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"Right-wingers are less intelligent than left wingers, says study." - Daily Mail.

Left wingers are more intelligent than right wingers. Do you agree?

  • No

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • Yes

    Votes: 7 43.8%
  • Don't know/Don't care

    Votes: 5 31.3%

  • Total voters
    16
  • Poll closed .
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Hydro

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The only wing really needed is a wing and a prayer.
 
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bnm

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Irrespective of what you think on that very particular molehill of self-righteousness, nearly half of the readers of the Daily Mail do not subscribe to Right Wing policies nor do they vote for Conservative or Right Wing political parties.

Meaning more than half do vote Conservative and/or subscribe to right wing policies. In a majority or a first-past-the-post system, that makes the Daily Mail a Conservative or right wing rag. ;)

It has always been in the interests of the Left to demonise private production and private employment. The reality so far as the Railways were concerned was that Privatisation has brought with it rates of pay and terms and conditions that could only have been dreamt of before.

And fares that are the stuff of nightmares.
 

Old Timer

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And fares that are the stuff of nightmares.
And you have a choice my friend.

Anyway to bring some humour to this forum, something some lack, try this one currently doing the rounds outside the Eurozone ;)


Hans, a middle-aged German tourist on his first visit to Orlando, Florida, finds the red light district and enters a large brothel. The madam asks him to be seated and sends over a young lady to entertain him.

They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she gasps and runs away! Seeing this, the madam sends over a more experienced lady to entertain the gentleman.

They sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear, and she too screams, "Not under any circumstances....No!" and walks quickly away.

The madam is surprised that this ordinary looking man has asked for something so outrageous that her two girls will have nothing to do with him. She decides that only her most experienced lady, Lola, will do. Lola has never said no, and it's not likely anything would surprise her. So the madam sends her over to Han's. The sit and talk, frolic a little, giggle a bit, drink a bit, and she sits on his lap. He whispers in her ear and she screams, "ABSOLUTELY NO WAY, BUDDY!" and smacks him as hard as she can and leaves.

Madam is by now absolutely intrigued, having seen nothing like this in all her years of operating a brothel. She hasn't done the bedroom work herself for a long time, but she's sure she has said yes to everything a man could possibly ask for. She just has to find out what this man wants that has made her girls so angry. Besides she sees a chance to teach her employees a lesson.

So she goes over to Han's and says that she's the best in the house and is available. She sits and talks with him. They frolic, giggle, drink and then she sits in his lap.

Han's leans forwards and whispers in her ear, "Can I pay in Euros?"
 

Oswyntail

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Excuse me?

The Welsh Assembly? The Scottish Parliament? - and the opportunity for devolved powers in England - only the English were too stupid and suspicious to grasp the opportunity.
IMHO, the two assemblies are essentially cosmetic while there is no English equivalent. But that is another argument :lol:. What I was chiefly referring to was the way that government institutions, and the process of government itself, became centralised into the hands of a few individuals, some elected some not, with Parliament largely by-passed as a proper scrutinising body.
 

Zoe

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IMHO, the two assemblies are essentially cosmetic while there is no English equivalent.
The regions of England were going to be offered devolution under Labour but the first to be asked rejected it.
 

Trog

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The regions of England were going to be offered devolution under Labour but the first to be asked rejected it.


Quite right too would just have involved more has beens and those who were not good enough at a**e licking to be an MP, putting their snouts in the public trough. :(


The sooner the Queen decides that the best thing to do with an MP is have the Beafeaters use them to amuse some American tourists on Tower Green. By demonstrating one of our traditional customs the better. <D
 

Old Timer

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Quite right too would just have involved more has beens and those who were not good enough at a**e licking to be an MP, putting their snouts in the public trough. :(


The sooner the Queen decides that the best thing to do with an MP is have the Beafeaters use them to amuse some American tourists on Tower Green. By demonstrating one of our traditional customs the better. <D
That should definitely go some way to helping the deficit !
 

yorksrob

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Am I the only one who feels thankful that we have a coalition government ?

