Will this crisis lead to a change in Conservative attitudes?

Well said Alexa, although the promises to "level up" might mean that the current government might have to be pragmatic. I think it depends more whether Labour can get its act together and provide an alternative. If it doesn't, Tory attitudes will win out by default.

We rarely agree do we MaizieD? You can call me silly for seeing the best in everyone but in my heart I don’t damn anyone for their views and wish everyone well - tories, socialists, whatever! I’m happy with my heart on this one

Oh, do stop being silly, Pantglas.

And do you damn all Gransnetters who have been so ‘culturally corrupted’ MaizieD?

I make no generalisations and sincerely believe that no matter how blessed (or not) we were in our backgrounds, we can all have empathy with those less fortunate. Unfortunately you, and so many others with your political bias, find you can’t.

I was more against the generalisation of assuming that well educated people have no empathy

Oh dear! Privately educated = well educated does it?

Does that mean that all us state educated hoi polloi aren't well educated? Now who is generalising?

You are completely missing the point, Pantglas. The quality of the education has nothing whatsoever to do with it. It's the cultural attitudes that go along with a specific type of education and employment choices that I'm referring to.

The pandemic and many deaths wont lead to change in Tory attitudes because Tory attitudes are idealogical not pragmatic.

If a Tory changes their attitudes they cease to be a Tory.

oscaroll: I didn’t want the life my parents had. I wanted better. I wanted what others had. I didn’t want to go through life scraping along the bottom. I realised the only person who could change my projected path was me.

Thank you for your honesty.
I came from a middle class family, my mother was Conservative through and through. When Harold Wilson was elected (I was 13) my mother said, it was the end of the world as we knew it.
Three years later, I realised how much better the UK had become. Not just for me, but for other people, like those I was at school with, and their families.
I got to Uni with a grant, and when I left there was high employment which made it easy getting a job.
I read all newspapers I could, not just the Express that was at my home.
I didn't get a vote till I was over 22, but I voted Labour and almost always have since. It wasn't me that made that happen, it was a lot of people all working together

Strange how attitudes vary

I actually believe that Rishi has shown empathy with the help given to self employed, charities, benefits and small businesses MaizieD which is a darn sight more than happened in the 2008 crash or the foot and mouth epidemic.

I was more against the generalisation of assuming that well educated people have no empathy - would that apply to all of the Gransnetters who went to private schools and uni?

Us council/comp kids don’t have the monopoly on caring!

Dinahmo isn't the only one who has problems with the latter! It's a problem that arises from a lifetime of observation of privileged tory MPs.

You give us some examples of tory MPs from privileged backgrounds who have displayed empathy, Pantglas

Dinahmo, I have no problem believing that a male gynaecologist can be empathetic to a woman nor, equally, believing that a Tory, privileged mp can be empathetic towards us at the other end of the scale.

You appear to have difficulty with the latter due to your political bias, which is the bit that I do ‘get’.

Jabberwok Margaret Thatcher's father was an alderman and important figure in the local community. I don't suppose he had loads of money to splash on his daughter, but he wasn't poor. Thatcher went to Oxford (admittedly because she was clever and hard-working), where she no doubt met people with influence and money, including her future husband, whose money did enable her to pursue a political career. Her problem was that she really didn't seem to understand that other people weren't like her.

I give up. You still don't understand.

There is no need for us "lefties" to apply assumptions about Labour MPs education and background to them because in general we support them. Obviously we do disagree with Labour MPs about policies as you will no doubt remember from the Brexit discussions.

Pantglas I'm afraid that I don't follow your logic about male gynies. It so happens that for a number of years my gynaecologist was Dr Sam Hutt, aka Hank Wangford. IMHO he was better than the women. Far more sympathetic and understanding and to quote an overused phrase, he was the best thing since slice bread!

Apologies Urmstongran, my first paragraph was quoting Dinahmo’s reply to you, where she suggested Rishi’s privileged education and subsequent career was not conducive to having empathy.

My last sentence stands.

I think I ‘get’ perfectly well when folks like you and MaizieD make denigrating assumptions based on a tory’s privileged background and refuse to apply those assumptions to a Labour mps, actually!

