UKC

Politically, not trouser-wise, that is.

According to Churchill "If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.”

When I left art college twenty years ago, I was a young idealist. After twenty years of Thatcher I wanted a fairer society where the haves supporting the have-nots. I'd witnessed the greed and excesses of the eighties, and graduated into the recession of the early 90s.

Fast forward to today and the important things to me are my family, my business and trying to maintain a reasonable standard-of-living and planning for the future. My politics are sympathetic to the ideals I held back then, but in practice are probably centre-right in many instances.

In reply to FrankBooth:

No change in belief, not active anymore in terms of protests

In reply to FrankBooth:


I am not quite as old as you, but I think I broadly agree. That said, I find the Tories pretty repugnant at the best of times.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Eleven


I've always been nailed to the centre

In reply to JJL:

"I've always been nailed to the centre'

Wow! Does Amnesty International know about this?

In reply to FrankBooth: I've certainly become more intolerant of the insidious Americanisation of the English language

In reply to FrankBooth:

In a crude sense I have moved from 'left' to 'right', but I prefer to think I have moved from authoritarian to liberal.

In reply to toad:



Me too.

I've moved leftwards. But probably only because I started out from my father's political views, which make Eric Pickles look lily-livered and irresolute.

I've been Wet Left for quite some time now. I care a lot about some political ideals, in particular for freedom, and for protecting the vulnerable. About other debates, such as privatisation vs. nationalisation, I really couldn't give a monkey's cuss. Whatever works!

In reply to FrankBooth: I think as I am getting older I am becoming like a socialist dictator.

In reply to FrankBooth:

As I get older the fraction of people I consider a complete waste of oxygen has grown considerably. I have changed my opinions on both lefty and centre-right position I once held, but generally I have just become more intolerant towards stupidity on either side of the political spectrum.

CB

In reply to ByEek:

Quite agree. I know I'm in a (very small) minority, but I'm actually quite a fan of the coalition - the Lib Dems for all their faults, have performed a decent job of keeping the Tories in check. I like the idea of consensual politics - it just seems more grown up.

I've no doubt that given half a chance they (the Tories) would have buckled to the opinion of their grassroots NIMBYs and swiftly lurched way to the right of where policies are today.

I also think that Blair's tenure was spectacularly wasteful - he had the mandate to make monumental reform and threw it all away by backing Bush.

In reply to cb294:

As I have got older my narrow waist and wide ideals have swapped places.

In reply to FrankBooth: fiscally to the right, socially to the left

In reply to Skip:

This^^^ but i still Drag my apathetic ass out on Protests etc Occasionally.

In reply to FrankBooth:
At the ripe old age of 31 I am in a broadly similar centrist position to where I was as a late teenager, which isn't surprising as a lot of studies seem to suggest you've formed your core position by your late teens.
I'm probably more apathetic about the viewpoints of others, combined with being generally a bit more libertarian.

In reply to Choss:
but i still Drag my apathetic ass out on Protests etc Occasionally.


Why has your donkey lost its enthusiasm?

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Touche sir touche

In reply to iksander:
pretty much describes my views too

In reply to FrankBooth:

Moved from left to right back to left during my voting life. Now very unhappy with both left and right, but tend towards left of centre. I like the ideals of socialism, but understand the importance of capitalism if the country is to have a sound economic future.

In other words I'm nearly 70 and mightily confused!!

In reply to FrankBooth: this might have more to do with gaining assets and wealth... which lend themselves to the right thinking - keeping what you've earnt rather than looking for an even playing field when you are starting out.

In reply to FrankBooth:

My daughter things I'm a right wing dictator who demands full control of her life and finances.

I'd like to think I'm probably further to the left than I was when I was younger. Certainly I have a keener interest in politics and stronger sense of injustice. When I was in my late teens/early teens all I cared about was music, booze, drugs and sex..... happy days.

Mind you any potential suitors who come calling on my daughter will be immediately exterminated. And probably hung on the gable end of my house as a warning to others. So I'm a liberal lefty with extremist right wing tendencies depending on the time of day, my mood and whether I've had too much or too little coffee.

In reply to FrankBooth: Only 16 and politically right wing - don't think i'll change much

In reply to Oliiver:

Yeah right!

In reply to Oliiver:

Quite, sad, but I believe that you believe that.

Have a nice life Oliver, very possibly, untouched by human compassion.

In reply to FrankBooth: I went the other way - I was right wing in my youth and am centre left now.

In reply to Jim C: eh, well we need some "right wingers" to make "left wingers"

In reply to Oliiver:

If you say so, I'm sure you are right, maybe I have just been unlucky with the right wingers I have met. Good and bad on both extremes I guess.