I don't trust the left wing of the liberals and I certainly don't trust the right wing of the Tories - Frankly I'd far rather they're shackled together !
 

bnm

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The sooner the Queen decides that the best thing to do with an MP is have the Beafeaters use them to amuse some American tourists on Tower Green. By demonstrating one of our traditional customs the better. <D

That'd be the Americans who's antecedents eschewed constitutional monarchy.

If the MPs are going to The Tower, then the royals (different snouts, same trough) should go along too. <D
 

Schnellzug

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That'd be the Americans who's antecedents eschewed constitutional monarchy.

If the MPs are going to The Tower, then the royals (different snouts, same trough) should go along too. <D

Although funnily enough, the Americans seem rather keen on our royalty.
Perhaps because of the abundant evidence in recent decades of what "Democratic" "Elected" Leaders are really like.

--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Not in the Class War which Snapper subscribes to. Stereotypes are very much required in order to preach Socialism. The fact that Left Wing papers such as the Independent and the Guardian are losing readers week by week does not matter, in the same way that it does not matter that the general poluation of the UK is conservative with a small "c" and has not subscribed to Left Wing policies in any great way.

It is only this myth that the Left still perpetuate about anybody right of centre, and the propoganda fed to youngsters at school by the miltant leftist in the 70s and 80s especially.

It has always been in the interests of the Left to demonise private production and private employment. The reality so far as the Railways were concerned was that Privatisation has brought with it rates of pay and terms and conditions that could only have been dreamt of before.

The nearest thing we have to a Government controlled organisation is Network Rail, which has long since embarked on a policy of reducing the Ts&Cs of those wh were TUPE'd in from the Private Infrastructure Contractors. They also have a nice line in suppressing incident reporting and removing those who fail to toe the applied line of production above safety - try proposing a late Possession handback because you want to relieve tired staff sometime and see what happens. A combination of idealogical ideals and the unwillingness of the Trade Unions and others to admit they were wrong continues to do nothing other than damage the interests of their members. Left Wing cynicism in its true light.

I love the irony here. We talk about Class War, and then we cheerfully attribute everything that we have complaints about to the Left Wing. So Not Work Rail is driven by Ideology, is it? :|

This is why I rarely bother with political arguments, because many people really cannot seem to see that they are indeed all as bad as each other.
 
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Oswyntail

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ahahahahahahaha!
Thankyou for that - though did you miss the h off the front? It is always disapointing when you try to wind someone up and get no response :lol:I suspect that, when the Scottish bit was set up, the Labour party could not imagine losing control, and thought they would be able to dictate or manipulate. I also suspect that the SNP would have been much happier sniping away in opposition. We shall see!
 

Old Timer

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I love the irony here. We talk about Class War, and then we cheerfully attribute everything that we have complaints about to the Left Wing. So Not Work Rail is driven by Ideology, is it? :|.
You have completely missed the point. Network Rail is an organisation set up by Labour and their cronies. As with pretty much everything they touched it is not fit for purpose being neither fish nor fowl, e.g. it is neither public nor private although in effect it is a nationalised Industry because the Board members are appointed with the tacit agreement of the DfT, and they are not free to dispose of the assets in the way a private Company would be.

Because NR is under public scrutiny and its financial operations are monitored by the DfT and the Treasury, it is not free to operate as a private Company and thus as a way of saving money it has gone down the road of reducing the Ts&Cs and pay levels of employees compared to the Infrastructure Contractors.

Despite continued downsizing of its maintenance organisation and the removal of higher paid staff and their substitution by those inexperienced and willing to work for less, maintenance costs have risen and Project costs are now unsustainable in the longer term. No private Company would operate in that manner, neither would it have allowed its CEO to pocket money in the way that Coucher was able to.

If you look at the accident levels to staff (which Network Rail tried to suppress illegally) the risk profile for a trackworker even in Possessions is much higher than for a comparative track worker working for a Major Infrastructure Contractor. In some but not all ways, this can be put down to the vicious treatment given to those who raise safety concerns unlike to Infrastructure Contractors who do not treat such reports as failures but as opportunities to investigate and act against a recurrence.

