General Chat

I'm just to the left on the Economic (-1.62) and -5.59 on the Social. Sounds about right, I've always felt 'centre' from a political standpoint. Like Rose, I would have answered 'neither agree nor disagree' on some of the questions, but perhaps that's just a cop out, lol!

Oh strewth. I have just had a closer look at the iconochasms. I do not think It is a case of you feeling stupid because i doubt I could get one of those correct.

Then again we could always google the questions and gain 100%.

I think there is the typical pattern of the multiple choice philosophy. One correct, a couple close and a couple very wrong. If you use that gauge you should be able to guess some of the answers correctly.

Me I have to go get ready for work. Hopefully if I am really quick I can come back and play some more.

By the way where are the other two Canadian scribes?? Probably watching the Winter Olympics.

Hayley - I didn't follow that chat all the way through - but I think you would only be wanting to vote "blue" if you decided you cared only about yourself and not about others who are still in the circumstances you once were. ;)

My family was lower-middle / upper-working class when I was a kid. University was paid by student grants and loans and part-time jobs, and even a couple of weeks on welfare when there were no summer jobs, not a trust fund. It paid off, and I don't need government money these days. I got it when I did need it, though. And I should contribute now.

Not everybody votes out of naked (and short-sighted) self-interest!

If I did, I'd vote for the party that offered me the lowest taxes, and promised to abolish welfare programs and subsidized housing, and institute school fees for public education, and privatize all public transit, and do away with public health ensurance, and cancel all funding for the opera and ballet -- since I don't use some of those services, and I can afford to pay for the ones I want.

But I know I wouldn't want to live in a society that did those things. I might not live long enough to see all the consequences, but even for myself there would be unpleasant ones soon enough if other people could not afford schools or medical care or housing.

Think about how our ancestors lived, and how they would envy us.

Of course, my gr-grmother's gr-grmother's brother's grandson, the Labour Lord Chancellor, was a "class traitor", to the Conservatives, so I come by it honestly. ;)

Hmmmm just done the ichonoclasms....21 out of 49 correct. Not bad I suppose. LOLOL

On neither-agree-nor-disagree -- I just have to look at it as: would I want to live in a society where porn was illegal? for instance. Actually, it would be fine with me. ;) But no, those are slippery slopes, and I don't. So I agree that it should be legal, I just don't really care enough to say "strongly".


There used to be other questions that have been dropped. One was about national service. I got all authoritarian there -- if I had lived during WWII, I would have supported conscription I think, and not apologized for it. As a general rule, other than in such extreme situations, no. So they may have found it wasn't giving a true measure.

There was also once a question about guns. That probably also skewed the results. A "libertarian" should think people who want guns should be able to have them, eh?

That's where the quiz falls down, in my estimation. There is actually a third dimension to things. The one where we think about the whole, the collective. How much of our personal liberty are we prepared to sacrifice (and take from someone else) for the benefit of others?

I'll sacrifice my liberty to own guns, to have a society where the public is safer and fewer women and children live in fear of violent/menacing partners and parents.

And I'll sacrifice my liberty to drive gas-guzzling cars and put my recyclables in the trash, to have a less polluted world for future generations, any time somebody wants to make laws like that.

Is that "authoritarian", or is it seeing the big picture?

Can I make a small point here, referring to something Hayley said on the other thread, without dragging it up again.

Hayley you said I am looking to the past a lot, but you wanted to know which party I thought could take us forward in the future.

I thought about that today, and in my view, you can't think about the future without taking into account the experiences and lessons learned from the past, ensuring that which was done right, is done again, and the mistakes made are not repeated.

So Teresa:

25. Who said The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did. ?
Margaret Thatcher
Milton Friedman
Ludwig von Mises
Friedrich Hayek


Hahaha. I'm still deciding which to guess. I know who they all are and despise them all equally ... just don't know which one was fixated on "quantity of money". ;)

eeny meeny ...

Economic Left/Right: -6.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.95

Somewhat to the left of the Dalai Lama and more libertarian than Mandela.

I can live with that.

