The curious incident of Miss Shah.
Living in the north and being a member of the Conservative party’s earned me a lot of stick over the past year or so, from people who’ve all been tricked into turning commie by Che Guevara T-shirts and movies from a confused Michael Moore about made millions of $$$$$ out of the capitalist system and they get the impression we simply don’t care – which simply isn’t the case. I’m angry at the politicians and policies which have caused chavs to become stuck in a poverty trap. People aren’t born benefit scroungers. People who are stuck in the poverty trap human just like you and me. We have enormous low quality council estates, without existing job markets and without transport links. We created a benefit regime that penalises people who take the plunge of going into work, they all hit the north the most especially in times of recession. Is it any wonder that comments like this leave me fuming?
The North East has come in for a rough time over the last 30 years. The sad thing is that, during the miners strike, both sides were right in their own way. Maybe the industry needed to go. It was dirty, that’s a certainty, and the environment has improved. Even so, you have to sympathise with the miners, and other workers, who just wanted a job and to work - to support their families. It was during Thatcher’s time however that Sunderland got the Nissan car plant (a major employer and the most efficient car plant in Europe) and major shopping centres such as the MetroCentre, providing most of the employment for the region but the region still struggles and nothing has been done to help the region in the last 13 years, with money from Whitehall being wasted on ‘regeneration’ projects that have only put us into more dire circumstances and white elephants so that the folk down in London, those that ‘work in the’ political sector’ (That’s a shot at you Miss Shah) can claim they’ve done a good job.
I don’t think really think this is the fault of Miss Shah, she’s simply a creation of what our centralised political system in recent years has come to produce. When the people sitting in London never come into contact with local communities is it any wonder they’re so aloof and make comments like this? Is it any wonder that so many bad decisions get made that leave regions like my own up the creek? I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better argument for localism…
Utterly fabulous post – as are your tweets.
I’m from the North East myself (v near Durham actually) and completely relate to what you’re talking about.
Good on you for verbalising so eloquently what many people are thinking.
All the Best
Tot
I dunno, I wouldn’t take Einy Shah as indicative of any sort of Tory, and certainly not (please!) any sort of southerner or Londoner. She is earning a nice little rep on Twitter as a highly entertaining twat of the first water. And even the other Londoners think that.
You sum up my perpetual confusion over Thatcher’s destruction of the mining industry. On the one hand it was brutal, nasty, insensitive, badly timed, poorly explained, imperious and motivated by snobbery as much as economics – and in some places was actually economically questionable. On the other hand there’s no doubt that subsidies were keeping some parts of the industry artificially alive, which ultimately is no good to anyone. I think, to be honest, perpetual confusion is the correct attitude. How can one permanently come down on one side or the other?
Have you seen Our Friends in the North? I do hope so.
Nah I haven’t, but I do have mixed feelings about Thatcher.
Economically, did some great ****. What’s left of our present prosperity and economic growth can be laid squarely at Thatcher’s door. Declawing local councils in order to disrupt the “loony left”; not so good.
Making them raise their own revenue; much more like it.
Having only noticed this person today, I’d have to agree with Alix; she does seem a pretentious “twat of the first water” – someone trying too hard, and that’s as boring when it comes to Tories as when it comes to NOLSies.
As for the rest, Thomas, please, for the love of god, don’t get sucked into the Tory Bear style of blogging. People don’t become socialists because of Che Guevara t-shirts – and certainly not because of Michael Moore, who isn’t a socialist in any case, making your point that he made millions from his docu-dramas a bit irrelevant.
Your political ideals are your own, I won’t piss on them. I hope they are honestly held, and offer the opportunity for critical and self-critical thinking. Equally you should recognise the people on both sides who are careerist ****s, and the people on both sides – including communists, even young ones – not driven by the populist guff you seem to have been exposed to, but by an honest conviction equal to your own.