[David9694]

I posted an earlier version of this a while back – inspired to do update following THAT discussion about all things ULEZ. 

The “manifesto”, in terms of transport, only mentions stopping HS2, but there’s plenty on the usual right-wing obsessions: Brexit, immigration, veterans and climate change.  I had another look because I worry about the ongoing decline of the two main political parties. 

If the Cons stay wedded to Brexit, then we will go into the next GE with all the widespread impoverishment Brexit has ushered in – not helped by Covid, Putin, etc. People generally vote according to their pockets.  I don’t get Labour’s current position on Europe either, but let’s see how that evolves, and even the Cons may also evolve, or even pivot, but time is already running out for them.

Several roads now lead to the horrors of a further lurch to the right in this country.  Let’s hope Labour get the GE landslide the polls are predicting – but we’re still at least a year out from the real campaigning beginning. 

A cycling angle? With the Reform Party and its ilk, Facebook Steve and Nextdoor Dave attain real political influence. It’s not spelt out in the manifesto, but you can see where this is probably heading and what it is likely to mean for cycling.  You can bet that this lot are very much “on the side of hard working drivers” etc. 

As you all know, Dave’s going to “sort the traffic” and no doubt show them lazy planners how it’s done: Steve thinks the Council are corrupt, the police blinkered and is, if he can fit it in to his busy schedule he’s going to “teach them Lycra’s a thing or two.” It won’t concern him that his Mondeo is 3 months out of MoT or that Mrs Steve sometimes drives the kids in it uninsured. 

As vulnerable road users, vulnerable people, we rely a great deal on the rule of law for protection. The rule of law means that we understand what the laws are, they are in general fair, and how they are applied and to whom is even-handed and consistent. 

The fascist position is broadly the opposite – it’s all off-the-cuff to support today’s particular agenda – that’s why the Iain Duncan-Smith “happy to see ULEZ infra vandalised” comment is, as an example, so very worrying.  In the Conservatives, here is a party happy to send signals to enable the mob to attack RNLI stations, beat up immigrants, shout at teachers, doctors etc. 

This right-wing stuff works by allowing/enabling significant privileged groups to to think of themselves as the downtrodden underdog and here is a way to fight back.  The pro Brexit campaign played on people’s ignorance, fears and prejudices exactly as this does. 

It’s all about freedom, innit, less regulation, less tax burden, and damn the climate.  There’s more polar bears now, so it’s fine.  Let’s have open-cast coal mining, lithium mining and fracking. The section on climate change stumbles around like a Friday night drunk, trying to explain he wasn’t being racist to the barman – a denier position emerges, unsurprisingly.

In places, the mask really slips: “We must keep divisive woke ideologies such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology out of the classroom.” – to be honest, I don’t even know what those two are.

The standard enemies are put up – the civil service, the BBC.  Amid all the thrust and parry, there’s nothing  about making a better, more inclusive and cohesive world to live in; arts, sports and culture don’t feature in this barstool view of the world: a dullard’s grim vision.

Don’t be a member of the wrong sort of minority would be my advice, should any of this come to pass. 
 

https://www.reformparty.uk/reformisessential

Topic

[mattw]

I think it may because for

I think it may because for the UK – compared even to many European countries, this stuff is rare.

Compare to France, say. Or the extent of Far Right politics across the four FIGS countries with the UK, or former Eastern Europe.

One of my concerns is that Reform’s search for a future is giong to lead to the blurring of lines, and some of the Tory MPs who have been placed in the dustbin of history by the voters may lose it. My MP is Lee Anderson, and I think he is way out of his depth.

Liz Truss’s support for Trump was a bit of a shocker, even given her fairly loopy history; I don’t think there are many UK politcians who will overlook that Trump is a sex-abuser and a career criminal who has corrupted everything he has touched.

Ex Conlservative MP Andrew Bridgen turning up on stage at the Tommy Robinson rally in Trafalgar Square was also concerning.

[Rich_cb]

You’ve misunderstood my point
You’ve misunderstood my point Rendel. Again.

Your 10% statistic is irrelevant to the discussion about the difficulties faced by the white working class. All it tells us is that overall white people suffer lower levels of deprivation than other groups. It doesn’t tell us anything about the experience of the white working class. It doesn’t even tell us, directly, what percentage of people in deprived areas are white. It’s likely to be a large percentage though based on those quick calculations before.

It’s the thugs who attack people, places of worship, local businesses etc but they are opportunists. The riot is the opportunity. The cause of the riot is multifactorial and, often but not always, includes legitimate grievances.

