POGS
Dinamo
Sorry but I don't understand how your response answers the statement.
' Some people think that by voting Conservative they somehow become one of the better off by association'.
Every political party will tell you you /the voter will be better off if you vote for them.
How does anybody become better off by ' association'?
I gave you the example of my mother and I'll explain more slowly, so hopefully you understand POGS.
My mother was never well off. Her own mother (my grandmother) was abandoned by my grandfather, so my mother and her brother were brought up by a single, divorced mother, which was quite unusual in the 1930s.
Nevertheless, they were educated and artistic ... and proud. They were snobs. They they thought they were better than working class people and those who claimed any kind of benefits. My own parents were divorced when my sisters were still quite young.
They associated voting Labour with being working class and, horror of horrors, with claiming benefits. My mother would have been eligible for some Pension Credit, but she always refused to claim.
In her mind, the only people who voted Labour were feckless scroungers and she thought she was better than that. If she had ever voted Labour, she would have had to admit to herself that she was really no better than other people.
She had friends who thought the same way and I sometimes see the same attitude in posts on GN. It's deeply entrenched into some kind of unconscious psyche. I'm not a psychologist, so I can't explain it any better.
My mother had no understanding of macro-economics, so saw everything through her own experience and bigotry. She didn't understand (or chose not to understand) that she voted against her best interests.
My sisters are lifelong Labour voters and my mother was always horrified, so we always did our best to change the subject. It was as though they had somehow betrayed their "class" and upbringing (to my mother at least).
beggars belief and makes me so so angry.
