Just because it is in the manifest does not mean it will happen.
The Tory party is rife with cronyism. £millions were wasted at the start of the pandemic in buying useless PPE from friends of MPs'
Brexit has been a disaster so far;
Shellfish and meat rotting at ports due to delays;
Exports to Europe down by 68%
Student exchange scheme scrapped;
Musicians unable to perform in Europe due to extra costs'
But hey we have a new trade deal with Australia and Singapore. That's going to help our carbon footprint.

@Moravian well there’s a loaded post.

1. No, this is true.
2. Needing support to get anywhere in politics seems to lend itself towards cronyism, as mutual interests are established.
3. The response to the pandemic seemed to go against any pandemic response I can imagine. But I don’t know the details of the PPE debacle; it doesn’t surprise me, the little hammer used to test for rust during MOTs has a similar history I’ve been told.
4. I didn’t vote for Brexit and think it’s idiotic a vote was taken on such a vague question with no meat around the implications and actions resulting from each outcome. But it’s done now and a lot of ‘older’ people seem very happy about it, as well as a few young ones that believe them.
5. Food waste should probably be criminal - especially when we are asking at nearly every supermarket for donations of free food for the poor in England. That’s horrible to hear, the obvious response would be it should be divvied out to charities.
6. That is unfortunately an expected outcome of leaving the Union, but exasperated by Covid, no doubt. Some businesses were already expecting to have to change or close
7. Travel for many sectors has been changed, a girl working in the local co op was ex cruise liner staff.
8. I’m just glad it’s not the original TIPP which guaranteed companies payouts if their products got banned, which is farcical as they should be experts in their own products. Now it’s less hidden the potential Trans Atlantic deal has had to be a bit more publicly accountable.

[economicshelp.org]

But I do still worry about consumer rights and labelling.
But yes, you’re right, Europe is much more accessible with less carbon footprint.

@girlwithsmiles

[thenational.scot]

I am am an admirer of de Bernieres as a writer and particularly liked "Birds without wings" but to say that there is antipathy towards English people in Scotland is absolute nonsense. Unfortunately this has now been spread widely on social media and it is being picked up by unionists here and British/English nationalists in England.
There always has been a few idiots on either side of the border but I have many English friends both here and in England from my time working in London,Hampshire and Bristol and none of them have had any experience of this.
I think he should stick to writing fictional stories.

@Moravian I know a few Brits that would like to live in Scotland if we are able to if you become independent.
After Brexit I must admit I considered Southern Ireland, but family ties temper my impulses these days.

@girlwithsmiles There are quite a few moving up from the south now that working from home is becoming more popular. I live in a small village in the Cairngorms national park and English accents are very common here.
The two things I miss about England are the warmer weather and village pubs but the crowded roads and restriction of access on private land you can keep.

@Moravian I worked a Summer in Tyndrum, just up from Glasgow and loved being able to just walk to any mountain in sight without farmers and landowners causing a fuss

Thanks for posting this, interesting. There is to be sure some commonality with the older definitions of US conservatives, and as well with some newer definitions, but you're right, it's not the same.

Major point of differences that comes through immediately are

• strong support for the UK national health system
• claims of support for clean energy and net zero carbon emissions.

Major commonalities are

• the focus on no-new-taxes
• stronger control of immigration

A grey area maybe would be US conservatives would likely claim to support workers strongly (for example, President Trump's appeal in part was staking out a claim of supporting workers by claiming to bring factories back to the US), but I don't know how true that is. I don't think US Conservatives generally could claim to support Unions very strongly. With Biden, by contrast, he has manifested explicit support for Unions. I'm not sure how the UK conservatives would align with some of this.

Possibly another difference (perhaps the most important one, if it is true) is that many US Conservatives actively cultivate some of the major hard-core Christian element in the US. I don't know if this is the case in the UK.

It's not the same thing as cultivation of the Christian vote, but is somewhat intertwined, that US conservatives stake out a claim of being supportive of Israel and (another somewhat separate thing) of being allegedly strong in opposition to Islamic Terrorism. In my view, there is a lot to debate as to whether US Conservatives are seriously (and lethally) irrational in some of their views in this area, but in any case, these seem to be long-held staked-out areas for them.