Those grievances don’t have to be mentioned specifically to be an underlying cause. The grievances are the kindling, the spark can be anything.

[Rendel Harris]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

The point I was making was that you are looking at the percentage of white people overall who live in deprived areas. That is irrelevant. We are specifically looking at white working class people.

Oh lord. Straightforward question, how many white middle class people do you think live in the 10% most deprived areas of the country?

The Tottenham riots and the ensuing riots elsewhere were indeed driven by multiple factors, although certainly my experience living in an affected area (Peckham) was that the majority of participants were indeed violent thugs and the vast majority of the local black working-class population, who might well have had as you say, “some completely legitimate long-standing grievances”, did not participate and were horrified at what happened. However, even if one set of riots might have been driven by social injustice does not mean that all riots are. If the current rioters were protesting about unfair treatment of the white working-class and the protests spilled over into violence, that would be one matter, these are people who are specifically targeting people of other ethnicities and trying to burn down their places of worship, set fire to hostels in which they are staying and so on. They are motivated by racial hatred and fascist ideology, not “legitimate long-standing grievances”.

 

[Rich_cb]

The point I was making was
The point I was making was that you are looking at the percentage of white people overall who live in deprived areas. That is irrelevant. We are specifically looking at white working class people.

Overall, off the top of my head, there are about 45m white British people, so 4.5m live in deprived areas. There are about 1.5m of Pakistani heritage so about 500k live in deprived areas.

So overall white people make up a very large proportion of those in deprived areas and white people in deprived areas do worse than almost any other ethnic group in the same areas when you look at things like educational attainment, access to university etc.

Riots are obviously multifactorial but denying there are systemic factors at play is a bit naïve.

How did you feel about the Tottenham riots? Was that just violent thugs? Or were there multiple factors that drove it, including some completely legitimate longstanding grievances that had affected the local community?

[chrisonabike]

OT (not Reform) but I wonder

OT (just recent rioting) but I wonder given that misperceptions and complete fabrications are out and about in the Meejasphere whether pediatricians are looking over their shoulders again?  (News: GPs and health practitioners advised to be vigilant).

[chrisonabike]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Have a read of the link, nice discussion of recent disorder and the groups involved. When you look at measurable metrics like healthcare, education, social mobility etc. the white working class and, in particular, white working class males really do come out amongst the least advantaged groups in the UK. Globally it’s obviously a different story but it’s quite hard for most people in the UK to consider themselves part of the global elite, hardest of all for those who are far from top of the UK table.

The link may be interesting (view from a child of immigrants) but didn’t have things to say about the “white working class” per se?

Nor about (for just one example) the complexities of how sex differences affect how people are doing.  Women – where they work – still almost always earn less than men, and less overall (ONS overview 2023 here, general UK gov report 2024 here).  (With some interesting quirks – and noting that it’s complicated because they still tend to take different kinds of work e.g. part-time as they still do the bulk of caring duties).

Not shocking to me though if men particularly – although genuinely not doing well – feel they have by far the worst of it.  Pretty sure that is nothing new under the sun, even allowing for recent trends (e.g. folks making political capital or indeed cash out of that online).

And yet … AFAIK most “white working class men” (never mind “people”) aren’t rioting?

(This is a giant topic – essentially “the future” – so that’ll do from me!)

[Rendel Harris]

Oh really, Rich, you are a

Oh really, Rich, you are a funny old sausage. Clearly in that metric it is going to be the white working class referred to – middle class people don’t tend to live in the 10% most deprived areas, in my experience.

I wouldn’t suggest for a moment that you approve of the riots. What you are saying though is that they are understandable because if people are given a raw deal for a long time they get angry and will riot, I reject that as an explanation or excuse. The current rioting is specifically confined to a small minority of hate-filled racist far right thugs who are in no way representative of the wider white working class; anecdotally mates in Liverpool and Bristol have told me there are more white working class people out on the streets opposing the rioters (who have often come from outside the area) than there are joining in with them. One of the most heartening aspects of the whole sorry business was the way working class people in Southport came out the morning after the riots to help clean up and repair the mosque that was attacked. Saying oh it must be frustrated white working class males ignores the fact that many of these people are simply fascists seizing their opportunity. I should not be in the least surprised if many of them, like the travelling football hooligans of yore, turn out to have reasonable jobs and relatively comfortable lifestyles.

[Rich_cb]

Neatly lumping all white
Neatly lumping all white people together.

When we are specifically discussing the white working class that sort of statistic is meaningless. Have a look at the statistics for deprived white educational attainment.

