Your voting intentions

[Mr Penguin]

CivicDuties said:

I think you can be thick and rise all the way to the top of the Conservative Party, because there are far more important factors in that organisation than intelligence.

I mean look at Oliver Dowden and Andrea Jenkyns for starters. Whale omlettes. Ress-Mogg is also startlingly dim when you scratch the surface.

Most active politicians are like this, and we often wonder what got them to where they are when they come across as completely dense. Then when they leave parliament they show themselves to be normal, intelligent, even charismatic and people ask why they weren't like that before.

Portillo said it's hard to be charismatic when you're in a high stress environment, being Paxo'd every other night on controversial things that you don't even agree with because you have to represent the cabinet position. Much easier to talk about trains when you have a script and ten takes.

[Jordie Barretts sock]

Evanivitch said:

Jordie Barretts sock said:

Castrol for a knave said:

I think a schoolgirl mother, who is probably the next Deputy Prime Minister, is very much a positive. I would say the same if she was a Conservative.

I find it odd that Starmer had no choice in her being imposed on her as deputy. Usually a leader picks his own people.

And usually in a democracy, people pick their own leaders.

I'm well aware that's not how the parliamentary system works, but the Tory party have had enough chances at imposing their own PM before criticising how Labour pick their deputy.

True.

I'm not an advocate for the Tory party by the way. I haven't expressed a political view. I don't like Angela Rayner and I think she is thick. I also think she has been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and is the sock puppet of the unions that put her where she is.

I agree with other posters that have said if Starmer could get rid, he would. I think he (rightly) sees her as a liability. A case of keep her close and on a short reign.

[PlywoodPascal]

Dagnir said:

Eye candy?!?


She looks like a witch!! A literal ginger crone!


Where's the vomit emoji?

Dagnir said:

I'd quite like to stop having to defend myself from baseless attacks and let the thread get back on track now

[valiant]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

Totally agree. But it isn't limited to Conservatives. Diane Abbott, for example.

Again, she ain’t thick.

She was my MP many moons ago and she was very competent, really fought for her constituency and its residents (at a time when Hackney was one of the most deprived boroughs in all the U.K. before gentrification took hold)and was passionate about what she believed in and could hold her own in any debate.

I agree, she has no place on the Labour front bench and, again, you may not like her style of politics and it also seems that she has declined of late and should really take the opportunity to stand down and focus on her health but you only have to look back a few years and see how she performed with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo on the late politics show to see there was intelligence there.

She has qualities that many may find questionable but lack of intelligence is not one of them.

[768]

CivicDuties said:

I think you can be thick and rise all the way to the top of the Conservative Party, because there are far more important factors in that organisation than intelligence.

I mean look at Oliver Dowden and Andrea Jenkyns for starters. Whale omlettes. Ress-Mogg is also startlingly dim when you scratch the surface.

Dowden went to a selective state school and read law at Cambridge.

As examples go to show Rayner isn't unusually thick... probably doesn't make a great case to defend her.

[768]

valiant said:

Again, she ain’t thick.

You say that, but I cannot see any justification for it. I'd be genuinely surprised if she had a double digit reading age. Only yesterday I saw her struggle to say the word appointment.

[MC Bodge]

Amateurish said:

Incredible that 20% of PHers will still vote Tory.

...But VAT on School fees!

[CivicDuties]

768 said:

CivicDuties said:

I think you can be thick and rise all the way to the top of the Conservative Party, because there are far more important factors in that organisation than intelligence.

I mean look at Oliver Dowden and Andrea Jenkyns for starters. Whale omlettes. Ress-Mogg is also startlingly dim when you scratch the surface.

Dowden went to a selective state school and read law at Cambridge.

As examples go to show Rayner isn't unusually thick... probably doesn't make a great case to defend her.

Suella Braverman is a lawyer too, but blimey look at her catastrophic record of failing to understand basic concepts.

[768]

I'm not saying they're the ideal, just that there's a long way to fall from where they are to find Rayner.

[Castrol for a knave]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

CivicDuties said:

I think you can be thick and rise all the way to the top of the Conservative Party, because there are far more important factors in that organisation than intelligence.

I mean look at Oliver Dowden and Andrea Jenkyns for starters. Whale omlettes. Ress-Mogg is also startlingly dim when you scratch the surface.

Totally agree. But it isn't limited to Conservatives. Diane Abbott, for example.

