Bantamzen
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He is very good at shooting them down, however I suspect that the targets are specifically picked out to make good listening / viewing.
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Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.
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Unless I've missed something it's a call-in, so the targets are self-selecting, no?
Bantamzen
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There would surely be some vetting of calls first though? So they might for example ask the callers reason for calling in on the topic, and vet from there? I know when an ex-partner was involved with a local radio talk show, this happened there.
Oh, almost certainly. But it still requires them to call his number in the first place.
gg1
Established Member
It's not that unusual for a person's political views to markedly change over time, I personally know a few who were strongly left wing in the 90s but who now have views more in line with the right of the Tory party and reform UK. The socially liberal person you start dating and marry may have very different views 20+ years later.
I'd say my views are pretty much the same as they were in the 90s (when I was mostly in my 20s) and that's fairly typical for people I know. The only real change I had in political views was when I started university, and those views have basically remained ever since.
I do get the impression that a lot of people born in the 1945-55 period (or so) did move strongly rightwards compared to their youth (that generation voting predominantly Remain in 1975 and Brexit in 2016 is the perfect example of that), but I was under the impression that wasn't such a thing for younger generations - based on the people I know, at least.
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Whilst there's some validity in generalisations, I think it's also true that for many people their fundamental beliefs which underpin their voting desires don't change.
However, over the same period many of the political parties have changed far more radically. So it's about finding a new, alternative political home for the unchanged beliefs.
The Conservatives have gone between vastly different places, I don't need to spell this out.
Labour has fallen into left-wing positions before climbing back out of them.
The main problem I see with the major parties is that they make themselves unelectable by pursuit of "pure" policies, overlooking the requirement to compromise in order to get elected. 2019 was an exception, but really all elections have been won by parties prepared to compromise apart from that one.
As long as people don't apply generalisations to specifics - IE to me - then I don't mind them.
However, over the same period many of the political parties have changed far more radically. So it's about finding a new, alternative political home for the unchanged beliefs.
The Conservatives have gone between vastly different places, I don't need to spell this out.
Labour has fallen into left-wing positions before climbing back out of them.
The main problem I see with the major parties is that they make themselves unelectable by pursuit of "pure" policies, overlooking the requirement to compromise in order to get elected. 2019 was an exception, but really all elections have been won by parties prepared to compromise apart from that one.
As long as people don't apply generalisations to specifics - IE to me - then I don't mind them.
gg1
Established Member
We're of similar ages, and like you my political view haven't changed a great deal, I defined myself as centre left both then and now.
I'm not saying it's commonplace for people of the our generation to hold radically different views over the course of 20-30 years but I don't think it's particularly rare either.
Many of these will have been the first in their family/ neighbourhood to go to University, and will have gone to some of the newer universities where some of the staff were more radical. Many will have entered the late teens during firstly the Mods and the Rockers, then the hippie era, the summer of love, protest songs, Dylan, Baez, the Stones and got swept up in it. It was all about rebellion. They may have come across as more radical than they actually were; some of the immediate post war generation could afford to, they couldn't vote until they were 21. Those before me would have gone to work in factories, similar manual work or, at best. clerks in offices; they may have been union members but that just meant campaigning for higher pay, they were, by and large, socially conservative. Where I lived (Kent/ London border area) the feeling was anti-immigration and, rather like now, not individuals, so Mr and Mrs Patel in the next road were OK, but they didn't want immigrants in general. It was the perceived number, stoked up by parts of the press and certain political parties (like the BNP), Farage's eve of Referendum poster was not the first attempt at such tactics.
I think that people call O'Brien because they feel they have a chance with him, he appears to listen to callers. Others will dismiss a caller's point by citing a completely unrelated point, O'Brien will, if it calls for it, take on the caller's argument and may even concede parts of it which makes better listening. He, and quite a few others, are the reasons why broadcasters should employ professional presenters, not celebs of one form or another.
Agreed. You don't often hear other presenters using the phrase "Okay, I'll give you that for argument's sake. Now what about..."
As William Allen White wrote in 1932 (and possibly more famously repeated by Robert F Kennedy in 1968): "If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vim and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow."
Interesting quote, interesting man (hadn't heard of him before, so thanks). I was going to claim that he can't be talking about the UK (claiming the only 'rebellion' at UK universities was last practiced here by the Bullingdon Club) but remembered the Oxford Union debate
that passed comfortably. Although much publicised, it would have had no impact on my parent's generation. They almost certainly didn't know anyone who had been to Oxford, never mind the University.