Erm Pantglas2 with respect I think you’ve muddled me up with someone else here?
?

Well, you've all wandered a long way from Ug''s original proposition.

In reply to a post that suggested that Sunak might not have much understanding of how the other half live Ug suggested that his middle class background (Dad a GP, mum a pharmacist running a pharmacy) would indicate that he is 'grounded'. My contention was that neither his education, nor his subsequent career in finance made it particularly likely that he was 'grounded'.

I should never have responded to the ridiculous suggestion that neither McDonnell nor Corbyn were 'grounded'..

Silly me. Wrists are smacked...

He comes from a very wealthy family with good connections, and although he left school with zero qualifications, he went to a good Prep School then onto Stowe which no doubt served him well despite the lack of exams! Not really to be compared to lets say Ernest Bevin, John Major, David Davies or even Margaret Thatcher! All of whom were successful entirely due to their own hard work with little or no family money and virtually no family influence.

If education is everything how do persons who hold such impressions excuse the achievements of Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson famously left school without any qualifications and went on to launch the Virgin group which has since expanded to an umbrella of more than 100 companies and 60,000 employees worldwide garnering him a wealth of $5 billion (£3.8billion).

Link to the above can be found here:-
www.independent.co.uk/news/people/a-level-results-2016-ucas-richard-branson-message-virgin-founder-grades-not-everything-a7197721.html

In my opinion education and intelligence are two different things.
In our unequal society many intelligent children from disadvantaged backgrounds dont achieve their full potential because the education system doesn't favour them.
Money buys access to education in a private, or good neighbourhood schools. Housing is at a premium near the best schools. This opens the door to the major universities and the top jobs.
The status quo is thus maintained, and many talented but uneducated people lose out.

AGAA4 ' The virus is what is causing all the problems we are having.'

No, the slow reaction and half-measures are causing the problems.

We could all see very clearly what was happening in other countries!

It was Ernest Bevin. We lived at Withypool just down the road from Winsford and there is a plaque on the house where E.B was born almost opposite Winsford Village shop. I worked for Care in the Community and used to visit an elderly lady living a few doors away from this house, and saw the plaque on an almost daily basis!!

Pantglas2 no most definitely Ernest Bevin.

Wikipedia link can be found here
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Bevin

Are you confusing Aneurin and Ernest Grandad? Not that they both weren’t great men who did good work for this country with little formal education.

Education can be a huge benefit in many environments but it is most certainly not the ultimate. In that, how a person correctly perceives a situation is far more important than any high standard of education, as that perception is born into someone and not educationally acquired.

In the above, I would cite Ernest Bevin. Born of an Exmoor farm labourers household, with less than two years in education he became a Labourer on Bristol Docks. In that role, he co-founded and served as first general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union in the years 1922–1940.

Winston Churchill asked him to become Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government. In that role he succeeded in maximising the British labour supply for both the armed services and domestic industrial production. Churchill remarked of him at the conclusion of the conflict that Bevin emphasised and became the domestic driving force that so saved Britain in the worst periods of the war.

However, Bevin highest achieved role came within the 1945 Clement Attlee Labour government where he held the office of Foreign Secretary in the government that gave this nation the National Health Service and the welfare state.

All the above came from a person who had less than two years in fulltime education.

Bevin is proof that It is very much what any person is by way of perception and situation solving that is very often the difference between real success and failure, and that is not something that any education can instil in a person.

Grounded and ungrounded its all total boll*cks in my view and experience.

AGAA4 I don't agree that no government could possibly know how to cope
In 2016 there was a government flu like pandemic exercise code named Exercise Cygnus for just such an eventuality, which exposed severe failings in preparedness - for example insufficient ventilators and means of body disposals. It appears the government did.......Nothing.

Urm you are right about his parents, but Winchester College, not exactly cheap, Oxford and Stanford. That sort of education can change peoples' outlook and certainly his career before parliament is not conducive to seeing how the majority live.

I think I ‘get’ perfectly well when folks like you and MaizieD make denigrating assumptions based on a tory’s privileged background and refuse to apply those assumptions to a Labour mps, actually!

Using your argument, no man could be a gynaecologist!