We need a coup

Gagajo ?

Janpt, I have SEEN it. I've been a teacher for a long, long time.

You are victim blaming. People aren't poor because they chose to be. It is a whole cycle from underfunded schools with huge classes resulting in poor education. Poor quality housing. Unemployment or underemployment.

There is a system in place to keep the poor, poor and keep the elite in place. It is deliberate. Multimillionaires in the HOP voting against feeding the most vulnerable in our society while awarding MILLIONS to their friends and family for services they fail to provide. Money that would have fed all of the UK's poor children for 20 years.

It shows our society for what it is. Selfish and greedy. Evil.

Nobody can guarantee that their life will not change for whatever reason, redundancy, illness or a worldwide pandemic.

There should be an adequate safety net to catch them.

Please add that my name to that list.
I wrote about my own experiences both as a child and a teacher in a school in an area of the highest deprivation in Scotland. I can assure you, not all parents are irresponsible or reckless! Janpt.

Can I be added to the list with Elegran, Galaxy, GagJo and GillT57 please?
I don't think any of them can be aid to just refuse to accept what is here in front of your eyes and want even more doled out to irresponsible parents
I believe their work and life experience confirms that many families need support from the state for different reasons, at different times. I agree with that pov.

Janpt

Just saw this on another thread. Says it all !!
Gwyneth Fri 23-Oct-20 19:27:14
Children often go hungry because their parents choose to spend their money on other things. I agree this is not always the case but during a long career working with children I have seen parents who both smoke and drink heavily as well as having the latest technology. Consequently there is no money left for food. Children should not be going without food but providing more and more from the State only encourages more dependency from parents and they continue with their lifestyle unaffected. I believe a packet of cigarettes now costs around £12.00 and if both parents smoke this amounts to £24.00 a day which could be spent on food. I honestly don’t know where the answer lies only pointing out what I have seen over the years.

Bookmark

Elegran Galaxy GagaJo GillT57
You just refuse to accept what is here in front of your eyes and want even more doled out to irresponsible parents.

Good morning, Elegran, your post of 09:11 sums it up for me. Well done. Calm, even headed and understanding.

Or mine Galaxy. Heresay and selfishness. Labelling the poor as undeserving, creating an excuse to do nothing.

Thirty years working with children and families not my experience at all.

Just saw this on another thread. Says it all !!
Gwyneth Fri 23-Oct-20 19:27:14
Children often go hungry because their parents choose to spend their money on other things. I agree this is not always the case but during a long career working with children I have seen parents who both smoke and drink heavily as well as having the latest technology. Consequently there is no money left for food. Children should not be going without food but providing more and more from the State only encourages more dependency from parents and they continue with their lifestyle unaffected. I believe a packet of cigarettes now costs around £12.00 and if both parents smoke this amounts to £24.00 a day which could be spent on food. I honestly don’t know where the answer lies only pointing out what I have seen over the years.

Bookmark

The change from FPTP to PR, if we could ever achieve it, would have many benefits, and as far as I know there is not a single democratic country which has ever opted to change back to the sham democracy of FPTP.

M0nica it may not change the flavour of government we get but it could make the government more accountable. I don't pretend to be an expert on this but in the Scottish system the party that wins the most votes in the first round of seat allocation are automatically disadvantaged in later rounds. This is meant to lead to a coalition so the decisions are taken by general agreement and not by diktat. Its also the reason we don't have a bi-cameral system.

Maybe moving to a similar system is the coup we should be aiming for?

Sorry, Varian classic example of suggesting a simple solution for a complicated problem. I do not think changing the voting system alone will have much effect on what flavour of government we get.

I have yet to see a study of changing voting patterns where countries have gone from first past the post to some form of PR but my impression is that the result is just more of the same government with the same parties dominating government, but usually in coalitions.

Except for a few countries like Israel. Israel has ended up with a clutter of fissiparous parties, one for every day of the year, which has led to a succession of coalition governments dependent on exremist religious parties to make numbers up and thus having to impose laws that protect extremist sects and impose unpopular religious legislation on an electorate the majority of whom object to these extremist laws.

paddyanne

Janpt do you consider yourself a Christian? Its Christian principles that the Labour movement was founded on .As you appear to have missed it at school maybe you should read about Keir Hardie and Robert Bontine Cuningham-Graham ,you might learn something useful '

I don't need any advice from you on what I should read. I certainly have no wish to read anything by someone with the name Keir or any other Marxist, Communist advocate.

I liked the article as well Elegran, very enlightening.

I think we are lucky in Scotland varian that we don't have the FPTP system for the Scottish parliament, as we are given a much bigger choice of who to vote for and the parliament itself is more balanced.

And paddyanne - hear hear regarding Cunningham-Graham! Why don't more people know about him?

Elegran

So, Jan As an extension to your school's admirable ethos, did you work out for yourself that it was OK "to abandon those in need " ?

I don't know where you got the idea that I thought it was o.k. to abandon those in need !! Is it o.k. to treat right wing posters with contempt ?

Message deleted by Gransnet as it repeats a previously deleted post. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Janpt do you consider yourself a Christian? Its Christian principles that the Labour movement was founded on .As you appear to have missed it at school maybe you should read about Keir Hardie and Robert Bontine Cuningham-Graham ,you might learn something useful '

A good article, Alegrias I like the bit - "Boris Johnson is easily underestimated, both as a classicist (he is a very able one) and as a politician. He is very good at winning. The costs have turned out to be considerable, for others"

"This whole site is definitely left wing" posts a right-wing GNetter, but , according to a recent study only 22% of Britons identify with left or right.

"Historic political divisions between Left and Right are breaking down as class barriers erode, with Britons falling into one of seven “tribes”, according to a detailed new study of the nation’s attitudes and outlook.

Research for the thinktank More in Common discovered that the coronavirus pandemic was driving demands for change across the United Kingdom and among all shades of political opinion.

Only 22% of Britons said they identified closely with Left or Right, with 70 per cent viewing such labels as unhelpful and more than half describing themselves as being on the centre ground. "

inews.co.uk/news/politics/left-and-right-political-opinion-britain-conservatives-labour-737495

It is only because of our undemocratic FPTP electoral system that so many are forced into voting, not for what they believe in, but for the lesser of two evils. This is the main reason that the UK is in such a mess.

I remember a tv documentary some years ago where Eton boys exchanged places for two weeks with boys from a Liverpool Comprehensive.

When they got together at the end one of the Liverpool boys said to an Eton boy "Your parents must really hate you to send you there"

By their fruits shall ye know them, Ellianne

Eton can tell whatever porkies it likes on their website but I prefer to judge it by its highly visible alumni...

Message deleted by Gransnet. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

Sorry, posted too early.

One former Eton schoolboy's view:

www.newstatesman.com/culture/observations/2020/10/personal-story-eton-and-need-win.

Quote from the article: Put slightly differently, the necessity of winning at all costs – even perhaps at the cost of one’s health – was the prime message I brought away from Eton.

One formenr Eton schoolboy's view.