We need a coup

It doesn’t bother me, am used to it on GN, but if anyone wonders why so few Conservative posters bother to comment, then now you know.

No no Ellianne I didn't mean the Eton comments. I still don't think I was wrong there . We disagreed but we spoke to each other like adults.

I was wrong about something else and I've been put right.

Alegrias I can often predict in advance which posters will call foul and throw their toys out of the pram when their views are not echoed and endorsed by all. It doesn't have any connection with which party they favour, and often goes with a narrow understanding of the subject being discussed.

Alegrias2

I posted a reply to a comment earlier today. A couple of other posters pretty quickly told me I was wrong. They know more about it than I do so I bow to their knowledge on this. I never felt bullied just because people disagreed with me. I'm an SNP voter so I've got lots of experience of very vocal people taking very different points of view than mine , but I don't throw my toys out of the pram and call "foul". On this forum I've been told to back off, I've been called scum and I've been told I'm over excited. All part of life's rich tapestry....

You might find it acceptable but others don't.

It’sthe constant ‘prove yourself’ Kind of comments that put so many posters off.
To an extent yes, lemongrove, there are times when some of us would like to contribute from the heart so to speak without always relying on facts, figures and evidence to back up everything we might say. Spontaneous comments seem to insense those on the other side and are criticised for having no substance, no value. It becomes tiresome.

Sorry, I called you Algerias .... in my mind from watching Michael Palin last night!

Ellianne

Sorry, I called you Algerias .... in my mind from watching Michael Palin last night!

Och, close enough. I've been called worse .

lemongrove I can survive people disagreeing with me - I don't often pontificate a party line, anyway - but I do react to people ranting about whole sections of the community as drunken layabouts, or calling all labour voters communists or all middle-of-the-road conservatives far-right fascists. Polarisation kills debate and discussion.

It has been said that Tories are afraid to post. On the politics thread it has been true that almost everyone has been afraid to post! The most critical (and very left-wing) posters seem to have retired from Gransnet so the rightwingers ought to be posting now. I don't believe it is from fear, I think they don't have anything positive to say about the current crop of Tory bigwigs. It will be interesting in 2021 when Brexit is a done deal to see whether they post more.

Can’t agree Elegran ( but that’s ok) it’s been the same since
GN started.Not so much that Conservative voters are afraid to post but they cannot be bothered to by all the flak as I said earlier.
Plus I do think since the LP have been out of power, Labour GN members have become more frustrated and upset, therefore more inclined to lash out verbally.
I haven’t noticed any absence of critical left wing posters bar one, who used to post copious links.

I think you might be right, lemongrove I guess that Conservatives are happy enough with this government so don't feel the need to post.
I wonder if it is also because Labour are no longer talking about policies of their own, whereas before the change of leadership there were many threads very critical of those Labour policies. (I am thinking of policies such as nationalisation, a four day week, every child to have an opportunity to learn a musical instrument, which received a lot of criticism)

I don't regard the provision of free meals for hungry children to be a particularly partisan issue, though, I think that most decent Conservatives would like to have said yes, if only to avoid a load of angry correspondence from their constituents, over such a relatively small sum of money.

I do hope I will not be accused of bullying for posting these thoughts.

Galaxy

I have been on threads where most have disagreed with me it's hard but it is what it is. I certainly didnt feel bullied. Actually Iwould say there are a lot of supporters of the government on this site compared to other sites.

They must be very silent then. Perhaps they are not prepared to put themselves through the abuse dealt out by the left wingers on here.

Exactly Galaxy. Before the election there was a LOT of right wing abuse thrown at those who dared to suggest they believed in Jeremy Corbyn. There still is.

Comments made to and about me such as 'Have you lost your mind' and one memorable one 'Are you aware you are a laughing stock on here?'

Not that it bothered me. My political beliefs are based on evidence, not MSM manipulation. BUT it did happen.

They must be very silent then. Perhaps they are not prepared to put themselves through the abuse dealt out by the left wingers on here.

I think that they're probably very silent because the government doesn't do much that is admirable or defensible.

Ilovecheese I agree, the provision of school meals through a short holiday period, in these very odd circumstances, should not be a partisan question. I would have thought more highly of Parliament if they had decided to forgo the £3,000 rise for the moment and put the money toward the cost of the meals. It probably wouldn't come near to completely paying for them (anyone got any figures for how much extra they would have put onto the existing school meal bill?), but it would have been a welcome gesture.

Lemongrove, I think you'll find the 'Labour GN members have become more frustrated and upset, therefore more inclined to lash out verbally' NOT because Labour lost. Once the election was over, as far as I am concerned, political discussion was done. No point rehashing the past.

