Why are so many people left-wing?
Poll
Do you generally identify yourself as...
Far left policies failed guys look at the USSR-most of those countries still haven't recovered.
Never mind North Korea!
USA a somewhat right-wing country has absolutely thrived into the world's #1 economy by a long stretch!
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
My thoughts on the EU
I think UK should hold onto the pound with all its might and NEVER use the Euro
I think the UK should leave the EU and trade more with the dynamic economies of the commonwealth
I think the money the UK spends directly funding the [increasingly federal] EU (and the billions lost through excess regulation from the EU) could be much better spent investing in UK infrastructure (especially to revive the areas of the UK outside of the SE and London).
We never got to vote the EU president or the various treaties (no referendum) which have systematically made the EU more federal and more powerful.
The EU wants to fine London for breaching pollution limits-this is utter madness and an abomination to UK sovereignty!
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
Though the Thatcher years saved us!
Never mind North Korea!
USA a somewhat right-wing country has absolutely thrived into the world's #1 economy by a long stretch!
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
My thoughts on the EU
I think UK should hold onto the pound with all its might and NEVER use the Euro
I think the UK should leave the EU and trade more with the dynamic economies of the commonwealth
I think the money the UK spends directly funding the [increasingly federal] EU (and the billions lost through excess regulation from the EU) could be much better spent investing in UK infrastructure (especially to revive the areas of the UK outside of the SE and London).
We never got to vote the EU president or the various treaties (no referendum) which have systematically made the EU more federal and more powerful.
The EU wants to fine London for breaching pollution limits-this is utter madness and an abomination to UK sovereignty!
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
Though the Thatcher years saved us!
(edited 11 years ago)
Scroll to see replies
Original post by Izzyeviel
A lot of people would argue the USSR wasn't truly socialist.
how do you figure that?
baring in mind communism and socialism are both cut from the same deranged cloth
Anyhow the USSR was undeniably left-wing and FAILED miserably and cost millions of lives (especially in the 1930s)
(edited 11 years ago)
Original post by a729
Socialism failed guys look at the USSR-most of those countries still haven't recovered.
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
this isnt you, okay.
Original post by a729
USSR= Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
how do you figure that?
baring in mind communism and socialism are both cut from the same deranged cloth
how do you figure that?
baring in mind communism and socialism are both cut from the same deranged cloth
If I call myself Batman it doesn't mean I am Batman....
Original post by a729
Socialism failed guys look at the USSR-most of those countries still haven't recovered.
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
In the Uk :
We are too soft on crime. Spending more on food for prisoners than patients is a disgrace!
We sell ourselves short and stick with the EU which costs us over £40 million a day (never mind the costs of all the legislation and regulations which stifle growth) and is totally necessary as we have the WTO and UN
We have allowed the Welfare state to grow out of control
We have allowed government spending to increase as well as debt meaning we are paying more and more each day to service the national debt
We need a strong leader who is not a populist.
Maybe a Thatcher-style leader (but with paid more attention to the social effects of their policies).
We desperately need a move not to the right or left but a move to Fairness for the law abiding and taxpayers
I know I'm risk of getting negged for this but I have to speak the truth. The move towards the left/socialism has slowly removed the Great from Great Britain.
The EU is about free trade, hardly the stuff of Lenin's fantasy.
Also, you may need a bigger platform then an internet forum for students if you hope to achieve this, a good starting point would be a seat in the HoC.
Original post by Harrow.7
Socialism, if done by the book, is the greatest system in the world...unfortunately, it has been abused and tarnished by the USSR, N Korea etc...
How?
If there's no reward for working harder than the rest , we'd all be in trouble
And as the beloved Maggie said the biggest problem with Socialism is when you run out of other people's money!!
Your poll completely ignores right wing liberals and left wing authoritarians. Good going OP.
Original post by HarveyCanis
Your poll completely ignores right wing liberals and left wing authoritarians. Good going OP.
i wanted a definite conclusion - the less options the better- I could probably have put as many as 10 options lool
Sorry you feel left out....
