"I've never seen anything like it!"

Someone in my village did put a skull and cossbones flag on the flagpole outside his house. I thought it was brillaint but his grandaughter told him to take it down cause it was scary....

Or the French, Portuguese, Dutch etc.

Has it all got something to do with that England has the biggest population. Therefore is somewhat seen as dominant.
So for a dominant something to shout hurrah, is not the same as somthing smaller to shout hurrah? If you see what I mean?

.....

Emily Thornberry was raised on benefits, second hand clothes and food parcels. She joined the Labour Party at 17 because she did not think it was fair that life should be so hard for her mother, who was a teacher. She became a human rights lawyer before she became an MP. Her mother became a labour councillor and mayor.
She has excellent credentials, so it's not fair of people on here to smear her background by insinuating she is not suitable to be a labour MP.
She should not have resigned, but it's to her credit that she did. Many MPs have done far worse and not resigned.
Her mistake was to tweet. If she had sent it to her friends on facebook, we would not have known.

I find it weird that all these people are voting Ukip when it is run by privately educated spivs from the City who pretend to be men of the people. It worries me that so many people have voted Ukip in the last two bye-elections because the previous Tory MPs never did anything for their constituents.
Does that not worry you? People get the politicians they deserve. If they wish to be conned, they will be.

Farage has made people think that a vote for him is a protest vote of some kind. Even the sight of him on the television or in a newspaper makes me feel ill. I despair .

"Thornberry was born in north Surrey to Cedric Thornberry, a Visiting Professor of War Studies at King's College London, and his wife Sallie Thornberry, a teacher. Her parents divorced when Thornberry was aged seven and she and her two brothers lived with her mother who later became a Labour Councillor."

No mention of benefits or food parcels in that write-up of ET's background, durhamjen.

"Her mistake was to tweet" durhamjen ??? NO! her "mistake"(if indeed there was ever a mistake) was to even think it in the first place ! Sadly for her, she was caught out saying what she really thought and perhaps not what she should be "seen to think" .

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

Just about sums the hypocrites up !

She just tweeted a photograph, with the caption "image from Rochester". Apparently, once the Sun got wind of this "story", they made an exclusive deal with the gentleman involved - who suddenly became very indignant about the whole thing.

It seems that left wing politicians are always in the wrong - if they are well off they are branded "champagne socialists" and hypocrites, and if they have more modest backgrounds and means they are accused of being motivated by the "politics of envy"

Emily Thornberry tweeted a photo with the caption "image from Rochester". I don't see why that makes her a "bad apple" but, of course, if the right wing press gets its teeth into someone everybody else has to follow suit - including, stupidly, Ed Miliband. I expect the gentleman whose house it was has been suitably compensated as he apparently entered into an exclusive deal with the Sun.

Some politicians manage. Tony Benn was from a very privileged background but really cared about the disadvantaged.

I don't imagine he ever sneered at the non-u goings on of the 'lower orders'.

I have to agree with you Eloethan. We used to have a fundamental liberalism (with a small "l") in this country which would accept that you are different to me in some ways but that's OK.

We now seem to have a "my views are the only right one's" fundamentalism which means that we can be castigate people for what they think because a photo is tweeted with a simple title, and many, many right wingers including many UKIP foot soldiers - rather than PR savvy leaders - are telling us that the only right way to think is their way.

You only have to read the Daily Mail article that gillybob flagged up to see the "I hate you for being different" mentality.

I do think the Labour party should stop apologising. If you belong to a party which believes in equal opportunity and being able to achieve through your own efforts some people will actually do that and surely it is a good thing that they then stay in a party which wants this for more people.

There is a really dog in the manger attitude which thinks saying that "I haven't got it so you shouldn't have it" is political thinking.

I don't agree with the "if I haven't got it you shouldn't have it" attitude Gracesgran but I cannot take a (so called) "socialist" party seriously who claim to represent the ordinary working people of this country who have
a) Never done a days work in their life.
b) Been born into or have accumulated huge wealth so as not to have even the remotest clue what it is like to have to budget.

It used to be that the Labour Party would mock the Tories for being out of touch "toffs" all privately educated, and hugely wealthy telling us normal working class people how we should live our lives. When in fact they are exactly the same.

We certainly seem to have a "my views are the only right ones" mentality amongst politicians of all flavours, including certain Labour politicians such as Emily Thornberry who is after all the person who caused all this furore.

I don't care that she's well off - good for her (though she didn't exactly pull herself up by her bootstraps, as others have pointed out) but I do care about her judgmental attitudes to those who don't follow her narrow view of how people should behave. I'm afraid Tony Benn was a marvel petallus, and we will never see the like of him again.