What individuals object to now, is the horrific incompetent mess that is being made of the management of a deadly pandemic. The death of tens of thousands of British people is upper most in our concerns. That this is due to crisis mismanagement and financial theft, given that the money that has been given to friends/associates of CP members has directly led to additional unnecessary infections and deaths is like something out of a horror movie. We watch this sort of thing play out in countries described in the MSM as less civilised (government officials and friends / family / associates siphoning off tax payer money) and we look on in shock and disbelief, while comforting ourselves it could never happen in the UK. And now it is. In the middle of the biggest emergency any of us have faced in our lifetime.

Instead of DOING something about it, we sit back and bicker about 'You're just jealous because Labour didn't win.' WTF?

(apologies for poor grammar and sentence structure!)

Nobody, least of all me, has said anything of the sort GagaIt’s nothing to do with ‘jealousy’ it’s simply because their Party has been kicking around in the doldrums....when a political Party has had no power for so very many years, it’s unsurprising that people who support them feel frustrated.
On Covid, I doubt any other Party could have done any better, you have only to look around Europe and see that whatever any government of any country did this year has been pretty futile as far as controlling numbers, they’re all on the rise again.

'You're just jealous because Labour didn't win.' WTF?

It's their comfort blanket, GagaJo. Same as the Leave voters (usually the same people) telling us 'we won, get over it'. It's easier to trot out these trite phrases designed to belittle and deflect, than to discuss anything.

Nobody has trotted out the trite phrase about jealousy!
Feel free to continue thinking so though.?

You are right Gagajo

I did not vote for the Labour Party or the Conservative Party, although I was aware that it would be one or other of them who were most likely to form a government, but what I hoped for, and had every right to expect, was that whoever won, under our hopelessly undemocratic FPTP electoral system, would be competent.

What we have ended up with is, without any doubt, by far the most incompetent administration in British history.

All the more tragic at a time when, because of the double disaster of the pandemic, and the falloout from the fraudulent brexit referendum, we need competence more than ever.

lemongrove

Nobody has trotted out the trite phrase about jealousy!
Feel free to continue thinking so though.?

I have no reason to think that GagaJo is making it up, lemon.

lemongrove Are you happy then with the amount this government has poured into the pockets of private companies for a "Test and Trace" system which is failing in many ways? Can you explain why the money was paid to those people and not used to improve public health systems already in place? What about this comment?^Maggie Rae, president of the Faculty of Public Health, told The BMJ, Other countries across the world are managing a more effective system on less tests than we are doing, so we need to build a much more intelligent and agile testing strategy.” She said that the £10bn being spent on NHS Test and Trace would be better spent on a more localised system, like that in Germany.

MaizieD

^'You're just jealous because Labour didn't win.' WTF?^

It's their comfort blanket, GagaJo. Same as the Leave voters (usually the same people) telling us 'we won, get over it'. It's easier to trot out these trite phrases designed to belittle and deflect, than to discuss anything.

It is ONLY the right wing members that keep referencing Labour.

And no, no one used the actual word jealousy, (instead insert synonym 'frustrated') but it is the essence of what you are implying, while totally ignoring the elephant in the room of the theft of tax payers money that COULD have been used to save lives and instead has been stolen.

If you think distress at so many needless deaths is 'frustration' at being out of power you REALLY need a reality check.

MaizieD

lemongrove

Nobody has trotted out the trite phrase about jealousy!
Feel free to continue thinking so though.?

I have no reason to think that GagaJo is making it up, lemon.

See MaizieD .....in Gaga’s own words....no one used the actual word jealousy. You could have checked a few posts yourself of course to see that it wasn’t true.

I think and continue to think that no other Party would have done any better.Do you think all the governments of all the other countries, say, in the EU have done terribly? They have lost so many to thousands to Covid too.No matter what approach to the virus was taken, and it varied from country to country, it’s all been much the same and continues that way.
With any government they will get some things wrong,
And so very easy to be a constant armchair critic.....this year the government have had Covid to deal with and Brexit to negotiate.Any one of these things would have been a really difficult task for any political Party.
So....we shall have to agree to disagree.

I don't think any other party could possibly have prioritised handing out lucrative contracts to their cronies without competitive tendering,whilst starving local authorities and public health departments of thew funds they needed to address the pandemic effectively..

Elegran

Ilovecheese I agree, the provision of school meals through a short holiday period, in these very odd circumstances, should not be a partisan question. I would have thought more highly of Parliament if they had decided to forgo the £3,000 rise for the moment and put the money toward the cost of the meals. It probably wouldn't come near to completely paying for them (anyone got any figures for how much extra they would have put onto the existing school meal bill?), but it would have been a welcome gesture.

About 1.4 million children in England are eligible for FSM. Multiply that by £15 a week = £21 million.

In reality, at least twice that number will be living in very low income families, but under the current regulations it's almost impossible for any child where one person is in work (even if it's minimum wage or reduced hours) to be eligible.