SargeNpton
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Best though to quote the full statement:
"As a matter of fact student riots of one sort or another, protests against the order that is, kicks against college and university management indicate a healthy growth and a normal functioning of the academic mind. Youth should be radical. Youth should demand change in the world. Youth should not accept the old order if the world is to move on. But the old orders should not be moved easily—certainly not at the mere whim or behest of youth. There must be clash and if youth hasn't enough force or fervor to produce the clash the world grows stale and stagnant and sour in decay. If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vim and vigor, then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better world for tomorrow."
I believe this was best summarised by popular beat combo The Beastie Boys in their song "fight for your right (to party)"
Although I fear that the old order has moved too easily, just not in the direction the youth would like.
Indeed. By contrast, I find in the 2020s I have become increasingly a "grumpy old man", but in a rather different way to the stereotype, mostly complaining that things are too right-wing and illiberal these days, not the converse!
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I was at the University of Bath when Chris Patten spoke at hustings in the Student Union lounge.
Simon Hoggard described it as a "hotbed of student rest".
Busaholic
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Gloster
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Presumably Simon Hoggart.
Enthusiast
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That usually happens to people when they finally realise they no longer know everything.
That was more a result of the dramatic changes in the functioning and purpose of the EEC/EC/EU over that period than a change in voters' opinions. The EEC in 1975 was mis-sold to a gullible electorate as a trading bloc with no ambitions towards the political and legislative unity into which it had evolved by 2016. If it had remained a trading bloc of perhaps no more than a dozen fairly similar nations, with none of those ambitions, Brexit would never have been even a remote possibility.
Hmm... Now what else happened in the forty intervening years? Oh yeah, forty freaking years!
It wasn't miss-sold, nobody in 1975 knew what 2016 or even 1992 was going to bring and how much the world would change.
To a certain extent, since 2016 it's become more evident that a least a part of the Tory party has always wished to blame their problems in someone else.
Until then the EU was always there and easy to blame. Too much red tape, that's down to the EU. Too many people coming here, that's the EU. The reality is that actually a lot of the rules people didn't like didn't actually impact them, and actually made it easier to be a consumer across the EU.
For example, much as older people didn't like changing from pounds and ounces to kgs, it did mean that when they went away they had a better understanding of how much of something they were getting. Likewise the Euro meant that it was easier to understand where was cheaper to be on holiday.
However since 2020 it's been much harder for the "it's the EU" to be the one at "fault" (much of the intermediate time there was still a lot of cases when the EU at fault could be used, but generally declining).
Now it's more likely to be those coming here in boats (even though for every one who does so there's about 4 international students not replacing international students leaving the UK and about 7 others coming here who aren't replacing others leaving, with the gross numbers of each being higher than that - which would be much easier for the government to deal with if they so wished).
The reality is that whatever is happening is much more complex than "extra people is all bad", as clearly more people means more customers for businesses. However, it's also true that too many people without providing services for them is also bad - for example making cuts to budgets to those who provide many of the local services (for example cutting the local government grant, even if that's not increasing it to keep up with inflation) so that librarys, household waste centres, children's centres and the like are closed down whilst the numbers locally to such services are increasing.
There's a good chance that such cuts will actually cost us more than the extra taxes we otherwise might have had to pay.
A classic example, there was a road improvement scheme locally 8 years ago, it introduced a roundabout at one part of a staggered cross roads, the other part had a lot of works done to it to make in left in left out with traffic using the new roundabout and an existing roundabout about 200m to the other side to allow all movements to be made. They are now coming back and realigning the road which was left in left out so it now joins the newer of the two roundabouts.
Not only had that resulted in a lot of wasted construction works for the road which is now being moved, but also typically 15% of the construction budget is basically the cost to get a contractor on site (i.e. their non construction related costs, such as site officers, project management, etc.) so that's another load of money. In addition inflation will have meant that the current works are more costly than they would have been before.
Let's say that the original construction was £100,000 or £150,000 if everything was built in one go, it wouldn't be surprising if the extra works would now be costing closer to another £100,000. In "saving" £50,000 8 years ago it's actually going to cost the highway authority more than if it was all done in one go. Before anyone asks, no there's been no major development nearby and no the junction isn't a cause of significant congestion.
It's then no surprise that government debt has grown from £0.77 trillion when Cameron came to power in 2010 to nearly £2 trillion more at £2.68 trillion in December 2023.
Before anyone says it's all down to COVID and the war in Ukraine in December 2019 it stood at £1.89 trillion, so at most those two events added £0.79 trillion to the debt (which would mean that between 2019 and now we would have seen zero increase in government debt if it wasn't for those events - which given the post trends would have been unlikely), so what accounts for the other at least £1.12 trillion?
Sometimes big numbers are hard for some to get their head around, basically the government has been running up a debt of about £3.30 per day per person. If you were running a deficit of at least £100 per month after 13 years you'd be in a world of trouble, regardless of if your boiler and car had needed replacing or not.
