Left or right of your parents?
Poll: Left or right of your parents?
Total Members Polled: 180
Discussion
Yet my wife says I'm more right wing than Mussolini?!
Brought up in South Bucks, so my parents were both Tory voters. I do feel that I could be a LibDem voter as I do have a social conscience. However, I'll never vote for them while they a) remain europhiles, b) are a bunch of wishy-washy idiots.
I vote UKIP.
Puggit said:
Yet my wife says I'm more right wing than Mussolini?!
Brought up in South Bucks, so my parents were both Tory voters. I do feel that I could be a LibDem voter as I do have a social conscience. However, I'll never vote for them while they a) remain europhiles, b) are a bunch of wishy-washy idiots.
I vote UKIP.
if it's true what they say and the truth lies somwhere in the middle, you must be a messiah.
Bit of both really - while they've both historically ticked the blue box, Dad is more liberal while Mum is a borderline fascist!
Both Grandfathers were working class, with my Mum's dad being born in Whitechapel not long after the turn of the century so you couldn't come from much more of a squalid background if you tried. Both of them detested the Labour movement as they believed it promoted laziness and state dependence.
I see myself a Middle Class, I suppose, but was born into a council flat in Plymouth but my parents both worked hard to get on and did well for themselves - they know that if it hadn't been for the Tories taking power in 1979, it would have been far, far harder.
However, like most, they are sick of the middle ground politics that we've been lumbered with for the last while but they're retired now, have nice places and enough money not to really be that worried about it.
Both Grandfathers were working class, with my Mum's dad being born in Whitechapel not long after the turn of the century so you couldn't come from much more of a squalid background if you tried. Both of them detested the Labour movement as they believed it promoted laziness and state dependence.
I see myself a Middle Class, I suppose, but was born into a council flat in Plymouth but my parents both worked hard to get on and did well for themselves - they know that if it hadn't been for the Tories taking power in 1979, it would have been far, far harder.
However, like most, they are sick of the middle ground politics that we've been lumbered with for the last while but they're retired now, have nice places and enough money not to really be that worried about it.
Very shocked by that. I thought I'd have been much more right wing.
I started out slightly more left wing, libertarian than my parents. By 25 I'd realised we're all f
ked, and that sort of nonsense is desperately old fashioned. So I've been sliding along to the right ever since. I guess I've some way to go.Mum and dad hugely resent the welfare state we find ourselves supporting. Similar to the post above, they were both born in socioeconomically deprived areas, and worked hard to get themselves out of that, then putting us through very good schools and on to university. I'd say that really defines their political outlook, unsurprisingly.
More to the right in some aspects, more to the left in others.
My mum, for example, has fond memories of the Seventies. She actually enjoyed the three-day week, the power cuts and the recession because she was of a generation that believed in a kind of post-capitalistic apocalypse where everyone would go back to an agrarian, bartering existence, living off the land. She recalls a time when they couldn't afford meat and reckoned the vegetarian diet they ate as a result made them healthier.
She wanted the communists to win the Cold War and would support any strike (still does) regardless of who is striking or what it's over, because they're 'standing up for their rights'. She thinks that absolutely everyone should be an active member of a union regardless of profession, she urges me to try and drum up a strike or some kind of protest if there's the slightest difference of opinion with the management, and she uses public services in preference to private wherever she can 'just to keep them going'. She actually prefers using buses to cars and gleefully sold hers when she realised she could get a bus to work.
Compared to her (and in her opinion), I might as well be Ronald Reagan. However, on here I'm considered a simpering lefty.
However, in terms of attitudes towards race, we're very different. her attitudes regarding race are very similar to Enoch Powell's. Mine aren't, but when she went to school there was one solitary Asian girl in the entire year and her parents' generation held all foreigners in deep suspicion, an attitude considered normal back then but deeply racist now. Given where we've come from, I'd say it's inevitable that the younger you are, the less racist you'll be.
My political views are roughly the same as my Dad's.
My mum, for example, has fond memories of the Seventies. She actually enjoyed the three-day week, the power cuts and the recession because she was of a generation that believed in a kind of post-capitalistic apocalypse where everyone would go back to an agrarian, bartering existence, living off the land. She recalls a time when they couldn't afford meat and reckoned the vegetarian diet they ate as a result made them healthier.
She wanted the communists to win the Cold War and would support any strike (still does) regardless of who is striking or what it's over, because they're 'standing up for their rights'. She thinks that absolutely everyone should be an active member of a union regardless of profession, she urges me to try and drum up a strike or some kind of protest if there's the slightest difference of opinion with the management, and she uses public services in preference to private wherever she can 'just to keep them going'. She actually prefers using buses to cars and gleefully sold hers when she realised she could get a bus to work.
Compared to her (and in her opinion), I might as well be Ronald Reagan. However, on here I'm considered a simpering lefty.
However, in terms of attitudes towards race, we're very different. her attitudes regarding race are very similar to Enoch Powell's. Mine aren't, but when she went to school there was one solitary Asian girl in the entire year and her parents' generation held all foreigners in deep suspicion, an attitude considered normal back then but deeply racist now. Given where we've come from, I'd say it's inevitable that the younger you are, the less racist you'll be.
My political views are roughly the same as my Dad's.
MartinM said:
Seems to be alot of mums with lefty ideals supported financially by their spouse's capitalist work ethic!
Clang...There is nothing leftist about a poor work ethic, infact the exact opposite, I'd propose the ethic of work for reward promotes that a monetary value is given to the value of "work" which in turn lowers standards, because people do the bare minimum needed to secure payment or maximise reward.
900T-R said:
That's you and me both then. Shame the supposedly left-libertarian cannot see how authoritarian their views are where (not just) 'transport' is concerned.
Yes liberal nowdays means stopping others accruing wealth, whilst doing everything to further ones own nest. Step forward clegg and cable. Oh the irony, a business secretary that secretly hates success in others. mattnunn said:
MartinM said:
Seems to be alot of mums with lefty ideals supported financially by their spouse's capitalist work ethic!
Clang...There is nothing leftist about a poor work ethic, infact the exact opposite, I'd propose the ethic of work for reward promotes that a monetary value is given to the value of "work" which in turn lowers standards, because people do the bare minimum needed to secure payment or maximise reward.
Which is why unions still exist, because by clubbing together a poor-performing workforce can force improved renumeration without improved performance.
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