Todays society

People fell out with Labour , they lost touch with there core voters in the Blair golden years . What Labour fail to grasp is they've only been succeseful in 3 out of the last 10 GEs . They've become a metropoliton " cult " with very limited atraction to the genuine working class . They were decimated in the last GE - they were decimated in the local elections , despite the Government mistakes they're miles behind in all polls , yet Groups like Momentum etc reckon its because the whole of the country are right wing little inglanders . They fail to realise voters do not like their policies , they dont like the idea of people like Eddie Izzard and Owen Jones being pushed forward as : spokesman " for the working class " . They cry about unfair advantages for the "white working class " , i'm older ( maybe not wiser ) than most and remember Bradford in the 70s , i remember playing football with and against black and asian teams , we went to VP together we mixed together at School ( i went to Belle vue which was a near 0n 50 - 50 mix ) race creed and colour was rarely mentioned we all got on together . Everybody just got on with their lives . It changed in the later years and became more insular , the more " enlightened people who promote percieved racism " the worse it will become . The vast majority of people get on , its the radicals on both sides of the coin who stir up the trouble .

 

Interesting on the 50-50 mix at Belle vue...in the 60's at Grange it was 99.9-00.1), yep only 1 black lad in the whole school, and what a smart, well respected friendly lad he was too.. and a good cricketer by all accounts..

 

The Main catchment area for Belle vue in the 60s was Maningham / Carlisle rd etc , i lived at Odsal ( but my grandad ex Belle vue ) insisted i went . We all got on played in the same football - Cricket and Rugby teams , we all hung around together and there was very little inter racial trouble . Its all changed now which is such a shame .

 

Thats my point , this has started occuring in another generation who to be fair didn't have the problems some asians / blacks faced when they 1st started arriving .

 

"Liberal elite bubble" - what a load of lazy right wing twaddle.
There's nothing 'elite' about me or any of my friends. My family background is stuffed full of dockers. I passed the 11+ in 1967 but was denied entry to my local grammar school and sent to a second tier Technical High School full of bright working class kids like me. I'm the first member of my extended family on either side to go to university and came to Bradford because it was the only university that would have me, having been rejected by Birmingham and East Anglia.
I worked as a social worker for 32 years and when I left in 2016 I earned the princely sum of £33k, despite various post qualification credentials and acknowledged expertise in my mental health law field. Teachers and social workers aren't any kind of elite. They earn average white collar salaries that are considerably lower than many working in the private sector with similar qualifications and responsibilities. Yes, nearly all have gone to university, but that's no longer 'elite', it's now the norm for half the nation's kids and around a third of the population has a degree.
The real elite are the public school twats who currently run our country and stifle social mobility with their old school tie, jobs for the boys connections. They perpetrate this lazy 'liberal elite' bollocks because it masks their stranglehold on our corridors of power, and people like you suck it up and swallow it whole. We are a nation of serfs who put up with this crap and might as well still be doffing our caps to the bosses.
Like I said, more people voted against the Tories than for them. The electoral odds are stacked in their favour and they'll continue gerrymandering the system to make sure that continues to be the case.

 

Isn't that a really poor point?

Has there ever been a government who got more than 50% of the popular vote? Its not particular to one party.

 

And that's a really lazy comment coming from you, why not say an effing lot more people voted AGAINST' Labour than for them.. ?

 

It's not just religion. It's a two way process. White flight has been equally contributory. As white people have moved out of areas where immigrants settled so more immigrants moved into those areas because a) there are people there they relate to
b) the housing is affordable and available
c) they aren't welcome in the white areas
So we've ended up with a city centre almost entirely populated by immigrants and their descendants and surrounding areas almost entirely white occupied. And apart from sometimes rubbing shoulders at work, the two sets of communities have nothing in common and see no need to mix.

 

I'm not saying it is. But Trevor is trying to say that the vast majority of the country is currently right of centre and that people with left of centre views are a small minority in a 'liberal elite' bubble'. Whereas, the reality is that more people voted against the right wing party than for it, which demonstrates that there are many more people with liberal/left of centre views than he sees from his own right perspective.

 

Have you been round Moore ave - Lidget green - odsal- lately ? . I think this idea is well passed its sell by date .

 

Because that's not the point I'm trying to make, is it? It's not my fault if you wilfully misinterpret my post.
People like you and Trevor imagine that most of the country is as right wing as you are, just because the people you mix with share your views. But the fact that more people voted against the right wing party than for it demonstrates that that's not the case.

 

For 7 of the last 10 GEs ? Labour ( apart from the Blair years ) haven't formed a government for 50 years , so more people actually voted against an ultra left wing party by your reckoning .

 

It's not necessarily about wings, you made it specifically about parties.

No government since World War 2 has got more than 50% of the vote. That's not a gerrymandering or rigging of the system though, it's simply a multi party election.

If anything the most skewed result when judged against the popular vote was the 2005 Labour landlslide win which only had about 3% between the main parties.

The solution to your perceived idea would be for the left wing parties to come together under one banner. However, the fact that they can't currently organise themselves under the current one - and are perceived to be leaning more towards student/coffee shop/London liberal/protest views rather than their historical working class roots - is a failing of the left, not a failing of the system.

 

What? Lidget Green is very close to the City Centre. Moore avenue is just above Great Horton, which has been a heavily Asian area for decades. Of course the size of the Asian area has expanded over the years as their population has grown.
But how many Asians live in Baildon, Nab Wood, Wyke etc?

 

Your point was made about the City centre areas , i corrected your assumption . Also more white families live in social housing because they can't get on the property ladder , yet most of the areas Gt Horton - Lidget green have very little non private accomodation , so that again opens up more questions .

 

There is a split, no doubt. But I honestly think that most people in this country are reasonably middle ground, holding sensible opinions and just wanting to get on with their life and get on with their fellow citizens. I think much of the polarisation is deliberately stirred by the media and then exacerbated on social media. Its the minority, with loud and 'extreme' views that get the air time and attention. There's a battleground on race, now on gender. I think most people are getting sick of it tbh.

Its why we end up with scandalous acts like this.

https://news.sky.com/story/schoolboys-made-to-apologise-for-stuff-we-didnt-do-during-assembly-about-sexual-assault-12260783

And I'm sure I read the other day that the demographic thats struggling most in school and later life, measured across a number of facets, is white working class boys.

 

Firstly, Labour isn't an ultra left wing party, any more than the Tories are an ultra right wing party. Both main parties have a spread of views. An ultra left wing party would be the SWP or any of the other overtly Marxist Parties. The LP is nothing like those. I'm not ultra left wing and nor are most of the people who vote Labour. We have never had an ultra left wing government in this country and I doubt we ever will have. Certainly if Labour gets back into power it won't be as an ultra left party. You are creating a straw man to burn down here.

Secondly, as I've already explained, it takes many more votes to get most LP MPs elected than it does Tories, because of the urban/rural split and the much higher urban population. So it's much easier for the Tories to win elections in our FPP system. So winning elections is not a good measure of how many people hold liberal/left of centre views. The Brexit vote was a very good indication of how closely the country is split. Most Brexiteers are socially conservative and most Remainers are socially liberal. The percentage difference was tiny.

 

I consider Lidget Green to be city centre. How small do you want to draw the circle?