Here again I don't know how the UK "Conservatives" could be summarized.

side-note: I once received same-day high-quality to-the-point immediate medical care for a situation I had when traveling in the UK. I was really grateful for it. I would have paid a bill, if there had been one, but there wasn't. It doesn't cause a change in my personal views on healthcare finance and insurance and administration, which are a bit complicated but not particularly opposed to the way they do things in the UK, but, apart from political discussion, it still seems worth briefly testifying that I had that good experience as a visitor to your country.

There certainly is no loss of points or penalties for failing to deliver on the party manifesto, simply no accountability. Imagnine the same lack of accountability were allowed in every other sphere of employment. I do not know of any company that does not have an annual appraisal/assessment of its employees.

Perhaps the lack of end of term assessment and penalties make politics attractive to many people as a career, safe in the knowlege that if they fail to deliver on their manifesto or fuck up they do not lose their job and minor indiscretions are overlooked.

@kmaz yes you’re right, the UK concentrate on saying they support businesses rather than workers.
Conservatives are often religious, as they tend to be traditionalists, but it’s rarely used to make themselves look better. All parties do tend to talk about the family and support for families.

@ASTRALMAX it’s a point I’ve been arguing for years. Over here if an unemployed person misses an appointment they stand to lose their, (subsistence level), benefits. While the government can totally fail on deliverables and rarely face issues from it. Bizarre isn’t it?

@girlwithsmiles Family, NHS etc etc are all words that are used emotively by politicians. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. How have those who staff the NHS been rewarded for their services over the years, especially, now in the pandemic. Well, the answer is simply the same as usual, empty rhetoric.

@girlwithsmiles

On the worker/union question, I think if UK conservatives claim to support business, this would be a strong commonality with US conservatives. (I think the key word here is claim.... I personally think the conservatives alleged support for US business is often misguided at best). I was going on about the worker thing because of something mentioned on that link about the UK conservatives and it got me down a different path..... thinking about Trump's (claimed) points about bringing manufacturing back and leveling our trade situation. Also, in recent days we have heard Biden make some effort toward Unions in the US.

On questions of who courts or does not court which theists, and from which angles, subtle or not-so-subtle, I was just taking a first look at some of the demographic data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the US and this came up:

[en.wikipedia.org]

Religion Biden Trump % of Total Vote
Protestant/Other Christian 39 60 43
Catholic 52 47 25
Jewish 76 22 2
Other religion 69 29 8
None 65 31 22

and:

White evangelical or born-again Christian
24 76 28

(it doesn't provide a way to separate out the ethnicity point as to evangelicals).

There's probably a decent amount of food for thought here, but my point in relation to your thread-starter is just that work has been done for many years and decades by US Conservatives to court those Christian and evangelical votes. Some of this has been I think a conscious effort to zoom in on one or two or three points where voters may be one-issue voters or nearly so (abortion, Israel and the Middle East). Some of it is that the brains of some of the voters clearly are somewhat pliant and mushy on certain points. Maybe some of the politicians looking for soft minds lick their chops a bit? Everyone has their intellectual strong and weak points though.

Part of my theory here is if you join a mushy belief system or way of thinking or community like evangelical/born-again, then maybe you resonate well to what you perceive as moral discussion, and some politicians may decide to see if they can appeal to that. Some secularist or quieter theist politicians may not talk about the moral side of things as much,.. and this failure to raise those issues may not resonate well with those evangelical/born-again voters.

@girlwithsmiles Consersatives may tend to be religious, however, they do not confuse profits with prophets, except where the latter may offer an opportunity to increase the former.

@girlwithsmiles Famous for the Green Wellie stop and a goldmine without much gold.

@Moravian that’s the one

Incorrect on all six. A very small percentage will hold one or more of those views, but the vast majority do not.

@racocn8 Your post looks racist.

@Mvtt By definition, there's no racism against the dominant race.

@LovinLarge I disagree. Non-whites can certainly behave with their own racial discrimination, but not being dominant, have much less power and effect. All discriminatory prejudicial behavior that is harmful should be discouraged.

@racocn8 Racism, particularly systemic racism as a social phenomenon encompasses much more than racial discrimination. I would elaborate but an honest discussion of the subject is beyond the parameters of this website, not to mention my attention span.