Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/rochester-byelection-forget-emily-thornberry-labour-long-since-betrayed-the-working-class-9876518.html

Rochester by-election: Forget Emily Thornberry, Labour long since betrayed the working class

What is striking about the Emily Thornberry affair is not that a Labour minister has “shown contempt for the working class”, as has been suggested, but that this should be a surprise.

This contempt wasn’t a clause in the party’s constitution, but increasingly it came close to being a policy within the past fifty years - finally becoming official in the 1990s when the Labour government embraced an open-door approach to immigration, fully aware that it would be opposed by the masses. And so - it didn’t tell them. It kept the news within its ranks in the hallowed halls of Westminster, and at north London dinner parties far from the postcodes where white vans are parked and the flag of St George flies. Well, it certainly smelt like contempt.

Part of the Labour party story - beyond the fleeting triumphs and the false dawns - has been that of championing an image of the working class, while showing contempt for the working class that fails to fit this image. Way back, this was anyone who wanted to own their own home, run their own business, watch ITV, send their kids to grammar school, or live next door to people they felt they had something in common with. This changed over time, thankfully. The party realised that the multitude didn’t exist in some folksy, prelapsarian, mythical north somewhere in the 1930s.

The perennials of unemployment, housing lists and the north-south divide persisted, but essentially the outlook and the aspirations of the working class changed. What didn’t was the party’s failure to address concerns among the multitude - immigration, multiculturalism, Europe - that didn’t fit with the image in which it had cast the average bloke, whoever he was. (As a cub reporter the late Gilbert Harding charged into a pub and bellowed: “Where will I find the average man?” Only to discover that every example was the exception to the rule).

From the off, those early supporters of the Labour party, the Fabians Beatrice and Sidney Webb, showed contempt for the leisure of the working class. Those steeped in the internationalism of the hard left, and the self-loathing of the soft-centre, never understood the patriotism of the British working class - something that was an extension of the neighbourhood, as surely as this was an extension of the street, and the street an extension of the home, for those that had little else to align themselves with. Along with this came an insularity, localism, collectivism (that was celebrated), but equally, a negative reaction to outsiders arriving en masse and changing the cultural landscape (which was condemned).

Seeing the image tweeted by Labour’s now former shadow attorney general, it’s as though this concept of the working class is being held up to ridicule. The absence of an accompanying comment appears to underline this. Thornberry’s fatal faux pas has been compared with that of Gordon Brown’s almighty slip-up, when he was heard to refer to Labour voter Gillian Duffy as a bigot for daring to raise the taboo of immigration. Chances are this might have a similar impact.

Emily Thornberry claims there was no malice aforethought in her eagerness to keep her Twitter followers updated on her day out. It was simply that she never comes across such sights on the Islington street in which she lives. But we all live in a culture where such cries of innocuousness and innocence are redundant. It’s a culture that the Labour party itself has created - a false triumph you could argue - and now it has come along and bitten one of its own on the rear. Before, and certainly beyond the era of the Macpherson Report and its thought crime of “unwitting prejudice”, we had to be seen to be offended, and often on the behalf of others; of being guilty until proven innocent; of giving interpretation precedence over intention. How ironic, that it should now be a character so much part of that culture who has been condemned and forced to apologise and resign - the very stereotype and caricature, no less: a multi-millionaire, Islington-living, Labour minister who married well, and created her riches in the nebulous but lucrative field of human rights law.

The stereotypical white van man with his St George flag, must be absolutely relishing this as he prepares to give his vote to another party. Just like so many of his number in Rochester, Clacton, and Heywood and Middleton.

Labour tries to rebut claims party is out of touch with working class voters

Hazel Blears backs Ed Miliband’s decision to sack Emily Thornberry but warns of disillusionment about career politicians



Chris Johnston, and Henry McDonald in Belfast


theguardian.com, Saturday 22 November 2014 16.42 GMT



Hazel Blears: 'People right across the spectrum do feel that politician who have never done a different job somehow cannot be in touch with their lives.' Photograph: Jon Super/AP



But she warned of a growing disillusionment among voters because an increasing number of MPs had little experience of life outside the Westminster bubble and were perceived as being out of touch with the general public.

The former communities secretary said parliament contained too many career politicians who had moved from jobs as professional political advisers to gaining safe seats in the Commons and then becoming ministers.

“In 1979, 3% of all MPs came through that path, the ‘transition belt’ I called it, of being a special adviser, getting a safe seat ending up in the government,” she told the programme.

