Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/04/conservative-politician-apolog.html
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Why is she apologising? That’s one of the most refreshingly honest and open expressions of the Tory endgame I’ve ever seen one of their politicians make.
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At the risk of answering a rhetorical question with a blindingly obvious answer, Tories and Trumpublicans are cowards who know they can’t afford to be honest if they want to have any chance to enact that endgame.
I wonder what she thinks of the Royal Family. /s
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Ah yes, the classic “Sorry about how you feel” nonpology. The bedrock of political apologies everywhere.
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Wait…this wasn’t in 'Murica?
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Shock.
The series was always designed to provoke spluttering of sherry across middle England.
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“Well, at least she’s honest” …
And yes, that TV program and British tabloids in general are terrible at demonizing the poor. Of which a sizeable portion are actually and really starving these days.
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Welcome aboard, Comrade.
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“My most sincere apologies for saying what I was actually thinking - sorry you’re all butthurt about it.”
Marvelous - quote them directly and hoist them on their own petards (though I’m reasonably sure this only galvanizes them with their like-minded bases).
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“I would like to apologize to those of you who misunderstood my statement about welfare recipients ‘needing putting down’. I wasn’t intending to imply that they needed to be killed, I just meant they needed to be insulted.”
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Well, she’s apologising for “the upset”, not for holding the opinion, so I’m sure she’s not wracked by any internal feelings of hypocrisy.
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As if anyone who hadn’t read all about Universal Credit hadn’t already reached that conclusion.
Tories are scum and vermin.
The following quotes from Aneurin Bevan in 1948 are always pertinent, but never more so than now. My bold [and comments]
So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now. Do not listen to the seductions of Lord Woolton [Boris’s predecessor of the time]. He is a very good salesman. If you are selling shoddy stuff you have to be a good salesman. [Yep = that’s Boris]
“we were attacked on our housing policy by every spiv in the country – for what is Toryism, except organized spivvery? They wanted to let the spivs loose.” As a result of controls, the well-to-do had not been able to build houses, but ordinary men and women were moving into their own homes. Progress could not be made without pain, and the important thing was to make the right people suffer the pain.
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Not only do people vote (in alarmingly high numbers) for people this unpleasant, they also apparently don’t care that someone would post something this unpleasant on the internet, where it can be found years later.
Seriously? How fucking stupid do you have to be?
Edit, I realise I’m being insufficiently cynical and this was probably what got her the fucking job: “Publicly fantasise about killing poor people? You’ll fit right into the Nasty Party!”
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I’m also thinking, 2014?
What people are thinking that’s somehow “an earlier era” where it would be hard to judge people’s comments?
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Don’t they want to eat the poor? This is an age-old proposition.
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It seems that it’s the endgame of fascists and other authoritarians everywhere.
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From reading the linked articles it doesn’t seem like she was making the comment because the people were on “welfare” but because the people were in engaging in “bad behavior”. I’d really need to watch the show to find out. Here are some quotes from the article.
“Another 40 viewers complained that the programme demonstrated criminal techniques, after an individual in one episode was shown lining a paper bag with foil as a shoplifting method and then later seen removing a security device from clothing.”
“Viewers specifically complained about the well-being of one child who was shown how to make a flame thrower using a deodorant can, as well as the potentially negative impact on the children featured resulting from their appearance on the series.”
It does sound like the better response to the story would be regarding the inevitable reactions to heavily biased media, and what the actual facts are and how to learn them.
that’s some fine hair splitting you are doing about why people should be murdered.
the examples that follow are justifications for a very horrible idea said by someone who apparently thinks very horrible things. is that really who you want setting policies?
strange behaviour to defend.
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At the time that this show was on television the right wing press were attacking welfare and its recipients at every opportunity. It was deliberately joining in the attacks by intentionally only showing the worst behaviour of a few people.
If she was attacking the people only because of their behaviour then she was in a tiny minority. Most of the attacks (all of them, in my personal experience) were of the anti-welfare variety.
Benefits Street was reactionary hate porn. There is no other way to describe it.
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