The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[cyrusr]

22 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Gove is a little weasel.  I don't think he's the chest thumping type that would resonate with the rabble.

After Johnson, I do think that the Tories struggle with "media friendly" politicians. Whilst some will be pushed by the mail/telegraph etc (those with mates in the media anyway), none of them have the "appeal" that Johnson has

[chrisp65]

 

 

Elections coming up, anyone still contemplating voting tory?

 

[chrisp65]

Fair play to the tories, two new jobs for every resident of Hartlepool. Kids, the elderly, people that already have a job - you’re getting two more.

 

 

[Genie]

17 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Fair play to the tories, two new jobs for every resident of Hartlepool. Kids, the elderly, people that already have a job - you’re getting two more.

 

 

She says she’s made it clear, but turned off the comments. I’m none the wiser 

 

[HanoiVillan]

If anybody believes that 'free ports' will bring that number of jobs in even a century of operation they're in dreamland.

[Genie]

What’s the definition of “well paid”? 5p above minimum wage?

[Chindie]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

What’s the definition of “well paid”? 5p above minimum wage?

It's just paid.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

If anybody believes that 'free ports' will bring that number of jobs in even a century of operation they're in dreamland.

Well the proposed LCR Freeport is only projected to create 14,000 jobs and that's across the whole region and includes extra customs staff etc so where she gets her 180,000 from is probably what she's sitting on as she types.

 

[blandy]

This thing about Brexit and Freeports now being possible - it's rubbish isn't it?. There is/was a Freeport up the road from where I live. It's been renamed "Affinity" but it was defo a freeport for ages - before the EU got demolished when that Brexit thing that was briefly in the news happened .

[bannedfromHandV]

53 minutes ago, blandy said:

This thing about Brexit and Freeports now being possible - it's rubbish isn't it?. There is/was a Freeport up the road from where I live. It's been renamed "Affinity" but it was defo a freeport for ages - before the EU got demolished when that Brexit thing that was briefly in the news happened .

Yep, there’s one of the outskirts of Stoke (Freeport Talke), been there for as long as I can recall.

[blandy]

5 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

there’s one of the outskirts of Stoke (Freeport Talke)

Blimey! The tide comes in further than I thought.

I suppose Stoke has got a Port - Port Vale

 

[bickster]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

This thing about Brexit and Freeports now being possible - it's rubbish isn't it?. There is/was a Freeport up the road from where I live. It's been renamed "Affinity" but it was defo a freeport for ages - before the EU got demolished when that Brexit thing that was briefly in the news happened .

We've had one in Liverpool (well Seaforth, Sefton but its called Liverpool) for as long as I can remember but they new LCR one seems to be encompassing the whole region, so the definition does seem to have changed

Map and more on LCR website

[bickster]

Going back to Dyson and James Dyson isn't a Tory donor yaddah yaddah................

From the records of Companies House

Look who got made a director of Dyson last year....

Quote

JOHNSON, Joseph Edmund

Correspondence address

Dyson, Tetbury Hill, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, SN16 0RP

Role Active Director

Date of birth December 1971

Appointed on 18 February 2020

Nationality British

Country of residence England

Occupation Director

Companies House

Yes I know the phone number was on some obscure memo online somewhere but I don't think that is where James Dyson got the phone number do you?

[Xann]

Morning.

Thought to bring a FB conversation here about what's happened, and what happens next?

They've taken credit for the NHS turning the tide, after their initial response was to line Tory chums' pockets. When their strategy caused the casualties to mount horrifically, they hurriedly handed the problem to the 5th biggest employer on the planet. Then it started to turn around.

Since then, they've been getting people to clap for the NHS whilst selling it to corporate America.

They couldn't have done it without a tax swerving press and a muzzled BBC.

That said, people should have worked it out anyway.
 

That was me, can you tell?

This is a friend's sister in law. She reads the small print.

 

This Conservative party is really the English Towns party, obsessed with ‘place’ and identification with place. All the recent economic strategies/ white papers (yes, I have read them all) have place-based investment as central tenets. The focus is on levelling up left behind places, ie English towns. Over the next view months we’ll see investment moving from urban areas and into towns. These places do need help and they will need more because the Brexit wrecking ball has yet to impact, but not convinced the planned interventions will have long-term systemic impact.

 

No link as only one other VTer could look at it anyway.

 

Still got family stuff to sort. Bye for now.

[chrisp65]

**** me! It’s Halley’s Comet!

 

[Panto_Villan]

The vaccine rollout has been hugely popular and I think that's probably the main reason for the success of the Tories this election cycle. Also, clearly most people who voted for Brexit are probably not going to swing in behind a party that supported Remain quite yet. I suspect Boris might get to ride that wave for another election - I guess he's seen as someone that gets things done now.

I think the one thing that isn't mentioned on this board much is that they seem to be winning the culture wars too. Thankfully they've not pushed the "own the libs" culture war aspect of their rule anywhere near as hard as the Republicans have in the US (yet), but they're still loudly positioning themselves as unashamedly British and pushing back against the worst excesses of woke culture.

I think that's a smart place to be electorally, as I think it's much closer to the position of the average person in the UK. Although it seems everyone on VT is fully on-board with the most modern thinking on race and gender, that's really not mirrored by my experience of real life.

Quite a few former Labour supporters I know basically just roll their eyes when those topics come up, and they are very well educated people. I suspect if you went to an ex-mining town and asked the locals what they think about not being allowed to like Churchill any more because he was a racist you might get some quite rude answers. I think there's a real lag between public opinion on race / gender theory and what you see posted on something like the BBC almost daily.

Perhaps public opinion may catch up over the next 5-10 years, given opinions on gay rights etc changed a lot over that timeframe. I do wonder if its just going to continue being a massive electoral gift to to the Tories though.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Panto_Villan

[bickster]

2 hours ago, Panto_Villan said:

I suspect if you went to an ex-mining town and asked the locals what they think about not being allowed to like Churchill any more because he was a racist you might get some quite rude answers.

Try it in South Wales and they'd buy you a pint

[Panto_Villan]

7 minutes ago, bickster said:

Try it in South Wales and they'd buy you a pint

Maybe. Perhaps it's something Plaid Cymru should go hard on, then, but it doesn't seem to be a winning strategy if you want to win power over the whole country.

[Demitri_C]

Wasnt the elections meant to be last year but got moved to this year due to the pandemic or am i mistaken?

If it was last year no doubt for me they would have been wiped out. I still thought they would take a massive hit despite the vaccine roleout due to the incompetence of johnson

[Panto_Villan]

While I'm on my soapbox I'll mention one more thing that the Tories have done which has helped them, in my opinion - they've dodged the least electorally palatable aspects of right wing populism, which I think cost Trump the election but has helped Boris out.

The first thing is not being climate change deniers. Some Tories are, of course, but the UK has had a quietly effective climate change policy under Tory rule for a long time now. I think climate change denial would be a big vote loser in this country, so they've wisely dodged that bullet.

The second thing is the ruling faction of the Tories not being overtly anti-mask and anti-vax. Boris flirted with this early on by bragging about how he was still shaking hands with everyone, but that quickly morphed into the government wearing masks and very clear support for vaccination. Again, I think they avoided shooting themselves in both feet there.

So at the moment I think they've done a good job of picking the areas where right wing populism is a vote winner and sidelining the parts of the party that are making similar sounds in areas where right wing populism definitely would not be a vote winner. Those two things for me let them portray themselves as the "common sense" party, instead of coming across like science-denying madmen.