Most of your arguments are based on conjecture
You can be sympathetic to the principles of the left (equality of opportunity, eradication of hierarchies, everyone being guaranteed a decent standard of living) without being some raving communist
Countries like Norway are softer on crime than we are and their reoffending rates and overall crime rates are lower, maybe instead of knee jerk reactions we could try to emulate their success?
You can be sympathetic to the principles of the left (equality of opportunity, eradication of hierarchies, everyone being guaranteed a decent standard of living) without being some raving communist
Countries like Norway are softer on crime than we are and their reoffending rates and overall crime rates are lower, maybe instead of knee jerk reactions we could try to emulate their success?
(edited 11 years ago)
I might be wrong but I think a lot of left wing people would not call themselves socialists.
Original post by a729
USSR= Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
how do you figure that?
baring in mind communism and socialism are both cut from the same deranged cloth
how do you figure that?
baring in mind communism and socialism are both cut from the same deranged cloth
I think you need to consider degrees of separation, Communism in execution was nearer to Fascism than it ever was to socialism.
Socialism has never had a stated aim of controlling and directing all the means of production, in fact if you consider the last UK Labour government as socialist, andIi am not that sure they really were, there is very little distiction between them and the current government, arguments are very much about means not beliefs.
As to "why are so many people left wing", that is likely a function of this forum which I suspect is mainly populated by younger individuals. People's political views tend to be far more polarised when they are younger and in the main appear to drift more to the centre as they age, certainly from the left. This may be a function of experience and life but I strongly suspect that as individuals over their life amass more wealth they become less keen on the redistributive ethos of socialism. From experience I have noted that those who start out in their youth to the right tend to more often stay of the right but that may be more a reflection of the individuals I knew at university rather than a societal observation.
This is so flawed.
For a start the UK is not close to being socialist. On top of that, you've used the archaic right/left rather than even right-liberal/right-authoritarian and you've not explained whether your asking for our social or economic opinion.
I am a right-liberal as are many people.
For a start the UK is not close to being socialist. On top of that, you've used the archaic right/left rather than even right-liberal/right-authoritarian and you've not explained whether your asking for our social or economic opinion.
I am a right-liberal as are many people.
All of those views appear to have come straight out of the Daily Mail or similar, without any critical analysis whatsoever.
Views that are derided by the more rabid bits of the right as 'left wing' are more often than not formulated by reference to evidence rather than knee-jerk reactions. Addressing your concerns in order:
Prison policy - treating prisoners well stops them re-offending. Regardless of how awful it is that prisoners are treated like human beings, it works, so the standard left-wing policy on prisons is to make them places of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The EU makes us far more money in the long run than we put into it, and has other intangible benefits which don't factor into a purely financial calculation, so the left supports it, in general. And there's absolutely no evidence that regulation stifles growth.
The welfare state is expensive, certainly. But to simply remove it is to let people starve, which is decidedly un-British. There's another alternative, which is to raise the minimum wage to be in line with the living wage, but the right doesn't like that idea (apparently it'll 'stifle growth', just like the introduction of the minimum wage didn't). And to pre-empt anyone who'd like to rant about families who've not worked in three generations and get a free house and car off the government, living in luxury, this doesn't happen - more evidence-based argument there.
And government spending increases all the time anyway. It always has, in good times and bad. It's an economic fact that things get more expensive. The government's obligations are (rightly) so numerous that spending has to be high.
Thatcher was a disaster. A leader who isn't populist to some degree is one without a proper mandate to rule.
And finally; The word 'great' in Great Britain doesn't mean 'good', it just serves to differentiate it from Brittany.
Views that are derided by the more rabid bits of the right as 'left wing' are more often than not formulated by reference to evidence rather than knee-jerk reactions. Addressing your concerns in order:
Prison policy - treating prisoners well stops them re-offending. Regardless of how awful it is that prisoners are treated like human beings, it works, so the standard left-wing policy on prisons is to make them places of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The EU makes us far more money in the long run than we put into it, and has other intangible benefits which don't factor into a purely financial calculation, so the left supports it, in general. And there's absolutely no evidence that regulation stifles growth.