As a lifelong socialist I'm finding myself in a very strange position on this thread. I think it just confirms the fact that there is no socialist political party in this country (no great surprise there).

I was wondering why I feel so strongly about 'white van man's' right to fly any number of flags outside his home even though I wouldn't choose to do so myself. I think it's because white van man is the descendant of the working men I grew up with and had respect for (yes Ed Miliband, respect does matter). I may not have liked some of their ways - hard drinking, chauvinistic - but I hated it then when the middle classes looked down on them and I hate it equally now. You will never win hearts and minds by sneering at the people you purport to represent.

Who is judging that these people have never done a days work gillybob? You, yourself say that these are people who "... represent the ordinary working people". There is no "claim" about it, they are doing a job and you are making a judgement about whether they are working at it or not. The fact that they are not giving you what you want is nothing to do with whether they are "working" or not.

Your second point is just inverted snobbery. No one can help the situation they are born into. As for accumulating wealth - what do you want? No successful socialists or them to give it all away? You also include the sweeping statement that they haven't "the remotest clue what it is to have a to budget". If that is not dog in the manger I don't know what is and you (or I) can have no idea about their lives other than, it seems in your case, what the Daily Hate tells us.

When I see this sort of post or hear people talk in this way it sounds to me as if the only people the commentators want is politicians made in their own image. I am not sure who made them God or why every person with a different background and life is lesser by comparison to them.

Well said * nightowl*

Oops nightowl

This whole thread is pure irony.

Emily Thornberry had no reason to tweet that photo and caption other than to take the p--s. She thought it amusing and she was caught out. She is not a child, she was the Shadow Attorney General of the Labour Party, the Party of the Working Man.

The stupidity of blaming the right wing press has reared it's head but the fact is it was a backlash on twitter that was picked up by the media and it was all over the t.v 'before the newspapers were even printed for heavens sake. Not that facts matter of course. 'If loosing the arguement blame the Daily Mail or the Sun' and try to deflect the debate.

I feel sorry for Thornberry if after her parents divorced her mother and siblings went to a council house and survived on free school dinners. I am sorry for her as her mother was a teacher and her father had a fairly prestigious career indeed. He was a visiting proffessor at Kings College and he was a UN Assistant Secretary General to NATO so it must be assumed there are issues we don't know about.

Having said that I was brought up in a council house and I don't know what my parents paid for my school dinners I thought they were free as I never took any money to pay for them. Come to think of it I never felt sorry to myself.

I don't find her upbringing is a fact to distance her from being so stupid rather it makes the whole episode worse. It's another own goal for saying 'she should know better then'.

I repeat what Labour MP Chris Bryant said about her resignation during the Rochester and Strood count :-

"The first rule of politics is 'surely you respect' the voter."

"Look, the Labour Party was founded to try and say that everybody is 'EQUAL' in the world and you shouldn't 'SCORN' anybody else. You shouldn't suggest that anybody is any different and you shouldn't 'JUDGE' somebody according to whether they have a flag outside their house.

There have been numerous Labour MP's who understand how this crass tweet causes offence and the potential PR disaster that would follow. As Edward Miliband would say and for once I agree with him "I get it".

Edward Miliband also wrote on this matter:-

"Respect is the basic rule of politics"

If you can't see why this has caused such a furory you never will because the tweet represents your view and thereby lies the difference between the posts. It is what it is.

Is a "working man(?)" only someone who drives a white van or "the working men(?)" you grew up with nightowl? Surely most people work for a living with only a very small percentage able to live on the returns from capital. There seems to have been at least as many of the people you are suggesting are looked down on by the "middle classes" looking down and casting aspersions on those they see as the "middle classes" and it has got very nasty recently, in tandem, I believe, with the rise of UKIP.

The party of labour is struggling, partly because the class system which helped all the parties out is now very blurred - although it has definitely not disappeared. Perhaps it is the time for more, smaller parties who can be clear in what they stand for. This would only work though, if people accepted that compromises have to be made by parties getting together to have enough power to get anything of what they believe through parliament.

As a point of information the Labour was founded to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the just rewards for their labour and the equitable distribution thereof.

Of course a 'working man' is not just someone who drives a white van Gracesgran. Nor are all working people 'men' or ever have been, but it was the men I was talking about. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make in relation to my post.

I have to say Ed Miliband has risen in my estimation on account of this incident, on the basis that he does indeed seem to 'get it'.

Is the borough of Islington anything like the borough of Rochester?
Why was she even commenting on Rochester?