Try asking some of the Network Rail people on here who used to be with the Infrastructure Contactors what it is now like in comparison with their previous Companies.
 

Schnellzug

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but weren't there rather a lot of accidents caused by poor maintenance and so on under the private Contractors? It would rather seem that their practices did not seem too succesful in terms of ensuring safety.
 

Old Timer

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..If the MPs are going to The Tower, then the royals (different snouts, same trough) should go along too. <D
The usual misinformed rubbish we expect to read from you.

Currently the cost per year of the Royal family to each taxpayer is in the region of 60-65p according to figues I have quickly googled.

The net benefit that is gained to the UK economy through tourism to Buckingham Palace is substantially greater than the costs of the Royal family. Without them the economy would suffer. There is also still s certain draw of money towards the UK because many Foreign leaders like to be seen with the Royals, and this does have its advantages in the wider world when it comes to exports.

It seems to me you must be desperately unhappy living in our democracy as I have yet to read anything positive from you, maybe Cuba would be a good place for you if you really are so anti- democratic as you appear to be ? :D
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
but weren't there rather a lot of accidents caused by poor maintenance and so on under the private Contractors? It would rather seem that their practices did not seem too succesful in terms of ensuring safety.
No, Hatfield was brought about by (1) Railtrack not allowing Fast line blockages because of TOC demands and the delay attrribution costs, and (2) as a result of Railtrack cancelling a re-railing POssession because of non-cooperation from the TOC/FOCs, and I have long perpetuated the view that senior Managers in those Companies should have been brought to account as it was their refusals to let essential track inspections and work go ahead. A similar situation applied at Grayrigg where the TOC wanted to run trains with insufficient time being allowed for inspection.

Potters Bar has never been settled fully but was again found to be a case of a lack of leadership from Railtrack in resolving a known problem with the torque and lock nut setting on the bolts. Remember that every single S&T spanner used by Jarvis Rail was inspected afterwards and none of the witness marks found on the equipment matched any Jarvis spanner. Draw your own conclusions.

Many of the problems that manifested themselves in the period up to Network Rail were down to this ridiculous compensation process which takes no recognition of the safety of the infrastructure.

Network Rail stated that it would remove sub-Contracted labour from its maintenance organisation but now has MORE self employed labourers working through labour agencies than any Infrastructure Maintenance Contractor ever did.

Remember finally that leadership in the prevention of derailments and incidents was led by the Infrastructure Contractors who actually developed jointly agreed maintenance Standards and Procedures and co-operated together to take forward a whole load of initiatives. Not one single innovation that was not started by the Infrastructure Contractors has ever come from Network Rail. Even this so called OHL Factory Train is simply a development of work started under GTRM and Balfour Beatty Rail.

I am told that every week in the National Control Log there are reports of Possession Irregularities, far more than there ever were under the former Maintenance/Renewals regime, despite the fact that less work is going on by comparison.
 
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bnm

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Currently the cost per year of the Royal family to each taxpayer is in the region of 60-65p according to figues I have quickly googled.

Rule 1. When using the internet to find evidence to support an argument it's best not to 'quickly Google' and read one of the top hits. Investigate further.

Your figure is per person. Just under 30 million UK income tax payers. Royal Family directly cost £32.1M in 2011.

Figures for security are not included and this is believed to add another £70M the actual cost of supporting the Royal Family.

So nearer £3 per taxpayer. That's an extra pint I could afford.

It seems to me you must be desperately unhappy living in our democracy as I have yet to read anything positive from you, maybe Cuba would be a good place for you if you really are so anti- democratic as you appear to be ? :D

I love this country, never lived or worked anywhere else. A country where I'm free to hold political beliefs that may differ from yours, OT. To hold left of centre and republican (anti-monarchy) views does not make me anti-democratic. It's also fun to be able to freely satirise all facets of the political system.