If you had to trust your life to someone only based on knowledge of their politics, would you feel safer with selecting a right or left winger, or would you have no preference ?

( Don't let Oliiver, or PopShot sway you)

In reply to Jim C:
In your two posts you've perfectly summed up the position of believing that people who disagree with your politics are inferior human beings. In my humble opinion this says more about you than anyone else, and is not a helpful starting point for any political discussion.

In reply to FrankBooth:

I think naive idealism isn't only a trait of the left; anyone who believes the 'trickle down economy' and acts of charity by the very rich are going to take care of the poorest and most vulnerable isn't scoring any more wisdom-points than those who think Marxism is a good idea anywhere but on paper.

My own most important political journey has been allowing myself to admit when I don't understand an issue enough, rather than to wade in and quote someone I overheard earlier. Entrenched, adversarial politics-as-football-team is crippling America's legislature and I see it creeping in over here.

In reply to Jim C: That's like saying: who'd you like to rescue you - a gay person / black person / white person or a straight person ? sexuality, race or moderate political ideologies don't sway with me if i needed to be rescued.

In reply to MonkeyPuzzle:


I would say it is doing a bit more than creeping, it completely dominates some people, to the point where their attitude to people who disagree with them is as vicious as any racist views.

Which is pretty unfortunate, as some issues are long term and inherently intractable, and just don't have simple pat answers. Trying to use partial or even entire failures at things that are important but are very difficult to get right, just because "the other side" is currently trying is both tribal and childish.

I was actually quite impressed recently when there was some discussion of dubious behaviour by Unite, mostly in Scotland. Some people actually said "yes it was my team, but I really don't like what they were doing" (intimidating the families of management in apparently).

In reply to FrankBooth:

More left in my ideals but more right in how to advance them. Centrist libertarian pretty much.

In reply to Oliiver: Well put. Quite incredible sort of question

In reply to FrankBooth: centre-left to centre right economically.` Unconcerned to liberal verging libertarian socially

In reply to FrankBooth:
I've come to have deeper and deeper contempt for all politicians and, sadly, for the electorate too. Aged 61 and having been round the block a few times, I despair at people voting for the same failed policies. Does nobody read any history? I despise Cameron/Osborne as a pair of lily-livered posh boys but I'll probably end up having to vote for them as the best of a bad lot. I favour small government on the basis that politicians and civil servants seem to screw up everything they touch so the less they do the less irate I become.
Cynical? Moi?

In reply to Oliiver:

No it's not.
In my experience, I would have no clue if any of these groups you cite would be less or more selfish / selfless than the other.

However, based on what views I have experienced being expressed in my own life, on what I hear on TV and radio, views I read in newspapers, and views I hear expressed on these forums, I would have a very good idea of who between a left winger and a right winger, would be a better bet to put themselves out to help me should I need it.

It comes out of their own mouths, you don't have to guess a right wingers views on self help self reliance etc.

In reply to Jim C: Firstly, i think your issue and many other people's issues, is that the boundaries between the right and the left have changed drastically over the last century. I sometimes look at the tory party and question if this really is "conservatism" - i'm a proud "backbench" conservative, yet i still volunteer in the community and help out at a local day centre, for people who've had strokes and other ailments. It really comes down to perception of the term "right wing" Jim.

In reply to Jim C:
it.

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding what "right wingers " mean by self-reliance. It's not let's see how much I can get and sod everyone else, or at least no more than in any other group. It's more an attitude of standing on your own feet and not *expecting* others to provide for you. The idea that this means ignoring someone in distress is bizarre.

As an example, I have some relatives in rural USA. They, in UK terms, are off the scale to the right. However they do far, far more for each other and their own community than would occur in "leftwing" areas here - this includes voluntary fire service provision for instance. They literally rely on themselves for most things, including a lot of food. What they don't expect or want is goverment telling them what to do and charging them for this.

In reply to Oliiver:

Olliver. You've changed! You've grown up!

In reply to Oliiver:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Dont go there.

In reply to dissonance:

Can I call a premature, but inevitable, Godwin's at this point?

In reply to Jim C:


If we're going to go for all out stereotypes, I'll take the Tory through and through Army Officer who fancies himself as a bit of a hero rather than the Labour voting union jobsworth who won't rescue anyone because the risk assessment won't allow it, and anyway, it's not in his job description.

Pretty ridiculous, but then stereotypes tend to be....

Personally, I've probably moved from centre left to centre right. At least in implementation of policies. I've never voted Tory, but most of the local Labour politicians leave me utterly cold. Whereas some of the local Tories politicians have, to my surprise, impressed me. The Lib Dems are just emerging locally, so have yet to prove themselves.