“Access to higher education: The proportion of White British pupils who were FSM-eligible starting higher education by the age of 19 in 2018/19 was 16%, the lowest of any ethnic group other than traveller of Irish heritage and Gypsy/Roma.”

Interestingly the link I posted discussed rioting involving people of Pakistani heritage attacking people of different ethnic backgrounds. Have a read. Compare and contrast the coverage with that of the current rioting.

I don’t approve of the riots btw. If we don’t try and understand the underlying causes then preventing recurrence becomes significantly more difficult.

[wycombewheeler]

David9694 wrote:

second point is that JSO protests for example are pretty peaceful by comparison – a bit of orange liquid, a disruptive sit-in – very little about singling out members of ethnic minorities and harassing, bullying and assaulting them. 

any violence at JSO protests is normally from (surpise) drivers. Be interesting to see if any of these rioters, or the instigators of the riots face sanctions as severe as environemental protestors are facing. 

[wycombewheeler]

brooksby wrote:

It doesn’t even have to be done as satire, which is the scary thing.

As far as I can see, you have a bunch of self-described patriots who demonstrate their patriotism by looting shops, burning buildings and throwing bricks at policemen.

Policemen who are probably about as right wing as the rioters in general. In the states they would just stand back and let the “protesters” storm the capital, but here in the UK they are a lot more professional and will actually defend the mosques etc, even if deep down they sympathise with some of the protestors concerns

[Rendel Harris]

We all know how are you love

We all know how are you love a graph or chart, so try this one from the government in 2020: white British people are the ethnicity least likely to live in the 10% most deprived neighbourhoods apart from Chinese, Indian and white Irish/white other ethnicities. People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity are three times more likely to live in the most deprived neighbourhoods than white British. If people of Pakistani ethnicity were rioting and trying to burn down synagogues on the basis of an erroneous belief that a Jewish person had committed some awful crime, would you be so understanding of that as you appear to be of the current situation?

 

[Rich_cb]

Have a read of the link, nice
Have a read of the link, nice discussion of recent disorder and the groups involved.

When you look at measurable metrics like healthcare, education, social mobility etc. the white working class and, in particular, white working class males really do come out amongst the least advantaged groups in the UK.

Globally it’s obviously a different story but it’s quite hard for most people in the UK to consider themselves part of the global elite, hardest of all for those who are far from top of the UK table.

[chrisonabike]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

FWIW I think if you marginalise any group for long enough you’ll get riots. The white working class get a pretty terrible deal on just about any measurable metric. That leads to anger which is often, as in these recent riots, horribly misdirected.

At least it wasn’t statues this time, right?

I am not a sociologist and I’m sure this is a vast oversimplification … but I suspect the white working class (especially white working class men) isn’t actually at the bottom of the pile.

It often seems to be it’s actually not those who really are at the bottom who get the most punchy. (Reasons easy to guess at).

“Disadvantage” is an inherently relative perception (because humans) unless you’re an academic.  Of course “doing well relative to most of the world and indeed history” has almost no effect on people’s feelings.  (Mind you – if we all were suddenly starving that might generate some action).

I think pretty much all human societies / systems are built around some inequality.  I suspect our current system (current strain of “businessism”) has contributed to multiplying the distances between top and bottom.  At the same time as it has given many lower down a bit more power e.g. being able to look up incorrect news on the internet then drive to a riot…

Talking of that – is this a bit “hard-working-drivers” (to link the topic back to transport)?

Was thinking that every few years – going back in my memory – there seem to be sporadic riots over what to outside observers seems “not very much”.  I was wondering about the correlation between unseasonal weather (especially heat) and the same?

What other recent instances of violent disorder are you thinking of? (Hoping to avoid the danger of getting into a “these ones are worse than that one” which is likely pointless).

[Rich_cb]

I think you’ve just taken
I think you’ve just taken something you don’t like – riots – and blamed it on other things you don’t like.

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the other recent instances of violent disorder.

This article was in The Times today, it raises some interesting points about how our society reacts to violent disorder.

https://unherd.com/2024/08/how-britain-ignored-its-ethnic-conflict/

FWIW I think if you marginalise any group for long enough you’ll get riots.

The white working class get a pretty terrible deal on just about any measurable metric. That leads to anger which is often, as in these recent riots, horribly misdirected.

[chrisonabike]

“Come to (insert frisky UK

“Come to (insert frisky UK town here) and enjoy a night out in one of the UK’s famous A&E units”.

Isn’t “adventure tourism” a thing again with the influencers?  The locals travelling rent-a-mob certainly provide “lively local customs” which would look striking in your TikTok…

[Author]

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