Thursday 21 April 2011

We Just Want Your Votes, Not Your Opinions....

Lynsey Hanley in CiF on Labour's attempts to woo working class voters:
The worst thing Labour could do is to ditch its "metropolitan elite liberal values" purely because it is being bullied by populists who love to bandy that phrase around. They're the same values I embraced as a provincial working-class teenager, who was desperate to hear a view of life that wasn't paranoid, suspicious, mistrustful, misogynist and racist. These were the grim corollaries of social solidarity, which emphasised sameness over difference.
Wow, she could give Liz Jones lessons in utterly despising her own culture!
From direct and felt experience I appreciate that the repeated experience of unwelcome change is important to understanding aspects of a collective working-class outlook – if we can pin down such a thing. But you can't treat the symptoms of dispossession as though they're inherently worthy of preservation.
Translation: 'I loathe the culture I came from and I want to do everything in my power to change it to the one I prefer, now vote for the things I want, you ignorant, miserable peasants!'.

I can't understand why this isn't going down well, can you?

7 comments:

PT said...

Ms Hanley has the saving grace of writing incoherently, which saves normal people the trouble of trying to understand her. I suspect her trouble stems from the urge she feels to cram as many Leftist buzzwords and phrases as possible into each tortuous sentence.

Feuillet said...

I love how the working class thought that labour party is fighting for them, when the truth is labour party want the working class to fight for them.

What is the difference between being ruled by a elitist government or by rich capitalist... especially when Bill Gate won't ban light buib lawl.

Captain Haddock said...

What would the Left do, without the phony "Class War" to sustain them ?

Without it, their existence would become even more irrelevant ..

Dogma Woof said...

"as a provincial working-class teenager, who was desperate to hear a view of life that wasn't paranoid, suspicious, mistrustful, misogynist and racist."

There you have it, dear. The things you longed for are all firmly locked into the Socialist condition: everything you despised then is embodied in the left-wing you love today. There's a ton of paranoia, suspicion, mistrust, misogyny and racism all there in the Labour movement. Oh, and a fair bit of violence, pettiness, regulated thinking and downright nastiness.

The difference, Lynsey, is you had a chance back then to reject all that left-wing tripe and political hogwash, and live your own life by your own ideals. You could have been the person you wanted, but you chose to hang on to the left's soiled shirt-tails instead.

But there you go, girl. Enjoy what you chose.

Trevor said...

as a provincial working-class teenager, who was desperate to hear a view of life that wasn't... [blah blah blah}

I attended school and lived on the same (99.9% white) estate as Ms Hanley. My hormone-addled teenage self was desperate for many things but, strange boy that I must have been, socialist bromides were not on the list.

Bucko said...

I read those two passages a few times but try as I might, I couln't make head nor tail of that arse wibble

JuliaM said...

"Ms Hanley has the saving grace of writing incoherently..."

As do so many of CiF's contributors! I can honestly say it's the site that leaves me scratching my head with puzzlement most often...

"What is the difference between being ruled by a elitist government or by rich capitalist... especially when Bill Gate won't ban light buib lawl."

Or if he does, it'll be a personal whim, and not dressed up as 'something that's good for us all'...

"The difference, Lynsey, is you had a chance back then to reject all that left-wing tripe and political hogwash, and live your own life by your own ideals. "

Some people are leaders. Most are sheep.

" My hormone-addled teenage self was desperate for many things but, strange boy that I must have been, socialist bromides were not on the list."

:D