou about it.

[2] I have no problems accepting your analysis – but when the same words are formed in the mouth of a privileged toff, and a former member of Thatch’s right wing think tank to boot, they seem to take on a different dimension?

Our noble Lord is commenting on something about which he has no personal experience (trying to make ends meet on a sink estate, for example) – why can’t he just stick to commenting on how British entrepreneurs can earn more dosh?

It is demonstrably true that people with a mortgage who stayed in employment have experienced little pain as a result of the recession. It is statistically true that 100,000 is a rounding error in a 30,000,000 employment sector. It is politically true that saying this things was extremely dim-witted.

@4,

A&e,

Is Lord Young a toff? I only ask because I know nothing of his background and can’t be bothered to look it up. If he thought the Conservatives were going to lose in 1987 though he was a bloody awful politician – and I think he may have just proved it here.

[6] “Young is the elder son of a businessman who imported flour and later set up as a manufacturer of coats for children. He went to Christ’s College in Finchley and then University College London to take a law degree as an evening”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Young,_Baron_Young_of_Graffham

So not really a toff then – but guilty of toffishness by association perhaps?

He’s self-made so looked down upon by everyone

[8] well the Lord is hardly helping himself, is he – how else are we to interpret the utterances of a wealthy man who has no insight into, or experience of crushing poverty.

How long do you think Thatch’s former golden boy would last in places like this?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/what-hope-remains-for-the-youth-of-britains-worst-sink-estates-685370.html

@7,8

Strange that the self-made man was made an executive at GUS after only a year as a solicitor and then worked directly for the chairman – it sounds more like family or other connections gave him a bit of an advantage.

george,

Or to be fair that he had obvious talent – I think you need to show the link to make accusations of cronyism.

Just because the guy is clearly not really that good a politician does not mean he is not a very good business man or solicitor.

Yeh, because the world really works like that …

george,

Well it has for me so far. Either that, or my dad has a lot of friends behind the scenes that I don’t know about (and that have never met him).

Maybe I’m the lucky one. And maybe Lord Young was well connected – but I’d suggest it is a bad idea to cast aspirsions about someone when you clearly have no evidence of this (and this thread has already established that we were wrong to assume Lord Young was a toff). Assuming the worst of people is a bad habit you know.

‘He’s self-made so looked down upon by everyone’

A good excuse to repeat Clease, Barker and Corbett on class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

A bit of a hollow victory for New Labour though: how dare a Tory toff claim we didn’t fuck up the economy! This wealthy, overprivileged fool doesn’t know the misery of those we threw onto the dole! Lets see him negotiate the tortuous and punitive benefit system! I bet he’s never even been beaten to a pulp by the police!

@13

I’ve done OK myself, but I wasn’t an executive of a major firm at 24.

Apologies for repeating this post but it speaks volumes. Taken from the Daily Mash article

“But the Tory peer was later forced to apologise for his sadistic, upper-class rightness, adding: “I’m very old. Look at my bow tie. I’m not right in the head.”

Knowing this in advance he was still appointed by Dave. Status over ability seems to be the criteria for Tories?

‘He’s self-made so looked down upon by everyone’

Yeah, poor lamb. As Shaw said, like most self-made men, he worships his Creator.

17

Hmmnn… which is worse tho, knowingly appointing old buffers like him (or the wing nut UKIP appointed who resigned after announcing he wasn’t very good at politics), or the Labour party electing a principle void like Blair, accepting a deeply flawed person like Brown as their leader… not as if they were great choices either is it?

@3

“…having … our liberties rolled back”

Seriously? You really, REALLY think that our liberties have been curtailed under this government compared with the last? By any stretch that’s hard to justify. Christ even the new labour administration acknowledges that they went way too far.

20

I wasn’t making a specific point about the Coalition and whether or not it was “better” in civil liberties terms than New Labour (altho I agree that it is): whether I would trust the Tories and/or coalition in the future is another matter, and of course there is more to liberties than just revoking the most nauseating aspects of the New Labour experiment.

Fair enough. We need to monitor all governments for infringements of civil liberties, but the instincts of the coalition have been to increase them. I don’t think they have earned any right to be criticised on their record there.