If you thought there was no money left after Gordon Brown, what state are we in now?
Looking again at the small boats, to see if that's the cause of where all that money is going, allowing for £8 million a day on housing asylum seekers for every day of the time the Tories had been in power (and it was no where near that much at the beginning), that cost only accountes for at most £0.04 trillion of that at least £1.12 trillion (or about £3.70 per month of the £100 per month deficit). As such, whilst a part of it, (and if the funding of the decision making process was good, those costs wouldn't have got to that level in the first place) there's a lot more going elsewhere.
Busaholic
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The U.K. were brought into what was mostly known in this country as the European Common Market on 1st January 1973, following a Commons vote that approved it on 29th October 1971. Therefore the referendum that took place under a newish Labour government in June 1975 was asking people whether they wished to continue with these arrangements, which perhaps had had little effect by this stage on the average person here. For my own part, if I'd been asked to cast a vote in a referendum prior to 1973, conducted under a Conservative party jed by Ted Heath, I would have voted 'no' to joining. By 1975 I was much more conflicted, because I could see some advantages and, in the end, for the only time in my life I felt I could not vote one way or the other, because I considered we needed more time to see how it was working out. There is a common misconception among those who weren't around (as adults at least) in 1975 that we were being asked whether we wanted to join the EEC or not. By the way, I'm not suggesting you were ignorant about this.
edwin_m
Veteran Member
I'd say it's more the opposite. The Right often proposes something that looks at first glance to be an obvious solution to a problem, but the (moderate) left will often try to dig deeper into the causes, which is the same as realising you don't know everything and wanting to know more [Edit: I should add that I believe sometimes the left goes too far in this]. This is perhaps most obvious in law and order, where the Right is more likely to want increased punishments and the left will be more likely to favour rehabilitation. I make an exception for the far left, who often seem to be saying that extreme socialism is the solution to all problems and have more in common with the far right in that respect (and others).
Leaving the EU in 2016 was mis-sold to a gullible electorate in very many ways.
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There is certainly a stronger argument for mis-selling in 2016 than 1975.
I was at Warwick, late sixties/ early seventies. There was unrest, it was in the papers. Soc Soc was supreme. And it wasn't those of us who were not traditional university material that were in the vanguard. It was largely those who still had their silver spoon!
Almost certainly most have moved at least a little towards the right.
Soc Soc = Socialist Society (left of Corbyn).
Busaholic
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Barristers and even judges, I expect.
One of the Law Department's lecturers was known to be pretty radical, so quite likely
At least one was a fairly senior civil servant and one worked for the BBC.
My theory is that the higher up the food chain you are the more you moved to the right.
My parents were not particularly political, I'm not sure my father voted, certainly not regularly (home 6:30 - 7:00, tea, drying up, read the paper), mum voted the way her father advised her to. They were typical of adults in our and neighbouring streets, I don't remember anyone expressing political views (even my grandfather kept those to himself), they just wanted to get through till tomorrow/ next week/ month. There would be political posters at local election time but mainly because a councillor lived two streets and if you needed help, he was the 'go to ..' person.
When I went to university, I was really surprised at how radical some people were, many of whom were privately educated. The likes of them must have moderated their views as, besides a few outliers, the most left-ministers in my life-time have been in office in my infancy. We have become more middle class so less significant movement as people age.
I'm with you on that in that I had no serious political views until I went to university and left home in 1980, my parents were centre-right Guardian readers and my dad supported the SDP in due course, but I didn't feel as if I could have my own views when I was at home.
Once I'd left I realised I agreed with a lot that the Conservatives were doing, and voted for them in the 1980s and would have voted for John Major in 1992 except I was abroad.
However 1997 was like the next election will be, nobody in their right mind will vote Conservative and I certainly didn't then.
I then voted LibDem because I didn't trust Blair or Brown, and the Conservatives went gradually bonkers.
I might have voted Conservative in 2017, ironically, because I thought Theresa May was making the best of a bad job, but my candidate for MP became Esther McVey so I couldn't vote for her.
In 2019 I voted for anyone likely to defeat Boris Johnson, and will vote tactically against the Conservatives again next time.
I don't think I've changed, I'm kind-of middle-ground Conservative, but all the MPs I admired were sacked by Boris Johnson and I don't think much of the remaining ones.
I've become more radical over my life since university, because I feel that society has more of a duty of care towards those less fortunate than me.
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I've given this some thought overnight. I wonder whether the increase in the the role of women has made a difference, that, in the past, it appeared that people moved to the right because the views of (at least some) men altered noticeably, and women were kept in the background. Just a thought.
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