“At the last election in 2010 it was 24% and rising. There is a genuine issue here. People right across the spectrum do feel that politician who have never done a different job somehow cannot be in touch with their lives.



http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/nov/22/labour-rebut-claims-party-out-of-touch-working-class-voters

MORE MORE Hays, just shows how u and

your boys are shitting.

Dont forget Rochester 271 on UKIP list.

Have u seen todays papers, UKIP to get at least 40 seats.

Your posts at the moment have fear written all over them.

Not long now Hays before Mansion Tax........ keep your piggy bank topped up.

Just think how Im going to get done.........a £7.9 million pound house but do I care??????

Not in the least.

I unlike you am not selfish and had to work my way to this position, you on the other hand was handed down everything.

Pampered puffs(non sexual) like you are going to be hit but lets face it, its really nothin g of your disposable income per week.

Grow up and accept it and pay it.

Would you like to be a rent boy!!!!!!!!!!!

Hazel Blear backs Ed Miliband’s decision to sack Emily Thornberry

Is that the Hazel Blears who flipped her houses

I thought her name was spelt Blair ?

Scotland, Scotland Scotland!!!!!

who says £7.9m?
for example, in the current climate, houses on the wentworth estate regularly fail to get near the value attributed ..... mind you £7.9m won't get near the price asked for many of those tasteless monstrosities

Join the twitterstorm #CameronMustGo


https://twitter.com/hashtag/CameronMustGO?src=hash

Anyone watching 'It Was Alright In The 1970's" on Channel 4, absolutely brilliant. How did we get away with it? Black and White Minstrel Show etc. Different world :0)

That comment applies the Labour front bench as well, apart from many on the back benches.

Agreed Haystack, all flavours are at it!

Gordon Brown is standing down, just announced. He is probably getting on the same gravy train as Blair.

Has Fred died? Awfully quiet :0)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845737/The-Thornberry-Set-million-pound-homes-Ed-s-elite-live-cheek-jowl-leafy-north-London.html

The Thornberry Set and their million pound homes... how Ed's elite live cheek by jowl in leafy north London

Emily Thornberry lives in £3million Islington home with Oxbridge educated lawyer husband Sir Christopher Nugee
Neighbours include Labour grandees Tony and Cherie Blair, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper, and Lard Falconer
Both Miliband brothers live nearby, along with Tessa Jowell and Margret Hodge - frontrunners for London Mayor

Emily Thornberry’s Islington home is at the heart of the liberal elite’s dinner party circuit. Directly next door is Margaret Hodge, who is expected to seek Labour’s nomination to be the next London Mayor.

Ms Thornberry's home is a vast, four-storey Victorian townhouse in an area beloved of lawyers and bankers, where a similar property changed hands earlier this year for £2.9 million - £900,000 above the threshold for Labour’s planned ‘soak-the-rich’ mansion tax.

Hodge’s likely rival, Tessa Jowell, lives a couple of miles north. If Ms Thornberry ever needs to consult Tom Baldwin, one of Ed Miliband’s key advisers, he is only a short stroll away.

Mr Miliband can be found two miles away, not far from Neil Kinnock, Alastair Campbell and Miliband’s adviser Stewart Wood. Others nearby include Ed’s brother David, Lord Falconer, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.

Ms Thornberry shares her home with Oxbridge educated lawyer husband Sir Christopher, a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers whose specialities included the lucrative field of off-shore trusts (which, among other things, help rich people avoid taxes).

The pair bought the property in 1993, two years after they married, and moved in during the same week as another great Islingtonian power couple, Tony and Cherie Blair.

Ms Thornberry, a close Ed Miliband ally and one of the first to back him as leader in his battle against brother David, stepped down from her post as Shadow Attorney General two days ago.

The resignation came after she was confronted by a 'furious' Ed following her tweet of a house in Rochester flying three England flags from the upstairs windows, with a white van parked in the driveway.

Gordon Brown to STEP DOWN as MP at next General Election after 32 years in the Commons:

Former Prime Minister to announce plans 'within days', sources say

Gordon Brown will formally announce plans to stand down 'within days'

Sources say he wants to bow out on a high after showing in referendum

Former Prime Minister has been an MP in the Commons for 32 years

Comes in the wake of Alistair Darling also announcing plans to step down

By Thomas Burrows for MailOnline

Published: 22:26, 22 November 2014 | Updated: 00:04, 23 November 2014


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845713/Gordon-Brown-STEP-MP-Former-Prime-Minister-step-days-32-years-Commons-sources-claim.html

did no labour MP's claim big expenses too?
none of the shadow cabinet???

Course they do, they are all at it!

it was a rhetorical question :-)

it's just that it would be nice to have some balance on this thread occasionally from the non-rabid section of this board