Election? What election?

[Des]

That is very funny indeed. Genius in fact.

[Neil Foxlee]

When he makes the inevitable speech justifying his decision to condem us, I bet that Corporal Clegg will make at least one reference to "the national interest", one "to ensure stability", and one "fairer politics".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8676579.stm

Damn, I knew I should have taken you up on that!

[Neil Foxlee]

Far be it for me to suggest that Cameron could be taken to be combining a high five with a certain salute...

PS Theresa May as Home Secretary??

[Mighty Joe]

So let me get this straight, if you go to an expensive private school you automaticallly cannot understand the needs of the poorer people and if you come into a position of political power you become a wanker. How prejudice is that? Surely it's about policies not where you were educated?

[joel]

Cameron's Cabinet 2010

Looks good to me. Not a 2.2 to be seen.

[howard male]

Mighty Joe wrote -

So let me get this straight, if you go to an expensive private school you automaticallly cannot understand the needs of the poorer people and if you come into a position of political power you become a wanker.

Yep, that's about the size of it.

[Neil Foxlee]

Doesn't Cameron look like a cardboard cut-out in this picture? He looks curiously two-dimensional, don't you think? (Cue comments.)

[jackdaw version]

I have a very hard time fixing Cameron's face in my mind or telling him apart from the Osborne bloke. There's something shapeshifting about the two of them, or maybe Borg-like. Or is it just that they're two white men of a certain age from a small gene pool?

[Neil Foxlee]

The coalition policy plans:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8677088.stm

Note, for instance, the proposed introduction of a tax on financial transactions (let's hope there's a big increase in capital gains tax too).

So let me get this straight, if you go to an expensive private school you automaticallly cannot understand the needs of the poorer people and if you come into a position of political power you become a wanker. How prejudice is that? Surely it's about policies not where you were educated?

Personally, I would disagree with the "automatically" in the first: George Orwell and Humphrey Lyttelton went to Eton, for instance, and no doubt there are others. However, the point in sending kids to an expensive private school is usually to buy your kids into a privileged peer (pun intended) group, who will usually go on to Oxbridge and thence to positions of wealth and power. Let's just say that a trajectory like that doesn't exactly prepare you for understanding the needs of poorer people.

As for the second, you're quite right, but the name-calling is hardly to be taken seriously. Yes, it is about policies. I'll wait with interest to see what emerges rather than con-dem-ning (sorry) the Cameron-Clegg coalition in advance.

[jackdaw version]

So let me get this straight, if you go to an expensive private school you automaticallly cannot understand the needs of the poorer people and if you come into a position of political power you become a wanker. How prejudice is that? Surely it's about policies not where you were educated?

I think one would have to be unusual to have come from that strata of society and be particularly sensitive to the needs of those at the bottom, or even part way up. I went to a school not far from Eton back about the time Cameron was born. It wasn't quite as hoity-toity as Eton and we didn't have quite such outrageous uniforms. But it tried. The school slogan was, "Beaumont is what Eton was, a good school for the sons of Catholic gentlemen." Or something like that. But I can tell you that the level of social privilege is inbred and expected. I've lived out in the bohemian world for forty years now, mostly in the US, and I still find bits of that expectation and arrogance in myself — and I learn plenty from reading the comments and attempting to understand the attitudes of others around this forum who've come from other backgrounds. So, yes, I think that Cameron is likely to carry around a certain dismissive attitude towards the ordinary common people. Plus, he's a smart wanker and they're often arrogant whatever social background they come from. He should probably join this forum. He'd be quickly properly schooled, I expect.

As for politicians — the Class War wanker posters were equal opportunity. There's also one each for Clegg and Brown and Griffin (if I remember the BNP guy's name correctly).

But then again, Cameron rides a bike and so he can't be all bad.

[Mighty Joe]

It's a good job Tony Blair didn't go to the exclusive Edinburgh School Fettes and Oxford then?!

[Neil Foxlee]

Don't think you'll find many Blairites on this forum. It's a question of a self-reproducing elite regardless of party.

Cameron has actually pledged to send his three kids to state school (if he judges the standards good enough: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/p ... 682523.ece). He may have ridden a bike, on the other hand, but it was a PR stunt: a car followed behind with his things.

[NormanD]

Bliar cared as little about poorer people as did his immediate successor, and now the latest one.

The latest UK unemployment figures show an increase to its highest level since 1994 (the good old days), and youth unemployment at its highest since records began 18 years ago. I've heard a lot today about keeping the markets happy (which means bankers, speculators, shareholders) and nothing about the unemployed.

Business as usual then.

[Neil Foxlee]

Actually, Cameron did mention the poorest in society and I think I heard a reference to the unemployment figures from one or other of them. You can check here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8678143.stm.

It's been said that the coalition has enabled Cameron to modernize the Tories by ten years in one go.

[CantSleepClownsWillGetMe]

So let me get this straight, if you go to an expensive private school you automaticallly cannot understand the needs of the poorer people and if you come into a position of political power you become a wanker. How prejudice is that? Surely it's about policies not where you were educated?

I don't agree with the consensus here. To obtain complete wankerdom it absolutely has to be about policies. So I would qualify your statement thus:

If you go to an expensive private school you automatically cannot understand the needs of the poorer people. However, if you expect us to believe that you will address those needs in any way, shape or form by becoming a member of the Conservative Party, then you are sadly mistaken, and also a wanker.