The welfare state is expensive, certainly. But to simply remove it is to let people starve, which is decidedly un-British. There's another alternative, which is to raise the minimum wage to be in line with the living wage, but the right doesn't like that idea (apparently it'll 'stifle growth', just like the introduction of the minimum wage didn't). And to pre-empt anyone who'd like to rant about families who've not worked in three generations and get a free house and car off the government, living in luxury, this doesn't happen - more evidence-based argument there.
And government spending increases all the time anyway. It always has, in good times and bad. It's an economic fact that things get more expensive. The government's obligations are (rightly) so numerous that spending has to be high.
Thatcher was a disaster. A leader who isn't populist to some degree is one without a proper mandate to rule.
And finally; The word 'great' in Great Britain doesn't mean 'good', it just serves to differentiate it from Brittany.
Original post by ZADS
All of those views appear to have come straight out of the Daily Mail or similar, without any critical analysis whatsoever.
Views that are derided by the more rabid bits of the right as 'left wing' are more often than not formulated by reference to evidence rather than knee-jerk reactions. Addressing your concerns in order:
Prison policy - treating prisoners well stops them re-offending. Regardless of how awful it is that prisoners are treated like human beings, it works, so the standard left-wing policy on prisons is to make them places of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Some people commit crime in part because they find prison easier than getting a job
The EU makes us far more money in the long run than we put into it, and has other intangible benefits which don't factor into a purely financial calculation, so the left supports it, in general. And there's absolutely no evidence that regulation stifles growth.
How , do you work that out...
We have a trade deficit with them as well as a net loser in funding the EU
The welfare state is expensive, certainly. But to simply remove it is to let people starve, which is decidedly un-British. There's another alternative, which is to raise the minimum wage to be in line with the living wage, but the right doesn't like that idea (apparently it'll 'stifle growth', just like the introduction of the minimum wage didn't). And to pre-empt anyone who'd like to rant about families who've not worked in three generations and get a free house and car off the government, living in luxury, this doesn't happen - more evidence-based argument there.
I didn't say remove the welfare state- it needs to be reformed so this doesn't happen (http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/waste/2011/08/unemployed-housing-benefit-claimants-multi-million-pound-house-benefits-scandal.html)
I don't think I know anyone personally who can afford to buy a house of that value...do you?
And government spending increases all the time anyway. It always has, in good times and bad. It's an economic fact that things get more expensive. The government's obligations are (rightly) so numerous that spending has to be high.
When it has so much waste and misuse of public funds that is especially true- benefit fraud, expenses scandal,etc....
Thatcher was a disaster. A leader who isn't populist to some degree is one without a proper mandate to rule.
She won 3 elections and might have beaten the unpopular Kinnock if she got the chance in 1992 so she did have a mandate
Her policies revived the UK -though at great cost
And finally; The word 'great' in Great Britain doesn't mean 'good', it just serves to differentiate it from Brittany.
Views that are derided by the more rabid bits of the right as 'left wing' are more often than not formulated by reference to evidence rather than knee-jerk reactions. Addressing your concerns in order:
Prison policy - treating prisoners well stops them re-offending. Regardless of how awful it is that prisoners are treated like human beings, it works, so the standard left-wing policy on prisons is to make them places of rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Some people commit crime in part because they find prison easier than getting a job
The EU makes us far more money in the long run than we put into it, and has other intangible benefits which don't factor into a purely financial calculation, so the left supports it, in general. And there's absolutely no evidence that regulation stifles growth.
How , do you work that out...
We have a trade deficit with them as well as a net loser in funding the EU
The welfare state is expensive, certainly. But to simply remove it is to let people starve, which is decidedly un-British. There's another alternative, which is to raise the minimum wage to be in line with the living wage, but the right doesn't like that idea (apparently it'll 'stifle growth', just like the introduction of the minimum wage didn't). And to pre-empt anyone who'd like to rant about families who've not worked in three generations and get a free house and car off the government, living in luxury, this doesn't happen - more evidence-based argument there.
