Friendships which cross the political divide - UPDATED
Back in mid October the Observer published this article by Gaby Hinsliff which I welcomed here about ten MPs and peers who had friends in an opposing political party.
It ought to be obvious that such friendships are a good thing. Unfortunately whenever someone puts their head above the parapet and admits to such a friendship there will be those who apply words like "traitor" to one or both of the individuals concerned.
Last Friday there was a charming Tweet showing two young women, Sophie the author of the tweet and her friend Rose, which referred to the fact that one of them votes Conservative and the other Labour but they had been friends for sixteen years.
It is important to recognise the positive as well as the negative, and note that many, many people, including myself, posted about over the weekend about what a nice tweet this was.
What I thought was rather sad. however was that this clearly upset a lot of people, and the responses to Sophie included a significant number of critical tweets, some of which were quite nasty. Sophie showed, incidentally, enormous maturity and patience in the polite way she responded.
I think it legitimate to point out that I did not see a single response from a Conservative accusing Sophie of being a traitor for being friends with Rose or attacking Rose for voting Labour. But there were plenty from the Left which were nasty about one or both young women because of Sophie's politics or Rose's friendship with her and many which made a whole raft of assumptions about one or both of them.
Far and away the most patronising of the negative responses was one from Owen Jones, a Guardian journalist who therefore ironically writes for the same news organisation which published Gaby Hinsliff's excellent article linked to in the first line of this post.
Jones parodied the words of Sophie's tweet to refer to himself and his cat. It appeared to be intended to be funny but that's not how I think it came over.
POSTSCRIPT ADDED MONDAY EVENING
I had not originally realised, but was saddened to learn this evening, that the nastier end of the twitter responses to Sophie and Rose included rape and death threats.
So much for "kinder, gentler politics!"
No political party has a monopoly on wisdom or foolishness, on achievements or terrible mistakes, We can all learn from other people. The sort of anger which fuelled the attacks on Sophie and Rose is not a positive thing. As Mark Twain wrote,
It ought to be obvious that such friendships are a good thing. Unfortunately whenever someone puts their head above the parapet and admits to such a friendship there will be those who apply words like "traitor" to one or both of the individuals concerned.
Last Friday there was a charming Tweet showing two young women, Sophie the author of the tweet and her friend Rose, which referred to the fact that one of them votes Conservative and the other Labour but they had been friends for sixteen years.
It is important to recognise the positive as well as the negative, and note that many, many people, including myself, posted about over the weekend about what a nice tweet this was.
What I thought was rather sad. however was that this clearly upset a lot of people, and the responses to Sophie included a significant number of critical tweets, some of which were quite nasty. Sophie showed, incidentally, enormous maturity and patience in the polite way she responded.
I think it legitimate to point out that I did not see a single response from a Conservative accusing Sophie of being a traitor for being friends with Rose or attacking Rose for voting Labour. But there were plenty from the Left which were nasty about one or both young women because of Sophie's politics or Rose's friendship with her and many which made a whole raft of assumptions about one or both of them.
Far and away the most patronising of the negative responses was one from Owen Jones, a Guardian journalist who therefore ironically writes for the same news organisation which published Gaby Hinsliff's excellent article linked to in the first line of this post.
Jones parodied the words of Sophie's tweet to refer to himself and his cat. It appeared to be intended to be funny but that's not how I think it came over.
POSTSCRIPT ADDED MONDAY EVENING
I had not originally realised, but was saddened to learn this evening, that the nastier end of the twitter responses to Sophie and Rose included rape and death threats.
So much for "kinder, gentler politics!"
No political party has a monopoly on wisdom or foolishness, on achievements or terrible mistakes, We can all learn from other people. The sort of anger which fuelled the attacks on Sophie and Rose is not a positive thing. As Mark Twain wrote,
Comments
You see I could get angry about the current war on diesel cars (as in london charging a 50% surcharge to park one that is over 2 years old) I could do that.
But no, instead I took the simple option of scrapping my trusty old (11 year old) honda diesel for a hybrid. And whoopie the chancellor has struck on that as well, So dont ever try to tell me that taxes are there to promote green rubbish, they are there to make money, its that simple, and when vehicle manufactures do manage to reach the "unreachable" then they simply move the goal posts, and not a penny of it goes to making the roads better. Its just a joke.
Taxes SHOULD be there primarily to raise money. The most damaging taxes are often the ones which raise least revenue.