Ha ha ha! Toby Young sticks it to the Gurniad and Labour luvvies

[Wellwobbly]

There's a great example in the Guardian this morning of what Americans call "gee whiz" journalism, as in, a piece of news greeted as if it's jaw-droppingly sensational when, to the rest of us is, it's bleedin? obvious. I'm talking about John Harris's belated discovery that "the yoof" don't share the values of the liberal, Guardian-reading metropolitan elite. Incredible as it may seem, they're not pro-immigration, pro-welfare or pro-redistributive taxation. According to Ipsos MORI, only 20 per cent of 18-34-year-olds agree with the statement "the creation of the welfare state is one of Britain's proudest achievements". How dare they?!? Most amazingly of all ? to Harris, anyway ? is that Generation Y don't blame the "Con-Dem cuts" for youth unemployment. Haven't they been listening to Len McCluskey?
The most telling passage in the article comes at the end, when Harris meets a 27-year-old in Warrington who's just got a job after a bout of unemployment thanks to the government's Work Programme. Harris asks him whether he thinks his joblessness was his fault.
"Yeah," he says. "I do. I think I should have applied for more. I should have picked myself up in the morning, got out, come to a place like this ? tried more. When you're feeling down, you start blaming the world for your mistakes ? you feel the world owes you. And it doesn't. You owe the world: you have to motivate yourself, and get out there, and try."
Harris describes this reply as ? wait for it ? "heartbreaking". Yes, it breaks the Guardianista's heart that this young person doesn't think the world owes him a living. Instead of becoming welfare dependent, trapped for the rest of his life in poverty and despair ? as any self-respecting member of the proletariat should, doncha know ? he's actually gone out and found himself a job! Oh tempora! Oh mores! What's become of the client state? It's as if 13 years of New Labour never happened.
Harris blames "Thatcherism" for the proletariat's false consciousness ? and the fact that Labour hasn't been a proper socialist party since Tony Blair ditched Clause IV. The "up-by-your-boot-straps Conservatism of Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher" (yah, boo, sucks) went "largely unchallenged during the New Labour years" and is now accepted by millions of young people as "a simple matter of fact". Echoes here of red daiper baby Owen Jones, whom Harris singles out (alongside public schoolgirl Laurie Penny) as a beacon of hope amidst all the gloom. Owen thinks "the rightwing media" is to blame for brainwashing the lumpen proles. If only the poor sods read the Guardian or the Independent, then they'd know THE TRUTH which is that the millionaire-Tory-Bullingdon-Boys-ruling-class have a vested interest in keeping them down.
Hmmm. Call me a capitalist running dog, but I can think of another explanation for Generation Y's lack of enthusiasm for the values of John Harris, Owen Jones and public schoolgirl Laurie Penny.
Maybe ? just maybe ? the reason 18-34-year-olds aren't wild about the consequences of Labour's open-door immigration policy is because they noticed that nine out of ten jobs created under the last government went to foreign-born workers.
Maybe ? just maybe ? the young residents of towns like Warrington aren't in lockstep with John Harris and Owen Jones and public schoolgirl Laurie Penny when it comes to state hand-outs is because they've witnessed the appalling, destructive, calamitous impact of welfare dependency with their own eyes.
Maybe ? just maybe ? the reason more 18-24-year-olds say they're going to vote Conservative (31 per cent) than Labour (27 per cent) is because they recognise that Britain wasn't in a great place after 13 years of the other lot in power, that we need to get the deficit under control if we're to avoid joining Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and (any day now) France in the bankruptcy club and that David Cameron and George Osborne's plan for digging us out of this hole is just a teensy weensy bit more credible than Ed Miliband and Ed Balls's.
No, silly me. It's because they've all been brainwashed by The Sun.

[Wellwobbly]

Copyright, of course, Toby Young

[claig]

Some wise words from Toby!

[claig]

Toby or not to be (a progressive)?

That is what Toby has addressed.
And the answer that our youth gave seems to have surprised John Harris.

The progressives don't like it, they're all at sea, they ask themselves how on earth can this be?

In their think thanks, their charitable foundations, their social trusts and their third sector publicly funded roles, the public school progressive PPEs are busier than bees trying to spin their way out of their self-produced quagmire; they curse our youth for daring to aspire.

