Heartless Britain - will attitudes ever change?

grandmajet

Sounds like the sort of word used by people who have spent their lives in political academia and not ventured into the world of cleaning people’s houses or working in a shop!

So, in your world grandmajet, cleaning others houses/working in a shop is "good" and working in academia, sorry "political" academia is "bad". Is that is how you tell the good and the bad amoungst us?

Perhaps I have misunderstood the conclusions you have jumped to. If so I would love you to explain for me and also how you "know" by the use of one word that this must be so.

amongst.

Lovetopaint037

It seems that the survey makers need a job.

I would have thought that having published the survey tells us they have one. Perhaps we are now judging good people and bad/lazy/worthless people by the jobs they do and, could it be possible, by the education they have worked for?

PippaZ perhaps you should have the good grace to stop the umpteen posts that say the same thing in gumteenth different ways.

Oops umpteen. Don’t know why my keyboard keeps doing that. Perhaps it knows something that others don’t.

LauraNorder

PippaZ perhaps you should have the good grace to stop the umpteen posts that say the same thing in gumteenth different ways.

Is being dictatorial about others contributions your forte LauraNorder? I had only just seen the various posts each of which, I imagine, was seen as offering something something new or some additional point of view. I replied as they were either about something I had written or something I wanted to contribute to.

Disagree by all means but it's probably not helpful to view yourself as having powers over what others write. Let's face it, I can either see it as another conservative trait or just plain rude. Which are you hoping to show as a characteristic, I wonder?

PippaZ please do not keep indulging in tired old stereotypes. It devalues the rest of your posts that are interesting and pertinent.

Attitudes in this country are formed less by lived experience than by the indoctrination over many years by right wing billionaire newspaper proprtietors who have their own agenda - turning ordinary people against other ordinary people, cultivating hate, diverting attention from those who pull the strings.

I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too
It gives me a sense of enormous well-being and then I'm happy for the rest of the day safe in the knowledge there will always be a bit of my heart devoted to it

I'm really sorry that was my son Hopefully he'll move back out again soon #HeartlessJane

PippaZ, I don’t think I used the words ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in my comment. I’ve just found that the more purely academic a person’s background, the more they tend to pepper any argument with words and phrases that are not in common use in the lives of more mundane people. The result is that we don’t know what is being said without recourse to a dictionary!

hrandmajet I was taught at school that it was polite to use the simplest word that conveyed the meaning.
Later, at degree level, I was taught to use the simplest word that conveyed the meaning if your argument was to be understood by the majority.

I understood every word of that, Laura!

M0nica

PippaZ please do not keep indulging in tired old stereotypes. It devalues the rest of your posts that are interesting and pertinent.

Thank you very much for your kind words in your last sentence. I can only guess what you are referring to but "tired old stereotypes" become tired old stereotypes because of the truths they contain so I, and many others, will probably continue to use them as examples of those truths. If I decide to reply to a platitudinous, banal and clinched phrase in someone else's post with a simplistic, easily understood one of my own at least be even handed and criticise their writing style as well if doing that is how Gransnet works, or perhaps that is now enough of the lecture on style.

varian

Attitudes in this country are formed less by lived experience than by the indoctrination over many years by right wing billionaire newspaper proprtietors who have their own agenda - turning ordinary people against other ordinary people, cultivating hate, diverting attention from those who pull the strings.

I'm afraid you are right Varian. But separating people, all of us, from long held myths is impossible. Especially when those myths are continuously reinforced.

Can I ask what it is that's making you so angry PippaZ - is it that the survey is so damning, or is it that many of the posters here don't see themselves as inherently bad people because of their voting choice and political allegiance?

Better to get the anger out here than elsewhere, perhaps? We are anonymous and faceless so it is a lot less damaging. That besides, it is an interesting thread and probably good that a bit of discussion on the topic is aired. I think nearly all societies are inherently selfish and self interested . Correction. All. Not so much the individuals but the 'country'.

It is 'tired old stereotypes' that play such a big part in entrenching racism, misogyny, homophobia, and most hate crimes. A stereotype is often a charicature of what people really are

May I ask, NellG, what makes you think I am angry. I am certainly upset by the recent pile-on, started, it appears, by my use of the word "solipsism". I do find the playground behaviour that followed quite amazing from a group of those who purport to be adults. It seems that from that one word various grandparents, sadly it seems to be women attacking a woman, think they can guess a person's education and previous employment, both of which they come across as believing to be either 'less than' or not normal for this group. I was left with a very vague view of why such assumed personal characteristics were mentioned other than to add to the playground trope that a difference means you can be personally attacked.

But back to the OP:
By far the most disturbing inequality at the moment concerns unemployment. Nearly 50% think people have lost their jobs because of underachievement. Only 31% think job loss is attributable to bad luck. Apparently, by 57% to 39% Conservative voters are more likely to accept poor performance as the reason for job losses.

This type of thinking is, as MOnica would say a 'tired old stereotype'. It is leftover from extreme 'religious' views, or at least that is where such views once found their home. These would have you declare your "sins"; the sins which caused your destitution or, sadly, illness and disability. This is the stereotype now used by the Conservative party and its members and followers. It feels, as does the renual of Victorian destitution, to be a throwback and that is how it should be seen; a throwback often contrived to cover the flaws in our benefits system, our insurance. We are probably about to see one of the fastest and deepest rises in destitution because of Covid - yes, but also because of the way the party currently in power treats people.

How does this make me feel? Just think of yourself, standing on a street corner, telling people their sins are the reason why their child is blind or has had polio as people once did or the reason why you are destitute and you will have some idea about how much I despise the thinking of the Conservative party, it's hangers-on and others who still feel like this about the unemployed, and how sad I am that we have learned so little and the only thing I can do about this attitude to others is cast a vote once every four years and hope.

I do see this changing in the young. The sort of "playground behaviour" I described, which occurs because of a perceived difference, seems to be less than it once was in playgrounds at least and education - that despised by some on here increase in real knowledge - is moving us forward too, but sadly never quickly enough for those that have to bear not only poverty but the slings and arrows of outrageous vilifiers.

PippaZ Thank you for the above post. I suggest that those piling on you are amongst the 57% Conservatives identified by the survey and they don't much like it.

Most of these surveys are done by faceless, never been in the real world ,up themselves wealthy twats.imho.
Surveys are a little like reviews,you can put anything down in writing but that does not make it accurate.

timetogo2016

Most of these surveys are done by faceless, never been in the real world ,up themselves wealthy twats.imho.
Surveys are a little like reviews,you can put anything down in writing but that does not make it accurate.

WTAF?

(Is that abbreviation allowed on Gransnet? I assume so since the reference to women's genitals seems to be OK)

timetogo2016. Disagree in this instance after having read the link below.

I found out which company Kings College contracted to do the survey. It was YouGov.

There are a few posts on here about this company and its methodology. yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology/

Extremely pleased to be in the 43% (according to the survey) of Conservatives who are caring employers (we have employees with us for 34 and 27 years) along with many in double figures.

I wonder how many of you would continue to employ someone who was not up to the job despite extra training and interventions?

Calling other people names and traducing their expertise is the technique used by those who are unable to put up a rational and reasonable argument to something they do not like.

It only reveals the inadequacies of their side and supports those who disagree with them.