Do you ever get the impression people don't care?

[Pain]

It's as if we've basically been set up to fail by the system. Seems we always have been and probably always will be.

Part of my reply to one of your other threads, Lencoboy (Are persons with ASD easy pickings for punitive treatment?)....

... What I was trying to elicit was whether you view yourself as a victim in/of life. Many of your threads/posts allude to personal bitterness, and you often seem to be wanting to blame someone, or some situation beyond your control, for upsetting you

[BlueIris]

I think this is a really good point, Pain.

[Lencoboy]

Yes Peter, right now it seems that people seriously don't care!

I get it in the neck off certain others on here for speaking my own mind, even though no malice is intended.

Now they're saying the UK economy is in recession, but people seem to be far more outraged about 2 Labour MPs speaking bad of Israel. Yes I know both MPs concerned were foolish to say such things, no matter how justified they may have felt or not, but the media coming out with such hyperbole about Labour being 'in crisis' over controversial comments from just 2 MPs of theirs which is hardly representative of what the whole party truly stands for.

Part of me thinks this is a virtue signalling smear campaign in a blatant attempt to damage the Labour Party ahead of all the forthcoming elections (local and national).

I wonder how the media and the general public at large might have responded had such remarks been made by MPs of other parties, including the current incumbent Tory Party?

And ISTR people being far more outraged over our last major recession at the end of the 2000s that was a consequence of the Global Financial Crisis that incidentally happened to start under the watch of the late New Labour than they seem to be over this one under the Tories right now, accompanied by endless cries of 'Broken Britain', yadda yadda yadda, at the time!

This whole thing just reeks of double standards big time!

Sorry for my rant but I'm just seeing red at nearly everything right now!

[MyNameIsTerry]

Lenco, whilst they may have been words I would consider why it's such a big issue. Do we want such vile people in positions of power? I watched one of the Labour front bench in an interview about this. He said the candidate apologised and wouldn't answer if he should be in the party.

Remember Oct 7th is still very fresh in memory.

Anti semitism is a big issue for Labour and Starmer can be slow to act. The lawyer he brought in to review the Corbyn era has said just this. They are bound to get jumped on when he doesn't act swiftly to discipline people. But politics is complicated by needing votes and that means buddying up with some horrible characters.

Has Starmer fixed the party? It seems not despite trying. The opposition are bound to jump on him, its election time.

But don't lose sight of how candidates and sitting MPs don't seem very outraged by the barbarism seen on the day that started this war. I find that the worrying part and it plagues those farther to the left.

[Lencoboy]

Lenco, whilst they may have been words I would consider why it's such a big issue. Do we want such vile people in positions of power? I watched one of the Labour front bench in an interview about this. He said the candidate apologised and wouldn't answer if he should be in the party.

Remember Oct 7th is still very fresh in memory.

Anti semitism is a big issue for Labour and Starmer can be slow to act. The lawyer he brought in to review the Corbyn era has said just this. They are bound to get jumped on when he doesn't act swiftly to discipline people. But politics is complicated by needing votes and that means buddying up with some horrible characters.

Has Starmer fixed the party? It seems not despite trying. The opposition are bound to jump on him, its election time.

But don't lose sight of how candidates and sitting MPs don't seem very outraged by the barbarism seen on the day that started this war. I find that the worrying part and it plagues those farther to the left.

I understand what you're saying Terry and I agree that those 2 Labour MPs screwed up big time by opening their big traps without thinking, but as we all know full well MPs of all parties are guilty of plenty of misdemeanours and scandals all the time, but it almost always seems that Labour MPs tend to get singled out the most as 'the bad men/women' and the misdemeanours/scandals involving MPs from other parties often seemingly shrugged off and glossed over.

It seems that this economic slump has been steadily brewing since the end of 2021, but I'm rather surprised at the apparent lack of outrage over it during the intervening period between then and now, especially as most past govts (not just New Labour but the Tory govts before them) were roundly vilified over the slumps that occurred under their respective watches, unlike now where there seems to be an almighty sense of apathy within society in general.

In 2008 for instance, when Woolworths went bust, people were really upset over it, unlike last year (2023) when Wilko and a couple of other chains went bust, there seemed to be nowhere near the same amount of grief and outrage as there was over the demise of Woolies and others at the end of the 2000s.

But I bet for certain if say, the govt banned holidays abroad there probably would be colossal outrage!