Abbott is not thick. She is past her sell by date, but she isn't stupid.

I actually don't think Mogg is thick - he's another anachronism, but that does not make him dim.

There are MP's who I think are not the sharpest tool in the drawer, such as Lia Nici and Andrea Jenkyns, but they are the 2019 intake, and the bar was set pretty low.

Rayner wasn't imposed on Starmer - she's more the product of realpolitik - that a centrist leader needs to have the backing of the unions and the left (not the hard left, she's no Tankie). They might not get on personally, but then again, plenty of politicians don't get on with their colleague, plenty of CEO's don't get on with their FD etc.

A Labour cabinet with Rayner in it is no different to a Thatcher cabinet with numerous ONT/ Wets in it. It's better for balance and for truth to speak unto power. We have seen where Government ends up when the cabinet is full of lackies.

[PlywoodPascal]

who could drive around with a PistonHeads sticker on their car when some of the opinions and language used in the past 5 pages on thread is tolerated on this website?

[Evanivitch]

768 said:

valiant said:

Again, she ain’t thick.

You say that, but I cannot see any justification for it. I'd be genuinely surprised if she had a double digit reading age. Only yesterday I saw her struggle to say the word appointment.

Her health issues are very much public knowledge. And I'm sure at 70 she's not as mentally sharp.as she just was.

That said, calling her thick by those standards would suggest you hold the same opinion of both the former US President, the current US President and definitely the next US President too.

[MC Bodge]

CivicDuties said:

Suella Braverman is a lawyer too, but blimey look at her catastrophic record of failing to understand basic concepts.

Braverman appears blinded by her weird prejudices.

JRM spouts some absolute nonsense, but often gets away with it presumably because many people don't understand some of the big word he uses.

[Jordie Barretts sock]

PlywoodPascal said:

who could drive around with a PistonHeads sticker on their car when some of the opinions and language used in the past 5 pages on thread is tolerated on this website?

Opinions? Is there a problem with expressing an opinion?

You may not agree with it, but that doesn't make it invalid.
I agree that personal attacks are not needed though.

[KingNothing]

Uber-safe Labour seat so usually vote for whoever has best chance of unseating them, which is usually Conservative.

[Evanivitch]

768 said:

CivicDuties said:

I think you can be thick and rise all the way to the top of the Conservative Party, because there are far more important factors in that organisation than intelligence.

I mean look at Oliver Dowden and Andrea Jenkyns for starters. Whale omlettes. Ress-Mogg is also startlingly dim when you scratch the surface.

Dowden went to a selective state school and read law at Cambridge.

As examples go to show Rayner isn't unusually thick... probably doesn't make a great case to defend her.

And Theresa May went to Grammar school and read Geography at Oxford.

But she still couldn't wrap her head around the basics of end to end encryption in 5 years.

[SWoll]

PlywoodPascal said:

who could drive around with a PistonHeads sticker on their car when some of the opinions and language used in the past 5 pages on thread is tolerated on this website?

The vast majority of posters who come here to discuss car related topics?

[Jordie Barretts sock]

Wasn't it Sunak who couldn't use a petrol pump?

[PlywoodPascal]

Jordie Barretts sock said:

PlywoodPascal said:

who could drive around with a PistonHeads sticker on their car when some of the opinions and language used in the past 5 pages on thread is tolerated on this website?

Opinions? Is there a problem with expressing an opinion?

You may not agree with it, but that doesn't make it invalid.
I agree that personal attacks are not needed though.

in general there is not a problem with expressing an opinion.
however there are bounds. for example it might not be considered appropriate for me write here: I think you are a total bellend
(for the record I don't)

Furthermore, one may prefer not to be associated with those who express opinions that are inappropriate or offensive.
Personally the idea of calling a politician stupid I do not find offensive.
However when language like 'crone' or 'witch' is introduced (you did not do this), or stupidity is connected to characteristics like motherhood or gender, then I think things become unacceptable.
They become unacceptable to me because they reveal bigotry, which I abhor,
I would prefer not to be associated with organisations that tolerate such wooly thinking and harmful beliefs.
hence i questioned how anyone would drive around with a PH sticker on their car, given the recent content of this thread.

[Castrol for a knave]

Just to add, there is a difference between uneducated and thick.

A lot of professional sportspeople are not well educated, they forewent education to pursue their sport ( Camus, Weatherall and Neils Bohr excepted ) . The two are often conflated however.