I didn't say remove the welfare state- it needs to be reformed so this doesn't happen (http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/waste/2011/08/unemployed-housing-benefit-claimants-multi-million-pound-house-benefits-scandal.html)
I don't think I know anyone personally who can afford to buy a house of that value...do you?
And government spending increases all the time anyway. It always has, in good times and bad. It's an economic fact that things get more expensive. The government's obligations are (rightly) so numerous that spending has to be high.
When it has so much waste and misuse of public funds that is especially true- benefit fraud, expenses scandal,etc....
Thatcher was a disaster. A leader who isn't populist to some degree is one without a proper mandate to rule.
She won 3 elections and might have beaten the unpopular Kinnock if she got the chance in 1992 so she did have a mandate
Her policies revived the UK -though at great cost
And finally; The word 'great' in Great Britain doesn't mean 'good', it just serves to differentiate it from Brittany.
I mean Great in the emotional/patriotic way
Original post by a729
x
I know a few people who could afford 2m for a house, don't think it's that rare in central London in particular these days, though it is still a fair way above average.
You might think benefits spending should be cut. Certainly I do. But that Muslim down the road with ten kids is not the way you're going to cut spending because that's not where most of the spending goes. Over half of all welfare spending goes on the elderly. And benefits as a share of national income *fell* under the Labour government. The chart, below, uses DWP and ONS data.
Quick Reply
Related discussions
- Lee Anderson defects to reform
- Germany: Marches against the far right draw over 200,000
- who is donald trump
- Working Class / Left wing football clubs?
- Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??
- How the radical left turned America's cities into slums.
- The Official TSR Fantasy Premier League 2023/24
- Green Party supporting Left Wing Terrorist Jailed
- Michelle Donelan / Freedom of Speech
- A teacher wanted to cane me when I was 14 but I am 28 now
- SOAS or Edinburgh for Law and Anthropology
- international student choosing oxford college
- Wadham College Reputation
- Just how bad are SOAS protests and strikes? Did it affect you?
- Cardiff accomodation
- Realism 30 marker Help - sociology ALEVEL
- Xu Fuyou counted was not epaulets, but beautiful knives
- De-banked for expressing alternative social views
- Politics
- Is TSR a hotbed of conservative right conspiracy theorists?
Latest
Trending
Last reply 1 day ago
Even Europe’s far-right firebrands seem to sense Brexit is a disaster- The GuardianLast reply 2 days ago
Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??Last reply 4 days ago
Sunak rejects offer of youth mobility scheme between EU and UKLast reply 1 week ago
Rayner denies wrongdoing over council house sale amid police reviewLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 3 weeks ago
TSR Big Discussion #1: What should be top priority to protect the environment?Last reply 3 weeks ago
Where do you stand on the political spectrum (8values)? – Take a quiz here!Last reply 3 weeks ago
2024 UK general election speculation and build-up threadLast reply 3 weeks ago
No progress made on half of UK government’s levelling-up targetsLast reply 3 weeks ago
Trump needs a $464m bond in six days. What if he can't get it?Trending
Last reply 1 day ago
Even Europe’s far-right firebrands seem to sense Brexit is a disaster- The GuardianLast reply 2 days ago
Why is the political left now censorious and authoritarian??Last reply 4 days ago
Sunak rejects offer of youth mobility scheme between EU and UKLast reply 1 week ago
Rayner denies wrongdoing over council house sale amid police reviewLast reply 2 weeks ago
TSR Goes Green: How important will the environment be in this year's election?Last reply 3 weeks ago
TSR Big Discussion #1: What should be top priority to protect the environment?Last reply 3 weeks ago
Where do you stand on the political spectrum (8values)? – Take a quiz here!Last reply 3 weeks ago
2024 UK general election speculation and build-up threadLast reply 3 weeks ago
No progress made on half of UK government’s levelling-up targetsLast reply 3 weeks ago
Trump needs a $464m bond in six days. What if he can't get it?