In reply to toad:

It's taken me a full day to get your point.

But, given that "forgotten" is correct, I can see a sort of logic in that particular construction.

In reply to FrankBooth:

Paxman's view in a Radipo Times piece: 'At the next election we shall have a choice between the people who've given us five years of austerity, the people who left us this mess, and the people who signed public pledges that they wouldn't raise student fees, and then did so – the most blatant lie in recent political history," wrote Paxman.

Nuff said

In reply to Wiley Coyote: Agreed, they are all cut from the same cloth...educated to become politicians, nothing more.

Apathy at the voting booth or fringe parties doing very well? I personally like the idea of ditching them all for whichever fringe party takes your fancy...it's the only way things will change IMO if enough of us do this.

In reply to Tom Valentine:
What he might have -- somewhat clumsily, I agree, but I'm in the most awful rush -- said is, "I've certainly become more intolerant of the insidious turning back of the clock several hundred years of the English language."

In reply to FrankBooth: I didn't think that. The wars damaged him but he stuck to his New Labour policies back home didn't he?

I think I've stayed fairly central, left a bit, but would say I've become more liberal. I wonder how much of that is US influence, because seeing social conservatism in action is not nice.

In reply to Carolyn:

Not really talking about politicians Carolyn(whom I would not trust generally)

Just going with my own life experience.

The last right winger I asked a favour of, left me sleeping in a mountain hut in winter cold without a sleeping bag, although he had a spare one (He did not lend out personal items, and I should have remembered mine !)

Not exactly asking him to risk his life, but indicative of a generally selfish nature, fend for yourself type attitute that I have found. (and you hear expressed on here)

Maybe I'm just unlucky in the ones I meet.

In reply to Jim C:
what a scumbag. why didnt you just Take it anyway?

In reply to Jim C: I'm struggling with the concept that he didn't lend you a sleeping bag because he was a "right winger" . I'm sure there were other motives at play.

In reply to Bjartur i Sumarhus:

Or indeed, how how he was known to be a right winger.....

In reply to Carolyn: Or how Jim C knew he had a spare sleeping bag!

In reply to FrankBooth: Jim, would you of lent him a sleeping bag if he had needed one?

In reply to MG:

Let alone why he had a spare sleeping bad with him at all.......

Very strange.

In reply to FrankBooth:

As I've got older, I've become more conservative about the use of Americanisms like "gotten" and "can I please get?".

In reply to teflonpete:
What ^^^ said.

Plus, yes, one does tend to beocme more right-wing as one gets older and realises that ideals have to be paid for- by oneself, not some socialist fairy-like being with unlimited funds.

Sx

In reply to Jim C:


In other words, untestable anecdotes. For what anecdotes are worth, I have frequently come across left-wingers with the very highest of theoretical ideas and the noblest of abstract sentiments, who are deeply self-serving and manipulative in their personal and professional lives. The profession of high-mindedness does not always or even that often, correspond to it actually being shown in any situation where there is ever a serious cost to the person expected to show it.


Perhaps you have a track record of either incompetence or sponging on others and expecting them to look after you when you screw up, and he was aware of it and had had enough.


Maybe you are just the sort of football-team tribalist with a massive chip on their shoulder that I was describing above?

In reply to Simon4:


Yep, I used to work for a couple who slavishly trotted out middle class left wing rhetoric and considered themselves socialists. Greedy, miserable, draconian bastards to work for they were. Paid the minimum wage they could get away with, treated the staff like sh*t (apart from the Australian athlete who worked there that the woman fancied), didn't have a car as cars were a "sign of capitalistic ownership" (although they had their own house) but expected me to deliver goods for them in the evenings in my own vehicle without any pay to cover the time or petrol.

That's not to mention some of the other middle class "socialists" I've met who own multiple houses they rent out for profit...

In reply to teflonpete: I think I prefer Bollinger Bolsheviks to champagne socialists...has a bit more humour

In reply to FrankBooth:

I don't feel like I've changed my views fundamentally, more that I'm slowly and falteringly crystallizing them.

Socially I'm a fully signed up card carrying pinko liberal. Economically I'm undecided but I can see merit and fault in bits of each ideology. Like many I hover, ill informed and disengaged, somewhere just left of the current (UK) center ground.

jk

In reply to jkarran:



As do the vast majority, I suspect. Its a bit like an old mattress, it doesn't matter where you start you tend to roll to the middle.

In reply to Simon4:

Is self awareness one of those made up concepts like empathy in your view?