They try all the tricks, scaremongering and doom mongering with cries of catastrophic climate change, anything to fool the youth; but alas, nothing works, for the youth have seen the truth and abandoned socialism red in tooth.

[NotQuitePerfect]

Loving this thread

[TabithaStephens]

Can someone link me to this article? I can't see it on the Guardian website.

[Darkesteyes]

Toby contradicts himself here. While trying to crawl up the arse of 18 to 34 yr olds it might be an idea not to refer to Owen Jones (who in in his late twenties) as a red diaper baby.

[claig]

The article was in the Telegraph

blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100223531/guardian-robot-simply-cannot-understand-why-generation-y-arent-all-good-socialists-does-not-compute-does-not-compute/

[claig]

"it might be an idea not to refer to Owen Jones (who in in his late twenties) as a red diaper baby"

To be fair to Toby, he may have made this mistake based on the way that Owen conducts himself, his level of argumentation and the way that he occasionally throws his toys out of the pram.

[TabithaStephens]

Harris is ridiculous. Saying that someone taking it upon themselves to get themselves a job is "heartbreaking"?

I really wonder about some people on the left.

The bit about Owen Jones and Laurie Penny is also mind boggling. What relevence do such groups as the ones named have to the average young adult?

Do these people have any self awareness? They seem to be in a bubble, surrounded by other people like them, but totally isolated from the real world.

[DontBeFooledByTheRocksThatIGot]

I see torn loyalties. My links are with "working class Glaswegians" who on one hand hate Thatcher (and ergo the Conservative party) because their parents did etc. - but at the same time they're looking around the welfare-dependent heap and wondering where their opportunities have gone.

[claig]

This is the original John Harris article that Toby is referring to

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jun/26/generation-y-young-voters-backing-conservatives

It is good news for Tories. New Labour always aimed their policies at the young and naive, with their global warming fear mongering etc, and their "Cool Britannia" spiel, but it looks like it may not be working for them.

Pensioners on the whole prefer the Tories and so do the "squeezed middle", so if the young won't vote for them, where can they go? It's no use sucking up to the polar bear with the global warming scare, because polar bears don't have the vote yet, not even a postal ballot.


"Welcome, then, to yet another element of the New Normal, and a sobering fact: when it comes to questions about the welfare state, work and the like, the younger you are, the more rightwing you're likely to be."


"At the upper end of the Gen Y age range, consider also the infamous views of Frank Turner, the 31-year-old old-Etonian singer who apparently thinks that when it comes to the relationship between government and the individual, there should be an emphasis on "minimising the impact on ordinary people's lives ? allow[ing] them to get on with their lives and not be bothered by the state. Then you've suddenly got a range of things to talk about that are achievable. Like everything from not having ID cards and trying to dismantle the surveillance system we've put together in this country on the one hand, trying to remove government from people's lives, social services. Letting people be freer, health and safety, whatever it might be." On the face of it, that all chimes brilliantly with the aforementioned polling."


"Oh, Generation Y. Why?"

Because they have seen the socialists in action and no longer believe in their spin and lies.

[BMW6]

.......am awaiting ttosca's first mahoosive copy & paste rebuttal to this thread

[beatback]

Maybe Education is working and the young can see that not only did labour destroy the economy for ever, but they also destroyed the culture and demographic of the country and they have realised the likes of mccluskey are just out for themselves. They also know that labour have made lifelong clients of welfare and they are sick of the thought of having to pay taxes all their life for a pension they wont get until they are in their early 70s. They also know the country is not going to pull them up by their bootlaces and realise they have to do it themselves. MIDDLE ENGLAND IS STARTING THE FIGHTBACK THOUGH 18-24 FANTASTIC.

[claig]

Spot on beatback.

Middle England has had enough of the spinners and liars and taxpayer funded charitable social foundation trust progressives on stellar salaries, they are fed up of quangos and taxpayer funded NHS trust bosses and their gagging clauses, and lies on everything from climate change to education, and they are rising.

The young are the same as us, they don't see why they should have to pay out of their taxes for this third sector class of socialists, wonks and think tankers with PPEs who pretend to represent the proletariat.

The fightback of ordinary people has started and the progressives and PPEs will be kicked out of power for years.

[claig]

The days of the high spending taxpayer funded big state socialists are over. People are saying enough is enough.

Look at the middle classes in Brazil, protesting in their millions on the streets every night for lower taxes and better services.