Enjoyable too debating with you OT. Even if you do tend to pepper your responses with personal digs.
 

Old Timer

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Rule 1. When using the internet to find evidence to support an argument it's best not to 'quickly Google' and read one of the top hits. Investigate further.

Your figure is per person. Just under 30 million UK income tax payers. Royal Family directly cost £32.1M in 2011.

Figures for security are not included and this is believed to add another £70M the actual cost of supporting the Royal Family.

So nearer £3 per taxpayer. That's an extra pint I could afford..
I dont have the time to do as much research as you may have done, but I see you have deliberately excluded the potential impact of the Royal Family in attracting tourists. The UK tourism equates to £100bn a year. even at the figures you suggest (no attribution) that still means that the Royal Family only represents around 0.02% of total tourism revenue.

I would suggest that they generate far more than they costs just on the percentages alone.


I love this country, never lived or worked anywhere else. A country where I'm free to hold political beliefs that may differ from yours, OT. To hold left of centre and republican (anti-monarchy) views does not make me anti-democratic. It's also fun to be able to freely satirise all facets of the political system..
And therein is the difference. I have and do work abroad an awful lot, funnily enough I am engaged on a littel job in Argentina right now !.

I know enough people who have come from the political system you suggest to me you support (Comrade for example can only be read one way) who were desperate to throw it off. I am hard put to name any Country which follows a Socialist regime which is not impoverished. I appreciate that France has left wing leanings but you need to set against those the natural resources such as wine which it exports, and which do much to help the economy. That said even the Socialist Governmments in France now realise that things have to change and they have to become more market-driven in order to remain competitive.

I recall working in the Former Soviet Union soon after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and saw first hand the conditions under which people lived and worked. I also saw the fear in people's eyes when, as a stranger you spoke to them or tried to engage them in conversation. That experience has stayed with me.

Some of the most vicious and muderous regimes in the world have been led by a socialist/Marxist/Communist ideal, for example Stalin murdered far more people than the Germans ever did, as did the North Koreans and other similar Countries.

Whilst there has certainly been Right Wing extremeism, this was not so idealogically driven.

I read a biography on Stalin and his rise to power a couple of years back and it is not a pleasant read I can assure you.


Enjoyable too debating with you OT. Even if you do tend to pepper your responses with personal digs.
They were not intended as digs but as responses to your own admitted Politics. They are not representative of the vast majority in the UK, and thus you must feel uncomfortable as no-one will take forward your case.
 

bnm

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Left of centre does not make me uncomfortable. Neither does it make me socialist/marxist/communist. To draw that inference by bringing up Cuba, Stalin, North Korea, the USSR and so on is very wide of the mark. Voted Labour twice in my life. Like most people, my politics are complex.

I particularly resent any comparison with the French. :p

What does make me uncomfortable, and has done since I've been disabled, are the many policies from the centre-right that have had, in the past, or will have, in the future, a detrimental effect on my quality of life. See? I can go off on random tangents as well. :roll:

Comrade was a joke, remember? I did explain that and you agreed that you were aware. Seems you've forgotten. Comes with age, does that.

Oops. Personal dig.
 

Old Timer

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Oops. Personal dig.
Doesn't bother me, comes as part of the cut 'n thrust of debate. Try going on PPRuNE sometime amd see real personal disparagement !

What does make me uncomfortable, and has done since I've been disabled, are the many policies from the centre-right that have had, in the past, or will have, in the future, a detrimental effect on my quality of life. See? I can go off on random tangents as well. :rolleyes:.
It depends upon what you mean as "detrimental effect".

I doubt very much that any Conservative MP or Minister sits down and thinks "Today I will destroy the lives of the disabled", and I doubt you hold that view in any case.

Part of the problem with disability is that for many years now it has been used and abused as a means of keeping people off the long term unemployment figures. It has also been allowed to be abused by those who are workshy.

Another debate is what disabled actually means in reality ?