[MyNameIsTerry]

Lenco, I do think it depends where you read. Tory leaning media will attack their enemies, Labour leaning media the same. If you want to see Tory ministers getting the same treatment you just have to read The Mirror, The Guardian, Indy, etc. But if there are more right wing papers you are bound to see more articles attacking Labour.

There have been Tory MPs who have made racist comments which have been covered in just the same manner. Some of them were caught up in anti semitism on social media.

It's not so much the comments of such a candidate but the possibility of what their truth beliefs are. We don't want extremist views in either main party. I don't mean capitalist types, more religious extremism.

[Lencoboy]

Lenco, I do think it depends where you read. Tory leaning media will attack their enemies, Labour leaning media the same. If you want to see Tory ministers getting the same treatment you just have to read The Mirror, The Guardian, Indy, etc. But if there are more right wing papers you are bound to see more articles attacking Labour.

There have been Tory MPs who have made racist comments which have been covered in just the same manner. Some of them were caught up in anti semitism on social media.

It's not so much the comments of such a candidate but the possibility of what their truth beliefs are. We don't want extremist views in either main party. I don't mean capitalist types, more religious extremism.

While I definitely agree that MPs of all parties should most certainly be taken to task over any wrongdoing, and that those two Labour MPs were total idiots for their faux pas over Israel, it just seems like it's mostly Labour MPs who tend to get it in the neck over the minutest of screw-ups, plus some people still continue to villify Labour today over the GFC which actually happened 'in spite' of their being in power at the time; not wholly 'because' of it, as it was a worldwide problem (hence the term GLOBAL Financial Crisis; had it actually been exclusive to the UK it would have been the 'UK/British Financial Crisis') that would still have happened regardless of whoever was in power in this country at the time.

Also it seems that Partygate is now largely forgotten, which seemed to be one of the biggest downfalls of the Tory govt since the end of 2021, unlike only just a few months earlier they still maintained relatively healthy leads in the opinion polls and also still seemed to be winning by-elections easy-peasy, even in historically 'red wall' areas like Hartlepool, which was incidentally shown on the TV news fairly recently discussing families in poverty and using food banks, which I immediately thought 'oh the irony', particularly in light of their 2021 by-election result.

[Peter A]

They'll blame the pandemic and claim they lost the funding.

That may be partially true, but I don't believe it's this so much. They just don't want me as a client.

Once you get blackballed by people, your reputation is in tatters.

[Lencoboy]

They'll blame the pandemic and claim they lost the funding.

That may be partially true, but I don't believe it's this so much. They just don't want me as a client.

Once you get blackballed by people, your reputation is in tatters.

You're right, most of the current problems developed long before the start of the recent Covid pandemic, which I think is often being used as a lazy smokescreen/scapegoat by the 'can't-be-bothered' brigade, who were already there before.

Heck, the pandemic was even blamed fairly recently for an increase in obesity levels, which also has already been the subject of a moral panic for years before 2020; ditto for the increase in reported retail crime and attacks on shop workers the other day, which I remember being discussed on the BBC site way back in 2006 under the heading 'Retail Rage'.

While I'm certainly not trivialising the above issues in any way, I'm also pointing out that they're hardly new problems exclusive to the present time, and certainly not the fault of Covid.

[Peter A]

That got on my nerves in 2020. "Social distancing" this, and whatnot. Being told off for not wearing a face covering, and having no idea when normality would resume. Now they rarely even cast up Covid. But had this continued, oh man. Every shop out there probably would have suffered liquidation from a lack of in-store custom.

There's a worse pandemic than Covid, and it's called tobacco smoke. Honestly, I wish both my grandmother and mum had never taken up the filthy habit. My gran couldn't be alive now anyway, mate. She died aged 85 way back in the summer of 2004. And my mum passed away at the age of 69 around 5 months ago.

My gran and my mum were more or less the only two people I could open up to. Although I also used to count my younger sister, before she went loopy. Now it feels like there's a void that will never be filled.

I ditched my lawyer in September because he expected me to travel to West Lothian, but I told him my anxiety is too great. Then he assumed I lied about my mum's death just 2 days after it happened, so I just told him to get to stepping. He wasted my time for years on end and never spoke up in court about the various idiots that were messing with me.

But civil cases are ridiculously costly. Like, you can be made to pay a fee upfront for the initial consultation. Then it just goes higher from there. Steep hourly rates, estimated to be over 200 quid.

It's why so many knobs get away with screwing up your life. Only those with the dough can hope to succeed.