The middle classes are the same the world over and they have been milked by the progressives for long enough.

The people are united, change is coming and its time for the progressives to start going.

[claig]

And it's happening in Australia too.

Today Julia Gillard went and the Australian Labour Party are desperate to hold on to their seats as the good people of Australia have been incensed by the socialists "carbon taxes".

All over the world, it's a rout, the people are shouting "kick the progressives out".

[beatback]

Thank you CLAIG. What a lot of left learning people dont realise is that the left treat the poor with disdain and labour has always taken their vote for granted. The majority of these votes come from people who could not name one labour policy but have been brainwashed over generations by union members, grandparents and parents that labour look after their intrests when the opposite is true. What labour do with benefits is like a drug dealer giving free samples of heroin to draw their client in and once hooked there is no way out that is what labour have done for generations.

[claig]

"What a lot of left learning people dont realise is that the left treat the poor with disdain and labour has always taken their vote for granted."

Exactly. The people havenot forgotten how Gordon Brown treated teh good lifelong Labour voter, Mrs Duffy.

Even Labour voters are wising up to the elite class of progressives who say they are on the people's side. How many of them ever worked in a factory or on a shopfloor or in a call centre? How many of them ever earned minimum wage? That's why they can't understand that young people are economically liberal and don't want what little they earn to be taxed to pay for bureaucrats in quangos and for bigwigs in charitable trusts.

John Harris studied PPE at The Queen's College, Oxford.
Laurie Penny studied English at Wadham College, Oxford.
Owen Jones studied history at University College, Oxford.

No wonder young people have abandoned socialism and are turning to the right; they are doing what they think is right.

[beatback]

HARRIS PENNY/ OWEN JONES. Must be fighting for their politcal lives thinking how long can we get away with our patronising views. As for owen jones well i read his book "CHAVS" and i must say what a loud of pompous rubbish not suprising when he was the son of two University professors and educated at Oxford. ITs because he spent to much time in on theory and not enough time reseaching the facts that cause the "CHAV" culture but the likes of jones,penny and harris have a vested intrest in keeping their nonsense going. Another thing how does owen jones claim to be "WORKING CLASS" and like the other people who were let down by Education when he went to Oxford the truth is Jones is as far from the CHAV CULTURE AS GEORGE OSBORNE IS. You want get anyone saying that but that is the truth.

[beatback]

OWEN JONES IS a "MOCKNEY TO CHAV CULTURE" FAKE FAKE FAKE, AND EARNING A LIVING OUT OF IT ,DISGUSTING PERSON. Making money out of other peoples heartache and problems.

[claig]

Exactly, and teh guardian is full of these type of people.

Where is a real paper that represents the working classes, full of clever people from every other university in the land?

Owen Jones, the Oxford educated scourge of the capitalists, didn't even turn up at teh biggest meeting of capitalists, bankers, socialists and puppets known as Bilderberg.

Where are the people who stand up for and represent real working people?

People are wising up to this game of charades with privileged progressives pretending to represent the people and then finding it heartbreaking when the people think differently to them and don't want to be taxed even more so that their money can be wasted on taxi fares and golden goodbyes for public sector BBC staff, who probably went to Oxford too!

[claig]

Agree, beatback.

The fact that Owen Jones (and most probably John Harris and Laurie Penny) didn't even turn up at Bilderberg made me wonder if he is a fake too, just like many of the other privileged progressives who play the game of charades with the people as their dupes.

[beatback]

Claig. The thing is within my extended family i have members who could be classed as "CHAVS". His views would not help any of them to escape the culture that has been forced on them. No doubt from the age of 5 Jones University parents would have been brainwashing him about "THATCHER," probably would have sent him to the worst school in the borough to make a point but making sure he benefited from his parents University friends and no doubt lecturing the school how their Owen was the only kid to go Oxford "EVER" from there.

[claig]

The progressives are losing the media battle. Their spin is falling on deaf ears. Very few people actually read John Harris, Laurie Penny and Owen Jones, many more good people read the Daily Mail, that's why the progressives are so pissed that they call it the Daily Fail.

The progressives are failing, all they can do at the Daily Mail is keep railing; they know they are losing and they know it's not them the people are choosing.

The progressives are pissed, but they won't be missed.

[beatback]

CLAIG. YOU DIDNT GO TO CAMBRIDGE DID YOU?