There is no one solution to the issue, and it is far more complex than I am able to comment on. I would however say that attitudes on both sides need to change. I know people who are quite happy to play on their disablement and I know those who find it dispiriting not to be able to find work because of it.

I really do not know what the answer is. What I do know is that a disablement does not mean that a person has a poor mind indeed many disabled people have very good intellectual powers. It is just a shame that opportunities to exploit these are not always given.

As a manager I would rather have 5 disabled and willing staff than 10 who just show up. Unfortunately the Industry within which I work does not easily allow for the use of disabled people outside of the office environment.

I doubt that any Conservative or right of centre voter would wish any disabled person to suffer. I think however it is fair to say that we would explain the disabled to make a fair attempt to at least seek some form of employment.

I appreciate it is easier to say this than do it, but I am most disappointed that you would ascribe an uncaring attitude or unconcern towards disabled people simply on the basis that a person does not vote left of centre.
 

pmgarvey

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I am hard put to name any Country which follows a Socialist regime which is not impoverished.

Most of Scandanavia's pretty socialist and has great standards of living.

Also, OT, what was the Stalin biography called and would you recommend it? Sounds interesting.
 

Schnellzug

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Most of Scandanavia's pretty socialist and has great standards of living.

Also, OT, what was the Stalin biography called and would you recommend it? Sounds interesting.

"The Court of the Red Tsar" by Simon Teabag Montefiore is quite good.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Whilst there has certainly been Right Wing extremeism, this was not so idealogically driven. .

So what was that Third Reich business all about, then? Was that not a little ideology involved there? Or was the NSDAP not strictly Right Wing; i mean, it had the word Socialist in the name!
 

Eagle

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I am hard put to name any Country which follows a Socialist regime which is not impoverished.

Scandinavia, highest quality of life in the world? Italy (ignoring the eurozone crisis, which is nothing to do with socialism), one of the ten richest countries in the world? Also, France was more-or-less socialist for years in the 90s and 2000s.
 

Old Timer

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Most of Scandanavia's pretty socialist and has great standards of living..
Their management of the economy though is not, being more Social democrat than Labour.

Right-wing parties have a long tradition in northern countries. In the past few years, under the collective label of “right-wing populism,” they’ve also made an increasing rise on the political scene. The Sweden Democrats made it into the country’s parliament in 2010. The Norwegian Progress Party has, since 2009, been the second strongest in that country’s parliament. Nearly 20% of Finnish voters gave their votes to the True Finns just a few months ago. And the Danish Peoples’ Party has been exercising considerable influence on government policies for the past 10 years.

Of course, there are differences among the groups. The Sweden Democrats have their roots in the Neo-Nazi scene, while in Norway and Denmark the right-wing parties began with platforms for lowering taxes. The True Finns were originally a provincial movement that today is mainly identified by its opposition to the European Union.



Most of Scandanavia's pretty socialist and has great standards of living.

Also, OT, what was the Stalin biography called and would you recommend it? Sounds interesting.
I will dig the details out for you.

Found them. Here it is.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...8Q6wEwAw#v=onepage&q=stalin biography&f=false
 
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Schnellzug

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What have they got to do with the NF and the EDL ???

I do not understand your point at all. I have pointed out that there were both Left and Right Wing dictatorships. There aren't any other forms.

Well, the former two organisations see the the aforementioned fascist dictatorships as role models, surely. After all, they did make the trains run on time ... :|
 

MidnightFlyer

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Left Wing and Right Wing dictatorships tend to get indistinguishable after a while. Several aspects of Nazi Germany and Communist GDR are similar.
 

Schnellzug

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I think that's probably true, actually. I don't think Stalin really cared two hoots about Communism; what he wanted was to build a Cult of Stalin. I think when they get to the extremes, they pretty nearly start to converge. Like IngSoc in 1984; whether that was Left or Right wing didn't make much difference in practical terms. In fact, I don't think Left or Right in even ordinary "Democratic" Politics makes much difference really either; there's always bigger factors beyond their control (particularly the Global Economy and nutters in far-away lands of which we know little) that have the real influence on things.
 
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