Gwynne

Teresa - perhaps if Mrs T had read some history, she might have realised that the poll tax wouldn't work (again!).

Very wise Janey...you see I know wondering what lower middle/upper working class is? As I am sure I am upper to highest of them all .....working or snob lol , I dont want to think of my past years where I once was, its a very grey area or my maybe it was my mums potical rantings,snarling at the TV and loathing for Maggie that I found depressing, or it could be the fact I was stepping in to the big real world realised I wasnt Lucy Ewingout of Dallas and this wasnt going to be as easy as I thought....ohhhh well....off to help Itsmytelly lay the kitchen floor..

Janey I got that one right ;)

I didn't get that one right, can't remember who actually said it. It wasnt' Thatcher LOL

Very good point Sheila LOL

Nice one, Janey.

I am in the green zone with -5.5 & -5.95, like others close to UK Lab in 72.

I picked the name Jen Red as a lefty nod anyway.

I seem to have grown up with that attitude; possibly because my mum was a teacher so I heard about the NUT and what it meant, and my dad was briefly a shop steward "because someone has to talk t'gaffers or they'll treat us as bad as they can".

And my ancestor was one of the first ever working class British MPs (not a very notable one but still!).

And I hung out with a lot of folky hippy types in my youth. :-)

Well I'm screwed. Either Adblock or NoScript is preventing me from seeing the button for submitting my Ichonochasms answers! Got all 49 answered (I've done it before, don't remember any of the 'right' answers, just remember half of them aren't who you'd think) and can't do anything with them. Argh.


Hayley - mum was a secretary before marriage, got fired from government job when she married, worked for a lawyer until I came along; dad worked in a bakery, sold vacuum cleaners door to door, eventually was a travelling wholesale salesman, selling a brand-name product line to retail stores. So in the early 50s we were renters in a baddish part of town, then bought a tiny new house in a new development around 1960 where they stayed until the 80s, but that kept expenses down so my dad was able to spend his Christmas bonuses taking us to Florida to camp. ;)

So not proper blue-collar / trade-union working class, like some of our neighbours in the suburb where I grew up, but nowhere near like the kids I went to school with -- the sons of lawyers and daughters of doctors from the other side of town.

My mum's father was a printer and a union man who voted Tory all his life ... I think because his local MP was a Mason ... . But our Ontario Tories would have been in the green square themselves, probably. ;) My dad's father was ex-military and some sort of stock trader in trouble half the time, died when I was four. My dad's childhood was a tale of alcoholism and absence, and getting money and losing it, I think. Kinda lower than working class in some ways, even when there was money ...

I think I must be the only potential Conservative voter on this site if this thread is anything to go by lol.

I love political theads on here.....when they're balanced and an exchange of view points like this one is... rather than belittling and condescending as I've seen some political debates here and elsewhere degenerate into.

VERY interesting thread Janey x

Jen - you guys at least have experience of unions. Here in North America in the 50s, times were prosperous, completely different situation from the UK and Europe. It was all consume, consume, consume. Unions were standard issue here (and still are, far more than in the US), but not militant as in England. The real union organizing era in Canada was earlier, and even working class households in the 50s here had it pretty good.

Few people in North America have any idea how tough the post-war era was in the UK.

Janey, there isn't one, you just count all the black answers...

Well I did say Muffy -- comparing 'scores' should give some insight into how and why some people will just never get along. ;)

When it comes to values, like on the up-down libertarian/authoritarian axis, it often isn't a matter of just disagreeing, it's more a matter of being truly appalled by the opposite end -- it's the values rather than the views, and it can be truly difficult to "discuss" something with someone whose values are completely different from one's own.

I can't imagine even wanting to be in the same room as someone who strongly agreed with "I'd always support my country, whether it was right or wrong" or "Abortion, when the woman's life is not threatened, should always be illegal" or "People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce" for instance -- and I'm sure the feeling would be mutual. ;)

Ah, okay, Teresa - I have to go back over them and click them again to reveal now that I've turned NoScript off for the page. Beats having to re-answer them.

29. Guessed wrong on that money one. ;)